Elvis Ming Chan, the FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the center of the TwitterFiles scandal, had started out as an engineer at NEC: a Japanese computer company. The son of Chinese immigrants who was raised in Seattle, near the hub of Big Tech, Chan describes a tech industry where going into national security was always a backdoor option.
“One of my buddies who I worked with at the company I was at, his game plan was always to join The Bureau,” Chan revealed in an interview. “And he got in and he’s calling me from the FBI academy in Quantico, which you were able to visit with me. Maybe we’ll talk about that later. But he said, ‘Elvis,’ he’s calling me on the phone, he’s like, ‘you would love this. We’re shooting guns. We’re kicking down doors. I’m learning about the constitution. This is awesome.’”
Chan was able to influence Twitter so well because he had come out of the tech industry.
The FBI offered tech industry dorks the opportunity to shoot guns and kick down doors, to wield visceral power rather than just virtual power. While the tech industry influenced far more lives, the Bureau could offer something more tangible. It’s why so many of the recent FBI raids on political opponents have featured large teams of heavily armed men. Behind the body armor are ‘mall cops’ with Ivy League degrees who enjoy shooting guns and kicking down doors even though there’s no threat that they’re dealing with that requires them to be doing either one.
Looking to get a hold on the internet, the FBI recruited from the tech industry. And looking to get a hold on security, the industry recruited from the FBI with at least a dozen senior Twitter personnel coming out of the bureau. The revolving door blurred the lines between the government and the tech industry. It’s still unclear what Twitter was doing on its own initiative or at the behest of the FBI. And it’s unclear where the allegiance of FBI people like Chan really lay.
In 2017, the FBI set up a Foreign Influence Task Force in response to Hillary Clinton’s Russiagate hoax. The legal premise of FITF, charged with combating, in the words of FBI Director Wray, efforts by foreign governments to “sway U.S. voters’ preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic processes” was dubious from the start.
Enemy propaganda had always existed. The legal basis for using the FBI, which is charged with domestic operations, as the lead was bound to mean targeting Americans rather than foreign enemies. The FBI had no meaningful legal authority to do anything about foreign propaganda except to do what Chan was doing, which was to form relationships with Big Tech companies and guide them to do the things that the Bureau could not legally undertake to do itself.
The Clinton influence operation that led to Russiagate had always been based on such revolving doors between industries, ex-intel personnel working for former reporters who could bridge the gaps between the media, the FBI and political campaigns using their relationships.
TwitterFiles has cast a harsh light on the fourth leg of the chair.
Russiagate had two phases. While in its first phase it was meant to win an election, in its second phase it was meant to subjugate the internet to government and media oversight. Having failed to achieve Plan A, the coordinated scandals and investigations between the media and the DOJ, Plan B set out to build new relationships between the DOJ, media and Big Tech.
These relationships were based on the big lie of what was initially a crisis of “foreign influence” that eventually became a “crisis of democracy”. Big Tech put media fact checkers in charge of flagging material to censor out front while the FBI flagged material behind the scenes. Much as in Russiagate, the media were the public face of a campaign while the DOJ kept its role secret.
The Hunter Biden laptop scandal tested the model with the FBI providing the guidance that Big Tech would follow to censor the story. Claims of foreign influence had become a pretext for a direct attack on freedom of the press as a major paper was censored using false FITF claims.
Big Tech had been prepped for four years to “redo” the 2016 election correctly. Democrats had blamed Hillary’s stolen emails and the FBI’s response to it for their election defeat. In 2020, the FBI and Big Tech had been prepped to properly play their role when Hunter’s laptop emerged. And that was done by wiring the FBI and Big Tech together into a single political operation.
Personnel is policy. Putting Big Tech people inside the FBI would transform its worldview from law enforcement to content moderation. And moving FBI people into Big Tech would lead platforms to see everything as a threat. The hybrid entity was a paranoid content moderating monster that wielded the untrammeled power of Big Tech and the authority of the feds.
“My mission is, ‘Protect the American people and uphold the constitution,’ Chan claimed. That’s noble, but what he was doing at FITF was hacking the constitution using a back door oligarchy.
The Constitution depends on boundaries between branches of the government, between elected officials and law enforcement, between government and industry, between the media and the government, and between the publishing platforms that enable speech and the government. When these boundaries collapse, the constitution becomes meaningless, and the Bill of Rights a series of technicalities that can be violated with impunity by an oligarchy that subdivides its powers by compartmentalizing them between private and public sectors.
When the DOJ, Big Tech, the media, administrations, companies, engineers, agents, and executives all work together toward the same political goals, the constitution is a dead letter.
And then there are doors to be kicked in and guns to be shot, people to be censored and stories to be suppressed for the emerging ruling class that pretends its coordinated actions are mere synchronicity when they are actually a conspiracy against the constitution.
A bit off topic but I would very much like to hear Daniel Greenberg’s take on the following:
What if Mexico, China and Russia formed an alliance (like NATO) to prevent American aggression across the Mexican border. This is not an unreasonable suspicion for some Mexican nationalists and communists to have, since all the American border States were once Mexican. And also – it is an article of Communist Faith that the US (capitalism) is ultimately by its nature (by Marxist theory) a world aggressor. They believe that as religion.
From a Russian perspective consider this – recently, 75 years ago (and France before that), Russia was overrun by Germany and some of its “European allies” killing 20 million Russians. The German Axis cut through Ukraine like butter and entered Russia over the Ukraine/Russia border. Russians actively remember this. Russians (reasonably or not) resent Ukraine for allowing this to happen. Never again! They actively cannot allow a European alliance which threatens Russia and especially on its border.
We in the US would NEVER allow such a NATO type alliance (China/Russia/Mexico/Cuba/etc.)on our border. Think “Cuban crises” and the lengths we went through to prevent that. Think Monroe Doctrine.”
Frankly, I have little interest in the Russian, Chinese, Mexican, etc perspective. I leave that stuff to John Kerry.
If Russia didn’t have a tendency to invade Eastern Europe and much of the region, and declare that countries like Poland don’t actually exist, NATO wouldn’t exist.
If you guys want to get rid of NATO, maybe give Poland and other countries a reason to think you wouldn’t do it again… instead of sending swarms of Iraqi migrants across the Polish border for giggles.
Speaking of Russia being overrun by Germany, before that happened, Moscow formed a pact with Hitler to slice up Poland and parts of the region. Then Hitler stabbed you guys in the back.
Arguing that you need the entire region as a buffer zone against Germany invading you again is silly because
1. The only reason Germany invaded Russia is because Moscow chose to ally with Hitler against the countries in the region, instead of allying with them.
2. Germany can’t even fend off mobs of Muslim migrants let alone invade you.
The only folks invading Russia are Muslims from parts of the former USSR who are taking over cities like Moscow. Every Russian kid who dies fighting so Putin’s oligarchs can get richer accelerates the Islamic victory against Russia’s real enemies.
Part 1
“A bit off topic but I would very much like to hear Daniel Greenberg’s take on the following:”
Firstly: If there is a “Daniel Greenberg” on this site they have declined to identify themselves as such. There is however Daniel Greenfield.
Secondly: You heard Mr. Greenfield’s take, but I will provide my own.
But let’s start at the end.
“We in the US would NEVER allow such a NATO type alliance (China/Russia/Mexico/Cuba/etc.)on our border. Think “Cuban crises” and the lengths we went through to prevent that. Think Monroe Doctrine.””
Actually, we do allow such an alliance on our border, and the Cuban Crises and what did and didn’t happen after it are proof positive of that. We share a maritime border with Communist Cuba, the totalitarian regime that came closer than any other government in history to causing global man-made apocalypse by its combination of seeking strategic nuclear weapons from its Soviet patron and then trying to prod and defraud said patron into launching nukes. And that regime has been around for decades, and serious US attempts to remove it ended half a century ago.
Nor is it alone any longer. After a welcome few decades of respite the Sandinistas have returned to power in Nicaragua and have proven to be the brutal, totalitarian monsters that the much-maligned “Cold Warriors” pointed out they were. Likewise, PSUV in Venezuela has turned a dysfunctional but decent centrist ish Republic into a totalitarian nightmare.
Part 2
All of the aforementioned retain close ties of alliance to each other and to both the PRC and Putin’s government. The fact that it is not formally organized into some formal alliance structure is more a matter of political convenience and lack of transparency (such as Cuba’s desire to get inside the “Non Aligned Movement” in order to help steer it) than a lack of alliance.
As such, attempts to justify the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine by claiming we would never allow a hostile alliance to border us fall completely and utterly flat, even on those grounds.
The fact that Ukraine had not joined and was not prepared to join any such analogous alliance for years to come and the war sparked as a result of an EU Association Agreement further underlines the fallacy at the heart of this hypothetical. The situations are not comparabl3e.
“What if Mexico, China and Russia formed an alliance (like NATO) to prevent American aggression across the Mexican border.”
They would be welcome to try, and indeed some other countries have tried. Though the threat of “American aggression across the Mexican border” is a Chimera. The last US military intervention on Mexican soil for the purpose of occupying part of it was more than a century ago during the Mexican Revolution and WWI. Indeed, Mexican troops violate US territory far more than the other way around, a problem
Part 3
I’ll also note that the US turned away from the idea of annexing more Mexican territory before the Civil War, hence why filibusters like William Walker were prosecuted by the Federal Government (often ineffectively it is true, but it shows policy).
Of course that doesn’t mean there will never be a problem, and they are welcome to take what precautions they deem necessary so long as they do not violate US sovereignty, and are prepared to accept the consequences.. Including diplomatic and military fallout.
“This is not an unreasonable suspicion for some Mexican nationalists and communists to have, since all the American border States were once Mexican.”
Yeah, it is. Especially among Communists; those Communists that actually do research know full well which side has tended to aggress. While most Mexican Nationalists acknowledge that whatever US “aggression” happens does not happen to them or across the border but by other ways, and indeed they are interested in aggression over the US border, hence the radical Chicano movement and the idea of “Aztlan.
Part 4
” And also – it is an article of Communist Faith that the US (capitalism) is ultimately by its nature (by Marxist theory) a world aggressor. They believe that as religion.”
Perhaps, but they are quite capable of double thinking. Decades of policy among Communist regimes were based on the two tracks of Capitalism as an aggressive, imperialist force poised to destroy the Workers’ States and Capitalist powers as being relatively reactive and prepared to sell Communist revolutionaries the rope to hang them. This is in sharp contrast to the Communist preparation for world conquest.
“From a Russian perspective consider this –”
I have been considering Russian perspectives for years, especially since I lived and worked there (however briefly). I am frankly tired of demands to see things through Russian perspectives to the exclusion of other perspectives,
Part 5
” recently, 75 years ago (and France before that), Russia was overrun by Germany and some of its “European allies” killing 20 million Russians.”
Half-true at best.
75 years ago, the Devil came for his due when Nazi Germany betrayed the alliance it sighed with the Soviet Union – a multinational, multi-cultural, Russian-centric empire aimed at world conquest- and overran vast parts of the USSR, including much of Russia and Belarus, all of Poland and the Baltic Three, and virtually all of Ukraine. Dozens of millions of Soviet citizens died whether in battle, of abuse, or atrocity by a mixture of the cruelty of the Axis and the heartlessness of their own regime.
None of which would have happened had Soviet leaders not sought cooperation with Germany’s militarists for around 20 years beforehand, helping them regain the strength they lost from WWI and then some for the express purpose of starting a world war to pave the way for global revolution as Lenin did.
Part 6
“The German Axis cut through Ukraine like butter and entered Russia over the Ukraine/Russia border. ”
This is AT BEST a third true.
The German Axis cut through all along the multi-national Soviet border along its entire length for thousands of miles. Much of this was in Ukraine, but so was it in the Baltics, in Moldova, Poland, Belarus, and what is now Russia itself, especially notable around Moscow and St. Petersburg.
There was nothing particularly special about Ukraine, save perhaps that it was one of the more resilient areas of the front (largely due to the heroic insubordination of one Mikhail Kirponos, who made the decision to put the Southern Military Districts on alert in contravention of Stalin’s orders just before Barbarossa began, resulting in the Axis making slower grounds on the Moldovan and Ukrainian fronts than they did anywhere else except the Far North of Russia).
If the collective Russian memory of Barbarossa is so skewed this is forgotten, then they have much greater problems than a trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU.
Part 7
“Russians actively remember this.”
If they do not remember the steady Axis advances all along the front during this time, they have bigger issues.
“Russians (reasonably or not) resent Ukraine for allowing this to happen.”
Do they resent themselves or Comrade Stalin for allowing Leningrad to be besieged? Or for undermining the USSR’s buffers by partaking in Molotov-RIbbentrop?
The Ukrainians for their own part remember centuries of abuse by governments based in Moscow, from the onesided terms of the Union of Pereyaslav, to the gradual abolition of local rights, to the persecution of Ukrainian culture, and above all the Ukrainian part of the “Peasants’ War” in the USSR and the ensuing Holodomors (the most infamous of which occurred in Ukraine), and the years of post-independence douchebaggery and refusal to iron out diplomatic issues.
Part 8
“Never again! They actively cannot allow a European alliance which threatens Russia and especially on its border.”
They can and they will. Estonia and Latvia are there. Moreover, Putin’s brutality and self-defeating diplomacy have helped push Finland and Sweden to seek entrance into NATO. So I do not believe the Kremlin is actually incapable of abiding by NATO on its borders. Indeed, Russian foreign policy has accepted that. Which is why talks of the “European Alliance which threatens Russia” is ultimately a red herring for the Kremlin’s real goals of forcibly dominating Ukraine and other nations in its “near abroad.”
continued
Furthermore Putin, a dictator with the button CANT be defeated. Ultimately. Saddam Hussein was defeated and cornered in a rat hole. What if Hussein had a nuclear button in that hole – as Putin does have. Pushed to the wall – Putin will respond, with the bomb available.
The “beauty” of the bomb, is border disputes must be settled by compromise or ——it’s too horrible to contemplate – but very, very possible.
Response appreciated. Further thoughts available.
Nobody is pushing Putin to the wall.
And he isn’t a dictator. He’s the public face of an oligarchy composed of industrialists and ex-KGB types who have gotten very rich.
Nobody is using the bomb either.
Moscow has been trying to threaten the world with the bomb ever since Khrushchev’s UN tantrum.
Nobody takes this stuff seriously anymore.
(response to both your responses)
Thank you for responding. Most don’t. You must be very busy in this. Good. It’s needed.
I hope you are right. My wife is from the former Soviet Union. Fact is – older Russians remember and fear aggression from the US and other countries. Why not a buffer? Puzzle to me why you would bristle at this. We are on a hot track into a very serious war. If a compromise to prevent that can be found – why not?
also strange to me why you call me “you guys” Which “you guys” am I part of?
You seem to be siding with Biden and the Military Industrial complex but I would not lump you with a “you guys” label with them. It’s insulting.
Which “you guys” do you lump me with. It’s too easy.
It’s pointless to go into tit for tat in history. Two countries have a border dispute. Fine. Let them resolve via a power balance AND with some international oversee.
“Frankly, I have little interest in the Russian, Chinese, Mexican, etc perspective.” Maybe give that some thought.
The whole region is one big border dispute going back centuries involving resettling populations, swapping churches and claiming land the hard way. It’s not just Russia and Ukraine, it’s half the region with their own nationalisms and ancient feuds.
Would be nicer if we weren’t involved. But we keep being dragged into it anyway.
Americans didn’t have, “Let’s have our economy upended because a bunch of ex-Communist countries decided to have the latest round of their grudge match this year” penciled in.
But here we are anyway.
Russians don’t fear aggression from the United States. The last and only time we were in Russia was to try and stop the Bolshevik takeover. They believe that they’re entitled as an empire/world power to control the region and grind other slavic countries under.
I don’t have much of a dog in this race, but we can be honest about that. Most Russians are.
Thanks again for the response. It’s good knowing there is a voice on the other end. I mostly like your live talks. Very good. Very Rabbinical.
The whole region is one big border dispute going back centuries What else is new?
Sounds like the middle east to me. These things take years and centuries to settle out. But they do settle out if we keep calm about it. I believe we are all cut from the same cloth. Economics helps, and the world is getting richer. The best the US can do is be a strong stabilizing example run by law. Maybe faith in God – but that is hard for me coming from my secular Brooklyn background.
Russians don’t fear aggression from the United States. TRUE!
But they absolutely fear and despise humiliation. I have it on good advice. Russia, the Russian people will not be humiliated – a way HAS to be found. You may disagree with this – but I believe Trump is the best negotiator.
The heart, the center of the Jewish State and people is socialist in spirit. That’s how the State was founded. Practically speaking it doesn’t work as you run out of other people’s money and good will. But the true Communist – and the true Christian share a judaic spirit of universal oneness.
Jump in, or not! Don’t want to take more of your valuable time.
@b
“Furthermore Putin, a dictator with the button CANT be defeated. ”
The Kim Dynasty would’ve liked to have known that before they were defeated in the DMZ War of the 1960s.
“Ultimately. Saddam Hussein was defeated and cornered in a rat hole. What if Hussein had a nuclear button in that hole – as Putin does have. Pushed to the wall – Putin will respond, with the bomb available.”
The issue I see is that Saddam did have a “button.” Not nuclear, but chemical, as he clearly did when he got beaten down in 1991. The button itself is not sufficient without delivery systems, which to be fair Putin does.
“The “beauty” of the bomb, is border disputes must be settled by compromise or ——it’s too horrible to contemplate – but very, very possible.”
Russian grand strategy has refuted that; thanks to the Soviet inheritance they are far more willing to accept nuclear weapons in preparation for it.
The bigger issue, however, is that this is not really a “border dispute.” Any such border disputes were resolved with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. This is aggression on Putin’s part, and his terms make it clear that this goes far beyond border issues and onto questions of Ukraine’s existential independence, and hte credibility of the West.
The FBI had to be rebuilt from the top down and the ground up
They get them to join before they have time to learn history or to have enough life experience to understand what’s really going on in the world, where they just follow orders from their superiors.
Of course, a lot of people never learn or understand anyway, even when they are old. Scary.
An old Nazi trick was, just give them snazzy uniforms, and they are happy.
A conspiracy against the constitution, indeed.
One solution to all of this is to charge Merrick Garland, his assistant AGs, and the management of the FBI, with violating 18 USC 241, conspiring to oppress Constitutional rights. The charges could be brought in state court in FL or rural TX. That can be done because the victims of the conspiracy reside in those states. The DOJ can’t take over the prosecution because of the obvious conflict of interest; those people can hardly be expected to prosecute themselves for their own crimes. Part of the evidence of their conspiracy is obvious; they won’t prosecute people who are publicly violating that law, which changes them from prosecutors, and law enforcement, into co-conspirators.
It is still going on. I was PERMANENTLY SUSPENDED from Facebook. My crime? Telling the truth. And then I was PERMANENTLY SUSPENDED from Twitter. For the same reason. Was I a harsh critic of liberals? Yes I was, but no more than they were about Trump or conservatives.
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter, I appealed my acceptance to no avail: so, I recreated a Twitter account using a very similar username and began posting the truth again. Oh the freedom, oh the joy, oh shit, I was banned for life for having ‘multiple accounts’. I guess 2 is multiplied by zero now.
My big idea to combat the tyrannical government is to:
Conservative communities across America should form Grand Juries and arrest the criminal subversives that are destroying America. Feel free to spread that idea far and wide.
You’re a fascist calling for kangaroo courts. Considering the types who would be attracted to this it would instantly devolve into lynch mobs rampaging across the country. Millions would be murdered for being who they are or because the “jurists” want to steal their property.
You still wonder why you were banned?
The FBI just becoming a SS group of Brownshirts Der Fehrer Biden will turn loose on us who refuse to abide by his dictatorship
The FBI, CIA and NSA’s next step will be disappearance and torture.
Part 8
“Never again! They actively cannot allow a European alliance which threatens Russia and especially on its border.”
They can and they will. Estonia and Latvia are there. Moreover, Putin’s brutality and self-defeating diplomacy have helped push Finland and Sweden to seek entrance into NATO. So I do not believe the Kremlin is actually incapable of abiding by NATO on its borders. Indeed, Russian foreign policy has accepted that. Which is why talks of the “European Alliance which threatens Russia” is ultimately a red herring for the Kremlin’s real goals of forcibly dominating Ukraine and other nations in its “near abroad.”
The FBI nor big tech have nothing to fear. This, too, will be rabbit-holed and nestle in among all the other crimes we store away and only dimly remember years from now. These assaults on our Constitution will only get worse because of our sense of helplessness against the latest iteration of Brown Shirts. Remember what Chuck Schumer said about going against the deep state. They (the deep state) know it and we know it. J. Edgar set the groundwork and it has taken its natural course from there. Recruiting tech nerds with the enticement of kicking in doors and shooting stuff (with a little Constitutional education on the side) is a good way of building a “brotherhood” loyal only to those with like minds. There is no legal system in the country with the will or power to reign in this form of tyranny.