CIA debuts on Twitter, Facebook

By Glynn Cosker
In Homeland Security Editor

The CIA has entered the world of social media by launching its official Twitter feed and its official Facebook page.

CIA Director John Brennan outlined his agency’s leap into the world of tweets and likes in a press release: “By expanding to these platforms, CIA will be able to more directly engage with the public and provide information on CIA’s mission, history, and other developments. We have important insights to share, and we want to make sure that unclassified information about the Agency is more accessible to the American public that we serve, consistent with our national security mission.”

The inaugural tweet, sent out at just before 2 p.m. EDT, had a definite tongue in cheek tone:

We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.

— CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014

Not exactly a spellbinding entrance into the Twittersphere, but it still resulted in more than 140,000 followers of @CIA within just three hours of its appearance. According to a CIA representative, the agency adopted its official moniker of @CIA only after filing a complaint with Twitter to gain access to the handle from someone who was using it to impersonate the agency.

The news was met with humor in some quarters. ““The CIA has followed people for years,” tweeted Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. “Now tweeple (sic) have a chance to follow @CIA.”

In the entertainment world, Ellen DeGeneres struck a tone that many others followed:

In an interesting turn of events, I’m now following the @CIA. Welcome to Twitter! #CIAisonTwitter

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) June 6, 2014

Meanwhile, over in Facebook world, the CIA posted a poignant post in which they unfortunately forgot to end their sentence with the appropriate punctuation mark:

“Today we honor the brave Americans who fought and served on this day in history. Did you know former OSSer Virginia Hall played an important role in support D-Day.”

Early teething problems aside, both the Twitter and Facebook accounts promised upcoming “photos, reflections on intelligence history, and fun facts from the CIA World Factbook.”