Former top US intelligence officials remained largely silent Saturday after the release of internal Twitter documents detailing how the social media company censored The Post’s revelations.
Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary, John Brennan, former CIA director, Mike Hayden, former CIA director, and Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence, who once said the Post reports had ” all the classic appropriations of a Russian intelligence operation” – declined or did not respond to a request for comment as to whether recent information had changed their minds.
The quartet made its demands as part of an open letter By discrediting The Post’s reports as Russian disinformation, signed off by dozens of other longtime intelligence officials.
The letter said: “Our experience leads us to strongly suspect that the Russian government played an important role in this case.” “If we’re right, Russia is trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we’re sure Americans should be aware of that.”
Of the four, only Clapper had addressed the letter publicly, and AJ Strong protection to The Post in March.
“Yes, I support the statement made at the time and will pay attention to the fifth paragraph,” he said, referring to the part of the letter in which the signatories admit they have no physical evidence of Russian involvement. “I think it was appropriate to issue such a caution at the time.”
Another signer of the letter, John Seaver, a former senior CIA operations official, responded on Twitter, echoing a post by NBC reporter Ben Collins denying the importance of the files.
“What Elon Musk’s Twitter profiles have revealed so far is that content moderation on Twitter was decided by a team of people with differing opinions. Now it has been decided by the richest man in the world with an ax to stab a political party, a real one. scandal,” Collins joked.
The Post reached out to other signatories to the letters, including former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director Douglas Wise and former National Counterterrorism Center director Nicholas Rasmussen. Mark Polimeropoulos, a former CIA operations officer, did not respond. to a request for comment.
Former senior CIA intelligence official Stephen L. Hall and former national security chief Don Hepburn also did not respond to requests for comment.
