Secretive Gaza checkpoint contractor reported as outgrowth of private intel firm
Safe Reach Solutions was reported to have grown out of former CIA special activities chief Philip Reilly's work at the private intelligence firm Orbis Operations.
On Saturday three journalists from The New York Times, including ‘Rise and Kill First’ author Ronen Bergman, revealed the private intelligence origins of the secretive security contractor Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), which has been positioned as the central company behind an Israeli government-affiliated replacement for United Nations-led aid delivery into Gaza. The new information comes one day after remarks from UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning that “the entire population of Gaza is facing the risk of famine” after noting that, “For nearly 80 days, Israel blocked the entry of life-saving international aid.”
The head of a controversial newly formed nonprofit set to partner with SRS in the aid distribution into Gaza, Jake Wood of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, also announced his resignation on Sunday. As part of an emailed press release regarding his resignation, Wood stated that, “it is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” Wood also stated that, “I urge Israel to significantly expand the provision of aid into Gaza through all mechanisms.”
SRS rose to prominence in January as the primary contractor, alongside former Green Beret and ‘Alcohol Armor’ entrepreneur Jameson Govoni’s UG Solutions, to run vehicle checkpoints along the Netzarim corridor separating northern and southern Gaza. Despite SRS initially hiding its leadership through a Wyoming-based registered agent firm, the company’s CEO was soon revealed to be former senior CIA paramilitary officer Philip F. Reilly, a former chief of station in Afghanistan whose biography with the CIA-affiliated nonprofit Third Option Foundation described him as the former chief of the agency’s Special Activities Division, which is responsible for CIA paramilitary and propaganda activities and subsequently renamed to the Special Activities Center.
(A now deleted video of UG Solutions founder Jameson Govoni (left) and Glenn Devitt (right) explaining how their ‘Alcohol Armor’ product was developed during undercover counter-pedophile operations in Nicaragua.)
Reilly’s roles with the private military contractor Constellis and the private intelligence firms Circinus and Orbis Operations following his 2014 retirement from the CIA are well known, but the relationship between Orbis and Safe Reach Solutions was only revealed by The Times on Saturday. “Mr. Reilly liaised with Israeli military and intelligence officials to develop new models for food distribution in Gaza, according to a document produced by Orbis,” reported The Times, before continuing that, “In late 2024, while working for Orbis, Mr. Reilly worked on a study that outlined a more detailed version of the plan to outsource food aid delivery to private companies and foundations, according to the document.”
Referring to several officials affiliated with the Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees logistical coordination between Israel and the Gaza strip, The Times noted that the central Israeli intermediaries for the aid privatization plan included: “Yotam HaCohen, a strategic consultant who joined COGAT, the military department that oversees aid delivery to Gaza; Liran Tancman, a well-connected tech investor who also joined COGAT; and Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli-American venture capitalist who remained outside the military.”
As exclusively reported by this publication in January 2024 — nearly a year prior to Mr. Reilly’s reported aid privatization drafting — Orbis Operations had accidentally published the end user license agreements with the surveillance firms whose data was stitched together to form the company’s “Discovery” situational awareness product. When reached for comment regarding the details of its published agreements with cellphone location-tracking firm Anomaly Six, sockpuppet management firm Ntrepid, gig-work human intelligence collection firm Premise Data, internet surveillance firm Fivecast, and numerous others, Orbis not only unpublished its license agreements agreements, the company also had a cache created by the author removed from The Wayback Machine.
While Safe Reach Solutions is led by the former head of the CIA’s paramilitary and propaganda activities, its origins have been revealed to be within the private intelligence firm Orbis Operations, which has been disclosed on numerous occasions to have been chaired by former acting CIA director Michael J. Morell.
Every time I read about the privatization of humanitarian aid, I think graft, who are they fooling any more.