Soon after arriving at Twitter, Zatko obtained seemingly unrestricted access to Twitter’s internal documentation, as well as extensive information about the firm’s procedures. Conspicuously, this included arrangements with federal enforcement agencies, which were strained at the time.

Unbeknownst to outsiders, Twitter at the time had shut its doors, at least somewhat, to the intelligence community. ...

Zatko quickly commissioned a series of audits by an outside security firm called Alethea with extensive political and intelligence connections (its initial capital investment included $10 million led by Ted Schlein, a board member of the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel). Alethea (pronounced uh-LEE-thee-ah) ended up doing two rounds of audits. The first was a review of Twitter’s cybersecurity profile. The second was more a retrospective analysis of failures leading to January 6th, featuring singing censor and former “Disinformation Governance Board” head Nina Jankowicz.