Excellent piece! I'm really amazed because I wrote about this exact same subject a couple of months ago. You MUST take a look a it:

https://steemit.com/propaganda/@homerus/a-timeline-for-the-massive-crackdown-on-internet-free-speech-part-1

I follow basically the same leads: CFR/ Atlantic Council; going through the same channels: WaPo/ Propornot... But I dig a bit deeper ehem into the WaPo journalist who brought Propornot to public light, he is also related to CFR... the circle closes. I also analyze the 2 congressmen who made a speech regarding this issue for the Atlantic Council months before the Fake News "scandal" started, hence the name of the 3rd article, below.

Part 2:

https://steemit.com/propaganda/@homerus/a-timeline-for-the-massive-crackdown-on-internet-free-speech-part-2

I give it a different interpretation to the whole issue. I disagree when you call it a "failed propaganda project", as I explain in the articles copied, the Propornot fiasco is just a part of a bigger scheme to bring the whole concept of "fake news" to the frontpage... being the final result the "soft-censoring" of many independent media by lobbying Facebook and Google into demonetization and outright censorship for certain media, or suddenly coming out in the 4th page of a google search, where nobody will find you, etc.

Anyway... I'm quoting you in a future article since I was missing that info on Propornot's behind the scene manager.

I started with this subject first in this article for www.antiwar.com:

https://original.antiwar.com/daniel_espinosa_winder/2017/01/11/from-official-policy-to-mainstream-discourse-propaganda-in-the-making/