Tag: cia

Report: Indian Businessman Poses as CIA Agent to Land Billion-Dollar ‘Defense’ Deal with Indonesia

An Indian businessman named Gaurav Srivastava allegedly passed himself off as an operative of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to close a multi-billion dollar defense deal with the Indonesian government, according to civil suits filed in the United States by his former business partner.

A report from a U.S.-based non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) quoted the lawsuits filed in New York and California by Srivastava’s former business partner, Niels Troost.

According to the lawsuits, Srivastava somehow persuaded then-Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, currently the president of the country, that he was a CIA agent when the two attended high-level military procurement meetings in Washington and Jakarta in 2020.

By the end of that year, the faux CIA agent had alleged secured three “letters of intention to purchase” jet fighters and other defense items from the Indonesian government. He scored two more defense procurement commitments in 2021 and 2022. Products mentioned in the deals included big-ticket items like F-15 jet fighters, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and C-130 transport aircraft.

Troost said Srivastava grew quite close to Subianto, becoming a frequent guest at his home and developing ties with his brother, a prominent Indonesian businessman. Subianto went on to become the president of Indonesia in October 2024.

The Indonesian Defense Ministry told Tempo, the OCCRP’s Indonesian partner, that all of the agreements secured by Srivastava were “preliminary,” none were binding contracts, and none led to a purchase by the Indonesian government.

“The entire process of Indonesian defense cooperation and procurement is always carried out with utmost caution, prioritizing the principles of good governance, national interest, and compliance with applicable mechanisms and regulations,” a defense ministry spokesperson insisted.

However, OCCRP noted that Subianto was photographed with Srivastava at signing ceremonies, Srivastava held press conferences to announce purchase agreements, and the U.S. government even issued formal approval for the sale of 36 F-15s in 2022 – the exact number of fighter jets mentioned in the agreements with Srivastava.

According to Troost, the reason he brought all of this up in a pair of U.S. lawsuits is that he was convinced Srivastava was a CIA agent. On that basis, he gave Srivastava a 50 percent share of his own company, believing the CIA man could help him win lucrative contracts with customers like Indonesia.

Srivastava allegedly proceeded to loot $51 million from Troost’s company and “loan” it to the Arsari Group, a company headed by Subianto’s brother. Srivastava then convinced the Arsari Group to give the loan money to him. He was able to wheedle the Indonesian company into giving him half, and proceeded to blow the money on a $25 million mansion in Los Angeles.

Srivastara allegedly presented himself as a mogul who controlled four firms of his own, but all four turned out to be shell companies that were eventually deregistered for not paying their taxes. None of those companies were named in the U.S. government approval for the F-15 sales to Indonesia. Boeing, which was involved in the process, gave up trying to sell F-15s to Indonesia four years later because Jakarta never finalized the deal. Subianto’s government is now shopping for Turkish-built KAAN jet fighters.

Indonesian authorities say they are investigating these transactions for possible corruption charges. Meanwhile, Troost went after Srivastava in New York and California on racketeering charges. In one of these filings, Troost referred to Srivastava as a “brazen con man of remarkable skill.”

Niels Troost is himself an interesting character, a Dutch commodities trader based out of Switzerland who was sanctioned by the European Union, and several individual European governments, for allegedly buying banned Russian oil after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The EU and Switzerland lifted their sanctions against Troost this year. Troost has claimed the sanctions were partly a result of his massive international business feud with Srivastava and has said he would not buy Russian oil because he supports Ukraine.

Srivastava, in turn, denies all wrongdoing and claims Troost’s allegations against him are part of an “aggressive scorched-earth disinformation campaign.”

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Secret CIA ‘workbook’ claims simple five-step exercise can supercharge the human body

A ‘workbook’ created by a secret US Army program claimed to have developed a simple five-step method of supercharging the human body. 

Created by the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences in Virginia in 1977, the 21-page document taught advanced mental skills for expanding awareness, remote perception, problem-solving, relieving pain and building energy.

However, on page 14 of the workbook, which was declassified and released by the CIA in 2003, users were taught how to ‘charge the body from great speed and strength’ with five easy steps.

Before tackling an intense activity such as lifting a heavy object or sprinting, the manual instructed users to close their eyes for a moment. Then, take a deep breath in.

While breathing in, the workbook said to mentally focus on two things at once: the exact physical action to be done and the ‘strong energy of red’ filling the body.

As the person breathes out, they open their eyes and immediately do the action – allegedly giving them a noticeable physical boost and better reflexes.

The classified workbook said: ‘You will be able immediately to perform the physical act you have pictured – with far greater strength, much more rapidly and with smooth total coordination of your physical body.’

The meditation training was part of a series of secret programs funded by the CIA from roughly 1972 to 1995, which explored methods of expanding consciousness and human potential for spies and special ops teams.

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Appeals Court Blocks Trump Administration from Firing 19 Intelligence Officials Assigned to DEI Jobs

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked the Trump Administration from firing 19 intelligence officers assigned to DEI jobs.

The Virginia-based Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court judge’s injunction requiring the intelligence agencies to provide the officials with an opportunity to be reassigned.

A group of anonymous intelligence officers, who had been temporarily reassigned to roles implementing controversial Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) programs, previously filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, names ODNI, the CIA, and leadership — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe—as defendants.

The plaintiffs, identified as “John Does 1-6” and “Jane Does 1-5,” claim they were unfairly targeted simply for their prior assignments to DEIA programs.

US Circuit Judge Nicole Berner, a Biden appointee, wrote the majority opinion.

Judge Berner said the CIA officials who were fired were deprived of due process.

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Former CIA Officer Drops Bombshell at MKULTRA Hearing: “I Don’t Believe the Research Stopped” — Luna Says Congress Was Lied to for 50 Years

Explosive testimony before the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets reveals decades of CIA crimes against unwitting Americans, evidence destruction, secret torture sites in Germany, and a continuing deep state effort to hide the truth from Congress and the American people.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) chaired a powerful hearing Tuesday titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Experiments,” dropping bombshell after bombshell on one of the darkest chapters in American intelligence history.

The CIA’s infamous MKULTRA program, which ran from 1953 to 1973, subjected countless unwitting victims, including American citizens, hospital patients, prisoners, and veterans, to LSD, psychological torture, electroshock, hypnosis, and sensory deprivation in a quest for mind control techniques.

In her opening remarks, Luna called the program “crimes committed by the Central Intelligence Agency against American citizens” and “crimes against humanity.”

“This was a deliberate, systematic governmental operation… authorized by the very top of U.S. intelligence apparatus,” Luna said.

She detailed how CIA Director Richard Helms personally ordered the destruction of MKULTRA records in 1973 as he left office. Sidney Gottlieb and his team spent an entire day burning 152 files.

Gottlieb then had his personal papers destroyed. The head of the CIA’s own records center protested in writing and was overruled.

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Ex CIA Director John Brennan Sues Trump Administration Over Russiagate Probe – Lawsuit Assigned to Anti-Trump Judge Jia Cobb

Former CIA Director John Brennan filed a lawsuit against President Trump, the Justice Department, and senior administration officials on Wednesday over the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into him.

Brennan filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming that he has been “vindictively singled out for investigation and prosecution.”

He is seeking a court order requiring the White House, Justice Department, ODNI, and the CIA to “preserve materials and communications potentially relevant to Director Brennan’s legal and constitutional challenges to any future criminal charges.”

The case has been assigned to far-left Biden-appointed Judge Jia Cobb. Cobb previously oversaw Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s lawsuit against the Trump Administration, blocked the Trump Administration from carrying out expedited deportations of illegal aliens under his “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” Executive Order, and blocked Trump’s National Guard deployment in Washington, DC.

“This Administration has adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President’s perceived adversaries,” the 46-page filing begins. “It is against this backdrop that former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan (“Plaintiff” or “Director Brennan”), is being vindictively singled out for investigation and prosecution.”

It further points to the investigation of former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and an ongoing investigation into Minnesota officials, arguing that, likewise, “the evidence of vindictiveness in this matter is overwhelming.”

“President Trump has been condemning and calling for Director Brennan’s prosecution for years,” it reads. “Given these strong indicia of vindictiveness, Director Brennan expects that he will forcefully challenge any eventual indictment as the product of an unconstitutionally vindictive and selective prosecution.”

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Congress Confronts MKULTRA: Testimony Warns Of Ongoing CIA Mind Control Capabilities

The deep state’s favorite tools of control just got dragged back into the light. Today, the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held the first congressional hearing on the CIA’s MKULTRA program since 1977.

What could have been a dusty historical review turned into a direct warning that the same machinery of mind control, memory manipulation, and behavioral experimentation may never have shut down – and could now run on far more powerful modern engines.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and her colleagues are doing what previous Congresses largely refused to do: forcing sunlight on one of the intelligence community’s darkest chapters.

The testimony made one thing unmistakable. The CIA lied to lawmakers decades ago about the program’s success. Advances in neuroscience, cyber tools, and artificial intelligence have handed covert operators capabilities Sidney Gottlieb could only dream of. And American citizens remain potential targets.

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They Told You Your Dishwasher Could Spy on You

Back in 2012, Wired published an article titled “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher.” That was not some wild theory. That was based on remarks from then-CIA Director David Petraeus, who was speaking about the so-called Internet of Things at an In-Q-Tel summit, the CIA’s own venture capital arm. Petraeus called these technologies “transformational,” especially for their effect on “clandestine tradecraft.” In plain English, the intelligence world saw your home appliances, television, car navigation system, light switches, phone apps, and connected devices as the next great surveillance frontier.

Petraeus said that “items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled” through RFID, sensor networks, embedded servers, and internet-connected devices. That is the quote everyone should remember. They were not hiding it. They were telling you directly that the smart home would become the spy home. Once upon a time, they had to bug your chandelier. Now they simply wait for you to buy the device, install the app, connect it to Wi-Fi, and sign away your privacy in some user agreement nobody reads.

Wired correctly noted that these devices would produce tagged, geolocated data that could be intercepted in real-time. The dishwasher quote was not really about dishwashers alone. It was about the entire home becoming a listening post and tracking station. Your television, thermostat, lighting system, refrigerator, phone, PlayStation, car, smartwatch, and now even your pet’s microchip become pieces of a surveillance net. This is precisely how tyranny advances, not with a knock at the door, but with convenience, entertainment, and a monthly subscription.

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A CIA Senior Official Personally Stopped Analysts From Concluding COVID Came From the Wuhan Lab.

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This is not a theory anymore. It is a documented fact with a paper trail.

When CIA analysts were privately concluding in the earliest days of the pandemic that the furin cleavage site in the COVID virus looked consistent with gain of function modification, a senior official at the CIA’s Weapons and Counterproliferation Mission Center personally intervened to stop them from shifting to a lab leak finding.

Not bureaucratic inertia. Not competing evidence. A person. Making a decision. To stop the conclusion the evidence was pointing toward.

On June 4th 2021 that same CIA center briefed Fauci on classified COVID origins intelligence from the President’s Daily Brief. During that briefing Fauci steered the agency toward consulting scientists who had publicly advocated for a natural origin. The scientists he recommended were the ones who had already staked out the position he needed them to hold.

Meanwhile a pre-pandemic Department of Energy warning to Fauci’s own agency about the risks of the Wuhan Institute of Virology research apparently never reached the analysts tasked with investigating the virus’s origin. The people investigating whether the lab caused the pandemic were never told their own government had already flagged that lab as dangerous before the pandemic started.

Then when a whistleblower filed a formal complaint alleging that classified intelligence contradicted Fauci’s sworn testimony to Congress, the Biden DNI’s office routed it not to an independent inspector general but to HHS Secretary Becerra, Fauci’s own boss, who had already indicated the matter was considered.

The FBI told Congress it had interviewed a key witness before reaching its lab leak conclusion. ODNI’s own records show that interview happened months after the FBI had already made its call. And when finally interviewed the witness said nothing about COVID origins at all.

This is not incompetence. Incompetence is random. This is a pattern running in one direction consistently protecting one man from accountability for five years.

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Fauci, The CIA, And The Unanswered Questions Of COVID

Did Anthony Fauci manipulate the intelligence community (IC) investigation of the origin of COVID as outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims?

Gabbard recently released previously unseen documents and communications during the COVID pandemic between the IC and the key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci. She claims they show that Fauci and the IC coordinated the investigation of the origin of the COVID to suggest it was a natural occurrence rather than a laboratory leak. She further charges that the documents reveal Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments in an attempt to discourage the lab-leak hypothesis.

It is not clear that the released information shows this, and a careful reading suggests a more complicated scenario. But what the messages do show is that an undue emphasis on Fauci’s actions risks missing a more important point – the hidden connection between public health officials and the IC during the pandemic.

The two theories on where COVID originated are that the virus evolved naturally from bats to man via an intermediate animal host; or that the virus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The first was more widely accepted by scientists and most of the international press early in the pandemic, but the intermediate host has never been discovered so the theory remains speculative. The second theory, which has gained significant traction since initially being disparaged as conspiracy, is only circumstantial since no definitive proof exists. The answer as to how COVID originated remains unknown.

Where does Dr. Fauci, the government’s point man in the pandemic, fit in? He acknowledges the possibility of a lab leak, but initially came down firmly on the side of natural origin – aggressively so. He and his colleagues, notably his boss NIH director Francis Collins, attempted to publicly silence proponents of the lab leak theory. The rub is that Fauci was tangentially involved in “gain of function” viral manipulation research done in Wuhan and clearly misled Congress about this involvement.

Because gain-of-function research could have been responsible for the development of the virus in the Wuhan lab, this means Fauci has a conflict of interest on the COVID source: He could bear some responsibility for the entire affair if this was indeed a lab leak. So he has reason other than scientific inquiry to support the animal host theory. He is aware of that and has written in the past about the necessity and the attendant danger of doing gain-of-function research. He now strenuously denies it had anything to do with COVID.

Enter the IC and Gabbard’s document release.

There is uncertainty over whether Fauci frequented CIA offices early in the pandemic, something he was less than forthright about in his 2024 congressional testimony. It is unclear whether or how many times he was there, in part because a whistleblower claims the requirement to sign in was waived for Dr. Fauci. What is not in doubt are his contacts with the CIA after President Biden charged the IC with investigating the origin of COVID.

The CIA asked Fauci to provide recommendations for experts to consult in their investigation of the COVID origin; the extent of his influence on the agency’s investigation is unclear. At the time, some officials, aware of the potential conflict of interest, questioned in the documents whether relying on recommendations from someone deeply involved in coronavirus research could create the perception of improper influence regarding their findings. Nevertheless, the IC employed the experts Fauci recommended, who were never publicly identified. Their names have been redacted in communications and the information they provided has never been released.

The lack of transparency by the public health community and the CIA caused Republicans, led by Dr. Rand Paul, to suspect Fauci selected his CIA consultants based on their opposition to the lab-leak theory. Further, Paul proposed there was a self-justifying loop of information in which the medical experts put their thumbs on the scale of the IC report supporting natural origin. Public health officials (and some politicians who saw the lab-leak theory as a potential scandal) then turned around and used the “doctored” IC report to support the conclusions they provided to the public.

Neither of these accusations is supported or refuted by the released communications.

Again, despite Gabbard’s claims, there is no smoking gun in the released documents, and the IC did not reach a consensus on the origin of COVID. The larger point, however, is one the public knew little about: the incestuous connection between high-level public health officials and the IC during the pandemic. Making Fauci the bête noire does little to advance our knowledge of what actually happened or how to go forward.

This hardly exonerates Fauci: His actions bear scrutiny because of his disturbing pattern of behavior. (Criminal charges may be a bridge too far, and in any event he has a blanket presidential pardon). Besides misleading Congress about his involvement with gain-of-function research and his attempt to suppress the views of lab leak proponents, he obscured his connection with the IC investigation. When asked, he mocked it with a snide deflection as “a conspiracy that I parachuted in like Jason Bourne.” In addition, and almost forgotten today, he confessed to deliberately lying to the American public in the New York Times about “herd immunity” to COVID. This was not, as some claim, the result of incomplete information; he admitted consciously dissembling.

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CIA Official Confirms Agency Flip-Flopped Over COVID-19 Origins Over Five-Day Period

Over the span of five days in 2021, the CIA abruptly changed its opinion on the origins of COVID-19 from a laboratory to neutral, a newly released document confirms.

Originally, CIA analysts concluded that COVID-19 likely came from a high-level laboratory in Wuhan, China located near where the first cases were detected in late 2019, senior CIA officer James Erdman III told lawmakers in May. Over the span of five days in 2021, however, Edman says the agency changed its stance to ‘neutral.’ 

Then in September of 2024 during a private briefing between intelligence officials and members of Congress, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) inquired as to how the agency came to the conclusion that lab-origin vs. natural origin were about equal, according to yesterday’s document release by outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard. 

In response, an unnamed CIA employee told Wenstrup that “he made the call to stop the shift to lab because [redacted] had come in the day before they were ready to publish which made them back off the call,” according to a summary of the briefing compiled by an intelligence official. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, officials said in a declassified assessment based on information through August 2021 that only one agency – which was not the CIA, based on details since made public – favored a lab origin for COVID-19.

An updated assessment released in mid-2023 states that the CIA was unable to determine the origin of COVID-19 because both the lab and natural origin theories “rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.”

The CIA said in 2025 that a lab origin for COVID-19 was “more likely.” The Trump administration maintains that COVID-19 came from the lab in China.

More on Changes

A whistleblower in 2023 told members of Congress that the CIA team tasked with analyzing the origins of COVID-19 favored a lab origin, but that after the team was paid, it changed its position.

The CIA at the time denied paying analysts to reach specific conclusions.

Erdman, the senior CIA official, told a Senate panel in May that he was on a team investigating how intelligence agencies handled the COVID-19 pandemic and that the CIA declined to provide documents the team had requested that may have shed light on the change.

Erdman said that the team found the shift happened after Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the time the head of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – which provided funding for the lab in Wuhan – briefed intelligence officials and suggested to officials that they talk to specific scientists, including researchers who wrote a paper with which Fauci and the institute’s head secretly assisted.

The paper, called “Proximal Origin,” purported to rule out a laboratory origin.

Wenstrup also asked intelligence officials in the 2024 briefing about a white paper that National Center for Medical Intelligence analysts compiled as a rebuttal to the “Proximal Origin.” The authors of the white paper felt their conclusions were ignored by intelligence officials, they informed Wenstrup.

A representative for the center was not prepared for the questioning, “which annoyed Wenstrup,” according to the briefing summary.

Fauci Briefed Intelligence Officials

Fauci briefed intelligence officials on June 4, 2021, and promoted the idea that COVID-19 had a natural origin, according to another briefing summary released by Gabbard.

Fauci “recommended that [intelligence officials] take a look at Tulane’s paper on two lineages from two separate markets,” the summary states. “To Dr. Fauci, this paper’s findings were a clear indication of natural origins of COVID-19.”

Fauci also “reminded the group that even for SARS, it took 12 years to make the link to a bat even though it only took 4 months to identify the natural reservoir” and that “we still haven’t identified source/origin of Ebola,” which is believed to have a natural origin, according to the summary.

Fauci, who has not responded to requests for comment, told lawmakers during a hearing in 2024 that he did not talk about viral research related to COVID-19 with intelligence officials.

“After the investigations began about COVID, I was briefed by intelligence agencies about possibilities of there being activities going on in different laboratories,” he said.

In another readout of the 2021 briefing, Fauci was said to have suggested intelligence officials connect with three scientists whose names were redacted.

“All three … have advocated for features of the virus that they judge to be consistent with a natural origin,” the readout states.

An email disclosed that one of the scientists was Kristian Andersen, a Scripps Research researcher who coauthored the “Proximal Origin.”

Andersen said in private messages with coauthors that COVID-19 may have been engineered before the paper was published. He has said that further analysis of the virus altered his and others’ views.

“Dr. Fauci was the behind-the-scenes adviser who, alongside his hand-picked so-called experts, pushed the intelligence community to endorse a natural animal origin to hide his dangerous gain-of-function research that he funded using taxpayer dollars,” Gabbard said in a video statement posted to X on June 18.

“All of this in a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth and shift the blame and attention away from Fauci’s own actions.”

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