We now know Twitter was acting as a subsidiary of the FBI and Matt Taibbi puts out a supplemental to The FBI Subsidiary files of tweets showing these ties. Read the sixth supplemental installment in a series of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
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1.THREAD: Twitter Files Supplemental
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
https://t.co/mz7AFoolHV July of 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the inter-agency group that deals with cyber threats. pic.twitter.com/V4zNYnF81W
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
3.The questionnaire authors seem displeased with Twitter for implying, in a July 20th “DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing,” that “you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.” pic.twitter.com/VR3DdkRyOr
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
https://t.co/0PiyFHVTrc would think that would be good news. The agencies seemed to feel otherwise.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
5.Chan underscored this: “There was quite a bit of discussion within the USIC to get clarifications from your company,” he wrote, referring to the United States Intelligence Community.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
6.The task force demanded to know how Twitter came to its unpopular conclusion. Oddly, it included a bibliography of public sources – including a Wall Street Journal article – attesting to the prevalence of foreign threats, as if to show Twitter they got it wrong.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
7.Roth, receiving the questions, circulated them with other company executives, and complained that he was “frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau.” pic.twitter.com/SrLrdZLREa
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
8.He added he was not “comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.” The idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
9.He then sent another note internally, saying the premise of the questions was “flawed,” because “we’ve been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter.” Note the italics for emphasis. pic.twitter.com/cNzrjcMJfD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
10.Roth suggested they “get on the phone with Elvis ASAP and try to straighten this out,” to disabuse the agencies of any notion that state propaganda is not a “thing” on Twitter.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
11.This exchange is odd among other things because some of the “bibliography” materials cited by the FITF are sourced to intelligence officials, who in turn cited the public sources.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
12.The FBI responded to Friday’s report by saying it “regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.” pic.twitter.com/fkJrLjPKlN
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
13.That may be true, but we haven’t seen that in the documents to date. Instead, we’ve mostly seen requests for moderation involving low-follower accounts belonging to ordinary Americans – and Billy Baldwin.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
https://t.co/p7t3Dnsk09 @BariWeiss and @ShellenbergerMD for more from the Twitter Files.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
