Thank you everyone. The circular pipeline basically goes like this:
CIA does the actual heavy lifting and finds the documents, maps, testimonies, etc. -> they are sent to journalists or NGOs to base a story on -> the state department uses the resulting articles to make policy -> the journalists receive an award from a state dept. NGO to deflect criticism of the "investigation".
OSINT is a lie, it's the CIA all the way down, philanthropy isn't real.
One more thing because I know a lot of people use proton. In 1970 a longstanding company based in Switzerland, Crypto AG, was found to have been owned by the CIA. An investigation found that the swiss intelligence services benefited from this relationship for years. Today, Proton Mail is based in switzerland despite not being owned or founded by swiss nationals. in 2024, they ran a raffle fundraiser and the first beneficiary of the raised money they listed was fucking freedom house. There is now a clear link between proton and the state department through freedom house.