The Clintons see Haiti only as a gold mine by Wayne Madsen

The Clintons see Haiti only as a gold mine

by Wayne Madsen
Another Haitian first round presidential election, held on October 25, has served to be another exercise in rampant vote tabulation fraud. Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the candidate of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s political party, Fanmi Lavalas, has claimed that recent election was based on massive fraud by the Haitian government. The two people who benefit the most from Haitian election fraud and the continuation of lackeys of the United States as presidents of Haiti are Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In 2010, current president Michel Martelly claimed that his third place finish against the government-backed candidate in the first-round was the result of fraud. Martelly’s challenge was successful and he was moved up to second place finisher and in the final round he was elected president. In the most recent first round election, Martelly’s handpicked successor, Jovenal Moise, was said to have led with 32.8 percent of the vote, followed by Jude Celestin, backed by former president Rene Preval, with 25.2 percent. Third place finisher, Moise Jean-Charles, who is very popular in Haiti, was locked out of the final round.

The Clintons will do everything in their power to prevent Aristide loyalists from becoming president of Haiti. Aristide's anti-globalization policies are a direct threat to the Clintons' massive investments in Haiti.

Even though Mr. Clinton sent U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994 to restore the elected president Aristide, a Roman Catholic Marxist-oriented “liberation theology” priest who was overthrown in a September 1991 coup, Clinton’s 1994 military operation “Uphold Democracy” could be renamed “Operation Uphold the Clintons’ Wealth.” Clinton would soon double cross Aristide after it became clear that the Haitian president’s new party, Fanmi Lavalas, was heading toward the same left progressivism as Hugo Chavez’s Fifth Republic Movement, which was victorious in 1999. Clinton forced Haiti to undergo painful World Bank-imposed austerity measures, a virtual death knell for the hemisphere’s poorest nation.

In 1996, Preval, to whom Clinton took an immediate liking because of his commitment to privatize Haiti’s state-owned enterprises, was elected president to succeed Aristide. Aristide supporters in parliament clashed with the Preval loyalists. In 1999, Preval dissolved the parliament and ruled by decree for the remaining year he had in office. Preval’s actions were supported by the phony “pro-democracy” Clinton who, in 1999, was busy trying to restore his political capital after his impeachment by the House of Representatives in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, backed Preval’s unconstitutional actions.

In 2000, Aristide ran again for president of Haiti. The U.S. State Department, under Clinton’s longtime consigliere Madeleine Albright, backed Haiti’s opposition in boycotting the presidential vote, which clearly showed that turnout was over 60 percent and that Aristide won with over 92 percent of the vote.

After Aristide was overthrown in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-inspired and planned coup in 2004, Clinton ecstatically danced on the political grave of Aristide, who was exiled first to the Central African Republic and then to South Africa. In 2009, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is owned and operated by the U.S. government, appointed Bill Clinton as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Clinton ensured that the populist opposition loyal to Aristide, the man he helped regain office after the 1991 military coup, remain suppressed. Aristide was anathema to Clinton’s plans to squeeze every imaginable profit from the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Clinton was able to use the “peacekeeping” United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) as personal centurions to ensure that Clinton’s political and business cronies were not threatened by the populist forces of Aristide, who returned from exile to Haiti in 2011, and his Lavalas party. MINUSTAH forces targeted, and continue to target, Aristide forces in brutal attacks. Perhaps in keeping with the spirit of the sordid sexual deviancy history of the UN Special Envoy Clinton, MINUSTAH forces in Haiti were accused of various sexual crimes, including Uruguayan forces gang raping a Haitian teenage boy, a Nepalese soldier torturing to death a 16-year old Haitian boy, Pakistani officers raping a 14-year old mentally challenged Haitian boy, and Sri Lankan troops raping Haitian children. Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton ever mentioned these outrageous actions while the U.S. president served as UN Special Envoy. Topping off these MINUSTAH crimes was the introduction of cholera into Haiti by Nepalese troops.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried every trick in the book to prevent Aristide’s return to Haiti, including having President Obama apply pressure on South African president Jacob Zuma. These efforts failed. Aristide and his wife made a triumphant return to Haiti on March 18, 2011.

A year before Aristide’s return, in 2010, things got much worse for Haiti and Mr. Clinton was there to strangle the nation to an even greater degree. The 2010 earthquake decimated Haiti and killed some 300,000 people and left the country’s infrastructure in tatters. President Barack Obama, in a body blow to Haiti, Obama asked Clinton and former President George W. Bush, the president responsible for the 2004 coup against Aristide, to join Bill Clinton in Haiti relief efforts. 

Bill Clinton used the devastating Haitian earthquake, and, ironically, George W. Bush, to line his own pockets and those of his wife, brother-in-law, and other cronies with quake relief money.

Mr. Clinton launched the following high-tech appeal on the web site of his William J. Clinton Foundation: "Text 'HAITI' to '20222' and $10 will be given to the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund, charged to your cell phone bill." Clinton also solicited for donations of up to $1000 for the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund. Most of the millions of dollars Clinton and Bush raised in Haiti relief never made their way to the Haitian people but into the pockets of the Clinton family and their cronies in Haiti and elsewhere. The Clinton aid money that did reach Haiti was siphoned off to benefit not only Haiti’s wealthy elite but also wealthy businessmen from the neighboring Dominican Republic who were moving their operations into Haiti.

The CIA-linked U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and members of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association (ARGA), the latter political cronies of the Clintons, wreaked havoc on Haiti's once thriving rice growing business. Once a net exporter of highly-nutritional rice, a combination of USAID policies and one-sided Clinton-era trade deals destroyed the Haitian rice industry and made the country dependent on expensive and non-nutritional genetically-engineered bleached white rice from Arkansas agri-businesses. In 2008, the soaring price of rice worldwide and price-fixing by U.S. agri-businesses linked to Clinton resulted in food riots breaking out in Haiti. By 2010, the time of the quake, Haiti was already an economic basket case.

Just like old King Leopold, who prized his personal country Congo because of its immense mineral wealth, particularly diamonds and gold, the Clintons became highly invested in Haiti’s emerging gold mining industry. The Clintons’ investments in Haiti, which had long been protected by MINUSTAH, would soon be guarded by an Israeli company, HLSI, the vice president of which, Eva Peled, a former officer in the Israel Defense Force, also happened to be the chief executive officer of Geomines and vice president of the Mitrelli Group.

In October 2015, HLSI signed an agreement with Haiti’s government to provide land, air, and sea border security for Haiti. The Geomines/Mitrelli team are major investors in Haitian gold mining operations. To ensure it gained full access into Haiti, the Mitrelli Group lavished generous donations on the Clinton Foundation. One of Geomines partners in the Haiti mining operations, VCS Mining of Delaware, named Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, to its advisory board in 2013. Rodham received generous stock options in VCS that stand to make him millions of dollars if VCS strikes gold. VCS Mining’s president, Angelo Viard, has also contributed generously to the Clinton Foundation, as well as to Democratic candidates, including his advisory board’s newest member’s sister, Hillary Clinton. VCS just happened to have been awarded two gold mining permits by the Martelly government, the first issued by Haiti in more than five decades.

Haiti’s new private “army,” the Israeli firm HLSI, touts its capability to find land mines. However, the same thermal imaging technology can be used to find minerals like gold and diamonds. Hence, HLSI is concentrating its “security” efforts around Haiti’s gold mining operations.

Haiti is sensitive to the presence of Israelis in the country. Some of Haiti’s earliest slave owners were Jews, such as the Gradisse family of Cap-Haitien and Gonaives and Simon Isaac Henriquez Moron of Grand’ Anse, Haiti. Israel also secretly supplied weapons to the repressive dictatorships of “Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier and his son, “Baby Doc” Jean-Clause Duvalier. One of Haiti’s richest businessmen, Gilbert Bigio, a Syrian Jew who is also Israel’s honorary consul in Haiti, is more committed to helping Israel than his native Haiti. It was the Haitian elite, individuals like Bigio, who benefited from Bill Clinton’s earthquake relief money.

Supplementing the HLSI security protection for Clinton/Israeli business investments in Haiti are the armed guards led by Martelly’s son, Olivier Martelly. These armed thugs, reminiscent of the dreaded Duvalier-era Tonton Macoutes, are known as the “Galil Gang” because of the Israeli Galil guns they carry. In September 2015, Olivier was reportedly arrested by federal authorities in Miami on drug smuggling charges. However, the younger Martelly was said to have been quietly released after a flurry of phone calls were made that, according to Haitian opposition sources, may have involved pressure exerted by Bill and Hillary Clinton on the Obama Justice Department.

A tale of two Jewish-Americans killed in a U.S. drone strike by Wayne Madsen

A tale of two Jewish-Americans killed in a U.S. drone strike

On April 23, President Obama made the startling announcement that three U.S. citizens, Warren Weinstein, a Jewish-American contractor for the ever-suspicious U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); frequent Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn (Pearlman), a Jewish convert to Christianity and then to Islam; along with a Muslim-American Al Qaeda leader named Ahmed Farouq, were killed in a January 2015 U.S. drone strike launched against an Al Qaeda compound on the Afghan-Pakistani border in North Waziristan. Obama did not say whether the deaths resulted from one or more operations, although it was revealed that two drone strikes were launched against suspected Al Qaeda targets in January. The White House issued a statement saying, "neither [Gadahn/Pearlman and Farouq] was specifically targeted, and we did not have information indicating their presence at the sites of these operations." Obama admitted that the information on the January deaths of the three Americans was classified until he decided to release the news of the operation or operations that killed them.

USAID contractor Warren Weinstein, a fluent Urdu speaker from Rockville, Maryland, worked for J. E. Austin Associates, Inc. of Arlington, Virginia. Little is known about the firm, which chose not to make any public statement upon Obama informing the nation that Weinstein, along with Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, were accidentally killed in the U.S. strike. Weinstein was taken captive from his Lahore compound on August 13, 2011, four days prior to his return to the United States. Weinstein's capture came two years after Alan Gross, a fellow Maryland Jewish contractor for USAID, Alan Gross, was arrested and imprisoned in Cuba for carrying out espionage associate with installing an Internet system for Cuba's Jewish community. Gross, who lived in Potomac, Maryland, worked for Development Alternatives, Inc. of Bethesda, a USAID contractor, about which, as is the case with J. E. Austin Associates, relatively little is known. Both firms are believed to have connections to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Weinstein's widow criticized the U.S. government for failing to keep hostages' families informed about the status of kidnapped Americans. In a Christmas 2013 video, Weinstein made a direct appeal to Obama for his release: "Nine years ago, I came to Pakistan to help my government, and I did so at a time when most Americans would not come here. And now, when I need my government, it seems that I have been totally abandoned . . ."

For Weinstein to have ended up in captivity with Gadahn/Pearlman must have seemed surreal. Weinstein, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Togo and Ivory Coast may have had contact with Gadahn, who was termed the chief propagandist for Al Qaeda. As reported by WMR on September 9, 2007, many of the videotaped speeches of Osama Bin Laden were written by Gadahn. Los Angeles native Gadahn was born Adam Pearlman, (aka Azzam the American), and ultimately became the number three man in charge of Al Qaeda. Gadahn/Pearlman's grandfather, Carl K. Pearlman, was a member of the board of the Anti Defamation League (ADL), an important component of the Israeli Lobby in the United States.
 
The man purported to be Osama Bin Laden [left] with his cable TV remote shortly before U.S. forces shot him to death in a raid in Pakistan. Weinstein [right] in December 2013 videotape appeal to Obama for his release. "Bin Laden" and Weinstein apparently had the same taste in hats.

Carl Pearlman, a prominent California urologist, was also the chairman of the Orange County, California "Bonds for Israel" campaign and the United Jewish Welfare Fund.

Curiously, a list of Al Qaeda officials published by the United Nations in 2007, omitted Gadahn/Pearlman from the roster even though he was then considered the number three man in charge of the terrorist group.

A number of purported Bin Laden video and audio tapes, with some of the videotapes showing an almost motionless Bin Laden, were, according to U.S. intelligence sources written entirely by Gadahn/Pearlman. The tapes were exclusively provided to the corporate media by the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute, a Washington, DC-based research institute with links to Israeli intelligence.

The classic "fly on the wall" may have heard some interesting conversations between Weinstein, the Urdu-speaking aid worker who dressed in Pakistani garb, and Gadahn/Pearlman, the Jewish convert to Wahhabist Islam who served as Bin Laden's main speechwriter. Although the White House is indicating Gadahn/Pearlman was killed in a drone attack, there have been reports in the past about his death following U.S. attacks. Nevertheless, what Gadahn/Pearlman may have told Weinstein about 9/11, the alleged Bin Laden "death" in Abbottabad, and Gadahn/Pearlman's connections with SITE may have resulted in a decision by America's chief drone attack official, the CIA's John Brennan, to eliminate all three Americans lest some unsavory information end up in the public domain.

May 2-3, 2011 -- Bin Laden: Body buried at sea, shoddy proof of death -- another "Made in Hollywood" performance from "Ari Gold"

The Anti-Russian machinations of George Soros by Wayne Madsen

The Anti-Russian machinations of George Sorosby Wayne Madsen

There is a reason for Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoying a whopping 88 percent favorable rating among the Russian people. Putin's success is mostly a result of his steering Russia away from disastrous neo-conservative/Milton Friedman policies brought about by the interference at all levels of Russian politics and economics from post-Soviet minions sent to Russia by George Soros in the early 1990s. The marching orders for hundreds of Soros operatives, most of whom were working under NGO cover, were clear: ensure that Russia never again poses a threat to Western domination over the Eurasian land mass.

Under an incompetent and often-drunk president, Boris Yeltsin, and a corrupt prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia experienced the wholesale sell-off to unscrupulous Russian businessmen state-owned assets of the Soviet Union and Russian Federation. Many of the businessmen who bought government assets at kopeks to the ruble became overnight billionaires. Later, these businessmen, many of whom arranged for second passports from Israel and the United Kingdom, became known as the "oligarchs." The "great Russian ripoff" was the result of the work of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, which was created out of an agreement between Yeltsin and U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Under a program developed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) was given primary responsibility for transforming Russia's state economy to private enterprise. USAID was already working closely with George Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to turn Russia into a free-market Eurasian version of a quasi-dictatorial Latin American republic.

Under the aegis of HIID's Harvard Project, led by Harvard economics professor Andrei Shleifer with the assistance of Larry Summers, Russia's economy underwent "shock therapy." Another shock therapist who advised the Yeltsin-Chernomyrdin regime was Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs. These neo-con professors applied the same sort of shock therapy, based on unbridled capitalism, not seen since Friedman forced post-Allende Chile, under the military dictator Augusto Pinochet, to adopt his destructive uber-capitalist policies. While Shleifer, a dual Russian-American citizen, advised the deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais on the sale of state property and was put in charge of Rosimushchestvo (the Committee for the Management of State Property), Sachs advised Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and Finance Minister Boris Fedorov on transforming Russia from a socialist society to a world-class capitalist market showcase. The Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission and HIID saw the city of Nizhny Novgorod as a testing ground for their libertarian economic policies that earned praise from former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The governor of Nizhny Novgorod who eagerly instituted Harvard's shock therapy was Boris Nemtsov, recently assassinated in Moscow by parties suspected of trying to bring about a violent Ukraine-style "themed revolution" in Moscow. The themed revolution concept, created by University of Massachusetts professor Gene Sharp, has been adopted as a primary tactic by Soros and the CIA to force regime changes around the world.

Nemtsov's "success" in Nizhny Novgorod earned him an appointment as First Deputy Prime Minister in the final years of the Yeltsin administration. Nemtsov stood by Yeltsin in 1993 and cheered on the Russian president's shelling by tank fire of the Congress of People's Deputies, Russia's supreme legislative institution after it moved to impeach Yeltsin. Before anyone sheds tears over Nemtsov's fate, it should be recalled that scores of people were killed inside the parliament, known as the "White House," and hundreds more wounded. Nemtsov, the "democrat," was a mere thug cheering on other marauding thugs in 1993.


The Russian Congress of People's Deputies opposed Yeltsin's plans to sell off state assets and it was shelled by tank fire ordered by Yeltsin, an attack cheered on by Nemtsov and the Soros gang who had infiltrated all levels of the Russian government, media, and economy. Above: the upper burned floors of the White House after Yeltsin's assault.

Perhaps the only real accomplishment of Yeltsin was his appointment of Putin as his successor. It is believed by many that in his later years, Yeltsin sobered up enough to realize how he allowed Russian oligarchs and foreign interests to take over Russia in order to bleed it dry of its valuable natural resources and turn its people into low wage slaves. Putin's first order of business after becoming president of Russia was to wrest control of Russia from the oligarchs who were working hand-in-glove with Soros's OSI; the
Harriman Institute at Columbia University, which specializes in Russian, Eurasian and East European studies; HIID; the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); The Carlyle Group (on whose board Soros served); the Ford, Rockefeller, and Heritage Foundations, Helsinki Watch (which later became Human Rights Watch, funded by Soros), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to ensure that the last vestiges of socialism were erased completely from the Russian landscape. These foreign neo-con elements also saw to it that Russia's government virtually demilitarized by allowing Russia's military infrastructure to fall apart. These were the years when Soviet-built ships and submarines rusted away at their moorings, Russian army units became demoralized, and air force planes were sold off on the international market to businessmen who used them for smuggling arms, precious gems, and drugs.

The results of these economic shock policies were disastrous across Russia, except for the few oligarchs who amassed billions of rubles and foreign currency at the expense of Russian workers, pensioners, and the middle class. One Harvard professor, Edward Glaeser, opined that the Harvard Project and its masterminds had not created so much hatred toward Jews in Russia and abroad since the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Putin has certainly had his job cut out for him. One of the first tasks of Soros was to transform Russian education. Just after the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros publishing houses provided the Russian education system with textbooks that lauded privatization, capitalism, and foreign investment. Soros's re-education of Russian youth was designed to ensure that socialism would never be popular again with future generations of Russians. It was out of these "re-educated" youth that Russia's current, and very much a minority, opposition draws its ranks. Soros's textbooks were also influenced by the CIA, which wanted Russian school-age population to believe that Russia would never again be a great power.

Exiled Russian media tycoon Boris Berezovsky, also known as Platon Elenin, who was suspiciously found hanging in 2013 in the bathroom of his English manor house with a belt tied around his neck after he expressed a willingness to return to Russia to patch up his differences with Putin, was quoted in 1999 by Interfax as saying of Soros and the CIA, "I nearly fainted when I heard a couple of years ago that George Soros was a CIA asset." Berezovsky said that Soros was working with the CIA to undermine Russia because they were "afraid of Russian capital becoming strong." Berezovsky, who worked with other Russian oligarch exiles and billionaire domestic Russian opponents of Putin like jailed and now-exiled former Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as well as Chechen rebels, to undermine Putin would have been a god-send to Russian counter-intelligence had he returned to Russia. Although the Soros media tried to pin Berezovsky's alleged "suicide" on Putin, it was the Soros/CIA nexus who had reason to want Berezovsky dead. Berezovsky was in on th4e ground floor of the opposition movement to Putin and he knew not only knew "where all the bodies were buried" but, more importantly, where all the money was stashed abroad.

One of the joint CIA/Soros OSI assets, who used the International Crisis Group (ICG), founded by Soros in 1993, as cover, was Fred Cuny. Cuny disappeared in 1995 in Chechnya while reportedly assisting Chechen separatist rebels in their war against Russia. ICG has included on its board a number of Cold War veteran intelligence types, including the rabidly anti-Russian Zbigniew Brzezinski; former NATO commander Wesley Clark, who was willing to shoot it out with Russian troops over control of the vestiges of the former Yugoslavia; and Ronald Reagan national security adviser Richard Allen, who recruited Oliver North for the National Security Council staff.

Although there is evidence that Nemtsov may have been sacrificed by the neo-cons as a way of embarrassing Putin and bringing pressure to bear on his government, there is little doubt that Nemtsov was working with Soros and the CIA to overthrow the Russian government. On November 17, 2010, Nemtsov addressed the Harriman Institute at Columbia. Surrounded by Soros operatives, CIA elements, and other ne'er-do-wells, Nemtsov publicly outlined the plans to overthrow Putin: Nemtsov called for sanctions against Russian leaders over the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a dodgy Russian lawyer, who was awaiting trial on charges of fraud in connection with Russia’s largest foreign investment fund, Hermitage Capital. Hermitage was owned by American William Browder, grandson of American Communist Party leader Earl Browder. Earl and William shared something in common: they were both dupes of U.S. intelligence. Earl wasted no time in denouncing other American communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee and FBI in order to save his own skin.

Nemtsov helped get Congress to enact the for Sergei Magnitsky Act of 2010 which imposed sanctions and U.S. visa bans on 60 Russian officials in the Interior Ministry, Federal Security Service, Federal Tax Service, arbitration courts, general prosecutor's office, and Federal Prison Service. The 60 officials were accused of murdering Magnitsky even though there was not a shred of evidence proving it. 

For Nemtsov, the list of 60 sanctioned Russians was insufficient. He wanted it extended to Putin himself and other top Russian officials. If any American political leader urged a foreign parliament to enact sanctions against President Obama, Vice President Biden, and other Cabinet officials, many Americans would call the action treasonous or seditious. 
Soros has a single intention when he throws billions of dollars at regime change. He wants to squash anything resembling a state-run or mixed state/private-run economy. Soros believes that all wealth must be held by a few oligarchs like himself. For that reason, any leader who stands in the way of Soros's brand of uber-capitalism, will find himself or herself pressured by street-centered themed revolutions. Putin is refusing to become the latest Soros victim, a list which includes Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo, Thailand's Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra, Georgia's Eduard Shevardnadze, Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych, Honduras's Manuel Zelaya, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, and Kyrgyzstan's Askar Akaev and Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

It is not Putin who stands as a threat to democracy but Soros and his well-paid minions who thrive on shock therapy economies and political turmoil. If anyone should be sanctioned with asset freezes and visa bans it should be one Gyorgy Schwartz, otherwise known as George Soros, and his children Alexander, Gregory, Jonathan, and Robert Soros, and Andrea Soros Columbel. For Russia, the Soros family rose up from the bowels of hell to plague the entire nation.

USAID: a history of front companies acting on behalf of the CIA

USAID: a history of front companies acting on behalf of the CIA

The recent disclosure by the Associated Press that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a notorious nexus for contract fraud within the State Department, contracted out a project to develop a rival to Twitter in order to foment rebellion in Cuba has refocused attention on USAID's long history of acting as a contract vehicle for various CIA covert activities.

The setting up of the Cuban Twitter-like system, called ZunZuneo, was contracted to Creative Associates, Inc. (CAI), which conducted most of its out-of-Cuba operations in Costa Rica. The contract to CAI was awarded as part of the State Department's "Civil Society Support Program," the same program that has been used by the CIA to foment rebellions in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iran, and other countries.

Some 40,000 ZunZuneo users in Cuba mistakenly believed their messages were private, when, in fact, they were recorded by USAID, which likely turned them over to the National Security Agency (NSA) for analysis and database archival.

CAI was not the only entity awarded USAID Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) money to help foment dissension and rebellion in Cuba as part of USAID's "civil society program." Other recipients included the International Republican Institute (IRI), a branch of the Republican Party; the National Democratic Institute, a branch of the Democratic Party; the Pan American Development Foundation, on whose board of trustees are found lobbyists for Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Caterpillar, Greenberg Traurig, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Citibank, Unibank of Haiti, Educational Testing Service (ETS),and Occidental Petroleum; Loyola University of Chicago; Center for a Free Cuba (which was caught embezzling $570,000 from USAID in 2008); the neo-conservative non-profit Freedom House; the Christian evangelical group Echo Cuba; Cuba On-Line; the Miami-based Plantados Until Freedom and Democracy in Cuba; and Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI)/Nathan Group.

ZunZuneo was created just after the December 2009 arrest in Cuba of DAI sub-contractor for USAID Alan Gross who was allegedly setting up satellite equipment and computer networks in Cuba to provide greater Internet access to Cuba's Jewish community. Cuba's Jewish community leaders denied any knowledge of the project or even knowing Gross, who was sentenced by Cuba to 15 years in prison for espionage. Gross's firm, JBDC, was subcontracted to DAI for the "civil society" work in Cuba.

In addition, USAID funding documents for the ZunZuneo (a Cuban slang word for a hummingbird's tweet) and other "civil society" projects state that USAID money went to "miscellaneous foreign contractors" and domestic contractors (undisclosed)" to support the Cuban initiatives. ZunZuneo was a pet project of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, according to AP, had her social media chief Suzanne Hall, contact Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to take over ZunZuneo. Dorsey has refused comment on the report.

DAI has a long history in supporting CIA operations. President Obama's mother, Ann Dunham Sutoro, worked for DAI in Java. DAI was also accused of supporting the April 2002 coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In 2005, right-wing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe stunned his audience by announcing that former Venezuelan military officers planned their coup against Chavez from Colombia. USAID and its contractors were heavily involved with anti-Chavez-activities in Colombia at the time of the 2002 coup.



CAI also used Mobile Accord, Inc. and a front company in the Cayman Islands called MovilChat possessing a bank account at Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Ltd. in Grand Cayman, as well as another "folding tent" firm based in the United Kingdom with a "subsidiary" in Barcelona, Spain to hide USAID as a funding source for ZunZuneo. Mobile Accord's web site states, "The heart of the Mobile Accord system is the proprietary high-volume EVO2 mobile platform that processes SMS, PSMS, and MMS. The EVO2 messaging system currently operates on four continents and is adaptable to any mobile network operator in the world. Mobile Accord uses our proprietary technology to offer one of the fastest, most reliable, and most secure messaging system available in the world."

The history of USAID is replete with examples of contractor companies and other front groups working for USAID but also doing the bidding of the CIA. WMR has reported on many such cases over the years:

• Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, worked on micro-financing projects for the USAID and Ford Foundation, both linked to the CIA, that helped prop up dictatorships in Indonesia and Pakistan. After Suharto seized power in 1965, USAID returned to Indonesia, with Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro as one of its chief employees, to help Suharto create the New Order (Orde Baru) that would usher in decades of fascist and kleptocratic rule. Suharto established the Bureau of Logistics (BULOG) that steered USAID-provided rice and other food staples to Suharto's business cronies. Suharto also relied on a group of U.S. economists, including Obama's mother, to re-engineer Indonesia's socialist economy. The group was called the "Berkeley mafia" and it ensured that Indonesia was compliant with dictates of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and large Western commercial banks. It is a family history that Obama refuses to comment on and one that is certainly nothing to be proud of.
  While USAID was moving into Indonesia in 1965, USAID contractors flying for the CIA airline, Air America, were dropping off weapons and picking up drugs in Laos and dropping off the contraband in Thailand and South Vietnam.
• USAID has long been involved in trying to oust the Castro government in Cuba, funneling money through the Cuban-American National Foundation, the Center for a Free Cuba, and even a German foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, an adjunct of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party.
• In Haiti, USAID, acting at the behest of the CIA, funded political opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ousted in CIA-backed coups in 1991 and 2004. After Aristide's return to power in 1994, USAID money used to oppose Aristide was funneled through a "Project Democracy." Today, USAID is providing dubious small and micro-financing loans to small businesses in Haiti.
• Bolivian President Evo Morales tossed USAID out of his country, charging it with acting with the CIA to destabilize Bolivia and bring about a coup. To this day, USAID is providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid to groups trying to undermine Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.
• During his ten-year rule, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, thought to be a CIA asset, reportedly received USAID funds to put down the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru guerrilla movements.
• In 2009, the Pakistani press reported that USAID was bypassing the Pakistan ministries of Education and Information and providing direct educational assistance to Pakistani students. One USAID program in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan resulted in some $45 million disappearing down a virtual black hole.
• In the 1980s, when Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Jr. spent time in Pakistan, USAID opened up a major office in Islamabad that distributed "non-lethal aid" to Afghan mujaheddin refugees in Pakistan, particularly in Peshawar. Some of the USAID assistance was also reportedly used to buy weapons for the Afghan mujaheddin but some of the weapons ended up in the hands of Pakistani Muslim radicals intent on ousting Pakistani dictator Muhammad Zia-ul Haq. Other USAID money ended up paying for expensive automobiles for leading Afghan mujaheddin commanders in Pakistan.
• The June 18, 1998 Jakarta Post reported that USAID programs in Indonesia continued to be fronts for CIA activity. Specifically, the paper said two Indonesian NGOs, the Indonesian Environmental Forum and the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation, were charged with accepting money from USAID but should have known that the aid did not come "free of charge" and was linked to the CIA.
• In 2002, USAID in Palestine, where DAI is also active, demanded detailed personal information on all the members of NGOs that received American funding. The Palestinian press reported that the information, including personal political opinions of NGO members, was to be turned over to the CIA and eventually, Mossad, to apply pressure on the NGOs to comply with U.S. and Israeli policies.
• For years, USAID operated in Manila from the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency building at the Ramon Magsaysay Center on Roxas Boulevard in the Malate district of the city. In 2000, the offices moved to the Makati district of the city but the building that housed USAID was always known to locals as the "CIA building." The building, owned by the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation, in honor of the Philippines President who died in a 1955 plane crash, was built in 1959 with a loan from the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers also provided grants to the Magsaysay Foundation.
• In 2004, USAID was charged by Philippines opposition parties of using CIA agents to "monitor" elections in the country. The deal to permit USAID observers was signed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The head of the Anakpawis Party, Crispin Beltran, told the  Philippine Daily Inquirer, "So much for independence when foreign intelligence agents can broker an official agreement with the Comelec (election commission) allowing them to interfere in the polls."
• The CIA-linked Asia Foundation, which worked closely with the CIA-funded East-West Center at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, where Obama's mother met her second husband, General Suharto's colonel, Lolo Soetoro, was linked closely to USAID covert programs in Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Thailand, Palau, Malaysia, and other Asian-Pacific nations. In Laos and Thailand, USAID officials provided counter-insurgency military training to Laotian and Thai special forces. In 1970, Dan Mitrione, a USAID official who was working for the CIA training Uruguyan special police on torture tactics, was kidnapped and killed by Tupamaro guerrillas.
• The dubious International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), a program with CIA fingerprints all over it, used anti-trafficking funds from the pedophile-plagued State Department, as well as USAID, to conduct training boondoggles in Albania, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Nigeria, Gabon, Gambia, Madagascar, Uganda, Tanzania, the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, and Malaysia.
• When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya raised the minimum wage in his country, the CIA and Southern Command arranged for a military coup to remove him. Obama decided to place the Southern Command, headquartered in the right-wing Latin American exilee rat's nest of Miami, to coordinate humanitarian relief in Haiti along with the head of USAID.
• A favorite USAID contractor, Chemonics International, started in 1976 by conservative Republican Gerald Murphy, in part, because as he told The New York Times in 1993, 'I've always wanted a way to do two things: one, have my own C.I.A., and two, be helpful to people,' received $500,000 to support USAID field missions in Nepal. OTI and Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI) are also linked through a contract awarded to Chemonics in Nepal to provide for U.S.-funded propaganda to be broadcast on FM stations in Nepal.The Soros/USAID/Chemonics media blitz in Nepal is also funding Radio Kailash, targeting thr Humla district of Nepal and Nepal Chautari (a national live radio call-in show).
• In 1988, USAID opened a huge compound in a suburb of San Jose, Costa Rica that many Costa Ricans charged was the CIA headquarters for the "parallel state" established by the CIA in Costa Rica to support the contra-led civil war in neighboring Nicaragua. USAID also pumped millions of dollars in loans, some at zero percent, to private banks in Costa Rica to undermine the state banking system.
• In 1995, Representative Mel Reynolds (D-IL), who was convicted of having sex with an underage female campaign worker, was also revealed as working for U.S. intelligence in the 1980s, via employment with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and USAID in Africa, particularly in Sudan. Reynolds, an African-American, also spent time in Israel under USIA cover. Recently, Reynolds was arrested in Zimbabwe for allegedly making pornographic movies with underage performers. Reynolds was subsequently expelled from Zimbabwe.
• Obama has continued USAID's involvement in CIA-directed programs in former Soviet states, including Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. In so doing, USAID complements the destabilization efforts of George Soros and his network of NGOs. Soros  was a major financial backer of Obama's presidential campaign. In 1999, Croatian media reported that USAID was working through various NGOs, some connected to Soros, to oust the ailing Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. The paper Vjesnik charged that USAID, as well as the U.S. Information Service (USIS), were used as ''tampons between the American non-governmental agencies and American state bodies." The paper said the USAID program to aid Tudjman's opposition was run by the CIA and coordinated by the U.S. ambassador in Zagreb, William Montgomery.
• In a 2008 Russian documentary film, "Technology of Modern Coup," Bermet Akayeva, the daughter of ousted Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, ousted in the 2005 Tulip Revolution, stated, "USAID is very actively financed by the Soros Foundation, by the National Democratic Institute and some kind of training is carried out constantly. However, it is difficult to describe USAID as an NGO given that it is under the U.S. Department of State. They work very actively." Akayeva said there were rumors in Kyrgyzstan that the U.S.-backed coup plotters distributed narcotics to rioters who participated in the coup.
• In the north Caucasus, NGOs supported by USAID, have been accused by Russian authorities of having links to Chechen terrorists.
• In 2002, Eritrea expelled USAID from the country, accusing it of working with the CIA to overthrow the government and assisting Ethiopia, which had engaged in a border war with Eritrea.
• In 2009, Susan Tsvangirai, the wife of Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, was killed in an automobile accident in which the Prime Minister was injured. The truck that struck their automobile was bought with USAID funds and bore a U.S. embassy license plate. USAID denied it had anything to do with the truck. Public Works Minister Theresa Mokone, a friend of Mrs. Tsvangirai, likened the crash to the mysterious auto accident that killed popular and incorruptible Tanzanian Prime Minister Edward Sokoine in 1984. Sokoine was the designated successor to President Julius Nyerere, who antagonized the CIA by his close ties with the Soviet Union and China. Sokoine created a number of enemies among the elite class when he ordered the assets of embezzlers and smugglers seized. USAID, at the time of Sokoine's possible assassination, was heavily-involved in Tanzania.
• In Zaire, millions of dollars in USAID money was diverted by CIA-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to amass his personal fortune making him one of the world's wealthiest leaders. Other USAID funds for Zaire were diverted to help the Angolan rebel forces of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, in violation of U.S. law prohibiting aid to Angolan rebel groups. The covert aid program to UNITA was started in 1976 by Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Similarly, during the Reagan administration, USAID money was funneled through the National Endowment for Democracy to the Nicaraguan contras, again in violation of a specific law prohibiting such assistance.
• During the late 1970s and 80s, USAID-funded "researchers" established links with African liberation movements, particularly the African National Congress of South Africa and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) of Zimbabwe. Actually, these programs were CIA activities using "leftist" academics to spy on the nationalist movements. The operations were concentrated in Harare, Zimbabwe and Cape Town, South Africa, and cities that had a large expatriate African student community, including London and Melbourne and Perth, Australia.
• In 1998, USAID participated in a closed-door meeting between major oil companies and the CIA, National Security Council, and three State Department officials, Stuart Eisenstat, Thomas Pickering, and Susan Rice (now Obama's National Security Adviser) . The topic was exploitation of Africa's oil resources and the senior executives of Exxon, Mobil, Chevron (where Condoleezza Rice was a board member), and Texaco were present along with Department of Energy and Petroleum Finance Corporation officials.
• In 2000, the CIA and USAID worked jointly through a private military company, Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) to train the Nigerian army in tactics to combat secessionists in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region. The CIA also commissioned the services of a private business intelligence and risk firm, Evidence-Based Research (EBR) of Vienna, Virginia, which appears to be a very similar operation to the CIA front, Business International Corporation, for which Obama worked in 1984, to conduct an assessment of the tribal revolt in the Niger Delta region, referred to by the CIA as a "semi-riot zone." EBR was formed in 1987, a year after Business International was sold to the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.
• In 1990, the one-time administrator of USAID under the Bush-Cheney administration, Roger Winter, met international weapons smuggler Viktor Bout, now imprisoned in the United States after being arrested in a February 2008 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sting operation in Thailand. The meeting coordinated arms smuggling activities that would mushroom into Bout's full-scale smuggling empire after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.
• The U.S.-flagged container ship MV Global Patriot fired on an Egyptian barge vessel on March 24, 2008, in the Suez Canal near the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. One Egyptian seaman, Mohammed Fouad, was killed and three others wounded on the Egyptian vessel that approached the Global Patriot to sell Egyptian products and cigarettes, a customary practice in the canal. The U.S. vessel was en route from Dubai with "used military equipment" and was stationary when approached by the Egyptian vending vessel. At first, the US Embassy in Cairo denied that anyone was killed in the incident.The Global Patriot is chartered by the Military Sealift Command from Global Container Lines of Garden City, New York. The firm operates in the Red Sea, including Sudan, East Africa, the Indian Ocean (including the Comoros -- where an African Union invasion of secessionist Anjouan has just occurred --and Seychelles, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Global Container Lines is a major contractor for USAID. The shipping line has been involved in shipments of "relief" supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan. One April 3, 2003, USAID "food" shipment to Iraq from Galveston, Texas, worth $500,000, is not recorded by USAID as a valid contract. The shipment was consigned to the MV Free Atlas.
• Obama named as his director of USAID Rajiv Shah, as his overall coordinator for Haiti relief operations. Shah was sworn into office on January 8. Obama could not have made a worse choice. USAID, which is a cipher for the CIA, has largely been responsible for Haiti remaining the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. Shah's previous work for the dubious Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, as well as his being a political hack for Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who is imbued in corruption in Harrisburg, should not give the beleaguered people of Haiti any hope.
• Custer Battles, Inc., a USAID contractor, was formed by former US Army Ranger Mike Battles and Scott Custer from a firm called Blue Sky. The firm soon became enmeshed in major contracting fraud in Iraq. Custer included former Lebanese Shia Amal official Mohammed Darwish, the owner of Cyprus-based Laru, Ltd., into the Custer Battles organization and decision making process. In January 2004, Darwish and Michel Mukattaf, a son-in-law of former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel and owner of a Lebanese currency exchange company, and Richard Jreisati, a former Lebanese military officer, were arrested by Lebanese authorities for attempting to smuggle a cache of 164 million in 25,000 Iraqi dinar notes into Lebanon from Baghdad Airport. Custer Battles had the Iraqi Currency Exchange (ICE) contract with the Coalition Provisional Authority and a major security contract for Baghdad Airport.
• Former Eli Lilly chief Randall (Randy) Tobias, while  George W. Bush's Administrator of USAID, was exposed as a client of the Washington escort firm, Pamela Martin & Associates, run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called "DC Madam."

Washington increases Clandestine Ops against Venezuela

By Eva Golinger

Millions of dollars are being channeled to opposition groups in Venezuela via USAID, while the Pentagon has established a new PSYOP program directed at Venezuela, including a “5-day a week television program in Spanish broadcast in Venezuela” during 2011

The 2010 annual report of the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a division of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), regarding its operations in Venezuela, evidences that at least $9.29 million USD was invested this year in efforts to “support US foreign policy objectives…and promote democracy” in the South American nation. This amount represents an increase of almost $2 million over last year’s $7.45 million distributed through this office to fund anti-Chávez political activities in the country.

The OTI is a department of USAID dedicated to “supporting US foreign policy objectives by helping local partners advance democracy in priority countries in crisis. OTI works on the ground to provide, fast, flexible short-term assistance targeted at key political transition and stabilization needs”.

Although OTI is traditionally used as a “short-term” strategy to filter millions of dollars in liquid funds to political groups and activities that promote US agenda in strategically important nations, the case of Venezuela has been different. OTI opened its office in 2002, right after the failed coup d’etat against President Hugo Chavez - backed by Washington - and has remained ever since. The OTI in Venezuela is the longest standing office of this type in USAID’s history.

OTI’S CLANDESTINE OPS

In a confidencial memo dated January 22, 2002, Russell Porter, head of OTI, revealed how and why USAID set up shop in Venezuela. “OTI was asked to consider a program in Venezuela by the State Department’s Office of Andean Affairs on January 4…OTI was asked if it could offer programs and assistance in order to strengthen the democratic elements that are under increasing fire from the Chavez government”.

Porter visited Venezuela on January 18, 2002 and then commented, “For democracy to have any chance of being preserved, immediate support is needed for independent media and the civil society sector…One of the large weaknesses in Venezuela is the lack of a vibrant civil society…The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has a $900,000 program in Venezuela that works with NDI, IRI and the Solidarity Center to strengthen political parties and the Unions…This program is useful, but not nearly sufficient. It is not flexible enough, nor does it work with enough new or non-traditional groups. It also lacks a media component”.

Since then OTI has been present in Venezuela, channeling millions of dollars each year to feed the political conflict in the country. According to the 2010 annual report, OTI is now operating “out of the US Embassy and is part of a larger US diplomatic effort to promote democracy in Venezuela”.

The principal investment of the $9.29 million in US taxpayer dollars in 2010 went to the opposition’s campaign for the legislative elections, held last September 26 in Venezuela. “USAID works with several implementing partners drawn from the spectrum of civil society…offering technical assistance to political parties…and supporting efforts to strengthen civil society”.
In Venezuela, it’s widely known that the term “civil society” refers to the anti-Chavez opposition.

A SECRET FLOW OF FUNDS

Despite revealing its overall budget, the actual flow of funds from USAID/OTI to groups in Venezuela remains secret. When OTI opened its offices in 2002, it contracted a private US company, Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), one of the State Department’s largest contractors worldwide. DAI ran an office out of El Rosal – the Wall Street of Caracas – distributing millions of dollars annually in “small grants of no more than $100,000” to hundreds of mainly unknown Venezuelan “organizations”.
From 2002 to 2010, more than 600 of these “small grants” were channeled out of DAI’s office to anti-Chavez groups, journalists and private, opposition media campaigns.

In December 2009, DAI began to have severe problems with its operations in Afghanistan, when five of its employees were killed by alleged Taliban militants during an attack on their office December 15 in Gardez. Just days earlier, another DAI “employee”, Alan Gross, had been detained in Cuba and accused of subversion for illegally distributing advanced satellite equipment to dissidents.

When an article written by this author titled “CIA Agents assassinated in Afghanistan worked for "contractor" active in Venezuela, Cuba”, published December 30, 2009 on the web, evidenced the link between DAI’s operations in Afghanistan, Cuba and Venezuela, and their suspicious nature, the CEO of DAI, Jim Boomgard, was alarmed. Days later, he attempted to coerce me into a private meeting in Washington to “discuss” my article. When I refused, he threatened me by claiming that my writing was “placing all DAI employees worldwide in danger”. In other words, if anything happened to DAI employees, I would be personalIy responsible.
But Boomgard, who claimed little knowledge of his company’s operations in Venezuela, understood that what DAI was doing in Venezuela was nowhere near as important (to his company) as what DAI was doing in Afghanistan and other countries in conflict. Weeks later, DAI abruptly closed its office in Caracas.

Nonetheless, OTI continues its operations in Venezuela, and although it has other US “partners” managing a portion of its annual multimillion-dollar budget, such as IRI, NDI, Freedom House and the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), there is zero transparency regarding funding to Venezuelan groups.

A report published in May 2010 by the Spanish think tank FRIDE assessing “democracy assistance” to Venezuela revealed that a significant part of the more than $50 million annually in political funding from international agencies to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela was entering illicitly. According to the report, in order to avoid Venezuela’s strict “currency control laws”, US and European agencies bring the monies in dollars or euros into the country and then change them on the black market to increase value. This method also avoids leaving a financial record or trace of the funds coming in to illegally finance political activities.

If DAI is no longer operating in Venezuela and distributing “small grants” to Venezuelan groups, then how are USAID’s multimillion-dollar funds reaching their recipients? According to USAID, they now operate from the US Embassy. Is the US Embassy illegally dishing out funds directly to Venezuelans?

OTI’s 2010 report also reveals the agency’s ongoing intentions to continue supporting and funding Venezuelan counterparts. In the section marked “Upcoming Events”, OTI makes clear where energies will be directed, “December 2012 – Presidential elections”.

PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS

USAID isn’t the only US agency intervening in Venezuela’s affairs. In the Pentagon’s 2011 budget, a new request for a “psychological operations program” for the Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), which coordinates all US military missions in Latin America, is included. Specifically, the request refers to the establishment of a “PSYOP voice program for USSOUTHCOM”.

PYSOP are, “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups and individuals. The execution of PSYOP includes conducting research on various foreign audiences; developing, producing and disseminating products to influence these audiences; and conducting evaluations to determine the effectiveness of the PSYOP activities. These activities may include the management of various websites and monitoring print and electronic media”. Or, as the 2011 request indicates, running a radio or audio program into a foreign nation to promote US agenda.

USSOUTHCOM’s new PSYOP program in Latin America will complement a new State Department initiative run out of the Board of Broadcasting Governors (BBG), which manages US propaganda worldwide. BBG’s whopping 2011 budget of $768.8 million includes “a 30-minute, five-day-a-week VOA [Voice of America] Spanish television program for Venezuela”.

This increase in PSYOP and pro-US propaganda directed at Venezuela evidences an escalation in US aggression towards the region.

And the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is still running a special intelligence “mission” on Venezuela and Cuba, set up in 2006. Only four of these country-specific “mission management teams” exist: Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan/Pakistan, and Venezuela/Cuba. These “missions” receive an important part of DNI’s $80 billion annual budget and operate in complete secrecy.

SPECIAL REPORT. The USAID-CIA consortium in which Obama was raised.

The world of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and U.S. government-run foreign assistance priograms in which President Obama was raised has long been dominated by the CIA. It is against this backdrop that Obama's continuation of Bush-era covert and overt intelligence operations abroad must be seen. Obama's mother, father, and step-father directly benefited from U.S. government assistance programs in countries where the CIA backed despotic regimes, lavishing them with hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance.

USAID and the Soetoros' years of living dangerously in Indonesia

Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, worked on micro-financing projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Ford Foundation, both linked to the CIA, that helped prop up dictatorships in Indonesia and Pakistan. After Suharto seized power in 1965, USAID returned to Indonesia, with Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro as one of its chief employees, to help Suharto create the New Order (Orde Baru) that would usher in decades of fascist and kleptocratic rule. Suharto established the Bureau of Logistics (BULOG) that steered USAID-provided rice and other food staples to Suharto's business cronies. Suharto also relied on a group of U.S. economists, including Obama's mother, to re-engineer Indonesia's socialist economy. The group was called the "Berkeley mafia" and it ensured that Indonesia was compliant with dictates of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and large Western commercial banks. It is a family history that Obama refuses to comment on and one that is certainly nothing to be proud of.

While USAID was moving into Indonesia in 1965, USAID contractors flying for the CIA airline, Air America, were dropping off weapons and picking up drugs in Laos and dropping off the contraband in Thailand and South Vietnam.

One of the covert CIA operations that Obama continues is the use of USAID as a front for destabilizing foreign governments.

Obama continues USAID operations with the CIA

One USAID contractor, Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) of Bethesda, Maryland, has been caught red-handed providing assistance to opposition forces in Cuba and Venezuela. DAI contractor Alan Gross was arrested in Cuba last December. Gross claimed to be installing Internet and other communications networks for the Jewish community in Cuba, however, leading members of that community reported they had never heard of Gross. The Cuban leadership has kept Gross in prison, believing him to be a spy. Recently, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson went to Cuba seeking Gross's release.

USAID has long been involved in trying to oust the Castro government in Cuba, funneling money through the Cuban-American National Foundation, the Center for a Free Cuba, and even a German foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, an adjunct of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party.

DAI is heavily involved with USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, which transfers U.S. funds to opposition parties, labor and student movements, and other groups that are pro-American. DAI, under USAID contract, was caught providing U.S. funds to Venezuelan labor unions and media outlets that supported the CIA-led coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002.

In Haiti, USAID, acting at the behest of the CIA, funded political opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ousted in CIA-backed coups in 1991 and 2004. After Aristide's return to power in 1994, USAID money used to oppose Aristide was funneled through a "Project Democracy." Today, USAID is providing dubious small and micro-financing loans to small businesses in Haiti. The legacy of the micro-loan scheme created, in part, by Obama's mother continues in the earthquake-ravaged nation.

Bolivian President Evo Morales tossed USAID out of his country, charging it with acting with the CIA to destabilize Bolivia and bring about a coup. To this day, USAID is providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid to groups trying to undermine Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

During his ten-year rule, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and his intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, thought to be a CIA asset, reportedly received USAID funds to put down the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru guerrilla movements.

Continuing USAID and CIA covert ops in Pakistan and Indonesia

Currently, private military contractors working for the ex-Blackwater, now Xe Services, have been reported to be posing as USAID employees in Pakistan. Last year, the Pakistani press reported that USAID was bypassing the Pakistan ministries of Education and Information and providing direct educational assistance to Pakistani students. One USAID program in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan resulted in some $45 million disappearing down a virtual black hole.

In the 1980s, when Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Jr. spent time in Pakistan, USAID opened up a major office in Islamabad that distributed "non-lethal aid" to Afghan mujaheddin refugees in Pakistan, particularly in Peshawar. Some of the USAID assistance was also reportedly used to buy weapons for the Afghan mujaheddin but some of the weapons ended up in the hands of Pakistani Muslim radicals intent on ousting Pakistani dictator Muhammad Zia-ul Haq. Other USAID money ended up paying for expensive automobiles for leading Afghan mujaheddin commanders in Pakistan. Zia-uk Haq, his top generals, U.S. ambassador Arnold Raphel, and the head of the U.S. military aid mission in Islamabad General Herbert Wassom were killed in the suspicious crash of their C-130 aircraft in August 1988. A board of inquiry concluded that poisonous gas was released inside the aircraft causing it to crash after take-off in Bahawalpur.

The June 18, 1998, Jakarta Postreported that USAID programs in Indonesia continued to be fronts for CIA activity. Specifically, the paper said two Indonesian NGOs, the Indonesian Environmental Forum and the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation, were charged with accepting money from USAID but should have known that the aid did not come "free of charge" and was linked to the CIA.

USAID: no aid is free of charge

In 2002, USAID in Palestine, where DAI is also active, demanded detailed personal information on all the members of NGOs that received American funding. The Palestinian press reported that the information, including personal political opinions of NGO members, was to be turned over to the CIA and eventually, Mossad, to apply pressure on the NGOs to comply with U.S. and Israeli policies.

For years, USAID operated in Manila from the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency building at the Ramon Magsaysay Center on Roxas Boulevard in the Malate district of the city. In 2000, the offices moved to the Makati district of the city but the building that hosued USAID was always known to locals as the "CIA building." The building, owned by the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation, in honor of the Philippines President who died in a 1955 plane crash, was built in 1959 with a loan from the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers also provided grants to the Magsaysay Foundation.

In 2004, USAID was charged by Philippines opposition parties of using CIA agents to "monitor" elections in the country. The deal to permit USAID observers was signed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The head of the Anakpawis Party, Crispin Beltran, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "So much for independence when foreign intelligence agents can broker an official agreement with the Comelec (election commission) allowing them to interfere in the polls."

The CIA-linked Asia Foundation, which worked closely with the CIA-funded East-West Center at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, where Obama's mother met her second husband, General Suharto's colonel, Lolo Soetoro, was linked closely to USAID covert programs in Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Thailand, Palau, Malaysia, and other Asian-Pacific nations. In Laos and Thailand, USAID officials provided counter-insurgency military training to Laotian and Thai special forces. In 1970, Dan Mitrione, a USAID official who was working for the CIA training Uruguyan special police on torture tactics, was kidnapped and killed by Tupamaro guerrillas.

In 1988, USAID opened a huge compound in a suburb of San Jose, Costa Rica that many Costa Ricans charged was the CIA headquarters for the "parallel state" established by the CIA in Costa Rica to support the contra-led civil war in neighboring Nicaragua. USAID also pumped millions of dollars in loans, some at zero percent, to private banks in Costa Rica to undermine the state banking system.

In 1995, Representative Mel Reynolds (D-IL), who was convicted of having sex with an underage female campaign worker, was also revealed as working for U.S. intelligence in the 1980s, via employment with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and USAID in Africa, particularly in Sudan. Reynolds, an African-American, also spent time in Israel under USIA cover.

Obama has continued USAID's involvement in CIA-directed programs in former Soviet states, including Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. In so doing, USAID complements the destabilization efforts of George Soros and his network of NGOs. Soros was a major financial backer of Obama's presidential campaign. In 1999, Croatian media reported that USAID was working through various NGOs, some connected to Soros, to oust the ailing Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. The paper Vjesnikcharged that USAID, as well as the U.S. Information Service (USIS), were used as ''tampons between the American non-governmental agencies and American state bodies." The paper said the USAID program to aid Tudjman's opposition was run by the CIA and coordinated by the U.S. ambassador in Zagreb, William Montgomery.

In a 2008 Russian documentary film, "Technology of Modern Coup," Bermet Akayeva, the daughter of ousted Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, ousted in the 2005 Tulip Revolution, stated, "USAID is very actively financed by the Soros Foundation, by the National Democratic Institute and some kind of training is carried out constantly. However, it is difficult to describe USAID as an NGO given that it is under the U.S. Department of State. They work very actively." Akayeva said there were rumors in Kyrgyzstan that the U.S.-backed coup plotters distributed narcotics to rioters who participated in the coup.

In the north Caucasus, NGOs supported by USAID, have been accused by Russian authorities of having links to Chechen terrorists.

In 2002, Eritrea expelled USAID from the country, accusing it of working with the CIA to overthrow the government and assisting Ethiopia, which had engaged in a border war with Eritrea.

USAID in Africa: involvement in political assassinations and corruption

In 2009, Susan Tsvangirai, the wife of Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, was killed in an automobile accident in which the Prime Minister was injured. The truck that struck their automobile was bought with USAID funds and bore a U.S. embassy license plate. USAID denied it had anything to do with the truck. Public Works Minister Theresa Mokone, a friend of Mrs. Tsvangirai, likened the crash to the mysterious auto accident that killed popular and incorruptible Tanzanian Prime Minister Edward Sokoine in 1984. Sokoine was the designated successor to President Julius Nyerere, who antagonized the CIA by his close ties with the Soviet Union and China. Sokoine created a number of enemies among the elite class when he ordered the assets of embezzlers and smugglers seized. USAID, at the time of Sokoine's possible assassination, was heavily-involved in Tanzania.

In Zaire, millions of dollars in USAID money was diverted by CIA-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to amass his personal fortune making him one of the world's wealthiest leaders. Other USAID funds for Zaire were diverted to help the Angolan rebel forces of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, in violation of U.S. law prohibiting aid to Angolan rebel groups. The covert aid program to UNITA was started in 1976 by Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Similarly, during the Reagan administration, USAID money was funneled through the National Endowment for Democracy to the Nicaraguan contras, again in violation of a specific law prohibiting such assistance.

During the late 1970s and 80s, USAID-funded "researchers" established links with African liberation movements, particularly the African National Congress of South Africa and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) of Zimbabwe. Actually, these programs were CIA activities using "leftist" academics to spy on the nationalist movements. The operations were concentrated in Harare, Zimbabwe and Cape Town, South Africa, and cities that had a large expatriate African student community, including London and Melbourne and Perth, Australia.

USAID and the oil industry

In 1998, USAID participated in a closed-door meeting between major oil companies and the CIA, National Security Council, and three State Department officials, Stuart Eisenstat, Thomas Pickering, and Susan Rice (now Obama's ambassador to the UN) . The topic was exploitation of Africa's oil resources and the senior executives of Exxon, Mobil, Chevron (where Condoleezza Rice was a board member), and Texaco were present along with Department of Energy and Petroleum Finance Corporation officials.

In 2000, the CIA and USAID worked jointly through a private military company, Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) to train the Nigerian army in tactics to combat secessionists in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region. The CIA also commissioned the services of a private business intelligence and risk firm, Evidence-Based Research (EBR) of Vienna, Virginia, which appears to be a very similar operation to the CIA front, Business International Corporation, for which Obama worked in 1984, to conduct an assessment of the tribal revolt in the Niger Delta region, referred to by the CIA as a "semi-riot zone." EBR was formed in 1987, a year after Business International was sold to the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.

A formerly Secret CIA Intelligence Assessment, dated June 1983, and titled "Indonesia: Deteriorating Prospects for Energy Diversification," warns of a drop in Indonesia's oil export capacity. The CIA, along with USAID and the World Bank/IMF, had invested heavily in Indonesia, most importantly, to secure the nation's oil supply for the United States and its allies.

After helping Suharto seize power, Soetoro became an official of the Indonesian state-owned oil company, Pertamina, and Mobil Oil. The CIA assessment states: "Huffco and Mobil, two U.S. firms, rapidly developed natural gas exports for the Japanese market in the past decade in partnership with Pertamina." The memo states that this development, as well as coal, hydro, and geothermal, was carried out with strong financial and technical assistance from the World Bank and foreign aid donors like USAID. Huffco is Huffington Oil, founded in 1956 by Texas oil man Roy M. Huffington, the father of former Representative Michael Huffington (R-CA), a former vice chairman of Huffco and the ex-husband of Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post. The Huffingtons divorced in 1997 and a year later Michael Huffington announced that he was gay. More noteworthy is the fact that Roy Huffington, who died in 2008, was a seven-year chairman of the Asia Society, linked to the East-West Center in Hawaii, where Obama's father and step-father resided and the CIA.

Case Study on how USAID was used by the CIA for political purposes

A case of how the CIA used USAID to prevent a left-wing political party to winning at the polls is Mauritius. In a formerly Secret CIA Intelligence Memorandum, dated June 1982, and titled "Mauritius: Moderate Government Threatened at Polls," the CIA discusses the use of USAID money to prop up the pro-Western Labor government Prime Minister Seewoosagur Ramgoolam at the expense of the leftist Militant Mauritian Movement (MMM) of Paul Berenger.

Ramgoolam was forced to adopt economically destructive austerity measures dictated by the IMF that resulted in high unemployment, wage reductions, and currency devaluation. The beneficiary of the economic downturn would have been Berenger and his socialist MMM. But the CIA and USAID intervened to send aid money to Ramgoolam. The CIA memo states: "Labor is attempting to limit the political fallout from the restrictive measures and regain the political initiative by the announcement in mid-May of . . . a large public works program that would employ 8,000 people. The funds for the program are derived from the USAID "Food for Work" agreement."

The importance of Ramgoolam to the CIA was his quiet support for the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean over which Mauritius officially claimed sovereignty. The Pentagon also intervened in the Mauritian economic situation by agreeing to employ Mauritian workers on Diego Garcia. Ramgoolam also succeeded in getting an agreement for the United Kingdom to compensate 1200 Diego Garcians who were removed from the island to Mauritius in 1971 to make way for the military base.

USAID funds were used by the CIA to prevent the nightmare scenario for the agency. The memo states: "An MMM victory would be a political victory for the Soviets, shifting Mauritius from a pro-Western to an non-aligned or even pro-Soviet position. [sentence redacted]. Based on MMM rhetoric, however, Moscow has reason to believe that an MMM regime would deny the Western powers the limited, though useful, military access they now enjoy on Mauritius. An MMM regime would be a valuable ally in Moscow's campaign for an Indian Ocean zone of peace and against the US military presence on Diego Garcia."

The CIA also believed the MMM to be influenced by Libya, which it accused of stirring up Mauritian Muslim youth. However, MMM leader Berenger was, at the time, the prominent Christian political leader in Mauritius. The CIA memo states "The Libyans have been rumored to be storing weapons in the Seychelles for the MMM, according to the US Embassy in Seychelles."

The CIA memo states that an MMM victory would reduce the Hindu community's influence. Mauritian politics was dominated by Hindus of Indian origin. The CIA also believed that the MMM would invite Cuban medical doctors and teachers to the island nation.

The CIA memo also reveals that South Africa's apartheid regime was assisting Ramgoolam's re-election campaign costs to avert an MMM victory.

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President Obama's entire career and family history strongly suggests that the person who now resides in the White House has a crass view of the world's downtrodden peoples. Years of exposure to CIA operatives operating under corporate, USAID, World Bank, micro-financing schemes, NGO, and diplomatic cover has extended the U.S. Intelligence Community's massive control over America's foreign and domestic policies. Frankly, it would be best for the United States if Obama does not run for another term as president. Let the secret control over the United States by groups answerable to no one finally end with the Obama administration.

For social justice in the face of permanent aggression

• Interview with Venezuelan-American researcher and lawyer Eva Golinger

Olga Díaz Ruiz and Geisy Guía (Journalism student)

THE Havana Book Fair has accustomed us to good, interesting publications. Its 19th edition brings us Eva Golinger, the Venezuelan-American writer and lawyer, for the launch of her book, USAID, NED and the CIA: Permanent Aggression, an ambitious compilation and analysis of current situations, written by Golinger and Jean-Guy Allard, a Canadian journalist resident in Cuba.
On this occasion, the perspicacity of Golinger, who is participating in the international fair for the second time, impelled her to expose the constant onslaught of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, "which, to date, we have been unable to halt," after studying the cases of Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras and Venezuela.
"This is a visit of exposé, to achieve maximum impact and, in one way, a pretext to outline that message and to prompt reflection on the constant imperial acts of aggression and their various manifestations." Moreover, it lays out "all the marvelous things that we have achieved" in the subcontinent, she affirmed in an interview with Granma.
Golinger proposes to take up this selection of political, economic, cultural and social events that are evidence of Washington’s tactics and strategies in 2009, maintaining its interference in the region, as "a weapon in the defense of our revolutions."
At this point in the conversation, she stops to observe that the coup d’état in Honduras last June "has taught us the need to take care of our spaces, to recognize that the enemy is everywhere," adding that the book is to be published in Honduras this year.
Likewise the author of The Chávez Code (2005) and Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela, the writer believes that the strengthening of Latin American integration, fundamentally through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) has prompted an increase in U.S. right-wing aggression, "Because we constitute a threat to its domination in the region."
Integration that has expanded its borders to the rest of the world, and that "seeks to lift up our countries without exploitation, or competition, through the principles of solidarity, integration and cooperation," she notes, commenting that Cuba and Venezuela constitute the vanguard of this South-South union.
Despite the fact that she was born and raised in the United States and "talks like a gringo" – as she reproaches herself – Golinger directs all her energy and passion into fighting for social justice, and emphasizes that cooperation among ALBA countries "is perceived outside of our bloc with much hope, because we are constructing a more just social model."
She gives the example of the Bolivarian Revolution, which has transformed all sectors of Venezuelan society, as well as making an impact at international level on account of that nation’s significance to the world, with the figure of Chávez. "We are constructing a country that was in ruins, despite its natural resources. Then this president comes along, without experience in politics, moreover, and look what he’s done!"
In this struggle against constant aggression, the writer notes the leading role of the alternative media: "Telesur has had a fundamental role in dismantling the received opinions of the international media and in promoting another class of journalism, which consists of going into and bearing witness to the facts."
At the same time, she expresses her enthusiasm at one of the first printed copies of the only Venezuelan English-language newspaper, Correo de Orinoco International. "It is the first time that there is information in English from a Venezuelan perspective, from the Venezuelan revolution," she affirms with pride.
Golinger told us that she intends to continue exposing the principal maneuvers of the powerful in Latin America and in that proposition, she says, she can count on her friend and colleague Jean-Guy Allard.

Translated by Granma International

Obama gets "F" for initial Haiti earthquake response

President Obama attempted to not repeat the same mistakes made by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in responding to natural disasters. Bush's handling of relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the Indonesian earthquake and resulting tsunami was nothing less than abysmal. Obama, on the other hand, was on television the morning after the devastating and deadly earthquake in Haiti trying to look "presidential." However, Obama's handling of the response to the Haiti disaster was in keeping with Obama'ssecretive CIA past. Obama kicked off his media appearance by stating that his first response was to dispatch a U.S. military ground assessment team Haiti that included a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion from the U.S. surveillance base at Comalapa in El Salvador conducting aerial surveillance of the devastated country. The plane overflight is, of course, reminiscent of President Bush's survey of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina from the safety of Air Force One.

While Obama, who is clearly not suited to emergency response by defaulting to his military in responding to the Haiti earthquake, was talking about U.S. military assessment teams going to Haiti, Cuba's President Raul Castro and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez already had field hospitals on the ground in Haiti rendering medical assistance to the injured. Obama is hamstrung in deploying any military logistics and medical personnel to places like Haiti because the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is now over-extended in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and, now, Yemen.

It was only later that Obama officials decided to dispatch the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and some Coast Guard cutters to Haiti. There remained confusion over the dispatch of the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, to Haiti, something that was specifically requested by the wife of Haitian President Rene Preval because all of Port-au-Prince's hospitals were destroyed or abandoned after the quake. However, as of the evening of January 12, the Comfort was still docked in Baltimore with a five-day transit time to Haiti. Only in the late afternoon of January 13 was the Comfort ordered to sail to Haiti.

One of the problems in providing relief for Haiti is that much of the Caribbean region's initial U.S. emergency response was being coordinated by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, an entity more interested in overthrowing Latin American governments through covert operations like that conducted against Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, than in providing humanitarian assistance.

Obama also named his director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Rajiv Shah, as his overall coordinator for Haiti relief operations. Shah was sworn into office on January 8. Obama could not have made a worse choice. USAID, which is a cipher for the CIA, has largely been responsible for Haiti remaining the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. Shah's previous work for the dubious Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, as well as his being a political hack for Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who is imbued in corruption in Harrisburg, should not give the beleaguered people of Haiti any hope.

And not to be left out, there were indications that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hoping for a repeat disaster relief fund-raising engagement by her husband, Bill Clinton, who garnered so much public attention in his and former President George H. W. Bush's tsunami relief work after the 2004 Indonesia earthquake disaster. Last year, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is owned and operated by the U.S. government, appointed Bill Clinton as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Clinton has ensured that the populist opposition loyal to exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a man he helped regain office after a 1991 military coup ousted him, remain suppressed. To make matters worse, Obama has asked former President George W. Bush, the man who was disengaged over the Asian tsunami and Katrina, to join Bill Clinton in Haiti relief efforts. Obama's tone deafness to political reality has his erstwhile progressive base wondering just who is occupying the White House.

The combination of Bill Clinton and USAID invited yet another disaster -- a financial one -- for the people of Haiti. USAID and members of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association (ARGA) who are political cronies of the Clintons have wreaked havoc on Haiti's once thriving rice growing business. Once a net exporter of highly-nutritional rice, a combination of USAID policies and one-sided Clinton-era trade deals destroyed the Haitian rice industry and made the country dependent on expensive and non-nutritional genetically-engineered bleached white rice from Arkansas agri-businesses. In 2008, the soaring price of rice worldwide and price-fixing by U.S. agri-businesses linked to both Clinton and Bush 41 resulted in food riots breaking out in Haiti.

No sooner had Hillary Clinton turned her plane around on a trip to Australia and New Zealand to head back to Washington to deal with the Haiti situation, her husband launched the following high-tech appeal on the web site of his William J. Clinton Foundation: "Text 'HAITI' to '20222' and $10 will be given to the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund,
charged to your cell phone bill." Clinton also solicited for donations of up to $1000 for the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund.

Current Haitian President Rene Preval has long been in the pocket of the CIA and USAID. Clinton chicanery with Haiti, continued under Bush and, now, Obama, was detailed in the editor's book, "Jaded Tasks: Brass Plates, Black Ops & Big Oil":

"In 1995, Preval’s government contracted with a number of U.S. companies close to U.S. intelligence and military circles to provide security services, including Brown & Root, which Dick Cheney headed at the time. Preval, a favorite of the U.S., defeated Aristide in the 1995 presidential election. In 1999, Preval began to rule by decree. After the Haitian armed forces were disbanded, Dyncorp (now owned by Computer Sciences Corporation [since sold off]) was brought in to establish and train the new Haitian National Police. Dyncorp recruited former Ton Ton Macoutes of the Duvalier regimes and pro-US former members of the military junta as policemen. According to U.S. congressional sources, some of these Dyncorp-trained police served as a virtual fifth column in the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Chemonics, a firm that is involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, has made hundreds of millions of dollars from State Department contracts, and is close to the Pentagon and State Department, was involved in US Agency for International Development (USAID) agricultural projects in Haiti in the 1990s. Chemonics’ sister company, Rice Corporation of Haiti (RCH), maintained a virtual monopoly on rice imports into the impoverished nation and helped drive Haiti's many small rice farmers out of business. Both Chemonics and RCH are owned by ERLY Industries, Inc., an agribusiness firm with headquarters in Houston and Los Angeles. ERLY is owned by Gerald Murphy and his son, Douglas. They are longtime Republican supporters of Ronald Reagan and both Bushes. The elder Murphy set up Chemonics, as he said, to have his 'own CIA."' Chemonics and its top officials have given thousands of dollars to the Republican Party. Since his return to power, Aristide came under attack for some time by a usual array of neo-conservative publications, including the New York Sun, a leading propaganda outlet for neo-conservative interests in the United States."

USAID continues to team up with Chemonics in agriculture projects in Haiti, where USAID also happens to have another partner, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where Shah first served Obama as Undersecretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics before being nominated to be the director of USAID last November.

President Obama reacted as anyone with his background as a non-official cover employee of Business International Corporation, a CIA front, would react: turn over humanitarian relief to those military and intelligence agencies responsible for Haiti's pre-existing poverty and despair.