The Most Revolutionary Act

All in the Family

Although many official records of Obama’s extended family are sealed, there is sufficient information in the public domain to suggest that his stepfather Colonel Lolo Soetoro and both maternal grandparents also had links to the CIA.

Colonel Lolo Soetoro

Following her return to the University of Hawaii East West Center in 1962, Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham divorced Obama senior and met retired Indonesian Colonel Lolo Soetoro. She married him in either March 1964 or March 1965 (her passport records list two different dates). However Ann remained in Honolulu to finish her when Soetoro returned to Indonesia in 1966. She and five year old Barack joined him in 1967, after she received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology.

According to Madsen, Soetoro was linked to the CIA via his participation in the 1965-67 CIA-backed coup that overthrew Sukarno, Indonesia’s first democratically elected president. Madsen disputes Obama’s claim that Soetoro did “topicological surveys” for the Indonesian army when he returned to his native country in 1966. I, too, find it extremely implausible that the fascist general Suharto would employ an experienced combat officer to perform geological surveys in a country racked by extreme political instability and violence. Although his evidence is sketchy, Madsen believes Soetoro returned to active duty to fight communist insurgents in Java (see http://www.opinion-maker.org/2010/08/special-report-the-story-of-obama-all-in-the-company-part-iii/).

By the time Ann joined Soetoro in Jakarta in June 1967, Suharto had consolidated the coup and installed himself as acting president (March 1967).

Stanley Armour Dunham: Unanswered questions

As I blogged previously, Madsen also suspects Ann Dunham’s father worked for the CIA. In addition to the photo of Stanley Armour Dunham welcoming Barack Obama senior (presumably as part of the CIA-inspired Africa Airlift program) in 1959, Madsen has also uncovered a second photo suggesting Dunham and his family were living in Lebanon in the early fifties – something Obama also neglects to mention in his biography. While an extremely restless furniture salesman might move his family from Kansas, to Texas, to Berkeley and ultimately to Hawaii in pursuit of exactly the right furniture store, it wouldn’t explain the family’s presence in Beirut in the early fifties. The photo depicts Stanley Ann Dunham, Stanley Ann Dunham in a school uniform with the insignia of College Notre Dame de Jamhour, a private Jesuit school in Beirut.

Stanley Ann (with parents) in Notre Dame de Jamhour uniform

Madsen notes that Armour Dunham had an FBI file (J Edgar Hoover commonly kept files on covert CIA agents) that was allegedly destroyed in 1997.

Madelyn Dunham

Madsen believes Obama’s grandmother Madalyn Dunham had CIA connections via her 16 year career at the Bank of Hawaii, where she managed the secretive escrow finance department. The Bank of Hawaii has been widely implicated in money laundering (linked to illegal covert operations and/or narcotics trafficking) on behalf of a range of Asia-Pacific CIA front companies, including the Indonesian Lippo Group; the CIA’s Nugan Hand Bank in Australia; the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and an affiliate bank Commercial Bank of Commerce Cook Islands, Ltd. (CBCCI); gold bullion trader Deak International; European Pacific investments; and a Honolulu CIA front company called Bishop Baldwin Rewald Dillingham Wong (BBRDW), Ltd.

To be continued, with a look at the CIA-linked foundations Obama worked for in Chicago.