(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and subsequent release of internal company documents, known as the Twitter Files, has exposed what critics have termed the “censorship industrial complex”—a shadowy network of government agencies and government-funded organizations.
It turns out, a CIA spook played a major role in establishing this network.
This is according to a new article from Twitter Files reporter Michael Shellenberger, who published a story Monday profiling Renee DiResta, Stanford Internet Observatory’s research manager.
DiResta has already been in the news for scandalous reasons.
Revolver News published a story last May spotlighting her role in an organization called New Knowledge, which orchestrated a disinformation campaign that falsely—and perhaps illegally—accused a Republican candidate for an Alabama senate seat in 2017 of being amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.
Revolver also noted last May that—in the irony of ironies—New Knowledge was actually given a contract by Senate Intelligent Committee to write a major report on how Russian troll farms influence elections.
While New Knowledge’s connections to Democrat operatives was already well known, Shellenberger’s Monday story adds a new wrinkle by showing that the organization also may have been a cutout for the CIA.
“I learned that DiResta had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency,” Shellengerger wrote Monday. “Mike Benz, a former State Department official … had discovered a little-viewed video of her supervisor at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos, mentioning in an off-hand way that DiResta had previously ‘worked for the CIA.’”
Shellengerger also divulged some of his findings on the Joe Rogan Show last Thursday.
Renee Diresta wrote the Senate Report on Russian bots. The New York Times later exposed her company for creating fake Russian bot accounts to sway an American election.
In response, she was promoted to lead the Election Integrity Project and the Virality Project, where she… https://t.co/HOOBnwzcoo pic.twitter.com/YYBmksIiIi
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 3, 2023
This apparently didn’t sit too well with DiResta, who clapped back against Shellenberger’s claims in her own Substack article. DiResta claimed that Shellenberger never asked her about her ties to the CIA, which she downplayed.
“My purported secret-agent double life was an undergraduate student fellowship at CIA, ending in 2004—years prior to Twitter’s founding. I’ve had no affiliation since,” she wrote.
“One of the strangest parts of this situation is that despite being in regular, good-faith contact for two months, Shellenberger — who identifies as a journalist — never asked me about these ‘undisclosed CIA ties’ or ‘millions of censored tweets’ or other accusations he presented as fact.”
However, this is false, according to Shellenberger. The Twitter Files reporter posted receipts Monday showing that he has, in fact, questioned DiResta about her CIA connections.
“In an October 13 email, which she had asked me to send over Whatsapp, that I sent to her, I asked her four questions,” he wrote.
Shellenger said the four questions are: According to recorded remarks by your supervisor at Stanford, Alex Stamos, you have previously ‘worked for the CIA.’ Is that true? What did you do for the CIA? What funding and/or employment and direction have you taken from government agencies? If you did work with the CIA, and/or other government agencies, activity, why haven’t you mentioned it in your previous biographies and 2018 Senate testimony?
DiResta has not answered any of those questions to date.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
