In a conversation with the political consultant David Axelrod about current acts of Russian disinformation, journalist and historian Anne Applebaum talked of how even the old USSR disseminated disinformation by cleverly seeding and laundering it through a free and open Western press. Neither she nor Axelrod thought to note that this was essentially the same method used by the George W Bush administration to gain credibility for the Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction story in 2002 and 2003. By having proxies seed it anonymously in the New York Times, with the help of a cooperative journalist, the Bush administration could then cite the New York Times as a credible and independent entity corroborating what was (of course) nothing more than its own seeded talking point. The consequences of this well-placed, effectively laundered misinformation (if not disinformation) were hardly insignificant. Years of war, human misery and damage to the credibility of both the Times and the country ensued.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/18/the-great-disinformation-panic/#:~:text=In%20a%20conversation,the%20country%20ensued.