In the latest "Twitter Files" reporting, journalist Matt Taibbi reveals that an office under the State Department allegedly was behind a think-tank group that falsely tagged ordinary U.S. citizens as foreign political operatives through a list of 40,000 accounts provided to Twitter in June 2021.
According to documentation shared through Taibbi's report, the list was provided through the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) of people it said were allegedly involved in "inauthentic behavior" to promote the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and to promote Hindu nationalism, reports The Daily Caller, quoting Taibbi.
The DFRL reportedly got money from the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an office inside the State Department that is set up to combat misinformation.
The DFRL is denying the use of GEC money to track Americans, Taibbi reported, but he said he contacted several Americans listed on the accounts and they said they were neither involved in Indian politics nor had any knowledge of Hindu nationalism.
The GEC also allegedly provided other lists of accounts of people they believed were acting to benefit countries such as China and Iran, including the names of three CNN employees and some Western government accounts, reported Taibbi. However, many of the people on those lists also had no connection to the allegations that were being named, he said.
Twitter’s safety chief Yoel Roth reportedly called the lists a “total crock.” Another Twitter employee, Aaron Rodericks, the company's head of threat disruption, called the GEC’s reports "more entertainment than anything."
“GEC has doubled their budget by aggressively overstating threats through unverified accusations that can’t be replicated either by external academics or by Twitter,” Rodericks said in an email Taibbi published.
The findings, however, were distributed to several mainstream media outlets that published reports on "foreign disinformation."
Taibbi said he and author Michael Shellenberger, who has also published Twitter Files threads, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on March 9.
© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.