Social Media Spies Exposed: Profiles Vanish After MintPress Report

After being exposed as former national security state agents by MintPress, large numbers of officials working in the highest levels of top social media platforms have deleted their profiles or wiped the incriminating evidence from the internet.

A series of MintPress News investigations uncovered a network of hundreds of former agents of the CIA, FBI, and other three-letter agencies, as well as high State Department and NATO officials working at social media giants, such as Facebook, Google, TikTok, and Twitter. These individuals are overwhelmingly concentrated in politically sensitive departments, such as trust and safety, security, and content moderation, meaning that these ex-spies and intelligence officials are helping to influence what billions of people around the world see, read and hear (and deciding who is promoted and who is suppressed).

Once this information was made public by MintPress, it caused a stir, being picked up by larger outlets, going viral online, and even being used as evidence in a Congressional hearing.

Delete Your Account

Many of the individuals profiled by MintPress have deleted the accounts and pages we used to expose their pasts. Others have simply removed the incriminating evidence from their biographies.

A prime example of this is Aaron Berman. Berman is Content Policy Global Lead at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In his own words, this role makes him the head of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook,” determining “what is acceptable and what is not” for the platform’s 3.1 billion users. He appears in numerous official Meta videos as the face of its global content moderation policy.

Aaron Berman is a CIA agent. Or at least he was until July 2019, when he left his post as senior analytic manager at the agency to become senior product policy manager for misinformation at Meta. A 15-year CIA veteran, Berman rose through the ranks of the agency to become one of its highest-ranking officials, being chosen to write the Presidential Daily Brief for both Obama and Trump.

Since MintPress made this information public, Berman has deleted his LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. He has since created a more anonymous LinkedIn profile, which does not feature either a picture or his surname, although it does note that among his professional skills are fluency in the Arabic language – a fact that raises even more questions about his past in the Central Intelligence Agency.

Berman is far from an isolated example of a former deep state official turned social media manager wiping this information from the net. Others who have deleted their accounts include:

Dawn Burton, who, in 2019, left her position as senior innovation advisor to the director at the FBI to become senior director of strategy and operations for legal, public policy, trust and safety at Twitter.

Jeff Carlton, a 14-year Marine Corps commander and a longtime intelligence analyst with both the CIA and FBI, who, in May 2021, left the government to be parachuted into Twitter, as its senior program manager for trust and safety.

Hayley Chang, the former deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland and Security and a deputy assistant director of the FBI who left the bureau to become director and associate general counsel for Meta, working on cybersecurity and investigations.

Joey Chan, who, in 2021, left his position as a commander in the U.S. Army to become trust and safety program manager at Meta.

Ellen Nixon, a former FBI agent turned Facebook threat investigations manager.

Cherrelle Y., another former FBI agent working as a policy domain specialist for Twitter.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/social-media-spies-exposed/290506/

So are they going to count how many Palestinians are left now?

‘Satanism’: Russian lawmaker calls for Halloween ban

Celebrating the holiday should be outlawed as it undermines traditional values, according to Mikhail Ivanov

Halloween should be banned in Russia, according to a lawmaker in Bryansk Region who associates it with Satanism, which is illegal in the country.

Speaking to news outlet Gazeta.ru, Mikhail Ivanov, who is also the head of the organization ‘Orthodox Russia’, described Halloween as a Western holiday that is alien to Russian culture and its spiritual foundations, claiming it is being forcefully imposed on society.

He argued that the symbolism associated with Halloween is linked with evil spirits and darkness and has a “destructive influence” on the fragile psyche of the younger generation.

According to Ivanov, the celebration undermines Russia’s traditional values, promotes occultism, and contradicts “the fundamental moral values on which our country has been built for centuries.”

Ivanov has called for equating the promotion of Halloween with the propagation of Satanism, stating that his organization’s mission is to create “legal barriers to the aggressive promotion of alien ideologies disguised as harmless entertainment.” The lawmaker urged Russians to focus instead on their own national holidays, heroes, and history instead of “borrowed substitutes.”

Halloween traces its origins to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest and the belief that spirits could cross into the world of the living.

The Western Christian Church, particularly Roman Catholics, later adopted the date as All Hallows’ Eve, the vigil preceding All Saints’ Day. The celebration eventually evolved into today’s Halloween, known for costumes, lanterns, and trick-or-treating.

Ivanov’s proposal comes as Russian religious leaders have been warning of occult practices spreading across the country.

Earlier this year, Russian Orthodox Church archpriest Andrey Tkachev described the phenomenon as a serious moral threat to the nation, stating that “the Russian land is full of sorcerers” and that “this abomination requires purification.”

The newspaper MK had previously reported that spending on esoteric services such as fortune-telling and spiritual healing reached 2.4 trillion rubles ($24 billion) in Russia in 2024.

https://www.rt.com/russia/626385-russian-lawmaker-halloween-ban/

Russia-US dialogue continues – Putin envoy

Kirill Dmitriev says Moscow’s engagement with Trump’s team is ongoing, dismissing claims that negotiator Steve Witkoff’s influence has waned

Moscow and Washington continue to engage based on the agreements reached at the Alaska summit, despite earlier reports that US special envoy Steve Witkoff had lost influence within the administration of President Donald Trump, Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev has said.

The Alaska meeting in August marked the first face-to-face encounter between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin since 2019. The discussions centered on ending the Ukraine conflict and restoring relations between Washington and Moscow. Both leaders described the talks as productive, although no breakthrough was achieved.

Following the summit, Witkoff – a New York-based businessman and Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, as well as his main negotiator on Ukraine and the Middle East – faced criticism in Western media over his lack of diplomatic experience and failure to broker a deal.

Writing on his Telegram channel, Dmitriev, who took part in the Alaska discussions, rejected reports that Witkoff’s standing in Washington had weakened.

“As the chief architect and negotiator behind Trump’s Gaza plan, which Russia also supported, Witkoff retains and has significantly strengthened his key role,” Dmitriev said following the envoy’s involvement in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that included a large-scale hostage exchange.

He described the Witkoff’s approach as pragmatic and said the dialogue between Moscow and Trump’s team “continues on the basis of agreements reached at the Alaska summit.”

Last week, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said the agreements reached during the mid-August summit do not sit well with Ukraine and its European backers – “those who do not want the Ukraine crisis to be resolved peacefully.” However, he emphasized that “this does not mean they are not working.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Wednesday that the “powerful impetus” for peace created by the Alaska summit had been extinguished, primarily by European “supporters of war.”

Putin has previously defended Witkoff, saying he “accurately conveys both Moscow’s and Washington’s positions” and represents “the position of the American president himself.” He added that criticism of the envoy can only come from those “not in favor” of Trump or his approach to Ukraine.

https://www.rt.com/news/626291-russia-us-dialogue-continues-putin/