This is from William Blum at killinghope.org
The question that may never go away: Who really is Barack Obama?
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Fathers", Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as "a consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer".
The odd part of Obama's story is that he doesn't mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation.10 Equally odd is that the Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960.11
The British journal, Lobster Magazine – which, despite its incongruous name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence matters – has reported that Business International was active in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored candidates in Australia and Fiji.12 In 1987, the CIA overthrew the Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships could not make port calls.13 After the Fiji coup, the candidate supported by Business International, who was much more amenable to Washington's nuclear desires, was reinstated to power – R.S.K. Mara was Prime Minister or President of Fiji from 1970 to 2000, except for the one-month break in 1987.
In his book, not only doesn't Obama mention his employer's name; he fails to say when he worked there, or why he left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions, but inasmuch as Business International has a long association with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to penetrate the radical left – including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)14 – it's valid to wonder if the inscrutable Mr. Obama is concealing something about his own association with this world.
- 10 New York Times, October 30, 2007
- 11 New York Times, December 27, 1977, p.40
- 12 Lobster Magazine, Hull, UK, #14, November 1987
- 13 William Blum, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpowerâ€, pp.199-200
- 14 Carl Oglesby, "Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement" (2008), passim
Here's Tarpley's take on this just for fun:
BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION Obama’s first job after leaving Columbia was with Business International Corporation (BIC), a private intelligence company which provided information and know-how to US companies seeking to do business overseas. Obama worked as a consultant and financial journalist. So far as is known, Business International Corporation was never identified as a CIA front company, but it had the telltale earmarks of one. Its business of journalism and reporting, ferreting out information about conditions in foreign countries was a perfect cover story for spying of all sorts. Business International went out of existence when it was acquired the London Economist Intelligence Unit, an operation that notoriously moved in the orbit of British intelligence. Once again, Obama covers up whatever may have happened in reality by throwing up a smokescreen of racial conflict. This time it was the first temptation of St. Barack by the devil (“white†society, as always). Dan Armstrong, who knew Obama when he was working at BIC, has stressed that Obama’s account of the firm and his job there is far from accurate: ‘Mr. Armstrong’s description of the firm, and those of other co-workers, differs at least in emphasis from Mr. Obama’s. It was a small newsletter-publishing and research firm, with about 250 employees worldwide, that helped companies with foreign operations (they could be called multinationals) understand overseas markets, they said. Far from a bastion of corporate conformity, they said, it was informal and staffed by young people making modest wages. Employees called it “high school with ashtrays.†Mr. Obama was a researcher and writer for a reference service called Financing Foreign Operations. He also wrote for a newsletter, Business International Money Report. […] “It was not working for General Foods or Chase Manhattan, that’s for sure,†said Louis Celi, a vice president at the company, which was later taken over by the Economist Intelligence Unit. “And it was not a consulting firm by any stretch of the imagination. I remember the first time I interviewed someone from Morgan Stanley and I got cheese on my tie because I thought my tie was a napkin.â€â€™ (Janny Scott, “Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say,†New York Times, October 30, 2007) Armstrong’s view is that Obama has distorted what went on at BIC to make himself look good, specifically by concocting a moment in which he turns away from the corrupt fleshpots of whitey’s world