An official Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Twitter account has expressed “regret” after it posted a link to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The FBI Records Vault tweeted the link  - later revealed to have been shared automatically - on Wednesday, to the bureau’s 139-page copy of the notorious forged antisemitic tract purporting to describe a Jewish plot to achieve world domination.

The FBI Records Vault is American domestic intelligence agency’s  Freedom of Information Act Library consisting of thousands of files and records.

The initial tweet, which simply read “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, did not offer any contextual information, sparking anger and dismay among online users.

A statement published by the FBI Records Vault  account later on Wednesday read: “Earlier today FOIA materials were posted to the FBI’s Vault and FOIA Twitter account via an automated process without further outlining the context of the documents.

“We regret that this release may have inadvertently caused distress among the communities we serve.”

The Auschwitz Memorial, which preserves the site of the Nazi concentration camp where millions of Jewish people died in the Holocaust, criticised the FBI for sharing the files saying: “Context REALLY matters. FBI Records Vault tweets out files it is releasing by including the subject. Without context.”

The Anti-Defamation League later said in a statement that while “there is no reason to think that the FBI shared this material out of malice or due to antisemitic animus, it is concerning that the FBI’s twitter account did not clarify in the tweet that the digitised file was of historical interest, and released the file without any additional context or description of this work as virulently antisemitic.”

The Protocols were  first published in Russia in 1903 before being translated into multiple languages and shared worldwide.  

Despite being proven as a hoax in 1921, it was widely circulated by automaker and antisemite Henry Ford through the 1920s, was used in Nazi propaganda to justify the persecution of Jews and continues to be held up as genuine by neo-fascist groups despite being proven to be a hoax.