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'Neutral' First Aid Responders in Syria Promoting Regime Change. Journalist Max Blumenthal shares his latest investigation into the public relations firm Syria Campaign and the USAID-backed White Helmets, both of which are calling for a no-fly zone in Syria
by therealnews.com
Oct 5, 2016

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Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria. Posing as a non-political solidarity organization, the Syria Campaign leverages local partners and media contacts to push the U.S. into toppling another Middle Eastern government.
by Max Blumenthal / AlterNet
October 3, 2016

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YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

On September 30, demonstrators gathered in city squares across the West for a "weekend of action” to “stop the bombs” raining down from Syrian government and Russian warplanes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Thousands joined the protests, holding signs that read "Topple Assad" and declaring, "Enough With Assad." Few participants likely knew that the actions were organized under the auspices of an opposition-funded public relations company called the Syria Campaign.

By partnering with local groups like the Syrian civil defense workers popularly known as the White Helmets, and through a vast network of connections in media and centers of political influence, The Syria Campaign has played a crucial role in disseminating images and stories of the horrors visited this month on eastern Aleppo. The group is able to operate within the halls of power in Washington and has the power to mobilize thousands of demonstrators into the streets. Despite its outsized role in shaping how the West sees Syria’s civil war, which is now in its sixth year and entering one of its grisliest phases, this outfit remains virtually unknown to the general public.

The Syria Campaign presents itself as an impartial, non-political voice for ordinary Syrian citizens that is dedicated to civilian protection. “We see ourselves as a solidarity organization,” The Syria Campaign strategy director James Sadri told me. “We’re not being paid by anybody to pursue a particular line. We feel like we’ve done a really good job about finding out who the frontline activists, doctors, humanitarians are and trying to get their word out to the international community.”

Yet behind the lofty rhetoric about solidarity and the images of heroic rescuers rushing in to save lives is an agenda that aligns closely with the forces from Riyadh to Washington clamoring for regime change. Indeed, The Syria Campaign has been pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria that would require at least “70,000 American servicemen” to enforce, according to a Pentagon assessment, along with the destruction of government infrastructure and military installations. There is no record of a no-fly zone being imposed without regime change following —which seems to be exactly what The Syria Campaign and its partners want.

“For us to control all the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia. That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make,” said Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee this month.

While the military brass in Washington seems reluctant to apply the full force of its airpower to enforce a NFZ, The Syria Campaign is capitalizing on the outrage inspired by the bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo this year to intensify the drumbeat for greater U.S. military involvement.

The Syria Campaign has been careful to cloak interventionism in the liberal-friendly language of human rights, casting Western military action as “the best way to support Syrian refugees,” and packaging a no-fly zone — along with so-called safe zones and no bombing zones, which would also require Western military enforcement — as a “way to protect civilians and defeat ISIS.”

Among The Syria Campaign’s most prominent vehicles for promoting military intervention is a self-proclaimed "unarmed and impartial" civil defense group known as the White Helmets. Footage of the White Helmets saving civilians trapped in the rubble of buildings bombed by the Syrian government and its Russian ally has become ubiquitous in coverage of the crisis. Having claimed to have saved tens of thousands of lives, the group has become a leading resource for journalists and human rights groups seeking information inside the war theater, from casualty figures to details on the kind of bombs that are falling.

But like The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets are anything but impartial. Indeed, the group was founded in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office of Transitional Initiatives, an explicitly political wing of the agency that has funded efforts at political subversion in Cuba and Venezuela. USAID is the White Helmets’ principal funder, committing at least $23 million to the group since 2013. This money was part of $339.6 million budgeted by USAID for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria" -- or establishing a parallel governing structure that could fill the power vacuum once Bashar Al-Assad was removed.

Thanks to an aggressive public relations push by The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets have been nominated for the Nobel Prize, and have already been awarded the “alternative Nobel” known as the Right Livelihood Award. (Previous winners include Amy Goodman, Edward Snowden and Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.) At the same time, the White Helmets are pushing for a NFZ in public appearances and on a website created by The Syria Campaign.

The Syria Campaign has garnered endorsements for the White Helmets from a host of Hollywood celebrities including Ben Affleck, Alicia Keyes and Justin Timberlake. And with fundraising and “outreach” performed by The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets have become the stars of a slickly produced Netflix documentary vehicle that has received hype from media outlets across the West.

But making the White Helmets into an international sensation is just one of a series of successes The Syria Campaign has achieved in its drive to oust Syria's government.

Targeting the UN in Damascus

When an aid convoy organized by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs came under attack on its way to the rebel-held countryside of West Aleppo in Syria this September 18, the White Helmets pinned blame squarely on the Syrian and Russian governments. In fact, a White Helmets member was among the first civilians to appear on camera at the scene of the attack, declaring in English that “the regime helicopters targeted this place with four barrel [bombs].” The White Helmets also produced one of the major pieces of evidence Western journalists have relied on to implicate Russia and the Syrian government in the attack: a photograph supposedly depicting the tail fragment of a Russian-made OFAB 250-270 fragmentation bomb. (This account remains unconfirmed by both the UN and SARC, and no evidence of barrel bombs has been produced).

Ironically, the White Helmets figured prominently in The Syria Campaign’s push to undermine the UN’s humanitarian work inside Syria. For months, The Syria Campaign has painted the UN as a stooge of Bashar Al-Assad for coordinating its aid deliveries with the Syrian government, as it has done with governments in conflict zones around the world. The Guardian's Kareem Shaheen praised a 50-page report by The Syria Campaign attacking the UN’s work in Syria as "damning." A subsequent Guardian article cited the report as part of the inspiration for its own “exclusive” investigation slamming the UN’s coordination with the Syrian government.

At a website created by The Syria Campaign to host the report, visitors are greeted by a UN logo drenched in blood.

The Syria Campaign has even taken credit for forcing former UN Resident Coordinator Yacoub El-Hillo out of his job in Damascus, a false claim it was later forced to retract. Among the opposition groups that promoted The Syria Campaign’s anti-UN report was Ahrar Al-Sham, a jihadist rebel faction that has allied with Al Qaeda in a mission to establish an exclusively Islamic state across Syria.

A Westerner who operates a politically neutral humanitarian NGO in Damascus offered me a withering assessment of The Syria Campaign’s attacks on the UN. Speaking on condition of anonymity because NGO workers like them are generally forbidden from speaking to the media, and often face repercussions if they do, the source accused The Syria Campaign of “dividing and polarizing the humanitarian community” along political lines while forcing humanitarian entities to “make decisions based on potential media repercussions instead of focusing on actual needs on the ground.”

The NGO executive went on to accuse The Syria Campaign and its partners in the opposition of “progressively identifying the humanitarian workers operating from Damascus with one party to the conflict,” limiting their ability to negotiate access to rebel-held territory. “As a humanitarian worker myself,” they explained, “I know that this puts me and my teams in great danger since it legitimizes warring factions treating you as an extension of one party in the conflict.

“The thousands of Syrians that signed up with the UN or humanitarian organizations are civilians,” they continued. “They not only joined to get a salary but in hopes of doing something good for other Syrians. This campaign [by The Syria Campaign] is humiliating all of them, labelling them as supporters of one side and making them lose hope in becoming agents of positive change in their own society.”

This September, days before the aid convoy attack prompted the UN to suspend much of its work inside Syria, The Syria Campaign spurred 73 aid organizations operating in rebel-held territory, including the White Helmets, to suspend their cooperation with the UN aid program. As the Guardian noted in its coverage, “The decision to withdraw from the Whole of Syria programme, in which organisations share information to help the delivery of aid, means in practice the UN will lose sight of what is happening throughout the north of Syria and in opposition-held areas of the country, where the NGOs do most of their work.”

Despite The Syria Campaign’s influence on the international media stage, details on the outfit’s inner workings are difficult to come by. The Syria Campaign is registered in England as a private company called the Voices Project at an address shared by 91 other companies. Aside from Asfari, most of The Syria Campaign’s donors are anonymous.

Looming over this opaque operation are questions about its connections to Avaaz, a global public relations outfit that played an instrumental role in generating support for a no-fly zone in Libya, and The Syria Campaign’s founding by Purpose, another PR firm spun out of Avaaz. James Sadri bristled when I asked about the issue, dismissing it as a “crank conspiracy” ginned up by Russian state media and hardcore Assadist elements.

However, a careful look at the origins and operation of The Syria Campaign raises doubts about the outfit’s image as an authentic voice for Syrian civilians, and should invite serious questions about the agenda of its partner organizations as well.

A creation of international PR firms

Best known for its work on liberal social issues with well-funded progressive clients like the ACLU and the police reform group, Campaign Zero, the New York- and London-based public relations firm Purpose promises to deliver creatively executed campaigns that produce either a “behavior change,” “perception change,” “policy change” or “infrastructure change.” As the Syrian conflict entered its third year, this company was ready to effect a regime change.

On Feb. 3, 2014, Anna Nolan, the senior strategist at Purpose, posted a job listing. According to Nolan’s listing, her firm was seeking “two interns to join the team at Purpose to help launch a new movement for Syria.”

At around the same time, another Purpose staffer named Ali Weiner posted a job listing seeking a paid intern for the PR firm’s new Syrian Voices project. “Together with Syrians in the diaspora and NGO partners,” Weiner wrote, “Purpose is building a movement that will amplify the voices of moderate, non-violent Syrians and mobilize people in the Middle East and around the world to call for specific changes in the political and humanitarian situation in the region.” She explained that the staffer would report “to a Strategist based primarily in London, but will work closely with the Purpose teams in both London and New York.”

On June 16, 2014, Purpose founder Jeremy Heimans drafted articles of association for The Syria Campaign’s parent company. Called the Voices Project, Heimans registered the company at 3 Bull Lane, St. Ives Cambridgeshire, England. It was one of 91 private limited companies listed at the address. Sadri would not explain why The Syria Campaign had chosen this location or why it was registered as a private company.

Along with Heimans, Purpose Europe director Tim Dixon was appointed to The Syria Campaign’s board of directors. So was John Jackson, a Purpose strategist who previously co-directed the Burma Campaign U.K. that lobbied the EU for sanctions against that country’s ruling regime. (Jackson claimed credit for The Syria Campaign’s successful push to remove Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s re-election campaign ads from Facebook.) Anna Nolan became The Syria Campaign’s project director, even as she remained listed as the strategy director at Purpose.

“Purpose is not involved in what we do,” The Syria Campaign’s Sadri told me. When pressed about the presence of several Purpose strategists on The Syria Campaign’s board of directors and staff, Sadri insisted, “We’re not part of Purpose. There’s no financial relationship and we’re independent.”

Sadri dismissed allegations about The Syria Campaign’s origins in Avaaz. “We have no connection to Avaaz,” he stated, blaming conspiratorial “Russia Today stuff” for linking the two public relations groups.

However, Purpose’s original job listing for its Syrian Voices project boasted that “Purpose grew out of some of the most impactful new models for social change” including “the now 30 million strong action network avaaz.org.” In fact, The Syria Campaign’s founder, Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans, was also one of the original founders of Avaaz. As he told Forbes, “I co-founded Avaaz and [the Australian activist group] Get Up, which inspired the creation of Purpose.”

New and improved no-fly zone

The Syria Campaign’s defensiveness about ties to Avaaz is understandable.

Back in 2011, Avaaz introduced a public campaign for a no-fly zone in Libya and delivered a petition with 1,202,940 signatures to the UN supporting Western intervention. John Hilary, the executive director of War On Want, the U.K.’s leading anti-poverty and anti-war charity, warned at the time, "Little do most of these generally well-meaning activists know, they are strengthening the hands of those western governments desperate to reassert their interests in north Africa… Clearly a no-fly zone makes foreign intervention sound rather humanitarian—putting the emphasis on stopping bombing, even though it could well lead to an escalation of violence.”

John Hilary’s dire warning was fulfilled after the NATO-enforced no-fly zone prompted the ouster of former President Moamar Qaddafi. Months later, Qaddafi was sexually assaulted and beaten to death in the road by a mob of fanatics. The Islamic State and an assortment of militias filled the void left in the Jamahiriya government’s wake. The political catastrophe should have been serious enough to call future interventions of this nature into question. Yet Libya’s legacy failed to deter Avaaz from introducing a new campaign for another no-fly zone; this time in Syria.

“To some a no-fly zone could conjure up images of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and illegal Western interventions. This is a different thing,” Avaaz insisted in a communique defending its support for a new no-fly zone in Syria. Sadri portrayed The Syria Campaign’s support for a no-fly zone as the product of a “deep listening process” involving the polling of Syrian civilians in rebel-held territories and refugees outside the country. He claimed his outfit was a “solidarity organization,” not a public relations firm, and was adamant that if and when a no-fly zone is imposed over Syrian skies, it would be different than those seen in past conflicts.

“There also seems to be a critique of a no-fly zone which is slapping on templates from other conflicts and saying this is what will happen in Syria,” Sadri commented. He added, “I’m just trying to encourage us away from a simplistic debate. There’s a kneejerk reaction to Syria to say, ’It’s Iraq or it’s Libya,’ but it’s not. It’s an entirely different conflict.”

Funding a "credible transition"

For the petroleum mogul who provided the funding that launched the Syria Project, the means of military intervention justified an end in which he could return to the country of his birth and participate in its economic life on his own terms.

Though The Syria Campaign claims to “refuse funding from any party to the conflict in Syria,” it was founded and is sustained with generous financial assistance from one of the most influential exile figures of the opposition, Ayman Asfari, the U.K.-based CEO of the British oil and gas supply company Petrofac Limited. Asfari is worth $1.2 billion and owns about one-fifth of the shares of his company, which boasts 18,000 employees and close to $7 billion in annual revenues.

Through his Asfari Foundation, he has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to The Syria Campaign and has secured a seat for his wife, Sawsan, on its board of directors. He has also been a top financial and political supporter of the Syrian National Coalition, the largest government-in-exile group set up after the Syrian revolt began. The group is dead-set on removing Assad and replacing him with one of its own. Asfari’s support for opposition forces was so pronounced the Syrian government filed a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of supporting “terrorism.”

In London, Asfari has been a major donor to former British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party. This May, Cameron keynoted a fundraiser for the Hands Up for Syria Appeal, a charity heavily supported by Asfari that sponsors education for Syrian children living in refugee camps. The Prime Minister might have seemed like an unusual choice for the event given his staunch resistance to accepting unaccompanied Syrian children who have fled to Europe. However, Asfari has generally supported Cameron’s exclusionary policy.

Grilled about his position during an episode of BBC’s Hardtalk, Asfari explained, “I do not want the country to be emptied. I still have a dream that those guys [refugees] will be able to go back to their homes and they will be able to play a constructive role in putting Syria back together.”

In Washington, Asfari is regarded as an important liaison to the Syrian opposition. He has visited the White House eight times since 2014, meeting with officials like Philip Gordon, the former Middle East coordinator who was an early advocate for arming the insurgency in Syria. Since leaving the administration, however, Gordon has expressed regret over having embraced a policy of regime change. In a lengthy September 2015 editorial for Politico, Gordon slammed the Obama administration's pursuit of regime change, writing, “There is now virtually no chance that an opposition military ‘victory’ will lead to stable or peaceful governance in Syria in the foreseeable future and near certainty that pursuing one will only lead to many more years of vicious civil war.”

Asfari publicly chastised Gordon days later on Hardtalk. “I have written to [Gordon] an email after I saw that article in Politico and I told him I respectfully disagree,” Asfari remarked. “I think the idea that we are going to have a transition in Syria with Assad in it for an indefinite period is fanciful. Because at the end of the day, what the people want is a credible transition.”

For Asfari, a “credible” post-war transition would require much more than refugee repatriation and the integration of opposition forces into the army: “Will you get the Syrian diaspora, including people like myself, to go back and invest in the country?” he asked on Hardtalk. “…If we do not achieve any of these objectives, what’s the point of having a free Syria?”

The Independent has described Asfari as one among a pantheon of "super rich" exiles poised to rebuild a post-Assad Syria — and to reap handsome contracts in the process. To reach his goal of returning to Syria in triumph after the downfall of Assad’s government, Asfari not only provided the seed money for The Syria Campaign, he has helped sustain the group with hefty donations.

Just this year, the Asfari Foundation donated $180,000 to the outfit, according to The Syria Campaign’s media lead Laila Kiki. Asfari is not The Syria Campaign’s only donor, however. According to Kiki, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed $120,000 to the outfit’s $800,000 budget this year. “The rest of the funds come from donors who wish to remain anonymous,” she explained.

Shaping the message

Among The Syria Campaign’s main priorities, for which it has apparently budgeted a substantial amount of resources, is moving Western media in a more interventionist direction.

When The Syria Campaign placed an ad on its website seeking a senior press officer upon its launch in 2014, it emphasized its need for “someone who can land pieces in the U.S., U.K. and European [media] markets in the same week.” The company’s ideal candidate would be able to “maintain strong relationships with print, broadcast, online journalists, editors in order to encourage them to see TSC as a leading voice on Syria.” Prioritizing PR experience over political familiarity, The Syria Campaign reassured applicants, “You don’t need to be an expert on Syria or speak Arabic.” After all, the person would be working in close coordination with an unnamed “Syrian communications officer who will support on story gathering and relationships inside Syria.”

Sadri acknowledged that The Syria Campaign has been involved in shopping editorials to major publications. “There have been op-eds in the past that we’ve helped get published, written by people on the ground. There’s a lot of op-eds going out from people inside Syria,” he told me. But he would not say which ones, who the authors were, or if his company played any role in their authorship.

One recent incident highlighted The Syria Campaign’s skillful handling of press relationships from Aleppo to media markets across the West. It was August 17, and a Syrian or Russian warplane had just hit an apartment building in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Sophie McNeill, a Middle East correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, received a photo from the Syrian American Medical Society, which maintains a WhatsApp group networking doctors inside rebel territory with international media.

The photo showed a five-year-old boy, Omran Daqneesh, who had been extracted from the building by members of the White Helmets and hoisted into an ambulance, where he was filmed by members of the Aleppo Media Center. The chilling image depicts a dazed little boy, seated upright and staring at nothing, his pudgy cheeks caked in ash and blood. “Video then emerged of Omran as he sat blinking in the back of that ambulance,” McNeill wrote without explaining who provided her with the video. She immediately posted the footage on Twitter.

“Watch this video from Aleppo tonight. And watch it again. And remind yourself that with #Syria #wecantsaywedidntknow,” McNeill declared. Her post was retweeted over 17,000 times and the hashtag she originated, which implied international inaction against the Syrian government made such horrors possible, became a viral sensation as well. (McNeill did not respond to questions sent to her publicly listed email.)

Hours later, the image of Omran appeared on the front page of dozens of international newspapers, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Times of London. CNN’s Kate Bolduan, who had suggested during Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip in 2014 that civilian casualties were, in fact, human shields, broke down in tears during an extended segment detailing the rescue of Omran.

Abu Sulaiman Al-Muhajir, the Australian citizen serving as a top leader and spokesman for Al Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, took a special interest in the boy. "I cannot get conditioned to seeing injured/murdered children," Al-Muhajir wrote on Facebook. "Their innocent faces should serve as a reminder of our responsibility."

Seizing on the opportunity, The Syria Campaign gathered quotes from the photographer who captured the iconic image, Mahmoud Raslan, and furnished them to an array of media organizations. While many outlets published Raslan’s statements, Public Radio International was among the few that noted The Syria Campaign’s role in serving them up, referring to the outfit as “a pro-opposition advocacy group with a network of contacts in Syria.”

On August 20, McNeill took to Facebook with a call to action: “Were you horrified by the footage of little Omran?” she asked her readers. “Can't stop thinking about him? Well don't just retweet, be outraged for 24 hours and move on. Hear what two great humanitarians for Syria, Zaher Sahloul & James Sadri, want you to do now.”

Sadri happened to be the director of The Syria Campaign and Sahloul was the Syrian American Medical Society director who partnered with The Syria Campaign. In the article McNeill wrote about Omran's photo, which was linked in her Facebook post, both Sahloul and Sadri urged Westerners to join their call for a no-fly zone— a policy McNeill tacitly endorsed. (Sahloul was recently promoted by the neoconservative columnist Eli Lake for accusing Obama of having "allowed a genocide in Syria." This September, Sahloul joined up with the Jewish United Federation of Chicago, a leading opponent of Palestine solidarity organizing, to promote his efforts.)

As the outrage inspired by the image of Omran spread, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (a friend and publisher of Syria Campaign board member Lina Sergie Attar) called for “fir[ing] missiles from outside Syria to crater [Syrian] military runways to make them unusable.” Meanwhile, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough waved around the photo of Omran and indignantly declared, "The world will look back. Save your hand-wringing…you can still do something right now. But nothing’s been done.”

As breathless editorials and cable news tirades denounced the Obama administration's supposed “inaction,” public pressure for a larger-scale Western military campaign was approaching an unprecedented level.

Damage control for opposition extremists

The day after Omran made headlines, the left-wing British news site the Canary publicized another photograph that exposed a grim reality behind the iconic image.

Culled from the Facebook page of Mahmoud Raslan, the activist from the American-operated Aleppo Media Center who took the initial video of Omran, it showed Raslan posing for a triumphant selfie with a group of rebel fighters. The armed men hailed from the Nour Al-Din Al-Zenki faction. At least two of the commanders who appeared in the photo with Raslan had recently beheaded a boy they captured, referring to him in video footage as “child” while they taunted and abused him. The boy has been reported to be a 12-year-old named Abdullah Issa and may have been a member of the Liwa Al-Quds pro-government Palestinian militia.

This was not the only time Raslan had appeared with Al-Zenki fighters or expressed his sympathy. On August 2, he posted a selfie to Facebook depicting himself surrounded by mostly adolescent Al-Zenki fighters dressed in battle fatigues. “With the suicide fighters, from the land of battles and butchery, from Aleppo of the martyrs, we bring you tidings of impending joy, with God's permission,” Raslan wrote. He sported a headband matching those worn by the “suicide fighters.”

Despite its unsavory tendencies and extremist ideological leanings, Al-Zenki was until 2015 a recipient of extensive American funding, with at least 1000 of its fighters on the CIA payroll. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who has said his research on the Syrian opposition was “100% funded by Western govts,” has branded Al-Zenki as “moderate opposition fighters.”

This August, after the video of Al-Zenki members beheading the adolescent boy appeared online, Sam Heller, a fellow for the Washington-based Century Foundation, argued for restoring the rebel group’s CIA funding. Describing Al-Zenki as “a natural, if unpalatable, partner,” Heller contended that “if Washington insists on keeping its hands perfectly clean, there’s probably no Syrian faction—in the opposition, or on any side of the war—that merits support.”

This September 24, Al-Zenki formally joined forces with the jihadist Army of Conquest led by Al Qaeda-established jihadist group, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham. For its part, The Syria Campaign coordinated the release of a statement with Raslan explaining away his obvious affinity with Al-Zenki. Sophie McNeill, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who was among the first to publish the famous Omran photo, dutifully published Raslan’s statement on Twitter, acknowledging The Syria Campaign as its source.

Curiously describing the beheading victim as a 19-year-old and not the “child” his beheaders claimed he was, Raslan pleaded ignorance about the Al-Zenki fighters’ backgrounds: “It was a busy day with lots of different people and groups on the streets. As a war photographer I take lots of photos with civilians and fighters.”

Mahmoud Raslan may not have been the most effective local partner, but The Syria Campaign could still count on the White Helmets.

In Part II: How the U.S.-funded White Helmets rescue civilians from Syrian and Russian bombs while lobbying for the U.S. military to step up its own bombing campaign.

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

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How the White Helmets Became International Heroes While Pushing U.S. Military Intervention and Regime Change in Syria. Created by Western governments and popularized by a top PR firm, the White Helmets are saving civilians while lobbying for airstrikes.
by Max Blumenthal / AlterNet
October 2, 2016

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YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

The following is Part 2 of a two part investigation into the forces cultivating Western public support for regime change in Syria. Read Part 1 here.



It is rare for a short Netflix documentary to garner as much publicity or acclaim as The White Helmets has. Promoted as “the story of real-life heroes and impossible hope,” the film is named for the civil defense organization whose members have gained international acclaim for saving lives in rebel-held territory in the hellish war zones of eastern Aleppo and Idlib. The film's tagline, "To save one life is to save all of humanity," that is remarkably similar to that of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust epic, Schindler's List: "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."

The Netflix feature comes on the heels of a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for the White Helmets, an “alternative Nobel” award known as the Right Livelihood Award and endorsements from an assortment of celebrities. “The move [by the celebrities] draws attention to both the horror of the conflict and the growing willingness of well-known Americans to adopt it as a cause célèbre,” wrote Liam Stack of the New York Times.

Footage of the White Helmets saving civilians trapped in the rubble of buildings bombed by the Syrian government and its Russian ally has become ubiquitous in coverage of the crisis. An international symbol of courage under fire, the group has become a leading resource for journalists and human rights groups seeking information inside the war theater, from casualty figures to details on the kind of bombs that are falling.

The bravado displayed by the White Helmets under Syrian government and Russian bombardment has captivated some of the most influential observers of the Syrian conflict. Among the group’s biggest boosters is Sophie McNeill, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent who was among the first reporters to publish the now-famous photo of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh being extracted from the rubble of an Eastern Aleppo apartment building.

On her Twitter account, McNeill urged readers to donate money to the White Helmets and expressed her hope that the group wins the Nobel Prize. (McNeill did not respond to questions sent to her publicly listed email.) Laura Rosenberger, a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton, also took to Twitter to promote the group, posting a Wall Street Journal article hailing the civil defense group as “white knights for desperate Syrians.” Hillary Clinton quickly retweeted Rosenberger, registering her own tacit endorsement of the White Helmets. On September 22, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that he was “honored to meet [the White Helmets] leader and Aleppo activists,” hailing the organization as “brave 1st responders on the scene.”

The White Helmets are touted for saving tens of thousands of lives, though estimates on exactly how many varies dramatically depending on the source. The recently released White Helmets’ Netflix documentary claims they’ve saved “over 55,000” people, while Georgetown Security Studies Review had the number at 15,500 in May 2015. The State Department claimed this April that 40,000 had been rescued by White Helmets, but AJ+, a subsidiary of Al Jazeera, asserted around the same time that “more than 24,000” have been saved.” In a separate report published four months later, AJ+ quoted the figure at 60,000—which is the figure the White Helmets themselves claim. Whatever the number, there is little dispute that the White Helmets’ rank-and-file are saving lives in what seems to be an increasingly desperate situation in eastern Aleppo.

Yet the group is anything but impartial. The White Helmets’ leadership is driven by a pro-interventionist agenda conceived by the Western governments and public relations groups that back them. Anyone who visits the group’s website—which is operated by an opposition-funded PR company known as the Syria Campaign—will be immediately directed to a request to sign a petition for a no-fly zone to “stop the bombs” in Syria. These sorts of communiques highlight the dual role the White Helmets play as a civil defense organization saving lives while lobbying for a U.S. military campaign that will almost inevitably result in the collapse of Syria’s government.

According to a 2012 Pentagon estimate, a no-fly zone would require at least “70,000 American servicemen” to enforce, along with the widespread destruction of Syrian government infrastructure and military installations. Also sometimes called "safe zones" or "buffer zones," from Yugoslavia to Iraq to Libya, no-fly zones have served almost without exception as the preamble to regime change. With no clear plan in place for the day after the government falls, or any conclusive evidence that its ouster is what most Syrians want, the Western governments, professional activists and public relations specialists who created the White Helmets are intensifying their push for regime change.

The White Helmets were founded in collaboration with USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives—the wing that has promoted regime change around the world—and have been provided with $23 million in funding from the department. USAID supplies the White Helmets through Chemonics, a for-profit contractor based in Washington DC that has become notorious for wasteful aid imbroglios from Haiti to Afghanistan. While members of the White Helmets have been implicated in atrocities carried out by jihadist rebel groups, the names of many of the firms that supposedly monitor and evaluate their work have been kept secret by USAID on unspecified security grounds.

Away from the battlefield, the White Helmets have proven one of the most effective tools in the Syria Campaign’s public relations arsenal. Apart from the group’s own calls for a no-fly zone, the White Helmets have been at the center of the Syria Campaign’s ongoing attack on the United Nations, which it accuses of illicit collusion with Assad. This month, the White Helmets joined 74 other groups operating in rebel-held territory announced their refusal this month to cooperate with the U.N. as long as it recognizes the Syrian government. In a separate move, the Syria Campaign launched a petition to demand that the United States National Security Council share confidential radar information with White Helmets teams operating on the ground, apparently including in areas controlled by extremist rebel factions.

In May 2015, White Helmets spokesperson Raed Saleh met privately with U.N. and EU officials to push for a no-fly zone. A month later, Saleh’s colleague Farouq Habib testified before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs in support of a no-fly zone, claiming to possess first-hand knowledge of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government. With the Obama administration having drawn its “red line” at the deployment of chemical weapons, allegations like these are potential trigger points for full-scale U.S. military intervention.

The White Helmets’ Netflix documentary studiously avoids any discussion of the group’s interventionist, hyper-partisan agenda and omits any mention of its actual origins among Western governments, leaving the impression that the White Helmets are an organically developed band of politically impartial volunteers reflecting the Syrian consensus.

Critical questions about the White Helmets’ role in an interventionist public relations apparatus have been raised by only a few marginal websites that generally support the Syrian government -- and those who raise them have been subjected to scorn and castigation. Thus the issue has been kept off the table, along with the public debate over the consequences of a regime change policy that the Obama administration still supports.

The White Helmets in Washington

This September 27, while White Helmets members dug survivors and bodies from the ruins of buildings in the rebel-held warzone of eastern Aleppo, two of the group’s public representatives appeared in Washington for a series of events and high-level meetings. The first event open to the public was held at the Atlantic Council, an influential think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, and took place under the banner of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, which is named for and funded by the family of the assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister who amassed his fortune through business ties to the Saudi royal family. (Rafik’s son, Saad, blames the Syrian government for killing his father and creating ISIS and has effectively called for its removal.)

Presiding over The White Helmets reception was Frederick Hof, the director of the Hariri center, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton on Syrian “transition” and a longtime State Department envoy in the Middle East. Hof has said his focus on Syria at the State Department was motivated by the prospect of “beating Hezbollah and its Iranian master,” a goal he found “inspiring.” As he introduced The White Helmets, Hof accused Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad of committing war crimes with impunity and demanded that his government pay a “heavy price.”

While conceding that a no-fly zone was not a feasible option because it would subject the U.S. Air Force to Syria’s anti-aircraft systems, Hof told me he preferred cruise missile strikes against Syrian military installations and arming the rebels with Manpad shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles. When I asked if he feared such sophisticated weapons falling into the hands of Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham or Ahrar Al-Sham, the jihadist groups that boast the most manpower and battlefield prowess, Hof accused me of ignorance about the Defense Department's foolproof vetting mechanisms.

After a screening of the trailer for The White Helmets, Hof introduced the civil defense group as a heroic and absolutely “impartial” party to the conflict. He then welcomed Saleh, the White Helmets spokesman, to the stage. “Our demand is not for support to continue the work of the White Helmets, rather our demand is to stop the killing itself so that we don’t have to continue this awful job,” Saleh said.

Seated beside Saleh and providing live translation was Kenan Rahmani, a legal and strategy adviser to the Syria Campaign. As I reported in Part 1 of this series, the Syria Campaign is a private company founded by a New York- and London-based public relations firm called Purpose in order to generate public pressure for the removal of Syria’s government. It led the push for the White Helmets’ Nobel Prize nomination, orchestrated the group’s endorsements from Hollywood celebrities and has fundraised for its Netflix documentary vehicle.

Rahmani, for his part, was a policy adviser to the Coalition for a Democratic Syria, a umbrella organization of exile groups with close ties to the Syrian rebels and neoconservative organizations in Washington, before he took his current job at the Syria Campaign. When I asked Saleh how the White Helmets’ demand for a no-fly zone fit with its claim to uphold impartiality, Rahmani interjected to defend his company’s work.

“Of course we are an impartial, non-political organization,” he said. “The Syria Campaign doesn’t take political sides but our position is a no-fly zone would stop the suffering, would stop the destruction.” Saleh of the White Helmets followed up with his own call for a no fly zone, telling me that if I understood the scale of destruction in Syria, I would agree with his demand.

Moments after the panel discussion ended, Rahmani approached me to complain about my line of questioning. “These people [the White Helmets] are saving lives,” he began. But before he could complete his sentence, Rahmani was whisked away by Anna Nolan, the Purpose firm’s director of strategy who oversaw the Syria Campaign’s foundation. From that point on, Rahmani refused to speak to me.

Seated in the front row throughout the event was Ayman Asfari, one of the main funders of the Syria Campaign and a top exile supporter of the Syrian opposition. The billionaire CEO of the petroleum services company Petrofac, Asfari contributed $180,000 of the Syria Campaign’s $800,000 budget this year. (Most of the company’s donors are anonymous.)

I approached Asfari on his way out to ask how long he planned to continue directing his fortune toward promoting regime change. “There is a political process, which is a transition. We just want to bring back the transition,” he said before disappearing into an elevator. In a few hours, Asfari would host a screening of The White Helmets at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The White Helmets’ founding fathers

Supporters of heightened U.S. military intervention in Syria routinely accuse President Barack Obama of not doing enough to support the forces fighting the Syrian government. James Traub, a leading liberal voice of interventionism, has repeatedly claimed over the past five years that the U.S. is “doing nothing” in Syria and paying a terrible price for it. But together with the $1 billion the CIA has spent on arming and training the rebels, a close look at the hundreds of millions of dollars the U.S. Agency for International Development has spent in Syria on projects including the White Helmets tells a different story.

Back in July 2012, a year after the Syrian conflict began, USAID began to lay the groundwork for its Syrian Regional Option. With American analysts excitedly proclaiming the imminent downfall of Bashar Al-Assad and his government, USAID rushed to “provide support to emerging civil authorities to build the foundation for a peaceful and democratic Syria,” according to a USAlD executive report from that year.

The grants were authorized by USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI), spearheading efforts to encourage what proponents like to call “democracy promotion” in countries like Cuba and Venezuela, but which amount to failed attempts at regime change. In Cuba, USAID’s OTI caused an embarrassing diplomatic incident in 2014 when it was exposed for funding a program aimed at spawning instability and undermining the government through a Twitter-like social network called Zunzuneo.

Following a series of pilot programs carried out by a for-profit, Washington DC-based contractor called Development Alternatives International (DAI) at a cost of $290,756 to U.S. taxpayers, the OTI began setting up local councils in rebel-held territory in Syria. The idea was to establish a parallel governing structure in insurgent-held areas that could one day supplant the current government in Damascus. According to its 2012 USAID executive summary on the Syria Regional Option (PDF), “foreign extremist entities” already held sway across the country.

In March 2013, a former British infantry officer named James Le Mesurier turned up on the Turkish border of Syria. Le Mesurier was a veteran of NATO interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo who moved into the lucrative private mercenary industry after his army days ended. But running security for the UAE’s oil and gas fields left him feeling unfulfilled with his career as a hired gun. He wanted to be a part of something more meaningful. So he became a lead participant in USAID’s Syria Regional Option.

Le Mesurier’s job was to organize a unique band of people who rush into freshly bombed buildings to extract survivors—while filming themselves—in rebel-held areas facing routine bombing by Syrian army aircraft. In 2014, he established Mayday Rescue, a non-profit based in Turkey that grew out of the Dubai-based "research, conflict transformation, and consultancy" firm known as Analysis, Research, and Knowledge, or ARK. That group, which employed Le Mesurier while overseeing the White Helmets' training, has been sustained through grants from Western governments and the British Ministry of Defense. Mayday Rescue, for its part, received around $300,000 in initial funding from the U.S. Department of State to assist in training the first responders. Though they were known as Syrian Civil Defense, graduates of Le Mesurier’s course became popularly identified by the signature headgear they wore in the field: White Helmets.

Since being founded under the watch of Mayday Rescue, the White Helmets have received grants worth millions of dollars from the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Japan and USAID. To date, USAID has donated $23 million to the White Helmets, a substantial sum for a civil defense project in a war zone.

Mark Ward, director of the Syria Transition Assistance and Response Team at the State Department, highlighted the political dimension of the White Helmets’ funding in an interview with Men’s Journal: “[Funding the White Helmets is] one of the most important things we can do to increase the effectiveness and legitimacy of civil authorities in liberated areas of Syria.”

In the Netflix documentary The White Helmets, Mayday Rescue is never identified as the administrator of the group, nor does Le Mesurier ever appear on screen. USAID and Chemonics, the for-profit contractor that supplies the group, are also curiously omitted from the film.

An unmonitored money dump?

USAID relies on Chemonics to deliver resources to the White Helmets. The company’s contract with the group is part of the $339.6 million committed by USAID for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria.” This whopping sum of money supplements the reported $1 billion the CIA spent in the past year supplying and training the rebel forces attempting to overthrow the Syrian government, fueling a grinding civil war that necessitates the presence of thousands of first responders.

Based in downtown Washington DC, Chemonics has developed a checkered history across the world. In Haiti, the company squandered millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and delivered next to nothing for average Haitians while racking up a $2.5 million bonus for its CEO. Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, produced a series of reports exposing Chemonics' disastrous performance in Haiti.

“After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Chemonics was the recipient of the largest single contract from the U.S. government. But despite the immediate and grave humanitarian needs, funding for Chemonics came from the Office of Transition Initiatives, the ‘political arm’ of USAID,” Johnston told me. “Rather than basing funding decisions on the needs on the ground, OTI provides funding based primarily on U.S. national interests and to help steer political transitions across the globe.”

Johnston pointed to a lack of independent monitoring procedures as one of USAID’s most substantial failures. “Unfortunately, it becomes extremely difficult to track where money spent by OTI and Chemonics actually ends up,” he said. “Programs are designed to be broad, flexible and fast, distributing millions of dollars to subcontractors with very little public oversight or accountability.”

In reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and USAID Inspector General, Chemonics was slammed for its incompetent performance and poor evaluation procedures, and was accused of wasting tens of millions of dollars in Afghanistan.

For many languishing in rebel-held territory in Syria, however, USAID and its contractors are among the only sources of sustenance. As Brett Eng and Jose Ciro Martinez wrote in Foreign Policy, USAID’s involvement in Syria “has created another unhealthy form of dependence in opposition-controlled areas like Daraa. Instead of the Assad regime, it is the United States, Jordan, and the for-profit development organization Chemonics that civilians in Daraa are beholden to.”

Eng and Martinez also warned that USAID might be inadvertently propping up some of the more unsavory rebel factions, writing, “without a well-defined, inclusive opposition group, it is unclear to whom civilian loyalties are being redirected.”

Frankie Sturm, a public information officer at the State Department, told me that Chemonics “has put in place third-party monitors to verify that assistance reaches intended beneficiaries and for intended purposes.”

When I asked Chemonics for the names of these monitors, it directed my questions back to USAID, which refused to provide an answer on security grounds. USAID spokesperson Sam Ostrander told me his agency “works with another firm, completely separate from Chemonics” to monitor the assistance to the White Helmets, but didn’t name the company or disclose how much public funding it received.

In 2014, USAID produced the only evaluation report to date on its Syria-related “transition initiatives.” It was not exactly a portrait of success. “The extent to which OTI’s efforts were successfully building inclusive and accountable governance structures was still unclear,” the report concluded, also noting that “the ongoing conflict resulted in challenges that have led to delays in development and implementation of these activities.”

With such thin monitoring mechanisms in place to track how USAID money is spent in Syria, the risk of misappropriation is considerable.

'Emergency burial'

Far from the gaze of most Western media consumers, videos and photographs have surfaced on news sites and social media accounts sympathetic to the Syrian government showing White Helmet members boasting about discarding the body parts of Syrian troops in dumpsters, posing triumphantly on the corpses of Syrian soldiers, joining fighters accosting an alleged political opponent, waving the flag of Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra alongside jihadist fighters, and carrying weapons.

While it would seem unfair to tar an entire group with the actions of a few scofflaws, more than a few of the images depict events that are disturbingly real. One particularly jarring video (18+) filmed in Northern Aleppo shows two members of the White Helmets participating in an execution, waiting just off camera while a member of Al-Nusra shoots a man dressed in street clothes in the head after reading out a death sentence. The video of the two White Helmets members immediately packing up the man’s body prompted a statement by the organization condemning the killing and claiming its members were simply fulfilling their task to perform “the emergency burial of the dead.”

In May 2015, a White Helmet member named Muawiya Hassan Agha provided an extensive eyewitness account to the Violations Documentation Center in Syria on the alleged deployment of chemical weapons by Syrian government warplanes in Idlib. (The report described him as a “media activist.”) A year later, Agha was exposed by pro-government social media activists for filming a grotesque video depicting extremist Syrian rebels torturing two captured soldiers they later executed. EA Worldview editor-in-chief Scott Lucas reported that Agha was expelled from the White Helmets days later.

Asked about the allegations of involvement by White Helmet members in human rights violations, the State Department’s Sturm replied, “Syria Civil Defense are emergency response workers who risk their lives to save others—men, women and children trapped by the ravages of war. USAID has no credible information to believe the organization is engaged in anything other than this core mission.”

Chemonics refused to offer a comment on its monitoring and evaluation of the White Helmets or other clients in Syria.

Syria Campaign hones the message

In 2014, the year after USAID disbursed its seed money for the White Helmets, an outfit called the Syria Campaign suddenly materialized to mobilize even greater support for Western intervention through online “clicktivism.” Among the group’s primary functions has been marketing the White Helmets to Western media consumers as non-political heroes saving lives in a sea of sectarian villains.

“We went to meet [the White Helmets] at a training in southern Turkey, they were focused on the training and we were like, we’d like to elevate you guys and get the inspiring work you do out to the world,” James Sadri, campaign director at the Syria Campaign, told me.

Back in November 2014, Tim Dixon, the managing director of Purpose Europe, a former adviser to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and an original Syria Campaign board member, issued a report detailing how his firm’s “White Helmets campaign uses compelling storytelling to mobilize public support.” Dixon wrote: “Purpose believed their story had the power to inspire empathy and action in the wider public, and launched the White Helmets campaign in August as part of an ongoing effort to build support for the protection of civilians.”

Crediting the Syria Campaign’s promotion of the White Helmets with “significant breakthroughs on public engagement, media narratives, and funding,” Dixon boasted of “elite meetings in New York and DC” as well as coverage in outlets from the BBC to the New York Times. Among the most effective storytelling vehicles, according to Dixon, was the “Miracle Baby” video portraying the dramatic rescue of baby Mahmoud from beneath the rubble of a bombed-out home by a White Helmets team.

The episode featured prominently in the documentary The White Helmets and even included a cameo appearance by Mahmoud himself, now a toddler. The Netflix film appears to be at least partly the handiwork of the Syria Campaign.

This July, staffers of the PR company appeared in the studios of Channel 4 in London at a gathering of wealthy donors known as the Funding Network. “The Syria Campaign made a fantastic pitch for funding for their outreach work surrounding The White Helmets,” the Funding Network reported. The group noted, however, that “for reasons of confidentiality, we are unable to post the Syria Campaign’s pitch for the time being.”

Laila Kiki, the Syria Campaign’s media lead, told me, “We didn't raise any funds specifically for outreach around the Netflix documentary, but our team is supportive of the release.”

On September 30, as the attacks on the rebel-held areas of Aleppo reached a level of unprecedented ferocity, the Syria Campaign sent out an email and social media blast in the name of “Heroes of Syria” like the White Helmets. The message urged supporters into the streets for a "weekend of action" to clamor for a no-fly zone—or what the PR company euphemistically described as, “all aircraft dropping bombs on civilians grounded.”

“In solidarity please cover your face in dust and share it with your friends on social,” the Syria Campaign advised. “If you can do this with a friend or family member, even better.”

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

[admin]

‘Cuban Twitter’ and Other Times USAID Pretended To Be an Intelligence Agency: Foreign governments have long accused the U.S. Agency for International Development of being a front for the CIA or other groups dedicated to their collapse. In the case of Cuba, they appear to have been right. In an eye-opening display of incompetence, the United States covertly launched a social media platform in Cuba in 2010, ...
by Catherine A. Traywick, an editorial fellow at Foreign Policy from 2013-2014.
Foreign Policy
April 3, 2014, 10:16 PM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cu ... ce-agency/

The OPS [Office of Public Safety] originated in the Public Safety program under the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) in 1954. In 1962, when the ICA was replaced by the USAID, the program was reorganised under the new title of 'Office of Public Safety', consolidating various disparate overseas police training and assistance projects across the globe. Its director, CIA operative and police reformer Byron Engle, served from 1962 until his retirement in 1973.

Police assistance projects overseas had been established by the Eisenhower administration, but military intervention and covert action by the CIA was the primary method of addressing communist groups and other subversives in poor and recently decolonised countries. In the 1950s and 60s, covert action was increasingly unsuccessful, the most infamous example being the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Already a proponent of modernization theory and international development programs as an alternative method of combating the spread of Communism, Kennedy was receptive to the efforts of national security advisor Robert W. Komer to grow police assistance and make it the primary agent of counterinsurgency. Komer considered the police to be “more valuable than Special Forces in our global counter-insurgency efforts” and more cost-effective in that they did not require the expensive equipment and weaponry that military forces did. He described them as more successful as a preventative measure than any other program, providing "the first line of defense against demonstrations, riots and local insurrections. Only when the situation gets out of hand (as in South Vietnam) does the military have to be called in". Police were, as USAID director David Bell put it, "a most sensitive point of contact between the government and people, close to the focal points of unrest, and more acceptable than the army as keepers of order over long periods of time. The police are frequently better trained and equipped than the military to deal with minor forms of violence, conspiracy and subversion".

International development programs could present the modernisation and expansion of security infrastructure as growing stability and preventing crime in these nations, without the bad optics of the CIA or the military. In a document drafted to launch the concept of the OPS, the USAID expressed concern over the optics of white American soldiers killing non-white dissidents: “In countering insurgency, the major effort must be indigenous. . . . In internal war it is always better for one national to kill another than for a foreigner—especially one with a different skin coloration to do so".

-- Office of Public Safety, by Wikipedia, Accessed: 2/7/25

Foreign governments have long accused the U.S. Agency for International Development of being a front for the CIA or other groups dedicated to their collapse. In the case of Cuba, they appear to have been right.

In an eye-opening display of incompetence, the United States covertly launched a social media platform in Cuba in 2010, hoping to create a Twitter-like service that would spark a "Cuban Spring" and potentially help bring about the collapse of the island’s Communist government.

According to an Associated Press investigation, the project ultimately failed to foment political unrest, but it did turn out to be a useful way for Havana to secretly gather intelligence on the political leanings of the 40,000 Cubans who used it. It was a digital Bay of Pigs, but it was funded by USAID, an arm of the government dedicated to doing good work in bad places, not by the CIA.

Though better known for administering humanitarian aid around the world, USAID has a long history of engaging in intelligence work and meddling in the domestic politics of aid recipients. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the agency often partnered with the CIA’s now-shuttered Office of Public Safety, a department beset by allegations that it trained foreign police in "terror and torture techniques" and encouraged official brutality, according to a 1976 Government Accountability Office report. USAID officials have always denied these accusations but in 1973, Congress directed USAID to phase out its public safety program — which worked with the CIA to train foreign police forces — in large part because the accusations were hurting America’s public image. "It matters little whether the charges can be substantiated," said a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. "They inevitably stigmatize the total United States foreign aid effort." By the time the program was closed, USAID had helped train thousands of military personnel and police officers in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries now notorious for their treatment of political dissidents.

Rajiv Shah, the head of USAID, defended the Cuba program Thursday, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. "Sometimes the work we carry out is carried out discreetly, in the context of keeping the people who are doing this work safe," he said. "It doesn’t make it covert, but it does make it discreet." Meanwhile, agency spokespeople have repeatedly insisted that USAID is "a development agency, not an intelligence agency."

In recent years, USAID’s alleged political meddling has been more subtle. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez frequently and famously accused the United States of covertly trying to overthrow him, but only after his death did evidence emerge to support his seemingly paranoid claims. A WikiLeaks cable released in 2013 outlined the U.S. strategy for undermining Chavez’s government by "penetrating Chavez’s political base," "dividing Chavismo," and "isolating Chavez internationally." The strategy was to be carried out by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, the same office responsible for developing "Cuban Twitter," and involved funding opposition organizations in Venezuela.

Usaid/oti Programmatic Support For Country Team 5 Point Strategy
https://web.archive.org/web/20140202170 ... 1314919461

Reference id
06CARACAS3356
aka Wikileaks id #85138  ? 
Subject Usaid/oti Programmatic Support For Country Team 5 Point Strategy
Origin Embassy Caracas (Venezuela)
Cable time Thu, 9 Nov 2006 15:03 UTC
Classification SECRET
Source http://wikileaks.org/cable/2006/11/06CARACAS3356.html
History
Time unknown: Original unredacted version, leaked to Wikileaks
Thu, 1 Sep 2011 23:24: Original unredacted version published, with HTML goodies
VZCZCXRO4744
PP RUEHAG RUEHROV
DE RUEHCV #3356/01 3131503
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
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FM AMEMBASSY CARACAS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6955
INFO RUEHBO/AMEMBASSY BOGOTA PRIORITY 7104
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA PRIORITY 5809
RUEHLP/AMEMBASSY LA PAZ PRIORITY 2394
RUEHPE/AMEMBASSY LIMA PRIORITY 0647
RUEHMU/AMEMBASSY MANAGUA PRIORITY 1449
RUEHME/AMEMBASSY MEXICO PRIORITY 4010
RUEHOT/AMEMBASSY OTTAWA PRIORITY 0832
RUEHQT/AMEMBASSY QUITO PRIORITY 2480
RUEHTC/AMEMBASSY THE HAGUE PRIORITY 1090
RUEHROV/AMEMBASSY VATICAN PRIORITY
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK PRIORITY 0612
RUMIAAA/HQ USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEHUB/USINT HAVANA PRIORITY 0996
RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE
Hide header
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 CARACAS 003356

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

HQSOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD
DEPT PASS TO AID/OTI RPORTER

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/02/2026
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PHUM, VE
SUBJECT: USAID/OTI PROGRAMMATIC SUPPORT FOR COUNTRY TEAM 5
POINT STRATEGY

CARACAS 00003356 001.2 OF 004

Classified By: Robert Downes, Political Counselor, for Reason 1.4(d).

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SUMMARY
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1. (S) During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and governance. The USAID/OTI program objectives in Venezuela focus on strengthening democratic institutions and spaces through non-partisan cooperation with many sectors of Venezuelan society.

2. (S) In August of 2004, Ambassador outlined the country team's 5 point strategy to guide embassy activities in Venezuela for the period 2004 ) 2006 (specifically, from the referendum to the 2006 presidential elections). The strategy's focus is: 1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez' Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally.

3. (S) A brief description of USAID/OTI activities during the aforementioned time period in support of the strategy follows:

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Strengthen Democratic Institutions
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4. (S) This strategic objective represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela. Organized civil society is an increasingly important pillar of democracy, one where President Chavez has not yet been able to assert full control.

5. (S) OTI has supported over 300 Venezuelan civil society organizations with technical assistance, capacity building, connecting them with each other and international movements, and with financial support upwards of $15 million. Of these, 39 organizations focused on advocacy have been formed since the arrival of OTI; many of these organizations as a direct result of OTI programs and funding.

6. (S) Human Rights: OTI supports the Freedom House (FH) "Right to Defend Human Rights" program with $1.1 million. Simultaneously through Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), OTI has also provided 22 grants to human rights organizations, totaling $726,000. FH provides training and technical assistance to 15 different smaller and regional human rights organizations on how to research, document, and present cases in situations of judicial impunity through a specialized software and proven techniques. Following are some specific successes from this project, which has led to a better understanding internationally of the deteriorating human rights situation in the country:

Venezuelan Prison Observatory: Since beginning work with OTI, OVP has taken 1 case successfully through the inter-American system, achieving a ruling requiring BRV special protective measures for the prison "La Pica". Also, on November 7th - 12th they will be launching the Latin-American Prison Observatory, consolidating their work with a regional network. OVP receives technical support from FH, as well as monetary support from Pan American Development Foundation (PADF). Due to the success of the OVP in raising awareness of the issue, the BRV has put pressure on them in the form of public statements, announcing investigations, accusing them of alleged crimes as well as death threats.

Central Venezuelan University Human Rights Center: This center was created out of the FH program and a grant from

CARACAS 00003356 002.2 OF 004

DAI. They have successfully raised awareness regarding the International Cooperation Law and the human rights situation in Venezuela, and have served as a voice nationally and internationally.

Human Rights Lawyers Network in Bolivar State: This group was created out of the FH program and a grant from the DAI small grants program. They are currently supporting the victims of a massacre of 12 miners in Bolivar State allegedly by the Venezuelan Army. Chavez himself was forced to admit that the military used excessive force in this case. They will present their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in February 2007.

7. (S) Citizen Participation in Governance: Venezuelan NGOs lack a long history of social activism. In response, OTI partners are training NGOs to be activists and become more involved in advocacy. The successes of this focus have been as follows:

Support for the Rights of the Handicapped: OTI has funded 3 projects in the Caracas area dealing with the rights of the handicapped. Venezuela had neither the appropriate legislation nor political will to assure that the cities are designed and equipped in a handicapped sensitive fashion. Through these programs, OTI brought the issue of the handicapped to the forefront, trained advocacy groups to advocate for their rights and lobby the National Assembly, and alerted the press regarding this issue. Subsequent to this, the National Assembly was forced to consider handicapped needs and propose draft legislation for the issue.

Por la Caracas Possible (PCP): Once-beautiful Caracas has decayed over the past several years due to corruption and lack of attention. PCP is a local NGO dedicated to bringing attention to this problem. They have held campaigns with communities shining a light on the terrible job elected leadership are doing resolving the problems in Caracas. During their work they have been expelled from communities by the elected leaders, further infuriating communities that already feel un-assisted.

8. (S) Civic Education: One effective Chavista mechanism of control applies democratic vocabulary to support revolutionary Bolivarian ideology. OTI has been working to counter this through a civic education program called "Democracy Among Us". This interactive education program works through NGOs in low income communities to deliver five modules: 1) Separation of Powers, 2) Rule of Law, 3) The Role and Responsibility of Citizens, 4) Political Tolerance, and 5) The Role of Civil Society. Separate civic education programs in political tolerance, participation, and human rights have reached over 600,000 people.

--------------
Penetrate Base/Divide Chavismo
--------------

9. (S) Another key Chavez strategy is his attempt to divide and polarize Venezuelan society using rhetoric of hate and violence. OTI supports local NGOs who work in Chavista strongholds and with Chavista leaders, using those spaces to counter this rhetoric and promote alliances through working together on issues of importance to the entire community. OTI has directly reached approximately 238,000 adults through over 3000 forums, workshops and training sessions delivering alternative values and providing opportunities for opposition activists to interact with hard-core Chavistas, with the desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo. We have supported this initiative with 50 grants totaling over $1.1 million. There are several key examples of this:

10. (S) Visor Participativo: This is a group of 34 OTI

CARACAS 00003356 003.2 OF 004

funded and technically assisted NGOs working together on municipal strengthening. They work in 48 municipalities (Venezuela has 337), with 31 MVR, 2 PPT and 15 opposition mayors. As Chavez attempts to re-centralize the country, OTI through Visor is supporting decentralization. Much of this is done through the municipal councils (CLPPs). The National Assembly recently passed a law that creates groups parallel to the mayor's offices and municipal councils (and that report directly to the president's office). These groups are receiving the lions share of new monies Chavez is pumping into the regions, leaving the municipalities under-funded. As Chavez attempts to re-centralize all power to the Executive in the capital, local Chavista leadership are becoming the opposition as their individual oxen are gored. Visor has been providing these leaders with tools and skills for leadership to counter the threat represented by the new legislation.

11. (S) CECAVID: This project supported an NGO working with women in the informal sectors of Barquisimeto, the 5th largest city in Venezuela. The training helped them negotiate with city government to provide better working conditions. After initially agreeing to the women's conditions, the city government reneged and the women shut down the city for 2 days forcing the mayor to return to the bargaining table. This project is now being replicated in another area of Venezuela.

12. (S) PROCATIA: OTI has partnered with a group widely perceived by people in the large Caracas &barrio8; as opposition leaning. Due to incompetence of the local elected leadership, the garbage problem in Catia is a messy issue for all those who live there. This group has organized brigades to collect and recycle trash, in the process putting pressure on the government to provide basic services and repositioning the group as a respected ally of the "barrio."

13. (S) Finally, through support of a positive social impact campaign in cooperation with PAS, OTI funded 54 social projects all over the country, at over $1.2 million, allowing Ambassador to visit poor areas of Venezuela and demonstrate US concern for the Venezuelan people. This program fosters confusion within the Bolivarian ranks, and pushes back at the attempt of Chavez to use the United States as a "unifying enemy."

---------------
Isolate Chavez
---------------

14. (S) An important component of the OTI program is providing information internationally regarding the true revolutionary state of affairs. OTI,s support for human rights organizations has provided ample opportunity to do so. The FH exchanges allowed Venezuelan human rights organizations to visit Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Washington DC to educate their peers regarding the human rights situation. Also, DAI has brought dozens of international leaders to Venezuela, university professors, NGO members, and political leaders to participate in workshops and seminars, who then return to their countries with a better understanding of the Venezuelan reality and as stronger advocates for the Venezuelan opposition.

15. (S) More recently, OTI has taken advantage of the draft law of International Cooperation to send NGO representatives to international NGO conferences where they are able to voice their concerns in terms that global civil society understands. So far, OTI has sent Venezuelan NGO leaders to Turkey, Scotland, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Chile, Uruguay, Washington and Argentina (twice) to talk about the law. Upcoming visits are planned to Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

CARACAS 00003356 004.2 OF 004

OTI has also brought 4 recognized experts in NGO law from abroad to Venezuela to show solidarity for their Venezuelan counterparts. PADF supported visits by 4 key human rights defenders to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission meetings in Washington in October of 2006. These have led to various successes:

Civicus, a world alliance of NGOs, has put the Venezuela issue on their Civil Society Watch short list of countries of concern.

Gente de Soluciones, a Venezuelan NGO presented their "Project Society" to the OAS General Assembly. While there, they met with many of the Ambassadors and Foreign Ministers of OAS member states to express concern about the law.

Uruguayan parliamentarians met with NGOs at a special session of the Foreign Affairs commission, and have promised to help where they can.

The Human Rights Commission of the OAS has made several public statements and sent private letters to the National Assembly expressing concern with the law.

The most prestigious law faculty in Buenos Aires, Argentina has committed to hosting an event to deal with the draft law.

The Democratic Observatory of MERCOSUR plans to hold an event early next year to discuss the draft law.

So far the Venezuelan National Assembly has received many letters and emails of opposition to the law from groups all over the world.

A private meeting between 4 Venezuelan human rights defenders and Secretary General Jose Miguel Inzulsa during the October 2006 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (please protect).

The press, both local and international, has been made aware of the proposed law and it has received wide play in the US as well as in Latin America

16. (S) OTI has also created a web site which has been sent to thousands of people all over the world with details of the law in an interactive format.

-------
Comment
-------

17. (S) Through carrying out positive activities, working in a non-partisan way across the ideological landscape, OTI has been able to achieve levels of success in carrying out the country team strategy in Venezuela. These successes have come with increasing opposition by different sectors of Venezuelan society and the Venezuelan government. Should Chavez win the December 3rd presidential elections, OTI expects the atmosphere for our work in Venezuela to become more complicated.

BROWNFIELD

USAID’s previous efforts to potentially weaken Cuban President Raul Castro’s hold on power came to light in 2009, when Cuban authorities arrested USAID contractor Alan Gross and later convicted him for "acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state." Gross had been secretly outfitting the island’s small Jewish community with communications and satellite equipment as part of a program funded by USAID. Castro called Gross a spy, which wasn’t true, but bringing in the equipment broke Cuban laws regulating their citizens’ Internet access. During his 2011 trial, Gross characterized himself as "a trusting fool" who had been manipulated by his employers. "I was duped. I was used. And my family and I have paid dearly for this," he said. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison anyway.

These incidents have fed a narrative, embraced by some foreign governments, that USAID acts as a cover for U.S. intelligence programs. In recent years, an array of countries have accused USAID of interfering in their domestic politics or attempting to undermine their power. In 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled USAID officials from his country on the grounds that the agency had conspired against his government by allegedly "manipulating" social movements in the country. He also charged that that a previous USAID program that sought to help coca farms switch to new crops was politically motivated.

Russia expelled the agency in 2012 for similar reasons. Its foreign ministry argued in a statement that USAID "attempts to influence political processes through its grants," while President Vladimir Putin blamed U.S.-funded NGOs for inciting protests against his re-election.

And in February, Kenyan Cabinet Secretary Francis Kimemia claimed that his government had evidence that USAID had hired activists to organize anti-government protests in Nairobi, in an effort to "topple" the government.

There is little evidence, at least so far, to verify those charges. But the new Cuba scandal won’t help USAID repair its tattered reputation.

Catherine A. Traywick was an editorial fellow at Foreign Policy from 2013-2014.

[admin]

USAID DOCUMENTS
by U.S. Agency for International Development
https://web.archive.org/web/20110721063 ... ortdir=asc

Current Search: USAID PUBLIC SAFETY OPS



1 / Feb 1966 / A survey of the major police forces in Argentina. Section IV, program recommendations to the United States Government / USAID. Ofc. of Public Safety (OPS) / PDF



2 / [1968] / Bolivia internal security forces communication study / U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM); USAID. Ofc. of Public Safety (OPS) / PDF



3 / 1 May 1970 / COSTA RICA PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS EVALUATION REPORT (05/18/70-05/24/70) / MOTTER, WENDELL / PDF



4 / Nov 1970 / Criminalistics operations of the national police, the Republic of Guatemala : a summary and follow-up report / Jee, Arlen W. / PDF



5 / 13 Sep 1965 / Dominican Republic : the civil security force development plan / Goin, Lauren J.; Broe, William; Shannon, L. T. / PDF



6 / [1968] / El Salvador internal security forces communications study / U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM); USAID. Ofc. of Public Safety (OPS) / PDF



7 / Jun 1969 / Evaluation of AID public safety program in Colombia / USAID. Ofc. of Public Safety (OPS) / PDF



8 / Dec 1971 / Evaluation of the public safety program : USAID-Guatemala / Goin, Lauren J.; Bell, S. Morey / PDF



9 / Apr 1972 / Evaluation of the public safety program, Philippines / Finn, Thomas M.; McMahon, James L. / PDF



10 / Nov 1969 / Evaluation of the public safety program, USAID/Laos / Goin, Lauren J.; Leister, Charles / PDF

**************************'

Office of Security: U.S. Agency for International Development
by U.S. Agency for International Development
https://web.archive.org/web/20121013214 ... e-security
Accessed: 2/8/25

The OPS [Office of Public Safety] originated in the Public Safety program under the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) in 1954. In 1962, when the ICA was replaced by the USAID, the program was reorganised under the new title of 'Office of Public Safety', consolidating various disparate overseas police training and assistance projects across the globe. Its director, CIA operative and police reformer Byron Engle, served from 1962 until his retirement in 1973....

International development programs could present the modernisation and expansion of security infrastructure as growing stability and preventing crime in these nations, without the bad optics of the CIA or the military...

The OPS operated in at least fifty-two countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas. One of its main functions was counterinsurgency, aiding governments in the suppression of communist groups. In total, it provided over $200M of USAID and CIA funds to recipient countries in weaponry, communications equipment and tactical equipment. Its other functions were to facilitate the planting of CIA operatives within police forces of at-risk regions, and to find suitable candidates within these foreign forces to enrol in the CIA.

-- Office of Public Safety, by Wikipedia, Accessed: 2/7/25

Foreign governments have long accused the U.S. Agency for International Development of being a front for the CIA or other groups dedicated to their collapse. In the case of Cuba, they appear to have been right.

-- ‘Cuban Twitter’ and Other Times USAID Pretended To Be an Intelligence Agency: Foreign governments have long accused the U.S. Agency for International Development of being a front for the CIA or other groups dedicated to their collapse. In the case of Cuba, they appear to have been right. In an eye-opening display of incompetence, the United States covertly launched a social media platform in Cuba in 2010, ..., by Catherine A. Traywick, an editorial fellow at Foreign Policy from 2013-2014.

Office of Security
OFFICE OF SECURITY

USAID’s resources to meet its development and humanitarian assistance mission include people, information, funding and facilities.

The Office of Security’s role is to support USAID and those resources. It does so in accordance with a number of laws, Presidential orders, Executive Branch-issued guidance as well as policy established by the Department of State.

People: Individuals seeking employment in USAID must undergo a background investigation and subsequently be determined to meet nationally established standards for federal employment and obtaining a security clearance. These standards are contained in Executive Orders and pertain primarily to a person having unswerving loyalty to the U.S., having integrity and exercising sound judgment. USAID employees are periodically re-investigated to ensure they remain eligible to retain their security clearance and employment.

The Security Office has a Personnel Security Division that conducts the investigations of applicants and employees and adjudicates the results to help ensure USAID’s workforce meets the highest standards required of federal employees. USAID’s security clearance processing is meeting the legislated timeline to complete 90% of all applicant investigations in an average of 60 days.

Information: The information about USAID’s development and humanitarian assistance programs is intentionally open and public; to perform the agency’s mission, USAID employees work directly with non-government organizations, contractors, United Nations organizations and host country governments. However, in order for USAID employees to effectively and efficiently carry out the agency’s programs, they often must have access to sensitive and sometimes classified information provided by other federal departments and agencies. Such information may pertain to U.S. foreign policy and relations as well as security conditions and threat data.

Like many other federal employees, especially those assigned to overseas locations, USAID staff can be the target of foreign intelligence services, criminal and terrorist elements. USAID employees must be made aware of the techniques used by criminal, terrorist and intelligence organizations. The Security Office provides a variety of training to employees to arm them with the necessary knowledge so that they can properly protect sensitive and classified information and themselves as well. On those occasions when other departments and agencies provide sensitive and classified information to USAID, they do so with the expectation that agency employees will protect it; doing so is critical for USAID to retain that trust and carry out its development mission.

The Security Office has a team devoted to counterintelligence matters; this unit has the specific goals of: 1) educating employees on the threat posed by foreign intelligence to USAID domestic and international operations; 2) developing and conducting travel related pre-briefings and debriefings and 3) conducting counterintelligence training for new and existing employees.

Funding: USAID issues contracts and grants to a wide variety of private organizations. These entities in turn may issue sub-contracts/grants. USAID uses a variety of tools available to ensure that the organizations it works with are legitimate, well managed and are able to implement USAID’s development programs in an efficient effective manner. In addition, legislation and Presidential orders specifically prohibit any U.S. Government transactions or dealings with entities or individuals designated as terrorists.

USAID employs various procedures to comply with those mandates. The Security Office plays a key role in the use of screening procedures to help ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars do not fall into the hands of individuals or organizations associated with terrorism. The Partner Vetting System, currently authorized under legislation as a pilot program, is one aspect of USAID’s standard due diligence practices and risk mitigation approach.

Facilities: The USAID headquarters is located in the Ronald Reagan Building and several other facilities in the Washington D.C. area. Overseas, the majority of USAID missions are co-located in U.S. embassy buildings. Security standards are developed for both U.S.-based facilities and overseas offices. The Security Office works closely with components of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure USAID’s D.C.-based buildings meet federal security standards. The Security Office staff also works very closely with the Department of State’s Bureau for Diplomatic Security to ensure USAID facilities meet overseas security standards.

************************

USAID
by wikispooks.com
Accessed: 2/ 7/25

Parent organization: US/Department/State
Headquarters: Ronald Reagan Building, Washington DC
Leader: USAID/Administrator
Subgroups: Office of Public Safety
Staff: 3,909
Interests: economic development
Founder of: Better Than Cash Alliance; Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project; B92; Internews; Abt Associates; International Consortium of Investigative Journalists; Article 19; Alliance for Science; The Asia Foundation; Maverick Collective; Chemonics; John Snow Inc; Pathfinder International; Pact (1971); Louis Berger Group; DAI Global; Right to Care
Subpage •USAID/Administrator
Subpage •USAID/Administrator
US govt organization to provide "international development", including funding of Ecohealth Alliance. Called "CIA's little sister".

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an agency of the US State Department with the stated mission to provide "international development". In addition, it has also gained global notoriety for its extensive role in helping brutal dictatorships repress, torture and murder; its role in facilitating drug trafficking; and its decades-long effort in mass sterilisation.

A former USAID director, John Gilligan, admitted it was "infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people." Gilligan explained that "the idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas; government, volunteer, religious, every kind."[1]

In 2025, the second Trump administration announced sweeping changes to USAID. President Donald Trump ordered a near-total freeze on all foreign aid.[2] Elon Musk, head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, announced the intention of shutting down USAID,[3] or rather, moving it into the State Department.[4]

Office of Public Safety
Full article: Office of Public Safety

The Office of Public Safety (OPS), nominally under USAID, was shut down in 1974 after James Abourezk revealed that it had been training torture techniques to foreign police. Ostensibly the OPS meant to teach police how to be less corrupt and more professional. In practice, it operated as a CIA proxy.[5]

In 1960, CIA officer Dan Mitrione was sent to Brazil under OPS cover to train police. Before Mitrione’s arrival, standard operating procedure for Brazilian police was to beat a suspect nearly to death. Under Mitrione’s tutelage, officers introduced refined torture techniques drawn from the pages of KUBARK, a CIA instruction manual describing various physical and psychological methods of breaking a prisoner’s will to resist interrogation. Many of the abuses in KUBARK would later become familiar to the world as the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used during the US war against terrorism: prolonged constraint or exertion, ‘no-touch’ torture (stress positions), extremes of heat, cold or moisture and deprivation or drastic reduction of food or sleep. KUBARK also covers the use of electric shock torture, a favorite tool of both the Brazilian and Uruguayan police under Mitrione’s instruction. By the end of the decade, USAID had trained more than 100,000 Brazilian police.

Activities

Funding Ecohealth Alliance

In 2021, the Daily Mail reported that USAID funded Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance to the tune of $64.7 million.[6]

Population reduction

It also plays a big role in other strategic projects, such as population control and forced sterilization campaigns.[7] USAID created a global network of groups to promote mass sterilization and abortion globally. Several of its biggest recipients work in this field.

USAID effectively took control of Peru’s national health system from 1993 to 1998. They were involved in a program which resulted in the forced sterilization of approximately 300,000 indigenous women. Despite an outcry, USAID did not stop funding sterilizations in Peru until 1998.[8]

Targeting dissidents

In 2008, the US State Department, through its "foreign assistance" agency USAID, set up a fake social network in Cuba. Supposedly concerned with public health and civics, its operatives actively targeted likely dissidents. The site came complete with hashtags, dummy advertisements and a database of users' "political tendencies".[9]

In 2016, Wikileaks termed the Panama Papers leak a "Putin attack" and that it "was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros".[10]

Sterilization Campaigns

Full article: Forced Sterilization Campaign

In 1966, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act, including a provision earmarking USAID funds for population control programs to be implemented abroad. The legislation further directed that all U.S. economic aid to foreign nations be made contingent upon their governments’ willingness to cooperate with State Department desires for the establishment of such initiatives within their own borders.[11]

An Office of Population was set up within USAID, and Dr. Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt was appointed its first director. He would hold the post until 1979, using it to create a global empire of interlocking population control organizations operating with billion-dollar budgets. As his method of operation, Ravenholt adopted the practice of distributing his funds aggressively to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Population Council, and numerous other privately run organizations of the population control movement, enabling them to implement mass sterilization and abortion campaigns worldwide without U.S. government regulatory interference.[11]

Ravenholt also had no compunction about buying up huge quantities of unproven, unapproved, defective, or banned contraceptive drugs and intrauterine devices (IUDs) and distributing them for use by his population control movement subcontractors on millions of unsuspecting Third World women, many of whom suffered or died in consequence.[11]

Reporting to the C.I.A.

When American humanitarian groups receive funds from USAID, their reports made the groups they assisted legible to USAID, and through USAID, this information is passed along to the CIA. Father Cotton, a missionary who became curious about the sources of mission work, described USAID as "the CIA'S little sister"[1], and worried that those working on humanitarian and assistance projects were being "plugged into an information network that starts with the U.S. government and to which the CIA is connected". Cotter also understood that the CIA valued missionaries because, like anthropologists, they tended to "spend years working with grass-roots people and helping the unfortunates among them, they win trust and confidence. People will tell them about their hopes and fears, about village happenings, and about whatever there is of interest. They learn who are the most promising leaders, what are the region's problems, and they are often given access to people and areas closed to most outsiders. This is the information wanted by the CIA, and wanted in steadily flowing streams"[1].

While groups such as Anthropologists for Radical Political Action developed critiques of military-linked anthropological projects, at times singling out USAID projects directly linked to war zone counterinsurgency operations, during the Cold War American anthropologists were slow to develop such broad critiques of the ways that modernization theory,USAID, and other development projects directly and indirectly connected with the CIA and Cold War politics[1].

USAID also helped fund opium traffickers in Laos[12].

Select other grants[13]

U.S.A.I.D. Overhaul

The overhaul of U.S.A.I.D. is the centralization of power for a fascist (corporate governance) / communist (government corporations) dictatorship serving the controligarchy.[citation needed] The reorganized public–private partnership corporatocracy will continue funding all the formerly-U.S.A.I.D. culture wars, deep state, fifth generation warfare, psyops, unrest, and wet ops projects - but now covertly with much more secrecy than ever before.[citation needed]

References

1. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Co ... frontcover
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html
3. "Elon Musk said Donald Trump agreed USAID needs to be ‘shut down’"
4. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjdmx12j9no
5. https://original.antiwar.com/brett_wilk ... -mitrione/
6. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... n-lab.html.
7. http://www.uscl.info/edoc/doc.php?doc_i ... ion=inline
8. https://fridayeveryday.com/usaid-steril ... this-year/
9. http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive ... propaganda
10. https://www.rt.com/news/338683-wikileak ... in-attack/
11. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicat ... -holocaust
12. https://repository.asu.edu/attachments/ ... t/4-11.pdf
13. https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?has ... b49ebcc1e3
14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_min2MyyV7E
15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DSyYb1pBXY
16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqJcoXgxjOc
17. https://corbettreport.com/nwnw580/

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Office of Public Safety
by Intelligence Wiki
Accessed: 2/7/25

The Office of Public Safety (OPS) was a US government agency, established in 1957 by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower to train foreign police forces [2]. It officially depended on the USAID (US Agency for International Development), and was close to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [1]. Police-training teams were also sent in South Vietnam, Iran, Taiwan, Brazil and Greece [2]. Courses were held in French, Spanish and English [2]. According to a 1973 document revealed in the Family jewels CIA documents, around 700 police officers were trained a year, including in handling of explosives [3]. It was dissolved in 1974.

Creation and dissolution of the OPS

The United States has a long history of providing police aid to Latin American countries. In the 1960s the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Public Safety (OPS) provided Latin American police forces with millions of dollars worth of weapons and trained thousands of Latin American police officers. In the late 1960s, such programs came under media and congressional scrutiny because the U.S.-provided equipment and personnel were linked to cases of torture, murder and "disappearances" in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

In Washington, D.C., the Office of Public Safety had remained immune to public embarrassment as it went about two of its chief functions: allowing the CIA to plant men with the local police in sensitive places around the world; and after careful observation on their home territory, bringing to the United States prime candidates for enrollment as CIA employees [2]. The OPS's director in Washington, Byron Engle, was close to the CIA [1].

In 1966, US senator J. William Fulbright started criticizing the OPS' methods [4]. Then, informed by Brazilian opposition members, US senator James G. Abourezk set about to disclose the OPS' program [4]. John A. Hannah, head of the USAID and former president of Michigan State University, unsuccessfully tried to support the OPS by sending a letter to deputy Otto Passman [4].

In 1974, Congress banned the provision by the U.S. of training or assistance to foreign police with a statute known as Section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) [3].

The OPS had formed a million policemen in the Third World [1]. Ten thousands of them had undertook training courses in the US. $150 millions' worth in material had been sent to foreign police forces [1].

Most of the OPS' missions were transferred to others agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while the US Department of Defense continued to transfer equipment to security forces in foreign countries [1]. OPS officer Jack Goin went on to found a private security firm, Public Safety Services, Inc., in Washington [4].

Divisions

International Police Academy

Operated by the OPS, the International Police Academy was instituted in 1963, training police officers from various countries around the World in the United States. Its first class included sixty-eight police officers from seventeen different nations.[5] Until the early 1970s, selected candidates could also receive training from CIA officers at the U.S. Border Patrol academy in Los Fresnos, Texas, including the making of bombs and incendiary devices.[6]

Operations

The head of the OPS, Byron Engle, sent Los Angeles Police Department officers to Venezuela in 1962 to train local police officers and assist them in repression against the Armed Forces of National Liberation (AFNL) [2].

Uruguay

The OPS had operated in Uruguay since 1964 , supplying the police with equipment, arms and training. These operations involved courses on explosives, assassination, and riot control [1] [7]. Between 1969 and 1973, at least 19 Uruguayan police officers were trained in CIA and OPS schools in Washington DC and in Los Fresnos, Texas to be taught the handling of explosives [1]. On several occasions, the pupils were not police officers, but individuals affiliated with the Uruguayan right-wing [1]. By 1970, the OPS had trained a thousand police officers in riot control [1].

USAID agent, Dan Mitrione, who had previously trained the Brazilian police in interrogation and torture methods, arrived in Uruguay in 1969 to work for the OPS [1]. Torture was already in use by the Uruguayan police at this point, although it became systematic under Mitrione's direction. In an interview with a Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US officers, in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a systemic method [1]. According to A. J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors (Pantheon Books, 1978, p. 286), older police officers were replaced "when the CIA and the U.S. police advisers had turned to harsher measures and sterner men."

While having been previously been complicit in torture, Otero stopped supporting Mitrione after a friend and Tupamaros sympathizer had been tortured in Mitrione's presence [1]. Otero also claimed to oppose torture as he thought it led to the radicalization of the conflict.

In July of 1970, the Tupamaros kidnapped Mitrione, questioning him "about his past and the intervention of the U.S. government in Latin American affairs. They also demanded the release of 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, with U.S. backing, refused, and Mitrione was later found dead in a car". ([8]

CIA officer William Cantrell was based in Montevideo as an OPS member. He assisted in the creation of the National Directorate of Information and Intelligence (Dirección Nacional de Información e Inteligencia - DNII), to which he supplied equipment, including devices that could be used in torture. After the 1971 elections during which the left-wing Frente Amplio was defeated, the Uruguayan government launched a DNII-led joint military and police force that was tasked with conducting counter-revolutionary operations against the Tupamaros. According to former police officers, death squads were run from the DNII [7].

After being released from prison for crimes related to the Tupamaros insurgent activity, the leader of the Tupamaros, Raul Sendic, revealed that Mitrione had not been suspected of teaching torture techniques to the police. Rather, Mitrione was suspected to have trained police in riot control and was targeted for kidnapping as retaliation for the deaths of student protestors. Further, Sendic claimed "that a breakdown in communication led to the death of Mr. Mitrione", and that his murder was accidental mishandling of a negotiations deadline.

References

• William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II, 2003 (chapter on Uruguay)
• J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors (Pantheon Books, 1978 (Chapter I)
• Family jewels, pages 600-603
• J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors (Pantheon Books, 1978 Extract 5)
• Template:Cite news
• Template:Cite news
• NIXON: "BRAZIL HELPED RIG THE URUGUAYAN ELECTIONS," 1971, National Security Archive
• s[1]

See also

• Department of Public Safety
• History of Uruguay
• U.S. Army and CIA interrogation manuals
• United States-Latin American relations and Foreign relations of Uruguay
• USAID and CIA
• Greek military junta of 1967-1974
• PIDE, Portuguese police force [4]

External links

• OPS-produced or OPS-funded publications available through USAID's Development Experience System (DEXS)
• William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II, 2003 (chapter on Uruguay)
• J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors (Pantheon Books, 1978)
• Christian, Shirley (June 21), "Uruguayan Clears Up 'State of Siege' Killing", New York Times