Reply #12: CIA recruitment and the church - Central Intelligence Agency [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

CIA recruitment and the church - Central Intelligence Agency
Christian Century, March 13, 1996

12Next ..RELIGIOUS GROUPS expressed concern February 22 about a loophole in CIA rules that allows the U.S. spy agency to use clergy and missionaries, as well as journalists and Peace Corps workers, for covert work overseas.

The rules forbid the CIA from hiring or establishing any intelligence relationships "with any U.S. clergy or missionary whether or not ordained, who is sent out by a mission or church organization to preach, teach, heal or proselytize." But the Washington Post has reported that a little-noticed provision within those rules allows the CIA director to waive the ban in extraordinary circumstances.

The rules covering CIA recruitment of missionaries were adopted in 1977 after an intense campaign by religious and civil liberties groups. The groups had raised objections to disclosures that the CIA had used clergy, journalists and academics in covert operations. As part of an overall reform of the agency, the CIA adopted similar rules barring employment of journalists and academics in covert operations overseas. CIA Director John Deutch, testifying February 22 before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, said the ban on the use of reporters would be waived only in cases of "unique and special threats to national security." He was not specifically asked about the clergy loophole, and the CIA did not return a phone call seeking clarification.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n9_v113/ai_18118934/

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CIA under attack for using missionaries
National Catholic Reporter, March 8, 1996 by Arthur Jones

WASHINGTON -- Revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency granted itself a private waiver to its own 1976 public ruling not to use missionaries as "covers," surfaced last month as the Senate Intelligence Committee prepared to meet.

The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that CIA officials admitted a "controversial loophole" exists that permits the CIA to "recruit American journalists as agents, use newsgathering organizations as cover and (employ) clerics or missionaries for clandestine work overseas."

A CIA official told NCR that the agency had no statement as to whether or not overseas personnel connected with U.S.-based religious groups had been used as fronts for agency activity in the past 20 years.

The news has led some U.S. Catholic mission bodies to suggest the CIA should be abolished.

In the post-Cold War era, "we question the need for an agency such as the CIA," Sr. Claudette LaVerdiere, Maryknoll Sisters president, wrote to Sen. Arlen Specter, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Feb. 23.

LaVerdiere spoke from experience. Maryknoll Sisters "have personally witnessed some of the damage done by covert operations in countries where we work, such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, Asia," she said. "Rather than improve things, CIA activities and covert intervention often made things worse."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_n19_v32/ai_18129721/

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Bush's Conversion Agenda for India:
Preparing for the harvest ...

~snip~
White House-Christian Coalition nexus

The American press is replete with reports on Bush's largesse to faith-based organisations. They say it's his "return gift" to the Christian Right for having loyally supported his presidential campaign. The Christian Coalition, founded by American TV evangelist and head of the multi-billion Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Pat Robertson, played a crucial role in the 2000 election. Recently, in his TV programme, Club 700, broadcast on CBN, Robertson created a stir by announcing that he is confident Bush will win the 2004 election in a "blowout" because God has told him so.

Indeed, Bush is keen to retain what we call the votebank and Americans 'the base'. After all, the Far Right Christian evangelists have also been the most loyal backers of his hardline militarism in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

But there is another, perhaps more important, reason why Bush is keen on supporting his evangelist friends who run huge transnational missionary organisations (TMOs). In the decade 1990-2000 they ran a global intelligence operation so complex and sophisticated that its scale and implications are no less than staggering. This operation has put in place a system which enables the US government to access any ethnographic information on any location virtually at the click of the mouse. This network in India, established with funding and strategic assistance from US-based TMOs, gives US intelligence agencies virtually real time access to every nook and corner of the country. (See 'List of TMOs Active in India')

Since Bush's ascendancy to the presidency this network of networks has multiplied rapidly in India. Bush supports conversion in India because he supports those American TMOs who fund and strategise conversion activities in this country. Organisations like the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, Christian Aid, World Vision, Seventh Day Adventist Church and multi-billion enterprises run by evangelists like Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Roger Houtsma, amongst many others, were instrumental in running a coordinated conversion campaign in India under the banner of AD2000. These later became the Joshua Project and when the decade-long movement officially closed down in March 2001, Joshua Project II was launched to sustain conversions and intelligence-gathering. Graham's TMO, Billy Graham Evangelist Association, supports conversion activities in Gurgaon, Haryana, and Kolkata.

When AD2000 was conceived for India, the plan was based on a military model with the intent to invade, occupy, control, or subjugate its population. It was based on solid intelligence emanating from the ground and well-researched information on various facets of selected people groups. The idea was to send out spying missions to source micro details on religion and culture. The social and economic divisions in the various Indian communities were closely examined. Given the oppressive and institutionalised caste system in the Hindu society, American evangelical strategists chalked out plans for reaching these various "unmixable" caste groups. The many faultlines running through the country-divisions in terms of ethnicity, caste, creed, language and class-were all factored in during the generation of ethnographic data.

North India was designated the core target of American evangelists. It was described as the "core of the core of the core" of a worldwide evangelical movement conceived by fundamentalist American missionaries. This movement that took shape over the 1990s, has now taken off because of a unique collaboration between the American government and US-based evangelical mission agencies. In the 1990s this movement was shaped by the World Evangelical Fellowship (an international alliance of national evangelical alliances), working with the AD2000 movement. It brought together a wide variety of individuals and organisations, under the single goal of achieving "a church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000." Its focus was missionary mobilisation and church planting in India and other regions of the world where the Christian population was negligible. This movement was also a massive intelligence gathering exercise funded and supported by American missionary organisations that were responsible for the election of George W Bush.

More:
http://www.christianaggression.org/features_bush.php

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~snip~
The CIA has also used other religious and charity organizations as fronts. For example, John F. Kennedy -- another anticommunist Roman Catholic who greatly expanded covert operations -- created the U.S. Peace Corps to serve as cover for CIA operatives. The CIA has also made extensive use of missionaries, with the blessings of many right-wing, anticommunist Christian denominations.

But the World Grows Wise…

It was only a matter of time before other nations caught on to these fronts. They learned that when the CIA comes to their countries to commit their crimes and atrocities, they come disguised as American journalists, businessmen, missionaries and charity volunteers. Unfortunately, foreigners are now targeting these professions as hostile. In Lebanon, terrorists held U.S. journalist Terry Anderson hostage for nearly seven years, on the not unreasonable assumption that he was a spy. Whether or not this was true is beside the point. The CIA has put all Americans abroad at risk, whether they are CIA agents or not. In hearings before the Senate in 1996, many organizations urged Congress to stop using their professions as CIA cover. Don Argue of the National Association of Evangelicals testified: "Such use of missionary agents for covert activities by the CIA would be unethical and immoral." (13)

More:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

(This quote appears around 2/3rds down the page.)