“A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News”
On July 28, 2020, a little-known teen and young adult book publisher released True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News, by Cindy Otis, a former CIA analyst.
“I had wanted to work for the CIA almost my whole life,” she writes. “Almost all governments, including the United States, have used fake news as a weapon to influence events in other countries.”
One year later, she would become a senior analyst for Alethea Group.
We did not hear back from Cindy Otis. However, Jankowicz told us over email that Otis “led research at Alethea through July 2021.” Jankowicz said, “My full time employment with Alethea began September 13, 2021. Ms. Otis left Alethea prior to that period. To my knowledge, she has not been employed with Alethea since that time.”
“My work with Alethea Group as a consultant (summer 2021) was narrowly focused on my subject matter expertise related to Russia,” she said. “I conducted Russian language translation and provided cultural analysis. When I joined Alethea as an employee (fall 2021) my work was entirely focused on public products: Changes to Alethea’s website, editing public reports, liaising with media, etc.”
But that claim contradicts Alethea’s Statement of Work contract with Twitter, which lists her as “Technical Research Director” for work relating to Twitter’s management of misinformation during the 2020 election, and specifically a “retrospective analysis of how then President Trump or other key figures may have violated Twitters [sic] policies, or otherwise leveraged the platform in a way that may have contributed to key events…”
Alethea Group founder, Lisa Kaplan, told us that Jankowicz “was never given the title Technical Research Director, that is a reference to a labor category for a contract.” Added Kaplan, “We respect client confidentiality and do not discuss relationships with our customers. In reviewing Nina’s timesheets she did provide support to one client that I cannot disclose, however I can confirm that while she was employed as the Director for External Affairs, Nina never conducted work at Alethea on behalf of Twitter.”
When shown the Statement of Work listing her as “Supplier Personnel,” Jankowicz said, “I have never seen this document before. A statement of work is generally a speculative document that informs clients of potential staffing and work plans. They are usually crafted to allow contractors a degree of flexibility in implementation by listing staff even if they are not assigned to a particular project in case they might do future work for that project. I assume this is what happened in this case.”
In fact, the Statement of Work between Alethea and Twitter was a formal contract between the two firms, signed by Alethea’s Founder and CEO and Twitter’s Senior Director and Associate General Counsel, and the contract specifies, “Any changes to the above listed Personnel must be approved by Twitter in writing.” There is no record in the Twitter Files of any chance to personnel.
Jankowicz added, “Ms. Otis and I were friends and colleagues prior to my short stint there and remain friends and colleagues. Yes, I knew Ms. Otis had worked — emphasis on the past tense — at the CIA. That does not constitute a ‘relationship’ with the intelligence community.”
In the acknowledgments to True or False, Otis thanks someone named Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who also blurbs her book, which he calls a “guidebook to learning from the past with actionable solutions to help you save our future."