Front organization

Intelligence agencies use front organizations to provide "cover", plausible occupations and means of income, for their covert agents. These may include legitimate organizations, such as charity, religious or journalism organizations; or "brass plate firms" which exist solely to provide a plausible background story, occupation, and means of income.

Brewster Jennings & Associates was a front company set up in 1994 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a cover for its officers. The most famous is Valerie Plame, a "covert employee of the CIA" whose then-classified status was published in a syndicated newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003, leading to a political scandal: the Plame affair.[1][2]

The airline Air America, an outgrowth of Civil Air Transport of the 1940s, and Southern Air Transport, ostensibly a civilian air charter company, were operated and wholly owned by the CIA, supposedly to provide humanitarian aid, but flew many combat support missions and supplied covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.[3] Other CIA-funded front groups have been used to spread American propaganda and influence during the Cold War, particularly in the Third World.[4] When intelligence agencies work through legitimate organizations, it can cause problems and increased risk for the workers of those organizations.[5] To prevent this, the CIA has had a 20-year policy (since 1976, per US Government sources) of not using Peace Corps members or US journalists for intelligence purposes.[6][7]

Another airline allegedly involved in intelligence operations was Russian Aeroflot that worked in a close coordination with KGB, SVR and GRU.[8] The company conducted forcible "evacuations" of Soviet citizens from foreign countries back to the USSR. People whose loyalty was questioned were drugged and delivered unconscious by Aeroflot planes, assisted by the company KGB personnel, according to former GRU officer Victor Suvorov.[9] In the 1980s and 1990s, specimens of deadly bacteria and viruses stolen from Western laboratories were delivered by Aeroflot to support the Russian program of biological weapons. This delivery channel encoded VOLNA ("wave") meant "delivering the material via an international flight of the Aeroflot airline in the pilots' cabin, where one of the pilots was a KGB officer".[8] At least two SVR agents died, presumably from the transported pathogens.[8]

When businessman Nikolai Glushkov was appointed as a top manager of Aeroflot in 1996, he found that the airline company worked as a "cash cow to support international spying operations" according to Alex Goldfarb:[10] 3,000 people out of the total workforce of 14,000 in Aeroflot were FSB, SVR, or GRU officers. All proceeds from ticket sales were distributed to 352 foreign bank accounts that could not be controlled by the Aeroflot administration. Glushkov closed all these accounts and channeled the money to an accounting center called Andava in Switzerland.[10] He also sent a bill and wrote a letter to SVR director Yevgeni Primakov and FSB director Mikhail Barsukov asking them to pay salaries of their intelligence officers in Aeroflot in 1996.[10] Glushkov was imprisoned in 2000 on charges of illegally channeling money through Andava. Since 2004 the company is controlled by Viktor Ivanov, a high-ranking FSB official who is a close associate of Vladimir Putin.

The FBI has acknowledged using at least thirteen front companies to conceal their use of aircraft to observe criminal activity in the United States, including:[11]

• FVX Research
• KQM Aviation
• NBR Aviation
• NG Research
• PXW Services

Many organized crime operations have substantial legitimate businesses, such as licensed gambling houses, building construction companies, hair salons and karaoke bars, engineering firms, restaurants and bars, billiard clubs, trash hauling services, or dock loading enterprises. These front companies enable these criminal organizations to launder their income from illegal activities. As well, the front companies provide plausible cover for illegal activities such as illegal gambling, extortion, drug trafficking, smuggling, and prostitution. Tattoo parlors are often used as fronts for outlaw motorcycle clubs.[12]

Where brothels are illegal, criminal organizations set up front companies providing services such as a "massage parlor" or "sauna", up to the point that "massage parlor" or "sauna" is thought as a synonym of brothel in these countries.[13]

A Colombian drug cartel, the Cali Cartel, in the past used Drogas La Rebaja, now a large national pharmacy store chain, as a front company in order to launder their drug trafficking earnings.[14]

In politics, a group may be called a front organization if it is perceived to be disingenuous in its control or goals, or if it attempts to mask extremist views within a supposedly more moderate group. Some special interest groups engage in astroturfing, which is an attempt to mask lobbying as a grassroots movement.

Banned paramilitary organizations sometimes use front groups to achieve a public face with which to raise funds, negotiate with opposition parties, recruit, and spread propaganda. For example, banned paramilitary organizations often have an affiliated political party that operates more openly (though often these parties, themselves, end up being banned). These parties may or may not be front organizations in the narrow sense (they have varying degrees of autonomy and the relationships are usually something of an open secret) but are widely considered to be so, especially by their political opponents.

Examples are the relationship between the IRA and Sinn Féin in 1980s Ireland or between the Basque groups ETA (paramilitary) and Batasuna (party) in Spain. Similarly, in the United States in periods where the Communist Party was highly stigmatized, it often operated largely through front groups. In addition, the Provisional IRA also operated a vigilante front group, called Direct Action Against Drugs.

Both Loyalist & Republican paramilitaries in Ireland during the Troubles used cover names when carrying out sectarian attacks against civilians. Irish Republican groups like the IRA & Irish National Liberation Army used front names like the South Armagh Republican Action Force, Catholic Reaction Force & People's Republican Army to claim responsibility for attacks on civilians,[37] Loyalists like the Ulster Volunteer Force & Ulster Defense Association used various front names such as the Protestant Action Force, Ulster Freedom Fighters & Red Hand Defenders when carrying out attacks against civilians, the majority of Loyalist attacks were aimed at Catholic civilians.

During the Weimar Republic in Germany, the antisemitic and nationalist Organisation Consul reportedly had a front company named the Bavarian Wood Products Company.[38]

Corporations from a wide variety of different industries, such as food, pharmaceutical and energy, set up front groups to advocate on their behalf.

Some pharmaceutical companies set up "patients' groups" as front organizations that pressure healthcare providers and legislators to adopt their products. For example, Biogen set up a campaign called Action for Access, which also claimed it was an independent organization and the voice of MS sufferers. People who visited the website and signed up for the campaign did not realise that these were not genuinely independent patient groups.

Over the past fifteen years, due to increasing concerns about obesity problem in the society Coca-Cola has experienced pressure from social movement activists to reduce the sugar content in its drinks. Although Coca-Cola has publicly promoted consumer engagement in healthy lifestyles with its campaigns such as 'Coming Together', activists have also exposed that Coca-Cola has secretly funded front groups or organizations that criticize social movement activists and legitimize controversial corporate activities. The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) and Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN) are two main groups that engage activists on behalf of Coca-Cola, even though they were not intended to be publicly associated with Coca-Cola as a corporation. Research has revealed that CCF, with a mission to "promote responsibility and protect consumer choices", uses both verbal and visual strategies to articulate obesity as "personal responsibility", and hence protect the industry from corporate responsibility.[39]

Tobacco companies frequently use front organizations and doctors to advocate their arguments about tobacco use, although less openly and obviously than in the 1980s. The WHO has charged that the Tobacco Industry has funded seemingly unbiased scientific organizations to undermine tobacco control measures in the past, citing the International Life Sciences Institute in particular.[40] Another way to combat public health measures against tobacco is to use lobbying and campaign contributions. For example, RJ Reynolds, the current second-largest tobacco company in the United States, created a front groups names Get Government Off Our Back ("GGOOB") in 1994 to fight federal regulation of tobacco. By hiding its involvement with tobacco industry, GGOOB avoided the tobacco industry reputation for misrepresenting evidence and drew big supports from both public and legislative aspects, successfully resolving the threats from wide-reaching tobacco regulations.[41]

A list of some alleged corporate front groups active in the US is maintained by the Multinational Monitor.[42] Some think tanks are corporate front groups. These organizations present themselves as research organizations, using phrases such as "...Institute for Research" in their names. Because their names suggest neutrality, they can present the commercial strategies of the corporations which sponsor them in a way which appears to be objective sociological or economical research rather than political lobbying.

Similarly the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has been criticised as a front organization for various industry bodies which seek to undermine regulation of their environmentally damaging activities under the guise of 'regulatory effectiveness'.[43]

• Front groups at SourceWatch