Creative Associates International

In the feverishly-written post below, we discussed an Obama administration scheme to destabilize Cuba using social media. (AP exposed the story -- and who, I wonder, gave AP the documents?) Let's focus on just one part of this business...

The social media project began development in 2009 after Washington-based Creative Associates International obtained a half-million Cuban cellphone numbers.

In my original post, I puckishly noted that the initials CAI resemble CIA. As it turns out, this world-spanning NGO has often had to fend off allegations of being a spook front. See for example this Wikipedia piece on a former CAI employee named Craig Daniels -- and keep in mind that these words may have been written by Daniels himself or by someone friendly to him:

While working in Pakistan in 2009 for Creative Associates Inc., a USAID implementing partner, allegations were raised that Davis was a Blackwater representative. The charge was initiated by Nation columnist Shireen Mazari[10] and Ahmed Qureshi, a journalist and conspiracy theorist.[11] As evidence, the similarity in acronyms between Creative Associates International, Inc. (CAII) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was cited. According to some reports, Davis was the victim of a campaign by the Pakistani government to blacklist certain journalists and NGO workers.[12] Mazari raised the accusations when she worked for The News International. The US Embassy objected to the charges and the editorial leadership determined that the story was inaccurate. Mazari consequently left The News International to work for the Nation and decried US Ambassador Anne Patterson for interfering in Pakistani media.[13] Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Rosenberg also left the country after similar allegations connecting him to Blackwater put his safety at risk.[14]

I don't know about Blackwater. We need to do further study there. But if CAI is just the international do-gooder organization it pretends to be, and if only those awful, awful "conspiracy theorists" would ever suggest otherwise, then why did CAI collect all of those Cuban cell phone numbers?

Let's look at CAI: The Early Years.

Creative Associates International, Inc. (CAII) is "a minority women-owned professional services firm incepted in 1977. Participation, diversity, and equity have driven projects seeking to improve the lives of underserved populations in more than 68 countries to date."[1].

Initially, CAII (a private for-profit corporation) was was known as Creative Associates, Inc. when it was founded in 1979 by four women, Maria Charito Kruvant, Ilda Cheryl Jones, Diane Trister Dodge, and Mimi Tse. Sometime between April 1983 and April 1984, Ilda Jones left Creative and in 1986, Kruvant and her remaining co-founders changed the company's name to Creative Associates International Inc. By 1985, CAII was a multimillion-dollar business, with both government and private-sector contracts. Since then it has received more than 400 contracts from around the world with offices in 11 countries, has more than 300 employees, and annual revenue as high as $50 million. [2]

One example of one of the prominent projects CAII has worked on, involved them providing support to "the Contra guerillas in Nicaragua" in 1989 which highlight(s) continuities in the role of education in aggressive U.S. foreign policy interventions in ways favorable to U.S.-based transnational capital" (Saltman, 2006: 28). Since the start of the ‘‘Reagan revolution’’ in ‘‘democracy promotion’’ ((see the National Endowment for Democracy)) CAII has been involved in "projects that merged development work with political, military, and economic influence strategies on the part of the U.S." (Saltman, 2006: 26). In 1991, CAII was also involved with the coup against democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Saltman, 2006: 40). Since September 2001, Creative has been working on a USAID-funded Haitian media assistance and civic education program. [3] [4]

The Contras? The freakin' baby-killing Contras? Are you kidding me?

And then there's the Aristide coup...!

Do we really need to know more? Perhaps this...

...the United States, through the Agency for International Development (USAID), contracted with... Creative Associates International, Incorporated (CAII) to lead the rebuilding of education. School buildings, textbooks, teacher preparation, curriculum planning, administration—all would be implemented by CAII directly or by firms subcontracted by CAII. In 2003, the company came under close scrutiny by congress and the press for receiving its Iraq contracts without competitively bidding for them.[5] The no-bid contract with CAII was one of a number of no-bid contracts benefiting U.S. corporations including Bechtel (which has been subcontracted by CAII to build schools), Halliburton, and others that profited from rebuilding in Iraq.

You may also want to read this DU thread from 2004.

It's obvious that CAI -- or CAII (take your pick) -- is just another CIA front organization. These days, spookery is done through NGOs.

Here's the interesting part: The company has emphasized women and minorities from the very beginning. That, I must admit, is a nice touch. People in the third world are much more likely to trust an (alleged) do-gooder group fronted by a black woman. People no longer trust the white asshole blowhards who used to strut around the world on the Agency dime back in the old days. I'm thinking here of guys like Duane Clarridge or William Harvey or Ed Lansdale or any of those other big, loud white guys suffering from testosterone poisoning. They're passe. It's easier to work undercover if you have estrogen and melanin in your favor.

Obama's mom, The Virgin Stanley, used to work for NGO's like CAI. I can't recall if she actually worked for that group specifically, but I know that she worked for extremely similar NGOs that also touted the "woman-owned business" angle.