Matt Taibbi Profile picture
Nov 28, 2023 12 tweets 5 min read Read on X
1. #CTIFIles2
INTRODUCING THE #CTIFiles
The Deep State, With Its Pants Down Image
2. Tuesday, @Shellenberger, @galexybrane and I began releasing the CTI League (CTIL) Files. Provided by a whistleblower, they detail activities of a group ostensibly formed for the narrow purpose of fighting Covid misinfo. We quickly found they had wider interests:


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3. “I DON’T KNOW A LOT, BUT…”
The documents equal or exceed the #TwitterFiles in explosiveness, offering a devastating portrait of the digital censorship sector – from breathtaking authoritarian views to comic ignorance and lack of self-awareness.
4. The CTIL story has enormous significance because of its close ties to the FBI, DoD, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CISA chief Chris Krebs boasted of CISA’s partnership with CTIL.

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5. A whistleblower told Public and Racket CTIL’s online meets were regularly attended by FBI and DHS operatives. The source added CTIL founder SJ Terp said the original go-ahead for the program came from the White House. cisa.gov/news-events/ne…
6. But the #CTIFiles are not just more confirmation of state-aided censorship efforts. They expose much more.
7. Unlike the #TwitterFiles, which detail mostly defensive activity like censorship and deamplification, the #CTIFiles show members instructed in a wide array of “offensive” operations, including infiltration, creation of fake personas, use of burner phones, and more.
8. “IMPAIR THE OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS OF THE ENEMY”
CTIL members repeatedly stressed building a “good guy analog” to disinfo programs of Russians, Chinese, even “Fox News Snorters," using an array of military-style “counters” to disrupt "the enemy” – American citizens? Image
9. “REPETITION IS TRUTH”
The #CTIFiles also detail how marketing executives with no skills apart from corporate brand management shifted from manipulating perceptions of products to doing it for nation-states, policies, and political parties:

10. @CTILeague has been the subject of reporting before. Accounts like @pepesgrandma aka “Bad Kitty” months ago connected CTIL, DHS, and operations like the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). The whistleblower docs, however, tell a damning and irrefutable new story. Image
11. That the DHS and FBI partnered with a group that endorsed both censorship and “bad guy” offensive operations “against U.S. citizens” is only one of many key revelations. The size of this leak makes it difficult to summarize quickly.
12. There are so many ugly details in the #CTIFiles, in fact, that the fastest way to introduce them is to release docs in bunches, by theme. In the next hours, days, and weeks, look for more threads in this space.
First up, momentarily: SOCKPUPPETS AND SPIES.
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More from @mtaibbi

Sep 5
THE STEELE DOSSIER IS BULLSHIT BECAUSE:

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, a Barack Obama appointee, conducted an extensive investigation of the issuance of four FISA warrants that required an in-depth review of the Steele dossier:
justice.gov/storage/120919…

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"CORROBORATED LIMITED INFORMATION... MUCH OF THAT WAS PUBLICLY AVAILABLE."

There is NOT ONE piece of original reporting in the Steele dossier that turned out to be true. The only "confirmed" details were from prior public news reports, and even got some of those wrong... Image
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PEE TAPE: "JUST TALK" OVER "BEERS" AND IN "JEST"

Horowitz noted the sources of Steele's spiciest revelations, like the "pee tape," were tracked down and stunned they'd been taken seriously. They laughed the story off as "just talk" told over "beers" in "jest": Image
Read 21 tweets
Sep 4
On the new piece about Jeffrey Sachs and “Shock Therapy”:

I see people already suggesting this story is propaganda that paints Putin’s Russia as a victim. That’s not what this account says at all (cont’d)
The victims here are the Russian and American people, not the governments. After the Cold War we had a historic opportunity. Instead of making Russia a quasi-partner like Japan or Germany, we went the other way:
The result was economic disaster in Russia (which Westerners bailed out btw), which thanks to help from U.S. ended up ruled by rapacious oligarchs. Anti-US sentiment exploded during my time there.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 2
In this article I’m trying to express something that’s been bothering me since I wrote “The Divide” and “I Can’t Breathe”:

racket.news/p/liberalism-r…
When I first started covering policing I was taken aback by the complexity. Post-Broken Windows, big cities essentially gave up on high-end enforcement and used tactics closer to commercial fishing: sweep up everyone on small offenses, throw back some innocents.
The infamous 2015 Mike Bloomberg address to the Aspen Institute confirmed that NY busted young black men on drug offenses with the aim of pre-empting a statistical probability of them committing more serious crimes like murder - Minority Report stuff
Read 12 tweets
Aug 12
The American speech system is a simple premise. A free press delivers the information, voters make the political decisions. We’re supposed to trust audiences to know what’s best for them. (1/4)
The new digital censorship movement is based on two fallacies. The first is that voters are too stupid to sort out information on their own, so they need institutional vanguards to weigh information, “help” them choose. (2/4)
The second is that the state has special responsibility to “protect” us from bad speech. The opposite is true. The constitution specifically enjoins the government from restricting citizen-to-citizen discussion. (3/4)
Read 4 tweets
Jun 13
Not only is the @nytimes is totally wrong implying @mirandadevine’s reporting hasn’t held up, the paper ignored its own multi-level failure on that same story in 2020, which included ignoring their own reporting. It’s almost actionable — they owe a huge apology (1/6):
First of all the Times in 2020 tried to use the unprecedented censorship of the story by Facebook and Twitter to call Miranda’s story “dubious,” without saying what was dubious. (The censorship angle they of course ignore entirely.) It got worse (2/6):
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Just a few paragraphs down, the Times contradicted itself, saying Twitter didn’t block the story because it was “dubious,” but because it was supposedly “hacked materials.”

The laptop contents were not even “hacked materials,” as Twitter quickly determined. But also (3/6): Image
Read 6 tweets
Jun 6
1. TWITTER FILES Extra: The Defaming of Brandon Straka and #Walkaway

Smeared as a Russian proxy after founding a movement to "#Walkaway" from the Democratic Party, Twitter documents suggest @BrandonStraka and his followers were set up Image
2. In Atlanta Monday, I testified before Georgia state Representative @MeshaMainor, in a free speech hearing centered around the censorship of members of the “#WalkAway” Facebook Group, whose 500,000-plus accounts were deleted by Facebook on January 8th, 2021.
washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/…Image
3. The #TwitterFiles contained material about federal interest in #WalkAway, including exculpatory Twitter analyses that contrasted with coverage describing #WalkAway as a “Kremlin operation.” These documents should have been published earlier. I apologize to @BrandonStraka.
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Read 41 tweets

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