Thread by @DefiyantlyFree

🧵🧵ICA, USAID, the CIA, Obama and Signal Gate

Either the contents of this thread are just a total coincidence or we have a serious problem.

1955: The U.S. creates the International Cooperation Administration (ICA)—a foreign aid agency meant to “win hearts and minds” in the developing world.

But ICA wasn’t just building schools and roads. It was a cover for covert power.

The CIA used the ICA as a tool of influence.

Aid missions often doubled as:
•Election interference
•Regime stabilization (or destabilization)
•Covers for U.S. intelligence officers

“Technical assistance” became political manipulation.

ICA projects in places like Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and the Congo were tied to coups, repression, and propping up dictators.

Instead of goodwill, ICA became a symbol of imperial meddling—sparking local resistance and deep blowback.

By the late 1950s, Congress and foreign leaders alike were growing wary. The agency was seen as corrupt, ineffective, and captured by the CIA.

Foreign aid lost credibility—and the Cold War messaging machine started backfiring.

1961: After the CIA’s disastrous Bay of Pigs operation, JFK shuts down the ICA.

In its place, he launches USAID—an attempt to professionalize aid and separate development work from intelligence operations.

USAID would be development-first, technically trained, and publicly accountable.

But the lesson was clear:
When U.S. aid is used for covert control, it loses both legitimacy and effectiveness.

Now jump to the digital age.

2012: Under the Obama administration, the U.S. launches the Open Technology Fund (OTF)—a federally funded nonprofit meant to support internet freedom tools for dissidents in repressive regimes.

Sound familiar?

One of OTF’s early beneficiaries: Signal, the encrypted messaging app developed by Moxie Marlinspike.

OTF grants helped fund the Signal Protocol—now used in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more.

Obama’s foreign policy team saw encryption tools as digital soft power—a way to help activists bypass censorship in China, Iran, and Russia.

OTF supported VPNs, Tor, secure comms, and open-source privacy tech.

Signal was meant to protect dissidents abroad. But it didn’t stop there.

Now Signal is used by:
•Whistleblowers
•Journalists
•Protesters
•Criminals
•And regular Americans who don’t trust their own government

Just like the ICA, Signal started with U.S. funding to challenge authoritarianism.
Just like the ICA, it created unexpected blowback.

And just like with ICA, the question became: Who really controls the tools of freedom?

Now, Signal was preloaded on the devices of Team Trump. The biggest Trump hating journalist was added by a technological mistake and an embarrassing leak ensues.

Everyone is confused how this happened.

Right after Trump took a sledgehammer to USAID.

Coincidence? I think not.

Glenn Beck talked about this on his show today I did the research and it checks out. In a very scary way.