The CIA Vault: the Twitter Files

The CIA and Twitter worked together to engage in censorship.

The Twitter Files is a series of releases of select internal Twitter documents made public after Elon Musk became CEO. The series has been written largely by a handful of journalists: Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. The first Twitter Files release was heavily politicized and that colored each subsequent release.

Left-wingers called it a “nothing burger”. Right-wingers freaked out because now they have definitive evidence of the state colluding with Big Tech social media companies to circumnavigate the Bill of Rights in order to censor and suppress unapproved people and ideas. Here we will recap Twitter Files 9.

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

1.THREAD: The Twitter Files TWITTER AND "OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES"

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

8.On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an “OGA” to an upcoming conference:

What a name.

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

9.OGA, or “Other Government Organization,” can be a euphemism for CIA, according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors. Chuckles one: “They think it's mysterious, but it's just conspicuous."

The CIA can do a better naming job than that!

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

10.“Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),” says retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

11. It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive’s “former employer.”

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

12.The first Twitter executive abandoned any pretense to stealth and emailed that the employee “used to work for the CIA, so that is Elvis’s question.”

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

14.Cardille then passes on conference details to recently-hired ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker.

Hmm, a former CIA and former FBI working at the same private company. Maybe there’s a revolving door here between Big Tech social media and the intelligence agencies. I wouldn’t be surprised, there is a lot of power in controlling what people see and think.

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

15.“I invited the FBI and the CIA virtually will attend too,” Cardille says to Baker, adding pointedly: “No need for you to attend.”

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

16.The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

17. These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.

Many big name players.

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

18.One of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and – nearly always – one or two attendees marked “OGA.”

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

19.The FITF meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an “OGA briefing,” usually about foreign matters (hold that thought).

Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

Thanks to the work of the Twitter Files journalists, there have been congressional hearings on the weaponization of the federal government. More are to come here. Do I expect this to be the next Church Committee? I don’t know. We’re more divided now I think. Only time will tell.

Thanks for reading.

Wow…

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1. Our Precarious Democracy Extreme Polarization and Alienation in Our Politics. University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP). 2022.