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city battle. okay, so my niece madeline speaking with we will van in the european union, the kremlin. yup. machine estate aunt rush up to date and r t spoke neck, given our video agency, roughly all band on youtube and pinterest and with mm ah, big corporations, especially the big social media sites, have a great deal of control over what the rest of us are able to see about what news we read and about what we think about the major issues of the day. certainly

governments try to regulate them, at least they're supposed to. but what happens when that regulation is a lie? what happens when the government that supposed to protect our freedom, to free speech and a free press is instead working to censor the news. i'm john kerry aku and you're watching the whistle blowers ah. 2 2 2 2 twitter is one of the most popular and most used social media platforms in the world. hundreds of millions of people use twitter as a source for news. news that we may not get in the mainstream media. and users rely on the openness of the site to be able to exchange information that in some cases the government doesn't want us to exchange. at least that's the way it's supposed to work. last year, billionaire ilan mosque famously purchased twitter mosque had spoken a great deal about the need for transparency and information. and he promised that twitter would truly become that social media site where transparency and the free

exchange of information would reign supreme. so far he's been true to his word, must made available to investigative journalists, matt tavy, and barry wice, all of the internal communications amongst twitters executives. before he bought the company, as well as all communication between twitter executives and us guard mental agencies, particularly the f b i. what they found was explosive, using primary source documentation. they found that twitter had colluded with the f b i. and with the american intelligence community to suppress news that those agencies did not want the american people to see. this wasn't just about a 100 buttons, laptop. it went even deeper than that. it included details about banning president donald trump from twitter, about shadow banning some twitter users because of the information they were sharing and about pressure that the f b i put on twitter to take action against several users for allegedly sharing

election misinformation. we are honored today to be joined by one of those investigative journalists, matt tavy math, contribution to the twitter files can be found, of course, on twitter, and his other work can be found on sub stack. he's a former investigative journalist with rolling stone and is a winner of the national magazine award among other prestigious prizes. welcome to the show, matt. it's great to have you. good to good to talk to you again. good to see you. now, you've become one of the most important investigative journalists in america. it's kind of that proverbial overnight success that you've been working towards since 1991. tell us how ilan mosque reached out to you to break the story of the twitter files. was it that he was a fan of your work or did you approach him with an idea for a story? well, some of that is things that i can't talk about because it's a deal that i made in terms of the attribution for the story. sure. but what i can

say, what i can say is that this wasn't something that i pitched i think the, the idea came basically from him. i think as you can see, he's been anxious to get news out. he has a number of journalists that he likes, and that he pays attention to. and you know, those folks for some of those folks are brought in for this project. the 1st 2 were myself and barry wice and it's been and it's been amazing. it's been quite a ride, i'll put it that way. it has to be great. and you must have gone through a mountain of information so far. when did it become clear to you that there were several major stories in these documents? and how did you hone your focus? were you primarily interested in the beginning in 100 by and laptop story or is that just what happened to come up 1st?

no, i wasn't. i wasn't very interested in that story, per se. at all. really. my suspicion and the thing that the question i was really interested in answering if these files were really truly going to be open was what level of communication and coordination exists between a company like twitter and federal law enforcement. and perhaps even agencies, you know, beyond say the f b i or the department of homeland security or the white house. i mean that's what i really wanted to know is, is, is it truly just private censorship or, or is there some other kind of relationship going on. one of the reasons that 100 buying story was picked as the 1st thing that we looked at is because i had a suspicion that we, if such a thing existed, we might see it there. and as a result, you know, the, that search turned out to be flawed. it was bedded as,

as we learn later by a former f b. i general counsel. and then jim baker and we ended up finding some things that gave indications of government interference. and that in that particular episode, but we found much more broad evidence in other areas i'm, i'm going to ask you if in a few minutes about some of these governmental agencies, i think this is so important, but i want to start with the 100 biden laptop story, the new york post had broken the story that 100 biden had left his laptop at a repair shop in new jersey and then just apparently abandoned it. the owner of the repair shop saw some of the things that were on the hard drive. and he contacted the f b i and apparently the f. b. i wasn't interested. he then contacted rudy giuliani, the former new york mare and friend, an attorney to president trump, but twitter and facebook for that matter,

killed the story. how and why was that decision made it twitter? why did they decide that this should not be a story that, that people could share? so internally, the, the excuse for stopping that story was that it violated the quote hacked materials policy, which is a policy that they do have. they had invoked it a couple of times, in fact they had done it that summer. unfortunately, executives that the company pretty quickly came to the realization that that is not that excuse me, i'm not going to stand up. there was this material, it was not hacked. as you know, it's even if it was stolen, which there's no indication that it was you know, that's legal to do, right. journalist. there's a supreme court case, part nicky, v. bopper that allows you to publish stolen material. there was no indication that this is the knowledge of them. a new story. and as we see, there were

a number of executives, you said something like, you know, to the, to the effective can we justify this according the policy, you know, the answering no, but a number of executives advocated kind of watch and wait attitude. and as a result, they not only blocked that story for at least the day, but they locked the new york post out of its own account for to watch. i think wow, the response to your twitter files, reporting on the 100 by and laptop story was dramatic. and many americans were chopping at the bit to see what else you were in the process of coming up with your next installment was about twitters decision to ban donald trump from the platform . what did you find there? so again, i made that decision, not because i was really interested in the relative justice or injustice of the decisions or ban donald trump. but because i thought that in the back and forth

about that decision, if there was some kind of government relationship was twitter that we would see it there. and we did see if, when we looked back, we started to see during that process during the process of looking at how they came to the trump position, slack chaps heading into the election in 2020, where you would see little indentation of the at the top of the messages that said, this is slide by d h, yes, this is like by the f b i. and then you would see a whole list of accounts. and you know that and that right away told us something very significant that you know, the, essentially the twitter was in the business of processing requests that came from federal law enforcement agencies. now we didn't know a whole lot about that, but that was our 1st hand that we had to start looking more in that direction and,

and trying to understand what that relationship was better. because clearly that was something there. we also learned in the process of, of looking at the trump decision a lot about shadow banning. i think the ordinary person, you know, when they think of that term, imagines that these companies have the ability to kind of dial up or dial down the, you know, how much any account can be seen. well, that does exist. we found that out concretely, we were told by the people who actually run that function in the company. and they call it visibility filtering at twitter. and they have an extraordinary tool box of stuff that they can do to any, to completely control how visible one account is versus another. interestingly, donald trump, there were numerous visibility filtering tools that had been applied to him before

the election of 2020 like what? before he was removed from the platform. wow, let me ask you, follow up about that to like, like many big companies, especially tech companies. you end up with a lot of people formerly from the cia or the f, b i or n s, a taking jobs in security or tech, or in the case of twitter as, as general counsel. so have you been able to find whether or not these people were largely acting on their own because of their backgrounds or if they were being asked to take these decisions by their former organizations. so that's, that's a really good question. i don't have unfortunately, i don't have a great answer for you on that one, but i have my suspicions. let's put it that way. there's a key moment in the mail record. i've already published it where twitter for awhile

was trying to say no to the state department. the state department was selling them lists of accounts that they wanted flag does chinese or russian or any of this information. and essentially, there were some of the people at twitter were saying, no, we don't, we don't trust this. our, of the state department, it's called the global engagement center. it's like a fledgling would be entail arm of state. and there is a moment where an employee at twitter says yes, their conclusions are of the sort that i would normally say, let's just wait and wait for more evidence. but our window on that is closing and our government partners are becoming more aggressive. now. the executive who said that happens to have a background and is, is one of i would say the 10 most prominent twitter executives and,

and that decision was significant because it was, it was one of the moments when twitter basically realized we can't say no anymore. right. and the fact that that came from a person with a ca background, who by the way, is not listed as having a ca, back or background. but it was, it was a joke that was sort of known in the company and, and, and referred to constantly. i thought that was pretty interesting, right? like, you know, you don't see the, the other communications and he's obviously not going to comment on it, but i thought it was interesting. agreed. we're speaking with investigative journalist, matt, tell me about the twitter files. you are watching the whistleblowers stay tuned. we have a lot more coming up the. 2 2 2 2 ah,

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o came out together. we were all supposed to go home together. it didn't happen. just shot after shot after shot after shot. deer was asking where's corey? where's course, could hear them say d, o a at the scene. so we knew he was gone. my name's kamani carter, and i'm currently starting a license for gang related job. i had the 9 years ago, my victim of dentist. she was also a student who was attending college. his name is corey pittman. very young kids, that seems were getting involved and horrendous violence. 20 to 30 years ago. i think there's no question that the kitchen cripps from ballet came up here and

seated this area. all my friends was either in prison now forever or day. a game this one, it will. ah, welcome back to the whistleblowers, i'm john curiosity, who were speaking with investigative journalist mat to be who has broken several of these very important stories coming out of the twitter files. thanks again for being with us, matt. next your help me, john. man, i believe that one of the most important things that you've uncovered in your reporting is the level of cooperation between twitter executives and the f b i. the f. b. i reported several accounts to twitters trust and safety team for allegedly spreading election. this information. many of those accounts had very few

followers and so were influencing nobody and many were satirical in nature. these weren't propaganda sources for people. this contact between twitter and the f b, i was quite common with the f. b, i frequently making requests of twitter executives and twitter employees. after you reported on the relationship the f. b, i issued a statement in its own defense. but what do you believe was this relationship proper and appropriate? and even if it was, why was there so much secrecy surrounding it? i don't believe it was appropriate if, if it hadn't been appropriate, they would. they wouldn't have covered it up so much. you mentioned several accounts. it was in several, it was thousands and thousands of requests and that came every day and it didn't just come from the f. b, i came from every when, when the government i saw requests ranging from, you know, everyone from the asia,

just a treasury to the state, to the ca, to the essay, to the deal. you know, there's other wing to the d o d. and then every state government was also making requests through a different portal through the d h a through g h s, called the h s. i. and there were so many requests that they got one batch one day. and when they completed it, there was a sort of round of applause in chat at twitter saying thanks everybody for completing this monumental undertaking. one of the other reporters, michael schellenberg, are found an email that where they talk about being twitter being paid 3400000 dollars one year for quote, processing requests. that seems like they were massively underpaid. and these people were basically morning tonight, in some cases,

doing nothing but processing government requests. and they came from all over again . the foreign ones, the ones that i suspect came from, from quote unquote, on other government agencies. and these are just excel spreadsheets with, with thousands of names on them. and yeah, so it's amazing math. you've taken a lot of heat from the political left for your reporting. this has struck me is very odd because you're a lifelong progressive. but many in the democratic party in the u. s. have kind of a year with us, or you're with them attitude. they've accused you and barry wice in glenn greenwald, and others of jumping into bed with donald trump and the republicans, just because you're reporting facts that are inconvenient for them. how have you felt about this? have you been surprised by some of the reactions? i'm in the, i mean, the degree of viciousness and dishonesty has been a little surprising. you know,

the washington post came out and they actually had the temerity, they call me a, a conservative journalists. they tried to slide that in. not that that's offensive, but it's certainly not an accurate description of me. the new york times basically said that mice, the problem with me is that my fan base had changed. i had not got along with narratives about trumps cooperation with russia. all of this stuff, both the personal attacks on me and the refusal of these companies to cover what is clearly an important story is you know, they think they think they're doing something that hurts me. it hurts the media. it really just imputes their credibility and it adds to the snowballing phenomenon of loss of audience, which i think they all recognize,

even before they started the i think you're right. hey, just as an aside on my radio show on sputnik, i often talk about criminal justice issues and a reporter at the washington post. listen to the show one day and wrote an article about sputnik and singled me out saying that by talking about these criminal justice issues, crooked judges, crooked cops, stuff like that, that i was weakening our democracy. i still am just amazed that they would say such a thing, but that's what we're up against. they think like that. yeah, they do really believe it. i think that's an indication of how, how journalists today. thank. i mean, as you may know, i grew up in a family of journalists and once upon a time, the idea of telling everybody in your audience what the bad stuff was is part of your job like that is your job job is to is to tell people when things are not

going right, and only this new breed of journalist that imagines itself to be part of the group, the socially the same people as the people they're covering. and so they feel it kind of kinship. that is defensive when, when there is an attack on, let's just say something like an improper relationship between the f b i and the n s a. and, you know, twitter 30 years ago you would never heard a journalist say that's not a story, but now they're like, oh my goodness, you can't tell people that ab, which is, you know, yep. it's, it's not, it's not, i can't believe we gotten, we've gotten ourselves to this point. what else should we expect to see coming out of the twitter files? are there more big stories on the way? i hope so. i mean, we have a lot of stuff to go through. it's funny,

it's not an easy process. we're, we're doing this through a search process that's a little bit cumbersome and time consuming, we have to read everything obviously. so that's tens of thousands of emails, but i think as we go, we're, we're regularly finding pieces to the puzzle that tell us a lot more about the nature of the relationship, not only between twitter and the government, but between other companies like facebook and google and the government, we know how they're meeting, we know when they're meeting, we know what, what systems they're using to communicate and we know what they're talking about at those meetings. finally, man, i have a personal question for you. you have a background that is unlike any other journalist i've ever known. you studied russian literature in russia. you lived in it was becky's done just after the fall of the soviet union, you even played professional baseball in russia and professional basketball in

mongolia. so how did you end up? not just in investigative journalism, but arguably at the top of your field. well, i don't know about that but, but look at again, my father was a reporter. i grew up around that he was, he was only 20 when i was born, so i got to see him through the prime of his career and you know i was, i went to newsrooms and i was a kid. so this, this business is always been in my blood. i love it. my, my father is very much an old school kind of reporter. you know, the stories, the boss, he used to say in other words, like it doesn't matter where the facts point to whatever they are, you just run it. right. and i, i believe very strongly in that i have kind of a, you know, a soft spot for this business. and it's

a wonderful thing to be part of if you, if you really put your all into it because you get to see the world and you get to be in the middle of all these events. and so yeah, it's gotten, it's allowed me to do everything from play basketball to clean elephant cages to work and money and work in a monastery to now what, you know, read the twitter files. it's great and i strongly recommend it as a profession. if you approach the right way, yes indeed. see the world have a fun time. that's all we have for you today. i want to thank our guests, matt, tell you be for his generosity. and i want to thank you. are viewers for tuning in? i'll leave you with a quote from another investigative journalist, glenn greenwald. he said, secrecy is the linchpin of abusive power. it's enabling force. transparency is the only real antidote. thanks again for joining us. i'm john curiosity and this has

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