The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Agency

Department of State

Documented money flows

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • DEF-2.1: The NSA historian Robert Hanyok concluded in a study published in 2001 that no attack on U.S. destroyers occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin on the night of 4 August 1964, and his study confirms the 2 August 1964 engagement with the Maddox. He wrote that the mishandling of the signals intelligence was "not done in a manner that can be construed as conspiratorial" and that NSA personnel believed the attack had happened.
  • INF-2.3: The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act authorizes information activity abroad and contains no ban on domestic distribution; the ban is section 208 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 16 August 1985, which Public Law 112-239 rewrote on 2 January 2013 to permit material made for foreign audiences to be made available in the United States.
  • INF-2.5: A Top Secret draft paper by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton dated 10 March 1965 lists U.S. aims in Vietnam as 70 percent "To avoid a humiliating US defeat," 20 percent to keep South Vietnam and adjacent territory from Chinese hands, and 10 percent to permit the people of South Vietnam a better, freer way of life.
  • INF-2.12: GAO found in B-229069 on 30 September 1987 that the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean arranged articles presented as the work of persons not associated with the government, that they "were misleading as to their origin," and that they violated the publicity-or-propaganda restriction.
  • INF-4.3: CISA's head of its misinformation team testified that CISA forwarded election officials' reports about posts to platforms in the 2020 election, and the record differs on whether it did so in 2022. The district court wrote in 2023 that no evidence produced in the case tied the Trump administration to the switchboarding, and a 2025 Senate Commerce majority report dates DHS's election-disinformation task force to March 2018.
  • DEF-6.5: The Kerry subcommittee found that State Department humanitarian funds for the Contras went to four companies tied to drug traffickers, and it did not find Contra leaders personally involved in trafficking.
  • POL-6.13: The National Endowment for Democracy Act of 1983 defines NED as a private nonprofit corporation that is not an agency of the U.S. Government, lists exchanges with "the two major American political parties, labor, and business" among its purposes, and subjects NED and its grantees to congressional oversight. The State Department paid NED congressional appropriations of $315,079,941 for fiscal 2022, $315,000,000 for 2023, $315,249,800 for 2024 and $315,860,780 for 2025.
  • POL-6.14: NED's Form 990 lists grants to its four core institutes, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the Center for International Private Enterprise and the Solidarity Center, of $142.4 million in fiscal 2023 and $135.9 million in fiscal 2024, 39 and 38 percent of total expenses. The Republican and Democratic institutes received $39.2 million and $33.4 million in 2023 and $35.4 million and $32.8 million in 2024.
  • POL-6.16: On 11 August 2025 a federal district court preliminarily enjoined the withholding of $95 million of NED's fiscal 2025 appropriation and found the stated reason for it not plausible. The State Department obligated NED's full $315 million fiscal 2026 appropriation in March 2026, and the government's motion to dismiss the suit as moot was pending on 9 October 2026. Executive Order 14169 paused new obligations of foreign development assistance for 90 days on 20 January 2025, and on 26 September 2025 the Supreme Court stayed an order to obligate about $10.5 billion of expiring aid without deciding the merits.
  • POL-6.17: Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, Qatar was on 23 February 2026 the largest country of attribution for reported foreign gifts and contracts at U.S. colleges and universities, about $8.8 billion in about 1,300 transactions, and China was second at about $4.9 billion in about 8,000. The Education Department opened 19 Section 117 investigations from 2019 to 2021 under the first Trump Administration, none under the Biden Administration and four to date under the second Trump Administration.
  • POL-7.11: On 4 July 2023 the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana preliminarily enjoined officials of the White House, the Surgeon General's office, CDC, FBI, CISA, NIAID and the State Department, finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed on the claim that the government coerced or significantly encouraged platform moderation. The court wrote that the alleged censorship "almost exclusively targeted conservative speech" and that the issues "go beyond party lines."
  • POL-7.13: Congress created the State Department's Global Engagement Center in section 1287 of Pub. L. 114-328 (23 December 2016) to "recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts." On 16 April 2025 Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the office, by then named R/FIMI, saying it "spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving." The statement cites no document or case.

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 312 1989. United States Senate, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations: Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, S. Prt. 100-165 (Kerry Committee report)
  • Exhibit 313 1989. United States Senate, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations: Kerry Committee report, table of State Department payments to four suppliers
  • Exhibit 380 4 August 1964 events; published FRUS. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968, Vol. I, Vietnam 1964, Doc. 276: Editorial Note (Gulf of Tonkin, 4 August 1964)
  • Exhibit 835 22 November 1983 (amended 1987). U.S. Congress: National Endowment for Democracy Act, 22 U.S.C. 4412 (grants to the Endowment)
  • Exhibit 837 Fiscal year ended 30 September 2023. National Endowment for Democracy: National Endowment for Democracy audited financial statements and Form 990, fiscal year ended 30 September 2023
  • Exhibit 838 Fiscal year ended 30 September 2024. National Endowment for Democracy: National Endowment for Democracy Form 990 and audited financial statements, fiscal year ended 30 September 2024
  • Exhibit 839 Fiscal year ended 30 September 2025. National Endowment for Democracy: National Endowment for Democracy audited financial statements, fiscal year ended 30 September 2025
  • Exhibit 840 Fiscal year ended 30 September 2022. National Endowment for Democracy: National Endowment for Democracy audited financial statements, fiscal year ended 30 September 2022
  • Exhibit 841 11 August 2025. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judge Dabney L. Friedrich): Memorandum Opinion, National Endowment for Democracy v. United States, No. 25-cv-648 (DLF), Doc. 46, 795 F. Supp. 3d 63
  • Exhibit 842 31 March 2026. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (parties' filing): Joint Status Report and Plaintiff's Motion to Withdraw Preliminary Injunction Motion, National Endowment for Democracy v. United States, Doc. 70
  • Exhibit 843 17 July 2026. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (defendants' filing): Defendants' Reply in Support of Motion to Dismiss, National Endowment for Democracy v. United States, Doc. 77
  • Exhibit 844 20 January 2025 (published 30 January 2025). The White House: Executive Order 14169, Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid, 90 Fed. Reg. 8619
  • Exhibit 845 26 September 2025. U.S. Supreme Court: Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, No. 25A269, order on application for stay, 606 U.S. 1055
  • Exhibit 847 25 March 2026. Congressional Research Service: Section 117 of the Higher Education Act: Reporting of Foreign Gifts and Contracts, CRS In Focus IF12927 (updated 25 March 2026)
  • Exhibit 863 2 January 2013. U.S. Congress: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, Pub. L. 112-239, sec. 1078 (Dissemination Abroad of Information About the United States)
  • Exhibit 865 4 July 2023. U.S. District Court, Western District of Louisiana (Judge Terry A. Doughty): Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Memorandum Ruling on Request for Preliminary Injunction, Doc. 293
  • Exhibit 868 23 December 2016. U.S. Congress: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, Pub. L. 114-328, sec. 1287 (Global Engagement Center)
  • Exhibit 869 16 April 2025. U.S. Department of State: Protecting and Championing Free Speech at the State Department (Press Statement, Secretary Marco Rubio)
  • Exhibit 1000 27 January 1948. U.S. Congress: United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Smith-Mundt Act), Pub. L. 80-402, 62 Stat. 6
  • Exhibit 1003 10 March 1965. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian: Paper Prepared by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (McNaughton), 'Action for South Vietnam' (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. II, doc. 193)
  • Exhibit 1012 30 September 1987. U.S. Government Accountability Office (Comptroller General): Department of State, Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, B-229069, 66 Comp. Gen. 707
  • Exhibit 1113 18 February 2023. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: Twitter Files #16: Comic Interlude: A Media Experiment (thread, 18-19 February 2023)