I was thinking about the organizations that the CIA has supposedly used as a front, such as Air America or Pacific Corporation. What happens when an innocent person starts sticking their nose in a organization that looks innocent and nondescript, but whose activities are nearly 100% devoted to the secret government work?
I’m considering cases where the front organization is a front for a government operation/secret agents (it does not have to be the CIA), rather than an organized crime front, so I would think that taking the nosy civilian out back and shooting them would not be as likely.
Government contractors that are open about doing classified government work such as Lockheed Martin don’t really count. What might have happened if I had visited the facilities of Brewster Jennings & Associates in an attempt to convince them to collaborate on a business opportunity, or repeatedly pestered Air America asking if I could fly to LA, especially to such an extent where it becomes clear that there may be something fishy going on and that I am not talking to an independent business? Has it happened? What happened to Mr. Nosey?
Obviously, if you know of any incidents that cannot be mentioned due to being classified, please don’t.
I suspect you’d politely but firmly be told that they weren’t interested in any mergers or collaborations, thanks. I’ve never heard of anyone being hurt, killed or “disappeared” because they got too nosey.
On a somewhat related note, the city of Rcohester used to have a law that no business could be devoted exclusively to the sale of pornography - it had to have at least fifty percent of the store used for some other business.
Some places would run a smoke shop. But most just accepted the “wasted” space as a cost of doing business. They would rent a building that was twice as big as what they wanted and fill up half of it with some “junk” merchandise which they could claim was their main business while all their actual sales were in the pornography section.
But one interesting thing was that many of them filled up the junk area with used books. So I would go through the tables and often find some books I wanted. And it would usually totally confuse the cashier. One of them admitted that nobody had ever wanted to buy anything from the from of the store before and he didn’t know how to ring up the sale. He had to phone a manager for help.
Many fronts were parts of or associated with legitimate business who they could refer you to. ALso I remember in an interview I saw with the manager of the bunker at the Greenbrier hotel that they spent about a third of their time dealing with business relating to their cover story.
The shell company for the Greenbrier was Forsythe Associates. They would retrain retired military personal as TV repair men, which they would actually do part time. The majority of their time could then be spent in bunker upkeep.
I think I am about as cynical as they come but the CIA is not going to kill or arrest a USA citizen for snooping around a front, officially and legally they are not to even deal with a USA citizen. I imagine if you get to be an actual harassment they will have local authorities pick you up and have a chat(not a euphemism). You might be able to get detained or deported as a foreigner though.
Here is an interesting story of an exposed CIA front Donna Blue Aircraft, check out the parking lot filled with unmarked government vehicles!
Surely they would have to have some percentage of their time doing some legitimate business or it would be trivially easy to blow their cover. Eg the CIA front claims to be a charter plane company, if a foreign government is suspicious and tries to book a charter flight to check them out and is continuously blown off thats a pretty good giveaway.
They would have to have some arrangement to actually provide the cover service to maintain a plausible cover. So you as the innocent customer would get passed to their legit service arm (or private company that they partner with)
It would seem ridiculously simple to keep potential customers away: be indifferent to them, ignore them if the come to your office, keep them in the waiting room for hours, take phone messages and throw them away, have a messy looking office with no chairs to sit on, have a surly office clerk, etc.
There was a restaurant in our neighborhood that was a front for a drug dealer. They kept people away by putting out some of the crappiest food you could imagine with unbelievably bad service. It was one of those “how does that place stay in business?” type of places. I imagine any good front would look like just any other poorly run businesses that you wouldn’t want to do business with.
Actually, in most cases you would receive excellent and very courteous service. these companies do extremely well but develop a reputation as being “exclusive” and devoted to a primary clientele. Anytime I notice a business showing little interest in growth or expansion, I wonder. . .
It wouldn’t be too hard for a front company to subcontract out any legitimate work that comes their way, especially if they’re not really worried about making money. There are plenty of real companies that do exactly this - repair services that have no repairmen, just an extensive list of subcontractors - so it wouldn’t immediately be suspicious.
The story about the crashed plane full of cocaine and Donna Blue Airlines(DBA…oh I get it!) was all over the mainstream media. NPR covered it, several sent out reporters to photograph the unmarked fleet of cars etc. Its legit.
Presumably part of running a front organization is dealing with such requests without arousing suspicion, otherwise it would be a very easy way for foreign countries to identify CIA front organizations.
I like aquariums and aquarium shops, once when strolling with my wife I spotted a sign for one that was in a very out of the way spot.
I went in and was shocked to see dozens of empty tanks, one tank was half full with algae green water with a few guppies in it. There was nothing else in the store, no accessories at all just tanks empty of fish.
There was a bored and surly looking old man behind the counter who when asked where exactly were the fish responded that all he had was on display, he did not respond when I asked if he was joking? At this point my wife pulled me to the side and demanded to leave, she agreed with me the place was “fishy” but said in that case I was crazy to try to irritate whoever it was a front for.
Speaking of which. Air America’s slogan was “Anything, anytime, anywhere, professionally.” They operated for over 25 years posing as a cargo fleet. Does anyone know if they did actually carry genuine cargo if they were approached by a business that didn’t have any CIA affiliation?
All my life I’ve seen restaurants like that–they’ve been around for decades, but you never see cars in the parking lot. If you do go in, the place is empty, the food is bad, etc., just as you say. My father used to say jokingly that the restaurant was a front for the mob.
