The Obamas and the CIA

This is an interesting, extended--and obviously highly speculative--case for the theory that Barack Obama's father and mother--and grandparents too--were involved at times in work for American intelligence.  Written by investigative reporter Wayne Madson, it gets highly technical about how the CIA has operated over the last 60 years.  If nothing else, you may learn something about the CIA that you didn't know before.  (Another great book on the subject of the CIA is Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner of the New York Times.)  It may all sound crazy--and maybe it is crazy--but this is a crazy world indeed, especially inside the 'Matrix'-like world of the global intelligence services.

I'll excerpt just a few paragraphs.

Barack Obama, Sr., who met Dunham in 1959 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, had been part of what was described as an airlift of 280 East African students to the United States to attend various colleges – merely “aided” by a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, according to a September 12, 1960, Reuters report from London. The airlift was a CIA operation to train and indoctrinate future agents of influence in Africa, which was becoming a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union and China for influence among newly-independent and soon-to-be independent countries on the continent.

The airlift was condemned by the deputy leader of the opposition Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) as favoring certain tribes – the majority Kikuyus and minority Luos – over other tribes to favor the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), whose leader was Tom Mboya, the Kenyan nationalist and labor leader who selected Obama, Sr. for a scholarship at the University of Hawaii. Obama, Sr., who was already married with an infant son and pregnant wife in Kenya, married Dunham on Maui on February 2, 1961 and was also the university’s first African student. Dunham was three month’s pregnant with Barack Obama, Jr. at the time of her marriage to Obama, Sr.

KADU deputy leader Masinda Muliro, according to Reuters, said KADU would send a delegation to the United States to investigate Kenyan students who received “gifts” from the Americans and “ensure that further gifts to Kenyan students are administered by people genuinely interested in Kenya’s development.”

Mboya received a $100,000 grant for the airlift from the Kennedy Foundation after he turned down the same offer from the U.S. State Department, obviously concerned that direct U.S. assistance would look suspicious to pro-Communist Kenyan politicians who suspected Mboya of having CIA ties. The Airlift Africa project was underwritten by the Kennedy Foundation and the African-American Students Foundation. Obama, Sr. was not on the first airlift but a subsequent one. The airlift, organized by Mboya in 1959, included students from Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland.

Reuters also reported that Muliro charged that Africans were “disturbed and embittered” by the airlift of the selected students. Muliro “stated that “preferences were shown to two major tribes [Kikuyu and Luo] and many U.S.-bound students had failed preliminary and common entrance examinations, while some of those left behind held first-class certificates.”

Obama, Sr. was a friend of Mboya and a fellow Luo. After Mboya was assassinated in 1969, Obama, Sr. testified at the trial of his alleged assassin. Obama, Sr. claimed he was the target of a hit-and-run assassination attempt after his testimony.