TWITTER FILES - CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the most famous of the 18 US government agencies that comprise the Intelligence Community (IC) of the United States of America. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), the law strictly prohibits CIA employees or contractors from spying upon or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil.
But now, a new Twitter Files investigation reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of the CIA’s mission-driven venture capital firm and ostensibly “former” IC and CIA analysts were involved in a 2021-2022 effort to take over Twitter’s content management system.
The effort also involved:
— a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;
— the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;
— Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
x.com/shellenberger/…
These existing or former IC employees, contractors, or intermediaries weren’t satisfied with simply controlling Twitter. They also wanted to use PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy in a totalizing effort to de-platform, de-monetize, and excommunicate from the Internet entirely those individuals that the IC et al. deems to be a threat.
There is much that we still do not know about the effort. We do not know if officials within the CIA or any other IC organization ran the operation. It is possible that the only individuals involved in the effort were the ones we discovered. And none of the individuals involved responded to our request for information except for one.
But thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents contained therein paint a clear picture of an organized operation by existing or former IC employees and contractors, using well-established IC tradecraft, to take control of Twitter’s content moderation.
Our investigation comes at a moment when governments and intelligence agencies around the world are stepping up their efforts to monitor and censor their citizens. It thus has large implications for policymakers and the public in Western nations that look to the US as a model for free speech and citizen control of the military.
This is a joint Public-Racket investigation. The authors are @Shellenberger @MTaibbi and @GalexyBrane. As always, the only condition we agreed to in publishing this was to first publish on X. At the end of this thread, we explain why and how this investigation began.
Here we go...
