[News] DAI’s not so invisible puppet show

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:04:24 +0000

From: Machetera <missmachetera at gmail.com>

DAI’s not so invisible puppet show

Posted: 08 Jan 2010

As we wait to learn the identity of the mystery 
Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) 
“subcontractor” who was handing out cellphones 
and laptops like Santa Claus in Cuba this 
December, let’s deconstruct the recent statement 
by Dr. James Boomgard, DAI Chief Executive 
Officer, denying DAI’s relationship to U.S. intelligence services.

Boomgard said: “The detained DAI subcontractor 
was not working for any intelligence service.”

In this post Clinton “it depends on what the 
meaning of ‘is’ is” world, perhaps that was meant 
as some kind of denial.  What Boomer did not say 
was that the detained subcontractor was not doing 
the work of U.S. intelligence.

In an interview the former CIA agent Phil Agee 
gave to Dennis Bernstein of the Flashpoints radio 
program in March 2005, he explained how 
intelligence work came to be shifted from the CIA 
to contractors such as the National Endowment for 
Democracy and their associated subcontracting 
NGOs such as DAI, Chemonics International (“an 
international development consulting firm that 
promotes meaningful change to help people live 
healthier, more productive, and more independent 
lives”), Partners for Democratic Change, 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/maher04162008.html>Albert 
Einstein Institution, Freedom House and countless 
others.  Agee was speaking specifically though 
not exclusively of Venezuela on that occasion.

During the late 1970s there was new thinking at 
the highest levels of the U.S. foreign 
policymakers, and they reconsidered whether these 
ugly murderous military dictatorships of the 
1970s were really the best way to preserve U.S. 
interests in these countries – U.S. interests 
bbeing defined traditionally as unfettered access 
to the primary products and raw materials, to the 
labor and to the markets of foreign countries. 
This new thinking led to the establishment in 
1983 of the National Endowment for Democracy. 
They had chosen the German pattern in which the 
major political parties in Germany have 
foundations financed by the federal government. 
They did more or less the same thing with the 
establishment of the NED as a private foundation 
– there is really nothing private about it, and 
aall its money comes from the Congress.

But then there were the other core foundations – 
this was the fuundamental mechanism for promotion 
of democracy around the world, but in actual 
fact, when they say the promotion of democracy, 
or civic education, or fortifying civil society, 
what they really mean is using those euphemisms 
to cover funding to certain political forces and 
not to others. In other words, to fortify the 
opposition of undesirable foreign governments as 
in the case of Venezuela, or to support a 
government that is favorable to US interests and 
avoid of coming to power of forces that are not 
seen as favorable to US interests. This will be 
the case since the early 1990s in Nicaragua 
because all those programs that were started in 
order to assure the defeat of Daniel Ortega in 
1990 continued, and they continued to make sure 
that Sandinista Front was not reelected again 
after their defeat in 1990 – and that has been 
the case. These programs go on in various 
different countries and they require quite a bit 
of research. 
 I am sure that one could find 
these programs in Mexico, Colombia, Peru 
probably, Brazil, and other countries outside the Latin American region.

Such as Cuba.

Let’s review who the sorry subcontractor likely 
reported to.  Michael Morfit, DAI’s Vice 
President for Governance and Public Sector 
Management began his career in Indonesia where he 
worked for eight years on behalf of the Ford 
Foundation and USAID.  He later moved on to the 
Philippines, and finally to USAID’s Office of 
Caribbean Affairs and the Office of Strategic 
Planning.  He also directed USAID’s Haiti Task 
Force where, according to the Georgetown 
University 
<http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/mm755/>website, 
“he was directly involved in U.S. Government 
planning and policy formation for major international development initiatives.”

According to the same website, his tenure at DAI 
was immensely profitable for the company, since 
the democracy and governance portion of the 
business saw its revenues increase from $3 
million to $25 million under his 
stewardship.  Most recently he has been 
consulting in Serbia, the same land from which 
emerged Ivan Marovic, of OTPOR, which  as both 
Eva Golinger and 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/maher06092007.html>George 
Ciccarielo-Maher explained, was the model advised 
for the student protests in favor of U.S. 
objectives in Venezuela.  Marovic later surfaced 
in Honduras where he was warmly received by the 
independent journalist Al Giordano, whose annual 
journalism classes are being 
<http://www.authenticjournalism.org/>partially 
underwritten this year by Peter Ackerman’s 
International Center for Non-Violent
Conflict.

Here’s Eva (in Spanish) on Otpor and incidentally, Peter Ackerman:

<http://machetera.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/dais-not-so-invisible-puppet-show/>
[]





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