Extended Empire

This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create “a Twitter-like Cuban communications network” run through “secret shell companies” in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service’s Cuban users was the fact that “American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes”–specifically, to manipulate those users in order to foment dissent in Cuba and subvert its government.

[...]

Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ–and previously published by The Intercept as well as some by NBC News–detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to “discrediting” the agency’s enemies with false information spread online.

  Glenn Greenwald (additional reference links are in the article)

And, there’s a great scramble to get distance from the program.

The Obama administration defended its creation of a Twitter-like Cuban communications network to undermine the communist government, declaring the secret program was "invested and debated" by Congress and wasn't a covert operation that required White House approval.

But two senior Democrats on congressional intelligence and judiciary committees said Thursday they had known nothing about the effort, which one of them described as "dumb, dumb, dumb." [That was Patrick Leahy.] A showdown with that senator's panel is expected next week.

[...]

"We also offered to brief our appropriators and our authorizers," said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. She added that she was hearing on Capitol Hill that many people support these kinds of democracy promotion programs. And some lawmakers did speak up on that subject. But by late Thursday no members of Congress had acknowledged being aware of the Cuban Twitter program earlier than this week.

[...]

White House spokesman Jay Carney said he was not aware of individuals in the White House who had known about the program.

  Yahoo

Well, apparently, one individual was aware of it…one very high up individual…and “defended its creation.”

USAID and its contractors went to extensive lengths to conceal Washington's ties to the project, according to interviews and documents obtained by the AP. They set up front companies in Spain and the Cayman Islands to hide the money trail, and recruited CEOs without telling them they would be working on a U.S. taxpayer-funded project.

[...]

Similarly, subscribers' messages were funneled through two other countries — and never through American-based computer servers.

[...]

"That is not what USAID should be doing," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform National Security Subcommittee. "USAID is flying the American flag and should be recognized around the globe as an honest broker of doing good. If they start participating in covert, subversive activities, the credibility of the United States is diminished."

[...]

At minimum, details uncovered by the AP appear to muddy the USAID's longstanding claims that it does not conduct covert actions, and the details could undermine the agency's mission to deliver aid to the world's poor and vulnerable — an effort that requires the trust and cooperation of foreign governments.

Let me put that in “truth speak.” The citizens of every other nation in the world know that USAID is an arm of the US government which funds and supports destabilization in enemy – i.e. politically opposed – countries. (Bolivia's president expelled USAID from that country in 2013.) The “trust and cooperation of foreign governments” has nothing to do with the actuality of non-political aid to their citizens. Other governments are allowing USAID to operate in their countries – the revelation will affect whether they continue to, but it will have nothing to do with trust. Cooperation, yes. Trust, no.

"I know they said we were notified," Leahy told AP. "We were notified in the most oblique way, that nobody could understand it. I'm going to ask two basic questions: Why weren't we specifically told about this if you're asking us for money? And secondly, whose bright idea was this anyway?"

I’M going to ask ONE basic question: If you didn’t understand something, if you were notified only “in the most oblique way,” why were you funding it?

The estimated $1.6 million spent on ZunZuneo was publicly earmarked for an unspecified project in Pakistan.

I see.

ZunZuneo vanished abruptly in 2012, and the Communist Party remains in power

The story is that the grant period ran out. Sure. (I thought it was money diverted from Pakistan?) I suppose what actually happened is that’s when the Cuban government got too close.

The annual SIGDEV conference, according to one NSA document published today by The Intercept, “enables unprecedented visibility of SIGINT Development activities from across the Extended Enterprise, Second Party and US Intelligence communities.”

“The Extended Empire?”

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.