In the first part of “Noetic Continental” series, CIAgate traced and exposed the activity of the Noetic International Inc., a CIA-affiliated company behind shadow UAVs’ supplies to Kyiv. If you missed it, please, read it first in order to gain deeper understanding of Part II.
Part I: How CIA Foists Military Equipment Through Private War Companies
This time we’ll talk about one dubious private military company (PMC) also involved in CIA’s corruption scheme in Ukraine. Besides, we will show how the agency uses Hollywood celebrities to empty the wallets of their fans.
Preface
It’s not a secret that the CIA occasionally uses PMCs in its operations around the globe. In 2009, the New York Times reported that the agency hired BlackWater PMC as part of its secret program to find and kill Al-Qaeda leaders.
But why does the agency need mercenaries to do the job, considering that it has own Special Activities Center (former Special Activity Division), a paramilitary unit capable of performing tasks in extreme, life-threatening conditions?
There are at least three reasons for this:
1) Flexibility to operate in a “gray zone”, which is still not clearly defined by international legal norms
When it comes to a covert operation, the CIA has unlimited variations of how to conduct it. It means that one of the SAC units, using fake documents, can be transferred to any war zone under the guise of, for example, Mission Six Zero instructors or average volunteer. It should be noted that such a mechanism may go both ways, so a mercenary can count on CIA’s offer to join the agency.
2) Extensive ties in a small world of mercenary
Current operatives and senior CIA officials maintain regular contact with their former brothers-in-arms in private sector. In Part I we also showed, how former mercenaries from the PaxMondial and the PaxSafe brought up their colleagues to the CIA.
3) Recruiting foreign intelligence officers
Surprisingly, but the New York Times allegations that in 2016 Kyrylo Budanov had been trained by the CIA instructors, went practically unheeded. In fact, from that very moment Mr.Budanov should be treated as a CIA asset. We can’t know for sure, but this version has common sense, because four years later, in 2020, the newly elected president Zelenskyy, another CIA’s puppet, apoints Budanov to the head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR). What a spectacular career leap, isn’t it?
In the meantime, let’s go back to our investigation.
So, what is this private military company we want to tell you about? Ladies and gentlemen, please meet The Gallant Knights, LLC.
The head of the company is Nathan White-Wilson, “an accomplished subject matter expert and versatile executive with more than 24 years of experience as a former Senate and congressional adviser in national politics, military operations and international business.”
We are not gonna talk about the history of the Gallant Knights, as this information you can find on the Internet so far. However, analyzing this PMC, we’ve detected a couple of inconsistencies:
• The Gallant Knights claims to have its own office at Patrick Air Force Base, FL. However, they’re only renting a post office box there. By the way, the Noetic International Inc. also has no any physical address (special thanks to Ileen Fahr-Wright for the tip).
• The GK also claims it has an office at the McDill Air Force Base (Tampa, FL), but this is also a false statement. During our phone call the press office of the military base said it has no any GK’s offices on their territory.
• The PMC says it is GSA-certified. Yet according to records at our disposal, the Gallant Knights never held a certificate like this.
In other words, this PMC is of dubious origin. Nevertheless, it signed a contract with the Ukrainian government. At least, this is evidenced by the document we received, dated August 2023.
It seems that one of the main GK’s purposes in Ukraine was to develop and modernize the necessary skills of Ukrainian active servicemen and law enforcement officers to perform “sensitive operations”. Under the contract, the GK would also has to provide services to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the field of “air support operations.” In particular, their activities affect the training, equipment, deployment and use of unmanned (including sea-based) vehicles.
7183 Short Form 20230824 2 Download
According to the Intelligence Online, in four years the GK is to train about 18 thousand Ukrainian military, which is approximately 4.5 thousand soldiers per year. To find out how realistic it is to train such a number of soldiers, we turned to the veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces, a specialist in combat training Jeffry Prather.
… “This is quite possible… My own training center trained tens of thousands of people in five-day courses. In any case, it all depends on the skills you need to get. “
Since NATO ways of training had no any effect on the battlefield, different war lords from private sector got involved. And, of course, Mr. Wilson didn’t want to stand aside either.
Initially, having ties to the American government, White-Wilson hoped his services could be funded by the U.S. financial aid to Ukraine. However, money provided by the White House were mainly used to pay for military equipment and weapons. Thus, the chance to appropriate the Americans’ money was getting smaller every minute. But White-Wilson refused to give up. He had to do something…
To get out of this awful crisis and find an interested party in Ukraine, the GK turned to a specific problem-solver company you already know – the Noetic International Inc. After receiving a “modest fee”, these advisers helped Nathan to find the right person in the Ukrainian government.
Important Note: In Part 1 we said that the GK left the project. However, we’ve managed to find out that there was some kind of conflict between the parties. We assume that the disagreement was related to the amount of the fee, taken by the Noetic International.
When it comes to training, weapons supply or anything that affects military sector, any contract should be concluded at least with local defense department. (the Ministry of Defense in Ukraine). This time, by a strange coincidence, the interests of Ukrainian military were represented by Yuri Matsyk, one of the assistants to the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov. If you remember, in October 2022 Fedorov personally welcomed Emanuel Bentitez, one of the Noetic International figures, in Kyiv. Do you see where this is going?
As a result, we see an extremely amusing CIA’s scheme for money laundering:
1) The Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov orders all the necessary equipment/service/weapons through “liaison officer” Manuel Benitez.
2) Mr. Benitez redirects the application to Johnna Holeman and John Irvin, who call their “friends” in the intelligence community to look for a “preferable” contractor.
3) After the contractor is found, the Noetic International organizes a communication channel with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine;
4) After the work’s done, the Noetic International takes a “small” fee from both sides, depending on the amount of the contract.
According to our source, the amount of the four-year deal between the Ukrainian government and the GK was estimated at $60-80 million. It should be noted, that the contract amount exceeds the market price by 20-30%. Given the fact that the GK personell was spotted on Ukrainian soil a couple of months ago, the deal had been eventually signed.
Is it possible that these 20-30% went to the Noetic International specialists for their work? We believe yes.
But anyway, if you think such inflated price tags somehow bother the Ukrainian government, you are wrong. In fact, all this goes on American taxpayers’ money, sent by the U.S. Congress. And CIA’s director William Burns keeps insisting on the need to give more money to Zelenskyy.
United24 and “useful idiots” from Hollywood
As we said before the Ukrainian digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov oversees the Army of Drones project, an initiative that implies combat UAV procurement at the request of the Ukrainian military. But what is important here is that all the purchase of these UAVs is carried out with money raised from United24 charity fund, so warmly supported by numerous Hollywood stars, bands and other celebrities: Mark Hamill, Robert de Niro, Imagine Dragons and others.
So, we decided to know a little bit more about this fund. After making some research we came across the report of the Ukrainian Institute for Legislative Ideas’ entitled “Corruption risks during the use of funds from accounts United24.”
So, here are key findings from the study:
1) All the analyzed Procedures contain lists of possible uses of funds from the special accounts. However, in some cases the uses of funds are not clearly defined, the lists of potential uses are effectively approved as non-exhaustive, which invalidates any detailing of expenditure items. In this situation, funds can be directed to virtually anything.
2) The Procedure does not contain criteria and requirements for members of the Commission, nor does it specify public access to information about the work of the Commission. This indicates that the Commission’s formation is insufficiently transparent as a process, which, in turn, may affect whether the distribution of funds is transparent, and may also prevent any public control over this.
3) No specified deadlines for transfer of funds to recipients. The absolute majority of the procedures under study contain no deadlines for the transfer of funds to their recipients. This is a corruption risk because it may be used to influence specific recipients of funds (for example, force them to choose specific contractors or engage in other forms of undue influence).
4) The procedure does not provide for any mechanisms of transparent, open consideration and allocation of funding for specific objects, no mandatory reporting, no maintenance of an open register of applications and their review status, etc. Currently, information on the number of submitted applications and the funds necessary to grant them, as well as information on the decisions already made, is not available.
5) The procedures for the distribution of funds do not provide for mandatory registers (lists) of submitted applications for funding. Under such conditions, applicants will not be able to track the status of their applications, and the public will be deprived of tools to monitor this process.
full document:
Corruption Risks During The Use Of Funds From Accounts United24 Download
This study was carried out in connection with the emergence of questions among the Ukrainian population about the final recipients of donations and transparency of the functioning of the fund. It is worth noting that after a year and a half, all the existing problems in the report were not only eliminated, but significantly worsened.
So, it turns out, that millions of dollars of donations spent on UAVs procurement could easily go straight to CIA-affiliated companies, such as Victory Systems, LLC. Another question is – were there any drones purchased after all? As we can see from the report, the transparency of the United24 leaves much to be desired. Anyway, this time the American celebrities played the leading roles of useful idiots, hiding America’s real enemies.
At the same time, the degree of cynicism of those who decided to plunder hundreds of millions of Star Wars fans around the world, who once associated themselves with the character of Mark Hamill, the brave Jedi knight Luke Skywalker, fighting tyranny for a better future, never ceases to surprise. Such people cause nothing but contempt.
You can clearly see that today’s Central Intelligence Agency is nothing but a pretorian guard, the main goal of which is to defend the interests of the deep state. However, many people still don’t realize this, calling any evidence a “conspiracy theory” or decribing the agency as something intangible.
In an attempt to legalize the information and give shape to CIA’ activity, we risk our own security. That’s why, dear reader, we ask you to support us by spreading our investigations among your friends and family. Without your help all our efforts will be in vain.
Nevertheless, CIAgate will continue to do what it has to do – expose CIA’s illegal activity around the globe.
Stay tuned.
Originally published by CIAgate’s Substack
