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Front organization

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A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, criminal organizations, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations. Front organizations can act for the parent group without the actions being attributed to the parent group. Front organizations that appear to be independent voluntary or charitable associations are called front groups. In the business world, front organizations such as front companies or shell corporations are used to shield the parent company from legal liability. In international relations, a puppet state is a state which acts as a front (or surrogate) for another state.

Intelligence agencies

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 only exist solely to provide a plausible background story, occupation, and means of income.

The airline Air America was set up by 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 Second Indochina War.[1] Other CIA-funded front groups have been used to spread American propaganda and influence during the Cold War, particularly in the Third World.[citation needed]

When intelligence organizations use legitimate organizations as fronts, it can cause problems and lead to increased risk for the workers from the legitimate organization.[2] For example, the Peace Corps and CIA both maintain that there has never been any relationship between the two groups.[3]

See also: Non-official cover and Agent handling § Fronts and cutouts

Organized crime

Many organized crime operations have substantial legitimate businesses, such as licensed gambling houses, building construction companies, 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 drug trafficking, smuggling, and prostitution.

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.

Religious organizations

Some religious organizations use front groups either to promote their interests in politics or to make their group seem more legitimate. The Church of Scientology is one such organization; the FBI's July 7, 1977 raids on the Church's offices (following discovery of the Church's Operation Snow White) turned up, among other documents, an undated memo entitled "PR General Categories of Data Needing Coding". This memo listed what it called "Secret PR Front Groups," which included the group APRL, "Alliance for the Preservation of Religious Liberty" (later renamed "Americans Preserving Religious Liberty").[4] The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) is considered by many to now be a front group for the Church of Scientology, which took the group over financially after bankrupting it in a series of lawsuits.[5]

Politics

Pro-Israel lobbying fronts

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been accused of using front organizations as a means of circumventing limits on campaign spending[6] These front organizations have names unrelated to AIPAC. Delaware Valley Good Government Association (Philadelphia), San Franciscans for Good Government (California), Beaver PAC (Wisconsin), Cactus PAC (Arizona), and Icepac (New York) are examples of former AIPAC front groups.[7] AIPAC was also investigated by the FBI in 2004 for espionage against the United States. [8][9][10]

Islamist front organizations

See also: Terrorist front organization

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is regarded by many scholars and intelligence agencies to be front organizations based on their founding ties to known Islamist or terrorist organizations like Hamas. [11][12] Rep. Cass Ballenger of North Carolina has stated that CAIR is a "fund-raising arm for Hezbollah" in an interview with the Charlotte Observer published 4 October 2003. CAIR official Todd "Ismail" Royer was convicted of conspiring to train on American soil for violent jihad. CAIR officials Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafagi and Ghassan Elashi have all been convicted of conspiring to fund Islamic terrorist groups.[1][2]

Hezbollah, the Lebanese anti-Israel guerilla army runs many front organizations for fundraising, including the Al-Mabarrat organization in Dearborn. [13][14] Hezbollah also has been implicated in counterfeiting.[15][16]

Other Islamist front organizations used to gather money for terrorist groups (including al-Qaeda), or accused of doing so, include the Global Relief Foundation, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Al Barakaat, Benevolence International Foundation, and Konsojaya Trading Company. In the UK, the Muslim Association of Britain has been accused of being a front for or connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. [3][4]

Communist fronts

Further information: Communist front

Communist and other Marxist-Leninist parties have sometimes used front organizations to attract support from those (sometimes called fellow travellers) who may not necessarily agree with Leninist ideology. The front organisation often obscures its provenance and may often be a tool for recruitment. Other Marxists often describe front organisations as opportunist.

According to a list prepared in 1955 by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, the Comintern set up no less than 82 front organizations in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. This tactic was often used during the Red Scare of the 1950s, when a number of organizations in the labor and peace movements were accused of being "Communist fronts".

More recently, the Workers' World Party (WWP), [17] set up an anti-war front group, International ANSWER. (ANSWER is no longer closely associated with WWP; it is closely associated with a WWP splinter, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, but PSL plays a more open role in the organization.) Similarly, Unite Against Fascism, the Anti-Nazi League, the Stop the War Coalition and RESPECT are all criticised as being fronts for the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (UK).

Some anti-Islamist feminist groups in the Muslim world have also been accused of being front organizations. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan has been accused of being a Maoist front, while the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq has been accused of being a front for the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq [5][6]/

The concept of a front organisation should be distinguished from the united front - a coalition of working class or socialist parties - and the popular front - a coalition of a Communist party with bourgeois groups. Both the united front and popular front usually disclose the groups that make up their coalitions.

Animal rights groups

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an organization which seeks to remove eggs, milk, meat, and seafood from the American diet, and to eliminate the use of animals in scientific research. The group advocates vegetarianism for health reasons and it has criticized high-protein diets such as the Atkins Diet. According to consumerfreedom.com, PCRM may be a front group for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights organization.[7]. In February 2004, Newsweek stated that "Less than 5 percent of PCRM’s members are physicians.” American Medical Association (AMA) has called PCRM a “fringe organization” that uses “unethical tactics” and is “interested in perverting medical science.” In 1991 the AMA’s senior vice president for science and medical education stated that PCRM are "...neither responsible nor are they physicians.” AMA scientific affairs vice president Dr. Jerod M. Loeb wrote that “the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has been formally censured by the AMA for purposefully misrepresenting the critical role animals play in medical research.”

Banned paramilitary organizations

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 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 Irish Republican Army 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.

Corporate front organizations

See also: Shell corporation

Corporations from a wide variety of different industries set up front groups. Some pharmaceutical companies set up "patients' groups" as front organizations that pressure healthcare providers and legislators to adopt their products. For example, Schering Healthcare and Biogen Ltd. tried to pressure the UK National Health Service (NHS) to adopt its drug Beta Interferon to treat Multiple Sclerosis (MS) sufferers. Schering set up and funded a group called MS Voice, with its own website, which claimed to represent MS sufferers.[citation needed]

Another pharmaceutical company, 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. It has been alleged that computer software giant Microsoft created and funded the Association for Competitive Technology to defend its interests against charges of antitrust violations.[citation needed] 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 Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is one of the more active corporate front groups and one of several front groups created by Berman & Co., a public affairs firm owned by lobbyist Rick Berman. Based in Washington, DC, Berman & Co. represents the tobacco industry as well as hotels, beer distributors, taverns, and restaurant chains. The group actively opposes smoking bans and lowering the legal blood-alcohol level, while targeting studies on the dangers of red meat consumption, overfishing and pesticides. Each year they give out the "nanny awards" to groups who, according to them, try to tell consumers how to live their lives.[8] They also run affiliated websites such as ActivistCash.com.

A list of some alleged corporate front groups is maintained by the Multinational Monitor. [9] Some think tanks are corporate front groups. These organizations present themselves as research organisations, 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 organisation for various industry bodies which seek to undermine regulation of their environmentally damaging activities under the guise of 'regulatory effectiveness'. [10]

Astroturfing

Main article: Astroturfing

Astroturfing is a wordplay based on "grassroots" efforts — is an American term used pejoratively to describe formal public relations projects which try to create the impression of a groundswell of spontaneous popular response to a politician, product, service, or event. Corporations have been known to "astroturf", but are not the only entities alleged to have done so. In recent years, organizations of plaintiffs' attorneys have established front groups such as Victims and Families United and the Center for Justice and Democracy to oppose tort reform.[11]

Notes

  1. ^ William M. Leary Supporting the "Secret War": CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974, Studies in Intelligence (CIA), volume 43, number 1, winter 1996-2000. TOC.
  2. ^ Joe Davidson, I Am Not a CIA Agent, AlterNet, April 11, 2002. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  3. ^ Press briefing by Mike McCurry, July 17, 1996. Clinton Presidential Materials Project. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  4. ^ Kent, Stephen A. (1988). "When Scholars Know Sin: Alternative Religions and Their Academic Supporters". Skeptic. 6 (3): 36–44. Retrieved 2006-06-06. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ Tilman Hausherr, Answers for Scientology Kids, Operation Clambake (undated). Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  6. ^ Top Pro-Israel Contributors to Federal Candidates and Parties (1992), Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  7. ^ Richard Curtiss (1997), "U.S. Aid to Israel: The Subject No One Mentions", The Link 30 (4):10, retrieved through http://www.ameu.org/
  8. ^ Elaine Shannon, A Second Search of AIPAC, Time, December 1, 2004. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  9. ^ Tom Regan, FBI steps up AIPAC espionage probe, Christian Science Monitor, December 16, 2004. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  10. ^ Richard Sale, FBI steps up AIPAC probe, Middle East Times, December 9, 2004. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  11. ^ Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment, Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006. Volume XIII, Number 2. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  12. ^ David Frum, The truth about Hamas - and its followers, National Post (Canada), April 25, 2006. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  13. ^ Steven Emerson, Al-Mabarrat – A Hezbollah Charitable Front in Dearborn, MI?, Counterterrorism Blog, July 22, 2006. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  14. ^ Debbie Schlussel, Hezbollah U.S.A, Part II: Al Mabarat Charitable Organization, Tax-Funded Hezbollah on Our Shores, debbieschlussel.com, July 24, 2006. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  15. ^ Hezbollah's Counterfeit Generosity: Counterfeit Dollars in Lebanon?, August 21, 2006. Unsigned item from KXMA, North Dakota. Also available on the KXMA site. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  16. ^ Hezbollah And Counterfeiting, Riehl World View, August 22, 2006. Accessed online 8 October 2006.
  17. ^ Adrienne Weller, Millions in the streets! …and here come the redbaiters, Freedom Socialist, Freedom Socialist Party, Vol. 24, No. 1, April-June 2003.

See also

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