Revealed: the US adviser who tried to swing Nigeria’s 2015 election
Sam Patten, an American consultant later mired in controversy, exploited emails obtained by Tal Hanan’s team
In late December 2014, a team from Cambridge Analytica flew to Madrid for meetings with a handful of old and new contacts. A member of the former Libyan royal family referred to as “His Royal Highness” was there. So, too, was the son of a US billionaire, a Nigerian businessman and a private Israeli intelligence operative.
For Alexander Nix, the Etonian chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, and his new employee Brittany Kaiser, who networked like most other people breathed, there may have been nothing unusual about such a gathering.
But, by any other measure, it was an unlikely ensemble, not least because last week the identity of the intelligence operative was revealed to be Tal Hanan: an Israeli “black ops” mercenary who, it is now known, claims to have manipulated elections around the world.
Hanan, who operates using the alias “Jorge”, has boasted of meddling in more than 30 elections. His connection to the now defunct Cambridge Analytica offers a revealing insight into what appears to have been a decades-long global election subversion industry.
Hanan’s group, “Team Jorge”, was unmasked by an international consortium of media, including the Guardian and Observer, which revealed the hacking and disinformation tactics it uses to try to sway elections."
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