Documents purportedly showing that the Global Engagement Center, a now-defunct state department office, secretly engaged in domestic censorship were leaked to a conservative online analyst earlier this month, sparking fresh debate over the agency’s mandate and activities. The leaked materials were provided by Sarah Rogers, the state department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, to Jennica Pounds, a rightwing data analyst, before Rogers published them herself and claimed officials at the center had “betrayed their stated mission.”
Two former senior officials at the Global Engagement Center—Daniel Kimmage, who served as principal deputy coordinator and acting coordinator from its founding in 2017 until its dissolution in 2025, and Carrie Goux, the center’s former acting deputy coordinator—dispute the implication that the leaked files prove wrongdoing. They contend the materials show nothing of the kind and argue the center’s work was explicitly foreign-facing and never directed at American citizens. Kimmage stated that Rogers had selectively quoted his congressional testimony, which was included in the leak, to misrepresent his statements about the center’s scope.
The dispute reflects an ongoing political conflict over the agency, which lost funding in 2024 and was disbanded following Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025. Republican critics, including former House foreign affairs committee chair Michael McCaul, have long characterized the center as part of a broader government effort to suppress rightwing speech. A focal point of this criticism has centered on the center’s funding of the Global Disinformation Index, a UK-based nonprofit that rated media outlets by disinformation risk and separately published a study rating several conservative outlets as high-risk.
During its nearly decade-long existence, the Global Engagement Center published eight detailed public reports on Russian and Chinese information operations and conducted multiple exposures of Russian disinformation campaigns across various regions. A 2022 inspector general review found the office “generally effective” at supporting counter-disinformation programs overall, though it flagged weaknesses in internal controls and contractor oversight. The state department is now resuming portions of this work through other departments, including plans to fund social media influencers in southeast Asia as part of an $11 million campaign to counter Chinese propaganda.
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