BRCC was founded by former CIA (Evan Hafer), and their executive Vice President is also former CIA (Mat Best). There is no such thing as "former CIA." You part of the agency for life. So why does the CIA need a coffee company? I suspect there are two objectives to this op:

1) Surveillance on conservative customers. Open coffee shops in red states, encourage right-leaning, gun-loving customers to frequent the shops, monitor their offline activities and discussion in said shops. Even the mail-order and wholesale aspects of the coffee business can be used for data mining purposes on conservative people and businesses.

2) Drugs. BRCC imports their coffee from Colombia and Brazil. Gary Webb reported that the CIA was getting their crack from Colombian drug cartels during the 1990s crack epidemic. "Coffee" is good cover for doing drug-related business:

• Needed to ship large quantities of drugs? Sneaking drugs in shipping containers full of coffee is one way to do it without attracting too much suspicion or drug-sniffing dogs.

• Need to send large amounts of money to Colombia? "Coffee" is a good excuse that won't attract much suspicion.

• Need to do a lot of in-person business with these Colombia drug dealers? A special OPs veteran/CIA like Evan Hafer sounds like the right man for a dangerous job. And he's got a lot of former veteran employees to protect the business and the merchandise.

• Need to expand your drug-running network and logistics? Open more fronts, i.e. coffee shops, around the country.

Bonus: Pic is from the NYT article. Dog comms?