U.S. deep state closely tied to Twitter

Recent Twitter Files revelations show strong links between the U.S. deep state and social media.

Twitter’s top ranks riddled with ex-FBI employees | New York Post - Jon Levine:

December 17, 2022 - "Twitter’s top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections. More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the social network in October. The Post found FBI influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter.... In some cases, the former G-men and -women held positions that would have put them close to company leadership directly involved in censoring The Post’s Hunter Biden coverage in October 2020.

• "Matthew Williams spent more than 15 years with the FBI, working mostly out of Seattle, where he served most recently as an intelligence program manager and senior supervisory intelligence analyst. Williams joined Twitter in June 2020 — the same month as Baker — as a 'senior director of product trust,' according to his LinkedIn. In June 2022 he moved into a more expansive position as 'senior director of product trust, revenue policy, counsel systems & analytics at Twitter'.... Williams gave small but consistent amounts to Democrats running for federal office during his years at the company, Federal Election Commission records show.
• "Dawn Burton, a former federal prosecutor who served as deputy chief of staff to FBI boss James Comey, joined Twitter in September 2019 as director of strategy and operations and counsel organization, according to her LinkedIn and Bloomberg.... As a Comey insider, Burton would have been close to the agency’s Hillary Clinton email investigation as well as its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. She continued to serve in her role after Comey’s ouster in May 2017 and the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. She also donated to Democrats. Burton left Twitter in July, before Musk’s takeover, and now works at Google.
• "Jeff Carlton worked for the FBI, CIA and as an intelligence officer for the US Marines before joining Twitter in May 2021. His now deleted LinkedIn account says he led 'Twitter’s Strategic Response Team of 50+ employees/agents in resolving the highest-profile Trust & Safety escalation,' which served to promote 'healthy public conversations'.... Twitter’s Trust and Safety team was lead by Yoel Roth, the now disgraced former company censor and an architect of the platform’s expansive shadow-banning efforts. During the run-up the the 2020 presidential, Roth had regular meetings with the FBI, which he joked about, according to troves of internal communications recently released by Musk....
• "Kevin Michelena did more than 12 years as an FBI intelligence analyst before coming to Twitter to work as a 'Senior Corporate Security Analyst' in July 2021. Among his responsibilities were to 'Partner with Software Engineering to create and optimize security products' and 'Collaborate with public policy and site integrity leads to ensure policies are properly implemented, which has mitigated risk to users from identified threat actors,' according to his LinkedIN, which has since been heavily redacted.
• "Michael Bertrand spent 23 years with the FBI working in counterterrorism, internal investigations and as chief of staff to the agency’s top leaders. He joined Twitter in January. Bertrand, an attorney, was responsible for 'proactively and reactively lead[ing] teams to assess and manage global incidents and crises affecting Twitter’s employees, offices and reputation,' according to his LinkedIN.
• "Karen Walsh spent more than 20 years at the FBI as a special agent focused on 'Public-Private Sector Outreach.' She joined Twitter as director of corporate resilience in March 2020.
• "Doug Hunt joined Twitter as a “senior director” after spending 20 years with the FBI as a supervisory special agent. Vincent Lucero also did more than two decades in the same role before joining Twitter in July 2019 as a “Senior Security Manager.”
• "Mark Jaroszewski became a director of corporate security in August 2018 after doing his own two decades as a supervisory special agent with the FBI. In a 2018 FBI press release the agency noted his job was 'focused on helping the FBI create strategic, mutually beneficial relationships with the private sector.' He also began donating to Democrats after joining Twitter."

Read more: https://nypost.com/2022/12/17/twitter-leadership-full-of-former-fbi-agents-linkedin-records-show/

"‘Twitter Files’ part 9 drops bombshell against the FBI," Fox News, December 25, 2022:

Latest Twitter Files shows CIA, FBI have spent years meddling in content moderation | New York Post - Mary Kay Linge & Jon Levine:

December 24, 2022 - "The CIA has been meddling in Twitter’s internal content moderation for years, according to the latest dispatches from Elon Musk’s 'Twitter Files' — which also revealed “mountains of insistent moderation demands” from the Democratic National Committee.... Two separate threads in the ongoing Elon Musk-sponsored deep dive into the social media’s internal documents were released Saturday by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, documenting how the platform has frequently bowed to government and political pressure. 

"On June 29. 2020, Taibbi shows, the FBI’s Elvis Chan — who has played a starring role in past Twitter Files releases — asked company executives to 'invite an OGA' to an upcoming conference. OGA, or ‘Other Government Organization,’ can be a euphemism for CIA, according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors,” Taibbi explains. One week later, Stacia Cardille, a senior Twitter legal executive, made the link explicit. 'I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,' Cardille wrote to her colleague — and former FBI chief counsel — James Baker on July 8, 2020. 'No need for you to attend.' Baker, one of dozens of ex-FBI agents and executives in Twitter’s ranks at the time, was fired this month for interfering in Musk’s effort to reveal the company’s past transgressions.

"From that point, Taibbi writes that 'regular meeting[s] of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF)' — attended by Twitter and 'virtually every major tech firm [including] Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others' — had “FBI personnel, and – nearly always – one or two attendees marked "OGA".' 'Meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an ‘OGA briefing,’ usually about foreign matters,' Taibbi writes.

"Through the FITF, US intelligence tasked Twitter analysts with laborious investigations into domestic Twitter accounts alleged to have nefarious foreign connections, the documents reveal — ramping up as the 2020 presidential election approached, but continuing through 2022. Twitter content monitors analyzed users’ IP data, phone numbers and even weighed whether user names were 'Russian-sounding' to confirm the government’s accusations – but often failed to do so."

Read more: https://nypost.com/2022/12/24/latest-batch-of-twitter-files-shows-cia-fbi-involved-in-content-moderation/