Thomas Farmer

Thomas Farmer   (deep state functionary, spook)
Born	26 July, 1923 Berlin, Germany
Died	5 February, 2015 (Age 91)
Nationality	US
Alma mater	Harvard, Oxford University/Brasenose College
Parents	Laurence Farmer
Founder of	The American Academy in Berlin
Member of	Atlantic Initiative
Interests	Germany

Thomas Laurence Farmer was an American intelligence operative, especially responsible for keeping (West) German society, law, trade, intelligence, and economic affairs aligned with U.s interests, stretching back to the 1950 until his death in 2015.

Early Life

Thomas was son of an American father (Laurence Farmer, 1895-1976) and a German-Jewish mother (Else Farmer, 1897-1960). In 1933 the family left Germany and moved to the United States and settled in New York City. He graduated from Great Neck High School in 1940 before studying at Harvard College, graduating in 1943. At Harvard College, he was also a member of the Editorial Board of the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University, and was a vocal advocate for American intervention in Europe.

Intelligence work

He subsequently served in the United States Army until 1946, where he joined the Military Intelligence Division of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C, where he assessed German military units. He then attended Brasenose College at the University of Oxford, from which he obtained a bachelor's degree in law in 1948. In 1950 he again obtained a Master of Laws degree from Harvard.

He then worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with unspecified covert operations for the Eastern Europe Division for three years from 1951, (the intelligence connection might have been reactivated a few years earlier), presumably working with the Gehlen organization. Farmer was also involved with Frank Wisner's Mighty Wurlitzer, CIA's effort to develop media assets and front organizations to take control over the non-communist left, which later got merged with its International Organizations (IO) department, responsible for international students and youth. There, he kept contact with among others later Swedish PM Olof Palme.

After a few years gap in his CV, he returned to Washington in 1958 one more time and from that time worked for the renowned law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

At the time, Thomas L. Farmer campaigned for the John F. Kennedy campaign in the run-up to the 1960 United States presidential election. Subsequent to his work on John F. Kennedy’s successful 1960 campaign, Farmer advised the new administration on State and Defense department appointments.

In 1962, he represented the then student and current economist Frederic Pryor, who was accused by East Germany of espionage. Through efforts by James B. Donovan, Pryor was released on February 10, 1962, during the prisoner exchange of Russian spy Rudolf Abel for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers at Checkpoint Charlie. In 1960 he founded the Overseas Development Institute think tank and was its director in the early days.

From 1964 to 1968, he was involved in development policy at the United States Department of State. He was involved in the establishment of the Asian Development Bank. During Jimmy Carter's presidency, he was the chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Board of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board from 1977 to 1981, overseeing intelligence services.

From 1970 to 1994 he was also a partner in the Washington white shoe law firm Prather Seeger Doolittle & Farmer and from 1970 to 2002 he was a member of the Bankers Association for Foreign Trade. He was also a member of the Kominers, Fort, Schlefer, Farmer & Boyer law firm for some time.

In 1983 he was involved in the founding of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), based in Washington, where he was director and treasurer. Until his death he was also a trustee of this organization.

In collaboration with Henry Kissinger and the then German President Richard von Weizsäcker, he helped found the American Academy in Berlin, an American research and cultural institution. As a founding member, he also served as chairman until he was replaced by Richard Holbrooke, the then US ambassador to Germany, who also had the idea for the institution.

A year earlier, Farmer became the first non-German member of the Treuhandanstalt,a a notoriously corrupt institution responsible for privatizing all East Germany state assets, and played a major role in the privatization of the coal mining industry in the former East Germany.

In 1997, the native of Berlin was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. From 2005 to 2013, he belonged to the Consultants International Group (CIG), founded in Washington in 1981.

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