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/

Paul and McCain oppose Trump's CIA pick

Rand’s rep as Senate rebel on the line - POLITICO - Burgess Everett:

May 14, 2018 - "Rand Paul is once again the talk of the Senate.... [W]ith the Senate preparing for a nail-biter on Trump’s CIA nominee Gina Haspel, the chamber is abuzz over the latest will-he-or-won’t-he Rand guessing game. The libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator says he’s a hard 'no,' but Democrats and Republicans believe he may yet fold under pressure from Trump, as he did with Mike Pompeo for secretary of state.

""Paul had a simple answer when asked if he again can be persuaded by the president to support one of his crucial nominees: 'No.'

"'Someone who has been an active participant and enthusiast for torture is not someone who should represent America,' Paul said in an interview as he left the Senate for the week on Thursday.... In a POLITICO op-ed Friday, he criticized the CIA nominee for selectively releasing information about her record of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees and said 'that fact alone should be enough to cause the Senate [to] reject her nomination'....

"For Paul, it’s the latest test of his resolve in the face of enormous pressure from his party and the president to toe the party line....

"In February, Paul single-handedly caused a brief government shutdown by refusing to relent in his opposition to a budget deal, but then backed off before forcing a second one in March. In the case of Pompeo, he relented after being personally lobbied by the president....

"Paul does not serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will hold the first vote on Haspel’s nomination. Pompeo was first taken up by the Foreign Relations Committee, which Paul does sit on, and his opposition threatened an embarrassing 'unfavorable' vote by the panel.

"For now, Haspel is short of votes for confirmation. {Democratic Senators Joe] Manchin, an Intelligence Committee member, and [Joe] Donnelly support her. But other moderate Democrats ... are not yet behind her, and neither are Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

"Though he‘s unlikely to be present for the vote, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) came out against Haspel last week over what he called her evasive responses to questions about the morality of torture, which he called 'disqualifying.' That marks one of the few times the hawkish McCain and libertarian-leaning Paul have agreed — McCain once called Paul 'wacko,' and Paul last year said McCain was 'unhinged' — on foreign policy."

Read more: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2018/05/paul-and-mccain-oppose-trumps-cia-pick.html
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Oliver Stone's Snowden a 'gripping docudrama' (video)

Hacker or hero? Oliver Stone sides with Snowden: review | Toronto Star - Peter Howell:

September 15, 2016 - "With his gripping new docudrama Snowden, which just had its world premiere at TIFF, Stone is totally on the side of Edward Snowden, painting the fugitive ex-CIA and National Security Agency whistleblower as an American patriot, not the evil 'hacker' that U.S. President Obama dismissed Snowden as when it all blew open in 2013.

"Yet Stone does so with a good measure of restraint, a quality rare for him. Joseph Gordon-Levitt sympathetically portrays the bespectacled title cipher, a Rubik’s Cube champ with an IBM brain. He breathes life into the complicated motivations behind a former soldier’s decision to air his country’s dirty laundry to the world, turning himself into a wanted man in the process, his U.S. passport revoked by Washington.

"Dubbed 'Snow White' by a cynical co-worker soon after he arrives with noble intentions at the CIA, Snowden discovers to his dismay that politics, economic advantage and good old-fashioned ambition are the main driving forces behind his new employer — which also routinely tramples on civil liberties by liberally spying on anyone and everyone, even in their bedrooms, publicly denying it all the while....

"Scripted by writer/director Stone with co-writer Kieran Fitzgerald, the movie also gives a fair hearing to the 'war on terror' counter-argument, with Snowden’s boss and mentor Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans, superb) emerging as an intelligent pragmatist who sincerely believes — as do many Americans — that preserving safety and security requires the necessary evil of invading personal privacy.

"Snowden would make a great double bill with Citizenfour, the Oscar-winning 2014 doc by Laura Poitras, which featured the real Edward Snowden as he prepared to reveal his identity to the world."

Read more: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2016/09/15/hacker-or-hero-oliver-stone-sides-with-snowden-review.html
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Documents shed new light on origin of ISIS

ISIS, Al Qaeda And The CIA: The Documented Connection | Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden:

December 17, 2015 - "The Middle East is fertile ground for conspiracy theories, and one growing to towering heights these days says the US created the Islamic State.  But while the US may well have aided ISIS in its formative days with covert supplies of weapons and CIA funding (directly or indirectly, via Turkey leading political families) the one nation most responsible for iteration after iteration of 'terrorist organizations' is Saudi Arabia which 'created' not only the Islamic State, but al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and many other Sunni Jihadist groups.

"The US has long been aware of this, of course, and it has provided material support to some of them in the distant past, for example to the Taliban in the war against Russia. But the more reasonable among us have questioned recent claims that the US intentionally created the Islamic State, a group of the same lineage as the Saudi terrorists responsible for 9/11....

"Thanks to the resurrection of 'J Pierpont Morgan', these doubts and questions are no longer reasonable.... Yesterday ['Morgan'] tweeted three public source documents that conclusively show a Senior CIA Spy - a major figure in operations from South America to the Middle East - is lobbying the US Government to destroy Iraq and formally create an independent Sunnistan on behalf of a Sunni terrorist.

"That terrorist joined the Iraq insurgency in 2004 under the Al-Qaeda Iraq banner, and was given hundreds of millions of dollars by the CIA and CENTCOM to defect, joining the US-led coalition in the now famous 'Surge.' Known as H.E. Shaykh Abdalrazzaq Hatem al-Sulayman, this self-described prince is the head of a 4 million strong (mostly Sunni) tribe in Anbar, and lived the high life on US taxpayer money - that is until Obama declared AQ and AQI dead, bolted from Iraq and pivoted toward Asia....

"His Eminence [then] created an insurgency called The Anbar Tribes Revolutionary Council in 2013, and solicited funds from Sunni Monarchs and individuals throughout the GCC [Gulf Co-operation Council]. The goal: destroy Baghdad and restore the Sunni to power in Iraq. His allies: the Ba’ath and ISIS.

"In late 2014 Sulayman connected with Jonathan Greenhill, 'former' Senior Operations Officer at the CIA who set up shop in DC as a lobbyist. Makes sense. CIA Spy since the early 1980s, probably living oversees under non-official-cover, comes home to lobby Congress. Anyway, Mr. Greenhill incorporated the Greenhill Group, and Sulayman retained him....

"[O]ne of the most important spies in the CIA, one with a major role in the Near East (probably Iraq), definitely was retained as a lobbyist by Sulayman. And Sulayman retained him to 'create an autonomous Sunni region in Iraq or an independent Sunni State.' In other words, destroy Iraq by formally creating and recognizing Sunni-Jihadi-stan. Or a safe-zone for Sunni terrorists. Or what it actually is, a caliphate."

Read more: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-17/missing-link-islamic-state-iraq-and-now-documented-cia-connection
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Some CIA officers convinced Arar was innocent, says Kiriakou

Ex-spy: CIA officers protested Arar arrest - Peace Arch News - Canadian Press:

April 5, 2015 - "A former spy has described the debate within the CIA over the arrest, rendition and torture of Canadian Maher Arar, saying multiple colleagues warned against it because they were convinced they were punishing an innocent man.

"The account from former CIA officer John Kiriakou sheds new light on decade-old events that caused a public inquiry in Canada, a $10 million payout from the federal government, and unsuccessful lawsuits in the U.S....

 "It came during an interview at the ex-spy's Virginia home, where he described how he went from being the head of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9-11, to becoming the first CIA employee to publicly question the use of torture, to eventually spending two years in jail for leaking agency secrets....

"Kiriakou expressed disgust with his country's role in sending the engineer to be tortured in his native Syria, and with its continuing failure to issue an apology like Canada has.

"He described a dynamic within the agency in which one mid-to-high-level officer ignored repeated objections from her subordinates, and insisted on pushing ahead.

"'I can tell you that a lot of people inside the CIA objected to this,' Kiriakou said. '(They said), "This is the wrong guy. He hasn't done anything."'

"Arar was grabbed during a New York airport layover and flown to a notorious Syrian prison. He has described a year-long ordeal that included being beaten and stuffed into a body-sized slot in a windowless dungeon. Arar likened it to being buried alive."

Read more: http://www.peacearchnews.com/national/298711661.html 
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