Aletho News

The Twitter Files

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | January 2, 2023

If you’re still under the naively mistaken belief that there is no Deep State, the Twitter file dumps¹ from Elon Musk detailing how Twitter, before his acquisition of the company, was coerced into doing the FBI’s bidding, with actual FBI agents on its staff to control the online narrative, ought to set the record straight.

In fact, the lawlessness of our intelligence agencies and the psychological warfare against the American public is far worse than most people ever expected.

FBI paid Twitter huge sums of money — your tax dollars, might I add — to censor certain views and stories, such as the damning Hunter Biden laptop story, which likely would have sunk Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency had it received the attention it legitimately deserved.

The FBI even ran a tabletop exercise about “hacked” information relating to Hunter Biden ONE MONTH before the real story broke. During that exercise, they practiced the narrative (i.e., lies) that weeks later became “official truth.”

There is a Deep State running the show, and they’re doing whatever they damn well please, without regard for the law or the U.S. Constitution. They’re acting completely outside the rules of our Constitutional Republic and the laws of the land, and they’ve weaponized the very agencies that are supposed to protect us and act in the public’s best interest and turned them against us.

The Twitter files saga is expanding by the day, so I won’t be able to cover every last detail here. Books will be needed to cover this scandal in depth. In the meantime, I suggest you review the references cited and keep your eyes peeled for later updates.

FBI Used Twitter to Track and Spy on Americans

In a recent video, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald reviews how Washington has expanded the war state and the Democrat’s censorship regime. About 39 minutes in, he begins reviewing evidence showing the FBI was not only censoring social media content, but the agency was also, on a regular basis, asking Twitter to reveal the location of specific Twitter users — for what purpose, no one knows. As noted by independent journalist Matt Taibbi in a December 17, 2022, Twitter post:

“What ‘law enforcement’ objective is served by asking for Billy Baldwin’s location information? Why is the FBI/DHS [Department of Homeland Security] in the business of analyzing and flagging social media content at all? When were these programs created and who approved them?”

These are all good questions. Historically, the FBI’s job has been to monitor and address criminal activity, not “misinformation.” Somewhere along the way, and it’s unclear exactly when the mandate changed and by whom, the DHS/FBI (the FBI supports the DHS by investigating threats) and other agencies tasked themselves with illegally suppressing free speech and shaping public narratives through public-private partnerships with Big Tech.

The Biden administration’s Orwellian “Ministry of Truth,” revealed in the summer of 2022, was one of the first indicators we had that something was horribly amiss. And even though that agency was quickly disbanded after public outcry (and no small amount of mockery), the policing of mis- and disinformation was simply shifted elsewhere within the federal government.

Moreover, as reviewed by Greenwald, internal DHS memos, emails and documents show the DHS has worked on expanding its influence over tech platforms for YEARS. So, government censorship is not something that “just happened” in response to the COVID crisis.

Nor is the censorship limited to COVID or public health information in general. We now have evidence showing the FBI has actively interfered in multiple elections, for example — activity that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) accurately warns is “the biggest threat to our constitutional democracy today.”²

FBI Invented ‘Foreign Interference’ Narrative

Not surprisingly, the FBI invented the narrative that foreign nations were interfering in U.S. elections, which is precisely what they were doing. As reported by Taibbi and attorney Jeff Childers,³ the FBI asked Twitter to investigate “malicious actors” spreading election disinformation on Twitter. Twitter looked into the matter and reported there was no evidence of foreign interference.

The FBI was none too pleased with that answer and made it clear that Twitter better find some. As “evidence” that Twitter’s investigation was flawed, the FBI cited mainstream media articles and think-tank reports that claimed foreign interference was indeed taking place.⁴

In response, Twitter’s former censorship head Yoel Roth did an about-face and informed the team that “official state propaganda is DEFINITELY A THING ON TWITTER.”

How Media Have Been Weaponized to Provide False Evidence

The FBI’s tactic appears to be a variation of what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the “wrap-up smear,” where they leak a lie to the media, and then they use that media report as “evidence” that the lie is true, and it just goes in circles from there.

Here, the FBI used reports — which were based on leaked information from anonymous intelligence agents⁵ — to pressure Twitter into making something up to further support the fiction the FBI itself invented and leaked to the sources they cited.

As noted by Childers, this variant on the political wrap-up smear is also being used by U.S. health agencies:⁶

“It’s a nifty trick … The NIH or CDC needs evidence to support some guidance they want to issue, like masking. So they fund some studies intended to show masks work. The pay-for-play scientists publish cartoonish, anti-scientific clown studies ‘proving’ cotton masks can somehow magically filter nanoscale virus particles.

Then the NIH and CDC cite those same studies — the same ones they procured — to ‘recommend’ unconstitutional mask mandates, or even outright order mandates, like for air travel and on cruise ships. Ditto vaccines … It’s a closed loop.”

Twitter-FBI Exercise: Managing the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

We now also have evidence showing it was the FBI that quenched the Hunter Biden laptop story. They, in collaboration with Twitter, Facebook and the Aspen Institute, even held a tabletop exercise in October 2020 to practice the shaping of the media’s coverage of a potential “hack and dump” operation involving Hunter Biden material.^7,8 National security reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post were also in attendance.⁹ As reported by the New York Post :¹⁰

“The exercise by the ‘Aspen Digital Hack-and-Dump Working Group’ involved an 11-day scenario in October 2020 that began with the imaginary release of falsified records related to Hunter Biden’s controversial employment by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which paid him as much as $1 million a year to serve on its board when his father was vice president.

‘The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it,’ Shellenberger wrote. But the drill was put into practical use weeks later, when The Post broke the news about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — which was either ignored or downplayed by most mainstream news outlets and suppressed by both Twitter and Facebook.”

In the video below, independent journalist Matt Taibbi speaks with Russell Brand about the Twitter files and the kinds of censorship tactics Twitter secretly engaged in on the government’s behalf.

However, it turns out the FBI didn’t just attempt to sideline the Hunter Biden story a month in advance. No. They’ve been shielding it and working with social media to shield it for them, since 2018. As reported by Childers:¹¹

“In December 2020, Twitter’s former censorship head Yoel Roth explained in a sworn statement that for almost two years leading up to the leak, the FBI told him, over and over, to expect a Russian leak about Hunter Biden in October 2020:

‘During these weekly meetings [since 2018], the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.

I was told in these meetings that … those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter … [and] that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.’ Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made comments on a podcast suggesting he’d had similar conversations with the FBI.”

FBI Agents Assigned to Twitter Censorship Duty

As reported by attorney Jeff Childers,¹² FBI field agent Elvis Chan was one of the agents assigned to work with Twitter. He was recently deposed in the Missouri v. Biden case about his role in Twitter’s censoring of Americans. Below is just one of Chan’s emails to Twitter in which he directs them to ban specific accounts for imagined “crimes.”

As noted by Childers:¹³

“Note that Chan only provided a list of accounts. He didn’t bother to say WHICH terms of service were violated. He didn’t say anybody broke the law. He didn’t even say WHICH tweets were problematic.”

Still, within 48 hours, Twitter had obliged, and the accounts listed by Chan had either been suspended or banned. Below is Twitter censorship employee Patrick Conlon’s reply to Chan. As you can see, a long list of other FBI employees were also carbon copied.

Another FBI “plant” is Jim Baker.¹⁴ Before becoming Twitter’s head lawyer, he spent three decades with the FBI, most recently as its Deputy General Counsel. He too used his authority at Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden story. While his comment (see email below) may seem innocuous enough — just a polite suggestion — it’s clear, with facts in hand, that Baker was trying to influence the situation.

Intelligence Agencies Have Weaponized Social Media

For the record, Facebook also employs no less than 115 “former” employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies.¹⁵ Most of them now work in Facebook’s content moderation department, which seems like a massive career slide, if you ask me, but what do I know? As noted by Childers:¹⁶

“The inescapable conclusion of what we’re seeing from the Twitter Files is that our country’s intelligence agencies, by and through the FBI, now control all the large social media outlets … and are using them to manipulate American public opinion and change the outcome of domestic elections. But for whom?”

My answer would be they’re doing it on behalf of the Deep State, the same unelected globalists that so doggedly push for a Great Reset and Fourth Industrial Revolution (i.e., eugenics rebranded as transhumanism). Childers continues:¹⁷

“If Elon Musk hadn’t spent $44 BILLION DOLLARS to buy Twitter, nobody would have ever believed the extent to which the intelligence community has absorbed private social media platforms in this country and turned them against the people. It’s literally unbelievable.

Exposure will probably be fatal. The Constitution does not provide for any internal security service in the United States. The agencies are WAY off the reservation, well into criminal territory, no matter how clever their lawyers are …

Of course, we still have the teensy-weensy little problem of ‘who’ will charge and arrest these people, since they’re in control of the entire federal law enforcement apparatus. Don’t worry, there ARE answers. But let’s wait a little bit and see how things play out.”

FBI Paid Twitter Millions

As mentioned, the FBI was also using taxpayer dollars to pay Twitter for their censorship services — $3,415,323 to be exact, between October 2019 and February 2021 alone.¹⁸

FBI and other intelligence agencies were also trying to gain even greater and more direct influence over Twitter. In a January 2020 email, Carlos Monje wrote to Roth, warning that a “sustained effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more information and change our API policies.” Apparently, the FBI wanted direct access into Twitter’s database.¹⁹

Lies and More Damn Lies

Investigative journalist Lee Fang with The Intercept ²⁰ has also provided us with some real bombshells. While Twitter has publicly insisted that it was cracking down on ALL covert government propaganda accounts, that was only partially true.

In reality, Twitter worked with the U.S. Department of Defense to promote and protect American propaganda accounts, and aided U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots.²¹ They only hunted down the foreign government-affiliated propaganda accounts. As reported by Fang:²²

“Behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval and special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological ops. Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used overt identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around two years or more. Some remain active …

In 2017 a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts ‘we use to amplify certain messages.’ The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one and ‘whitelist’ abilities for the others.”

Whitelisted accounts have a “validated” status similar to that of the blue check mark, which ensures they are promoted in searches. These accounts also don’t get shadow-banned or limited by other means. In closing, I think Childers makes an excellent and accurate observation:²³

“Combine all this Twitter censorship, influence peddling, and pure propaganda with the vast budget for pushing vaccines by buying scientists and influencers during the pandemic, and we can begin to see the outlines of a vast private market for censorship and fake news created by the deep state, which then became its biggest customer.”

As for the FBI, it released a single-sentence “rebuttal” on December 21, 2022 — on Twitter — to the mountain of scandalous evidence presented against it.²⁴

Sources and References

• ^1, 7 Twitter Michael Shellenberger December 19, 2022
• ² Rumble Glenn Greenwald December 19, 2022 Timestamp: 44:23
• ^{3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13} Coffee & Covid 2022 December 19, 2022
• ^{8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19} Coffee & Covid December 20, 2022
• ^9, 10 New York Post December 19, 2022
• ¹⁸ Meryl Nass Substack December 20, 2022
• ^20, 22 The Intercept December 20, 2022
• ^21, 23 Coffee & Covid December 21, 2022
• ²⁴ Coffee & Covid December 22, 2022

January 2, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | DHS, FBI, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment