A highly classified Pentagon intelligence operation ran a network of spies in North Korea from 2004 to 2012 under the cover of a US-based Korean Christian missionary group, US media reports revealed on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Hiramine was the Colorado-based founder of a multimillion-dollar humanitarian movement and non-governmental organization called the Humanitarian International Services Group (HISG).

“[Evangelical Christian leader Kay Hiramine] was a Pentagon spy whose NGO [non-governmental organization] was funded through a highly classified Defense Department program,” according to a report published in The Intercept.

However, the group really operated under a secret Defense Department program that began in December 2004 and lasted through most of President Barack Obama’s first term, the report said.

“[The program] was the brainchild of a senior Defense Department intelligence official of the Bush administration, Lt. Gen. William ‘Jerry’ Boykin… an evangelical Christian [who]… settled on the ruse of the NGO as he was seeking new… ways to penetrate North Korea,” the report explained.

In 2003, Boykin received widespread criticism for publicly making militant hostile statements about Islam, the report noted.

“North Korea was the most difficult intelligence target for the United State. But Hiramine’s NGO, by offering humanitarian aid to the country’s desperate population, was able to go where others could not,” The Intercept said.

Hiramine did not respond to requests for comment and neither did any of its senior colleagues, according to the report.

The Intercept said its expose was the result of a month-long investigation during which it interviewed more than a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials, humanitarian aid workers, missionaries, US officials and former HISG staffers.

The use of HISG for espionage was “beyond the pale” of what the US government should be allowed to do, Sam Worthington, president of Inter Action, an association of nearly 200 American NGOs, told The Intercept.

“It is unacceptable that the Pentagon or any other US agency use nonprofits for intelligence gathering. It is a violation of the basic trust between the US government and its civic sector,” he said.

A former US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Intercept that the Defense Department provided at least $15 million to HISG over the course of the program through these revenue streams.