Alwaght | News & Analysis Website

Alwaght- A new report reveals how American Christian NGO’s are being used by the US government on spy missions abroad.
According to a report by The Intercept, an online news magazine christian evangelical Kay Hiramine’s non-governmental organization Humanitarian International Services Group served under both presidents Bush and Obama as a spy organization in North Korea for the Pentagon.
By pledging humanitarian aid to North Korea’s impoverished population, the organization was able to venture into the impenetrable country. According to Sam Worthington, president of InterAction, an association of nearly 200 American NGOs, the use of humanitarian aid workers in this capacity “violates international principles.”
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois who served on the US Congress Intelligence Committee from 2007 until this year, found this operation to be reckless and “completely unacceptable.”
Though Hiramine’s involvement in this effort is unclear, his nonprofit presented a convenient vehicle for the Pentagon to carry out intelligence-gathering and smuggle shipments of military espionage equipment into denied areas.
Hiramine’s NGO, Humanitarian International Services Group, or HISG, won special praise from the president  George W Bush for having demonstrated how a private charity could step in quickly in response to a crisis. “In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” read Hiramine’s citation, “HISG’s team launched a private sector operation center in Houston that mobilized over 1,500 volunteers into the disaster zone within one month after the hurricane.”
But as the evangelical Christian Hiramine crossed the stage to shake hands with President Bush and receive his award, he was hiding a key fact from those in attendance: He was a Pentagon spy whose NGO was funded through a highly classified Defense Department program.
According to the Intercept, the secret Pentagon program, which dates back to December 2004, continued well into the Obama presidency. It was the brainchild of a senior Defense Department intelligence official of the Bush administration, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin. Boykin, an evangelical Christian who ran into criticism in 2003 for his statements about Islam, settled on the ruse of the NGO as he was seeking new and unorthodox ways to penetrate North Korea.
ISG was established shortly after 9/11, when Hiramine led a group of three friends in creating a humanitarian organization that they hoped could provide disaster relief and sustainable development in poor and war-torn countries around the world, according to the organization’s incorporation documents.
In its first two years, HISG was little more than a fledgling faith-based charity. Just after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Hiramine and his friends shipped medical supplies to a hospital there. By 2003, HISG had collaborated with a small Pentagon group called the Afghanistan Reachback Office, which was set up to coordinate reconstruction activities.
According to The Intercept, HISG operated in more than 30 countries, significantly funded by the Pentagon.
According to former employees, public records, and HISG’s former website, the nonprofit conducted disaster relief; provided food, medical supplies, and clothing; and helped start small businesses in countries including Niger, Mali, Ethiopia, Kenya, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, and China.