Tal Hanan: Israeli 'black ops', election manipulation master: Report

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In December 2014, UK political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica traveled to Madrid for a meeting that included a member of the former Libyan royal family, referred to only as “His Royal Highness”, alongside the son of a US billionaire, a Nigerian businessman, and a private Israeli intelligence operative. 

The identity of this "black ops" mercenary has been revealed: Tal Hanan, who goes by the alias "Jorge" is a global master elections manipulator. 

His group, “Team Jorge”, was exposed by The Guardian after three reporters pretended to be consultants attempting to delay elections in an unstable African nation, and went incognito in "Israel". They filmed shocking evidence of Hanan's crimes: a demonstration by the manipulator himself on how hacking methods can be employed to infiltrate Gmail and Telegram accounts of Kenyan politicians. 

In response to the exposure, Hanan declined to comment except to say, “To be clear, I deny any wrongdoing.”

Dirty laundry on Jorge in emails 

Previously leaked emails proved Hanan's interference in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election to increase the chances of incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan's win, while discrediting rival Muhammadu Buhari, with the help of none other than Cambridge Analytica.

One name, however, remained under wraps: Sam Patten, the consultant who led Cambridge Analytica’s campaign in Nigeria, and who would become to known as a witness in Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Once a state department official, Patten pled guilty as charged for pretending to be an unregistered foreign agent to a Ukrainian oligarch.

The Guardian covered the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 regarding the illegal hack of millions of people’s Facebook data, which was followed by another scandal of a knee-deep dirty campaign that turned out to be the now Nigeria scandal involving none other than "Jorge". 

In 2018, "Jorge's" true identity went undetected, and Cambridge Analytica's co-founder Brittany Kaiser,  stated she couldn't “recall” his name and didn't know anything about him until now. In the leaked emails, founder Alexander Nix asked Kaiser for the real name of “the Israel black ops co” in May 2015, to which she replied, “Tal Hanan is CEO of Demoman International.”

Kaiser told The Guardian, “I didn’t remember the name of the Demoman company when asked,” adding that she was not aware of the methods Team Jorge would eventually use in Nigeria, and that her team and Team Jorge were working “separately but in parallel” for the same Nigerian businessman they met in Madrid. “Alexander flew in for this one to pitch the Nigerians and separately so did Jorge,” Kaiser said.

Following the end of the Madrid meeting, Kaiser said she did not get involved with the Nigeria campaign and instead "sent some emails to put everyone in contact with each other and sort out who was doing what as time was short,”  

Ukrainian passports let Israelis enter Africa

The emails demonstrate that Patten was responsible for exposing the material Hanan acquired from the Nigerian opposition. With panic raging among staff who assumed the material was "hacked", it was Patten that did not only look for the Nigerian opposition's dirty laundry, but also leaked some documents to BuzzFeed and the Washington Free Beacon.

Cambridge Analytica employees in London told The Observer in 2018 that they had been given a flash drive by two Israeli operatives, one of them being Hanan. Kaiser said she did not suspect the emails had been “hacked” via computer, but by a person from the Israeli team to manually infiltrate the Buhari campaign and download them.

In January 2015, Patten was sent to Abuja, Nigeria, to manage a $1.8 million “ghost” campaign for Cambridge Analytica to back President Jonathan and discredit Buhari. Kaiser, who aided in landing the contract in the first place, penned in her memoir that her friend, a former Libyan prince, was the one who introduced her to “wealthy Nigerian oil industry billionaires” who were the ones requesting the re-election of Jonathan. 

Patten is understood to have worked with individuals including Hanan, who according to sources, he met at a hotel in the country. According to emails by Hanan, Team Jorge entered Nigeria on a “special visa” but a top yet unidentified source told The Observer in 2017 that they used Ukrainian passports and a fee to work in Nigeria for the amount of $500,000.

'Silver bullets or smoking guns'

Reportedly, Patten said he was not directly involved in Cambridge Analytica’s data hacking work and focused instead on analysis, speechwriting, and “attempts to sway the media”.

According to The Observer, Patten's work trip to Nigeria happened just days before he founded the company Begemot Ventures with the Ukrainian-born political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik - an alleged Russian intelligence agent hired by the US government.

The emails show that Patten flew to London at the end of January where a “final sweep” was done of the material that Team Jorge obtained. Referring to “the matter that brought us back to London”, Patten asked coworkers, “Did anyone come up with anything that could be of interest? My overall read is that, while a good insight into campaign thinking, there are few silver bullets or smoking guns.”

He added that he would “use the AKPD bits” referring to AKPD Message and Media, the political consultancy founded by David Axelrod, which show that a former chief strategist to Barack Obama was hired by the Buhari campaign.

“What are our media pitch angles?” Patten asked in an email the next day, stating "B’s [Buhari’s] actual positions are obscured by a slick ‘change’ campaign steered by well-heeled American consultants”. That was followed by another email saying: “Boom. Story 1 in progress, background sources needed, off the record, who other than me can do?”

A follow-up email was sent requesting someone talk to a journalist and say that Buhari was “running a tight, American-style campaign with discipline and a scripted message”.

Five days later, BuzzFeed published an article titled “Firm founded by David Axelrod worked in Nigerian election as recently as December” which cited emails between top Buhari officials obtained by BuzzFeed News and mirrored Patten’s points. When Patten was asked over the phone, he said he doesn't recall a man by the name Tal Hanan or Jorge, and was “not involved” in anything related to the “Israeli hackers”. 

When asked if he reached out to reporters to discuss AKPD's work for Buhari, he said, “I’m not going to get into that,” and ended the conversation.