This article, reprinted with the consent of the author, has

been banned from a wide variety of progressive news

outlets. Her reporting on this subject is independently
consistent with my own articles on the Spring movement

The CIA and Nonviolent Resistance

One important aspect of the diversity of tactics debate

(i.e. the debate whether to be exclusively nonviolent) in the
Occupy movement relates to mounting evidence of the role
CIA and Pentagon-funded foundations and think tanks play
in funding and promoting nonviolent resistance training.

The two major US foundations promoting nonviolence,

both overseas and domestically, are the Albert Einstein
Institution (AEI) and the International Center for
Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Both receive major corporate
and/or government funding. The latter comes mainly
through CIA pass-through foundations. While the ICNC
is funded mainly by the private fortune of hedge fund
multimillionaire (junk bond king Michael Milkens second
in command) Peter Ackerman, the AEI has received
funding from the Rand Corporation and the Department of
Defense, as well as various CIA-linked foundations, such
as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the
International Republican Institute (IRI), the US Institute of
Peace and the Ford Foundation (see The Ford Foundation
and the CIA),which all have a long history of collaborating
with the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA in
destabilizing governments unfriendly to US interests.
This is a strategy Frances Stonor Saunders outlines in her
pivotal Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts
and Letters. According to Sanders, right wing corporate-
backed foundations and the CIA have been funding the
non-communist left since the late sixties, in the hope of
drowning out and marginalizing the voice of more militant
leftists.

Gene Sharp, the Fervent Anticommunist

Much of this debate focuses around the American godfather

of nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp, the founder and
director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Sharps
handbooks on nonviolent protest were widely disseminated
in the Eastern Europe color revolutions, in the Arab spring
revolutions and in the Occupy movement in the US (see
Nonviolence in the Service of Imperialism). Unfortunately
Sharp has become a decoy in this debate, deflecting
attention from the larger question of whether the US
government is actively financing and promoting the work
of the AEI, the ICIC and other groups that promote
nonviolent resistance, to the exclusion of other militant
tactics. The question is extremely important, in my view,
because it possibly explains the rigid and dogmatic attitude
in the US progressive movement regarding nonviolence.

Is Military-Intelligence Funding Compatible with

Progressive Politics?

The institutional nonviolence clique has cleverly refocused

the debate on whether Sharp, who is eighty-three, is a CIA
agent and whether he actively participated in US-funded
destabilization efforts in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran
and elsewhere that resulted in so-called Arab Spring
revolutions. The obvious answer to both questions is no.
The more important question is why the alternative media
and official progressive movement embrace Sharp
unconditionally as a fellow progressive without a careful
look at his past or his ideological beliefs. Sharp has never
made any secret of his fervent anticommunist views. He
also makes no secret of the funding he has received from
the Defense Department; the Rand Corporation; CIA-linked
foundations, such as NED, the IRI and the US Institute of
Peace; and George Soross Open Society Institute. All this
information is readily available from the AEI website.

Thierry Meyssans 2005 Expose

The current brouhaha over Gene Sharp was first triggered

by an article, The Albert Einstein Institution: Nonviolence
According to the CIA, Thierry Meyssan published on
Voltaire Net in October 2005. Meyssan, a French
intellectual and political activist, first gained international
prominence in 2002 by publishing a French best seller
entitled Leffroyable imposteur (English title: The Big Lie).
The book claimed that the 9-11 attacks were directed by
right-wingers in the U.S. government and the military
industrial complex, who were seeking justification for
military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meyssans 2005
article on the Albert Einstein Institutes enumerates a long
list of collaborations between Sharp and opposition groups
receiving covert US support in campaigns to bring down
Asian and Eastern European governments unfriendly to US
interests.

Iran and Venezuelas Denunciation of Sharp

The article was widely reposted on leftist and libertarian

websites. In 2008, it resulted in a formal denunciation of
Sharp by the Iranian government and Venezuelan president
Hugo Chavez, both targets of AEI destabilization activities.
In June 2008, Stephen Zunes, chair of the Academic
Advisory Committee of the Peter Ackermans International
Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) issued a rebuttal,
Sharp Attack Unwarranted, in Foreign Policy in Focus. The
latter is an on-line magazine of the Institute for Policy
Studies, where Zunes serves as Middle East Editor. The
article was simultaneously reprinted in the Huffington Post.

Zunes subsequently persuaded Noam Chomsky, Howard

Zinn, Code Pink and other high profile progressives to help
launch an on-line petition defending Sharps progressive
credentials. However, as numerous critics point out, he
never addressed Meyssans most important concerns: the
military/intelligence backgrounds of many of the Albert
Einstein Institutions (AEIs) directors and advisory board
members; their documented collaboration, together with
Sharp, with opposition groups responsible for the color
revolutions in Eastern Europe; and their work with
Venezuelan opposition groups in an effort to topple
president Hugo Chavez.
AEI Links with the State Department and the Military-
Intelligence Complex

Australian researcher Michael Barker, Canadian activist

Stephen Gowans and CIA watchers wrote detailed critiques
defending Meyssans 2005 expose. Barkers rebuttal is
entitled Sharp Reflection Warranted. Barkers main
argument is that the problem of elite manipulation of
ostensibly progressive groups isnt at all new. He also
points readers to excellent links regarding collaboration
between the CIA and the Ford Foundation, the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) and others.

Gowans argues that Zunes, a paid adviser to the

International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), is
hardly a neutral or objective party, given his involvement
with Peter Ackerman and the ICNC. Ackerman, hardly the
progressive peace activist, is a Wall Street investment
banker, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and
head of Freedom House. The latter, according to Noam
Chomsky (in Manufacturing Consent), is interlocked
with the CIA and a virtual propaganda arm of the (US)
government and international right wing. According to
Louis Proyect, Ackerman is also on the advisory board of
the ultraconservative Cato Institutes Project on Social
Security Choice. Not surprisingly, this group strongly
advocates for privatizing Social Security.
 A Close Look At Sharps Past

There is no question that Thierry Meyssans 2005 article on

Gene Sharps extensive links to the US military-
intelligence complex is one of the most important exposes
of the 21st century. Its only weaknesses is Meyssans
failure to cite many of his references. What follows is the
best publicly verifiable chronology of Sharps life I could
come up with (most comes from Meyssans 2005 article
with sources added):

1953 conscientious objector during Korean War,

imprisoned for nine months for refusing to report for
alternative duty. Imprisoned for refusing to fight in
Korean War (People and The Progressive).
1973 publishes The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973)
with an introduction by Thomas C. Shelling. Shelling
was a well known economist and professor of foreign
affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms
control. After working with US ambassador Averel
Harriman in Paris in 1948 to implement the Marshall
Plan, Shelling had a fifty year affiliation with the Rand
Corporation (US military think tank) and is widely
credited as the theoretician behind military escalation
in Vietnam.
1983 founds the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) in
Boston, with the assistance of Major General Edward
B Atkeson, who was on the first AEI advisory board.
The AEI website identifies Atkeson as Senior Fellow
at the Institute of Land Warfare Association of the US
Army. According to the CIA website, during the 1980s
 Atkeson was also a National Intelligence Officer for
General Purpose Forces.
1985 publishes a book entitled Making Europe
Unconquerable: the Potential of Civilian-base
Deterrence and Defense. The second edition includes
a preface by George Kennan, historian and State
Department senior diplomat whose writings
influenced Truman in the creation of the Truman
Doctrine. Kennan is viewed as the father of the US
foreign policy of containment (by force) of Soviet
expansion.
1986, 1988 and 1989 travels to Israel/Palestine to
bolster support for the Palestinian Center for the
History of Non-Violence, founded in 1983 by one of
Sharps disciple. Its a matter of public record that
Sharp met with Colonel Reuvan Gal, who directed the
Israel Defense Force (IDF) Psychological Action
Division. Meyssan claims the two conspired to create
a split in the Palestinian Liberation Organization
(PLO) by creating a dissident nonviolent group. Gal
and Sharp claim the purpose of their meetings were to
devise ways to dissuade IDF commanders from using
tanks and excessive military force against Palestinian
settlers (see The Jeruselem Fund, Mubarak Awad, and
Nonviolence).
1987 receives funding from the US Institute of Peace to
host seminars instructing US allies on defense based
on civil disobedience. By law, the US Institute of
Peace is an extension of US intelligence.
1989 assists Colonel Robert Helvey in training
anticommunist Burmese opposition groups concerned
 about the growing strength of the Burmese
Communist Party. The AEI website refers to Helvey as
a retired US military officer and ex-military attach in
Burma. He was actually a thirty year veteran of the
Defense Intelligence Agency with extensive
experience in overseeing clandestine and subversive
operations in Southeast Asia (see Who is Col Bob
Helvey and Peace Magazine Archive). Following his
retirement from the DIA, he became chairman of the
board of the Albert Einstein Institution.
1990 with his AEI team (according to AEI website),
assists Lithuanian opposition leaders in organizing
popular resistance against the Red Army. According to
the website, the AEI also did trainings with
anticommunist opposition groups in Tibet, Estonia,
and Belarus.
1998 travels, with Helvey, to Eastern Europe to train
Otpor, a group of Serbian youth opposed to Slobodan
Milosevic and Europes last communist government.
Milosevic was immensely popular with Serbian people
for standing up to NATO and for his generous social
policies. The trainings were funded by the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International
Republican Institute (IRI) and the US Agency for
International Development (USAID). (See 2000 New
York Times interview with NED officer Paul B.
McCarthy).
2003 assists, with AEI staff, in the launch of the Rose
Revolution in Georgia (see The Secrets of the
Georgian Coup).
2004 Helvey and other AEI members meet with the
 Ukrainian resistance in Kiev (see Mowats The Coup
Plotters).
2003-2004 travels, with Helvey and other AEI team
members to Venezuela to meet with wealthy
Venezuelan opposition leaders, following the failed
2002 CIA-sponsored coup against Chavez. The AEI
advises them in organizing a recall referendum against
Chavez. They also train the leaders of Smate during
the August 2004 demonstrations and assist in the
formulation of Operation Guarimba, a series of
often-violent street blockades that result in several
deaths. According to an analysis published by
Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), Venezuelan student
leaders traveled to Belgrade in 2005 to meet with
representatives of AEI-trained OTPOR/CANVAS,
before traveling to Boston to consult directly with
Sharp himself.

Fast Forward to the Arab Spring

In the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, Sharp and the

Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) seem to have handed the
baton to his disciple Peter Ackerman. It was Ackerman who
conducted nonviolence trainings in Cairo and Tunisia in
2009-2010 (see Bloomberg Markets, Foreign Policy
Journal and New York Times).

As others have documented elsewhere, the 2011 uprisings

in the Middle East and North Africa were neither
spontaneous nor indigenous. Many of the individuals and
groups who helped organize them received training (in the
US) sponsored by the State Department and CIA-linked
democracy manipulating foundations (see LAbarabesque
Americaine by French-Canadian analyst Ahmed Bensada
and Tony Cartaluccis Soros Celebrates the Fall of Tunisia).
The New York Times lends further credibility to these
claims in their April 2011 U.S. Groups Helped Nurture
Arab Uprisings.

***

About the author: Dr Bramhall is a 64 year old American

child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in
New Zealand. She has just published a free non-fiction
ebook 21st Century Revolution, which can be downloaded
at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/120942. Her
first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an
American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her
to leave the US in 2002. Her website is at:

www.stuartbramhall.com.

Note: CIA methods of discrediting excellent work such as

Dr Bramhalls above article includes [but is not limited to]
leaning hard on the better known progressive sites [alternet
terminated Dr Bramhalls' relationship, probably faced with
funding threats] not to run the pieces while providing other
so-called 'alternative' news sites where the articles CAN be
run but subjected to guilt by association and other method
of discrediting the information. For instance 'Daily
Censored' ran this article but only allows negative
comments through 'moderation' and concurrently ran an
article supporting David Icke's 'lizard DNA' theories [to
associate her work with nut jobs.] It then becomes the
dilemma of the author whether to publish in less than
optimal circumstance or not get the information out at all

My own work supporting Dr Bramhall's conclusions here