OCCRP – A tool of the US State Department and its implications
By Romegas
Thanks to the new US administration, a lot of unsavoury facts have come to light on how the US deep state pursues its foreign policy objectives.
One major tool in achieving these objectives, which have included everything from the imposition of progressive ideology on matters concerning abortion and pro-LGBT to judicial and political reform of foreign states and even the toppling of governments considered to be uncooperative, has been USAID – a supposedly independent NGO funded by the US State Department and overseen by the CIA.
The USAID is therefore nothing but a US Government mechanism used to fund a vast web of supposed NGOs and practically the entirety of so-called Western and other ‘independent media’ that provides the US government a thin veneer of plausible deniability.
The term ‘independent media’, just like the term ‘conspiracy theory’ is a term coined by the CIA to designate any media which is ‘independent’ from the influence of any US geopolitical rival. It certainly does not mean media free from any interests particularly that of the USA.
This so-called ‘independent media’ and conglomeration of NGOs are simply another weapon in the armoury of the US State. They have been used to promote the US government’s narrative, disseminate misinformation, censor opposing voices and also to subvert democracy in foreign states, and even enable ‘regime change’. All such ‘independent media’ and ‘independent NGOs’ are in effect agents of a foreign power – who for mercenary or ideological reasons are used to subvert foreign states from within.
Among the litany of such paladins of the ‘independent media’ funded by USAID to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, we find Reuters, Associated Press, the BBC, Politico, and many others.
One organisation that the Maltese should be very familiar with but whose ties to USAID have been barely reported is the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), with which the likes of the Times of Malta and the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation boast of having had (and continue to do so) collaborated closely with.
The OCCRP was seeded and continued receiving the bulk of its funds from the US government primarily but not only through USAID. As of last year USAID alone provided for half of its budget, a fact which is not clearly acknowledged on its website. Other funding comes from George Soros’s Open Foundation and other states including Britain, Sweden, Denmark, and France.
OCCRP’s funding from US AID came with some very important strings attached namely that USAID had a veto right on any key appointments within the organisation and that the organisation had to submit its annual programme of works to USAID for approval. Despite it being the ‘world’s largest consortium of investigative journalists’ – OCCPR itself has always been very reluctant to acknowledge this fact.
In essence, OCCPR was being funded to the hilt to do hit-piece journalism about corruption – to go after US government’s opponents in a specific country or region. The information gathered by this consortium would then be used by the ‘independent media’ and particularly prosecutors in the country being targeted to change policy or even topple political opponents of the US State Department. In other words a mercenary media to go after political opponents, rig the scales of justice and affect pro-US policy and personnel changes from the inside.
On the now defunct USAID website, USAID bragged about the ‘achievements’ of OCCPR to which it attributed the direct responsibility for 548 Policy changes, over 21 resignations including those of a president and prime minister and also the toppling of at least 5 foreign governments.
Let us not forget that it was precisely OCCPR – that broke the Panama Papers story – where it and its journalists including our very own Daphne were given privileged access to supposedly leaked (read CIA hacked) documents. The fact that cases of actual corruption might have been revealed is not the point – the point is that the information given and released was very selective and intended either to compromise the USA’s political or financial opponents.
Given that it receives the bulk of its funding from the US government, OCCPR is obliged not to conduct any investigations on the US government itself or its interests. In fact, not only in the Panama Papers investigation, US interests were conspicuously missing but OCCPR has never conducted an investigation into for example Microsoft, Exxon, Chevron, Pfizer, Burisma etc nor for example on the US secret prisons and torture programs.
Finally for an organisation that brags that it is the culmination of investigative journalism and a crusader for transparency, it is very telling that it recently brought all its pressure on German broadcaster NDR’s investigation into the OCCRP’s financial dependence on the US Government to bury it. Thanks to WIKILeaks we the public can get a glimpse into the murky machinations engaged in by those posing as independent bodies by watching the full documentary here:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1874607197554102443
Daphne Caruana Galizia and her family
Daphne Caruana Galizia was not an investigative journalist, she was simply a relatively credible vessel through which local vested interests as well as evidently, a foreign power could feed her with information which she in turn would propagate to compromise the intended target for petty partisan reasons. I have no idea whether she wittingly knew that she was being used as such by a foreign power – probably her hatred for her political opponents and her desire to bring the government down at any cost was enough for her to take the bait without much convincing. Still, it would be proper for her family to tell us how much she and subsequently the foundation created in her name was paid from OCCRP. The same should be forthcoming from that bastion of ‘independent media’ – The Times of Malta. They have always after all called for greater transparency except when it concerns them.
The revelation that OCCRP is a fully-fledged tool of US interests sheds a new dynamic on contemporary political events – from the Panama Paper Scandals, Egrant, Pilatus, Malta’s financial Grey Listing, Steward, the pressure to introduce pro-LGBT and abortion as well as that for our country to ditch its neutrality and so on.
One can also begin to understand how this family gained enough authority – such as to actually nominate judges and magistrates of their own choice!
It also opens up another potential reason on why Daphne’s family was so eager to make sure that in a clear obstruction of justice, her laptop was denied to the Maltese authorities and to have it disposed of in Germany. They always stated that this was to protect their sources from the state – and given that their sources undoubtedly included a tool of the US State Department, I believe them.
All this should make it clear to everyone, that if we value our independence and sovereignty, then we should introduce a foreign agents law – requiring any individual, NGO or other entity that receives funds from abroad to register as a foreign agent and to declare who is funding it and to what end so that our citizens can know who is acting in the interests of who.
As for OCCPR itself, now that it has been starved of its USAID funds – it faces a very uncertain future. The demise of USAID began, when instead of simply restricting its activities to foreign jurisdictions it started to direct NGOs and other organisations not least the OCCPR itself to take down political opponents of the US government in the US itself. It is here pertinent to remind everyone that OCCRP was one of the main reasons for creating the Russia-Hoax narrative, that Russia interfered in the US election and that Trump was “Putin’s puppet” which led to attempts to impeach him.
Author Michael Shellenberger asserts that:
OCCRP, had for years pushed the false narrative that Trump was a ‘Putin puppet’ on Russia’s payroll. The collusion story recycled OCCRP claims about alleged Russian money laundering schemes dating back to 2014.
In August 2016, OCCRP reports were passed by Nellie Ohr, a Fusion GPS employee hired by the Clinton campaign to dig dirt on Trump for the unverified Chris Steele dossier. She also shared them with her husband, Bruce Ohr, at the Department of Justice. Ohr relayed the information to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation team, which, according to special counsel John Durham, influenced the Trump probe.
In March 2017, OCCRP revived its Russian ‘money laundering’ reports, aligning with Democrat efforts to probe Trump’s finances. OCCRP didn’t admit the effort was aimed against Trump, but its media partners did. Media like Barron’s, The Guardian, and The New York Times used the OCCRP reports to link Trump to Russian criminals based on circumstantial evidence like shared banking institutions. MSNBC and other broadcasters amplified the claims without evidence.
In November 2017, OCCRP and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published the Paradise Papers, tying Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to Russians via offshore accounts.
OCCRP also worked with Dutch public TV on ‘The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump,’ alleging his involvement in money laundering in post-Soviet states.
Those and other OCCRP stories reinforced the false claim that Trump had deep financial ties to Russia and colluded with the Kremlin to win in 2016.
It is no wonder then that Trump’s new administration had USAID and its proxies firmly in its sights upon assuming power. But should we depend on such mercies to learn about who is interfering in our internal affairs? Should we depend on such mercies to understand who among us is acting in the interests of our country and who is interested in propagating those of others?