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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: The mafia began as a resis­tance move­ment focused against Norse (Viking) and Sara­cen (Turkish/Muslim) invaders in 12th and 13 cen­tu­ry Sici­ly. It might seem incred­i­ble to the casu­al observ­er that an orga­ni­za­tion that began so long ago could have devel­oped and spread to the size, grav­i­tas and scope of oper­a­tions that it has.

We also appre­ci­ate that when Mr. Emory uses the term “Under­ground Reich,” it might seem odd or incred­i­ble to many. Bring­ing up to date “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” we under­score the deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the CIA’s broad­cast psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare fronts and their evo­lu­tion into the milieu involv­ing and sur­round­ing Eddie the Friend­ly Spook.

Much of the mate­r­i­al in this pro­gram is reviewed from pre­vi­ous broad­casts, pre­sent­ed here to pro­vide depth and under­stand­ing to how what has been pre­sent­ed as a “pro­gres­sive,” “enlight­ened” phe­nom­e­non could be its oppo­site. “Team Snow­den” man­i­fests fas­cism and the Under­ground Reich at every turn. (For an overview of the fas­cist and spook links of the Snowden/Greenwald/Omidyar/WikiLeaks crowd, see–among oth­er pro­grams–FTR #‘s 755, 756, 831, 885, 888, 889, 890.)

Review­ing a spec­u­la­tive ele­ment of analy­sis, we high­light the devel­op­ment of the “focal point” net­works with branch­es of the U.S. mil­i­tary and oth­er agen­cies of the gov­ern­ment. (We have exam­ined these net­works against the back­ground of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and the Snow­den milieu in FTR #‘s 891 and 895.)

A cen­tral ques­tion posed in our analy­sis is this: are the focal point net­works set up by Prouty now func­tion­ing as an Under­ground Reich Fifth Col­umn, hav­ing been infil­trat­ed over the decades by the Gehlen Org, the SS and the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work?

 . . . .Each office that [Col. L. Fletch­er] Prouty set up was put under a “cleared” CIA employ­ee. That per­son took orders direct­ly from the CIA but func­tioned under the cov­er of his par­tic­u­lar office and branch of gov­ern­ment. Such “breed­ing,” Prouty said decades lat­er in an inter­view, result­ed in a web of covert CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tives “in the State Depart­ment, in the FAA, in the Cus­toms Ser­vice, in the Trea­sury, in the FBI and all around through the government–up in the White House . . . Then we began to assign peo­ple there who, those agen­cies thought, were from the Defense Depart­ment. But they actu­al­ly were peo­ple that we put there from the CIA.”

The con­se­quence in the ear­ly 1960’s, when Kennedy became pres­i­dent, was that the CIA had placed a secret team of its own employ­ees through the entire U.S. gov­ern­ment. It was account­able to no one except the CIA, head­ed by Allen Dulles. After Dulles was fired by Kennedy, the CIA’s Deputy Direc­tor of Plans, Richard Helms, became this invis­i­ble gov­ern­men­t’s imme­di­ate com­man­der. No one except a tight inner cir­cle of the CIA even knew of the exis­tence of this top-secret intel­li­gence net­work, much less the iden­tiy of its deep-cov­er bureau­crats. These CIA “focal points,” as Dulles called them, con­sti­tut­ed a pow­er­ful, unseen gov­ern­ment with­in the gov­ern­ment. Its Dulles-appoint­ed mem­bers would act quick­ly, with total obe­di­ence, when called on by the CIA to assist its covert oper­a­tions. . . .

As we exam­ine the per­son­nel and insti­tu­tions com­pris­ing “Team Snow­den,” we come to a milieu that has evolved from the CIA’s radio pro­pa­gan­da and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare capa­bil­i­ties.

An exten­sion of the CIA’s pro­pa­gan­da and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare broad­cast­ing infra­struc­ture devel­oped dur­ing the Cold War, the milieu detailed here func­tions in a sim­i­lar fash­ion. The inter­net is the lat­est form of broad­cast­ing. The Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund and relat­ed insti­tu­tions are designed to pro­vide dis­si­dents and covert oper­a­tors a means of shield­ing their inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mobile phone mes­sages from sur­veil­lance by tar­get­ed gov­ern­ments. The prob­a­bil­i­ty is strong that U.S. intel­li­gence can mon­i­tor those com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

In our past dis­cus­sions of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, we have not­ed that the very same covert action net­works used to over­throw and elim­i­nate gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als deemed hos­tile to U.S. inter­ests were ulti­mate­ly deployed against Amer­i­cans and even the Unit­ed States itself. “Regime change” and desta­bi­liza­tion came home.

In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that a CIA-derived tech­nol­o­gy milieu devel­oped to assist and effect “ops” abroad was used to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. (There is MUCH more to “L’Af­faire Snow­den” than just the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er that is a major and ongo­ing out­growth of it.

” . . . Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­ganda out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Internet’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists. . . . [We think it is prob­a­ble that these tech­nolo­gies have a “back door” built into them per­mit­ting U.S. intel­l­li­gence agen­cies to mon­i­tor the infor­ma­tion con­tained in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, at the same time that unknow­ing users of the “apps” oper­ate under the illu­sion that their mes­sages are secure.–D.E.]

. . . . Though many of the apps and tech backed by Radio Free Asia’s OTF are unknown to the gen­eral pub­lic, they are high­ly respect­ed and extreme­ly pop­u­lar among the anti-sur­veil­lance Inter­net activist crowd. OTF-fund­ed apps have been rec­om­mended by Edward Snow­den, cov­ered favor­ably by ProP­ub­lica and The New York Times’ tech­nol­ogy reporters, and repeat­edly pro­moted by the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Every­one seems to agree that OTF-fund­ed pri­vacy apps offer some of the best pro­tec­tion from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance you can get. In fact, just about all the fea­tured open-source apps on EFF’s recent “Secure Mes­sag­ing Score­card” were fund­ed by OTF. . . .

. . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .”

” . . . .  Rea­gan may not have known it, but 99 per­cent for the Crusade’s funds came from clan­des­tine accounts, which were then laun­dered through the Cru­sade to var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions such as Radio Lib­er­ty, which employed Dulles’s Fas­cists. . . . .”

Recap­ping infor­ma­tion from AFA #3, we note the cen­tral role of the Gehlen Org in the devel­op­ment of Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty, with the Nazi influ­ence in the orga­ni­za­tion evi­dent decades after its for­ma­tion.

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of review con­sists of analy­sis of the Gehlen “Org” and its pri­ma­ry role as a Tro­jan Horse enabling Under­ground Reich pen­e­tra­tion of the Unit­ed States. We have cov­ered the Gehlen Org’s incar­na­tions as the CIA’s depart­ment of Russ­ian and East­ern Euro­pean affairs, the de-fac­to NATO intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion and the BND, the Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice. It ini­tial­ly served as Army Intel­li­gence’s “eyes and ears” on the for­mer Sovi­et Bloc, and paved the way for Nazi/SS infil­tra­tion of the Army. ” . . . A net­work of for­mer Nazi intel­li­gence agents, the major­i­ty of whom were mem­bers of the SS, began work­ing out of offices at Camp King side by side with army intel­li­gence offi­cers. . . . The Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion was a mur­der­ous bunch, ‘free-wheel­ing’ and out of con­trol. . . The army became fed up with the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion, but there was no way out. Its oper­a­tives were pro­fes­sion­al dou­ble-crossers and liars–many were also alleged war criminals–and now they had the army over a bar­rel. . . .”

The broad­cast flesh­es out the Gehlen Org as a vehi­cle for pen­e­tra­tion of the U.S. by the Under­ground Reich, not­ing:

• The con­ti­nu­ity in chain of com­mand from the Third Reich to the Org as it was going to work for the U.S.
• The Org’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hein­rich Mueller, secu­ri­ty direc­tor for the Bor­mann net­work.
• The CIA’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the the Bor­mann group.
• Mar­tin Bor­man­n’s view of Bush fam­i­ly busi­ness asso­ciate Fritz Thyssen as a liai­son to Allen W. Dulles.
• Prescott Bush (Senior) and his work as Con­gres­sion­al liai­son to the CIA.
• Allen Dulles’ use of Third Reich monies to fund Cold War covert oper­a­tions, inevitably plac­ing the Agency in the sway of Mar­tin Bor­mann.

The pro­gram con­cludes with Pierre Omid­yar’s choice of Snow­den supe­ri­or Robert Liet­zke as an Omid­yar fel­low.

1. Against the back­ground of the CIA/BBG/RFA evo­lu­tion of “Team Snow­den,” we high­light the devel­op­ment of “focal point” per­son­nel by the CIA. Infil­trat­ed into oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the mil­i­tary, they con­sti­tut­ed a “gov­ern­ment with­in a gov­ern­ment.” Was Snow­den one such “focal point?” Is the BBG/RFA/OTF nexus an evo­lu­tion of the “focal point net­works?”

JFK and the Unspeak­able: Why He Died and Why It Mat­ters by James W. Dou­glass; Touch­stone Books [SC]; Copy­right 2008 by James W. Dou­glas; ISBN 978–1‑4391–9388‑4; pp. 196–197.

. . . . One man in a posi­tion to watch the arms of the CIA pro­lif­er­ate was Colonel Fletch­er Prouty. He ran the office that did the pro­lif­er­at­ing. In 1955, Air Force Head­quar­ters ordered Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty, a career Army and Air Force offi­cer since World War II, to set up a Pen­ta­gon office to pro­vide mil­i­tary sup­port for the clan­des­tine oper­a­tions of the CIA. Thus Prouty became direc­tor of the Pen­tagon’s “Focal Point Office for the CIA.”

CIA Direc­tor Allen Dulles was its actu­al cre­ator. In the fifties, Dulles need­ed mil­i­tary sup­port for his cov­er cam­paigns to under­mine oppos­ing nations in the Cold War. More­over, Dulles want­ed sub­ter­ranean secre­cy and auton­o­my for his projects, even from the mem­bers of his own gov­ern­ment. Prouty’s job was to pro­vide Pen­ta­gon sup­port and deep cov­er for the CIA beneath the dif­fer­ent branch­es of Wash­ing­ton’s bureau­cra­cy. Dulles dic­tat­ed the method Prouty was to fol­low.

“I want a focal point,” Dulles said. “I want an office that’s cleared to do what we have to have done; an office that knows us very, very well and then an office that has access to a sys­tem in the Pen­ta­gon. But the sys­tem will not be aware of what ini­ti­at­ed the request–they’ll think it came from the Sec­re­tary of Defense. They won’t real­ize it came from the Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence.

Dulles got Prouty to cre­ate a net­work of sub­or­di­nate focal point offices in the armed ser­vices, then through­out the entire U.S. gov­ern­ment. Each office that Prouty set up was put under a “cleared” CIA employ­ee. That per­son took orders direct­ly from the CIA but func­tioned under the cov­er of his par­tic­u­lar office and branch of gov­ern­ment. Such “breed­ing,” Prouty said decades lat­er in an inter­view, result­ed in a web of covert CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tives “in the State Depart­ment, in the FAA, in the Cus­toms Ser­vice, in the Trea­sury, in the FBI and all around through the government–up in the White House . . . Then we began to assign peo­ple there who, those agen­cies thought, were from the Defense Depart­ment. But they actu­al­ly were peo­ple that we put there from the CIA.”

The con­se­quence in the ear­ly 1960’s, when Kennedy became pres­i­dent, was that the CIA had placed a secret team of its own employ­ees through the entire U.S. gov­ern­ment. It was account­able to no one except the CIA, head­ed by Allen Dulles. After Dulles was fired by Kennedy, the CIA’s Deputy Direc­tor of Plans, Richard Helms, became this invis­i­ble gov­ern­men­t’s imme­di­ate com­man­der. No one except a tight inner cir­cle of the CIA even knew of the exis­tence of this top-secret intel­li­gence net­work, much less the iden­tiy of its deep-cov­er bureau­crats. These CIA “focal points,” as Dulles called them, con­sti­tut­ed a pow­er­ful, unseen gov­ern­ment with­in the gov­ern­ment. Its Dulles-appoint­ed mem­bers would act quick­ly, with total obe­di­ence, when called on by the CIA to assist its covert oper­a­tions. . . .

2. As we exam­ine the per­son­nel and insti­tu­tions com­pris­ing “Team Snow­den,” we come to a milieu that has evolved from the CIA’s radio pro­pa­gan­da and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare capa­bil­i­ties.

An exten­sion of the CIA’s pro­pa­gan­da and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare broad­cast­ing infra­struc­ture devel­oped dur­ing the Cold War, the milieu detailed here func­tions in a sim­i­lar fash­ion. The inter­net is the lat­est form of broad­cast­ing. The Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund and relat­ed insti­tu­tions are designed to pro­vide dis­si­dents and covert oper­a­tors a means of shield­ing their inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mobile phone mes­sages from sur­veil­lance by tar­get­ed gov­ern­ments. The prob­a­bil­i­ty is strong that U.S. intel­li­gence can mon­i­tor those com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

In our past dis­cus­sions of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, we have not­ed that the very same covert action net­works used to over­throw and elim­i­nate gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als deemed hos­tile to U.S. inter­ests were ulti­mate­ly deployed against Amer­i­cans and even the Unit­ed States itself. “Regime change” and desta­bi­liza­tion came home.

In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that a CIA-derived tech­nol­o­gy milieu devel­oped to assist and effect “ops” abroad was used to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. (There is MUCH more to “L’Af­faire Snow­den” than just the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er that is a major and ongo­ing out­growth of it.

” . . . Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­ganda out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Internet’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists. . . . 

. . . . Though many of the apps and tech backed by Radio Free Asia’s OTF are unknown to the gen­eral pub­lic, they are high­ly respect­ed and extreme­ly pop­u­lar among the anti-sur­veil­lance Inter­net activist crowd. OTF-fund­ed apps have been rec­om­mended by Edward Snow­den, cov­ered favor­ably by ProP­ub­lica and The New York Times’ tech­nol­ogy reporters, and repeat­edly pro­moted by the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Every­one seems to agree that OTF-fund­ed pri­vacy apps offer some of the best pro­tec­tion from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance you can get. In fact, just about all the fea­tured open-source apps on EFF’s recent “Secure Mes­sag­ing Score­card” were fund­ed by OTF. . . .

. . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .”

There are numer­ous ref­er­ences to the Tor net­work in this arti­cle. Although we do not have the time to go into it in this pro­gram, the Tor net­work is dis­cussed at length in the link that fol­lows. Suf­fice it to say that the Tor net­work was devel­oped by U.S. intel­li­gence ser­vices and, to no one’s sur­prise, is being mon­i­tored by intel­li­gence ser­vices, includ­ing the NSA.

“Inter­net Pri­vacy, Fund­ed by Spooks: A Brief His­tory of the BBG” by Yasha Levine; Pan­do Dai­ly; 3/01/2015. 

For the past few months I’ve been cov­er­ing U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of pop­u­lar Inter­net pri­vacy tools like Tor, Cryp­to­Cat and Open Whis­per Sys­tems. Dur­ing my report­ing, one agency in par­tic­u­lar keeps pop­ping up: An agency with one of those real­ly bland names that masks its wild, bizarre his­tory: the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, or BBG.

The BBG was formed in 1999 and runs on a $721 mil­lion annu­al bud­get. It reports direct­ly to Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry and oper­ates like a hold­ing com­pany for a host of Cold War-era CIA spin­offs and old school “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” projects: Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Martí, Voice of Amer­ica, Radio Lib­er­a­tion from Bol­she­vism (since renamed “Radio Lib­erty”) and a dozen oth­er gov­ern­ment-fund­ed radio sta­tions and media out­lets pump­ing out pro-Amer­i­can pro­pa­ganda across the globe.

Today, the Con­gres­sion­al­ly-fund­ed fed­eral agency is also one of the biggest back­ers of grass­roots and open-source Inter­net pri­vacy tech­nol­ogy. These invest­ments start­ed in 2012, when the BBG launched the “Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund” (OTF) — an ini­tia­tive housed with­in and run by Radio Free Asia (RFA), a pre­mier BBG prop­erty that broad­casts into com­mu­nist coun­tries like North Korea, Viet­nam, Laos, Chi­na and Myan­mar. The BBG endowed Radio Free Asia’s Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund with a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar bud­get and a sin­gle task: “to ful­fill the U.S. Con­gres­sional glob­al man­date for Inter­net free­dom.”

It’s already a mouth­ful of prover­bial Wash­ing­ton alpha­bet soup — Con­gress funds BBG to fund RFA to fund OTF — but, regard­less of which sub-group ulti­mately writes the check, the impor­tant thing to under­stand is that all this fed­eral gov­ern­ment mon­ey flows, direct­ly or indi­rectly, from the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors.

Between 2012 and 2014, Radio Free Asia’s Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund poured more than $10 mil­lion into Inter­net pri­vacy projects big and small: open-source encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion apps, next-gen­er­a­tion secure email ini­tia­tives, anti-cen­sor­ship mesh net­work­ing plat­forms, encryp­tion secu­rity audits, secure cloud host­ing, a net­work of “high-capac­i­ty” Tor exit nodes and even an anony­mous Tor-based tool for leak­ers and whistle­blow­ers that com­peted with Wik­ileaks.

Though many of the apps and tech backed by Radio Free Asia’s OTF are unknown to the gen­eral pub­lic, they are high­ly respect­ed and extreme­ly pop­u­lar among the anti-sur­veil­lance Inter­net activist crowd. OTF-fund­ed apps have been rec­om­mended by Edward Snow­den, cov­ered favor­ably by ProP­ub­lica and The New York Times’ tech­nol­ogy reporters, and repeat­edly pro­moted by the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Every­one seems to agree that OTF-fund­ed pri­vacy apps offer some of the best pro­tec­tion from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance you can get. In fact, just about all the fea­tured open-source apps on EFF’s recent “Secure Mes­sag­ing Score­card” were fund­ed by OTF.

Here’s a small sam­ple of what the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors fund­ed (through Radio Free Asia and then through the Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund) between 2012 and 2014:

* Open Whis­per Sys­tems, mak­er of free encrypt­ed text and voice mobile apps like TextSe­cure and Signal/RedPhone, got a gen­er­ous $1.35-million infu­sion. (Face­book recent­ly start­ed using Open Whis­per Sys­tems to secure its What­sApp mes­sages.)
* Cryp­to­Cat, an encrypt­ed chat app made by Nadim Kobeis­si and pro­moted by EFF, received $184,000.
* LEAP, an email encryp­tion start­up, got just over $1 mil­lion. LEAP is cur­rently being used to run secure VPN ser­vices at RiseUp.net, the rad­i­cal anar­chist com­mu­ni­ca­tion col­lec­tive.
* A Wik­ileaks alter­na­tive called Glob­aLeaks (which was endorsed by the folks at Tor, includ­ing Jacob Appel­baum) received just under $350,000.
* The Guardian Project — which makes an encrypt­ed chat app called Chat­Se­cure, as well a mobile ver­sion of Tor called Orbot — got $388,500.
* The Tor Project received over $1 mil­lion from OTF to pay for secu­rity audits, traf­fic analy­sis tools and set up fast Tor exit nodes in the Mid­dle East and South East Asia.

In 2014, Con­gress mas­sively upped the BBG’s “Inter­net free­dom” bud­get to $25 mil­lion, with half of that mon­ey flow­ing through RFA and into the Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund. This $12.75 mil­lion rep­re­sented a three-fold increase in OTF’s bud­get from 2013 — a con­sid­er­able expan­sion for an out­fit that was just a few years old. Clear­ly, it’s doing some­thing that the gov­ern­ment likes. A lot.

With those resources, the Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund’s moth­er-agency, Radio Free Asia, plans to cre­ate a ver­ti­cally inte­grated incu­ba­tor for bud­ding pri­vacy tech­nol­o­gists around the globe — pro­vid­ing every­thing from train­ing and men­tor­ship, to offer­ing them a secure glob­al cloud host­ing envi­ron­ment to run their apps, to legal assis­tance.

... Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­ganda out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Internet’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists.

But, as folks in the open-source pri­vacy com­mu­nity will tell you, fund­ing for open-source encryp­tion/an­ti-sur­veil­lance tech has been hard to come by. So they’ve wel­comed mon­ey from Radio Free Asia’s Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund with open pock­ets. Devel­op­ers and groups sub­mit­ted their projects for fund­ing, while lib­er­tar­i­ans and anti-gov­ern­men­t/an­ti-sur­veil­lance activists enthu­si­as­ti­cally joined OTF’s advi­sory coun­cil, sit­ting along­side rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Google and the US State Depart­ment, tech lob­by­ists, and mil­i­tary con­sul­tants.

But why is a fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed CIA spin­off with decades of expe­ri­ence in “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” sud­denly blow­ing tens of mil­lions in gov­ern­ment funds on pri­vacy tools meant to pro­tect peo­ple from being sur­veilled by anoth­er arm of the very same gov­ern­ment? To answer that ques­tion, we have to pull the cam­era back and exam­ine how all of those Cold War pro­pa­ganda out­lets begat the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors begat Radio Free Asia begat the Open Tech­nol­ogy Fund. The sto­ry begins in the late 1940’s.

The ori­gins of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors

The Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors traces its begin­nings to the ear­ly Cold War years, as a covert pro­pa­ganda project of the new­ly-cre­at­ed Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency to wage “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” against Com­mu­nist regimes and oth­ers deemed a threat to US inter­ests.

George Ken­nan — the key archi­tect of post-WWII for­eign pol­icy — pushed for expand­ing the role of covert peace­time pro­grams. And so, in 1948, Nation­al Secu­rity Coun­cil Direc­tive 10/2 offi­cially autho­rized the CIA to engage in “covert oper­a­tions” against the Com­mu­nist Men­ace. Clause 5 of the direc­tivee defined “covert oper­a­tions” as “pro­pa­ganda, eco­nomic war­fare; pre­ven­tive direct action, includ­ing sab­o­tage, anti-sab­o­tage, demo­li­tion and evac­u­a­tion mea­sures; sub­ver­sion against hos­tile states, includ­ing assis­tance to under­ground resis­tance move­ments, guer­ril­las and refugee lib­er­a­tion groups, and sup­port of indige­nous anti-com­mu­nist ele­ments in threat­ened coun­tries of the free world.”

Pro­pa­ganda quick­ly became one of the key weapons in the CIA’s covert oper­a­tions arse­nal. The agency estab­lished and fund­ed radio sta­tions, news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, his­tor­i­cal soci­eties, emi­gre “research insti­tutes,” and cul­tural pro­grams all over Europe. In many cas­es, it fun­neled mon­ey to out­fits run and staffed by known World War II war crim­i­nals and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, both in Europe and here in the Unit­ed States.

Christo­pher Simp­son, author of “Blow­back: America’s Recruit­ment of Nazis and Its Destruc­tive Impact on Our Domes­tic and For­eign Pol­icy”, details the extent of these “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare projects”:

CIA-fund­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare projects employ­ing East­ern Euro­pean émi­grés became major oper­a­tions dur­ing the 1950s, con­sum­ing tens and even hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars. . . .This includ­ed under­writ­ing most of the French Paix et Lib­erté move­ment, pay­ing the bills of the Ger­man League for Strug­gle Against Inhu­man­ity , and financ­ing a half dozen free jurists asso­ci­a­tions, a vari­ety of Euro­pean fed­er­al­ist groups, the Con­gress for Cul­tural Free­dom, mag­a­zines, news ser­vices, book pub­lish­ers, and much more. These were very broad pro­grams designed to influ­ence world pub­lic opin­ion at vir­tu­ally every lev­el, from illit­er­ate peas­ants in the fields to the most sophis­ti­cated schol­ars in pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties. They drew on a wide range of resources: labor unions, adver­tis­ing agen­cies, col­lege pro­fes­sors, jour­nal­ists, and stu­dent lead­ers, to name a few. [empha­sis added]

In Europe, the CIA set up “Radio Free Europe” and “Radio Lib­er­a­tion From Bol­she­vism” (lat­er renamed “Radio Lib­erty”), which beamed pro­pa­ganda in sev­eral lan­guages into the Sovi­et Union and Sovi­et satel­lite states of East­ern Europe. The CIA lat­er expand­ed its radio pro­pa­ganda oper­a­tions into Asia, tar­get­ing com­mu­nist Chi­na, North Korea and Viet­nam. The spy agency also fund­ed sev­eral radio projects aimed at sub­vert­ing left­ist gov­ern­ments in Cen­tral and South Amer­ica, includ­ing Radio Free Cuba and Radio Swan— which was run by the CIA and employed some of the same Cuban exiles that took part in the failed Bay of Pigs inva­sion. Even today, the CIA boasts that these ear­ly “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” projects “would become one of the longest run­ning and suc­cess­ful covert action cam­paigns ever mount­ed by the Unit­ed States.”

Offi­cially, the CIA’s direct role in this glob­al “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” project dimin­ished in the 1970s, after the spy agency’s ties to Cold War pro­pa­ganda arms like Radio Free Europe were exposed. Con­gress agreed to take over fund­ing of these projects from the CIA, and even­tu­ally Wash­ing­ton expand­ed them into a mas­sive fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed pro­pa­ganda appa­ra­tus.

The names of the var­i­ous CIA spin­offs and non­prof­its changed over the years, cul­mi­nat­ing in a 1999 reor­ga­ni­za­tion under Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton which cre­ated the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, a par­ent hold­ing com­pany to group new broad­cast­ing oper­a­tions around the world togeth­er with Cold War-era pro­pa­ganda out­fits with spooky pasts—including Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­erty, Voice of Amer­ica and Radio Free Asia.

Today, the BBG has a $721 mil­lion bud­get pro­vided by Con­gress, reports to the Sec­re­tary of State and is man­aged by a revolv­ing crew of neo­cons and mil­i­tary think-tank experts. Among them: Ken­neth Wein­stein, head of the Hud­son Insti­tute, the arch-con­ser­v­a­tive Cold War-era mil­i­tary think tank; and Ryan C. Crock­er, for­mer ambas­sador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syr­ia.

Although today’s BBG is no longer covert­ly fund­ed via the CIA’s black bud­get, its role as a soft pow­er “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” oper­a­tion hasn’t real­ly changed since its incep­tion. The BBG and its sub­sidiaries still engage in pro­pa­ganda war­fare, sub­ver­sion and soft-pow­er pro­jec­tion against coun­tries and for­eign polit­i­cal move­ments deemed hos­tile to US inter­ests. And it is still deeply inter­twined with the same mil­i­tary and CIA-con­nect­ed intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tions — from USAID to DARPA to the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy. . . .

3a. We review analy­sis of the Cru­sade For Freedom–the covert oper­a­tion that brought Third Reich alum­ni into the coun­try and also sup­port­ed their gueril­la war­fare in East­ern Europe, con­duct­ed up until the ear­ly 1950’s. Con­ceived by Allen Dulles, over­seen by Richard Nixon, pub­licly rep­re­sent­ed by Ronald Rea­gan and real­ized in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by William Casey, the CFF ulti­mate­ly evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP. The events reviewed here took place at the same time as the gen­e­sis of the CIA’s broad­cast pro­pa­gan­da fronts were evolv­ing. Those pro­pa­gan­da fronts evolved into the BBG, the OTF and the milieu of Snow­den and the “pri­va­cy advo­cates.”

The Secret War Against the Jews; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; [HC] ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; pp. 122–123.

. . . . Frus­tra­tion over Truman’s 1948 elec­tion vic­to­ry over Dewey (which they blamed on the “Jew­ish vote”) impelled Dulles and his pro­tégé Richard Nixon to work toward the real­iza­tion of the fas­cist free­dom fight­er pres­ence in the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion. As a young con­gress­man, Nixon had been Allen Dulles’s con­fi­dant. They both blamed Gov­er­nor Dewey’s razor-thin loss to Tru­man in the 1948 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on the Jew­ish vote. When he became Eisenhower’s vice pres­i­dent in 1952, Nixon was deter­mined to build his own eth­nic base. . . .

. . . . Vice Pres­i­dent Nixon’s secret polit­i­cal war of Nazis against Jews in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics was nev­er inves­ti­gat­ed at the time. The for­eign lan­guage-speak­ing Croa­t­ians and oth­er Fas­cist émi­gré groups had a ready-made net­work for con­tact­ing and mobi­liz­ing the East­ern Euro­pean eth­nic bloc. There is a very high cor­re­la­tion between CIA domes­tic sub­si­dies to Fas­cist ‘free­dom fight­ers’ dur­ing the 1950’s and the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic cam­paign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financ­ing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to off­set the Jew­ish vote for the Democ­rats. . . .

. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Eth­nic Divi­sion with­in the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Dis­placed fas­cists, hop­ing to be returned to pow­er by an Eisen­how­er-Nixon ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­i­cy signed on with the com­mit­tee. In 1953, when Repub­li­cans were in office, the immi­gra­tion laws were changed to admit Nazis, even mem­bers of the SS. They flood­ed into the coun­try. Nixon him­self over­saw the new immi­gra­tion pro­gram. As Vice Pres­i­dent, he even received East­ern Euro­pean Fas­cists in the White House. . .

3b. More about the com­po­si­tion of the cast of the CFF: Note that the ascen­sion of the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion was essen­tial­ly the ascen­sion of the Naz­i­fied GOP, embod­ied in the CFF milieu. Rea­gan (spokesman for CFF) was Pres­i­dent; George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA head­quar­ters is named) was the Vice Pres­i­dent; William Casey (who han­dled the State Depart­ment machi­na­tions to bring these peo­ple into the Unit­ed States) was Rea­gan’s cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er his CIA direc­tor.

For our pur­pos­es here, note the posi­tion of Radio Lib­er­ty in this con­stel­la­tion. Again, that is part of the array of CIA broad­cast­ing enti­ties that evolved into the milieu of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook.

The Secret War Against the Jews; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; [HC] ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; p. 605.

. . . . As a young movie actor in the ear­ly 1950s, Rea­gan was employed as the pub­lic spokesper­son for an OPC front named the ‘Cru­sade for Free­dom.’ Rea­gan may not have known it, but 99 per­cent for the Crusade’s funds came from clan­des­tine accounts, which were then laun­dered through the Cru­sade to var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions such as Radio Lib­er­ty, which employed Dulles’s Fas­cists. Bill Casey, who lat­er became CIA direc­tor under Ronald Rea­gan, also worked in Ger­many after World War II on Dulles’ Nazi ‘free­dom fight­ers’ pro­gram. When he returned to New York, Casey head­ed up anoth­er OPC front, the Inter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee, which spon­sored the immi­gra­tion of these Fas­cists to the Unit­ed States. Casey’s com­mit­tee replaced the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross as the spon­sor for Dulles’s recruits. Con­fi­den­tial inter­views, for­mer mem­bers, OPC; for­mer mem­bers, British for­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office. . . .

3c. Next, the show excerpts AFA #3, detail­ing the Gehlen involve­ment with the devel­op­ment of the CIA psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare broad­cast­ing out­fits.

3d. Next the pro­gram cov­ers an aspect of the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion which has received lit­tle dis­cus­sion in these pages–its work for Army Intel­li­gence pri­or to going to work for the CIA. Note the dom­i­nant pres­ence of SS offi­cers in the “Org” and the rup­ture between Army intel­li­gence once the treach­er­ous nature of the Gehlen group became known. ” . . . A net­work of for­mer Nazi intel­li­gence agents, the major­i­ty of whom were mem­bers of the SS, began work­ing out of offices at Camp King side by side with army intel­li­gence offi­cers. . . . The Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion was a mur­der­ous bunch, “free-wheel­ing” and out of con­trol. . . The army became fed up with the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion, but there was no way out. Its oper­a­tives were pro­fes­sion­al dou­ble-crossers and liars–many were also alleged war criminals–and now they had the army over a bar­rel. . . .”

Oper­a­tion Paper­clip by Annie Jacob­sen; Lit­tle Brown [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Ann M. Jacob­sen; ISBN 978–0‑316–22104‑7; pp. 319–320.

. . . . Gehlen had been in the Unit­ed States under inter­ro­ga­tion since 1945. Here, at Oberursel, Army Intel­li­gence decid­ed to make Gehlen head of its entire “anti-Com­mu­nist intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion,” under the code name Oper­a­tion Rusty. Even­tu­al­ly, the orga­ni­za­tion would become known sim­ply as the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion. A net­work of for­mer Nazi intel­li­gence agents, the major­i­ty of whom were mem­bers of the SS, began work­ing out of offices at Camp King side by side with army intel­li­gence offi­cers. Colonel [William Rus­sell] Philp was in charge of over­all super­vi­sion.

By late 1947, the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion got­ten so large it required its own head­quar­ters. Army intel­li­gence moved the orga­ni­za­tion to a self-con­tained facil­i­ty out­side Munich, in a vil­lage called Pul­lach. This com­pound was the for­mer estate of Mar­tin Bor­mann [!–D.E.] and had large grounds, sculp­ture gar­dens, and a pool. . . . Accord­ing to doc­u­ments kept clas­si­fied for fify-one years, rela­tions between Gehlen and Philp declined and became hos­tile Philp final­ly real­ized the true nature of who he was deal­ing with. The Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion was a mur­der­ous bunch, “free-wheel­ing” and out of con­trol. As one CIA affil­i­ate observed, “Amer­i­can intel­li­gence is a rich blind man using the Abwehr as a see­ing-eye dog. The only trou­ble is–the leash is much too long.”

The army became fed up with the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion, but there was no way out. Its oper­a­tives were pro­fes­sion­al dou­ble-crossers and liars–many were also alleged war criminals–and now they had the army over a bar­rel. Decades lat­er, it would emere that Gen­er­al Gehlen was report­ed­ly earn­ing a mil­lion dol­lars a year. [A LOT of mon­ey in the late ’40s and ear­ly ’50s–D.E.] . . .

3e. In FTR #‘s 278, 370, 435 and 475, we dis­cussed the Bush fam­i­ly, their links to Nazi indus­try and Mr. Emory’s belief that the Bush fam­i­ly is the point ele­ment of the Bor­mann net­work in the U.S. FTR #370, in par­tic­u­lar, high­lights the vio­lent cov­er-up of the Bush family/Thyssen link. Note that Bor­mann saw Fritz Thyssen as a pipeline to Allen Dulles.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 254.

. . . . Also, Bor­mann felt [Fritz] Thyssen was his ace in the hole if he ever need­ed a pipeline to Allen W. Dulles. . . .

3f. Much of the dis­cus­sion that fol­lows con­cerns Dulles’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Rein­hard Gehlen. Note that Gehlen cleared his actions with Admi­ral Doenitz (Hitler’s suc­ces­sor) and Gen­er­al Franz Halder, indi­cat­ing that the Ger­man chain of com­mand was still in effect even after Gehlen began work­ing with the U.S.

“The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt” by Carl Ogles­by; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin;  #35 (Fall of 1990.)

Gehlen met with Admi­ral Karl Doenitz, who had been appoint­ed by Hitler as his suc­ces­sor dur­ing the last days of the Third Reich. Gehlen and the Admi­ral were now in a U.S. Army VIP prison camp in Wies­baden; Gehlen sought and received approval from Doenitz too! . . .⁴⁴ 

. . . . As Gehlen was about to leave for the Unit­ed States, he left a mes­sage for Baun with anoth­er of his top aides, Ger­hard Wes­sel: “I am to tell you from Gehlen that he has dis­cussed with [Hitler’s suc­ces­sor Admi­ral Karl] Doenitz and [Gehlen’s supe­rior and chief of staff Gen­eral Franz] Halder the ques­tion of con­tin­u­ing his work with the Amer­i­cans. Both were in agree­ment.”

In oth­er words, the Ger­man chain of com­mand was still in effect, and it approved of what Gehlen was doing with the Amer­i­cans. . . .

3g. While serv­ing in his capac­i­ty as direc­tor of secu­ri­ty for the Bor­mann organization—the NSDAP in exile and its eco­nom­ic infrastructure—former Gestapo chief Hein­rich Mueller worked close­ly with US intel­li­gence, the CIA, in par­tic­u­lar.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 211.

. . . . The CIA could have pulled aside the gray cur­tain that obscured Bormann—at any time. But the CIA and Mueller’s crack orga­ni­za­tion of for­mer SS men found it to their mutu­al advan­tage to coop­er­ate in many sit­u­a­tions. There is no moral­i­ty in the sense that most of us know it in the strange world of pro­fes­sion­al secre­cy, and when it was to the advan­tage of each to work togeth­er they did so. . . .

3h. As might be sur­mised, Mueller’s oper­a­tives also worked with the orga­ni­za­tion of Rein­hard Gehlen.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 273.

. . . . Even Gen­er­al Gehlen, when he was chief of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic’s intel­li­gence ser­vice, sent his agents to con­fer with Gen­er­al Hein­rich Mueller in South Amer­i­ca. . . .

3i. Prescott Bush, Sr. was the Sen­ate’s liai­son with Dulles’s CIA.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 249–250.

 . . . . Dulles’s CIA oper­at­ed with vir­tu­al­ly no con­gres­sion­al over­sight. In the Sen­ate, Dulles relied on Wall Street friends like Prescott Bush of Connecticut–the father and grand­fa­ther of two future presidents–to pro­tect the CIA’s inter­ests. Accord­ing to CIA vet­er­an Robert Crow­ley, who rose to become sec­ond-in-com­mand of the CIA’s action arm, Bush “was the day-to-day con­tact man for the CIA. It was very bipar­ti­san and friend­ly. Dulles felt that he had the Sen­ate just where he want­ed them.” . . . .

3j. In Gold War­riors, we looked at the use of Gold­en Lily and Black Eagle Trust loot as a finan­cial engine for U.S. covert oper­a­tions dur­ing the Cold War. Inevitably the use of these monies would have need­ed the OK of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann net­work and would have result­ed in even deep­er pen­e­tra­tion of the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment by the Under­ground Reich’s fifth col­umn.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 27–29.

“. . . . More­over, like many in the upper ech­e­lons of U.S. finance and nation­al secu­ri­ty, Dulles believed that a good num­ber of these pow­er­ful Ger­man fig­ures should be returned to pow­er, to ensure that Ger­many would be a strong bul­wark against the Sovi­et Union. And dur­ing the Cold War, he would be more intent on using Nazi loot to finance covert anti-Sovi­et oper­a­tions than on return­ing it to the fam­i­lies of Hitler’s vic­tims. .  . .”

4. Check out the lat­est Omid­yar Fel­low:

“What the Hell? Pierre Omid­yar Selects One of Edward Snowden’s For­mer Booz Allen Boss­es to Be an Omid­yar Fel­low;” by Mark Ames; Pan­do Dai­ly; 10/16/2015.

Edward Snow­den was a Booz Allen Hamil­ton employ­ee in Hawaii when he worked as a sub­con­trac­tor for the Nation­al Secu­rity Agency and made off with hun­dreds of thou­sands of the spy agency’s files.

Booz Allen, “the world’s most prof­itable spy orga­ni­za­tion,”is one of the NSA’s lead­ing pri­vate con­trac­tors; the direc­tor of US intel­li­gence, James Clap­per, was a Booz Allen exec­u­tive, and for­mer NSA direc­tor Michael McConnell is now a Booz Allen VP.

In oth­er words, if you con­sider your­self an Edward Snow­den sup­porter in any way, Booz Allen is the ene­my.

So it may come as a sur­prise that bil­lion­aire Pierre Omid­yar — pub­lisher of The Inter­cept, which owns the only com­plete cache of Snowden’s NSA secrets; financier of the Free­dom of The Press Foun­da­tion, where Snow­den serves on the board of direc­tors— has just select­ed one of Snowden’s for­mer boss­es at Booz Allen’s Hawaii branch to join the Omid­yar Fel­lowspro­gram.

His name is Robert Liet­zke, and he’s a “prin­ci­pal” at Booz Allen’s Hawaii branch, where he’s worked for over 15 years. In 2008, Liet­zke was report­ed in the local Hawai­ian press as one of “three prin­ci­pals [run­ning] day to day oper­a­tions” at Booz Allen’s Hawaii branch. Lietzke’s spe­cialty at Booz is infor­ma­tion sys­tems and tech­nol­ogy, Snowden’s field. Before he joined Booz Allen, Liet­zke was a com­puter sys­tems offi­cer in the US Air Force from 1989 through 1999.

After join­ing Booz’s Hawaii branch, Liet­zke worked “sup­port” for the US Pacif­ic Com­mand, head­quar­tered out­side of Hon­olulu, on pro­tect­ing crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture and net­work oper­a­tions.

Ironically—as if there isn’t already an entire aster­oid belt of irony in this story—Lietzke was fea­tured in a 2009 sto­ry on how dif­fer­ent Hawaii com­pa­nies learned to suc­cess­fully man­age their employ­ees and build cor­po­rate cama­raderie. Under the sub-head­er “Employ­ee Feed­back,” Hawaii Busi­ness Mag­a­zine report­ed:

“In a firm that employs 18,000 peo­ple world­wide, it’s easy to feel like a small voice that will nev­er be heard by ‘The Man.’ But at Booz Allen Hamil­ton, a tech­nol­ogy con­sult­ing firm that main­ly ser­vices the U.S. mil­i­tary, employ­ees feel that high­er-ups are lis­ten­ing.

“One way employ­ees pro­vide feed­back is through a ‘peo­ple strat­egy’ sur­vey every two years. ‘One of the things I’ve noticed is that the response rate is very, very high for that sur­vey,’ says Bob Liet­zke, prin­ci­pal at BAH’s Hon­olulu office. ‘It cer­tainly takes in inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions with­in the firm, folks talk­ing from the top all the way down, and this is real­ly your chance to be heard. I think it’s impor­tant that lead­er­ship stress­es it and, more impor­tantly, peo­ple are see­ing that there’s action tak­en after it.’”

Speak­ing of “The Man”: Lietzke’s descrip­tion of his cyber-intel­li­gence exper­tise on his LinkedIn page gives a pret­ty good indi­ca­tion of just how close his and Snowden’s paths would’ve crossed when Snow­den worked for Booz Allen in 2013:

“At Booz Allen Bob is apply­ing his knowl­edge of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems and joint mil­i­tary oper­a­tions to emerg­ing nation­al efforts in Mis­sion Assur­ance. He pro­vides strate­gic plan­ning and devel­op­ment guid­ance to a vari­ety of clients in the areas of Crit­i­cal Infra­struc­ture Pro­tec­tion (CIP), NetOps, and Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance (IA). In addi­tion, he cur­rently man­ages a wide vari­ety of client sup­port projects in the areas of Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance (IA), CIP, Anti-Ter­ror­is­m/­Force Pro­tec­tion (AT/FP), Home­land Defense (HLD), and Con­ti­nu­ity of Oper­a­tion Plan­ning (COOP). In sup­port of these engage­ments he is help­ing clients devel­op an enter­prise wide approach to risk man­age­ment. Bob cur­rently holds a Top Secret (TS/SCI) Secu­rity clearance.Specialties:Information Assur­ance, NetOps, Crit­i­cal Infra­struc­ture Pro­tec­tion, Cyber Secu­rity.”

In oth­er words, every two-three-and-four-let­ter cyber-mil­i­tary acronym in the book... except for the three-let­ter agency that starts with “N”.

Omid­yar Fel­lows: “Once a Fel­low, Always a Fel­low”

Every year since 2012, Hawaii’s rich­est res­i­dent, Pierre Omid­yar, selects around a dozen peo­ple from Hawaii’s busi­ness, non­profit, and gov­ern­ment sec­tors to become Omid­yar Fel­lows and form a kind of unof­fi­cial club of Hawaii’s future lead­ers.

In a local Hawaii TV news seg­ment on Omid­yar Fel­lows, the program’s direc­tor described how each Fel­low must con­duct a “gru­elling” inter­view with Pierre Omid­yar him­self:

“Yeah, the inter­views are pret­ty tough. In-per­son inter­views with the board of five direc­tors.”

“With Pierre?”

“With Pierre, yeah. It was great, yeah. I think the Fel­lows them­selves learned a lot—about them­selves.”

“They were a lit­tle over­whelmed?”

“Yeah, a bit. A bit. It was great, ha-ha!”

The appli­ca­tion process for the Omid­yar Fel­lows’ 15-month pro­gram is designed to be rig­or­ous. Your com­pany must spon­sor your appli­ca­tion, which requires per­sonal tes­ti­monies and let­ters from your com­pany CEO.

Accord­ing to the web­site,

Omid­yar Fel­lows need the full endorse­ment of their cur­rent employ­ers and must be able to par­tic­i­pate in all the activ­i­ties of the pro­gram. The spon­sor will rec­og­nize the ben­e­fit to the orga­ni­za­tion of a Fellow’s lead­er­ship devel­op­ment and be will­ing to hold the Fel­low account­able for putting his/her learn­ing to work.

This includes a “let­ter of sup­port from your chief exec­u­tive” that explains “why you are a cur­rent and future leader in your orga­ni­za­tion and how your growth might con­tinue beyond the pro­gram.” Mean­ing, pre­sum­ably, that Booz Allen CEO Hora­cio Rozan­ski wrote to Omidyar’s peo­ple push­ing for them to select his top Hawaii exec­u­tive as an Omid­yar Fel­low.

[Pan­do reached out to Booz Allen’s Hawaii office and to Omid­yar Fel­lows for this sto­ry, but received no com­ment.]

Snowden’s for­mer Booz Allen boss, Liet­zke, was also required to sub­mit, among oth­er things, a 1500 word essay address­ing themes such as,

* What does it mean to be a leader in 21st-cen­tu­ry Hawaii?

* How will the Omid­yar Fel­lows pro­gram help you to achieve your pro­fes­sional aspi­ra­tions?

* How will the Omid­yar Fel­lows pro­gram help you to achieve your aspi­ra­tions for the larg­er com­mu­nity and the peo­ple of Hawaii?

Those lucky few select­ed to join the Omid­yar Fel­lows pro­gram spend the next 15 months in a lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gram that com­bines some of Omidyar’s own New Age fetish­es – as skew­ered by Ken Sil­ver­stein and in Van­ity Fair— with more tra­di­tional pow­er-net­work­ing and rela­tion­ship-build­ing events. When they com­plete the pro­gram, they join what is called the “Forum of Fel­lows”:

Once a Fel­low, always a Fel­low… The for­mal pro­gram is just the begin­ning of a life­long com­mit­ment by Omid­yar Fel­lows to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence with the knowl­edge and net­work gained and to help sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of emerg­ing lead­ers.

In oth­er words, Omid­yar is build­ing a kind of local Hawai­ian cadre of lead­ers and net­worked exec­u­tives under his brand name and sponsorship—a kind of elite Cham­ber of Com­merce loy­al to Omid­yar and imbued with his New Age lib­er­tar­ian faith.

Hired Spies: More Omid­yar-Booz Allen

I asked nation­al secu­rity inves­tiga­tive reporter Tim Shorrock, the fore­most expert on pri­vate con­trac­tors and the NSA and author of “Spies For Hire” for his take on Omid­yar cozy­ing up with one of the heads of the Booz Allen branch where Snow­den worked.

Shorrock point­ed me to Omidyar’s Ulupono Ini­tia­tive in Hawaii, a mul­ti­fac­eted ven­ture cap­i­tal fund that oper­ates in Omidyar’s home state much the way his Omid­yar Net­work oper­ates in coun­tries around the world, seek­ing both prof­its and polit­i­cal influ­ence. Kyle Dat­ta, who serves as Gen­eral Part­ner at Omidyar’s Ulupono Ini­tia­tive, is a for­mer Booz Allen vice pres­i­dent.

Shorrock also point­ed me to a major Pen­ta­gon con­trac­tor expo in Hawaii that Omid­yar has been co-spon­sor­ing his Ulupono Ini­tia­tive for the past few years with the likes of Lock­heed Mar­tin, Hon­ey­well, and NSTXL  (Nation­al Secu­rity Tech­nol­ogy Accel­er­a­tor) — the Defense Department’s ver­sion of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel.

Says Shorrock:

“Omidyar’s rela­tion­ship with Booz Allen Hamil­ton would be per­fect for the link-analy­sis style of report­ing on politi­cians and pub­lic fig­ures we see in his pet jour­nal­is­tic project, The Inter­cept.

“This is the sec­ond senior Booz exec­u­tive he’s tak­en under his wing....Kyle Dat­ta, who has direct­ed Ulupono’s invest­ment strate­gies since 2009, once did the same for Booz, where he ran the contractor’s ener­gy prac­tice.

“Under Dat­ta, Ulupono was a lead spon­sor in 2014 for a big ‘ener­gy sum­mit,’ where its part­ners includ­ed the Pen­ta­gon, Lock­heed Mar­tin and Hon­ey­well. That makes sense, because as a major play­er in Hawaii’s ener­gy mar­kets, Ulupono main­tains close ties with the state’s enor­mous mil­i­tary indus­trial com­plex.”

“Part of its 2014 sum­mit includ­ed a DoD ‘indus­try day’ co-spon­sored by Ulupono, its part­ners, and the Unit­ed States Pacif­ic Com­mand, which is based on Hawaii but con­trols all US mil­i­tary forces through­out the Asia-Pacif­ic area. It includ­ed pre­sen­ta­tions on ‘the mechan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and con­trol sys­tem design for cyber-secure micro­grids and will address the costs and ben­e­fits includ­ing the cost of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty.’

“Now Omid­yar has brought in Robert Liet­zke, anoth­er Booz exec and a for­mer Air Force offi­cer, into his oper­a­tions. These rela­tion­ships with Booz raise ques­tions about Omidyar’s deci­sion to invest in the Snow­den doc­u­ments and cre­ate The Inter­cept. Did he ‘vet’ Snow­den — who for­merly worked for Booz in Hawaii — with Dat­ta or Liet­zke before he plopped down that $250 mil­lion for the Snow­den depos­i­tory at First Look? Did either exec­u­tive know or work with Snow­den when he was employed by Booz in Hawaii?”

Strict­ly Busi­ness?

Shorrock’s ques­tion is the one we’re all try­ing to make sense of: Why would Omid­yar both court and devel­op Edward Snowden’s for­mer boss and employ­er at Booz Allen, and also set up an “adver­sar­ial” media com­pany based on the NSA leaks tak­en by Booz Allen Hawaii’s for­mer employ­ee, Edward Snow­den? Is the eBay bil­lion­aire just trolling us? Is his Kit­to Man­dala char­ac­ter tak­ing over Omidyar’s ves­sel and play­ing tricks on the rest of us?

This is one of those cas­es where you prob­a­bly should start with the sim­plest answer, and the sim­plest answer here is: It’s strict­ly busi­ness.

For one thing, as Shorrock notes, Hawaii is one of the most high­ly mil­i­ta­rized patch­es of real estate in the U.S. A RAND study esti­mated that up to one-fifth of Hawaii’s econ­omy is tied to the Depart­ment of Defense. Beyond the big new NSA cen­ter, there are 10 major mil­i­tary instal­la­tions, research cen­ters, weapons stores, pri­vate con­trac­tors, and a local cit­i­zenry over-rep­re­sent­ed by vet­er­ans, for­mer offi­cers, and spooks.

A cou­ple of years ago, after Snowden’s name was first revealed as the NSA leak­er, a local Hawai­ian mil­i­tary stud­ies pro­fes­sor, Car­los Juarez, explained why so many intel­li­gence con­trac­tors work in the tourist par­adise:

“This is a place that has long had a large intel­li­gence com­mu­nity. The mil­i­tary is of course, head­quar­tered here, the U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand, and part of that includes a larg­er intel­li­gence com­mu­nity.”

In oth­er words, Omid­yar is the rich­est man in a state where the mil­i­tary-intel­li­gence com­plex is the biggest busi­ness in town. And since Booz Allen is a big name in Hawaii’s mil­i­tary-intel­li­gence con­tract­ing, when it comes to strict busi­ness inter­ests, it’s nat­ural that Omid­yar and Booz Allen would want to seal their rela­tion­ships in one of Omidyar’s local lead­er­ship cults.

...

We’re also left ner­vously won­der­ing why, out of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of NSA files in The Intercept’s pos­ses­sion, not one leaked thus far has men­tioned Booz Allen or oth­er pri­vate con­trac­tors. How is that pos­si­ble, when we know that 70 per­cent of the NSA’s oper­a­tions are run by pri­vate con­trac­tors (thanks to Shorrock’s report­ing)?

After Pan­do exposed Omidyar’s co-financ­ing role with USAID in fund­ing Ukraine regime-change groups in 2014, Green­wald gave a giant mid­dle fin­ger to every­one who ever fell for his right­eous indig­na­tion schtick, admit­ting:

“[P]rior to cre­at­ing The Inter­cept with Lau­ra Poitras and Jere­my Scahill, I did not research Omidyar’s polit­i­cal views or dona­tions. That’s because his polit­i­cal views and dona­tions are of no spe­cial inter­est to me...”

Chances are, even Snow­den won’t crit­i­cize Omid­yar for court­ing his Booz Allen adver­saries. Hell, he prob­a­bly doesn’t even care any­more. They’ve all got valu­able per­sonal brands to tend to. Like Paci­no said — it’s strict­ly busi­ness, Son­ny.