By Thomas Neuburger
In a previous piece — “Twitter and the Security State” — I provided a unified list of links to the Twitter Files issued to date. These included releases 1 through 5. You can read or review them there if you like.
I also wrote that when there are new Twitter Files, I’d extend the list. Since then, two more have been released. Scroll down for the links.
Twitter Files 6, by Matt Taibbi, contains a preliminary overview of the extent of connection between the FBI and Twitter.
As Taibbi has said in various interviews since (example here), they’re just scratching the surface in these connections. He’s said that quite a few other agencies are similarly involved, including DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and ODNI (the Office of the Director of National Intelligence), plus others that have not been named as yet.
Twitter Files 7, by Michael Shellenberger, looks at the Hunter Laptop story in detail. It’s quite long, but one of the gems of the piece occurs near the middle, where he provides background about the FBI’s prepping Twitter to “be very afraid” of foreign interference in the 2020 election while, as later court affidavits show, they knew they had no new information whatever that 2016 was going to be repeated. This occurred before the laptop story, and shows the general operation of the relationship, what Taibbi has called its "master-canine quality."
My recommendation is to read Twitter Files 7 for that especially, since my focus here is not on interference in the 2020 election — by Russians or our own Spook State — but on the entanglement between the aforementioned State and social media platforms.
After all, if you want to influence a nation, you go where the ears are assembled. And I’m convinced, as are many of you, that the Spook State is heavily involved in “guiding” the nation, has been for decades, with the best of intentions, of course.
As David Swanson wrote in “The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies,”
Propaganda is most impactful when people don’t think it’s propaganda.
More on this subject here.
I think it’s naive to think the Pentagon doesn’t propagandize, both directly and indirectly. For starters, consider the half-trillion dollars at risk each year if the public failed to support the Pentagon budget.
The Twitter Files, Round 2
These are the latest Twitter Files to be dropped to date. They add to the list collected here.
Twitter Files 6 — Twitter, The FBI Subsidiary
Matt Taibbi, December 16, 2022
3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary. 4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. 5. Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend “our quarterly call next week.” Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations. 6. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts. [...]
Twitter Files 7 — The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop
Michael Shellenberger, December 19, 2022
18. It's not the first time that Twitter's Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process. 19. Pressure had been growing: “We have seen a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our API policies. They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).” 20. Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting. “[W]e haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).”
Why Assemble These Lists?
As I’ve said many times, my interest is not to defend either Musk or Trump against whatever sins they have committed.
My interest is in the facts — in particular, the facts of the entanglement (a careful word) between our so-called security establishment and its American targets, by which I mean the public.
I also worry, as do a great many others, about a coup in the United States. I’m just looking where others aren’t.
It stands to reason that both the nazis and the state aparatii know the same things.
Of course the nazis sole interest is to overthrow the state and create a reich in the image of the german nazi reich. One fuhrer, worshipped, and no line of demarcation between that fuhrer and the state.
The current state aparatii are interested, presumably, in more of the status quo and with no interference in their current power by politicians and the public.
Toward those ends, it should be no surprise that they both try to make or keep the public stupid and servile. Thus, both will know and do their all to capitalize on the following FACTS:
1) "After all, if you want…