Former DEA and CIA Operatives: Los Zetas May Attempt to Overthrow Mexican Government in 2012 (Using U.S. Government Weapons)
Los Zetas use the Alliance Airport in Ft. Worth, Texas -the same airport where the DEA’s Air Operations Center is located- to fly weapons to Columbus, NM., El Paso, and Laredo, TX. to be later smuggled into Mexico. CIA analysts say the weapons, which are purchased from the U.S. Government according to captured Zeta leader Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, aka. El Mamito, are being stockpiled throughout Mexico for a potential upcoming overthrow of the Mexican government in 2012.
Los Zetas use the border crossings of El Paso-Ciudad Juarez and Palomas-Columbus (both locations along the Texas-Chihuahua border) to supply and stockpile military type weapons, which would give them ability to disrupt the 2012 elections, according to the El Paso Times.
“Many of the weapons have been stored in safe houses. I think Los Zetas are storing them for the upcoming elections of 2012,” said Robert Plumlee, a former CIA pilot who has testified before Congress on drugs and weapons trafficking research.
The report is corroborated with an interview with Phil Jordan, former director of the DEA in El Paso, who stated that the stockpiles, which include anti-aircraft missiles, are transported from a Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The consultant added that the criminals set up (phony) companies to buy weapons directly through a State Department program.
U.S. analysts warn of narco-attack in 2012
The Border Patrol personnel and U.S. intelligence services have recently learned that Los Zetas have been purchasing properties on both sides of the border to store thousands of high-power weapons that were discovered to be part of five or six shipments that left the same airport where the DEA has its air operations center.
Phil Jordan, former central intelligence operative and director of the DEA office in El Paso, Texas, and a former CIA pilot, Robert Plumlee, said Los Zetas transported the high-power weapons to El Paso-Ciudad Juarez and the Columbus-Palomas border areas to reinforce their troops for battling other cartels and possibly disrupt the 2012 elections in Mexico, El Paso Times reported yesterday.
“I believe Los Zetas are storing weapons for the election season (2012). They probably want to be included as part of the (new) government, “said Plumlee.
“The agency responsible for investigating arms trafficking has just confirmed that Los Zetas have been smuggling weapons through this region, and Laredo, which was new to us,” said Diana Washington Valdez from El Paso Times.
She mentioned grenades, grenade launchers, antiaircraft missiles, body armor, radios, GPS devices, and night vision binoculars, among other items.
Washington Valdez reported that Phil Jordan and Robert Plumlee, who has been called to testify in many U.S. congressional investigations, as well as other sources, reported that some of the weapons were purchased in Dallas, Texas, and being sent by plane from a nearby airport in Forth Worth to the Carrillo Fuentes (Juarez) cartel.
“There is an airport over there is called Lions (Alliance –ed.), but the irony,” said Phil Jordan, “is that there is also a DEA aviation headquarters at the same airport. Who knows how long they have been doing this under the noses of the DEA, because the shipments and the aircraft used by Los Zetas left the same airport,” he added.
Washington Valdez said Jordan, Plumlee and other sources were consulted for several months when the rumor of the weapons stockpile began, and compared these events to the time when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) not only went to war against the cartels themselves, but also the very government of that country.
“One of the weapons shipments was found in a warehouse in Juarez, which was later relocated to a ranch on the other side of town, and other weapons were moved to another ranch further deep into Chihuahua,” she said.
Weapons purchased in the U.S.
She also stressed that Jordan and Plumlee, who participated in high-profile operations during the Cuban Revolution and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as well as other sources, reported that the stockpiles of weapons are not only held at real estate properties that Los Zetas have purchased on both sides of the border, but in other locations throughout Mexico because it was found that a private company is taking advantage of the Direct Commercial Sales program under the U.S. State Department, which allows businesses to purchase high-power weapons which the U.S. exports worldwide.
“According to these reports, some Mexican businessmen who took advantage and authorized the use of that mechanism, arranged for these weapons to be delivered to the drug cartels,” she said.
The global arms report, Small Arms Survey of 2011, from the Institute for International and Development Studies in Switzerland, said that Mexico was the number one importer in the world of RPG’s, and “under-barrel” grenade launchers, with 1,429 units being imported, followed in second place by Latvia with 250.
World imports of this type of grenade launchers rose to 1,912 units.
Diana Washington announced that she’s also expecting new revelations from a U.S. federal investigation that took place in the Dallas area, which she will publish in a book.
“I’m waiting to confirm the details related to this case of weapons trafficking because what is striking is that the weapons were stockpiled and not used in the current war between the drug gangs,” she said.
Recent U.S. actions against Los Zetas
Both U.S. and Mexican authorities are on high alert and coordinating actions against Los Zetas in order to disable or damage their organizational structure.
On January 24, 2011, the U.S. embassy in Mexico reported that former Mexican military member Rogelio Lopez, who was trained in that country (Ft. Benning), was recruited by Los Zetas to assassinate former Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Vasconcelos.
On July 3, 2011, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), issued a warning to its citizens with the recommendation not to travel to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, particularly during that weekend, and especially on July 4, due to a potential threat from Los Zetas.
On 4 July, the Federal Police arrested Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, third in the command in the criminal organization known as Los Zetas and allegedly involved in the killing of U.S. agent Jaime Zapata, last February.
On July 6, 2011, Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, aka. El Mamito, said the weapons used by that criminal group (Los Zetas) to be used against their opponents are bought in that country (the U.S.) and are even sold to them by the U.S. authorities.
On July 11, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the United States (BATFE) announced that firearms dealers will now have to disclose the names of customers who purchase semi-automatic weapons.
By Carmen Álvarez
excelsior.com.mx
Translated by Mario Andrade
DeadlineLive.info
Ten Years Ago Portugal Legalized All Drugs — What Happened Next?
Drug related deaths fell by 50%
The government in Portugal has no plans to back down. Although the Netherlands is the European country most associated with liberal drug laws, it has already been ten years since Portugal became the first European nation to take the brave step of decriminalizing possession of all drugs within its borders – from marijuana to heroin, and everything in between. This controversial move went into effect in June of 2001, in response to the country’s spiraling HIV/AIDS statistics. While many critics in the poor and largely conservative country attacked the sea change in drug policy, fearing it would lead to drug tourism while simultaneously worsening the country’s already shockingly high rate of hard drug use, a report published in 2009 by the Cato Institute tells a different story. Glenn Greenwald, the attorney and author who conducted the research, told Time: “Judging by every metric, drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country.”
Back in 2001, Portugal had the highest rate of HIV among injecting drug users in the European Union – an incredible 2,000 new cases a year, in a country with a population of just 10 million. Despite the predictable controversy the move stirred up at home and abroad, the Portuguese government felt there was no other way they could effectively quell this ballooning problem. While here in the U.S. calls for full drug decriminalization are still dismissed as something of a fringe concern, the Portuguese decided to do it, and have been quietly getting on with it now for a decade. Surprisingly, most credible reports appear to show that decriminalization has been a staggering success.
The DEA sees it a bit differently. Portugal, they say, was a disaster, with heroin and HIV rates out of control. “Portugal’s addict population and the problems that go along with addiction continue to increase,” the DEA maintains. “In an effort to reduce the number of addicts in the prison system, the Portuguese government has an enacted some radical policies in the last few years with the eventual decriminalization of all illicit drugs in July of 2001.”
However, as Glenn Greenwald, the author of the Cato study, concludes: “By freeing its citizens from the fear of prosecution and imprisonment for drug usage, Portugal has dramatically improved its ability to encourage drug addicts to avail themselves of treatment. The resources that were previously devoted to prosecuting and imprisoning drug addicts are now available to provide treatment programs to addicts.” Under the perfect system, treatment would also be voluntary, but as an alternative to jail, mandatory treatment save money. But for now, “the majority of EU states have rates that are double and triple the rate for post-decriminalization Portugal,” Greenwald says.
For those looking for clues about how the U.S. government can tackle its domestic drug problem, the figures are enticing. Following decriminalization, Portugal eventually found itself with the lowest rates of marijuana usage in people over 15 in the EU: about 10%. Compare this to the 40% of people over 12 who regularly smoke pot in the U.S., a country with some of the most punitive drugs laws in the developed world. Drug use of all kinds has declined in Portugal: Lifetime use among seventh to ninth graders fell from 14.01% to 10.6%. Lifetime heroin use among 16-18 year olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8%. And what about those horrific HIV infection rates that prompted the move in the first place? HIV infection rates among drug users fell by an incredible 17%, while drug related deaths were reduced by more than half. “There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,” said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, at a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.
We’re not holding our breath that the Portuguese example will lead to any kind of abrupt about-face in America’s own sputtering drug war, which is still sputtering steadily along at a cost of trillions a year. However, with the medical marijuana movement so far refusing to be strangled out of existence by the DEA, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter recently made a proposal to create a blue ribbon commission to look at prison and drug sentencing reform. And for any pro-legalization presidential hopefuls in 2012, the movement for a common sense drug policy in the United States may be finally moving into the mainstream.
Brevik’s Manifesto as Fake as Obama’s Birth Certificate
This is starting to come into focus – just a bit. The Norwegian murderer’s “manifesto” is pretty much a 1500 page cut-and-paste job. Lots of word-for-word plagiarism. It appears that it may have been constructed quoting from multiple folks in the anti-jihad movement in order to then “implicate”, or at least damn-by-implied-association people who obviously had nothing to do with the Norwegian Nutter.
This was sent to me by reader L last night.
Click here and read “Sagunto’s” multiple citations.
Great work there by “Sagunto”. Finding plagiarism (if that is the correct term for this) really isn’t that difficult. Here is how you do it. Find a sentence or phrase in an essay that is relatively unique in composition. For example, the sentence I just wrote above:
“It appears to me that it may have been constructed quoting from multiple folks in the anti-jihad movement in order to then “implicate”, or at least damn-by-implied-association people who obviously had nothing to do with the Norwegian Nutter.
In the entire history of humanity and the English language, those words have NEVER been assembled in that order ever before. Therefore, one can do a simple google or other search engine search on that sentence by putting quotation marks around it in the search engine entry field. This will yield EXACT match results. So, with Brevik’s manifesto, all one need do is pull out unique sentences, or even just phrases, and do a search on them. Any matches will pop right up.
It seems to me that if Brevik was an insane “philosopher” like the Unabomber, he would be all about writing his own stuff. Writing your own stuff is kinda the point for philosophers – both the sane and the insane. The Brevik “manifesto” seems to be more of a contrived “smoking gun” specifically designed to implicate prominent names in the anti-jihad movement. And that is exactly what they are doing. They have already gone after Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller (from Atlas Shrugs), the guys and girls over at GatesofVienna.blogspot.com and Robert Spencer to name just a few.
And yes, even I have an anti-gun propagandist who is tasked with “smearing” me on the internet. He doesn’t get much traction, but he sure tries! About all he can do is call me “crazy” over and over and over again, but sure enough, within hours of the Norwegian attacks, he made a post calling me “America’s Brevik”. Now, you might be thinking that this is no big deal and I certainly do take this guy with a grain of salt, but there is one aspect to this that bears note, and I think perhaps ties back to the phenomenon of the constructed Brevik manifesto and the immediate attempts to smear anti-jihad authors. This propagandist assigned to me? He works and runs his blog out of the United Nations World Food Programme office in Rome. No kidding. The kind gent at the following link sent me a heads up back in February when he saw the U.N. blogger’s first post about me. The U.N. blogger’s handle is Mikeb302000. Copy and paste the URL below to see both IP address proof AND Mikeb302000’s own admission of his location and employment.
http://serr8d.blogspot.com/2010/11/mikeb302000-anti-gun-blogger-is-united.html
Can you now see why I view all of this Norway stuff with extreme suspicion? I already personally know that the U.N. pays people (with OUR tax dollars, by the way) to act as agents provocateurs against the United States, its Constitution and its citizens. The U.N. wants to disarm Americans via the Small Arms Treaty and has the full cooperation of the Obama/Clinton machine. Operation Fast and Furious was designed and executed to achieve that goal. The U.N. is also deeply anti-Israel and pro-muslim, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood. The Norway mass murder serves practically every U.N. agenda simultaneously. It really is spooky to see how all of this stuff is connected, and you don’t need to dig down very far at all to find these connections.
More DOJ Malpractice
A misbegotten scheme to boost gun control turns deadly.
The Obama administration’s Justice Department has been no stranger to controversy. Attorney General Eric Holder has staked out controversial policies on everything from terrorist detainee trials to the decision not to pursue voter intimidation charges against two New Black Panther party members patrolling a polling place with weapons.
Gary Locke
Now a slow-burning scandal at the Justice Department is threatening to become the largest law enforcement debacle in decades. The scandal, dubbed “Gunwalker,” involves the department’s role in knowingly supplying guns to Mexican criminal gangs. Holder has been lucky to avoid taint thus far, but his luck may not hold. Gunwalker could tarnish not just his department but the entire Obama administration.
The scandal was touched off by three pivotal events:
- On December 14, 2010, Brian Terry and three other border patrol agents got caught in a firefight with Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and two other Mexican nationals carrying AK-47 rifles near Mesquite Seep, Arizona. Terry was shot in the pelvis and died the next day.
- On February 15, 2011, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were ambushed while driving on a highway near San Luis Potosi in northern Mexico. Zapata was killed; Avila survived his wounds. The gun used to kill Zapata was traced back to Otilio Osorio, a Dallas-area man known for helping Mexican gangs.
- In May, rumors began to spread that a Mexican military helicopter was forced to land after it had been fired upon in western Mexico by a heavy caliber weapon. The Mexican military later seized some 70 weapons in the accompanying raid—including a .50 caliber rifle, known for its ability to fire long distances and pierce armor. A number of the seized guns were said to have originated in the United States.
To hear the Obama administration tell it, the fact the guns used in these attacks came from the United States should not be surprising. In April 2009, the administration claimed that “90 percent” of the weapons used in Mexican cartel violence originated in the United States, a figure that was also parroted by the Mexican government.
When congressional hearings examined the substance of that claim, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) revealed that figure referred only to guns that the Mexican government handed over to the ATF. Of the total number of guns seized by Mexican authorities, about 8 percent were of U.S. origin.
So in the three attacks mentioned above, it might seem surprising that all would involve guns of U.S. origin. But this turned out not to be coincidental. In fact, the weapons used to kill the two U.S. law enforcement agents and down the Mexican helicopter were all provided to Mexican criminals as part of a baffling and ill-considered scheme initiated by the ATF and Justice Department.
“Gunwalking” is ATF slang for investigations where potentially illegal gun sales are allowed to go forward so that the guns can be used to help trace smuggling routes. Until recently, such obviously risky investigations have been rare.
That changed when the Obama administration in its first few months took up the cause of doing more about the alleged threat of U.S. guns entering Mexico. The White House’s warnings about U.S. culpability in Mexican drug violence—particularly the “90 percent” fiction—were so alarming to the National Rifle Association that the organization gave prescient congressional testimony in March 2009 warning that the White House would make “scapegoats” of lawful U.S. gun owners as a justification to pass more gun regulation to address violence in Mexico.
By the fall of 2009, ATF had launched an operation dubbed “Fast and Furious” that shifted ATF tactics away from seizing guns as soon as possible in favor of gunwalking. Fast and Furious may have allowed as many as 2,500 straw purchases of guns to Mexican gangs with no clear plan for recovering the weapons. The program was so out of control that when Arizona representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot last January, ATF agents immediately feared that the gun would be traced back to Fast and Furious.
And the operation appears to have come right from the top. “This shift in strategy was known and authorized at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Through both the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona and ‘Main Justice’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., the Department closely monitored and supervised the activities of the ATF,” according to a June 14 report produced by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
What’s more, the House report notes, “though many line agents objected vociferously, ATF and DOJ leadership continued to prevent them from making every effort to interdict illegally purchased firearms.” In fact, as early as this past December, months before congressional investigators began probing the issue in earnest, ATF agent Vince Cefalu was publicly speaking out against the agency’s gunwalking operation. Cefalu now reports he was sent a termination notice at the end of June, an action he claims is politically motivated.
The Justice Department has been less than forthcoming with congressional investigators. As of the release of the June 14 congressional report, the ATF and Justice Department had been unresponsive to seven letters and a subpoena from the House oversight committee.
Then over the July 4 holiday, things took an unusual turn. Acting ATF director Kenneth Melson appeared before Senate Judiciary Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform investigators. Remarkably, Melson made the appearance with his private attorney rather than with Justice Department representatives, consistent with Melson’s reported contention that higher-ups in the Justice Department had been trying to muzzle him.
Melson told congressional investigators that the gunwalking operation was part of a special task force being run by the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix. Further, even in his capacity heading up the ATF, he had no knowledge of what was going on. Melson’s testimony came in the wake of a June 18 Wall Street Journal report on the Justice Department pressuring him to resign over the scandal. If Melson truly didn’t know the operational details even as the Justice Department was maneuvering to make him the fall guy, it’s no wonder he would get his own attorney, break his silence, and implicate the Justice Department.
It also appears that numerous other law enforcement agencies—including the FBI, DEA, ICE, U.S. Marshals, and Homeland Security—were involved in Fast and Furious to varying degrees. Again, the coordination of that many law enforcement agencies clearly points to involvement at high levels of the Justice Department.
“The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons, but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities,” Representative Daryl Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Judicary Committee, wrote in a July 6 letter to Eric Holder.
There’s one more disturbing wrinkle that has yet to be ironed out—the role of federally licensed firearms dealers in Fast and Furious. Were they coerced into participating in the operation under threat of losing their licenses as firearms dealers? Troublingly, even if they knowingly made illegal sales to criminals at the behest of law enforcement, that wouldn’t immunize them from prosecution.
In February, the Mexican government retained a U.S. law firm, Reid Collins & Tsai, LLP, to pursue “claims against certain entities and individuals in the U.S. believed to be participating in . . . the illegal manufacture, import/export, or sale of weapons, or other conduct that may be harming Mexico.” That’s according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act paperwork, which must be filed with—yes—the Justice Department before a U.S. law firm can represent a foreign country. Incredibly, Mexico could take U.S. firearms dealers to court for their unwitting and unwilling role in Fast and Furious.
Despite the growing scandal, the White House is moving full steam ahead with planned gun regulations. On July 11, an ATF-Justice Department order went into effect requiring gun dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to report the purchase of two or more semi-automatic rifles over five days that are greater than .22 caliber and include a detachable magazine, a description so broad it encompasses a huge segment of the commerce in ordinary hunting rifles. The justification, naturally, is stemming the flow of guns into Mexico, even as that rationale is blowing up in the administration’s face.
Taken together, the Mexican government’s legal maneuvering and the Obama executive order raise the unsettling question of whether the White House and Justice Department have coordinated with a foreign country against U.S. gun dealers to help move forward a gun control agenda.
The NRA was quick to slam the executive order, saying, “$40 billion transnational criminal enterprises don’t fill out paperwork and are not deterred by paperwork violations. This is a blatant effort by the Obama administration and ATF to divert the focus of Congress and the general public from their gross incompetence in the Fast and Furious scandal.”
For once, the NRA might be understating things. “Gross incompetence” doesn’t adequately describe what has transpired here. The investigation is far from complete, but the facts so far suggest that the Justice Department and White House are implicated in the needless deaths of two U.S. law enforcement agents. And the level of political collusion suggests they were motivated not by law enforcement concerns, but by a desire to gain traction in implementing a liberal gun control agenda.
Mark Hemingway is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
The USAID-CIA consortium in which Obama was raised.
The world of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and U.S. government-run foreign assistance programs 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.
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