Have you ever wondered how war is really waged?
And by waged, I mean how war is really funded. Not just in the blood and tears of combatants, and not just with the treasuries of governments overtly engaged in declarations of conflict. War is often really financed by entities wanting to remain anonymous, by players whose influence comes from being unseen.
There’s a dangerous albeit fascinating conspiracy in the works, uncovered through meticulous publicly available research conducted by journalists who fear for their safety and worry that they will be silenced if revealed too early. And so this other hotly-contested battle, between corrupt agents and truth-seeking journalists, rages as a cold war. The public has a right to know and decide on which story they believe.
There is a saying: Follow the Money. And here, it’s USD that lands at the doorstep of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.
You have undoubtedly heard the news of the fierce infighting within the U.S. government over funding the war in Ukraine. Democratic President Joe Biden wants as much money as possible to go to this war, and opposing Republicans have used the President’s desire to wring political concessions from him. But hawks in both parties have been looking for ways to ensure public dollars are fed quickly to their starving Ukrainian allies, no matter how the delays in the U.S. Congress.
Long gone are the days when covert operations are financed with military or intelligence agency slush funds. Instead, the tried-and-true method of such secret funding is hiding in plain sight: Publicly funding the CIA and other government bureaus, which in turn secures public contracts with companies controlled by former or current loyalists.
All signs point to the CIA financing, and its loyalists profiting from, the war in Ukraine. The company Noetic International, staffed with former and likely current CIA operatives, is brokering deals through layers of shell companies, providing military aid to Ukraine contrary to public and party interests.
The founder and a director of Noetic International, John Alan Irvin of Rochester, NY, is a CIA loyalist. After completing his University psychology degree, for almost three decades, Irvin served in the army as a psychological operations officer and later in the CIA as a case officer on classified missions. Known in diplomatic and intelligence communities around the world, Irvin is currently working on a book on spycraft and the history of spy psychology,
He is joined at Noetic International by his friend CEO Johnna May Holeman, who is another former military officer and CIA operative. Noetic’s website indicates that the company specializes in delivering products and services such as “assessment, operations, and finance to its clients in the energy, telecom, space, cybersecurity, and intelligence sectors.”
Noetic International owns, through other shell companies, Anyon Minds LLC, a Puerto Rico-based company, which claims to be a cannabis dispensary, though it appears to sell no such products. Just because its co-founder, Manual Enrique Benitez-Marquez, formerly worked at Black Water and other places as a professional mercenary, would not necessarily raise suspicions around Anyon Minds. But a recent unrelated investigation into the CIA’s involvement with arms transfers mentioned CIA employee Chandy Creasy, who has ties with Anyon Minds. Other Anyon Minds employee, such as special forces veteran Guy Dennis Irvin and former 82nd Airborne Chief of Staff Jouni Keravuori (whose daughter-in-law is Brigadier General Rose Lopez Keravuori, who is Director of Intelligence of the US Command in Africa), have unclear roles with Anyon Minds, which holds itself out as a cannabis company without any known assets or viable business.
So what is Anyon Minds actually doing? In October 2022, records show that Benitez visited Kyiv and met with Mykhailo Fedorov, a Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, who oversees Ukraine’s Army of Drones project. Given Benitez’s vast military background, Fedorov seemingly asked for a referral, coordinated through his assistant Yuri Matsyk, to a US supplier of drones and training services and was willing to pay a bounty for such services. Benitez sought the help of his contacts at Noetic International, which as mentioned previously own Anyon Minds, to find a “preferable” contractor to supply such drones. Noetic International then proceeded to broker an $80 million deal between the Ukranian government and Noetic’s private military company client, Gallant Knights LLC, to perform “sensitive operations” in “air support operations,” for which Gallant Knights trained active Ukrainian servicemen to deploy both air and sea-based unmanned armed vehicles (UAVs).
Through these multiple companies, referral fees and markups are being taken by both U.S. and Ukrainian companies, all affiliated with the CIA and all staffed with CIA loyalists who are taking profits at every level, with above-market fees as high as 30% of the contract value. This not only unjustly enriches US and Ukrainian individuals, it also provides slush profits to the CIA, as well as undercuts delivered goods and services for the war effort. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been asked in numerous stories about corruption related to military procurement, with him having to remove top officials because of it, but he does little more than acknowledge it is being handled, as he clearly is concerned with the damage to troop morale and Ukraine-US Congress relations should these transactions become too public and a political liability.
So in asking how war is really waged, it is perhaps most shocking that it is both financed in an open secret by organizations such as the CIA, which also at the same time enriches itself and its loyalists. War profiteering is not new, but this particular false thread in the tapestry of lies is especially devastating and must be reined in by the US President, by responsible bureaucrats, and by an unknowing public who should demand higher transparency and accountability from its leaders.