Speaking on the issue of the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding Twitter and both the extreme, ideology-based censorship at the woke social media company and how that company was working with the feds to crack down on conservatives and other dissidents, new Twitter owner Elon Musk said that pretty much all the conspiracy theories are true.
That comment came during an appearance of his on the “All In Podcast”, in which he was asked about Twitter and responded by saying:
“I mean, to be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true. So is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn’t turn out to be true? So far they’ve all turned out to be true, and if not, more true than people thought.”
Watch him say so here:
"To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true.”
–@ElonMusk— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 25, 2022
Later during the interview, Musk was asked “is there a part of the files that really shocked you?” Responding, he said that the “FBI stuff is pretty intense.”
Indeed it was. Journalist Matt Taibbi reported in a supplemental release of the Twitter Files that “In
July of 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the inter-agency group that deals with cyber threats.”
Continuing, Taibbi reported that even Yoel Roth got uncomfortable with what the FBI was demanding, saying:
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.”
He added he was not “comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.” The idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations.
Reporting on the massive scope of the US government’s involvement in Twitter in a Christmas Eve thread, Matt Taibbi reported that:
The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.
The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state governments.
Oh, and the CIA was involved too, as Taibbi also showed, saying:
On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an “OGA” to an upcoming conference:
OGA, or “Other Government Organization,” can be a euphemism for CIA, according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors. Chuckles one: “They think it’s mysterious, but it’s just conspicuous.”
“Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),” says retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.
It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive’s “former employer.”
The first Twitter executive abandoned any pretense to stealth and emailed that the employee “used to work for the CIA, so that is Elvis’s question.”
[…]The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm.
These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.
Yikes. Oh, and the FBI was paying Twitter millions because of how much time its employees spent doing FBI tasks…and the FBI stepped in to silence the Hunter Biden story. So yes, the conspiracy theories were true, and the FBI information was particularly horrifying and shocking. And the CIA looks involved too…
"*" indicates required fields