See also US Involvement in Ukraine, Omidyar/ Greenwald Connection, and Glenn Greenwald's response HERE
Pierre
Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government,
documents show
Chesno document showing total funding from USAID and Omidyar Network to “Centre UA”:
Chesno document showing numerous Omidyar fundings for activities in regional cities:
28
February, 2014
Just
hours after last weekend’s ouster of
Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, one of Pierre Omidyar’s
newest hires at national security blog “The
Intercept,”
was already digging for the truth.
Marcy
Wheeler, who is the new site’s “senior policy
analyst,” speculated that
the Ukraine revolution was likely a “coup” engineered by “deep”
forces on behalf of “Pax
Americana”:
“There’s quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is.”
These
are serious claims. So serious that I decided to investigate them.
And what I found was shocking.
Wheeler
is partly correct. Pando has confirmed that the American government –
in the form of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) –
played a major role in funding opposition groups prior to the
revolution. Moreover, a large percentage of the rest of the funding
to those same groups came from a US billionaire who has previously
worked closely with US government agencies to further his own
business interests. This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but
clear evidence shows that US investment was a force multiplier for
many of the groups involved in overthrowing Yanukovych.
But
that’s not the shocking part.
What’s
shocking is the name of the billionaire who co-invested with the US
government (or as Wheeler put it: the “dark deep
force” acting on behalf of “Pax Americana”).
Step
out of the shadows…. Wheeler’s boss, Pierre Omidyar.
Yes,
in the annals of independent media, this might be the strangest twist
ever: According to financial disclosures and reports seen by Pando,
the founder and publisher of Glenn Greenwald’s government-bashing
blog,“The Intercept,” co-invested with the US government to help
fund regime change in Ukraine.
[Update: Wheeler
has responded on Twitter to say that her Tweets were taken out of
context, but would not give specifics. Adam Colligan, with whom
Wheeler was debating, commented on Pando that "while Wheeler did
raise the issue of external interference in relation to a discussion
about a coup, it was not really at all in the manner that you have
portrayed." Further "[Pax Americana] appeared after the
conversation had shifted from the idea of whether a coup had been
staged by the Ukrainian Parliament to a question about the larger
powers’ willingness to weaken underlying economic conditions in a
state.” Neither Wheeler or Colligan has commented on the main
subject of the story: Pierre Omidyar’s co-investment in Ukrainian
opposition groups with the US government.]
* *
* *
When
the revolution came to Ukraine, neo-fascists played
a front-center role in overthrowing the country’s president. But
the real political power rests with Ukraine’s pro-western
neoliberals. Political figures like Oleh Rybachuk, long a favorite of
the State
Department, DC
neocons, EU,
and NATO—and
the right-hand
man to
Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko.
Last
December, the Financial
Times wrote
that Rybachuk’s “New Citizen” NGO campaign “played a big role
in getting the protest up and running.”
New
Citizen,
along with the rest of Rybachuk’s interlocking network
of western-backed NGOs
and campaigns— “Center
UA” (also
spelled “Centre UA”), “Chesno,” and
“Stop Censorship” to name a few — grew their power by targeting
pro-Yanukovych politicians with a well-coordinated anti-corruption
campaign that built its strength in Ukraine’s regions, before
massing in Kiev last autumn.
The
efforts of the NGOs were so successful that the Ukraine government
was accused of employing dirty tricks to shut them down. In early
February, the groups were the subject of a massive money
laundering investigation by
the economics division of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry in what many
denounced as a politically motivated move.
Fortunately
the groups had the strength – which is to say, money – to survive
those attacks and continue pushing for regime change in Ukraine. The
source of that money?
According
to the Kyiv
Post,
Pierrie Omidyar’s Omidyar Network (part of the Omidyar Group which
owns First Look Media and the Intercept) provided 36% of “Center
UA”’s $500,000 budget in 2012— nearly $200,000. USAID provided
54% of “Center UA”’s budget for 2012. Other funders included
the US government-backed National Endowment for Democracy.
In
2011, Omidyar Network gave $335,000 to
“New Citizen,” one of the anti-Yanukovych “projects” managed
through the Rybachuk-chaired NGO “Center UA.” At the time,
Omidyar Network boasted that its investment in “New Citizen”
would help “shape public policy” in Ukraine:
“Using technology and media, New Citizen coordinates the efforts of concerned members of society, reinforcing their ability to shape public policy.
“… With support from Omidyar Network, New Citizen will strengthen its advocacy efforts in order to drive greater transparency and engage citizens on issues of importance to them.”
In
March 2012, Rybachuk — the operator behind the 2004 Orange
Revolution scenes, the Anatoly
Chubais of
Ukraine — boasted that
he was preparing a new Orange Revolution:
“People are not afraid. We now have 150 NGOs in all the major cities in our ‘clean up Parliament campaign’ to elect and find better parliamentarians….The Orange Revolution was a miracle, a massive peaceful protest that worked. We want to do that again and we think we will.”
Detailed financial
records reviewed
by Pando (and embedded below) also show Omidyar Network covered costs
for the expansion of Rybachuk’s anti-Yanukovych campaign, “Chesno”
(“Honestly”), into regional cities including Poltava, Vinnytsia,
Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Sumy, and elsewhere, mostly in the
Ukrainian-speaking west and center.
* *
* *
To
understand what it means for Omidyar to fund Oleh Rybachuk, some
brief history is necessary. Rybachuk’s background follows a
familiar pattern in post-Soviet opportunism: From well-connected KGB
intelligence ties, to post-Soviet neoliberal networker.
In
the Soviet era, Rybachuk studied in a military languages program half
of whose graduates went on to work for the KGB.
Rybachuk’s murky overseas posting in India in the late Soviet era
further strengthens many suspicions about his Soviet intelligence
ties; whatever the case, by Rybachuk’s own account, his close
ties to
top intelligence figures in the Ukrainian
SBU served
him well during the Orange Revolution of 2004, when the SBU passed
along secret information about vote fraud and assassination plots.
In
1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rybachuk moved to the
newly-formed Ukraine Central Bank, heading the foreign
relations department under
Central Bank chief and future Orange Revolution leader Viktor
Yushchenko. In his central bank post, Rybachuk established close
friendly ties with western government and financial aid institutions,
as well as proto-Omidyar figures likeGeorge
Soros,
who funded many
of the NGOs involved in “color
revolutions” including
small donations to the same Ukraine NGOs that Omidyar backed. (Like
Omidyar Network does today, Soros’ charity arms—Open Society and
Renaissance Foundation—publicly preached transparency and good
government in places like Russia during the Yeltsin years, while
Soros’ financial arm speculatedon
Russian debt and participated in scandal-plagued
auctions of
state assets.)
In
early 2005, Orange Revolution leader Yushchenko became Ukraine’s
president, and he appointed Rybachuk deputy
prime minister in
charge of integrating Ukraine into the EU, NATO, and other western
institutions. Rybachuk also pushed for the mass-privatization of
Ukraine’s remaining state holdings.
Over
the next several years, Rybachuk was shifted around President
Yushchenko’s embattled administration, torn by internal divisions.
In 2010, Yushchenko lost the presidency to recently-overthrown Viktor
Yanukovych, and a year later, Rybachuk was on Omidyar’s and USAID’s
payroll, preparing for the next Orange Revolution. As Rybachuk told
the Financial
Times two
years ago:
“We want to do [the Orange Revolution] again and we think we will.”
Some
of Omidyar’s funds were specifically earmarked for covering the
costs of setting up Rybachuk’s “clean up parliament” NGOs in
Ukraine’s regional centers. Shortly after the Euromaidan
demonstrations erupted last November, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry
opened up a money laundering investigation into Rybachuk’s NGOs,
dragging Omidyar’s name into the high-stakes political struggle.
According
to a Kyiv
Post article
on February 10 titled, “Rybachuk: Democracy-promoting
nongovernmental organization faces ‘ridiculous’ investigation”:
“Police are investigating Center UA, a public-sector watchdog funded by Western donors, on suspicion of money laundering, the group said. The group’s leader, Oleh Rybachuk, said it appears that authorities, with the probe, are trying to warn other nongovernmental organizations that seek to promote democracy, transparency, free speech and human rights in Ukraine.
“According to Center UA, the Kyiv economic crimes unit of the Interior Ministry started the investigation on Dec. 11. Recently, however, investigators stepped up their efforts, questioning some 200 witnesses.
“… Center UA received more than $500,000 in 2012, according to its annual report for that year, 54 percent of which came from Pact Inc., a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nearly 36 percent came from Omidyar Network, a foundation established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife. Other donors include the International Renaissance Foundation, whose key funder is billionaire George Soros, and National Endowment for Democracy, funded largely by the U.S. Congress.”
* *
* *
What
all this adds up to is a journalistic conflict-of-interest of the
worst kind: Omidyar working hand-in-glove with US foreign policy
agencies to interfere in foreign governments, co-financing regime
change with well-known arms of the American empire — while at the
same time hiring a growing team of soi-disant ”independent
journalists” which vows to investigate the behavior of the US
government at home and overseas, and boasts of its
uniquely “adversarial” relationship
towards these government institutions.
We had a long discussion about this internally; about what our position would be if the White House asked us to not publish something…. With us, because we want to be adversarial, they won’t know what bat phone to call. They know who to call at The Times, they know who to call at The Post. With us, who are they going to call? Pierre? Glenn?
Of
the many problems that poses, none is more serious than the fact that
Omidyar now has the only two people with exclusive
access to the complete Snowden NSA cache,
Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Somehow, the same billionaire who
co-financed the “coup” in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclusive
access to the NSA secrets—and very few in the independent media
dare voice a skeptical word about it.
In
the larger sense, this is a problem of 21st century American
inequality, of life in a billionaire-dominated era. It is a problem
we all have to contend with—
PandoDaily’s 18-plus investors
include a gaggle of Silicon Valley billionaires like Marc Andreessen
(who serves on the board of eBay, chaired by Pierre Omidyar) and
Peter Thiel (whose politics I’ve investigated, and
described as repugnant.)
But
what is more immediately alarming is what makes Omidyar different.
Unlike other billionaires, Omidyar has garnered nothing but
uncritical, fawning press
coverage, particularly from those he hashired.
By acquiring a “dream team” of what remains of independent media
— Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Wheeler, my former
partner Matt
Taibbi — not to mention press “critics” like Jay
Rosen —
he buys both silence and fawning press.
Both
are incredibly useful: Silence, an absence of journalistic curiosity
about Omidyar’s activities overseas and at home, has been purchased
for the price of whatever his current all-star indie cast currently
costs him. As an added bonus, that same investment buys silence from
exponentially larger numbers of desperately underpaid independent
journalists hoping to someday be on his payroll, and the
underfunded media
watchdogs that
survive on Omidyar Network grants.
And
it also buys laughable fluff from the likes of Scahill who also
boasted to the Daily
Beast of
his boss’ close involvement in the day to day running of First
Look.
“[Omidyar] strikes me as always sort of political, but I think that the NSA story and the expanding wars put politics for him into a much more prominent place in his existence. This is not a side project that he is doing. Pierre writes more on our internal messaging than anyone else. And he is not micromanaging. This guy has a vision. And his vision is to confront what he sees as an assault on the privacy of Americans.”
Now
Wheeler has her answer — that, yes, the revolutionary groups were
part-funded by Uncle Sam, but also by her boss — one assumes
awkward follow up questions will be asked on that First Look internal
messaging system.
Whether
Wheeler, Scahill and their colleagues go on to share their concerns
publicly will speak volumes about First Look’s much-trumpeted
independence, both from Omidyar’s other business interests and from
Omidyar’s co-investors in Ukraine: the US government.
Editor’s
note: Pando
contacted Omidyar Networks for comment prior to publication but had
not received a response by press time. We will update this post if
they do respond.
Update: First
Look staffer, Glenn Greenwald, has responded to Pando’s
report here.
Paul Carr, the editor of the above report, has written a
follow-up here.
Chesno document showing total funding from USAID and Omidyar Network to “Centre UA”:
Chesno document showing numerous Omidyar fundings for activities in regional cities:
Glenn Greenwald's response is HERE
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