Middle East Eye reported on June 6 that former CIA paramilitary officer Phil Reilly, who heads a private military company that is guarding Israel’s newly set-up food distribution sites in Gaza, was a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group until 6 months ago, and is the latest partner to withdraw from the controversial aid project. This is as 110 Palestinians have been killed, and 583 wounded, trying to access aid during GHF’s 10 days of operations, MEE reports. But Reilly’s role with BCG, which ended only 6 months ago, raises questions about whether and how the “consultancy” was also involved in developing the security side of the aid operation from the beginning.
From the MEE report:
A 29-year veteran of the CIA, Reilly served as a senior advisor at BCG for eight years starting in January 2017, just as U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term started, according to his LinkedIn account. It was early last year, while still holding his advisory role, that Reilly reportedly first began discussing Gaza aid with Israeli civilians in early 2024. Later in 2024, he worked on a study for Orbis, another U.S. consultancy, which reportedly outlined a plan to outsource food aid delivery to private companies and foundations, the New York Times reported.
Reilly’s advisory role with BCG ended in December, a month after Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), the private military company now operating in Gaza, was registered in Wyoming, a known U.S. tax haven. Public records show that SRS’s registered agent, as first reported by All-Source Intelligence, is the Wyoming-based wealth management fund, Two Oceans Trust LLC.
But the public records fail to reveal many more details about SRS, including its funders. It was reported this week that McNally Capital, a Chicago-based private equity firm, has an “economic interest” in SRS, although the scale of the interest remains unclear. The lack of clarity about funding is also true of GHF which is registered with scant few other details in Delaware, another notorious U.S. tax haven.
As all of this was coming out, Reuters reported that USAID, or what’s left of it, was considering giving $500 million to GHF for its ID distribution operations in Gaza, Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former U.S. officials, “a move that would involve the U.S. more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.” The plan has met resistance from some U.S. officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
