USAIDs: A CIA Love Story
The United States celebrates itself as the land of the free and home of the brave. But the CIA, the intelligence agency run by the U.S. government, has instead pushed censorship and violent color revolutions around the world. Much of this was done through monies supplied via U.S. Agency for International Development or USAIDs– the State Department-affiliated program that has run into a buzzsaw under the Trump administration.
Here, Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, tells the story of one of USAID’s most hideous endeavors — Internews. Founded in California in 1982, Internews claimed to be non-partisan. But the non-profit had a particularly cozy relationship with the Democratic Party. Not only did it collaborate with the Clinton Global Initiative and have Obama advisor Susan Rice on board, but it also drew money from the likes of Bill Gates and the Carnegie Corporation.
Its chief — Jeanne Bourgault — carved out an annual salary of $451,000 for herself, so this was, indeed, a choice racket. Information saves lives was the Internews slogan, but again, the Democratic Party wanted full control and to dictate what constituted legitimate information that should be spread. Censorship, as well as color revolutions, became part of the Internews legacy, as well as quite possibly money laundering out of the Cayman Islands. Benz gives us the bigger picture.
