Author Topic: Stung by a Twitter renegade, group in Obama administration launched sting of its own  (Read 817 times)

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Offline Rapunzel

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/stung-by-a-twitter-renegade-group-in-obama-administration-launched-sting-of-its-own/2013/10/23/3cb89d56-3c00-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html

Stung by a Twitter renegade, group in Obama administration launched sting of its own

@NatSecWonk

Oct. 6, 1913 5:24 p.m.
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Admit it, when you heard Helen Thomas went out on a date with JFK back in the day, you asked yourself, "Wait, she was attractive once?"

These are copies of deleted tweets by @natsecgov, who has been identified as Jofi Joseph.

By David Nakamura, Anne Gearan and Scott Wilson, Published: October 23 E-mail the writers

Inside the National Security Council, most officials aren’t allowed to use or even look at Twitter, the popular social-networking service.

But that didn’t stop some of President Obama’s top advisers from trying to identify the person responsible for @natsecwonk, an anonymous Twitter account that published a steady stream of personal and sometimes offensive attacks on White House and State Department officials.
 
A White House national security staffer was fired over inappropriate tweets sent out under an alias. Here are a few rules that all Twitter users in politics should know.

Three weeks ago, the group hatched a plan to trick the suspected NSC staffer into revealing himself. They would intentionally plant inaccurate, but harmless, information with him to see if it would pop up as a 140-character tweet, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the effort.

It is not clear whether the sting led directly to the unmasking last week of Jofi Joseph, 40, who was identified as the creative force behind @natsecwonk and was fired from his position on the administration’s Iran negotiations team. But the lengths to which White House officials went to find Joseph reveal how much of an embarrassment his Twitter feed had become inside the West Wing and across the street at the stately Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where Joseph worked alongside his NSC colleagues while secretly skewering them online.

“It was like they were hunting for bin Laden in a cave and he was right in the belly of the beast all along ,” said a former NSC official who worked with Joseph, marveling that he was able to keep his identity secret for over two years.

“We talked about it from time to time in the hallways, ‘Did you see what @natsecwonk posted?’ ” said this former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations. “He probably heard people walking around saying things about the account.”

Joseph said in a statement Wednesday that “I deeply regret violating the trust and confidence placed in me.”

“What started out as an intended parody account of DC culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments,” the statement continued. “I bear complete responsibility for this affair and I sincerely apologize to everyone I insulted.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed Wednesday that Joseph no longer worked for the administration, but he declined to discuss specifics. Administration officials said privately that Joseph — a political appointee who served at the pleasure of the president and could be fired more easily than a civil servant — was sanctioned not just because of offensive tweets but also because he exhibited poor judgment in an office that handles sensitive national security secrets.

Although @natsecwonk did not have a large audience by Twitter standards — fewer than 1,600 followers before the account was taken offline last week — the feed was watched closely by an influential circle of foreign policy experts in Washington think tanks, on Capitol Hill, and at the NSC, the State Department and the Pentagon.

The willingness of @natsecwonk to mock and insult the administration from a clearly Democratic point of view made it a refreshingly unpredictable read in partisan Washington — at least for those who were spared Joseph’s scathing abuse. Any preening or inflation of credentials was cause for ridicule.

snip....
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Rapunzel

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The balance of the article has some of his tweets.... guess he didn't like Hillary ~LOL~
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Cincinnatus

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Targets of some of the most sophomoric posts included Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and former national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon. The feed called Obama’s staff an unprintable name and said the president can be a nasty boss.

Do tell.
We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid ~~ Samuel Adams