USAID: A Front for CIA Intelligence Gathering

Watch: Thomas Tighe Describing the Relationship between USAID and NGOs

President and CEO of Direct Relief International, Thomas Tighe, in a provocative piece of video describing the unsavory relationship between international NGO’s and the U.S. Government – specifically that of USAID (the US Agency for International Development). The organizations only get funding according the their acquiescence to the government’s terms and conditions. Therefore, the ‘beneficent’ relationship is inextricably linked to the criteria of Western imperialism.

In 1995, self-sufficient Eritrea, another target of US destabilization, also expelled USAID in order to protect and build Eritrean autonomy.

http://youtu.be/_ctbVfLuuXw

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Excerpt from the article written by Bill Keisling published on Sept 2, 2007 by the Yardbird Reader

“Is there a tie-in to foreign intelligence in all this? Public records show that USAID has long been a front for CIA intelligence gathering, as well as a conduit for CIA funding to foreign governments and agencies.

The USAID’s infamous Office of Public Safety, for example, received cover and funding from the USAID while directed by the CIA. More information on all this was released in July 2007 with the publication of the CIA’s long-suppressed “Family Jewels” set of documents. (Pages 607 to 613 of the Family Jewels papers describe this program as a “joint CIA/USA training program.”)

“According to a 1973 document revealed in the Family Jewels CIA documents, around 700 police officers were trained a year (by the Office of Public Safety), including in handling of explosives,” Wikipedia summarizes. “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, DC, 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. The OPS’s director in Washington, Byron Eagle, was close to the CIA.”

Former USAID Tobias was believed to have held a Top Secret security clearance, the result of what is known as a supposedly rigorous “Single Scope Background Investigation,” or SSBI.”

+++Read the article in its entirety here.

Also see CIA Spying Under USAID Cover, Fears NAB (Pakistan, April 29, 2011)

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau has unofficially conveyed its apprehensions to some leading security agencies of the country that certain USAID officials, apparently monitoring and executing development work in the tribal areas and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are spying for the CIA.

+++Read the article in its entirety here.