Category Twitter Exposed

Dec 11 2022

Twitter File Evidence – Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Donald Trump Have Something in Common…


Posted originally on the CTH on December 10, 2022 | sundance 

… Both were targets of the U.S. government’s use of Twitter and social media to manipulate election outcomes.

While current conservative headlines are filled with discussion surrounding revelations of Twitter being used by U.S. government officials to control and manipulate public opinion, it is worthwhile reminding everyone how this process was first triggered – and then look at how the intelligence community applied the lessons to the USA in 2020.

The Obama administration first created the public-private partnership with Twitter and Facebook to support the “Arab Spring” uprising.   As a consequence, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the first elected official to be taken out by former President Obama’s deployment of Twitter as a community activist tool for revolution in 2011. In direct and consequential ways, Egypt was the BETA test for a process that surface a decade later in the United States during the 2020 election.

Using and influencing social media was a tool created by the Obama state department, as noted years ago in Mic.Com:

[…] In countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, rising action plans such as protests made up of thousands, have been organized through social media such Facebook and Twitter. “We use Facebook to schedule the protests” an Arab Spring activist from Egypt announced “and [we use] Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” The role that technology has taken in allowing the distribution of public information such as the kinds stated by the aforementioned activist, had been essential in establishing the democratic movement that has helped guide abused civilians to overthrow their oppressor. (link)

(NationalPulse) The most popular Twitter hashtags in the Arab region in the first three months of this year were “Egypt”, “Jan25”, “Libya”, “Bahrain” and “protest”.

Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them. All but one of the protests called for on Facebook ended up coming to life on the streets.

These and other findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011. (link)

Fast forward to 2020, and those same elements deployed against the Egyptian government were deployed in the United States in a coordinated public-private partnership with Twitter, Facebook and social media.

The U.S. government control over these social media platforms is ultimately what lies at the heart of the latest Twitter Files release.

Within the Twitter file release, you will find Twitter’s lead censor, Yoel Roth, meeting with an official from the U.S. Dept of National Intelligence (DNI).  From the testimony of FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, we know that official was Shelby Pierson.  Chan was speaking under oath in an ongoing first amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration for manipulating and censoring speech on social media.

To see the connective tissue between the events in 2011 (Egypt) and the events a decade later in 2020 (USA), it is worth noting a discussion that took place in early 2020 between Shelby Pierson and former CIA Director Mike Morell.

Mike Morell was made CIA Director after General Petraeus was removed in 2012 by then DNI James Clapper at the behest of President Obama.  With his new position, Mike Morell was the Obama official who gave testimony to congress about CIA operations in/around the Libyan Benghazi compound attack on 9/11/11.  Morell was put into this position to protect Hillary Clinton and President Obama for the crisis they created in Libya, the covert arms sales to Libya, and ultimately the Benghazi attack that stemmed from State Dept and CIA efforts to retrieve those illegal weapons.

During the 2016 Presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Mike Morell was a key voice helping to frame the narrative that Russia was planning to interfere in the election.  Morell, no longer in government and working for Clinton, was another 2016 vector seeding the Trump-Russia narrative to the media while Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele worked outside sending various files to FBI allies to assist the fraudulent framework.

Mike Morell is a key Clinton/Obama loyalist and tool of the national security state.  Morell is now a CBS intelligence analyst and contributor.

Back to Shelby Pierson….  In early January 2020 Ms. Pierson and Mr Morell were discussing the upcoming presidential election from the perspective of how the U.S. Intelligence Community would be engaged.  Emphasis mine:

(Via CBS) – In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell speaks with Shelby Pierson, a career intelligence official recently named the Intelligence Community Election Threats Executive within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Pierson details past, present and future election security threats facing the U.S., and explains how the intelligence community has partnered with other government agencies to boost visibility into foreign interference efforts.

She explains how the threat landscape has broadened since 2016, and tells Morell what new vectors foreign adversaries may consider using in 2020. Pierson also offers new insights into Russia’s systematic efforts to interfere in the 2016 and 2018 midterm elections. This is the latest installment of a continuing series on “Leadership of the IC,” featuring currently-serving senior leadership within the U.S. intelligence community. (link)   

Keep in mind, Shelby Pierson is the key official from the ODNI office, talking to FBI liaison Elvis Chan about frameworks for social media censorship and the specific needs of the U.S. government in October 2020.  At the same time, it is Shelby Pierson who is coordinating withe Twitter Executive Yoel Roth.

I urge readers to read the full CBS transcript above get a sense Ms. Pierson from the context of her conversation with fellow traveler Mike Morell in January 2020.

Then, not coincidentally, we go to the CTH archives from February 2020:

February 23, 2020 – […] Sending shockwaves through the intelligence community, it was reported yesterday that newly appointed Acting DNI Richard “Ric” Grenell asked the intelligence community, specifically including Shelby Pierson, to produce the underlying intelligence within the briefing she gave to the House Intelligence Committee.

Well, what do you know…. All of a sudden today, anonymous intelligence officials are reporting to CNN that Ms. Pierson “overstepped” her position, was “misleading” in her briefing, and “mischaracterized” the underlying intelligence.   Imagine that.

Washington (CNN)-The US intelligence community’s top election security official appears to have overstated the intelligence community’s formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020 election, omitting important nuance during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month, three national security officials told CNN.

The official, Shelby Pierson, told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump get reelected.

[…] “The intelligence doesn’t say that,” one senior national security official told CNN. “A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it’s a step short of that.

[…] One intelligence official said that Pierson’s characterization of the intelligence was “misleading” and a national security official said Pierson failed to provide the “nuance” needed to accurately convey the US intelligence conclusions.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where Pierson is a senior official, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. (more)

Why would Shelby Pierson and Joseph Maguire intentionally blindside the White House?

The briefing was obviously spun by HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff and democrats on the House intel committee; and there was no intelligence presented during the briefing to support the claims made by Pierson, Democrats and media. (2020 LINK)

What you see now surfacing is evidence of the framework of 2020 election manipulation from the DNI office.  That government manipulation later manifests in the public-private partnership between the U.S. government and Twitter, as highlighted in the releases of the Twitter files.

One note of caution.  I will draw attention to a very similar framework now rolling out with the Twitter File releases that we saw in the John Durham investigation.   Notice how both Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are drawing attention to the Twitter executives, but NOT drawing any attention to the government officials.  This does not appear to be coincidental.

Bari Weiss could have easily identified the head of the Twitter head of the “Strategic Response Team” an intelligence official named Jeff Carlton.  She didn’t.  Similarly, Matt Taibbi could have identified the official from the DNI office in contact with Twitter executive Yoel Roth, ODNI official Shelby Pierson. He didn’t.

Just as John Durham structured his public investigative releases to cast the unlawful shadow on only those people outside government, so too is Weiss and Taibbi structuring their public reviews of the Twitter files to draw attention only to the Twitter executives outside government.

The officials from the U.S. government, who are transmitting through the DHS portal to Twitter, are not being named and identified, why not?

From Taibbi and Weiss and Taibbi again, we are getting an outline of actions taken by Twitter officials, but we are still blind to how the information, requests and demands come into Twitter from the U.S. government, and who specifically is sending them.

.

Dec 10 2022

Twitter Files Release #3 – The Pre-Election Monitoring, Filtering and Control of Public Discussion Including Donald Trump


Posted originally on the CTH on December 10, 2022 | Sundance

Twitter File Release #3 come from Matt Taibbi – SEE HERE – and includes a review of some internal documents and internal communication in the lead up to the 2020 election.

As noted by Taibbi, “as the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.”

“Vios” is a short-hand term for violations.

Internal Slacks, communication chats within the organization, show Twitter executives discussing various relationships with federal agencies, specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS), various elements of the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI.  Twitter’s main censor Yoel Roth plays a key role in the discussion.  Mr. Roth organized many of the communication chats that surrounded the election.

The slacks (communication chats) contain channels to create sub-sets of topics with smaller groups of internal officers assembled to prioritize the discussion.

The reports being cited by Taibbi are, “based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker.” … “On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called “us2020_xfn_enforcement.” Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved “high-profile” accounts (often called “VITs” or “Very Important Tweeters”).”

There was internal discussion about how they should describe their contact with federal agencies who were involved in the process of filtering the public discussion.  Essentially, what were these Twitter executives going to say about how they are coordinating with DHS, FBI and ODNI?  Policy Director Nick Pickles, eventually led a discussion to label the government contacts in the generalized term “partnerships.”

Twitter was partnered with the FBI, DHS and DNI to control the content of the platform.  Using existing portals to communicate, various government officials within these agencies (and others) could send instructions to the Twitter team, and action would be taken based on a review of the government concern.

Taibbi draws attention to an internal chat on an UNKNOWN DATE showing Yoel Roth meeting with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.   However, Taibbi doesn’t identify who from the ODNI was meeting with Mr Yoel Roth:

However, thankfully from depositions related to the Missouri and Louisiana AG lawsuits, specifically about censorship on social media, within the deposition of San Francisco FBI Agent Elvis Chan [Page, 255 – Transcript], the ODNI official was a woman named Shelby Pierson.

Given the fact that DNI John Ratcliffe was publicly saying the Hunter Biden laptop story did not come from hacked information, and the Hunter Biden laptop information appeared to be genuine according to his office, we can assume Ms. Shelby Pierson was telling Twitter (via Yoel), that their decision to censor the New York Post article based on hacked material, was not valid.

However, it is also likely true Ms. Shelby Pierson was not communicating the Twitter meetings with Yoel Roth to her boss, DNI John Ratcliffe.  So, willful blindness might be applied to her end of the conversations.

The rest of the Twitter Release #3 is essentially a walkthrough of instances where the Twitter filter team were engaged in controlling the public conversation as the election was getting ever closer.  They focused heavily on the Twitter account of President Donald Trump and applied internal flags and various control mechanisms to his content in order to control distribution.

Yes, the Twitter executives were censoring the President of the United States.  And they were quite happy with their ability to do it.  READ THE RELEASE HERE

Shifting focus, again the issue who is controlling the released materials becomes important.  How are these journalists getting the information?  Who is giving it to them? Who is doing the redaction of the files?  Are these zip files from preselected material that are then given to Weiss, Taibbi etc?   So many questions.

The basics of how this information is surfacing has not been explained except for Taibbi saying, “the reality is the data sets are enormous and we’re still working through them.”  Something about this just is not feeling right.  I am not the wisest person I know, far from it, but I am wise enough to know to ask questions about the source material before giving any credibility to any narrative that is coming from the voices sharing the material.

Additionally, Elon Musk stated last night that Twitter was going to roll out software to allow current users to see if any of these internal mechanisms are being used against them. “Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal” (link).  This seems silly.

Why not just get rid of the functionality of a system that Twitter previously denied they created.  Instead of getting rid of the filtration and control mechanisms, Elon Musk is developing software to show users if the filtration and control mechanisms have been deployed against them.

The only way it makes sense to retain a corrupt system they previously denied ever using, is if various interests (agencies, governments, influence types) are requiring the platform to retain the ability of throttling information they deem adverse to their interests.  If that is indeed the case, then Elon Musk should say that.

Something akin to, ‘free speech Twitter doesn’t want the ability to control your reach and engagement, but the stakeholders of Twitter are requiring we retain it’. In lieu of not being able to disable the flagging and information control system, we are going to provide users with the ability to see if they have been flagged and controlled. Is that what Elon Musk is essentially saying?

We keep watching….  In the interim, at least our suspicions of DHS, FBI and ODNI control and influence over Twitter are no longer conspiracy theories to be dismissed.  It looks like everything CTH has ever postulated about the platform is coming to light as true… So, that’s a good thing.

I have yet to see a single data point from any release that runs counter to the basic outline, in the background of Twitter you find DHS.

DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012 (Arab Spring deployment).  However, it’s not just Twitter.  The same fundamental intelligence relationships are now at work within Google, Microsoft, Apple, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.

Twitter is simply the gateway, the Rosetta Stone, to revealing how much of the public conversation is being controlled by government.

Dec 9 2022

Understand How We Think


Armstrong Economics Blog/AI Computers Re-Posted Dec 9, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: I see how you were surprised by your dog in discovering how she studies your patterns and predicts where you are going. My dog does the same. I didn’t pay attention to those traits until you wrote about them. The very trait of how to think is fascinating. Have you incorporated that into Socrates?

LC

ANSWER: Yes. I had a friend who was a psychologist and he explained to me many years ago that there were two fundamental types of thinking in humans – linear v dynamic.  There is a good book written by Richard E. Nisbett entitled “The Geography of Thought, How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why.” He attributed his work to a Chinese student who said: “You know, the difference between you and me is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it’s a line.” He goes on to quote him:

The Chinese believe in constant change, but with things always moving back to some prior state. They pay attention to a wide range of events; they search for relationships between things; and they think you can’t understand the part without understanding the whole. Westerners live in a simpler, more deterministic world; they focus on salient objects or people instead of the larger picture; and they think they can control events because they know the rules that govern the behavior of objects.

I can say I never had to explain cycle theory in Asia to anyone. In the West, we were taught to think linearly. What stunned me about my dog was noticing that she thought dynamically. I had no idea any animal possess such a thinking process. There are dogs who even has done simple math. Understanding how the thinking process works was absolutely essential to be able to create any AI program that was functional. Of yes, there were those trying to create a neural net, dump all the data in, shake it up, and somehow it would unexplainable to come forth with the answer. IBM tried that and it failed.

There was just a lot more to how we thought that necessitated investigation. Anyone who thinks they cannot learn by observing even how a dog thinks is so biased that they will never discover anything.

Dec 9 2022

A First Amendment Issue Beyond Belief


Armstrong Economics Blog/Rule of Law Re-Posted Dec 8, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

You have to understand that we actually have ZERO rights. The Constitution is NEGATIVE meaning it is actually a restraint upon the GOVERNMENT rather than a positive list of rights that we have. That is how the media and social media have been violating the principles of free speech we thought we had. That is why any private platform can do whatever it wants because we have no actual right to freedom of speech – only that the government SHALL NOT restrict our speech.

This introduced what I believe will be an explosive issue in 2023. Already the Emails between an employee at the United States (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Twitter have revealed that at least one CDC staff member and the US Census Bureau had access to Twitter’s dedicated “Partner Support Portal” which allows approved government partners to flag content to Twitter for censorship. New Zealand has already admitted to having access to Twitter in the same manner to censor speech.

This is a MONUMENTAL event for linking the government to the backdoor of Twitter means that the government has violated the First Amendment right to Free Speech and that then becomes actionable. It will not be long before we see class-action lawsuits and this is not excusable under Sovereign Immunity for this is DELIBERATE. The emails that have been released by the nonprofit organization America First Legal show that Twitter was enrolling a CDC employee into this portal through their personal account in May 2021 (pages 182-194).

Then we have the Missouri v. Biden case which has the potential to become perhaps the most important civil liberties case of 2023 and may rise to that of decades. The case was brought by Missouri and Louisiana, along with other individual plaintiffs and it asks the court to bar the government from colluding with social media companies to limit free speech. Now even Jen Psaki will be deposed.

We are on the verge of cracking open the entire corruption of government insofar as their deliberate acts to skirt the First Amendment by pretending that it is the private sector that is engaging in the Cancel Culture – not at the direction of the government. There is enough ammunition here to possibly blow a hole in this entire Cancel Culture. The problem will be getting the press to report the truth when they are the very people who have conspired with the government to circumvent the First Amendment.

We may be looking at the very beginning of the collapse in confidence long-term, which is what 2032 is all about.

Dec 9 2022

Latest Release of Twitter Files Highlight the Mechanics of Controlling Platform Information, With Former U.S. Intel Officials


Posted originally on the CTH on December 8, 2022 | Sundance 

The latest release of information behind the controversial “Twitter Files”, comes from Bari Weiss complete with the strategic promotion of a new website [The Free Press] launching via the booster provided by their access to the internal Twitter documents.

Curiously intelligent people will note the Weiss website is structured to support the 2024 presidential bid of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is, not coincidentally, riding atop a multi-staged booster guided by Elon Musk and fueled by Wall Street billionaires.

For the moment, just note and I digress – but please do not miss the connections.

As noted by the former New York Times journalist, Ms. Weiss states, “the [website] authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.”  You can read the entire Twitter Thread Here, and with that, we look at what the current narrative consists of.

Overall, the story as released walks through the process that Twitter used to control users and as a consequence control the flow of information on the platform.  Accounts were subject to restrictions, manipulations and other inorganic engagement controls depending on the ideology of the content being provided.

Twitter had teams set up to attach limiting flags within the Twitter platform that would essentially hide content the platform control officers did not want to see reaching a wider audience. As noted by Twitter employees Weiss writes, “we control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.”

What I find interesting is in segment/tweet #12 where Ms. Weiss reveals the existence of the top tier of Twitter control officers.  “The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 “cases” a day.”

I find it curious that Ms Bari Weiss mentioned several names in her expose’ yet failed to mention the name or curriculum vitae of the head for the Strategic Response Team, a fellow named Jeff Carlton.

Like former CIA head Mike Pompeo, Mr Jeff Carlton was a former U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer responsible for briefing White House officials where his responsibilities included his former work within the FBI counterintelligence division and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Apparently, these intelligence skillsets transferred nicely to his position as the head of Twitter’s Strategic Response Team.

[Source]

You can decide why Ms. Weiss failed to identify this intelligence operative, again – I digress.  However, all of these revelations only align in one direction.

In the background of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop (aka Twitter), was a system set up by the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security.

Controlling information, and ultimately shaping public opinion, was/is the primary responsibility of this internal Twitter network that was/is operating in a public-private partnership with the United States Government.

I have yet to see a single data point from any release that runs counter to the basic outline, in the background of Twitter you find DHS.

Twitter is simply a discovery vector to reveal the larger dynamic of DHS being in control of social media.  That was the DHS/ODNI problem James Baker was trying to mitigate by his filtration of the released documents.  The “Twitter files” are one tentacled element in a much larger story.

#1 Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop and #2 The Fourth Branch of Government

To put it in brutally honest terms, The United States Dept of Homeland Security is the operating system running in the background of Twitter.

You can debate whether Elon Musk honestly didn’t know all this before purchasing Twitter from his good friend Jack Dorsey, and/or what the scenario of owner/operator motive actually is.  Decide for yourself.

For me, I feel confident that all of the conflicting and odd datapoints only reconcile in one direction.  DHS, via CISA, controls Twitter.

Wittingly or unwittingly (you decide) Elon Musk is now the face of that govt controlled enterprise.

If you concur with my researched assessment, then what you see being released by Elon Musk in the Twitter Files is actually a filtered outcome as a result of this new ownership dynamic.  And with that intelligence framework solidly in mind, I warn readers not to take a position on the motive of the new ownership.

Put simply, DHS stakeholders, to include the DOJ, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), are mitigating public exposure of their domestic surveillance activity by controlling and feeding selected information about their prior Twitter operations.

If TikTok is a national security threat, then TikTok is to Beijing as Twitter is to Washington DC.

The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.

Dec 8 2022

Elon and Jack Talk Shop – Musk Says “Data May Have Been Deleted”


Posted originally on CTH on December 7, 2022 | Sundance 

Jack, who never had control, says just release everything without filter.

Elon says stuff might have been hidden from you too, and some stuff deleted:

(Source)

Knowing the background of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop…

Obvious question… Hey fellas, who was doing the hiding and deleting?

Dec 7 2022

The COVID Scam Continues


Armstrong Economics Blog/Uncategorized Re-Posted Dec 7, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that vaccinated and boosted people made up most of the COVID-19 deaths in August. EVERY person I personally know who has had problems from blood clots to being rushed to the hospital was vaccinated. I went to get my hair cut, yes what’s left of it, and the two women there both lost their sons-in-law in their 20s after being vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Fauci, finally under oath, could not name a single study that showed that masks ever worked. Indeed, there were many studies that showed that masks never worked during the 1918 Spanis Flu. Indeed, the CDC even conceded that cloth masks never worked.

Initially, Fauci spoke the truth that masks were useless. All the studies from the 1918 Spanish Flu confirmed that masks never worked and the Washington Postsaid they were “useless.” Everyone knows that the Post is so left they could never walk a straight line. Here is a 2009 study of the 1918 Spanish Flu.

Fauci 2009 Influenza 1918 study

Now the head of Pfizer has refused to testify before the European Parliament. Let’s face the facts. This entire COVID scam was carried out with the full knowledge of those at the very top. It was done for the purpose of creating this Great Reset Agenda. It was being pushed by the WEF and Klaus Schwab for political purposes. Remember how the WEF was telling us it was so great to lock everyone down? And now, they claim the inflation has nothing to do with shortages, but Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They really think everyone, of the vast majority anyhow, is outright stupid and will believe whatever they say.

These people should be removed from any power and imprisoned for life. Of course, there is no possible justice when the very people apply their laws ONLY to us, and never act in an ethical manner themselves.

Dec 7 2022

Georgia Senate Contest – Day One of Election Ballot Counting, Warnock vs Walker – Open Discussion


Posted originally on the CTH on December 6, 2022 | Sundance 

On the first of three days of ballot counting, Georgia Republican Senate candidate Hershel Walker is in a runoff with Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Raphael Warnock.

Most of Hershel Walker’s votes will be counted today, however votes for Raphael Warnock will come in over the next several days.   If the race is close tonight, the inbound mail ballots sitting in parked vans, cars and busses around Atlanta will deliver the Warnock outcome on Wednesday or Thursday.

[Politico] – Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are locked in a tight race in Georgia’s Senate runoff, with blue-leaning early voters breaking hard for Warnock but the red-leaning Election Day vote swinging toward Walker as those ballots were tallied later Tuesday night. {Politico Results Here}

[New York Times Results Here]  Atlanta will likely deliver.

Dec 7 2022

Elon Musk Fires Twitter General Counsel James Baker for Manipulating and Filtering Twitter File Release – “His explanation was unconvincing”


Posted originally on the CTH on December 6, 2022 | Sundance

Yesterday, we speculated publicly the first set of “Twitter Files” released was heavily pre-filtered by internal stakeholders connected to DHS who hold a vested interest in controlling any evidence of Twitter’s former political activity.

Knowing there are multiple executives remaining within the company who previously aligned with the intents of government, specifically DHS officials, to control the platform, the prediction was not a stretch. Indeed, it just made common sense.

Former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker, a man of notoriously corrupt disposition, was one of those former government officials who started working for Twitter as general counsel.  James Baker (pictured below left) working as a government mechanism for filtration of damaging information was not a leap. Again, just common sense.

Today, as an outcome of internal discoveries that indeed Jim Baker did prefilter internal documents in order to mitigate sunlight and exposure [outline here], Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired legal counsel James Baker.

Mr Musk said through his Twitter account, “In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today.”  Mr. Musk followed up a question about James Baker being asked to explain himself by saying, “His explanation was …unconvincing.”

Matt Taibbi provides the context:

Taibbi – On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay.

We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.

The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.

Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @Bari Weiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask “Jim’s” last name, the answer came back: “Jim Baker.”

“My jaw hit the floor,” says Weiss.

The first batch of files both reporters received was marked, “Spectra Baker Emails.”

Baker is a controversial figure. He has been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess. He resigned in 2018 after an investigation into leaks to the press.

The news that Baker was reviewing the “Twitter files” surprised everyone involved, to say the least. New Twitter chief Elon Musk acted quickly to “exit” Baker Tuesday. (LINK)

Big Picture:  The Twitter Files are a threat vector to a bigger story [GO DEEP].  The DHS, DOJ, FBI and ODNI U.S. government elements who operated with control over the social media platform did so as an outcome of the larger surveillance state [GO DEEP].  That surveillance state was deployed against Donald Trump in 2016 and everything as an outcome of that failed effort, and the ongoing coverup effort, is what surrounds the current DOJ effort to attack and remove the threat Donald Trump represents.

Dec 7 2022

It’s All Making Sense – Elon Musk Has No Idea What He Purchased with Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop…


Posted originally on the CTH on December 6, 2022 | Sundance 

… And if he does, the outlook is worse.

According to both the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), via Chairman Mark Warner, and the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) via Mike Turner, the Chinese social media platform TikTok represents a “national security risk” to the United States.  South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, soon to be the vice-presidential candidate for the DeSantis-Noem 2024 ticket, has also called TikTok a national security threat and banned it in the state. Now, think about that carefully.

What is it about a social media app that allows short video sharing that would constitute a national security risk?  The answer is not about dog and cat videos, or dancing diatribes or funny, weird or goofy content; nor is the national security risk attached to any data of the app users or content providers.  The national security risk is found in the ability to influence public opinion that is not under the control of the United States government, or more specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS).

The need for control is a reaction to fear.  TikTok, as a social media platform, is not considered a national security threat because the Chinese government can control it.  TikTok is considered a national security threat because the United States government does not control it.

For several years CTH has been outlining the relationship between DHS and social media.  Currently, the headlines are filled with stories about Twitter and revelations of censorship and government influence coming from the purchase of the platform by Elon Musk.  I promise you things are not what they seem.

Let me put some context to the dynamic that will hopefully clarify what is going on, and perhaps the context will help explain what you are seeing and what you are not seeing as this unfolds.  There are going to be a lot of citations to fill in the details and understanding the modern Fourth Branch of Government is critical.  The bigger picture also explains why SSCI Chairman Mark Warner said “people will die” if the seized Trump Mar-a-Lago documents become public.

♦ Elevator Speech: Twitter is to the U.S. government as TikTok is to China. The overarching dynamic is the need to control public perceptions and opinions. DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012.  Jack Dorsey lost control and became owner emeritus; arguably, Elon Musk has no idea (you’ll see proof toward the end).

To explain the background activity of Twitter in a way that readers could understand, I used the metaphor of Twitter as Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop.

…”The metaphorical Jack had a great idea, open a coffee shop where the beverages were free and use internal advertising as the income subsidy to operate the business.  Crowds came for the free coffee, comfy couches, fellowship, conversation and enjoyment.

It didn’t matter where Jack got the coffee, how he paid for it, or didn’t, or what product advertising the customers would be exposed to while there.  Few people thought about such things.  Curiously, it didn’t matter what size the crowd was; in the backroom of Jack’s Coffee Shop they were able to generate massive amounts of never-ending free coffee at extreme scales.

Over time, using the justification of parking lot capacity and township regulations, not everyone would be able to park and enter.  Guards were placed at the entrance to pre-screen customers.  Some were denied.  A debate began.”…

Here’s what happened….

In/around 2011 and 2012 the U.S. Government, Obama administration and the U.S. State Dept., came into Jack’s Coffee Shop and asked him for help.

The govt officials needed to deliver massive amounts of coffee to their allies in Egypt, Libya and the middle east to support the Arab Spring party.  Jack told the officials he was willing to help but didn’t have the capacity to deliver on that scale.  The officials told Jack not to worry, they would handle that aspect – he just needed to agree to the partnership and let them utilize his business.  Jack agreed.

[Note, the timing here is not accidental.  The operational agreement happened at the same time DHS was fine tuning the domestic surveillance systems to monitor social media platforms and target political opposition. See The Fourth Branch.]

Over the next several weeks, months and eventually years, Jack watched as hundreds of new employees flooded into the business to facilitate the rapid expansion.  Along with a myriad of new faces, new equipment was delivered and soon Jack found himself looking at heavy industrial equipment erecting large buildings in the back lots of the property.  Coffee urns were replaced with massive industrial coffee delivery systems that far exceeded anything Jack ever imagined.

Business was booming, but slowly Jack realized he had lost control.  Jack was riding a dragon.

As the years progressed, thousands of new employees moved into the offices of the new buildings and massive pipelines were producing incredible scales of coffee.  Jack noted offices of the United Nations Human Rights Commission were now creating unique blends of coffee for international distribution, and the European Commission had an entire suite of specially trained coffee production engineers creating alternate combinations and flavors.

By 2018 Jack had essentially become an “owner emeritus,” his name was on the shingle, but the day-to-day operation of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop had turned into an industrial park complex.

Jack saw his personal wealth attached to the success of the business, but operationally his only responsibility was traveling to symposiums and venues where he would stand on stage and wax philosophically about the future of a coffee delivery organization he no longer controlled.  Day-to-day operations were now controlled by experts in the scale of massive industrial coffee.  Those experts came from the Dept of Homeland Security.

[The Intercept] – […] Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.” (read more)

To streamline the operational efficiencies as the industrial coffee system grew, direct portals between the Washington DC government offices and Jack’s Magic Coffee shop were created.  Officials no longer needed to travel to the location of Jack’s Coffee Shop in order to operate the valves, mixers, grinders and systems to generate the scale of blends being produced.

Experts could now use direct portals to the facility to operate the coffee production systems remotely, with a limited number of specially trained (FBI) coffee engineers doing the laborious tasks and maintenance at the facility.

The badges were intimidating to Jack who went to sleep every night under the realization he no longer had any clue about how the coffee shop communication business was operating.

[…]  The extent to which the DHS initiatives affect Americans’ daily social feeds is unclear. During the 2020 election, the government flagged numerous posts as suspicious, many of which were then taken down, documents cited in the Missouri attorney general’s lawsuit disclosed. And a 2021 report by the Election Integrity Partnership at Stanford University found that of nearly 4,800 flagged items, technology platforms took action on 35 percent — either removing, labeling, or soft-blocking speech, meaning the users were only able to view content after bypassing a warning screen. The research was done “in consultation with CISA,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Prior to the 2020 election, tech companies including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon Media met on a monthly basis with the FBI, CISA, and other government representatives. According to NBC News, the meetings were part of an initiative, still ongoing, between the private sector and government to discuss how firms would handle misinformation during the election. (keep reading)

After several years of increasing distance from the Coffee Shop operation he initially started, eventually Jack decided it was silly to own an industrial coffee delivery system that he didn’t control.  So, Jack decided ot sell his shingle to someone else.

Enter, Elon Musk.

Billionaire Elon Musk, a man intimately familiar with large industrial systems and government, had been watching the disgruntled visitors to Jack’s Coffee Shop who were no longer permitted to enter.  Musk saw an inequity between the amount of coffee that was available, and the scarcity of the coffee amid a community blacklisted by the operational executives and managers of the shop.

With expressions of both interest and fellowship, Mr. Elon Musk told Mr. Jack Dorsey he would take ownership of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop and remove any discriminatory guards that were now controlling permitted entry.  Jack had no aversion to Elon and eventually a deal was brokered.

After the transfer of sale was complete, Mr. Musk fired many of the guards and then set about checking the payroll to identify which group of shop employees were actually involved in the generation of coffee, and which employees were involved in promotion of the industrial coffee delivery system that were no longer needed.

Within this process Elon Musk begins to discover the complex nature of what, at least at the surface, appeared to be an uncomplicated coffee shop.  Why is there a 500-room glass walled office building on the backside of the coffee shop?  What is going on in that building that has anything to do with selling coffee?

If you’ve read this far, you might think my metaphor is a little over the top.  Perhaps you thought that when I originally started saying there was much more to Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop a long time ago.

Well, thankfully, someone of reasonably intelligent curiosity finally asked Elon Musk the right question about this direct portal from DHS into the coffee shop. How Mr. Musk replied might surprise you.  You see, the Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop metaphor is evidenced in the Musk response.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has no idea what the DHS portal into the coffee shop is for.  WATCH:

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To put it in brutally honest terms, The United States Dept of Homeland Security is the operating system running in the background of Twitter.

You can debate whether Elon Musk honestly didn’t know all this before purchasing Twitter from his good friend Jack Dorsey, and/or what the scenario of owner/operator motive actually is.  Decide for yourself.

For me, I feel confident that all of the conflicting and odd datapoints only reconcile in one direction.  DHS controls Twitter.

Wittingly or unwittingly (you decide) Elon Musk is now the face of that enterprise.

If you concur with my researched assessment, then what you see being released by Elon Musk in the Twitter Files is actually a filtered outcome as a result of this new ownership dynamic.

Put simply, DHS is mitigating any consequential public exposure by controlling and feeding Mr. Musk selected information about prior Twitter operations.

If TikTok is a national security threat, then Twitter is to Washington DC, as TikTok is to Beijing.

The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.

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Resources:

Large Numbers of FBI Agents Work Inside Twitter 

Govt Structured Cloud Computing is Social Media operating System

Tech Platforms Connected to DHS Portals

Examples of Govt Influence of Social Media Content

[…] “Intelligence agencies backed new startups designed to monitor the vast flow of information across social networks to better understand emerging narratives and risks.” [HERE]

Understanding Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop

Leaked DHS Documents Showing Connections

Why Govt Fears Discovery of Relationship