Greenwald’s Boss Omidyar provided 36% of “Center UA”’s $500,000 budget in 2012— nearly $200,000. USAID provided 54% of “Center UA”’s budget for 2012. Other funders included the US government-backed National Endowment for Democracy.
Update: Pando Responds to Greenwald’s Justification on Working for a Shady Billionaire who has Partnership with the U.S. Government in Global Regime Change Operations
On the importance of keeping investors out of the newsroom, and not treating your readers like fools
According to financial disclosures and reports published by Pando, the founder and publisher of Glenn Greenwald’s new venture co-invested with the US government to help fund regime change in Ukraine.
This is a major exposé that vindicates our series on the Greenwald-Snowden-Omidyar axis (Please see below for links). Here are a few excerpts, but I urge you to visit Pando’s website and read the entire investigative report, and do so several times [All Emphasis Mine]:
According to the Kyiv Post, Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network (part of the Omidyar Group which owns First Look Media and the Intercept) provided 36% of “Center UA”’s $500,000 budget in 2012— nearly $200,000. USAID provided 54% of “Center UA”’s budget for 2012. Other funders included the US government-backed National Endowment for Democracy.
In 2011, Omidyar Network gave $335,000 to “New Citizen,” one of the anti-Yanukovych “projects” managed through the Rybachuk-chaired NGO “Center UA.” At the time, Omidyar Network boasted that its investment in “New Citizen” would help “shape public policy” in Ukraine…
…
Detailed financial records reviewed by Pando (and embedded below) also show Omidyar Network covered costs for the expansion of Rybachuk’s anti-Yanukovych campaign, “Chesno” (“Honestly”), into regional cities including Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Sumy, and elsewhere, mostly in the Ukrainian-speaking west and center.
…
Some of Omidyar’s funds were specifically earmarked for covering the costs of setting up Rybachuk’s “clean up parliament” NGOs in Ukraine’s regional centers. Shortly after the Euromaidan demonstrations erupted last November, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry opened up a money laundering investigation into Rybachuk’s NGOs, dragging Omidyar’s name into the high-stakes political struggle.
…
Mark Ames, the investigative reporter at Pando, raises some of the most significant implications and questions [All Emphasis Mine]:
What all this adds up to is a journalistic conflict-of-interest of the worst kind: Omidyar working hand-in-glove with US foreign policy agencies to interfere in foreign governments, co-financing regime change with well-known arms of the American empire — while at the same time hiring a growing team of soi-disant ”independent journalists” which vows to investigate the behavior of the US government at home and overseas, and boasts of its uniquely “adversarial” relationship towards these government institutions.
As First Look staffer Jeremy Scahill told the Daily Beast: “We had a long discussion about this internally; about what our position would be if the White House asked us to not publish something…. With us, because we want to be adversarial, they won’t know what bat phone to call. They know who to call at The Times, they know who to call at The Post. With us, who are they going to call? Pierre? Glenn?”
…
Of the many problems that poses, none is more serious than the fact that Omidyar now has the only two people with exclusive access to the complete Snowden NSA cache, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Somehow, the same billionaire who co-financed the “coup” in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclusive access to the NSA secrets—and very few in the independent media dare voice a skeptical word about it.
But what is more immediately alarming is what makes Omidyar different. Unlike other billionaires, Omidyar has garnered nothing but uncritical, fawning press coverage, particularly from those he has hired. By acquiring a “dream team” of what remains of independent media — Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Wheeler, my former partner Matt Taibbi — not to mention press “critics” like Jay Rosen — he buys both silence and fawning press.
…
Okay, I am going to apply the brakes and refrain from quoting the entire explosive article. Please visit their site, and read the entire report here.
Here is the series of articles and commentaries I have written on the Greenwald-Omidyar-Snowden axis since November 2013:
Thank You NSA, Snowden & the Media for Showing our Super-Ness in Something!
The Entire Snowden NSA Cache Exposed Once and for All
Part II: David Miranda’s Detainment: The Calico Kitten in Wag-The-Dog?
Part I: The Doomsday Insurance Cache That Was, and Then Never Was
Dear Mr. Snowden, It’s Time to Come Out & Take a Stand Publicly as to Your Intentions
Establishment-Made Heroes, Blind Seekers of Saviors & Suckers
Green-Light for Greenwald: Government Duplicity or Government Duality?
Greenwald-Omidyar Venture: Blurring Lines Between Being A Source & Being A Journalist
Greenwald Goes on Record: “I Don’t Doubt PayPal Cooperates with NSA!”
BFP Report- Omidyar’s PayPal Corporation Said To Be Implicated in Withheld NSA Documents
Checkbook Journalism & Leaking to the Highest Bidder