Fact check: False claim Edward Snowden exposed HAARP ‘assassination agenda’
The claim: Edward Snowden exposed HAARP’s ‘global assassination agenda’
A Feb. 1 Facebook post (direct link, archived link) includes a video showing someone scrolling through an online article about former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden.
“Snowden reveals HAARP’s GLOBAL Assassination agenda,” reads both the headline of the article and the caption of the post.
The video appears to originate from a Telegram channel called “END ILLUMINATI.”
The same video was posted by other users on multiple social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. The videos have been viewed more than 29,000 times on Facebook.
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Our rating: False
The article featured in the video comes from a satirical news website. Snowden has not released any kind of documentation of an assassination agenda associated with the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, also known as HAARP.
Article shown in video comes from satirical news site
The article shown in the videos was published on a website called the Internet Chronicle in 2013.
James Galloway, editor of the Internet Chronicle, confirmed in an email that the website is satirical in nature and described the article as a “joke.”
While the website’s about page does not explicitly state that its content is satirical, the content as well as descriptions of the publication and its editors are clearly satirical in nature.
Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, fled the U.S. after he leaked information on the nation's most secretive spy agencies and their programs in 2013. His actions triggered a debate over government surveillance, with some hailing him as a hero and others calling him a traitor.
Several other “articles” on the site purport that Snowden has unveiled other sorts of nefarious undercover government plots.
Researchers at HAARP utilize an array of high-frequency transmitters to conduct various experiments in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere. There is no evidence that the research program has a “global assassination agenda.”
The posts are examples of what could be called "stolen satire," where screenshots of stories written as satire and presented that way originally are reshared in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.
Paste BN has previously debunked claims that HAARP can manipulate the weather and create earthquakes.
Fact check: High-frequency research program studies ionosphere, can't create hurricanes
Paste BN reached out to the social media users who shared the video for comment.
Reuters also debunked this claim.
Our fact-check sources:
- Paste BN, Jan. 25, Fact check: False claim ‘chemtrails’ and HAARP are used to manipulate the weather
- Paste BN, Feb. 15, Fact check: False claim HAARP is responsible for the earthquake in Turkey
- Paste BN, Oct. 28, 2022, Fact check: High-frequency research program studies ionosphere, can't create hurricanes
- Paste BN, Aug. 15, 2020, Trump says he will look 'very strongly' at granting pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden
- Paste BN, Dec. 16, 2013, Snowden says ruling vindicates leak of NSA files
- Paste BN, June 10, 2013, Is Snowden a traitor or a public servant?
- James Galloway, Feb. 28, Email exchange with Paste BN
- University of Alaska Fairbanks, accessed March 1, FAQ | HAARP
- Reuters, Feb. 24, Fact Check-Article about Edward Snowden revealing a HAARP global assassination agenda is satire
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Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.