Late yesterday afternoon Matt Taibbi posted a Twitter Files Supplemental thread running to 12 substantive tweets. It is accessible here. I urge interested readers to check it out. Here are my notes and comments.
• The New York Post covers it here. The Daily Mail covers it here. Mainstream media eyes remain wide shut. The revelations of the Twitter Files suggest that Elon Musk may not be public enemy number 1.
• This supplemental thread is derived from old Twitter’s communications with FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan (hereinafter “the bad Elvis”). The bad Elvis has not left the building. Indeed, he won’t go away. He wants answers.
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.” pic.twitter.com/VR3DdkRyOr
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
• This is mind-boggling stuff. Something is rotten in the state of the FBI. It was perhaps a tad too much even for the compliant management of old Twitter.
• Who does Chan think he is? He’s the man from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF). That’s a suggestive acronym. FIT For Nothing would have been more like it. Old Twitter should have told him to stuff it.
• Chan also speaks on behalf of the United States Intelligence Community. “There was quite a bit of discussion within the USIC to get clarifications from your company,” Chan advised.
• Did I say this is mind-boggling stuff? Here we see the bad Elvis drawing on the FBI modus operandi with which we became familiar in the Russia hoax, citing leaked “USIC” stories in support of the “USIC” party line.
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.” pic.twitter.com/SrLrdZLREa
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
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.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
• Old Twitter’s Yoel Roth has been a good boy. He is confused by the imputation that old Twitter has fallen out of compliance or has departed from the requisite groupthink.
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. pic.twitter.com/cNzrjcMJfD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
• In my last set of notes I omitted the FBI’s response. Taibbi includes it in this supplemental thread along with his own comment on it.
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.” pic.twitter.com/fkJrLjPKlN
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 18, 2022
• Did I say something is rotten in the state of the FBI? Let’s broaden that to take in the “USIC” for which the bad Elvis spoke.
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