In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and known as In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.[4] The name, "In-Q-Tel" is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond.[5]

The firm is seen as a trend-setter in the information technology industry, with the average dollar invested by In-Q-Tel in 2012 attracting nine dollars of investment from other companies.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

vision behind it as being:

We [the CIA] decided to use our limited dollars to leverage technology developed elsewhere. In 1999, we chartered… In-Q-Tel… While we pay the bills, In-Q-Tel is independent of CIA. CIA identifies pressing problems, and In-Q-Tel provides the technology to address them. The In-Q-Tel alliance has put the agency back at the leading edge of technology.

I love the part about how Tenet says that while the CIA pays the bills, In-Q-Tel is still “independent.” That is so cute!

Not surprisingly, according to The Wall Street Journal, the reality is that In-Q-Tel runs virtually all investment decisions by the CIA.1

https://dailyreckoning.com/revealed-facebooks-cia-connections/

Since it was founded, In-Q-Tel has made at least 167 investments that we are aware of.2 In-Q-Tel doesn’t disclose everything it invests in, but of the investments that have been disclosed, the focus of a large number of them has been data.

“Data” again being a very hot word today given the Facebook controversy.

As far back as 2005, The Washington Post reported that virtually any U.S. entrepreneur, inventor or research scientist working on ways to analyze data had probably received a phone call from In-Q-Tel or at least been Googled by its staff of technology watchers.

One company that happened to be very hungry for startup capital in 2005 was Facebook.

Facebook was launched in February 2004 from the Harvard dorm room of Mark Zuckerberg and friends.

The company received its first capital injection of $500,000 from Peter Thiel that summer. The next two capital injections were $12.7 million from Thiel and Accel Partners in May 2005 and then $27.5 million from an Accel-led round of financing that included Thiel, Accel and Greylock Partners in April 2006.3

Just for fun, I searched for each of those investors and In-Q-Tel at the same time.

Here is what I found:

Peter Thiel — Took In-Q-Tel funding for his startup firm Palantir somewhere around 2004.

Accel Partners — In 2004, Accel partner James Breyer sat on the board of directors of military defense contractor BBN with In-Q-Tel’s CEO Gilman Louie.

Greylock Partners — Howard Cox, the head of Greylock, served directly on In-Q-Tel’s board of directors.

Now, I’m not saying that the CIA or In-Q-Tel had any direct involvement with Facebook.

All I’m saying is that it appears to me that the key early investors in Facebook had direct relationships with In-Q-Tel or In-Q-Tel’s top management at the same time that Facebook was raising capital…

https://dailyreckoning.com/revealed-facebooks-cia-connections/