Press Action ::: My Secret Life as a CIA Operative

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

My Secret Life as a CIA Operative

By Kurt Nimmo

Lately, things have been a bit crazy. After Counterpunch posted an article I wrote critical of Mike Ruppert, I was drawn into an at times acrimonious email exchange. In order to protect the innocent (and guilty) I will not mention any names, but suffice it to say a few wild allegations were tossed around.

One allegation floating around is that Counterpunch, according to a guy connected to the 9/11 movement, Mark Robinowitz, is a COINTELPRO and CIA front. I found this assertion rather off-the-wall, to say the least. So I decided to do a bit of research, using Google, just to see what turned up.

I was unable to track down any mention by Robinowitz alleging Counterpunch is a CIA or COINTELPRO front, but I did find an interesting article written by Bob Feldman, who claims Counterpunch is connected to the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute through the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity (IAJC). In fact, this organization is mentioned on a slew of older CP pages, although it is missing from the current site. Feldman claims IAJC is connected to the Roosevelt family through Ford Roosevelt, a grandson of Franklin D. Roosevelt, although an exhaustive Google search turned up absolutely no evidence of this. In fact, all searches of IAJC are related to Counterpunch, leading me to believe it was created by Counterpunch and subsequently discarded. Feldman claims Ford Roosevelt was vice-president of IAJC. The only reference I found to this was contained in Feldman’s article, leading me to conclude this connection is either undocumented, nonsense, or unavailable via Google.

Feldman’s theory is that large corporate foundations—in league with the CIA—fund progressive magazines and publications and these publications act as “gatekeepers,” controlling the information published there. On the QuestionsQuestions.net site—where, incidentally, I have had articles reposted—Feldman includes a large flowchart purporting to show the links between the Ford, Rockefeller, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Soros, and MacArthur foundations and not only the CIA, but also Skull and Bones, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carlyle Group, and various progressive publications, a virtual Who’s Who of the high-profile Left: Mother Jones, Alternet, FAIR, ZMag, Progressive Magazine, Pacifica, Democracy Now, the Nation, and others.

In short, according to Feldman, much of the Left is funded by the CIA and those other nefarious groups and cabals, mentioned above.

Imagine my surprise.

Feldman offers an encyclopedic amount of information on his site attempting to establish how the Left is an unwitting zombie for the CIA and the ruling elite. Since I don’t have a spare week to read all this stuff, I examined the flowchart and contributed the following to the email exchange:

Just a short addition to my last email. Apparently, I have earned money from the CIA, according to this flowchart:
http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html
You see, this is how it works: the CIA is connected to the Ford and Rockefeller foundations—with input from Skull & Bones, the Trilateral Commission, CFR, and the Carlyle Group—and both of these foundations give money to FAIR and in turn FAIR gives money to ZMag and last year ZMag published an article I wrote and paid me for it. In fact, I made more money on this article than I made in royalties on my book last year. I guess my book publisher is not connected to the CIA or George Soros, so I’m out of luck.

I am a CIA operative after all!

But wait. It is worse. I had an article syndicated by Alternet two years ago and they paid me for it and as we all know Alternet gets its money from the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, invested heavily in oil and gas companies, so not only am I a CIA operative, I’m a shill for Big Oil.

Incidentally, I am looking for more CIA/gas and oil money in the future because my wife needs medical work and our “health insurance” won’t pay for it.

Oh, one last note. I didn’t see CP on this flowchart, so I guess that’s why they don’t pay me for the articles I send them.

Kurt “Skull & Bones” Nimmo

Naturally, all of this is ridiculous. Do progressive organizations take foundation money? Of course they do. Are those foundations connected to Skull and Bones? Feldman says yes. I say I don’t know but it sure sounds like tinfoil hat stuff to me. If Zmag, for instance, takes money indirectly from the CIA, why is the magazine allowed to publish negative articles about the spook agency? Makes no sense. Or maybe I don’t see the larger picture.

It appears the criteria used by Feldman and Robinowitz runs as follows: if a progressive publication or web site does not publish or post articles that say the attacks of September 11, 2001, were committed by Bush, Cheney, the neocons, the CIA, the military-industrial-complex, etc., then they are in the pocket of multinational corporations, the wealthy ruling class foundations, the CIA, secretive Yale fraternities, et al.

According to Feldman, referencing the work of John Coleman in an article that appeared on the Conspiracy Planet web site, Noam Chomsky, who admittedly believes 9/11 was carried out by Osama and his tribe of crazy cave dwelling Muslims, has ties to the military because he works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Moreover, according “to John Coleman, author of ‘Conspirators Hierarchy,’ Noam Chomsky is the chief theoretician of ‘the Committee of 300’s most notorious Washington based left wing think tank, the Institute of Policy Studies,’ also known as Phony Pregressives (sic) ‘R’ Us. By the way, how did this guy ever become a cult figure/icon when he’s been an Illuminati shill since the beginning?” the editor of Conspiracy Planet notes.

Noam Chomsky, a member of the Illuminati!

How do I know Feldman, Coleman, and Robinowitz don’t work for the CIA, discrediting progressives and progressive publications? Makes perfect sense to me—or at least it makes as much sense as the stuff these guys are pedaling.

Incidentally, I don’t believe Osama and the cave dwellers pulled off 9/11, either. But after reading Feldman, or looking at his chart anyway, and as an irregular contributor to Counterpunch, allegedly co-opted by Big Bucks and the Evil Roosevelt family, I don’t know if I am a secret CIA operative or not. Maybe I was brainwashed by MK-Ultra. Maybe I’m a Manchurian Leftist. I mean, as a stupid teenager, I took LSD and everybody knows LSD was a CIA plot. Or, as Joe Pesci’s David Ferrie said in Oliver Stone’s JFK: “It’s a mystery! It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!”

It would be nice, though, if I could get my hands on some of that reactionary foundation money. I could use it right about now since I am unemployed, there are medical bills, car insurance, taxes, and other expenses I’d rather not divulge.

Or maybe I should go over to the Dark Side, join the likes of Ann Coulter, and make a fortune spouting off about how Liberals hate America.

I don’t see how it would be any worse than working for the CIA.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, a collection of essays published by Dandelion Books. Visit his weblog at KurtNimmo.com.

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