His actual takes (like his bad one on Bolivia) seem more relevant than who signs his checks, and those takes are as consistent with "useful for the State Department" as they are with "directly representing State Department interests." "Useful for the State Department" covers basically any leftist with bad foreign policy takes, and those people can be brought around. "Directly representing State Department interests" is a much more serious problem that raises bigger questions about whether the guy can ever be trusted.

Remember, the media critique outlined in Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent doesn't claim that any journalist with any sort of monetary link to any organ of the government is effectively a federal employee parroting the State Department line. The critique is that:

1. News outlets can't be too critical, too often of the groups that pay the bills. If they are, they'll lose funding and be unable to do their jobs.
2. Journalists who rely on access to organizations can't be too critical, too often of those organizations. If they are, they'll lose access and be unable to do their jobs.

Bellingcat receives a portion of its funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, but not all of its funding. Evans receives a portion of his income from Bellingcat, but not all of his income. I'm sure he relies on institutional access to some extent in his reporting, but it's almost certainly a much smaller extent than, say, a reporter who lives in D.C. and gets all their information from press conferences and whatever government officials will talk to them. All of this (and all of Evans' good reporting) makes me think he's probably a leftist with bad foreign policy takes, and probably not printing stuff the State Department emails him.