Who is this USIM?

For weeks we’ve all read and heard a great deal about the United States International Mission project. Their goals seem noble and the cause certainly tugs the heartstrings. That being said, who is the USIM? I’m not the first to ask the question but I still haven’t seen an answer.

I went online to try and find out. I’m used to typing in a web search and finding 100,000 hits on almost any subject. There were only a few references to this organization, primarily resulting from their own website at http://www.theusim.com

The USIM website has a nice red, white, and blue logo with the Stars and Stripes but it does not state any affiliation with any U.S. government entity. They bill themselves as “An International Human Rights Agency.” Sounds important, but what does it mean?

I did a web search of “Human Rights Agency” (there were 42,500 hits). The first 10 pages or so were devoted to agencies of states and countries. The first non-governmental agency that I found was Amnesty International followed by Human Rights Watch and the American Center for Law and Justice. I never did come across a reference to USIM under that category.

I did a web search for each of the USIM Board members listed on the website. They list Dennis R. Catron, president; Dennis Matthews, vice president; Tina H. Do, secretary/treasurer; Aaron Cohen, executive director; along with members Dr. Thomas Futch and Dr. Touyer Mona. I found absolutely nothing on Dr. Mona other than one hit from the USIM website itself. I found the same for Dr. Futch. The USIM website bills Tina H. Do as a skilled translator and an Indochina expert. I couldn’t find any reference to her under those categories except in the USIM release. In fact she had a couple hits if she is a realtor from Texas. Dennis R. Catron had a few hits, but nothing about human rights activism. Dennis Matthews appears to run a videoconferencing/web casting company “that supports USIM.” When I researched the USIM local spokesperson, Alexandro “The Colonel” Sablan, I could not find anything relating to human rights activism.

USIM claims to be “a non-profit non-partisan corporation that supports the international framework for the defense of human rights . . .” Who knows what that means? They do not say when they were organized but it appears to be recently (copyright 2005 on the web page). Under “News Releases” they have just one entry. A seminar on “Child Trafficking in South Africa.” They claim that their presentation “was preceded by a presentation on three projects in South Africa being carried out by the United Nations Organization for Drugs and Alcohol Control – UNODC.”

Actually, the UNODC is the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes. The UNODC website has extensive information about human trafficking. When I searched the UNODC website I received the following responses: “Your search—USIM—did not match any documents. No pages were found containing “USIM.” And “United States International Mission”—did not match any documents. No pages were found containing “United States International Mission.”

The USIM states that the venue for this presentation was the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, South Africa on Sept. 9, 2005. My web search did not reveal any reference to this presentation at that venue.

I don’t claim any special expertise in Internet research. I encourage everyone to investigate for him or herself. My personal opinion is that this organization, while ostensibly noble in purpose, doesn’t appear to have done much to suggest that they are capable of carrying out such an ambitious project here in the Northern Marianas or anywhere else. I would love to get some of the principals out here to explain things in person. I still have plenty of questions.

Barry Hirshbein
San Antonio