The former White House national security official who lost his job last year after he was unmasked as the snarky anonymous tweeter NatSecWonk has reinvented himself as a foreign policy pundit.
Jofi Joseph, who was known for mocking his White House colleagues and other members of the Washington intelligentsia under the anonymous twitter handle "NatSecWonk," has been writing Iran analysis for Iran Matters, an online journal published by Harvard University’s Belfer Center.
Joseph lost his job on the White House’s national security team last October after White House officials identified him as NatSecWonk, the Daily Beast first reported.
The well-known but divisive twitter feed included Joseph’s analysis on foreign policy issues as well as sharp criticism of his colleagues.
He was particularly critical of former national security adviser Tom Donilon, and suggested that deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes was the source of leaks about the Stuxnet cyber warfare program.
On the former deputy secretary of defense, NatSecWonk once wrote, "In a town full of egos, Ash Carter may have one of the largest."
Joseph, who began writing for the Belfer Center’s website as early as January, also took regular aim at Washington’s foreign policy elite while writing as NatSecWonk.
"Is the Guiness [sic] World Record for largest density of tools in one room about to be broken?" he wrote in reference to an event at the Council on Foreign Relations.
There were also reports last October linking Joseph to another anonymous twitter handle known as DCHobbyist, although they were not confirmed. The twitter feed, which was deleted almost immediately after Joseph was publicly revealed to be NatSecWonk, was a mix of national security analysis and commentary about local escort services.
Joseph's wife, Carolyn Leddy, is a Republican adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
As a pundit, Joseph appears to be less prolific than he was on his high-volume NatSecWonk twitter feed, though he did weigh in on the Iranian nuclear negotiations on the Iran Matters website several times in June. Fans of NatSecWonk might also have a hard time recognizing him from the reserved tone.
"Negotiators will face a difficult challenge as the calendar draws closer to [final Iranian nuclear agreement deadline] July 20th as they will want to give their all to reach a final agreement, but also put aside adequate time to draft an extension agreement that meets the needs of both sides," concluded Joseph in a Wednesday piece, adding that "the next three weeks will be a fascinating rollercoaster."
Harvard’s Belfer Center is co-chaired by another former Obama administration national security official, White House "WMD czar" Gary Samore, who also serves as president of the group United Against a Nuclear Iran.