Obama's USAID says information suddenly 'for internal purposes only'
By Steve Peacock
Publicly available documents revealing the Obama administration’s unwieldy portfolio of Kenyan projects—which includes a formal plan to manipulate Kenyan and global media – have been removed from a federal contracting database, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered.
The Monitor now has restored public access to the USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan 2012-2013.
The sanitizing of the FedBizOpps system follows a series of Monitor reports—first published via WND—on what the U.S. Agency for International Development itself has described as an “exponential increase” in U.S.-funded initiatives in the African nation.
The Monitor and WND additionally broke the story on a USAID propaganda initiative to sway how “opinion leaders”—including those in the media—depict U.S. operations in Kenya. That “strategic plan” maps out how the federal government intends to take its cue from the public relations industry in order to “target specific journalists at key media outlets to be groomed to cover targeted issues over time.”
The discovery of the document purge probably would not have happened without the assistance of Kenyan journalist and blogger Dennis Itumbi, who raised questions about dead links in the WND articles.
Itumbi had widely distributed to his readers WND articles about the Obama administration’s Kenyan projects and propaganda plan. He then found out that the links did not offer access to the documents in question.
Itumbi earlier this received worldwide attention when Kenyan authorities arrested and released him for allegedly hacking into International Criminal Court e-mails, a charge that Itumbi denies.
Wayne Madsen, author of the recently released “The Manufacturing of a President: The CIA’s Insertion of Barack H. Obama into the White House,” told the Monitor that this governmental data purge – combined with the escalation of USAID projects – offers further evidence of the president’s staunch commitment to influencing Kenyan affairs.
“Obama clearly is favoring Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, his distant cousin who was propelled into power by Soros money into the Orange Movement,” according to Madsen, a former Naval intelligence officer.
Madsen was referring to the financing of a Nairobi-based activist group by billionaire George Soros, whose support of Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement allegedly fueled Kenyan post-election violence in 2007.
The Monitor submitted a request to the USAID Press Office for an explanation of the government’s removal from FedBizOpps of the entire Kenya Program Support solicitation, Number SOL-623-12-000013, which included an amendment that included the USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan 2012-2013.
The agency also was asked to provide the legal justification for their removal.
USAID Press Officer Matthew Johnson swiftly responded via e-mail, saying:
“The solicitation was removed from FedBizOpps as it contained information that was for internal purposes only. As part of our standard procedure, the solicitation was removed to correct for this error.
“With regards to the communications document you referenced below and in your article, USAID is federally mandated as part of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to inform people that our assistance is ‘American aid.’ USAID therefore develops communications strategies around the world to ensure that countries recognize the generosity of America’s assistance, which further supports the impact of our investments while strengthening our national security and economic diplomacy.”
Johnson up until recently was the agency’s Horn of Africa campaign manager of the FWD (Famine, War, Drought relief) initiative, a public awareness campaign that USAID operated with the Ad Council from September 2011 to March 2012.
President George W. Bush appointed Johnson as White House Director of Presidential Personal Correspondence, a position he held 2006-2008. He also sits on the board of directors of the Center for Global Understanding, a non-profit group that believes “the only way to bring people together is through educating everyone about different cultures, religions and their values.”
But WND has documented Obama ties to Odinga in the past, and recently reported on a tell-all book by a former associate that targets Odinga.
Former top adviser Miguna Miguna provided to WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi an 800-page manuscript of the book, which was scheduled to be published in Kenya this year.
Miguna, however, was informed by his publisher that publication in Kenya had to be delayed until 2013, after the presidential and parliamentary elections at the end of the year.
The delay appears to be politically motivated government censorship, said Corsi, who was deported by the Kenyan government in 2008 during an investigative reporting trip.
“Odinga knows his chances of being elected president are dramatically reduced if Miguna’s book is published before this year’s presidential election in Kenya,” Corsi said. “Miguna presents a convincing portrait of Odinga as a ‘political conman’ whose term as prime minister has been riddled by family favoritism, massive corruption, sexual abuses, and public policy incompetence.”
Miguna told Corsi that the book’s publication “will completely change Odinga’s political fortunes and ultimately, the political panorama in Kenya.”
Odinga, a self-proclaimed communist, received his college education in East Germany and named his first-born son Fidel after the Cuban dictator.
Among the more damaging accusations in the book, Miguna charges that Odinga and various Luo tribe leaders practice black magic that incorporates animal slaughter and that Odinga has a voracious sexual appetite that shows no respect for his own marriage or to the spouses of the women who catch his fancy.
Miguna’s book provides further documentation for Corsi’s allegation in his 2008 New York Times No. 1 bestselling book, “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” that Odinga signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sheik Abdullah Abdi, the chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum in Kenya, to support and expand Islam in Kenya.
In the memo, Odinga promised to rewrite the Kenyan constitution to enact Shariah as law in “Muslim declared regions,” elevate Islam as “the only true religion” and give Islamic leaders “oversight” over other religions, establish Shariah courts and ban Christian proselytism.
Odinga’s ties to Obama
Odinga, a fellow Luo tribesman to Obama, was appointed prime minister in April 2008 only after he lost the December 2007 presidential election. The decision to create the extra-constitutional “co-head of state” position of prime minister for Odinga was devised by Obama, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The purpose was to stop the wave of tribal rioting and machete-wielding violence against members of the rival Kiduyu tribe in January and February 2008 that arose as Luo members charged their candidate was a victim of voter fraud.
The tribal violence ultimately left 1,000 dead and about a half-million homeless. Some 800 Christian churches were destroyed or burned to the ground, without a single mosque being damaged.
WND reported the existence of a strategy document developed by Obama and Odinga during Obama’s 2006 senatorial “fact-finding” trip to Kenya. It called for Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement to exploit tribal tensions should Odinga lose the 2007 presidential challenge, as a means of keeping alive his aspiration to be Kenyan head of state.
During the 2006 trip, Obama campaigned so openly for Odinga that Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua went on Kenyan television on behalf of Kenyan President Kibaki to object that Obama was meddling inappropriately in Kenyan politics, as WND reported.
WND further reported documentary evidence that Obama contributed nearly $1 million to the ODM in support of Odinga’s 2007 presidential campaign. An ODM campaign accounting document that listed the contribution as coming from “Friends of Senator BO.”
A similar version of this article originally was published via WND.com on July 16, 2012. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.
Hurricane Sandy: Another Example of Why We Need to Invest More in America, Less Around the Globe (COMMENTARY)
I have an idea how we as a nation can better cope with the financial burden that nature has imposed upon us in this post-hurricane environment of devastation on the East Coast: Assess and then cancel various programs that U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Trade & Development Agency currently are carrying out or are planning to implement across the globe.
For the sake of full disclosure, I say this not only as a concerned taxpayer who continues to advocate streamlining (not the elimination) of foreign aid, but as a human being who lives one mile from the beach on the battered New Jersey coast -- someone who is doing significantly better than many of his Shore neighbors, but who is temporarily displaced nonetheless.
Before I continue, also keep in mind that this is less political -- insofar as partisan politics -- than it appears. Yes, the Obama Administration currently is executing the following initiatives. But as I've said before, it's a power thing, not an Obama thing. Such endeavors took place under Clinton and Bush, and in various forms will continue under future presidents.
Here we go:
Cancel the planned development of Ph.D. and masters degree programs for which USAID intends to fund in a Ugandan university. Use that money in schools across New Jersey, New York, or Connecticut.
Cancel the nearly $1 billion in construction projects that USAID has planned for the Palestinians. Use it to rebuild homes, businesses, and infrastucture destroyed during the hurricane. OUR hurricane.
Those business start-up projects in The Philippines? Cancel them. Most of the businesses in my area are closed, hopefully just temporarily. many, presumbaly, will go under. Tell the Filipinos they have to wait.
The groundwater cleanup projects in for which USTDA paid the cost of U.S. industry reps to fly to China to boost that sector? Stop such subsidies, damnit. I'm guessing the groundwater between Seaside Heights and Point Pleasant (among other locations) could use some ameliorating.
The list is seemningly endless. There are bigger and even more controversial projects, I am sure, the billions is no so-called "drug war" contracts among one of the more insane categories.
Oh, okay, just one more example (out of many). I know it amounts to peanuts, but the $322,000 that Department of State just spent on a 10-animal dog kennel in Iraq could have been used to rebuild damaged animal -- and human -- shelters here on the East Coast instead. Just sayin.' -- Steve Peacock
Posted at 01:25 PM in Africa, China, Commentary, Gaza/West Bank, Iraq, U.S. State Dept., USAID, USTDA, White House | Permalink | Comments (0)
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