Deep State

13 ways of looking at disinformation

Featured image In March 2023 Tablet published Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Subhead accompanied by the profile of a blackbird’s head: “Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” (The subhead and graphic allude to the Wallace Stevens poem.) Siegel’s magnum opus runs to some 13,000 words. I meant to include Siegel’s column in my take on “The year in columns.” Indeed, I had devoted a separate post »

Deep state of denial

Featured image Oh, by the way, Gary Shapley’s testimony establishes that the FBI confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop as far back as November 2019. The Washington Free Beacon covered that aspect of Shapley’s testimony last week in this story by Andrew Kerr and Joe Simonson. The Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross follows up with this sidebar to Shapley’s testimony today: The former spies and Biden campaign aides who smeared Hunter Biden’s »

Twitter Files updates

Featured image Racket News has unlocked Andrew Lowenthal’s column “Twitter Files Extra: How the World’s ‘No-Kidding Decision Makers’ Got Organized.” Subhead: “The Atlantic Council is hosting its 360/0S Summit at RightsCon this week, and Twitter Files documents tell us more about how this VIP-room-within-a-VIP-room was formed.” Lowenthal describes himself as a writer and consultant focused on digital authoritarianism and civil liberties. He manages the Network Affects site on Substack and now works »

The disinformation hoax

Featured image In late March Tablet published Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Subhead accompanied by the profile of a blackbird’s head: “Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” (The subhead and graphic allude to the Wallace Stevens poem). It’s a long-form essay that runs to some 13,000 words. The introduction is followed by a table of contents with links to the chapters: I. Russophobia Returns, Unexpectedly: The »

Notes on the Twitter Files (20)

Featured image I have tried to keep up with the Twitter Files in this series of notes to which I have added a separate series of footnotes. I think the revelations of the Twitter Files are the biggest story out there. The silence of the mainstream media in the story is certainly suggestive. Andrew Lowenthal has now added a twentieth installment of the Twitter Files in a 36-part thread he calls “The »

13 ways of looking at disinformation

Featured image Last week Tablet published Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Subhead accompanied by the profile of a blackbird’s head: “Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” (The subhead and graphic allude to the Wallace Stevens poem). Siegel’s magnum opus runs to some 13,000 words. The introduction is followed by a table of contents with links to the chapters: I. Russophobia Returns, Unexpectedly: The Origins of Contemporary »

A Twitter Files footnote (15)

Featured image Michael Shellenberger touches on several of the most important themes that emerge from the Twitter Files in the interview with Joe Rogan that RealClearPolitics has posted here (with transcript). Shellenberger is one of the journalists who participated in the excavation and reporting of the Twitter Files. It is useful to have his assessment of the findings, among which is this: Over time we kept finding all these weird, “Oh, FBI »

Clapper’s claptrap: The video

Featured image I noted the work of Aaron Maté in connection with the Russia hoax in “A Twitter Files footnote (10)” (interviewing former New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth). He writes frequently for the RealClearInvestigations portal of RealClearPolitics, as in “Unchastened by Russiagate, the NY Times Doubles Down in Its Special Counsel Coverage.” Sitting in for the comedian/host of the Jimmy Dore Show, Maté devoted a segment to what I have »

A Twitter Files footnote (13)

Featured image Steve Krakauer is the author of Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy With Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People, published today by Hachette. Fox News has posted his column on the suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and James Clapper’s claptrap on behalf of the Deep State 51 leading the charge. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler took Clapper’s claptrap at face value. Kessler »

Clapper’s claptrap, take 2

Featured image Yesterday I wrote about (former Director of National Intelligence James) “Clapper’s claptrap.” David Harsanyi took up the subject in the Federalist column “Clapper can’t stop lying.” Can’t Stop Won’t Stop! The Washington Free Beacon also took it up in editorial “Intel officials fresh laptop baloney.” The Free Beacon editorial gets at a few of the more peculiar angles to the story. It has several, to say the least. The editors »

Clapper’s claptrap

Featured image Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is one of the Deep State 51 who lent his credibility to the open letter to the castigation of the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. According to Clapper et al., the emails reported by the Post “ha[ve] all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Given to Natasha Bertrand, the letter was published by Politico in conjunction with the »

Walk right back

Featured image Last week I characterized Hunter Biden’s threatened legal assault on the purveyors of his abandoned laptop as “Battle of the Bulge, Biden style.” Hunter Biden’s new legal team invited the authorities to bring privacy claims and alleged defamation claims against a variety of parties that had the temerity to bring the contents of the laptop to the attention of the public. The news was notable for a number of reasons »

A Twitter Files footnote (8)

Featured image Matt Taibbi has renamed his TK News site Racket. On Saturday he posted “Responding to Hamilton 68” — his analysis of the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s “fact sheet” on the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” that he exposed as a fraud in the fifteenth installment of the Twitter Files (the link is to my notes on it). Taibbi summarized his response to the fact sheet in the subhead: “After refusing to answer »

Notes on the Twitter Files (15)

Featured image Matt Taibbi has posted the fifteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It is a thread that comes in 42 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below) or read in unrolled form via the Thread Reader app here. 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD pic.twitter.com/bLRpDpuWql — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023 Taibbi’s thread addresses the Hamilton 68 “dashboard” fronted by »

A Twitter Files footnote (1)

Featured image The Twitter Files reveal the suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on Biden family corruption at the behest of the deep state authorities with whom Twitter was collaborating. The absurd letter by 51 former intelligence officials reported by Natasha Bertrand and published by Politico was a key piece of the puzzle (to the extent it was a puzzle). Holman Jenkins takes it up in his Wall Street Journal column »

Code Red for the Deep State?

Featured image Moviegoers may recall the scene late in Return of the Jedi where the rebel fleet transmits a stolen security code to get through the defensive perimeter surrounding the new death star, and the communications officer on the imperial battle cruiser says, “It’s an old code, but it checks out.” This line came back to mind with the news this morning that one of the items supposedly sought in the Mar-a-Lago »

Mark Millley “on dangerous constitutional terrain”

Featured image In this post, I argued against a defense of Gen. Mark Milley’s reassurances to China, in the waning days of the Trump administration, that’s based on his apparent collaboration with the Defense Department. If Milley made improper statements to Chinese military officials, it doesn’t matter that high-ranking DOD officials were in the loop. I also argued that, in all likelihood, Milley did make improper statements to the Chinese. Even before »