Twitter Files Supplemental: Now the FBI Begins Carrying Messages from the CIA to Twitter, Hinting (Demanding) That They Act Against Alleged "State Propaganda" Efforts

There's only one government of one country that I can definitely say is involved in a conspiracy to interfere with the US political/media system with official state propaganda, and it's not Russia.

1.THREAD: Twitter Files Supplemental

2.In 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.

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."

4.One would think that would be good news. The agencies seemed to feel otherwise.

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.

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.

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."

It feels like two things:

1, It appears the FBI is acting as the agent of the CIA and other agencies which are forbidden to interfere in US politics. It's illegal for them to run psyops against the American population, so the FBI is running their op for them.

Actually it's illegal for the FBI to do this too but they seem to have decided this is their main duty. (DEPLATFORM.)

2, It appears that the "Intelligence" Community already has a villain in mind for "state propaganda," Russia or, who knows, maybe Israel, and feels it can't explicitly tell Twitter to censor messages in support of this country, so they're just insisting that there is a foreign propaganda op going on, and telling Twitter to guess which country is running it and then take action.

While not expressly ordering them to do that. Because, you know, the "Intelligence" Community is not allowed to interfere in US political affairs, you know?

They're saying: We legally can't tell you who to censor, but put your heads together and figure out who we are strongly, strongly hinting you should censor.

Even Yoel Roth, who was previously suuuuper-stooooked to be talking with his swell FBI friends, has a problem with this, and wants to know why they're talking to him as if they were a "congressional committee" instead of his Best Buds from the Bureau.

He's also uncomfortable signing his name to the answers to questions.

He's right to be worried about that: It's a threat. That's the CIA saying, "Sign your name to these answers, and if we think you're wrong, we'll lobby for you to be prosecuted for obstruction of national security or any other charge we invent."

This is intended to remind him of CEOs being forced to sign every financial disclosure document, with any erroneous statement being potentially chargeable by the SEC.

This is intimidation by the CIA and "Intelligence" Community. For purposes of censorship.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

posted by Ace at 12:02 PM

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