Provides only minimal substance here, but I'll mention I have worked in a company where there were times I knew information I wasn't even allowed to share with the CEO of the company. He knew who our customer was, but he was not allowed to know the substance of the work we were doing due to the non-disclosure agreements.

What I'm trying to get at is, it is possible for an agreement to be created for someone internally to know some "important" information in a company, and for it to not be known by others, even those higher than the employee.

100%. Work at a company that provides equipment to the government. There where people that have a clearance and know why and how thing where being used, but the exec staff up to the CEO just knew who the customer was and no details beyond. It’s prtty normal.

> Either Apple and Amazon are lying or Bloomberg is wrong

Apple and Amazon are compelled to lie. It's a classified investigation and likely only cleared employees are aware of it, and they have to deny its existence or stand to lose their clearance (worth $$$).

How can companies be forced to issue such press statements? They may be forced to give incomplete answers when asked, but these statements go far beyond answering questions.

The people issuing press statements are almost certainly out of the loop. And of course, no one with knowledge of the situation is going to step forward, given they have a strong incentive to stay silent.

I mean, think of your own company's PR team. If you've worked for a large company, you've likely had interaction with a PR team that was pretty ignorant about the inner workings of the company. Now, add to that the fact that this is a classified investigation being run by FBI counterintelligence, and interfacing only with cleared employees (none of whom work for the PR team).

You are a PR guy. A respected and big news agency puts out an article saying your company is involved in some secret stuff - stuff that you wouldn't know about.

Do you release a press release denying everything without asking the guys who are supposed to know about it? Would those guys say to you it's all fabricated and urge you to deny it or will they evade answering it (or even more likely they'll go up the chain)?

This is a CEO level incident.

> This is a CEO level incident.

And as the article describes, the CEOs were summoned to DC, briefed, and at that point almost certainly asked to keep the investigation under wraps.

Issuing such press statements is the opposite of "keeping the investigation under wraps".

Right, PR folks may not understand how all the stuff works in their company, but they sure as shit know which topics require senior approvals. That is basic self-preservation for them.

Their denials are very, very specific. Meaning those words can be true, and a blanket denial would be false.

Please note that the US government cannot compel speech and - by extension - cannot compel anyone to lie.

Of course it can. The methods it can do so legally are limited, and it has no "free floating" power to do so, but that doesn't mean much.

When did the US turn into a dictatorial state? I thought the US was free country.