Thread by @danmyg

How Israeli Psy-Group and ex-Mossad agents were meddling in the election in an American smalltown
newyorker.com/magazine/2019/…

Not only smalltown:" relationships with high-profile Republicans in the U.S., including Newt Gingrich and Elliott Abrams, who served in foreign-policy positions under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and whom Psy-Group listed as a member of its advisory board."

Not only USA: "Using Cyprus as a front made it easier for Psy-Group to sell its services in Arab states that don’t work overtly with Israeli companies"

Not only elections. Project Butterfly: "The operation targeted what Psy-Group described as “anti-Israel” activists on American college campuses who supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, known as B.D.S"

Project Butterfly: " recruited Ram Ben-Barak, a former deputy director of Mossad, to help with the project. As the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, from 2014 to 2016, Ben-Barak had drawn up a plan for the state to combat the B.D.S. movement"

"Yaakov Amidror, a former national-security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also became an adviser to Psy-Group on Butterfly... he spoke to Daniel Reisner, Psy-Group’s outside counsel, who had advised five Israeli Prime Ministers, including Netanyahu"

"While active Israeli intelligence operatives aren’t supposed to spy on the United States, Amidror said, he saw nothing improper about former Israeli intelligence officers conducting operations against American college students"

Psy-Group and Trump: "Zamel showed Nader several analytical reports, including one that described the role of avatars, bots, fake news, and unattributed Web sites in assisting Trump. Zamel told Nader, “Here’s the work that we did to help get Trump elected,”"

Online:"A series of ominous Web sites appeared: Tularespeaks.com, Tulareleaks.com, and Draintulareswamp.com. The sites directed visitors to articles that smeared Senovia Gutiérrez"

Offline:"Psy-Group also conducted “off-line” operations, as the company sometimes termed clandestine on-the-ground activities, according to a former company employee"

Offline: "The woman handed Richard an envelope that read “To: Mrs. Sanovia,” misspelling her name. Richard noticed that a man was standing across the street, next to a Yukon Denali S.U.V., taking photographs with a telephoto lens"

"Some of the photographs soon appeared on Draintulareswamp.com, under the title “Who Is Pulling Senovia’s Strings?” ... The photographs seemed designed to make it appear as if Senovia had taken a bribe. (The envelope contained a thirty-dollar Tommy Hilfiger gift certificate.)"

"On the eve of the election, Alex’s house burned down and he lost almost everything, including his final batch of campaign flyers ... A former Psy-Group official told me, “I never initiated any physical fire on any project whatsoever.”

Psy-Group is just one of many companies: "“This is the challenge of our time,” he said. “Everything is fake. It’s unbelievable... What started as a noble cause ended up as fake news. What you have today is a flooded market, with people that will, basically, do anything.”

Don't trust online:" In the end, the Web sites attacking Senovia attracted scant attention in the community. “It was like they organized a concert and nobody showed up, a computer-security expert said after reviewing trace data from the sites”

Psy-Group closed down: " Some of Psy-Group’s former employees have met with Black Cube to discuss job opportunities ... Recently, Efraim Halevy, who served as the director of Mossad from 1998 to 2002, joined Black Cube’s advisory board"