The Twitter Files Parts XI and XII Unrolled
How Twitter let the intelligence community in.
You can find all the Twitter Files unrolled here.
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
900 Reposts · 1.51K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
2.In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter wasn’t worried. Its leaders were sure they didn’t have a Russia problem.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
115 Reposts · 465 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
3.“We did not see a big correlation.”
“No larger patterns.”
“FB may take action on hundreds of accounts, and we may take action on ~25.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
97 Reposts · 400 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
4.“KEEP THE FOCUS ON FB”: Twitter was so sure they had no Russia problem, execs agreed the best PR strategy was to say nothing on record, and quietly hurl reporters at Facebook:
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
88 Reposts · 364 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
5.“Twitter is not the focus of inquiry into Russian election meddling right now - the spotlight is on FB,” wrote Public Policy VP Colin Crowell:
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
82 Reposts · 344 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
6.In September, 2017, after a cursory review, Twitter informed the Senate it suspended 22 possible Russian accounts, and 179 others with “possible links” to those accounts, amid a larger set of roughly 2700 suspects manually examined.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
77 Reposts · 330 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
7.Receiving these meager results, a furious Senator Mark Warner of Virginia – ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee – held an immediate press conference to denounce Twitter’s report as “frankly inadequate on every level.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
67 Reposts · 281 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
8.“#Irony,” mused Crowell the day after Warner’s presser, after receiving an e-circular from Warner’s re-election campaign, asking for “$5 or whatever you can spare.”
“LOL,” replied General Counsel Sean Edgett.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
55 Reposts · 248 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
9.“KEEP PRODUCING MATERIAL” After meeting with congressional leaders, Crowell wrote: “Warner has political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news, maintain pressure on us and rest of industry to keep producing material for them.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
66 Reposts · 255 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
10.“TAKING THEIR CUES FROM HILLARY CLINTON” Crowell added Dems were taking cues from Hillary Clinton, who that week said: “It’s time for Twitter to stop dragging its heels and live up to the fact that its platform is being used as a tool for cyber-warfare.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
78 Reposts · 261 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
11. In growing anxiety over its PR problems, Twitter formed a “Russia Task Force” to proactively self-investigate.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
50 Reposts · 212 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
12.The “Russia Task Force” started mainly with data shared from counterparts at Facebook, centered around accounts supposedly tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). But the search for Russian perfidy was a dud:
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
48 Reposts · 203 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
13. OCT 13 2017: “No evidence of a coordinated approach, all of the accounts found seem to be lone-wolf type activity (different timing, spend, targeting, <$10k in ad spend).”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
47 Reposts · 197 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
14.OCT 18 2017: “First round of RU investigation… 15 high risk accounts, 3 of which have connections with Russia, although 2 are RT.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
45 Reposts · 198 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
15.OCT 20 2017: “Built new version of the model that is lower precision but higher recall which allows to catch more items. We aren’t seeing substantially more suspicious accounts. We expect to find ~20 with a small amount of spend.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
43 Reposts · 190 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
16.OCT 23 2017: “Finished with investigation… 2500 full manual account reviews, we think this is exhaustive… 32 suspicious accounts and only 17 of those are connected with Russia, only 2 of those have significant spend one of which is Russia Today...remaining <$10k in spend.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
51 Reposts · 197 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
17.Twitter’s search finding “only 2” significant accounts, “one of which is Russia Today,” was based on the same data that later inspired panic headlines like “Russian Influence Reached 126 Million Through Facebook Alone”:
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
54 Reposts · 199 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
18.The failure of the “Russia task force” to produce “material” worsened the company’s PR crisis.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
46 Reposts · 200 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
19.In the weeks after Warner’s presser, a torrent of stories sourced to the Intel Committee poured into the news, an example being Politico’s October 13, “Twitter deleted data potentially crucial to Russia probes.”
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
52 Reposts · 191 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
20.“Were Twitter a contractor for the FSB… they could not have built a more effective disinformation platform,” Johns Hopkins Professor (and Intel Committee “expert”) Thomas Rid told Politico.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
59 Reposts · 211 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
21.As congress threatened costly legislation, and Twitter began was subject to more bad press fueled by the committees, the company changed its tune about the smallness of its Russia problem.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
68 Reposts · 291 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
22.“Hi guys.. Just passing along for awareness the writeup here from the WashPost today on potential legislation (or new FEC regulations) that may affect our political advertising,” wrote Crowell.
8:27 PM · Jan 3, 2023
86 Reposts · 314 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
23. In Washington weeks after the first briefing, Twitter leaders were told by Senate staff that “Sen Warner feels like tech industry was in denial for months.” Added an Intel staffer: “Big interest in Politico article about deleted accounts."
8:38 PM · Jan 3, 2023
17 Reposts · 36 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
24.Twitter “pledged to work with them on their desire to legislate”:
8:39 PM · Jan 3, 2023
56 Reposts · 165 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
25.“Knowing that our ads policy and product changes are an effort to anticipate congressional oversight, I wanted to share some relevant highlights of the legislation Senators Warner, Klobuchar and McCain will be introducing,” wrote Policy Director Carlos Monje soon after.
8:39 PM · Jan 3, 2023
34 Reposts · 99 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
26.“THE COMMITTEES APPEAR TO HAVE LEAKED” Even as Twitter prepared to change its ads policy and remove RT and Sputnik to placate Washington, congress turned the heat up more, apparently leaking the larger, base list of 2700 accounts.
8:40 PM · Jan 3, 2023
33 Reposts · 58 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
27.Reporters from all over started to call Twitter about Russia links. Buzzfeed, working with the University of Sheffield, claimed to find a “new network” on Twitter that had “close connections to… Russian-linked bot accounts.”
8:40 PM · Jan 3, 2023
66 Reposts · 182 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
28.“IT WILL ONLY EMBOLDEN THEM.” Twitter internally did not want to endorse the Buzzfeed/Sheffield findings:
8:41 PM · Jan 3, 2023
43 Reposts · 123 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
29. “SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE IS ASKING… POSSIBLE TO WHIP SOMETHING TOGETHER?” Still, when the Buzzfeed piece came out, the Senate asked for “a write up of what happened.” Twitter was soon apologizing for the same accounts they’d initially told the Senate were not a problem.
8:42 PM · Jan 3, 2023
39 Reposts · 98 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
30.“REPORTERS NOW KNOW THIS IS A MODEL THAT WORKS”
This cycle – threatened legislation, wedded to scare headlines pushed by congressional/intel sources, followed by Twitter caving to moderation asks – would later be formalized in partnerships with federal law enforcement.
8:43 PM · Jan 3, 2023
34 Reposts · 82 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
31.Twitter soon settled on its future posture.
In public, it removed content “at our sole discretion.”
Privately, they would “off-board” anything “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”
8:45 PM · Jan 3, 2023
70 Reposts · 178 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
32.Twitter let the “USIC” into its moderation process. It would not leave.
Wrote Crowell, in an email to the company’s leaders:
“We will not be reverting to the status quo.”
8:46 PM · Jan 3, 2023
39 Reposts · 113 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
33.For more on the #TwitterFiles, check out @bariweiss, @ShellenbergerMD, @lhfang, and @davidzweig.
Watch this space shortly for another thread…
8:47 PM · Jan 3, 2023
73 Reposts · 278 Likes
Part XII
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
Twitter and the FBI “Belly Button”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
978 Reposts · 1.72K Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
2.By 2020, Twitter was struggling with the problem of public and private agencies bypassing them and going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
131 Reposts · 584 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
3.In February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center – a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department – went to the media with a report called, “Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
137 Reposts · 548 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
4.The GEC flagged accounts as “Russian personas and proxies” based on criteria like, “Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,” blaming “research conducted at the Wuhan institute,” and “attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
147 Reposts · 539 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
5.State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode “led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.” ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
133 Reposts · 512 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
6.The GEC still led directly to news stories like the AFP’s headline, “Russia-linked disinformation campaign led to coronavirus alarm, US says,” and a Politico story about how “Russian, Chinese, Iranian Disinformation Narratives Echo One Another.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
96 Reposts · 429 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
7.“YOU HAVEN’T MADE A RUSSIA ATTRIBUTION IN SOME TIME” When Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub complained Twitter hadn’t “made a Russia attribution” in some time, Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth said it was “revelatory of their motives.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
106 Reposts · 438 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
8.“WE’RE HAPPY TO WORK DIRECTLY WITH YOU ON THIS, INSTEAD OF NBC.” Roth tried in vain to convince outsider researchers like the Clemson lab to check with them before pushing stories about foreign interference to media.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
112 Reposts · 443 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
9.Twitter was also trying to reduce the number of agencies with access to Roth. “If these folks are like House Homeland Committee and DHS, once we give them a direct contact with Yoel, they will want to come back to him again and again,” said policy director Carlos Monje.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
99 Reposts · 401 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
10.When the State Department/GEC – remember this was 2020, during the Trump administration – wanted to publicize a list of 5,500 accounts it claimed would “amplify Chinese propaganda and disinformation” about COVID, Twitter analysts were beside themselves.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
85 Reposts · 402 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
11.The GEC report appeared based on DHS data circulated earlier that week, and included accounts that followed “two or more” Chinese diplomatic accounts. They reportedly ended up with a list “nearly 250,000” names long, and included Canadian officials and a CNN account:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
83 Reposts · 363 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
12.Roth saw GEC’s move as an attempt by the GEC to use intel from other agencies to “insert themselves” into the content moderation club that included Twitter, Facebook, the FBI, DHS, and others:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
46 Reposts · 200 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
13.The GEC was soon agreeing to loop in Twitter before going public, but they were using a technique that had boxed in Twitter before. “The delta between when they share material and when they go to the press continues to be problematic,” wrote one comms official.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
39 Reposts · 193 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
14.The episode led to a rare public disagreement between Twitter and state officials:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
37 Reposts · 191 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
15.“IT MAKES SENSE TO PUSH BACK ON GEC PARTICIPATION IN THIS FORUM” When the FBI informed Twitter the GEC wanted to be included in the regular “industry call” between companies like Twitter and Facebook and the DHS and FBI, Twitter leaders balked at first.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
39 Reposts · 188 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
16.Facebook, Google, and Twitter executives were united in opposition to GEC’s inclusion, with ostensible reasons including, “The GEC’s mandate for offensive IO to promote American interests.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
41 Reposts · 191 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
17.A deeper reason was a perception that unlike the DHS and FBI, which were “apolitical,” as Roth put it, the GEC was “political,” which in Twitter-ese appeared to be partisan code.
“I think they thought the FBI was less Trumpy,” is how one former DOD official put it.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
39 Reposts · 181 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
18.After spending years rolling over for Democratic Party requests for “action” on “Russia-linked” accounts, Twitter was suddenly playing tough. Why? Because, as Roth put it, it would pose “major risks” to bring the GEC in, “especially as the election heats up.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
42 Reposts · 177 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
19.When senior lawyer Stacia Cardille tried to argue against the GEC’s inclusion to the FBI, the words resonated “with Elvis, not Laura,” i.e. with agent Elvis Chan, not Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) unit chief Laura Dehmlow:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
38 Reposts · 170 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
20.Eventually the FBI argued, first to Facebook, for a compromise solution: other USG agencies could participate in the “industry” calls, but the FBI and DHS would act as sole “conduits.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
40 Reposts · 170 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
21.Roth reached out to Chan with concerns about letting the “press-happy” GEC in, expressing hope they could keep the “circle of trust small.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
41 Reposts · 175 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
22."STATE... NSA, and CIA" Chan reassured him it would be a “one-way” channel, and “State/GEC, NSA, and CIA have expressed interest in being allowed on in listen mode only.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
49 Reposts · 171 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
23."BELLY BUTTON" “We can give you everything we’re seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,” Chan explained, but the DHS agency CISA “will know what’s going on in each state.” He went on to ask if industry could “rely on the FBI to be the belly button of the USG."
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
50 Reposts · 172 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
24.They eventually settled on an industry call via Signal. In an impressive display of operational security, Chan circulated private numbers of each company’s chief moderation officer in a Word Doc marked “Signal Phone Numbers,” subject-lined, “List of Numbers.”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
47 Reposts · 182 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
25.Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI), which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction. Execs rushed to tell “Team SSCI” they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
56 Reposts · 182 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
26.Requests arrived and were escalated from all over: from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
55 Reposts · 185 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
27.They also received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned. Here, the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff asks Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
94 Reposts · 220 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
28.“WE DON’T DO THIS” Even Twitter declined to honor Schiff’s request at the time. Sperry was later suspended, however.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
70 Reposts · 189 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
29.Twitter honored almost everyone else’s requests, even those from GEC – including a decision to ban accounts like @RebelProtests and @bricsmedia because GEC identified them as “GRU-controlled” and linked “to the Russian government,” respectively:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
45 Reposts · 167 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
30.The GEC requests were what a former CIA staffer working at Twitter was referring to, when he said, “Our window on that is closing,” meaning they days when Twitter could say no to serious requests were over.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
46 Reposts · 169 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
31.Remember the 2017 “internal guidance” in which Twitter decided to remove any user “identified by the U.S. intelligence community” as a state-sponsored entity committing cyber operations? By 2020 such identifications came in bulk.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
56 Reposts · 173 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
32.“USIC" requests often simply began “We assess” and then provided lists (sometimes, in separate excel docs) they believed were connected to Russia’s Internet Research Agency and committing cyber ops, from Africa to South America to the U.S.:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
40 Reposts · 178 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
34.Some reports were just a paragraph long and said things like: “The attached email accounts… were possibly used for “influence operations, social media collection, or social engineering.” Without further explanation, Twitter would be forwarded an excel doc:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
46 Reposts · 175 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
35.They were even warned about publicity surrounding a book by former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokhin, who alleged “corruption by the U.S. government” – specifically by Joe Biden.
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
91 Reposts · 246 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
36.By the weeks before the election in 2020, Twitter was so confused by the various streams of incoming requests, staffers had to ask the FBI which was which:
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
62 Reposts · 205 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
37.“I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR WORK LOAD”: Requests poured in from FBI offices all over the country, day after day, hour after hour: If Twitter didn’t act quickly, questions came: “Was action taken?” “Any movement?”
9:54 PM · Jan 3, 2023
67 Reposts · 221 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
38.Wrote senior attorney Stacia Cardille: “My in-box is really f--- up at this point.”
9:55 PM · Jan 3, 2023
36 Reposts · 184 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
39.It all led to the situation described by @ShellenbergerMD two weeks ago, in which Twitter was paid $3,415,323, essentially for being an overwhelmed subcontractor.
Twitter wasn’t just paid. For the amount of work they did for government, they were underpaid.
9:55 PM · Jan 3, 2023
92 Reposts · 391 Likes
Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi
40.For more on the #TwitterFiles, check out @bariweiss, @ShellenbergerMD, @lhfang, and @davidzweig. For more on this story, read
taibbi.substack.com
TK News by Matt Taibbi
9:55 PM · Jan 3, 2023
73 Reposts · 307 Likes
