MANILA, Philippines — Similarly worded allegations that Philippine Coast Guard Spokesperson Jay Tarriela was a covert “CIA agent” and supporter of the United States government surfaced online after he publicly condemned the Chinese Coast Guard’s water cannon attack on Filipino vessels in August.
Besides accusing the PCG spokesperson of aligning with the US government and inciting war with China, several accounts also revived a 2004 news story that mentioned Tarriela as one of the subjects of a probe by the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) on a cheating incident. At least two columnists writing for The Manila Times and Net25 echoed this narrative.
These posts have some of the markings of an influence operation that Philstar.com is tracking across all social media platforms, groups and spaces on the internet. Among others, the posts appear to focus on flooding the discourse on Chinese vessels’ behavior in the West Philippine Sea with accusations that Tarriela is providing intelligence services to the US government.
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This report was made possible by an Internews project to build the capacity of news organizations in understanding disinformation and influence operations in the Philippines.