… Both were targets of the U.S. government’s use of Twitter and social media to manipulate election outcomes.
While current conservative headlines are filled with discussion surrounding revelations of Twitter being used by U.S. government officials to control and manipulate public opinion, it is worthwhile reminding everyone how this process was first triggered – and then look at how the intelligence community applied the lessons to the USA in 2020.
The Obama administration first created the public-private partnership with Twitter and Facebook to support the “Arab Spring” uprising. As a consequence, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the first elected official to be taken out by former President Obama’s deployment of Twitter as a community activist tool for revolution in 2011. In direct and consequential ways, Egypt was the BETA test for a process that surface a decade later in the United States during the 2020 election.
Using and influencing social media was a tool created by the Obama state department, as noted years ago in Mic.Com:
[…] In countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, rising action plans such as protests made up of thousands, have been organized through social media such Facebook and Twitter. “We use Facebook to schedule the protests” an Arab Spring activist from Egypt announced “and [we use] Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” The role that technology has taken in allowing the distribution of public information such as the kinds stated by the aforementioned activist, had been essential in establishing the democratic movement that has helped guide abused civilians to overthrow their oppressor. (link)
(NationalPulse) The most popular Twitter hashtags in the Arab region in the first three months of this year were “Egypt”, “Jan25”, “Libya”, “Bahrain” and “protest”.
Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them. All but one of the protests called for on Facebook ended up coming to life on the streets.
These and other findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011. (link)
Fast forward to 2020, and those same elements deployed against the Egyptian government were deployed in the United States in a coordinated public-private partnership with Twitter, Facebook and social media.
The U.S. government control over these social media platforms is ultimately what lies at the heart of the latest Twitter Files release.
Within the Twitter file release, you will find Twitter’s lead censor, Yoel Roth, meeting with an official from the U.S. Dept of National Intelligence (DNI). From the testimony of FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, we know that official was Shelby Pierson. Chan was speaking under oath in an ongoing first amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration for manipulating and censoring speech on social media.
To see the connective tissue between the events in 2011 (Egypt) and the events a decade later in 2020 (USA), it is worth noting a discussion that took place in early 2020 between Shelby Pierson and former CIA Director Mike Morell.
Mike Morell was made CIA Director after General Petraeus was removed in 2012 by then DNI James Clapper at the behest of President Obama. With his new position, Mike Morell was the Obama official who gave testimony to congress about CIA operations in/around the Libyan Benghazi compound attack on 9/11/11. Morell was put into this position to protect Hillary Clinton and President Obama for the crisis they created in Libya, the covert arms sales to Libya, and ultimately the Benghazi attack that stemmed from State Dept and CIA efforts to retrieve those illegal weapons.
During the 2016 Presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Mike Morell was a key voice helping to frame the narrative that Russia was planning to interfere in the election. Morell, no longer in government and working for Clinton, was another 2016 vector seeding the Trump-Russia narrative to the media while Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele worked outside sending various files to FBI allies to assist the fraudulent framework.
Mike Morell is a key Clinton/Obama loyalist and tool of the national security state. Morell is now a CBS intelligence analyst and contributor.
Back to Shelby Pierson…. In early January 2020 Ms. Pierson and Mr Morell were discussing the upcoming presidential election from the perspective of how the U.S. Intelligence Community would be engaged. Emphasis mine:
(Via CBS) – In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell speaks with Shelby Pierson, a career intelligence official recently named the Intelligence Community Election Threats Executive within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Pierson details past, present and future election security threats facing the U.S., and explains how the intelligence community has partnered with other government agencies to boost visibility into foreign interference efforts.
She explains how the threat landscape has broadened since 2016, and tells Morell what new vectors foreign adversaries may consider using in 2020. Pierson also offers new insights into Russia’s systematic efforts to interfere in the 2016 and 2018 midterm elections. This is the latest installment of a continuing series on “Leadership of the IC,” featuring currently-serving senior leadership within the U.S. intelligence community. (link)
Keep in mind, Shelby Pierson is the key official from the ODNI office, talking to FBI liaison Elvis Chan about frameworks for social media censorship and the specific needs of the U.S. government in October 2020. At the same time, it is Shelby Pierson who is coordinating withe Twitter Executive Yoel Roth.
I urge readers to read the full CBS transcript above get a sense Ms. Pierson from the context of her conversation with fellow traveler Mike Morell in January 2020.
Then, not coincidentally, we go to the CTH archives from February 2020:
February 23, 2020 – […] Sending shockwaves through the intelligence community, it was reported yesterday that newly appointed Acting DNI Richard “Ric” Grenell asked the intelligence community, specifically including Shelby Pierson, to produce the underlying intelligence within the briefing she gave to the House Intelligence Committee.
Well, what do you know…. All of a sudden today, anonymous intelligence officials are reporting to CNN that Ms. Pierson “overstepped” her position, was “misleading” in her briefing, and “mischaracterized” the underlying intelligence. Imagine that.
Washington (CNN)-The US intelligence community’s top election security official appears to have overstated the intelligence community’s formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020 election, omitting important nuance during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month, three national security officials told CNN.
The official, Shelby Pierson, told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump get reelected.
[…] “The intelligence doesn’t say that,” one senior national security official told CNN. “A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it’s a step short of that.
[…] One intelligence official said that Pierson’s characterization of the intelligence was “misleading” and a national security official said Pierson failed to provide the “nuance” needed to accurately convey the US intelligence conclusions.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where Pierson is a senior official, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. (more)
Why would Shelby Pierson and Joseph Maguire intentionally blindside the White House?
The briefing was obviously spun by HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff and democrats on the House intel committee; and there was no intelligence presented during the briefing to support the claims made by Pierson, Democrats and media. (2020 LINK)
What you see now surfacing is evidence of the framework of 2020 election manipulation from the DNI office. That government manipulation later manifests in the public-private partnership between the U.S. government and Twitter, as highlighted in the releases of the Twitter files.
One note of caution. I will draw attention to a very similar framework now rolling out with the Twitter File releases that we saw in the John Durham investigation. Notice how both Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are drawing attention to the Twitter executives, but NOT drawing any attention to the government officials. This does not appear to be coincidental.
Bari Weiss could have easily identified the head of the Twitter head of the “Strategic Response Team” an intelligence official named Jeff Carlton. She didn’t. Similarly, Matt Taibbi could have identified the official from the DNI office in contact with Twitter executive Yoel Roth, ODNI official Shelby Pierson. He didn’t.
Just as John Durham structured his public investigative releases to cast the unlawful shadow on only those people outside government, so too is Weiss and Taibbi structuring their public reviews of the Twitter files to draw attention only to the Twitter executives outside government.
The officials from the U.S. government, who are transmitting through the DHS portal to Twitter, are not being named and identified, why not?
From Taibbi and Weiss and Taibbi again, we are getting an outline of actions taken by Twitter officials, but we are still blind to how the information, requests and demands come into Twitter from the U.S. government, and who specifically is sending them.
