August 9, 2010 -- Details revealed about Obama's former CIA employer and the agency's ties to its "journalists"

After a reporter for the Washington Star-News was outed as a covert CIA agent in 1973 after a report was commissioned by then-CIA director William Colby on the CIA's use of journalists abroad as agents, Colby revealed that the CIA would continue to use journalists for "small, limited-circulation specialty publications, such as certain types of trade journals or commercial newsletters." Colby's statement, which appeared in the New York Times on December 1, 1973, appears to describe the CIA's later relationship with Business International Corporation (BIC), the company for which Barack Obama worked as an editor after he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

Colby's revelations in 1973 that the CIA would continue to employ journalists working for "small, limited-circulation specialty publications, such as certain types of trade journals or commercial newsletters" coincides with what the son of BIC founder Eldridge Haynes, Elliott Haynes, revealed in an interview reported in the December 27, 1977, New York Times about the nature of the CIA's longtime relationship with BIC. The younger Haynes stated that BIC "provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960." The same article revealed that the CIA had one agent devoted to liaison with the press who worked out of the CIA's Manhattan office at 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, across from the United Nations.

WMR reported on BIC's structure and mission in a February 24, 2009, report. In a December 19, 1971 article in the Boston Globe by Dan Pinck, titled "Is everyone in the CIA?" it is alleged that US Agency for International Development (USAID) officers was a "reasonably accurate accounting of certain leading operatives and associates of the CIA." President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro worked for USAID in rural Java in Indonesia. Pinck's article was a review of a 1968 book, "Who's Who in the CIA" published in Berlin.

The Boston Globe article states the CIA had a massive presence in Third World nations, including 32 agents in Nigeria, 24 in Ethiopia, 71 in Hong Kong, 8 in Uganda, 132 in South Vietnam, 14 in Ghana, 42 in Chile, and 90 in Mexico. Dunham Soetoro, who worked for USAID at the time the "Who's Who in the CIA" was published, was also employed by the Ford Foundation and Asian Development Bank. This fits with what the Boston Globearticle stated was the common use of non-official cover (NOC) officers abroad. One of the tactics of USAID operatives in Indonesia was the smuggling of aid staples to Indonesian generals so they could buy the loyalties of local village elders against Sukarno and the Communist Party of Indonesia.

President Obama has never explained his mother's role, if any, in the CIA's smuggling operation carried out through USAID. However, Obama has snubbed his nose at the memory of the Indonesians killed by Suharto's CIA-supported troops by restoring U.S. training contacts with the Indonesian Red Berets, the KOPASSUS special forces. As President, Obama has done nothing to alleviate the blocks placed by the previous Bush administration on Freedom of Information Act requests for CIA and other agency files on CIA and USAID human rights violations.

In addition, the article stated that among NOCs used by the CIA were agents working abroad for Time, Life, Forbes, Newsweek, the New York Times, CBS News, AFL-CIO, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bankers Trust, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, US News and World Report, First National City Bank, Westinghouse, NBC News, RCA, Gulf Oil, Standard Oil Company, Bank of America, Litton Industries, and Kimberly-Clark Corporation of Canada. The article also reported "the directors of Asian and Russian research centers at leading American universities" worked for the CIA abroad. President Obama's mother and father, Barack Obama, Sr., met at a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in Manoa in 1959.

Pinck, who served as an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer in China and later wrote a book about his experiences, wrote in the Boston Globe that USAID officers operating as CIA agents abroad included Dan Mitrione, who served in Brazil and Uruguay from 1960 to 1970 under USAID cover.

Mitrione's actual job was providing counter-insurgency training to Brazilian and Uruguayan security forces, which reportedly included training police in the use of torture. Mitrione was kidnapped and executed by Uruguayan Tupamaro guerrillas in 1970. Mitrione reportedly used homeless people as torture training subjects. The homeless were disposed of after they served their purpose.

In Indonesia, USAID, for whom Obama's mother worked, was primarily involved in infiltrating the labor unions and student movements to ferret out Communists. Indonesian army officers, like Obama's father-in-law, would target Communist leaders for execution. It was in central Java, where Obama's mother worked for USAID in the late 1960s, where Suharto began his anti-Communist massacres in 1965, two years before Obama and his mother arrived in Indonesia. Soon, knife-wielding paramilitaries working for Suharto murdered entire families in east Java, Bali, Aceh, the Celebes, and Borneo. The CIA's chief of clandestine activities in Southeast Asia, including the CIA's support for Suharto's massacre of Communists, was William Colby, who would later insist on keeping intact the agency's relationship with niche journalists working for companies like BIC. In 1983, one of those journalists was Barack Obama, Jr.

In October and November 1981, while Obama was supposedly studying at Columbia University after his unexplained activities in 1980 and 1981 in Indonesia and Pakistan, the CIA held a major seminar titled "Third World Intelligence," according to a formerly Secret CIA document. The seminar attendees included CIA director William Casey, Assistant Marine Corps Commandant General Paul X. Kelley, the Director of the CIA's Office of Near East South Asia [name redacted], a representative of the CIA's Office of Soviet Analysis [name redacted], the chief of operations of the National Security Agency's G Group [name redacted], the Deputy Director of the CIA's Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis [name redacted], the NSA's Signals Intelligence National Intelligence Officer (SINIO) for the Middle East [name redacted], and the CIA National Intelligence Officer [name redacted]. In 1981, as the CIA was making a major push into South Asia, Obama was staying in Karachi, Jacobobad, Lahore (where his mother was working), and Hyderabad.

During the late 1970s, the CIA was activley recruiting on campuses across the United States, including University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at San Diego, and New York University. Obama entered Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979, but his activity there is sketchy.

The ties that bind: Obama, BIC, UN, Franco, Juan Carlos, and Suharto. Who else would a CIA-groomed future president have links to?

In a September 14, 1978, memorandum from CIA deputy director for administration John F. Blake to senior CIA staff on Freedom of Information and Privacy Act requests, it is stated the second-most prevalent requests to the CIA for information was the "CIA's past and present relationships with academia." Blake wrote "the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for National Security Studies have encouraged such requests." Interestingly, the fourth most prevalent requests, according to the Blake memo were those dealing with "past programs of the Agency in the field of drug and behavioral control experimentation."

In his book, Dreams from My Father, Obama does not even mention BIC as the company he went to work for after graduating from Columbia in 1983. However, BIC had, for years, been a conduit to leaders, fascist, communist, and democratic, around ther world. The main business of BIC appears to be opening up nations, regardless of political leanings, to U.S. business investments. CIA files contain a translated article from the Paris periodical, "Marches Tropicaux et Mediterraneen," dated September 26, 1980. The article states that Mozambique's Marxist President, Samora Machel, offered the assurance to the representatives of Business International Corporation, an American company, that 'Mozambique, as a socialist country, is well-organized enough to work with private enterprise, multinational or not, by preserving the principle of mutual advantage.'"

A BIC brochure issued in the mid-1970s is testament to the influence the CIA front company had around the world. It is the same world of extraordinary global access that Barack Obama was introduced to in 1983.

The brochure states: "BI held more than 50 government roundtables over the past 19 years, including:

Africa H.I.M. Haile Selassie and 87 ministers and officials of 33 countries and multinational organizations (Addis Ababa 1969)

Andean Bloc(2) President Lleras of Colombia; authorities, business and labor leaders of six Andean Bloc countries (1968, 1972)

Argentina(2) President Frondisi and Ongania and their cabinets (1958, 1966)

Australia(2) Prime Ministers Holt and Whitlam and their cabinets (1967, 1973)

Brazil (3) Presidents Kubitschek, Castello Branco, Medici and their cabinets (1956, 1965, 1970)

Canada Prime Minister Pearson and his cabinet (1963)

Colombia President Valencia and his cabinet (1964)

EEC & EFTA(4) Presidents Hallstein, Rey and Mansholt and other members of the EEC Commission; Secretary General Figures and other EFTA officials (1960, 1963, 1968, 1972)

France(2) Prime Minister Pompidou and his cabinet; Prime Minister Chaban-Delmas and his cabinet (1963-70)

Germany (2) Vice Chancellor Erhard and Federal Chancellor Brandt and their cabinets (1963, 1973)

Hungary Prime Minister Jeno Fock and his cabinet (1969)

India Prime Minister Nehru and his cabinet (1961)

Indonesia (2) President Suharto and his cabinet (1968, 1972)

Italy (2) Prime Ministers Zoli and Colombo and their cabinets (1958, 1970)

Japan (3) Prime Ministers Kishi and Sato and their cabinets (1959, 1965, 1971)

LAFTA & CACM (2) Executive Secretary Sola and other members of the LAFTA Secretariat; Secretary General Delgado and other CACM officials (1963, 1969)

Mexico President Lopez Mateos and his cabinet (1962)

Poland Prime Minister Jaroszvicz and members of the Council of Ministers

Romania President Ceausescu and members of the Council of Ministers

Spain (2) Generalisimo Franco and his cabinet (1962, 1967)

Sweden Prime Minister Palme and his cabinet (1971)

USSR (2) Premier Kosygin and his cabinet and more than 250 government officials and Soviet industrial managers (1964, 1971)

United Kingdom (3) Prime Ministers Macmillan, Wilson and Heath and their cabinets (1961, 1966, 1972)

United Nations Secretary-General U Thant; heads of 22 principal UN organizations (1967)

United States (15) Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and/or their cabinets year by year

Venezuela President Leoni and his cabinet (1967)

Yugoslavia President Tito and members of the Federal Executive Council (1968)

BIC also promoted the future leadership of Spain of then-Prince Juan Carlos. It is noteworthy that Obama's wife and daughter were recently feted at the royal resort in Mallorca of now-King Juan Carlos. Obama remained in the United States. The following is what Business International's Executive Briefing of October 31, 1975, had to say about Juan Carlos:

"The consensus in Spain is that Prince Juan Carlos is inheriting a good administrative organization and that his appointment as Chief of State will put an end to the political uncertainty which has plagued Spain in recent years. Franco's departure from the political scene will speed up the introduction of democratic reforms and reopen the doors for negotiations with the European Economic Community.

The new king will have 'supreme power of administration,' but he will have less power than Franco had. So to ensure his position, Juan Carlos may hold a referendum to get majority approval of the reforms he intends to introduce. For the present, he may also keep Carlos Arias Navarro as prime minister and name a 'Cabinet of National Union,' incorporating some representatives of opposition groups (excluding the communists), members of the current establishment, and a sprinkling of technocrats. Thus far, everything points in Juan Carlos' favor. Since his designation as successor to Franco a year ago, he has gained in popularity and has the support of the Catholic church and the army, especially the new generation of officers."

BIC apparently had good insight into the future plans for Juan Carlos, especially since Franco did not die until a few weeks after the Madrid report was written by the firm's Spain correspondent. Franco died on November 20, 1975. Juan Carlos acceded to the Spanish throne on November 22, 1975. Juan Carlos had been named the next ruler of Spain in 1969, two years after BIC held a meeting with Franco. The BIC report ignored the fact that the original Spanish Republic, overthrown by Franco with the help of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, still had support among many Spaniards, especially in Catalonia and the Basque region. Until 1977, a Spanish Republican government-in-exile existed in Paris and was recognized by Yugoslavia, the USSR, and Mexico.

Obama's former employer maintained close relations with foreign leaders, Suharto of Indonesia and Franco and Juan Carlos of Spain. Suharto was closely linked, through Obama's step-father Lolo Soetoro, to young Obama in Jakarta while Juan Carlos continues to be close to the Obama family. None of these relationships are found in Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father."