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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The Federal Bureau of Tweets: Twitter is Hiring an Alarming Number of FBI Agents</h1></div>
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<p><img src="https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/AP21320777612831_edited.webp?fit=1366%2C768&ssl=1" alt="This July 9, 2019 file photo shows a sign outside of the Twitter office building in San Francisco. Photo: Jeff Chiu." class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="220"> </p>
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<font size="1">This July 9, 2019 file photo shows a
sign outside of the Twitter office building in San Francisco. Photo:
Jeff Chiu. </font> </p>
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<p>By Alan Macleod – Jun 21, 2022</p>
<p><span><span>S</span>AN FRANCISCO – </span>Twitter has been on a
recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies.
Studying a number of employment and recruitment websites, <i>MintPress</i> has
ascertained that the social media giant has, in recent years, recruited
dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the
fields of security, trust, safety and content.</p>
<p>Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The FBI
is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force.
However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace. “The FBI’s
investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement
agencies,” the “About” section of its <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/what-are-the-primary-investigative-functions-of-the-fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a> informs
readers. “The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of
programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign
counterintelligence [and] cyber crime,” it adds.</p>
<p>For example, in 2019, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Dawn-B.png">Dawn Burton</a> (the
former director of Washington operations for Lockheed Martin) was
poached from her job as senior innovation advisor to the director at the
FBI to become senior director of strategy and operations for legal,
public policy, trust and safety at Twitter. The following year, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Karen-Walsh-scaled.jpg">Karen Walsh</a> went
straight from 21 years at the bureau to become director of corporate
resilience at the silicon valley giant. Twitter’s deputy general counsel
and vice president of legal, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jim-Baker-scaled.jpg">Jim Baker</a>,
also spent four years at the FBI between 2014 and 2018, where his
resumé notes he rose to the role of senior strategic advisor.</p>
<p><a title="" href="https://i0.wp.com/www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Untitled-design-1_edited-1.jpg?ssl=1"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Untitled-design-1_edited-1.jpg?resize=640%2C1019&ssl=1" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="246" height="392"></a></p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Mark-Jaroszeqski-scaled.jpg">Mark Jaroszewski</a> ended
his 21-year posting as a supervisory special agent in the Bay Area to
take up a position at Twitter, rising to become director of corporate
security and risk. And <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Donald-Turner-scaled.jpg">Douglas Turner</a> spent
14 years as a senior special agent and SWAT Team leader before being
recruited to serve in Twitter’s corporate and executive security
services. Previously, Turner had also spent seven years as a secret
service special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.</p>
<p>When asked to comment by <i>MintPress</i>, former FBI agent and
whistleblower Coleen Rowley said that she was “not surprised at all” to
see FBI agents now working for the very tech companies the agency
polices, stating that there now exists a “revolving door” between the
FBI and the areas they are trying to regulate. This created a serious
conflict of interests in her mind, as many agents have one eye on
post-retirement jobs. “The truth is that at the FBI 50% of all the
normal conversations that people had were about how you were going to
make money after retirement,” she said.</p>
<p><a href="https://orinocotribune.com/twitter-partners-with-uk-govt-backed-cia-linked-reuters-to-censor-alternative-views/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED CONTENT: Twitter Partners with UK Govt-Backed, CIA-Linked Reuters to Censor Alternative Views</a></p>
<p>Many former FBI officials hold influential roles within Twitter. For instance, in 2020, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Matthew-W-scaled.jpg">Matthew W.</a> left
a 15-year career as an intelligence program manager at the FBI to take
up the post of senior director of product trust at Twitter. <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Patrick-G-scaled.jpg">Patrick G.</a>,
a 23-year FBI supervisory special agent, is now head of corporate
security. And Twitter’s director of insider risk and security
investigations, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Bruce-A-scaled.jpg">Bruce A.</a>,
was headhunted from his role as a supervisory special agent at the
bureau. His resumé notes that at the FBI he held “[v]arious intelligence
and law enforcement roles in the US, Africa, Europe, and the Middle
East” and was a “human intelligence and counterintelligence regional
specialist.” (On employment sites such as LinkedIn, many users choose
not to reveal their full names.)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2021 <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jeff-Carlton-scaled.jpg">Jeff Carlton</a> built
up a distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps, rising to
become a senior intelligence analyst. Between 2014 and 2017, his
LinkedIn profile notes, he worked for both the CIA and FBI, authored
dozens of official reports, some of which were read by President Barack
Obama. Carlton describes his role as a “problem-solver” and claims to
have worked in many “dynamic, high-pressure environments” such as Iraq
and Korea. In May 2021, he left official service to become a senior
program manager at Twitter, responsible for dealing with the company’s
“highest-profile trust and safety escalations.”</p>
<p>Other former FBI staff are employed by Twitter, such as <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Cherrelle-Y-scaled.jpg">Cherrelle Y.</a> as a policy domain specialist and <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Laura-D-scaled.jpg">Laura D.</a> as a senior analyst in global risk intelligence.</p>
<p>Many of those listed above were active in the FBI’s public outreach
programs, a practice sold as a community trust-building initiative.
According to Rowley, however, these also function as “ways for officials
to meet the important people that would give them jobs after
retirement.” “It basically inserts a huge conflict of interest,” she
told <i>MintPress</i>. “It warps and perverts the criminal investigative
work that agents do when they are still working as agents because they
anticipate getting lucrative jobs after retiring or leaving the FBI.”</p>
<p>Rowley – who in 2002 was <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/12/23/time.persons.of.year/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">named</a>, along with two other whistleblowers, as <i>Time</i> magazine’s
Person of the Year – was skeptical that there was anything seriously
nefarious about the hiring of so many FBI agents, suggesting that
Twitter could be using them as sources of information and intelligence.
She stated:</p>
<p>Retired agents often maintained good relationships and networks with
current agents. So they can call up their old buddy and find out stuff…
There were certainly instances of retired agents for example trying to
find out if there was an investigation of so and so. And if you are
working for a company, that company is going to like that influence.”</p>
<p>Rowley also suggested that hiring people from various three-letter
agencies gave them a credibility boost. “These [tech] companies are
using the mythical aura of the FBI. They can point to somebody and say
‘oh, you can trust us; our CEO or CFO is FBI,’” she explained.</p>
<p>Twitter certainly has endorsed the FBI as a credible actor, allowing
the organization to play a part in regulating the global dissemination
of information on its platform. In September 2020, it put out a <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1300848637417644032" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> thanking
the federal agency. “We wish to express our gratitude to the FBI’s
Foreign Influence Task Force for their close collaboration and continued
support of our work to protect the public conversation at this critical
time,” the statement read.</p>
<p>One month later, the company <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1311462538056544258" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> that
the FBI was feeding it intelligence and that it was complying with
their requests for deletion of accounts. “Based on intel provided by the
FBI, last night we removed approximately 130 accounts that appeared to
originate in Iran. They were attempting to disrupt the public
conversation during the first 2020 U.S. Presidential Debate,” Twitter’s
safety team wrote.</p>
<p>Yet the evidence they supplied of this supposed threat to American
democracy was notably weak. All four of the messages from this Iranian
operation that Twitter itself <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1311462541424558080" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shared</a>
showed that none of them garnered any likes or retweets whatsoever,
meaning that essentially nobody saw them. This was, in other words, a
completely routine cleanup operation of insignificant troll accounts.
Yet the announcement allowed Twitter to present the FBI as on the side
of democracy and place the idea into the public psyche that the election
was under threat from foreign actors.</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Based on intel provided by the <a href="https://twitter.com/FBI?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@FBI</a>,
last night we removed approximately 130 accounts that appeared to
originate in Iran. They were attempting to disrupt the public
conversation during the first 2020 US Presidential Debate.</p>
<p>— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1311462538056544258?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 1, 2020</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Iran has been a favorite Twitter target in the past. In 2009, at the behest of the U.S. government, it <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-election-twitter-outage-sb-idUSTRE55F49520090616" target="_blank" rel="noopener">postponed</a> routine
maintenance of the site, which would have required taking it offline.
This was because an anti-government protest movement in Tehran was using
the app to communicate and the U.S. did not want the demonstrations’
regime-change potential to be stymied.</p>
<p><strong>A CARNIVAL OF SPOOKS<br>
</strong>The FBI is far from the only state security agency filling
Twitter’s ranks. Shortly after leaving a 10-year career as a CIA
analyst, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-scott-robinson-29158174/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Scott Robinson</a> was hired to become a senior policy manager for site integrity, trust and safety.</p>
<p>The California-based app has also recruited heavily from the Atlantic
Council, a NATO cutout organization that serves as the military
alliance’s think tank. The council is <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/donate/honor-roll-of-contributors-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sponsored</a> by NATO, led by senior NATO generals and regularly <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/atlantic-council-pens-anonymously-authored-expose-calling-for-us-regime-change-in-china/275068/">plays out</a> regime-change scenarios in enemy states, such as China.</p>
<p>The Atlantic Council has been associated with many of the most egregious fake news plants of the last few years. It published a <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/atlantic-council-enraged-think-tank-slightly-less-anti-russia-article/276120/">series</a> of
lurid reports alleging that virtually every political group in Europe
challenging the status quo – from the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn
and UKIP in Great Britain to PODEMOS and Vox in Spain and Syriza and
Golden Dawn in Greece – were all secretly “the Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.”
Atlantic Council employee Michael Weiss was also <a href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/propornot-setting-atlantic-council-lawsuits.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">very likely</a> the
creator of the shadowy organization PropOrNot, a group that anonymously
published a list of fake-news websites that regularly peddled Kremlin
disinformation. Included in this list was virtually every anti-war
alternative media outlet one could think of – from <i>MintPress</i> to <i>Truthout, TruthDig</i> and <i>The Black Agenda Report</i>. Also included were pro-Trump websites like <i>The Drudge Report</i>, and liberatarian ventures like <i>Antiwar.com</i> and <i>The Ron Paul Institute</i>.</p>
<p>PropOrNot’s list was immediately <a href="https://fair.org/home/why-are-media-outlets-still-citing-discredited-fake-news-blacklist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">heralded</a> in
the corporate press, and was the basis for a wholescale algorithm shift
at Google and other big tech platforms, a shift that saw traffic to
alternative media sites crash overnight, never to recover. Thus, the
allegation of a huge (Russian) state-sponsored attempt to influence the
media was itself an intelligence op by the U.S. national security state.</p>
<p>In 2020, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/unnamed.jpg">Kanishk Karan</a> left
his job as a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital
Forensics Research (DFR) Lab to join Twitter as information integrity
and safety specialist – essentially helping to control what Twitter sees
as legitimate information and nefarious disinformation. Another DFR Lab
graduate turned Twitter employee is <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Danield-Weirmart.jpg">Daniel Weimert</a>, who is now a senior public policy associate for Russia – a <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/atlantic-council-enraged-think-tank-slightly-less-anti-russia-article/276120/">key target</a> of the Atlantic Council. Meanwhile, <a title="" href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Sarah-Oh-scaled.jpg">Sarah Oh</a> is
simultaneously an Atlantic Council DFR Lab non-resident senior fellow
and a Twitter advisor, her social media bio noting she works on “high
risk trust and safety issues.”</p>
<p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Untitled-design-3_edited-1.jpg?ssl=1"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Untitled-design-3_edited-1.jpg?resize=640%2C1258&ssl=1" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="199" height="392"></a></p>
<p>In 2019, Twitter also hired Greg Andersen straight from NATO to work
on cybercrime policy. There is sparse information on what Andersen did
at NATO, but, alarmingly, his own LinkedIn profile stated simply that he
worked on “psychological operations” for the military alliance. After <i>MintPress</i> <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tiktok-employing-national-security-agents/280336/">highlighted</a> this
fact in an article in April, he removed all mention of “psychological
operations” from his profile, claiming now to have merely worked as a
NATO “researcher.” Andersen left Twitter in the summer of last year to
work as a product policy manager for the popular video platform TikTok.</p>
<p>Twitter also directly employs active army officers. In 2019, Gordon
Macmillan, the head of editorial for the entire Europe, Middle East and
Africa region was revealed to be an officer in the British Army’s
notorious 77th Brigade – a unit dedicated to online warfare and
psychological operations. This bombshell news was steadfastly <a href="https://fair.org/home/media-ignore-unmasking-of-twitter-exec-as-british-psyops-officer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ignored</a> across the media.</p>
<div>
<p><strong>POSITIONS OF POWER AND CONTROL<br>
</strong>With nearly <a href="https://backlinko.com/twitter-users" target="_blank" rel="noopener">400 million</a> global
users, there is no doubt that Twitter has grown to become a platform
large and influential enough to necessitate extensive security measures,
as actors of all stripes attempt to use the service to influence public
opinion and political actions. There is also no doubt that there is a
limited pool of people qualified in these sorts of fields.</p>
</div>
<p>But recruiting largely from the U.S. national security state
fundamentally undermines claims Twitter makes about its neutrality. The
U.S. government is the source of some of the largest and most extensive
influence operations in the world. As far back as 2011, <i>The Guardian</i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> reported</a> on
the existence of a massive, worldwide U.S. military online influence
campaign in which it had designed software that allowed its personnel to
“secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas
to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.”
The program boasts that the background of these personas is so
convincing that psychological operations soldiers can be sure to work
“without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries.” Yet
Twitter appears to be recruiting from the source of the problem.</p>
<p>These former national security state officials are not being employed
in politically neutral departments such as sales or customer service,
but in security, trust and content, meaning that some hold considerable
sway over what messages and information are promoted, and what is
suppressed, demoted or deleted.</p>
<p>It could be said that poachers-turned-gamekeepers often play a
crucial role in safety and protection, as they know how bad actors think
and operate. But there exists little evidence that any of these
national security state operatives have changed their stances. Twitter
is not hiring whistleblowers or dissidents. It appears, then, that some
of these people are essentially doing the same job they were doing
before, but now in the private sector. And few are even acknowledging
that there is anything wrong with moving from big government to big
tech, as if the U.S. national security state and the fourth estate are
allies, rather than adversaries.</p>
<p>That Twitter is already working so closely with the FBI and other
agencies makes it easy for them to recruit from the federal pool. As
Rowley said, “over a period of time these people will be totally in sync
with the mindset of Twitter and other social media platforms. So from
the company’s standpoint, they are not hiring somebody new. They already
know this person. They know where they stand on things.”</p>
<p><strong>IS THERE A PROBLEM?<br>
</strong>Some might ask “What is the problem with Twitter actively
recruiting from the FBI, CIA and other three-letter agencies?” They,
after all, are experts in studying online disinformation and propaganda.
One is optical. If a Russian-owned social media app’s trust, security
and content moderation was run by former KGB or FSB agents and still
insisted it was a politically neutral platform, the entire world would
laugh.</p>
<p>But apart from this, the huge influx of security state personnel into
Twitter’s decision-making ranks means that the company will start to
view every problem in the same manner as the U.S. government does – and
act accordingly. “In terms of their outlooks on the world and on the
question of misinformation and internet security, you couldn’t get a
better field of professionals who are almost inherently going to be more
in tune with the government’s perspective,” Rowley said.</p>
<p>Thus, when policing the platform for disinformation and influence
campaigns, the former FBI and CIA agents and Atlantic Council fellows
only ever seem to find them emanating from enemy states and never from
the U.S. government itself. This is because their backgrounds and
outlooks condition them to consider Washington to be a unique force for
good.</p>
<p>This one-sided view of disinformation can be seen by studying the reports Twitter has <a href="https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/information-operations.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> on
state-linked information operations. The entire list of countries it
has identified as engaging in these campaigns are as follows: Russia (in
7 reports), Iran (in 5 reports), China (4 reports), Saudi Arabia (4
reports), Venezuela (3 reports), Egypt (2 reports), Cuba, Serbia,
Bangladesh, the UAE, Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria, Honduras, Indonesia,
Turkey, Thailand, Armenia, Spain, Tanzania, Mexico and Uganda.</p>
<p>One cannot help noticing that this list correlates quite closely to a
hit list of U.S. government adversaries. All countries carry out
disinfo campaigns to a certain extent. But these “former” spooks and
feds are unlikely to point the finger at their former colleagues or
sister organizations or investigate their operations.</p>
<p><strong>THE COLD (CYBER)WAR<br>
</strong>Twitter has mirrored U.S. hostility towards states like Russia,
China, Iran and Cuba, attempting to suppress the reach and influence of
their state media by adding warning messages to the tweets of
journalists and accounts affiliated with those governments.
“State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises
control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or
indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and
distribution,” it <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affiliated" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted</a>.</p>
<p>In a rather bizarre addendum, it explained that it would not be doing
the same to state-affiliated media or personalities from other
countries, least of all the U.S. “State-financed media organizations
with editorial independence, like the <i>BBC </i>in the U.K. or <i>NPR </i>in
the U.S. for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the
purposes of this policy,” it wrote. It did not explain how it decided
that Cuban, Russian, Chinese or Iranian journalists did not have
editorial independence, but British and American ones did – this was
taken for granted. The effect of the action has been a throttling of
ideas and narratives from enemy states and an amplification of those
coming from Western state media.</p>
<p>As the U.S. ramps up tensions with Beijing, so too has Twitter
aggressively shut down pro-China voices on its platform. In 2020, it <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/hawkish-think-tank-twitter-decision-delete-chinese-accounts/268524/">banned</a> 170,000
accounts it said were “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to
the Communist Party of China,” such as praising its handling of the
Covid-19 pandemic or expressing opposition to the Hong Kong protests,
both of which are majority views in China. Importantly, the Silicon
Valley company did not claim that these accounts were controlled by the
government; merely sharing these opinions was grounds enough for
deletion.</p>
<p>The group behind Twitter’s decision to ban those Chinese accounts was the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/aspi-think-tank-controlling-twitter/279490/">deeply controversial</a> think
tank funded by the Pentagon, the State Department and a host of weapons
manufacturers. ASPI has constantly peddled conspiracy theories about
China and called for ramping up tensions with the Asian nation.</p>
<div>
<p>Perhaps most notable, however, was Twitter’s <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-deletes-accounts-for-undermining-faith-in-nato/275641/">announcement</a> last
year that it was deleting dozens of accounts for the new violation of
“undermining faith in the NATO alliance.” The statement was widely
ridiculed online by users. But few noted that the decision was based
upon a partnership with the Stanford Internet Observatory, a
counter-disinformation think tank filled with former spooks and state
officials and headed by an individual who is on the advisory board of
NATO’s Collective Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. That Twitter is
working so closely with organizations that are clearly intelligence
industry catspaws should concern all users.</p>
</div>
<p><strong>NOT JUST TWITTER<br>
</strong>While some might be alarmed that Twitter is cultivating such an
intimate relationship with the FBI and other groups belonging to the
secret state, it is perhaps unfair to single it out, as many social
media platforms are doing the same. Facebook, for example, has entered
into a formal partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics
Research Lab, whereby the latter holds significant influence over 2.9
billion users’ news feeds, helping to decide what content to promote and
what content to suppress. The NATO cutout organization now <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/facebook-partners-hawkish-atlantic-council-nato-lobby-group-protect-democracy/242289/">serves</a> as
Facebook’s “eyes and ears,” according to a Facebook press release.
Anti-war and anti-establishment voices across the world have reported
massive drops in traffic on the platform.</p>
<p>The social media giant also <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/censorship-way-facebook-hires-nato-press-officer-intelligence-chief/275154/">hired</a> former NATO Press Secretary Ben Nimmo to be its head of intelligence. Nimmo subsequently used his power to <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/nicaraguans-ignore-facebook-spooks-trick-treating-election/278870/">attempt</a> to
swing the election in Nicaragua away from the leftist Sandinista Party
and towards the far-right, pro-U.S. candidate, deleting hundreds of
left-wing voices in the week of the election, claiming they were
engaging in “inauthentic behavior.” When these individuals (including
some well-known personalities) poured onto Twitter, recording video
messages proving they were not bots, Twitter <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/meet-nicaraguans-facebook-falsely-branded-bots-censored-days-elections/278835/">deleted</a> those accounts too, in what one commentator called a Silicon Valley “double tap strike.”</p>
<p>An April <i>MintPress</i> <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tiktok-employing-national-security-agents/280336/">study</a> revealed
how TikTok, too, has been filling its organization with alumni of the
Atlantic Council, NATO, the CIA and the State Department. As with
Twitter, these new TikTok employees largely work in highly politically
sensitive fields such as trust, safety, security and content moderation,
meaning these state operatives hold influence over the direction of the
company and what content is promoted and what is demoted.</p>
<p>Likewise, in 2017, content aggregation site Reddit <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/jessica-ashooh-reddit-national-security-state-plant/277639/">plucked</a>
Jessica Ashooh from the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task
Force to become its new director of policy, despite the fact that she
had few relevant qualifications or experience in the field.</p>
<p><a href="https://orinocotribune.com/jack-dorsey-the-cia-and-twitter-censorship-in-the-age-of-covid-19/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED CONTENT: Jack Dorsey, the CIA and Twitter Censorship in the Age of Covid-19</a></p>
<p>In corporate media too, we have seen a widespread infiltration of
former security officials into the upper echelons of news organizations.
So normalized is the penetration of the national security state into
the media that is supposed to be holding it to account, that few reacted
in 2015 when Dawn Scalici left her job as national intelligence manager
for the Western hemisphere at the Director of National Intelligence to
become the global business director of international news conglomerate
Thomson Reuters. Scalici, a 33-year CIA veteran who had worked her way
up to become a director in the organization, was open about what her
role was. In a <a href="https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/authors/dawn-scalici/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blog post</a> on the <i>Reuters</i> website,
she wrote that she was there to “meet the disparate needs of the U.S.
Government” – a statement that is at odds with even the most basic
journalistic concepts of impartiality and holding the powerful to
account.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, cable news outlets routinely employ a wide range of
“former” agents and mandarins as trusted personalities and experts.
These include former CIA Directors John Brennan (<i>NBC</i>, <i>MSNBC</i>) and Michael Hayden (<i>CNN</i>), ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (<i>CNN</i>), and former Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend (<i>CBS</i>). And news for so many Americans comes delivered through ex-CIA interns like Anderson Cooper (<i>CNN</i>), CIA-applicants like <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/tucker-carlson-biography-nicaragua-cia/279782/">Tucker Carlson</a> (<i>Fox</i>), or by Mika Brzezinski (<i>MSNBC), </i>the
daughter of a powerful national security advisor. The FBI has its own
former agents on TV as well, with talking heads such as James Gagliano (<i>Fox</i>), Asha Rangappa (<i>CNN</i>) and Frank Figliuzzi (<i>NBC, MSNBC</i>) becoming household names. In short, then, the national security state once <a href="https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2104/S00073/the-cia-used-to-infiltrate-the-media-now-the-cia-is-the-media.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">used</a> to infiltrate the media. Today, however, the national security state <i>is</i> the media.</p>
<p>Social media holds enormous influence in today’s society. While this
article is not alleging that anyone mentioned is a bad actor or does not
genuinely care about the spread of disinformation, it is highlighting a
glaring conflict of interest. Through its agencies, the U.S. government
regularly plants fake news and false information. Therefore, social
media hiring individuals straight from the FBI, CIA, NATO and other
groups to work on regulating disinformation is a fundamentally flawed
practice. One of media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth
estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to
account. Yet instead of doing that, increasingly it is collaborating
with them. Such are these increasing interlocking connections that it is
becoming increasingly difficult to see where big government ends and
big media begins.</p>
<p>(<a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring-alarming-number-spooks-secret-agents/281114/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MintPress News</a>)</p>
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