So Why the Omission? Barack Obama and the CIA

This article by William Blum was written in 2102 and published on the BFB blog on March 19th 2016.  What amazes me is when people assume a  candidate from one of the two Wall Street parties can actually change things, can represent the interests of workers or the poor and disenfranchised barring a huge working class movement from below. I can fully understand given the violent racist history of the US why African Americans supported Obama and are so moved at this historic event. After all, if we can understand why people vote Democratic based on the disastrous lesser of two evils theory surely supporting Obama has far more credibility when it comes to black folks.

It is fascinating too that someone like Bush could put on a cowboy hat and, put a chainsaw in his hand and pose for a photo shoot down at the ranch and suddenly he's just one of the guys, a plain old workin' man. 

But do people really think that someone who genuinely represented workers, the poor and oppressed and was actually committed to doing something about it would be allowed to become the president of the United States?  I think not.  Obama was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He is a constitutional lawyer and taught that subject at the University of Chicago. He is the consummate bourgeois politician.  To become president of the United States as a candidate of one of the two main bourgeois parties one has to be trusted. Trusted to represent the interests of the US 1% and Obama has fulfilled his promises. In my opinion, the one that fits the bill for the job that will be vacated by Obama in the months ahead is Hillary Clinton. Even the misogynists among the bourgeois will be forced to recognize that she is their best choice barring some unforseen events and given the fracturing of the US two party system not much can be ruled out.

So the inferences with regards to Obama's role or relationship with the CIA in this article should come as no surprise. It's business as usual for politics in the US. Richard Mellor.

So Why the Omission?
William Blum
July 5, 29012

July 5, 2012

July 5, 2012

July 5, 2012

July 5, 201

In his autobiography, Dreams From My Fathers, Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as "a consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer".

Oddly, Obama doesn't mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of October 30, 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation. Equally odd is that the Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960.

The British journal, Lobster — which, despite its incongruous name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence matters — has reported that Business International was active in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored candidates in Australia and Fiji.11 In 1987, the CIA overthrew the Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships could not make port calls.12 After the Fiji coup, the candidate supported by Business International, who was much more amenable to Washington's nuclear desires, was reinstated to power — R.S.K. Mara was Prime Minister or President of Fiji from 1970 to 2000, except for the one-month break in 1987.

In his book, not only doesn't Obama mention his employer's name; he fails to say exactly when he worked there, or why he left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions, but inasmuch as Business International has a long association with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to penetrate the radical left — including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)13 — it's reasonable to wonder if the inscrutable Mr. Obama is concealing something about his own association with this world.

Adding to the wonder is the fact that his mother, Ann Dunham, had been associated during the 1970s and 80s — as employee, consultant, grantee, or student — with at least five organizations with intimate CIA connections during the Cold War: The Ford Foundation, Agency for International Development (AID), the Asia Foundation, Development Alternatives, Inc., and the East-West Center of Hawaii.14 Much of this time she worked as an anthropologist in Indonesia and Hawaii, being in good position to gather intelligence about local communities.

As one example of the CIA connections of these organizations, consider the disclosure by John Gilligan, Director of AID during the Carter administration (1977-81). "At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind."15 And Development Alternatives, Inc. is the organization for whom Alan Gross was working when arrested in Cuba and charged with being part of the ongoing American operation to destabilize the Cuban government.

William Blum is an American, historian and critic of United States foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II. He has described his life's mission as: "If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It's causing so much suffering around the world."Mr. Blum can be reached through his website http://killinghope.org .

- See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/07/05/barack-obama-his-mother-and-the-cia/#sthash.6bl4lzKq.dpuf