Twitter Files: US State Department Panicked Over ZeroHedge Covid-19 Reporting

Journalist Matt Taibbi gave the public a double-header on Tuesday – first revealing how Twitter was swarmed by the US intelligence community…

1.THREAD: The Twitter Files
How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

The drop includes several bombshells about how the US intelligence community, and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), tried to force-feed the Russian influence narrative down Twitter’s throat despite the fact that Twitter just wasn’t seeing it.

Anyone shocked that Twitter manufactured a fake Russian disinformation campaign at the request of a United States Senator (Warner) to make it look like foreign actors were still influencing American elections?#TwitterFiles

— Spitfire (@DogRightGirl) January 3, 2023

And second, a thread on how the intelligence community started going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts.

https://t.co/BcFhHCvjAE 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.” pic.twitter.com/KjUeE8vejt

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

In the early days of the pandemic, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) was flagging accounts suggesting COVID-19 was a bioweapon, blaming the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or “attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA,” (the latter of which nobody was actually saying… it was speculation over work done at Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina).

As Taibbi further notes, the State Department also flagged accounts that retweeted ZeroHedge due to “Sinophobia” and a “flurry of disinformation” that allegedly broke out after our suspension on Twitter.

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. pic.twitter.com/JlIobPzAFE

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

Which only raises more questions.

Why was this GEC more concerned about “Sinophobia” (fear of China) than the truth?

— ICULuci (@icu_luci) January 3, 2023

But hey, they had a giant problem on their hands, since even those with double-digit IQs could connect the dots between the Obama administration banning Gain-of-Function research to manipulate bat coronaviruses in order to become more transmissible to humans, then Anthony Fauci offshoring it to Wuhan, China via EcoHealth Alliance, which was carried out by a guy who repeatedly bragged about… manipulating bat coronavirus, and then COVID-19 breaks out in the same exact town.

What are the odds?

Anthony “the Science” Fauci desperately tried to hide his involvement in Wuhan covid research. Anything that pointed at him, even remotely, was “Russian propaganda” https://t.co/FOPObnvm74

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 3, 2023

Did we mention we’re really interested in the Twitter ‘Fauci Files’ that are supposedly dropping later this week?

The real source of disinformation turned out to be, what do you know, the government.

— Dave Benner, Thomas Paine Promoter (@dbenner83) January 3, 2023

Back to the infiltration of Twitter…

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.” pic.twitter.com/zByT5aCaBo

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

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.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.

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.

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