also cost the war need to speak in one voice like this, this, this, the santa support for that is our lot for now from the art international use your in but don't go too far as our programs are just beginning. see what's ahead, where you are today next from ah ah, well, a ah

with oh, is your media a reflection of reality in the world transformed what will make you feel safer? isolation for community. are you going the right way? or are you being that somewhere? direct what is true, what is great. in the world corrupted, you need to descend a join us in the depths or remain in the shallows.

so look forward to talking to you on that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given by human beings, except where such order that conflict with the 1st law show your identification. we should be very careful about artificial intelligence and the point obviously is to place trust, rather than fear. i would like to take on various char with artificial intelligence . real, somebody with a robot must protect its own existence with a 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 regulation is a lie? what happens when the government that's supposed to protect our freedom to free speech and a free press is instead working to sensor the news. i'm john curiosity and you're watching the whistleblowers 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 the 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 to day 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 a good good to talk to you and good to see you. matt. 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 991. tell us how ilan must 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 $100.00 buying 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, really 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 is, or is there some other kind of relationship going on. one of the reasons that the 100 by the 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 learned later by a former f b. i general counsel and m 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 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 was the knowledge of them, a new story. and as you, 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 answer being no, but a number of executives advocated it kind of watching weight attitude. and as a result, they not only blocked that story for at least a day, but they locked the new york posts out of its own account for to watch. i think wow, the response tier twitter files reporting on the 100 by the 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

decision to 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 decision. slack chaps heading into the election in 2020, where you would see little indentation at the top of the messages that said, this is flag by d h s. 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 trying to understand what that relationship was better. because clearly that was something there. we also learned in the process 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 concrete, 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 the 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 s se, 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 what, 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. are the state department. it's called the global engagement center. it's 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 this 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. and the company that, and referred to constantly i thought that was pretty interesting, right? like, you know, you don't see the of 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 2 2

ah, lou children at st. andrew's eventual school suffered nightmarish levels of abuse, torture and child rape. and yet the office of the attorney general suppressed thousands of pages of police and evidence that identified those perpetrators in the school. i was electrocuted twice. i was only 7 years or 1st too high for me. so for me to put me in the chair or by the law warriors to run over here, abuse somebody and run here and seek out solution and whip himself. some of them are, my relatives didn't make it jerking themselves to death over doses. but yeah, what it made me, it made me the person i am today because i'm afraid i don't give up with

anything. investigations were too often handled differently because the deceased was indigenous. so many of the worst criminals got away the bishop's got away. the ones we've done most of the damage never got charged. 2 0, welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john carrie, aka. we're speaking with investigative journalist matt t b who has broken several of these very important stories coming out of the twitter files. thanks again for being with us, matt. next, your major 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 disinformation. 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 to treasury, to the state, to the cia,

to the essay, to the deal. you know, there's other wing, 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 the chat. 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, the foreign ones, the ones that i suspect team from you know, 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. matt, 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 and glen 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 called me a g, a conservative journalist. they tried to slide that in not to that and 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 trump's 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, a is a, you know, they think they think they're doing something that hurts me. it hurts the media. it, it's really just impudence. 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 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 as part of your job like that is your job at a job is, 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, 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, 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 states book 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 conventional 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 mine, and work in a monastery to now what, you know, read the waterfalls. it's great and i strongly recommend it as a profession. if you purchase 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 b 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, glen greenwald. he said, secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power. it's enabling force. transparency is the only real antidote. thanks again for joining us. i'm john curiosity and this has been the whistleblowers. ah.

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ah, so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy even foundation, let it be an arms race group is on often very dramatic development only personally and getting to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very particular time time to sit down and talk with the joggers archipelago. coma that she go. san diego garcia, the largest island in the archipelago is now the location of a very large u. s. military base. you could go the med div i to the u. s. government to make a military base and just deported or douglas and people from their country. so big

cod return back on the island. no, no, but we are fighting. that's why i'm flat. we'll fighting for the right, so i, we do not consider the right to self determination actually applies to the trickle . since i don't, the question of self determination of legal advice we have received is actually the trickle. since we're not at all, not a people for me, it's time to move on and see what we can do. a full, the chunk of said community to return back home. there is no support from the nomination. i commission african united nish. i don't care about juggler. said people with

i'm willing to do it, you know cranium, t a d i d, she ship, dr. lien that ship with control. you put you on board so we should shield the tv at the mobile dope. i liked the system really being able to not say what's the city yeah. with insurance actually. it's kim jeff. dr. little dish with oh, crazy that to lose to modern day my subway. but just dory. yes or no it's i live here the least get us. but we ship it with them, so just take a look, you know what of them? i need a you paying squirrels with a one. they each the one that or up with

. busy you go so good, i'm up with a germany. he's vice chancellor accuses love in your book of cold in the energy crisis raging across europe. but critics playing blurred lens only got itself to play also ahead on the program with russian games along the river here. unmanned aerial drones become a major component of that. fighting for don, boss, we take you to the front lines where our correspondent p killed up close the effects of weapon i maybe.