Former State Department official Mike Benz revealed Thursday what he said was a long-standing and covert collaboration between top U.S. intelligence agencies and Ivy League institutions.

In his podcast streamed through X, Benz said these relationships date back to the end of the Cold War and demonstrate a strategic merger between academia, intelligence, and philanthropy. Benz traced what he said was the formation of a covert network where philanthropic organizations, often perceived as neutral, became instruments of intelligence agencies.

“That merger, as we’ve talked about so many times now, between intelligence, academia and philanthropy,” Benz said. Benz points to declassified CIA documents from 1999, which show that, as far back as 1951, the CIA enlisted philanthropies to fund and influence universities. This collaboration aimed to modernize education systems abroad, especially in countries where the U.S. had geopolitical interests.

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“And, lo and behold, Indiana University, together with USAID instead of CIA, because USAID is just doing what CIA did. Except it’s considered not as scandalous if the soft power work is done by a humanitarian NGO sponsor than by an intelligence agency,” Benz added.

The Harvard Institute for International Development, Benz said, garnered funding from USAID in the 1990s, playing a significant role in reshaping Russia’s economy during its post-Soviet transition. Benz said that this is just one of many cases where universities become integral parts of a broader geopolitical strategy, one that often goes unexamined by the public.

“What if I just do USAID? Higher education reform, modernized universities in Vietnam, $14 million from USAID, Indiana University’s Office of International Development, getting funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, just like the Harvard Institute for International Development run by Jeffrey Sachs to carve up Russia in the 1990s,” Benz said. “Whenever you see a university office of international development, it’s just this structure, with this structure, and it’s just underneath USAID within this same structure.”

The funding mechanisms are part of what Benz describes as the “blob”—a network of interconnected elites that includes government agencies like the State Department, DOD, CIA, and USAID, alongside multinational corporations, private equity firms, and powerful NGOs.

“You have the overclass, the donor drafter overclass, with the multinational corporations, the private equity firms, the hedge funds, banks, big dollar donor drafters,” Benz said. “The government agencies, state, DOD, CIA, USAID. And then the underbelly of it is the NGOplex, which includes the super NGOs, the universities. So anytime you see Harvard Institute of International Development, get money from USAID.”

Benz previously said Harvard University serves as a central hub for anti-Trump activity, with its academic departments and think tanks “weaponized” against the former president. The Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s ability to host foreign students due to what officials said was the school’s toxic campus climate and violations regarding antisemitism and foreign funding disclosures.

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