ARE USAID GORILLA CONSERVATION FUNDS
BEING USED FOR COVERT OPERATIONS IN CENTRAL AFRICA?
Gorilla Conservation & Guerilla
Warfare
19 September 2007
Georgianne Nienaber
keith harmon snow
On Wednesday September 19, 2007 the U.S.
State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
announced the provision of $496,000 of new funds for wildlife conservation in
the Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to a State Department press release, poaching, armed conflict and
Òdemographic pressuresÓ are justification for the grant.
But
investigations in Eastern Congo reported by these authors over the past six
months indicate that USAID ÒconservationÓ funds—millions of taxpayerÕs
dollars—have been misappropriated, misdirected and disappeared. Evidence
suggests that ongoing guerrilla warfare in Central Africa is receiving
clandestine financial support in AID-for-ARMS type financial transfers.
ÒOur efforts are
focused on conserving and protecting the habitat of these magnificent animals,Ó
said Claudia A. McMurray, U.S. Assistant Secretary for State Oceans,
Environment, and Science. ÒThe survival of the mountain gorillas of Virunga is
severely threatened by the tragic events in the region, and we will continue to
devote whatever resources we can to protect the gorillas and other threatened
species there.Ó
However, as
reported by these authors, millions of dollars in USAID funds given to Virunga
Park through the Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE)
over the past ten years have virtually disappeared. Wildlife conservation in
eastern Congo is a shambles, and ÒrebelÓ armies fighting in the region are
receiving massive military support from unknown sources.
The realities on
the ground in Central Africa are disturbingly different from those painted in
the fundraising drives and brochures produced by the big conservation
organizations, and their partners and sponsors. Are these conservation programs
merely providing a smokescreen for other activities?
The Virungas
region is located in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
also the base for long-time Rwandan-backed warlord General Laurent Nkunda.
There is evidence
that the United States backs General Laurent Nkunda through both clandestine
and open military program and missions in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
Fighting in
CongoÕs North Kivu province has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in
the past year alone. The death toll for the region is unknown but
cataclysmic—in the millions of people dead since warfare began in the
area in 1996.
Playwright Eve
Ensler, producer of the Vagina Monologues, recently launched a campaign to stop
sexual violence in Eastern Congo that is unprecedented. Sexual violence is used
as a weapon of war to sow terror and break down resistance to facilitate
military occupation and conquest by invading forces. Hundreds of thousands of
women and girls have suffered attacks of sexual violence in the area.
THE MISSING
USAID MONEY
In 2005, after
years of activity with zero oversight or program verification, the activities
of Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund-International (DFGFI) and Conservation
International expenditures of USAID funds ostensibly for gorilla conservation
in Central Africa came under scrutiny.
A Freedom of
Information Act request was submitted regarding DFGFIÕs failure to file required
A-133 audit forms on its USAID funding. These A-133 forms are federally
mandated from every non-governmental organization (NGO) receiving USAID monies,
which come from U.S. taxpayers.
A Freedom of
Information Act request determined that DFGFI has not filed audits for more
than two years, while they received a total of at least $4,693,384 from USAID
between September 24, 2001 and September 29, 2004.
In September of
2005, US Congressman James Oberstar was contacted by a constituent who claimed
that the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International had failed to file federally
mandated audits (Form A-133) after receiving millions of dollars in grants from
USAID.
Congressman
OberstarÕs informal inquiry found that, indeed, the DFGFI had failed to file
required forms accounting for millions of dollars in USAID money.
ÒUSAID is
covering up for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International,Ó said a source
close to this investigation, in January 2006. ÒThe US government has backed off
their investigation of where the millionÕs of dollars in grants went.Ó
The source claims
that DFGFI officials working in Congo and Rwanda are using the gorilla
conservation as a front for other activities. The source also provided
information revealing the interesting backgrounds of top-level DFGFI directors.
ÒThe little old
lady in Iowa who sends in her five bucks to save the gorillas would freak out
if she knew where her money was really going,Ó the source said. ÒThe gorillas
are getting zip in the wild.Ó
In 2006
Congressman Oberstar demanded that USAID produce a report on the activities of
the DFGFI in Central Africa, but as of this writing there had been no
substantive action by the DFGFI or USAID. Oberstar noted that the DFGFI has
violated U.S. law by not filing required audit reports.
ÒIÕm personally
pursuing the matterÓ Oberstar told a reporter for the Rwanda-owned state
newspaper, the New Times, in November 2005, Òand have to make sure that
USAID explains to the government why DFGFI has not been presenting their audit
reports.Ó
The Rwandan
state-run newspaper New Times reported that DFGFI President and CEO
Clare Richardson told their reporter that DFGFI had presented audits to USAID
in March 2005. The New Times also reported that the Director General of
the Office of Rwanda Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN), Rosette Rugamba, told
the New Times that she didnÕt understand the activities of the DFGFI.
ÒI donÕt know
what they are doing in Rwanda,Ó Rugamba told the New Times. ÒThey have
been here for over three decades claiming they are doing research work but they
havenÕt given us any results. The living conditions of the DFGFI trackers are
miserable and yet the DFGFI has lots of money.Ó
According to
Congressman OberstarÕs office, on March 31, 2006, Congressional Affairs at
USAID told a House International Relations Committee staff-member Òthat an
audit is being conducted by a third party auditor, but it has not yet been
completed.Ó
Also, the U.S.
government Office of Acquisition and Assistance was reportedly forcing DFGFI to
respond to all allegations leveled against them about finance and budget
issues.
The Òthird-partyÓ
auditor performing a ÒprivateÓ audit is the Defense Contract Audit Agency, a
U.S. government agency responsible for auditing U.S. Department of Defense
contracts.
Why is the U.S.
Defense Contracts Audit Agency auditing programs and funds designated for
Ògorilla conservationÓ in Central Africa?
ÒThe Defense
Contract Audit Agency,Ó reads their web site, Òis under the authority,
direction, and control of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), is
responsible for performing all contract audits for the Department of Defense
(DoD), and providing accounting and financial advisory services regarding
contracts and subcontracts to all DoD Components responsible for procurement
and contract administration.Ó
The Defense
Contract Audit Agency completed the DFGFI/USAID audit in March 2007, but the
audit has not been released due to the claimed Òproprietary natureÓ of the
audit.
We repeat the
question: Why is the U.S. Department of Defense Contract Audit Agency auditing
the finances and programs of a conservation organization like the Dian Fossey
Gorilla Fund?
While oversight
and accountability for past USAID ÔinvestmentÓ in the region has not been
achieved, even under the pressure of a U.S. Congressman, some $496 thousand
dollars is being directed to the ongoing black hole in Central Africa.
DIAN FOSSEY
GUERILLA FUND
Dian Fossey
Gorilla Fund International also receives funds from private donors, foundations
and corporate sponsors, and they have regular fundraising drives where callers
solicit donations from members and the general public.
Sponsors and
friends listed in DFGFI documents for January to December of 2003, in the
$25,000 and above category included, Dr. and Mrs. Nick Faust and CNN, and
certain mining and intelligence connected interests.
Dr Nicholas Faust
has deep connection to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Department
of Defense.
CNNÕs
Ted Turner is an owner-shareholder in a high-tech company called Earth Search
Sciences Inc. (ESSI) based out of McCall, Idaho. In 1999 ESSI loaned a
state-of-the-art ÒhyperspectralÓ probe—a remote sensing instrument
carried on an aircraft or satellite platform—to a DFGFI and Georgia
Institute of Technology team who performed some interesting ÒstudiesÓ in
Rwanda.
The project was directed by
Dr. Nicholas Faust who is one of the key scientists with the Environmental
Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), Redlands, California, USA, which is
directly linked to ESSI.
ESRI Corporation
(www.esri.com) is self-described as Òthe world leader in GIS (geographic information
system) modeling and mapping software and technology.Ó
ESRI is a key
contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence sector,
providing battle theatre GIS mapping and support technologies used, for
example, for Òa defense-wide
infrastructure, supporting fighting missions, command and control, installation
management, and strategic intelligence.Ó
http://www.esri.com/industries/defense/business/military_ops.html
Remote sensing of gorilla habitat reportedly provides essential
information about food sources, like the availability of species of bamboos, or
encroaching threats from slash-and-burn agriculture, or other changes to
gorilla habitat. But the remote sensing arena has proliferated due to the
efficacy of these technologies in identifying deposits of minerals or
hydrocarbons (oil & gas)—prospecting from aerospace
platforms—and the data was therefore far more significant than a few
species of bamboos.
According to two independent inside sources, the 21 data CDÕs from
the ESSI/ESRI remote sensing over-flights ostensibly for Dian Fossey Gorilla
Fund International were delivered directly by the DFGFIÕs CEO Clare Richardson
into the hands of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Minister of
Defense.
ÒThese guys aren't looking
for habitat,Ó comments one remote sensing expert (who has visited the
facilities of ESSI), Òthey are looking for oil, which is what they do, and they
probably got funding for habitat assessment from USAID and are using the data
to provide their owners with oil, minerals and uranium info. I'm not
aware of any natural resource vegetative project that they have done in the
past. It strictly sounds like taking the taxpayer dollar to fatten some
oil guys pockets.Ó
The Albertine Rift area and
so-called World Heritage Sites of the border zone between Uganda, Rwanda and
Democratic Republic of Congo are at present enmeshed in massive petroleum and
natural gas exploration and exploitation projects.
Some 1000 people a day die in
war-torn Eastern Congo due to guerrilla warfare and covert operations. The
extent of western petroleum, mining or military involvement in Eastern Congo is
never reported by the international press.
Former CNN
journalist Gary Strieker became a member of the DFGFI Board of Trustees.
Strieker was the CNN journalist embedded with the Rwandan Patriotic Army during
the PentagonÕs covert operation that overthrew the government of Juvenal
Habyarimana in Rwanda in 1994.
CNN is deeply
embedded with the Pentagon in reporting the U.S. government slant on military
operations in U.S. military hotspots, including Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and
Sudan.
CNN reportage
never establishes any connections to, or stories about, the deeper, hidden
realities of western involvement in war, mining, extortion, pillage,
dictatorship, arms-running, genocide, disease, or population control programs
in Central Africa. Like virtually all of the western media, there is never any
attention to the perpetuation of structural violence or the institutions of
control and domination.
WEIDEMANN
CHALLENGES CONSERVATION
In a telling memo
written in December 2004, Robert Hellyer—USAID Mission Director for
DRC—wrote to the USAID Africa Bureau in Washington regarding the Central
Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE), the Òprincipal vehicle for
United States participation in the Congo Basin Forest Project.Ó
Buried in the
February 2006 Annex of the supporting documents for the report of the Weidemann
Consortium—an evaluation of the CARPE program in Central Africa—is
the admission that the rational of ÒoverpopulationÓ was bogus.
ÒOf the more than
60 million people that live in the region,Ó Hellyer wrote, Òabout 22 million
are located in urban areas. At present rates of population growth, the region
is expected to contain 150 million people by the year 2025. Population density
is on the whole quite low, with a regional average of 14 persons per square
kilometer.Ó
Wildlife
conservation and state department interests have repeatedly trumpeted
population pressures as the reason for gorilla and habitat decline in Central
Africa, yet the above report makes it clear that Òpopulation density is on the
whole quite low.Ó
Robert Hellyer
elaborates on the global demand for petroleum and timber, and on the adverse
impacts of human populations in a landscape—Congo—where Òit is in
the self-interest of the United States governmentÓ to support Òsustainable
developmentÓ in the region. Hellyer confirmed that CARPE and USAID are not
interested in the Congolese people, or even biodiversity protection, but only
in the interests of the United States.
The Virungas
National Park has become the focus of international investigations around white
western mercenary operations. Top former U.S. state department officials
involved in mining companies now plundering eastern Congo have turned up on the
boards of some of the ÒconservationÓ organizations involved in the Virungas and
other protected areas in Central Africa.
One of these
conservation mercenary organizations is Richard LeakeyÕs Wildlife Direct, a newcomer in Congo that operates
under the mantle of the Africa Conservation Fund, a tax-exempt (501-c-3)
registered with the Internal Revenue Service.
Gorilla killings in the
Virungas increased when Wildlife Direct appeared in the Virungas in January
2007.
One former sate department
official involved in the region is Walter H. Kansteiner III, an Africa
Conservation Fund board member since the founding of ACF in 2004. Kansteiner
was a top-level National Security Agency official in both the William J.
Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations.
In
2003 Kansteiner appeared as an expert witness in the U.S. Congressional Hearing
before the Subcommittee on Africa of the U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on International Relations titled ÒSaving the Congo Basin, the
Stakes, the Plan.Ó At the time, Kansteiner was Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs. He formerly served with the National Security Council as
director of African Affairs and as an African specialist on the staff of the
Secretary of State.
Kansteiner has been a constant
presence behind the scenes in CongoÕs war since 1996. Kansteiner worked on a
strategic minerals task force at the Department of Defense and was Executive
Vice President of a commodity trading and manufacturing company specializing in
tropical commodities in the developing world: one of these was coltan, one of
the mineral byproducts of warfare in DRCÕs Kivu provinces today.
The Democratic Republic of
Congo has the worldÕs purest and largest deposits of strategic minerals, such
as gold, coltan, niobium, cobalt and columbite (columbium-tantalite or coltan).
Niobium, coltan, tantalum and cassiterite are found in the Virungas region.
Walter H. Kansteiner III is
on the Board of Directors of Moto Gold, now operating in the killing fields of
the bloody Ituri district near Lake Albert.
RESOURCE WARS
IN CENTRAL AFRICA
One petroleum firm involved
in the great lakes region of Central Africa is Heritage Oil and Gas, a Canadian
company involved in Kazakhstan, Russia, Iraq, Oman, Kurdistan, Gabon and on
Lake Albert—on both sides of the war-torn DRC-Uganda border—where
fighting between the Congolese FARDC army and Ugandan soldiers and Heritage Oil
guards killed a British Heritage Oil subcontractor on August 3, 2007.
Heritage Oil (Canada) and
Tullow Oil (London) are operating around Lake Albert in areas that recently saw
major fighting. In mid-August the Uganda government commenced a build-up of
troops on the DRC border. Congolese survivors in frontier towns along Lake
Albert saw Ugandan military and their ÒrebelÓ allies—believed to be
troops allied with Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba—marching into
Congo with heavy weapons in late August.
By September 5, 2007, UPDF
troops—and rebels reportedly aligned with Jean-Pierre Bemba—had
occupied the DRCÕs oil- and gold-rich Semliki Basin on the western shores of
Lake Albert. Heavily armed foreign forces occupied the villages of Aru, Mahagi,
Fataki, Irengeti and the Ruwenzori mountains. The international press and the
United Nations Observers Mission in DRC (MONUC) remained completely silent
about the Ugandan incursions.
By September 8, 2007,
Ugandan troops were heavily massed on the DRC border while Kabila and Museveni
were signing oil and gold sharing agreements in Tanzania. UPDF forces and
ÒrebelÓ troops alleged to be BembaÕs remained in DRC as of September 15.
Heritage Oil and Gas is
tied to mercenary companies and a long list of shady operators and offshore
subsidiaries and partner companies.
Bechtel Corporation
subsidiary Nexant is involved in the oil pipeline being constructed across
Uganda to the U.S. military port at Mombasa Kenya.
The Ugandan PeopleÕs
Defense Forces and Museveni government genocide against the Acholi people of
northern Uganda is driven by transboundary petroleum and gold concessions
linked to foreign corporations like Heritage, Tullow, and Bechtel.
Uganda and Rwanda are two
of the PentagonÕs premier military partners in Africa: some 150 U.S. Special
Forces were added to the PentagonÕs Uganda arsenal in March 2007 and U.S. and
U.K. military have been training UPDF troops.
Heritage has already
reported pumping some 13,000 barrels per day from its ÒKingfisherÓ 1-A site on
Lake Albert.
In March 2007, the
government of Rwanda awarded massive oil concessions to Vangold
Resources. The 2700 square kilometer Vangold concession—named White
ElephantÓ—is believed to be part of the underground basin connected to
the Heritage and Tullow Oil fields in the Semliki basin of DRC/Uganda.
Vangold Resources
is a Canadian Company with Canadian and US principals.
The ÒWhite
ElephantÓ concession is located in northern Rwanda in areas where the Rwandan
Patriotic Army has led massive military operations, driving forced
displacements premised on depopulating the area of Hutu villagers, since their
initial invasions in 1990.
COVERT ALLIANCES WITH
LAURENT NKUNDA
Congolese warlord
Jean-Pierre Bemba met with Rwandan-backed General Laurent Nkunda during his
Vice-Presidency (2003-2006) and he is now one of General Nkunda's secret
backers in the ongoing bloodletting in eastern Congo.
Jean-Pierre BembaÕs
brother-in-law Anthony ÒTonyÓ Teixeira deals in blood diamonds, criminal
networks and mercenary operations. Tony Teixeira is one of three pivotal
businessmen who, along with Jacques Lemaire and Victor Bout, were cited in 2000
for sanctions busting by supporting the UNITA rebels in AngolaÕs war. Bout and
other businessmen with U.S. connections have been involved in weapons transfers
to Congo.
According to insider MONUC
sources, Jean-Pierre Bemba has been buying off high-level MONUC officials. This
would partially explain MONUC's unwillingness to challenge or dislodge General
Nkunda.
Congolese people in the
Kivu province have been throwing stones at MONUC vehicles because they believe
MONUC is not serious about ÒpeacekeepingÓ in eastern Congo but is pursuing a
political agenda.
On September 17, 2007 a
Òresource hungryÓ China signed an agreement to invest five billion dollars in
CongoÕs infrastructure. Anglo-European interests are now using the military
occupation of General Laurent Nkunda—backed by client regimes in Uganda
and Rwanda, by Jean-Pierre Bemba and MONUC—to leverage their position
with Kabila.
General Laurent Nkunda
earns at least $100,000 a month in extortion and minerals theft, and he is
buying officials. Most important, General Laurent Nkunda is the Òinsurance
policyÓ for the U.S. and German companies preventing Congo's access to the
Lueshe niobium mines and other mineral bonanzas, including coltan, cassiterite
and, allegedly, uranium, under Nkunda's control.
Over the past decade, USAID
has become closer and closer to Pentagon interests. While originally a ÒsoftÓ
instrument of U.S. foreign policy around the world, the Pentagon has openly
sided with USAID in recent military programs. One of these is AFRICOM, the
PentagonÕs new Africa Command, which count USAID as a major partner.