Let’s take a look at USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.
The first thing to know: the agency is run out of the State Department. Its pubic relations cover is to provide “international development.” This is code for fomenting regime change and undermining elected governments not on-script with the neoliberal agenda.
Second point: USAID is basically a cutout for CIA activity. David H. Price, in his “Cold War Anthology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology,” documents how “activists” working for USAID pass on information of use to the CIA.
Moreover, according to former USAID director, John Gilligan, the agency “served as a sort of graduate school for CIA agents,” and “many AID offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people.” Gilligan added “the idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas; government, volunteer, religious, every kind.”
Third: USAID’s Office of Public Safety (OPS) was shut down in 1974 after James Abourezk, a senator from South Carolina, disclosed OPS was involved in training Latin American police to torture activists. The public cover for OPS was to end corruption and promote professionalism. In reality, it was a CIA proxy. (See “Teaching Torture: The Death and Legacy of Dan Mitrione,” Brett Wilkins, Antiwar.com, August 11, 2020.)
Four: in 2021, USAID funded (to the tune of $39 million) Ecohealth Alliance, a group studying emerging viruses. President Trump shut down the operation after it was revealed it collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Ecohealth Alliance funded “gain of function” experiments.
Five: information on the shady and illegal behavior of USAID briefly emerged when it was discovered the agency had established a fake social media platform in Cuba. “Supposedly concerned with public health and civics, its operatives actively targeted likely dissidents,” Wired reported in 2015.
Today [August 4, 2014], the Associated Press broke a story that USAID backed a program in Cuba that brought Latin American youth to the island in an alleged effort to stir up political dissent. The youngsters from Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Peru traveled to Cuba posing as tourists or health workers leading HIV prevention workshops, but with the real goal of grooming opposition activists. (See “With HIV regime-change ruse in Cuba, another black eye for USAID,” Whitney Eulich, The Christian Science Monitor.)
Six: according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, an “extraordinary leaked document gives a glimpse of the breadth and complexity of the US government’s plan to interfere in Nicaragua’s internal affairs up to and after its presidential election in 2021.” USAID put out a call for contractors interested in subverting Nicaragua following its 2021 election.
The latest escalation in intervention began under the Obama presidency and continued under Trump, although the motivation probably has more to do with the US administration’s ongoing concerns about the success of the Ortega government’s development model since it returned to power in 2007 and began a decade of renewed social investment.
Seven: in 1966, USAID established the Office of Population. The first director was Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt. “He would hold the post until 1979, using it to create a global empire of interlocking population control organizations operating with billion-dollar budgets to suppress the existence of people considered undesirable by the US Department of State,” writes Robert Zurbin for The New Atlantis. (Emphasis added.)
“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.”
Eight: USAID is at the forefront of numerous color revolutions. “Wherever a coup d’etat, a colored revolution or a regime change favorable to US interests occurs, USAID and its flow of dollars is there,” writes Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer, writer, and journalist. (See “Colored Revolutions: A New Form of Regime Change, Made in USA,” posted at WikiLeaks.)
The recipe is always the same. Student and youth movements lead the way with a fresh face, attracting others to join in as though it were the fashion, the cool thing to do. There’s always a logo, a color, a marketing strategy. In Serbia, the group OTPOR, which led the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, hit the streets with t-shirts, posters and flags boasting a fist in black and white, their symbol of resistance. In Ukraine, the logo remained the same, but the color changed to orange. In Georgia, it was a rose-colored fist, and in Venezuela, instead of the closed fist, the hands are open, in black and white, to add a little variety.
Golinger adds, “The same agencies are always present, funding, training and advising: USAID, NED, IRI, NDI, Freedom House, AEI and ICNC.”
The pattern is now being repeated on the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia.
In 2020, according to NATO,
USAID/Georgia launched a new Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) to guide its assistance to Georgia through 2025. Under the new strategy, USAID will strategically partner with Georgia on its journey to self-reliance [neoliberal servitude], helping advance its Euro-Atlantic integration [specifically targeting the Caucasus and Central Asia] and strengthen its resilience to malign influence [defined as diplomatic, economic, and security initiatives with the Russian Federation].
The above is a short list. In order to cover all the subversive activities of USAID, we would need a book length monograph.
Rest assured, USAID is not in Georgia to promote “democracy.” It is there to subvert the government, which is not sufficiently pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian, according to Samantha Power and the USG State Department.
The only difference this time is the neocon Vicky Nuland isn’t on the edge of the orchestrated demonstrations passing out cookies.
Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.
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