The latest Twitter Files release, penned by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, uncovers efforts by former Intelligence Community and CIA analysts to take over Twitter’s content management system during 2021-2022.
Despite laws prohibiting CIA employees and contractors from conducting operations against U.S. citizens on domestic soil, these individuals sought significant influence over the platform.
Key figures in this attempt included Nina Jankowicz, known for leading Joe Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, and Jim Baker, a former FBI General Counsel and Twitter Deputy General Counsel. Both Jankowicz and Baker were involved in prior controversies: Jankowicz with the “Ministry of Truth” and Baker with the promotion of the Russiagate narrative and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The aim extended beyond Twitter. The group also targeted platforms such as PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy, aiming to de-platform and de-monetize individuals they considered threats, attempting to entirely ‘excommunicate’ them from the Internet, according to Shellenberger.
These revelations come from internal communications at Twitter, now rebranded as X, made accessible to the above journalists by Elon Musk, who acquired the platform in April 2022.
Previously, Musk exposed that the FBI had a portal for requesting extensive censorship on Twitter, which inadvertently led to the suspension of a CNN journalist and an elected Canadian official. However, full disclosure of these communications has been hampered by the FBI's auto-deletion of records, potentially violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
Read the Twitter files (CIA) here.
