A former CIA agent who signed the October 2020 open letter that dismissed The Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop emails as Russian disinformation worked on policy enforcement at Twitter as recently as last year and did not disclose her role to Congress, new “Twitter Files” reporting shows.
Nada Bakos alerted her senior policy team — including now-former Twitter head of trust and safety Yoel Roth — that her photograph was one of 20 on The Post’s March 19, 2022, cover highlighting 51 former intelligence officials who cast doubt on the authenticity of the laptop, according to an email sent the same day and obtained by Substack journalist Texas Lindsay.
“Hi All – I wanted to make you aware of the NYPost cover that I was ‘featured’ on related to the Oct 2020 story about Hunter Biden’s emails when he was on the Board of the Ukrainian Gas company, Burisma and a letter signed by 100s of former IC officials,” Bakos wrote in an email that listed her title as a senior policy domain specialist of site integrity.
“(Twitter also banned the NYPost for the story at the time),” she added. “Given my Policy role (and currently doing enforcement) across CHA-O, I didn’t want this to come as a surprise. I don’t /haven’t publicly acknowledged working for Twitter and locked down my Linkedin.”
“I have no plans to respond/make a statement or acknowledge the piece,” she told the team.
Shortly after, Bakos switched her LinkedIn account to private and locked her profile on Twitter, now known as X. It’s unclear when she began working at the social media company, or if she remains employed.
Bakos is widely believed to be the inspiration for Jessica Chastain’s character of Maya in the 2012 film “Zero Dark Thirty,” but has denied the rumors, saying Chastain’s character “appears to be an amalgamation of women I knew and worked with.”
Neither Bakos nor X immediately responded to a request for comment. After purchasing the social media company last year, billionaire Elon Musk purged top executives and dissolved the trust and safety team.
Bakos’ Wikipedia page formerly referenced her involvement in the intelligence community letter, but it was taken down the month after The Post’s cover story, according to an archived webpage.
The ex-CIA counterterrorism analyst worked under former agency head Michael Morell, who helped author the now-infamous letter seeking to discredit laptop emails that showed Hunter Biden had introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian business partner, according to congressional testimony he gave earlier this year.
In April, the former CIA director told members of the House Judiciary Committee in private sworn testimony that he had been “triggered” to write the intelligence letter by then-Biden senior campaign official Antony Blinken, now secretary of state.
Bakos also helped draft the intelligence letter, but the email address she used with other former officials was redacted in communications forwarded to House lawmakers, according to a source familiar with the matter.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has sent several letters to Bakos requesting further information and a transcribed interview about the drafting of the intelligence letter, but she has declined to respond.
A senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Bakos has also written articles for the Washington Post and other outlets criticizing former President Donald Trump for firing FBI director James Comey in May 2017 and arguing his tweets made him sensitive to Russian intelligence operations.
Bakos also authored tweets hyping fears about Russian collusion during the 2016 election and expressing support for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, which are still available on an internet archive.
Morell, her former boss, is listed a columnist for the Washington Post but has not published any articles since October 12, 2020 — two days before The Post’s first laptop report.
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