Front organization
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as
Front organizations that appear to be independent
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 "
Brewster Jennings & Associates was a front company set up in 1994 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a cover for its officers.
The airline Air America, an outgrowth of Civil Air Transport of the 1940s, and Southern Air Transport, ostensibly a civilian air charter company, were operated 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 Vietnam 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.[2] When intelligence agencies work through legitimate organizations, it can cause problems and increased risk for the workers of those organizations.[3] To prevent this, the CIA has had a 20-year policy (since 1976, per US Government sources) of not using Peace Corps members or US journalists for intelligence purposes.[4][5]
Another airline allegedly involved in intelligence operations was Russian
When businessman
Law enforcement
The
- KQM Aviation
- NBR Aviation
- NG Research
- PXW Services
- FVX Research
Organized crime
Many
Where brothels are illegal, criminal organizations set up front companies providing services such as a "massage parlor" or "sauna" to the point that "massage parlor" or "sauna" is thought as a synonym of brothel in these countries.[12]
Examples
A Colombian drug cartel, the Cali Cartel, in the past used Drogas La Rebaja, now a large national pharmacy store chain, as a front company in order to launder their drug trafficking earnings.[13]
The General Manager of the Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club in Cheektowaga, New York, is the international leader of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club: John Ermin. Many Outlaws MC members also work at the club. Authorities have referred to Pharaoh's as a hot spot for drug dealing and sex trafficking.[14] The club's owner is Peter G. Gerace Jr., the nephew of reputed Buffalo crime family boss Joseph A. Todaro Jr.[15] The Outlaws Motorcycle Club, themselves, have been designated by federal law enforcement as a criminal enterprise.[16]
In the early 2000s, the Black Mafia Family established the Atlanta-based record label BMF Entertainment as a front company to launder funds that were generated from the sale of cocaine.[17][18][19]
The boxing management company MTK Global is owned by the reputed Irish gang boss Daniel Kinahan. Heredia Boxing Management alleges that MTK Global was established as a front company to launder funds made from drug trafficking.[20]
During the year of 2019,
Religion
Scientology
The
Time identified several other fronts for Scientology, including: the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), The Way to Happiness Foundation, Applied Scholastics, the Concerned Businessmen's Association of America, and HealthMed Clinic.[28] Seven years later the Boston Herald showed how Narconon and World Literacy Crusade were also fronts for Scientology.[29] Other Scientology groups include
Unification Church
Politics
In politics, a group may be called a front organization if it is perceived to be disingenuous in its control or goals or if it attempts to mask extremist views within a supposedly more moderate group. Some special interest groups engage in
Apartheid government fronts
- Rand Daily Mail, contributing to the political ruin of John Vorster and Connie Mulder
- Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) – a covert, special forces organization that harassed, seriously injured, and eliminated anti-apartheid activists
- Federal Independent Democratic Alliance (FIDA) – a conservative black group.[31][32]
- International Freedom Foundation – Washington-based mechanism to combat sanctions and support Jonas Savimbi and UNITA
- Jeugkrag – or Youth for South Africa, led by Marthinus van Schalkwyk as a short-lived Afrikaner youth group, surreptitiously funded by the Military Intelligence's Project Essay
- National Student Federation (NSF) – led by NUSAS
- Roodeplaat Research Laboratories – Led by Daan Goosen, the main research facility of Project Coast[33]
- Taussig Familienstiftung, or Taussig Family Trust - a Liechtenstein conduit for secret government transactions[34]
- Veterans for Victory – consisting of national servicemen, a countermeasure to the End Conscription Campaign, which was allied to the United Democratic Front (UDF)
Communist fronts
United States
According to a list prepared in 1955 by the United States
Soviet intelligence
More recently, the
In 2014,
Russia
In April 1991, the
China
The united front is a political strategy and network of groups and key individuals that are influenced or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and used to advance its interests. It has traditionally been a popular front that has included eight legally-permitted political parties: the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, and other people's organizations.[46] Under Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, the united front and its targets of influence have expanded in size and scope.[47][48][49][50] The united front is managed primarily by but is not limited to the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
Other
An
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, but those parties themselves often end up being banned. The 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
Both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries in Ireland during
During the Weimar Republic in Germany, the anti-Semitic and nationalist Organisation Consul reportedly had a front company named the Bavarian Wood Products Company.[54]
Corporate front organizations
Corporations from a wide variety of different industries, such as food, pharmaceutical and energy, set up front groups to advocate on their behalf.
Some pharmaceutical companies set up "patients' groups" as front organizations that pressure healthcare providers and legislators to adopt their products. For example, Biogen set up a campaign called Action for Access, which also claimed it was an independent organization and the voice of multiple sclerosis sufferers. People who visited the website and signed up for the campaign did not realise that these were not genuinely independent patient groups.
Over the past 15 years, increasing concerns about
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 World Health Organization has charged that the tobacco industry funded seemingly-unbiased scientific organizations to undermine tobacco control measures and cited the International Life Sciences Institute in particular.[56] Another way to combat public health measures against tobacco is to use lobbying and campaign contributions. For example, RJ Reynolds, the current second-largest tobacco company in the United States, created a front group named Get Government Off Our Back ("GGOOB") in 1994 to fight federal regulation of tobacco. By hiding its involvement with tobacco industry, GGOOB avoided the tobacco industry reputation for misrepresenting evidence and drew big supports from both public and legislative aspects, successfully resolving the threats from wide-reaching tobacco regulations.[57]
A list of some alleged corporate front groups active in the US is maintained by the Multinational Monitor.[58] Some think tanks are corporate front groups. These organizations present themselves as research organizations, 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 organization for various industry bodies which seek to undermine regulation of their environmentally damaging activities under the guise of 'regulatory effectiveness'.[59]
Astroturfing
Astroturfing, a wordplay based on "
See also
- Agent of influence
- Astroturfing
- Category:Advocacy groups
- Category:Front organizations
- CIA
- Covert operation
- Denial and deception
- Dummy corporation
- False flag
- FBI
- GONGO
- Mafia
- Media transparency
- Money laundering
- Money loop
- Offshore bank
- Organized crime
- Racket
- Revolutionary Communist Party
- Shell company
- Straw man (law)
- Strawman argument
- Terrorist front organization
- Transparency (humanities)
References
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- ^ Joe Davidson, "I Am Not a CIA Agent". April 11, 2002. Retrieved December 13, 2007.
- ^ "Press briefing by Mike McCurry". Clinton Presidential Materials Project. July 17, 1996. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2007.
- ^ "Exclusive: Peace Corps, Fulbright Scholar Asked to 'Spy' on Cubans, Venezuelans". ABC News. February 8, 2008. Retrieved February 15, 2008.
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- ^ Wenz, John (June 2, 2015). "The FBI Flies Secret Surveillance Planes Under Fake Company Names". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved August 14, 2021.
- ^ "Police look to crack down on bikie gangs and their stranglehold on booming tattoo industry". ABC News. September 11, 2013.
- ^ Eric Nicholson (June 20, 2013). "The Feds Say They Shut Down Nine Massage-Parlor Brothels in Massive Prostitution Bust". Dallas Observer. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 8, 2013.
- ^ Gallo, Iván (October 11, 2017). "Drogas La Rebaja, el emporio creado por los Rodríguez Orejuela que EE.UU. no ha podido atajar". Las 2 Orillas (in Spanish). Bogotá: Las 2 Orillas Foundation. Retrieved January 29, 2020.
- ^ "GM of Pharaoh's strip club is leader of international biker club, prosecutor says". April 20, 2021.
- ^ "Leader of alleged New York crime family arrested in Florida". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on March 1, 2021.
- ^ "7 motorcycle clubs the feds say are highly structured criminal enterprises". Los Angeles Times. May 18, 2015.
- ^ Snell, Robert (May 5, 2020). "Black Mafia Family kingpins push for prison release amid COVID-19". The Detroit News.
- ^ Brodnik, Laura (October 2, 2021). "Stan's captivating new crime drama Black Mafia Family is based on a true story". Mamamia.
- ^ Pajot, Sean (May 6, 2010). "Young Jeezy, Big Meech, the Black Family Mafia, and a Hundred Thousand Kilos of Coke". Miami New Times.
- ^ Carswell, Simon (December 30, 2020). "Kinahan served with summons in US case taken by boxing manager". The Irish Times.
- ^ "Tattoo parlour allegedly laundering money for bikie gang seized by police". ABC News. July 29, 2019.
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We know many cult movements that maintain client services as front organizations facilitating recruitment to the sponsoring movement. Examples include Scientology...
- ^ Kent, Stephen A.; Krebs, Theresa (1988). "When Scholars Know Sin: Alternative Religions and Their Academic Supporters". Skeptic. 6 (3): 36–44. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 3, 2006. Retrieved February 20, 2023.
- ^ Kent, Stephen A. (January 2001). "The French and German versus American Debate over 'New Religions', Scientology, and Human Rights". Marburg Journal of Religion. 6 (1). Archived from the original on June 19, 2001. Retrieved May 7, 2007.
- ^ Russell, Ron (September 9, 1999). "Scientology's Revenge - For years, the Cult Awareness Network was the Church of Scientology's biggest enemy. But the late L. Ron Hubbard's L.A.-based religion cured that -- by taking it over". New Times LA. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
- ^ Behar, Richard (May 6, 1991). "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power". Time. Archived from the original on February 25, 2007. Retrieved May 3, 2010.
- ^ Mallia, Joseph (March 3, 1998). "INSIDE THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY; Scientology reaches into schools through Narconon". Boston Herald. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
- ^ "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Volume 2" (PDF). 2003. pp. 525–527. Retrieved January 29, 2020.
- Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 1991
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External links
Library resources about Front organization |
- Front groups at SourceWatch