Big Oil's Foundation/PBS Links
by bob feldman
9 December 2002
Some of the profits that San Francisco-based Chevron Texaco has made during the last ten years has gone to PBS's Washington, D.C. outlet, WETA-TV. In 1992, for instance, a foundation grant of over $2.4 million was given to WETA-TV by Chevron to fund PBS¹s National Geographic Specials. That same year Chevron¹s foundation also gave money to the following other ³non-profit² organizations:
Stanford University was given 3 grants, totaling $455,000, by Chevron
University of California-Berkeley was given 2 grants, totaling $217,000 by Chevron
The American Enterprise Institute For Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. was given a $70,000 grant by Chevron
The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. was given a $60,000 grant by Chevron
The National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C. was given a $65,000 grant by Chevron
The NAACP in New York City was given a $55,000 grant by Chevron
Among the ³non-profit² organizations who received foundation grants from Chevron two years later, in 1994, were the following:
San Francisco¹s KQED/Channel 2, which was given a $152,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The San Francisco Opera Association, which was given an $86,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The African American Institute in New York City, which was given a $90,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, which was given another $70,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
Stanford University, which given 4 grants, totalling $495,000, by Chevron¹ s foundation
University of California at Berkeley, which was given a $342,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The Hoover Institute On War, Peace and Revolution in Stanford, California, which was given a $120,000 grant by Chevron¹s foundation
The Center for Strategic and International Studies in D.C., which was given another $100,000 in tax-exempt money by Chevron¹s foundation
Although the assets of Chevron¹s foundation exceeded $34.3 million in 1995, it only gave $21.7 million away during that same year‹despite the fact that Chevron made a $930 million profit.
ChevronTexaco¹s foundation is not the only foundation that gets its grant distribution money from a business involvement in the oil industry. The MacArthur Foundation¹s $2 billion-plus corporate stock portfolio included at least $31 million in oil company stock a few years ago. The Sister Fund¹s assets are derived from Hunt Oil, a firm which sometimes competes with Chevron in the marketing of Middle East and African oil. And, as long ago as 1973, The American Oil Industry: A Failure of Anti-Trust Policy pointed out the following about the relation between large U.S. foundations and the oil industry:
³Some of the largest foundations in the country have been established with oil money. A foundation can be both a means of retaining control and seeking favorable tax treatment.
³Of the first 30 largest foundations in the United States in asset rank, seven have major holdings in oil company stocks and are associated with oil company founders. The three largest in terms of the market value of assets are the Rockefeller Foundation with $831 million, the Mellon Foundation with some $668 million and the Pew Memorial Trust with $367 million in 1971.
³An examination of these foundation assets reveals a known truth‹that the Rockefeller and Mellon families are the sources of great wealth deriving from the oil industry. If the assets of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are added together they total approximately $1 billion. Similarly, if the assets of the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the Scaife (Sarah Mellon) Foundation are combined, they too total in the neighborhood of $1 billion.”
In 1972, when Chevron went under the name of Standard Oil of California, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund owned $8.9 million worth of stock in this company; and the Commonwealth Fund owned $11.1 million worth of Standard Oil of California/Chevron stock. The president and CEO of the WETA-TV station which received $2.4 million from Chevron in 1992 was PBS Director Sharon Rockefeller.
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The Website http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/nation_ned_1.html Is DEAD,,I am saving everything from the WayBack Machine.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Northwestern University's CIA Connection
by bob feldman
12 December 2002
Between 1982 and 1989 Henry Bienen was employed as a Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] consultant. In recent years, former CIA Consultant Bienen has been the president of Northwestern University.
Northwestern University is not the first liberal institution of higher education to be involved with the CIA. As long ago as 1968, The Closed Corporation: American Universities In Crisis by James Ridgeway noted that "through foundations" the CIA "dispursed funds to universities for work which interested it." The same book also recalled:
"MIT's Center for International Studies began as a CIA front. Michigan State's police-training program in South Vietnam was a dodge for the CIA agents. Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations was supported by the CIA...Harvard University received money from more than a dozen CIA passes...Columbia University's research on income in East Central Europe was financed by the CIA...Joseph Strayer, a medieval historian [at Princeton] is perhaps the agency's most devoted consultant."
According to the 1991 book CIA Off-Campus by Ami Chen Mills, "CIA spokesperson Sharon Foster said in 1988 that the CIA has enough professors under Agency contract 'to staff a large university.'" The same book also observed:
"As of the late 1970s, approximately 5,000 professors were doing CIA work in some capacity, either `spotting' U.S. or foreign recruitment candidates, participating in research and grant work or carrying out more active programs like foreign police training. It is estimated that about 60 percent of these academics were aware of the nature of their employment, while another 40 percent did the CIA's bidding in the dark—through front companies or foundations. In the 1990s, the number of academics on the CIA payroll has undoubtedly increased."
In a November 1972 acknowledgment which appeared in his book Kenya: The Politics Of Participation And Control (that was written under the auspices of the Harvard Center for International Affairs), Northwestern University President Bienen wrote that "I am especially grateful to Samuel Huntington." Coincidentally, in 1985 "the former director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington, was...uncloaked as a CIA ‘asset’ working secretly with a CIA consultant and publishing documents that were...paid for...by the Agency" (CIA Off Campus by Ami Chen Mills).
questionsquestions.net
12 December 2002
Between 1982 and 1989 Henry Bienen was employed as a Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] consultant. In recent years, former CIA Consultant Bienen has been the president of Northwestern University.
Northwestern University is not the first liberal institution of higher education to be involved with the CIA. As long ago as 1968, The Closed Corporation: American Universities In Crisis by James Ridgeway noted that "through foundations" the CIA "dispursed funds to universities for work which interested it." The same book also recalled:
"MIT's Center for International Studies began as a CIA front. Michigan State's police-training program in South Vietnam was a dodge for the CIA agents. Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations was supported by the CIA...Harvard University received money from more than a dozen CIA passes...Columbia University's research on income in East Central Europe was financed by the CIA...Joseph Strayer, a medieval historian [at Princeton] is perhaps the agency's most devoted consultant."
According to the 1991 book CIA Off-Campus by Ami Chen Mills, "CIA spokesperson Sharon Foster said in 1988 that the CIA has enough professors under Agency contract 'to staff a large university.'" The same book also observed:
"As of the late 1970s, approximately 5,000 professors were doing CIA work in some capacity, either `spotting' U.S. or foreign recruitment candidates, participating in research and grant work or carrying out more active programs like foreign police training. It is estimated that about 60 percent of these academics were aware of the nature of their employment, while another 40 percent did the CIA's bidding in the dark—through front companies or foundations. In the 1990s, the number of academics on the CIA payroll has undoubtedly increased."
In a November 1972 acknowledgment which appeared in his book Kenya: The Politics Of Participation And Control (that was written under the auspices of the Harvard Center for International Affairs), Northwestern University President Bienen wrote that "I am especially grateful to Samuel Huntington." Coincidentally, in 1985 "the former director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington, was...uncloaked as a CIA ‘asset’ working secretly with a CIA consultant and publishing documents that were...paid for...by the Agency" (CIA Off Campus by Ami Chen Mills).
questionsquestions.net
Ford Foundation's Skull & Bones Link
Ford Foundation's Skull & Bones Link
by bob feldman
A few years ago a movie called SKULLS—which seemed to draw its initial inspiration from Yale University's secretive Skull and Bones society—was shown in some theatres around the United States . According to the 1998 edition of SHARING THE PIE: A CITIZEN'S GUIDE TO WEALTH AND POWER IN AMERICA by Steve Brouwer:
"Skull and Bones is a small, secret society of Yale University. During the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century it was home to many rich, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant young men who went on to run the country, including William Howard Taft, Republican president from 1908 to 1912; Averell Harriman, the leading financier of the Democratic Party from 1932 to 1992; Prescott Bush, the manager of Harriman's bank, Republican senator, and father of George Bush; and George Bush, Republican president from 1988 to 1992 [and the father of the current U.S. president, George W. Bush]. The list could be filled out with the names of scores of very influential Americans--for example, Henry Stimson, Republican financier and two-time secretary of war, and Henry Luce, the nation's leading publisher (TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE, etc.).
"In the first half of the twentieth century, George Bush's father and his generation of Bonesmen were intimately involved in maintaining family wealth, looking after the welfare of America's largest banks and corporations, running the affairs of both political parties, and directing U.S. foreign and domestic policies."
The 1990 book TELEVISION AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY by Douglas Kellner also observed that former President George "Bush's father Prescott had connections with the intelligence service, was involved in the secret investment bank...and, like his son, was a member of the secret Skull and Bones society at Yale..."
Like George W. Bush's father, the president of the Ford Foundation between 1966 and 1979, McGeorge Bundy, was a member of the Skull and Bones society. In addition, both the father [Harvey Bundy] and the brother [William Bundy] of former Ford Foundation President Bundy were members of Skull and Bones. According to NATION magazine contributing editor Kai Bird's MacArthur Foundation, LBJ Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation-subsidized book, THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND WILLIAM BUNDY--BROTHER IN ARMS:
"In his junior year Harvey [Bundy] was selected to the most exclusive and ritualistic of fraternities, Skull and Bones. Only fifteen men were tapped for membership each year in the secretive club. [Harvey] Bundy was enormously pleased...
"Nothing affected him more at Yale than the people he met at Skull and Bones. They met twice a week, and [Harvey]Bundy claimed the friendships he formed were such that Skull and Bones `did more for us than any other single experience in our lives.'...
"Skull and Bones had been founded in 1832...William H. Russell...endowed Skull and Bones with a considerable fortune, managed by the Russell Trust Association...The clubhouse and its dining facilities were one thing, but the Russell Trust also owned a summer house on Deer Island, a rustic retreat in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. The Russell Trust also reportedly had a special fund from which any Bonesman caould withdraw up to $15,000 in a lifetime for any purpose...
"Skull and Bones...reinforced the paridigm of the Bundy brothers' Boston Brahmin upbringing..."
The Ford Foundation's Vice President for Educational Programs who also chaired the Ford Foundation's Public Policy Committee when McGeorge Bundy was Ford Foundation President--Harold Howe--was also a member of Skull and Bones. Under Skull and Bones member Howe's chairmanship, the Ford Foundation's Public Policy Committee "dispersed several million dollars a year on projects which were seen as too far afield from Ford's guidelines," according to THE COLOR OF TRUTH.
Another Skull and Bones member who has been playing a prominent role in U.S. Establishment politics since the now-deceased McGeorge Bundy moved out of his Ford Foundation office in 1978 is U.S. Senator John Kerry--who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2004.
click here for an email-formatted version of this article
questionsquestions.net
by bob feldman
A few years ago a movie called SKULLS—which seemed to draw its initial inspiration from Yale University's secretive Skull and Bones society—was shown in some theatres around the United States . According to the 1998 edition of SHARING THE PIE: A CITIZEN'S GUIDE TO WEALTH AND POWER IN AMERICA by Steve Brouwer:
"Skull and Bones is a small, secret society of Yale University. During the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century it was home to many rich, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant young men who went on to run the country, including William Howard Taft, Republican president from 1908 to 1912; Averell Harriman, the leading financier of the Democratic Party from 1932 to 1992; Prescott Bush, the manager of Harriman's bank, Republican senator, and father of George Bush; and George Bush, Republican president from 1988 to 1992 [and the father of the current U.S. president, George W. Bush]. The list could be filled out with the names of scores of very influential Americans--for example, Henry Stimson, Republican financier and two-time secretary of war, and Henry Luce, the nation's leading publisher (TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE, etc.).
"In the first half of the twentieth century, George Bush's father and his generation of Bonesmen were intimately involved in maintaining family wealth, looking after the welfare of America's largest banks and corporations, running the affairs of both political parties, and directing U.S. foreign and domestic policies."
The 1990 book TELEVISION AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY by Douglas Kellner also observed that former President George "Bush's father Prescott had connections with the intelligence service, was involved in the secret investment bank...and, like his son, was a member of the secret Skull and Bones society at Yale..."
Like George W. Bush's father, the president of the Ford Foundation between 1966 and 1979, McGeorge Bundy, was a member of the Skull and Bones society. In addition, both the father [Harvey Bundy] and the brother [William Bundy] of former Ford Foundation President Bundy were members of Skull and Bones. According to NATION magazine contributing editor Kai Bird's MacArthur Foundation, LBJ Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation-subsidized book, THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND WILLIAM BUNDY--BROTHER IN ARMS:
"In his junior year Harvey [Bundy] was selected to the most exclusive and ritualistic of fraternities, Skull and Bones. Only fifteen men were tapped for membership each year in the secretive club. [Harvey] Bundy was enormously pleased...
"Nothing affected him more at Yale than the people he met at Skull and Bones. They met twice a week, and [Harvey]Bundy claimed the friendships he formed were such that Skull and Bones `did more for us than any other single experience in our lives.'...
"Skull and Bones had been founded in 1832...William H. Russell...endowed Skull and Bones with a considerable fortune, managed by the Russell Trust Association...The clubhouse and its dining facilities were one thing, but the Russell Trust also owned a summer house on Deer Island, a rustic retreat in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. The Russell Trust also reportedly had a special fund from which any Bonesman caould withdraw up to $15,000 in a lifetime for any purpose...
"Skull and Bones...reinforced the paridigm of the Bundy brothers' Boston Brahmin upbringing..."
The Ford Foundation's Vice President for Educational Programs who also chaired the Ford Foundation's Public Policy Committee when McGeorge Bundy was Ford Foundation President--Harold Howe--was also a member of Skull and Bones. Under Skull and Bones member Howe's chairmanship, the Ford Foundation's Public Policy Committee "dispersed several million dollars a year on projects which were seen as too far afield from Ford's guidelines," according to THE COLOR OF TRUTH.
Another Skull and Bones member who has been playing a prominent role in U.S. Establishment politics since the now-deceased McGeorge Bundy moved out of his Ford Foundation office in 1978 is U.S. Senator John Kerry--who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2004.
click here for an email-formatted version of this article
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"Alternative" media paymasters: Carlyle, Alcoa, Xerox, Coca Cola...
"Alternative" media paymasters: Carlyle, Alcoa, Xerox, Coca Cola...?
The Ford Foundation, historically closely linked to the CIA and the military-industrial-academic complex, has in recent years provided substantial funding grants to a number of "alternative" media organizations, such as FAIR, Progressive magazine, and Pacifica. Also participating in this type of funding are other elite foundations such as MacArthur, Soros, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Schumann.
General policy for grant-making at the Ford Foundation is handled by the Board of Trustees. Approval for all grants over $100,000 must be personally signed by Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford, who is also a member of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission and the Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations Inc.. So, for example, a $150,000 grant to FAIR by the Ford Foundation in 2001 for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States" was approved directly by Trilateral Commission member Berresford, in accordance with the grantmaking policy guidelines established by the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees. Given the tremendous power that the Ford Foundation has historically wielded in influencing cultural, academic, and political affairs, one must ask, who makes up this board of directors whose policies the Ford Foundation president implements—and what interests do they represent?
In May 2002, the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees welcomed a new member, Afsaneh M. Beschloss, former World Bank investment officer and CEO / President of Carlyle Asset Management Group, which is a division of the Carlyle Group, the defence-related international investment firm which enjoys all-star revolving door influence in the Bush White House and is enjoying a post-9/11 profit bonanza. Beschloss first joined Carlyle Asset Management Group in 2001 as a managing director. She also happens to be married to George W. Bush's official presidential historian, Michael Beschloss.
It would appear that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees is within the Bush administration's sphere of cronyism. Is this who should be entrusted to decide how grant money gets doled out to "alternative" media organizations? Is the CEO of Carlyle Asset Management Group and wife of a current presidential historian likely to smile upon funding alternative media organizations which are eager to go beyond offering the usual cut-and-paste complaints about Carlyle Group influence in the White House, and ask more probing questions about this company's role the "War on Terrorism", such as its alleged investment in anthrax vaccine maker Bioport or its past business ties with the not-quite-completely-estranged-from-their-errant-son bin Laden family?
In 1999 the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees was joined by Deval L. Patrick, currently Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Coca Cola. As General Counsel, Patrick currently has a difficult task to contend with at Coca Cola: defending the company against an historic lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of America on behalf of the largest Coca Cola union in Columbia. The charges are that the company is guilty of willful negligence and complicity during a long-running campaign of kidnapping, violence, and murder committed against unionists at Colomian bottling factories by paramilitary death squads (conditions which have kept labor costs conveniently low). A number of humanitarian and labor rights groups have lent their support to the lawsuit. Incidentally, this wouldn't be Mr. Patrick's first run-in with paramilitary death squads: in 1995, as Clinton's Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, he declined to pursue any serious action following an internal Justice Department report which recommended criminal prosecution of the Federal agents who massacred the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge in 1992. Prior to joining Coca Cola, Patrick was the Vice President and General Counsel for Texaco.
Also on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees are Paul A. Allaire, Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation and Former Chairman / CEO of Xerox Corporation, and David T. Kearns, another former Chairman / CEO of Xerox. Xerox happens to be one of the corporations implicated in the ongoing accounting scandals. Can we fully depend on media organizations funded by the Ford Foundation to turn up the heat and beyond the limited, damage-controllable cover story of "greedy, reckless CEOs" and "excess deregulation" to examine the deeper aspects of the corporate scandals which seem to indicate a calculated mass transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich? Even more significant are much larger related ripoffs in the US government, such as the HUD scandal and the disappearance of roughly THREE TRILLION dollars from the US Treasury (according to official US audits which failed to produce audited financial statements as required by law). Financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts (who helped with the official clean-up of the Savings & Loan and BCCI scandals and helped implement the requirement that Federal agencies had to produce audited financial statements as an Assistant Secretary for HUD in the first Bush administration) argues that such extraordinary failures to produce audited financial statements along with trillions of undocumentable adjustments to get the books to "balance" could not have occured without a conspiracy involving high officials of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. Is the Ford Foundation likely to support media efforts to tell the truth about concerted upper class looting of public resources?
Another powerful elite corporate interest represented on the Board of Trustees is aluminum manufacturing giant Alcoa. Alain J. P. Belda, Chairman and CEO of Alcoa, joined the Ford Foundation in 2000 (he is also a director of Citigroup and DuPont). Alcoa is also linked to the Bush administration through Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was Belda's predecessor and who has also served as the chairman of war industry think tank Rand Corporation. Alcoa happens to posess some uniquely repellent skeletons in its corporate closet. Originally founded by the powerful right-wing Mellon family (whose Mellon Bank is currently the Carlyle Group's sole outside partner), the company was centrally involved in the conspiracy amongst a group of US industrialists and Wall Street interests in the 1930s to support and trade with the Nazis through a cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, the notorious industrial giant which built the Nazi war machine and ran their concentration camps. This would continue even into the early part of World War II, and Alcoa's sabotage of the US Air Force's aluminum production program with this cartel agreement led Secretary of Interior Harold Ickles to warn in June 1941, "If America loses the war it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America." Some of the other elite names involved in this crime were Rockefeller, Ford, Harriman, DuPont, and Bush; all were strong supporters of the racial eugenics movement which inspired some of Hitler's own policies.
There doesn't seem to be much indication that the "alternative" media recepients of Ford Foundation funding have any interest in exposing this still heavily suppressed treasonous episode in US history, nor does there seem to be much interest in exposing how these same elite families continue to fund racial eugenics-related organizations, one example being the Manhattan Institute (funded by the Mellon-Scaife fortune and the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank) which originated President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" policies. It hardly seems likely that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees would want to fund alternative researchers and journalists who are inclined to connect these kinds of dots and bring critical scrutiny to the alarming fact that the US elite interests who have had the closest historical relationship with fascism, eugenics, and genocide (in addition, being closely connected with the biotech & biowarfare industries) are in a position of great influence over the planning of US bioterrorism defence policy, including new proposals for mass forced vaccinations.
Is it any more likely that the Ford Foundation, given its long and well-documented history as a back channel for CIA covert funding streams, would favor the kind of alternative media which might be expected to ask troublesome questions about the CIA's recent activities? For example, many questions need asking about the CIA's close connections with its subordinate in Pakistan, the ISI, which was a main supporter of the Taliban before 9/11. The former head of the ISI was discovered to have organized a wire transfer of $100,000 to the enigmatic alleged 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in Summer of 2001, and yet also wound up visiting Washington D.C. for high-level meetings with US officials the week of 9/11. Any competent investigative journalist would find information like this to be compellingly in need of further inquiry, but the "alternative" media who receive Ford Foundation grants don't seem to find it very interesting at all.
Is it likely that the Ford Foundation would fund the kind of alternative media which would be inclined to look deeply into the long-running control over US foreign policy exerted by the private and secretive Council on Foreign Relations, given the fact that the CFR counts among its funding sources the Ford Foundation and Xerox? Or would the Ford Foundation more likely favor those who could be relied upon to toe the party line that the CFR (and other elite policymaking NGOs like the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group) functions only as a stuffy intellectual debate society, and that anyone who argues otherwise is a "paranoid nut"?
Is it likely that establishment foundations, which are invested heavily in Big Oil, would choose to fund the kind of alternative journalists and researchers who are asking challenging questions about the formative role of oil politics in 9/11 and the so-called "War on Terrorism"? Or those who have been pursuing urgent investigations into the stunning array of evidence pointing to Bush administration complicity in the 9/11 attacks?
Of course not. Instead, the big establishment foundations are likely to seek out "alternative" media that is more bark than bite, which they can rely on to ignore and dimiss sensitive topics like those mentioned above -- and many more -- as "irrelevant distractions" or "conspiracy theory." Recipients of funding will always protest that they are not swayed by any conflicts of interest and don't allow the sources of funding to affect their decisions, but whether or not these claims are actually true is already somewhat of a red herring. The more important question is, what sort of "alternative" journalism garners the goodwill of the Ford Foundation corporate rogues' gallery in the first place? Or the Rockefeller Foundation? Or Carnegie, Soros, and Schumann?
Judging by the journalism being offered (and not offered) by Nation magazine, FAIR, Pacifica, Progressive magazine, IPA, Mother Jones, Alternet, and other recipients of their funding, the big establishment foundations are successfully sponsoring the kind of "opposition" that the US ruling elite can tolerate and live with.
Brian Salter, questionsquestions.net
29 September 2002
see also:
Alternative Media Censorship: sponsored by CIA's Ford Foundation? by Bob Feldman
The Ford Foundation, the CIA, and US Establishment Conspiracy (part 3) by Bob Feldman
click here for an email-formatted version of this article
questionsquestions.net
The Ford Foundation, historically closely linked to the CIA and the military-industrial-academic complex, has in recent years provided substantial funding grants to a number of "alternative" media organizations, such as FAIR, Progressive magazine, and Pacifica. Also participating in this type of funding are other elite foundations such as MacArthur, Soros, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Schumann.
General policy for grant-making at the Ford Foundation is handled by the Board of Trustees. Approval for all grants over $100,000 must be personally signed by Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford, who is also a member of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission and the Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations Inc.. So, for example, a $150,000 grant to FAIR by the Ford Foundation in 2001 for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States" was approved directly by Trilateral Commission member Berresford, in accordance with the grantmaking policy guidelines established by the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees. Given the tremendous power that the Ford Foundation has historically wielded in influencing cultural, academic, and political affairs, one must ask, who makes up this board of directors whose policies the Ford Foundation president implements—and what interests do they represent?
In May 2002, the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees welcomed a new member, Afsaneh M. Beschloss, former World Bank investment officer and CEO / President of Carlyle Asset Management Group, which is a division of the Carlyle Group, the defence-related international investment firm which enjoys all-star revolving door influence in the Bush White House and is enjoying a post-9/11 profit bonanza. Beschloss first joined Carlyle Asset Management Group in 2001 as a managing director. She also happens to be married to George W. Bush's official presidential historian, Michael Beschloss.
It would appear that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees is within the Bush administration's sphere of cronyism. Is this who should be entrusted to decide how grant money gets doled out to "alternative" media organizations? Is the CEO of Carlyle Asset Management Group and wife of a current presidential historian likely to smile upon funding alternative media organizations which are eager to go beyond offering the usual cut-and-paste complaints about Carlyle Group influence in the White House, and ask more probing questions about this company's role the "War on Terrorism", such as its alleged investment in anthrax vaccine maker Bioport or its past business ties with the not-quite-completely-estranged-from-their-errant-son bin Laden family?
In 1999 the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees was joined by Deval L. Patrick, currently Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Coca Cola. As General Counsel, Patrick currently has a difficult task to contend with at Coca Cola: defending the company against an historic lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of America on behalf of the largest Coca Cola union in Columbia. The charges are that the company is guilty of willful negligence and complicity during a long-running campaign of kidnapping, violence, and murder committed against unionists at Colomian bottling factories by paramilitary death squads (conditions which have kept labor costs conveniently low). A number of humanitarian and labor rights groups have lent their support to the lawsuit. Incidentally, this wouldn't be Mr. Patrick's first run-in with paramilitary death squads: in 1995, as Clinton's Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, he declined to pursue any serious action following an internal Justice Department report which recommended criminal prosecution of the Federal agents who massacred the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge in 1992. Prior to joining Coca Cola, Patrick was the Vice President and General Counsel for Texaco.
Also on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees are Paul A. Allaire, Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation and Former Chairman / CEO of Xerox Corporation, and David T. Kearns, another former Chairman / CEO of Xerox. Xerox happens to be one of the corporations implicated in the ongoing accounting scandals. Can we fully depend on media organizations funded by the Ford Foundation to turn up the heat and beyond the limited, damage-controllable cover story of "greedy, reckless CEOs" and "excess deregulation" to examine the deeper aspects of the corporate scandals which seem to indicate a calculated mass transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich? Even more significant are much larger related ripoffs in the US government, such as the HUD scandal and the disappearance of roughly THREE TRILLION dollars from the US Treasury (according to official US audits which failed to produce audited financial statements as required by law). Financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts (who helped with the official clean-up of the Savings & Loan and BCCI scandals and helped implement the requirement that Federal agencies had to produce audited financial statements as an Assistant Secretary for HUD in the first Bush administration) argues that such extraordinary failures to produce audited financial statements along with trillions of undocumentable adjustments to get the books to "balance" could not have occured without a conspiracy involving high officials of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. Is the Ford Foundation likely to support media efforts to tell the truth about concerted upper class looting of public resources?
Another powerful elite corporate interest represented on the Board of Trustees is aluminum manufacturing giant Alcoa. Alain J. P. Belda, Chairman and CEO of Alcoa, joined the Ford Foundation in 2000 (he is also a director of Citigroup and DuPont). Alcoa is also linked to the Bush administration through Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was Belda's predecessor and who has also served as the chairman of war industry think tank Rand Corporation. Alcoa happens to posess some uniquely repellent skeletons in its corporate closet. Originally founded by the powerful right-wing Mellon family (whose Mellon Bank is currently the Carlyle Group's sole outside partner), the company was centrally involved in the conspiracy amongst a group of US industrialists and Wall Street interests in the 1930s to support and trade with the Nazis through a cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, the notorious industrial giant which built the Nazi war machine and ran their concentration camps. This would continue even into the early part of World War II, and Alcoa's sabotage of the US Air Force's aluminum production program with this cartel agreement led Secretary of Interior Harold Ickles to warn in June 1941, "If America loses the war it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America." Some of the other elite names involved in this crime were Rockefeller, Ford, Harriman, DuPont, and Bush; all were strong supporters of the racial eugenics movement which inspired some of Hitler's own policies.
There doesn't seem to be much indication that the "alternative" media recepients of Ford Foundation funding have any interest in exposing this still heavily suppressed treasonous episode in US history, nor does there seem to be much interest in exposing how these same elite families continue to fund racial eugenics-related organizations, one example being the Manhattan Institute (funded by the Mellon-Scaife fortune and the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank) which originated President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" policies. It hardly seems likely that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees would want to fund alternative researchers and journalists who are inclined to connect these kinds of dots and bring critical scrutiny to the alarming fact that the US elite interests who have had the closest historical relationship with fascism, eugenics, and genocide (in addition, being closely connected with the biotech & biowarfare industries) are in a position of great influence over the planning of US bioterrorism defence policy, including new proposals for mass forced vaccinations.
Is it any more likely that the Ford Foundation, given its long and well-documented history as a back channel for CIA covert funding streams, would favor the kind of alternative media which might be expected to ask troublesome questions about the CIA's recent activities? For example, many questions need asking about the CIA's close connections with its subordinate in Pakistan, the ISI, which was a main supporter of the Taliban before 9/11. The former head of the ISI was discovered to have organized a wire transfer of $100,000 to the enigmatic alleged 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in Summer of 2001, and yet also wound up visiting Washington D.C. for high-level meetings with US officials the week of 9/11. Any competent investigative journalist would find information like this to be compellingly in need of further inquiry, but the "alternative" media who receive Ford Foundation grants don't seem to find it very interesting at all.
Is it likely that the Ford Foundation would fund the kind of alternative media which would be inclined to look deeply into the long-running control over US foreign policy exerted by the private and secretive Council on Foreign Relations, given the fact that the CFR counts among its funding sources the Ford Foundation and Xerox? Or would the Ford Foundation more likely favor those who could be relied upon to toe the party line that the CFR (and other elite policymaking NGOs like the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group) functions only as a stuffy intellectual debate society, and that anyone who argues otherwise is a "paranoid nut"?
Is it likely that establishment foundations, which are invested heavily in Big Oil, would choose to fund the kind of alternative journalists and researchers who are asking challenging questions about the formative role of oil politics in 9/11 and the so-called "War on Terrorism"? Or those who have been pursuing urgent investigations into the stunning array of evidence pointing to Bush administration complicity in the 9/11 attacks?
Of course not. Instead, the big establishment foundations are likely to seek out "alternative" media that is more bark than bite, which they can rely on to ignore and dimiss sensitive topics like those mentioned above -- and many more -- as "irrelevant distractions" or "conspiracy theory." Recipients of funding will always protest that they are not swayed by any conflicts of interest and don't allow the sources of funding to affect their decisions, but whether or not these claims are actually true is already somewhat of a red herring. The more important question is, what sort of "alternative" journalism garners the goodwill of the Ford Foundation corporate rogues' gallery in the first place? Or the Rockefeller Foundation? Or Carnegie, Soros, and Schumann?
Judging by the journalism being offered (and not offered) by Nation magazine, FAIR, Pacifica, Progressive magazine, IPA, Mother Jones, Alternet, and other recipients of their funding, the big establishment foundations are successfully sponsoring the kind of "opposition" that the US ruling elite can tolerate and live with.
Brian Salter, questionsquestions.net
29 September 2002
see also:
Alternative Media Censorship: sponsored by CIA's Ford Foundation? by Bob Feldman
The Ford Foundation, the CIA, and US Establishment Conspiracy (part 3) by Bob Feldman
click here for an email-formatted version of this article
questionsquestions.net
Reoly to Writer
Alternative Media Censorship:
Bob Feldman and Brian Salter reply to a reader
Hello,
I saw and appreciated your essay on the foundational support for Left orgs and writers that dismiss anything that smacks of "conspiracism".
However, while I share with you the idea that such orgs and writers should be critically evaluated, I do not think your evidence, specifically, against Noam Chomsky is all that weighty. You don't really present any evidence that Chomsky is a controlled person. You cite the Inamori award from the "Japanese Establishment", but that award was for his achievements in the area of linguistics and cognitive science, not his political writings. So what does the Inamori award have to do with anything? The award is somewhat akin to the various Nobel prizes.
Also, you mentioned that Z magazine was perhaps named after the Costa-Gavras film "Z". My recollection is that Z magazine was originally named Zeta magazine, billing itself the last word, as it were, in political writing. When Sargent and Albert found out the name Zeta was already used by someone else, they opted for the abbreviated form, 'Z'.
In any event, I fail to see how your charts, in general, necessarily predict control of the sort you claim. However, I am eager to examine more evidence of such if it exists.
Thanks, WiseSerpent
Bob Feldman replies:
Thank you for considering some of the possible institutional/political reasons for censorship of 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers by the foundation-sponsored alternative media gatekeepers.
Although MIT Professssor Chomsky has been on the payroll of the 12th-largest recipient of US Air Force war contracts in recent years, the article isn't asserting "that Chomsky is a controlled person." But there is evidence that Z magazine was unwilling to print an article about MIT's links to the U.S. Air Force's space warfare preparations and to the Pentagon's think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses, a few years ago.
Regarding the $350,000 award from the Inamori Foundation that was set up by the chairman emeritus/founder of one of Japan's leading telecommunications companies, DDI Corporation, that was given to ALTERNATIVE RADIO's frequently featured guest: Generally, recipients of such large grants from Establishment foundations are reluctant to scrutinize or criticize a foundation world from which they've obtained such a large sums of money. And, like the Nobel prize money (that was initially obtained from Nobel's invention and marketing of dynamite weapons), some of the Inamori Foundation money was originally obtained from DDI's ownership of 75% of the AVX Coroporation--which is an electronic company that (like MIT) is a key contractor in the U.S. aerospace/military industry.
Regarding evidence that the alternative media gatekeepers are reluctant to either air or publish criticism of the Soros/Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation or the MacArthur Foundation or encourage much fair of discussion of 9/11 conspiracy evidence in their media: I don't think much evidence exists of any foundation-sponsored gatekeeper eagerness to either scrutinize the Establishment foundations or welcome 9/11 conspiracy discussion. Yet as G. William Domhoff wrote long ago in his book Who Rules America?: "The foundation boards have the power to accept or reject various scientific, educational, and culture ventures. They therefore have the power to exert considerable influence over the noneconomic aspects of American life." Refusing to acknowledge that the multi-billion or multi-million dollar foundations possess great power to influence alternative media editorial priorities through their funding policies, seems like an illogical interpretation of current U.S. political/social reality.
Brian Salter replies:
To clarify, Mike Ruppert is of the opinion that the Left "gatekeepers" phenomenon to which we are drawing attention is the result of a classic COINTELPRO-style infiltration. Given his expertise and personal experience in this area, he is more than justified in voicing that opinion. In certain cases, the egregious and unconscionable behavior of some "Left" media figures literally begs the question -- but again, one should note that we have not made this type of claim, and the title of Feldman's article itself says "Sponsored by the Ford Foundation," not "Controlled by the Ford Foundation."
The burden of proof is not on us to verify the existence of a formalized arrangement or quid pro quo in order to raise the issue of foundation funding of Left media as a crucial concern. Instead, the burden of proof is on those who receive foundation funding to demonstrate (against all historical precedents and common sense) that they are capable of providing unbiased and unfettered coverage on the most sensitive issues involving the US ruling establishment. The most logical starting point is not to ask, "are these media figures being controlled and censored by an outside agency?" but instead to ask "are these media figures controlling and censoring themselves?" John Moyers of TomPaine.com could not have said it better:
"If they don't like what we're doing, we don't get paid next year."
Even more fundamentally, one of the most damning points of all is already made by the prima facie evidence itself. As Feldman notes above, with an informed and responsible understanding of political and social realities, it would be very naieve to adopt the default assumption that "philanthropic" foundation funding is neutral and benign until proven otherwise. Elite foundations do not throw their money around without looking for a return on their investment, and the rapidly broadening and expanding foundation funding of establishment Left media indicates that they have been getting the return they desire. The elites are paying to promote the type of opposition which they believe is most compatible with their interests; they are paying to promote the type of "dissidence" which will do them the least harm.
Even giving the most generous benefit of the doubt, assuming that the establishment Left media orgainizations and individuals in question are all completely sincere and unhesitant in their pursuits and clear of any conflicts of interest, one still cannot avoid this basic question: if they (and their general school of thought) have found such positive favor with the Ford Foundation and other well-known elite instruments of mass control and social engineering, are they really doing the job that needs to be done? And how can one find any continuing credibility in their rigidly controlled ideological positions as a genuinely effective and viable basis for "dissent"?
As the threat of a new war in the Persian Gulf builds day by day, it becomes increasingly important to ask these kinds of questions. Those who have fully studied the issues and facts concerning 9/11 and the Bush administration's inexplicable coverup and lies understand rationally that this is not a topic of "conspiracy theory" but instead a true scandal of serious proportions. This can no longer be denied. It is a scandal which, if aggressively pursued by the media, should have helped hamstring and sideline the Bush administration months ago, which would have made it politically impossible for them to push ahead with their war plans in the first place. Thus, for those who have been striving to uncover the underlying truths behind 9/11 and the "War on Terror," the imminent possibility of this terrifying new war is a double tragedy. For this reason, we feel there is an urgent imperative to expose and scrutinize the institutional factors which have steered the establishment Left media toward their current gatekeeping / censorship agendas.
original article:
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Bob Feldman and Brian Salter reply to a reader
Hello,
I saw and appreciated your essay on the foundational support for Left orgs and writers that dismiss anything that smacks of "conspiracism".
However, while I share with you the idea that such orgs and writers should be critically evaluated, I do not think your evidence, specifically, against Noam Chomsky is all that weighty. You don't really present any evidence that Chomsky is a controlled person. You cite the Inamori award from the "Japanese Establishment", but that award was for his achievements in the area of linguistics and cognitive science, not his political writings. So what does the Inamori award have to do with anything? The award is somewhat akin to the various Nobel prizes.
Also, you mentioned that Z magazine was perhaps named after the Costa-Gavras film "Z". My recollection is that Z magazine was originally named Zeta magazine, billing itself the last word, as it were, in political writing. When Sargent and Albert found out the name Zeta was already used by someone else, they opted for the abbreviated form, 'Z'.
In any event, I fail to see how your charts, in general, necessarily predict control of the sort you claim. However, I am eager to examine more evidence of such if it exists.
Thanks, WiseSerpent
Bob Feldman replies:
Thank you for considering some of the possible institutional/political reasons for censorship of 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers by the foundation-sponsored alternative media gatekeepers.
Although MIT Professssor Chomsky has been on the payroll of the 12th-largest recipient of US Air Force war contracts in recent years, the article isn't asserting "that Chomsky is a controlled person." But there is evidence that Z magazine was unwilling to print an article about MIT's links to the U.S. Air Force's space warfare preparations and to the Pentagon's think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses, a few years ago.
Regarding the $350,000 award from the Inamori Foundation that was set up by the chairman emeritus/founder of one of Japan's leading telecommunications companies, DDI Corporation, that was given to ALTERNATIVE RADIO's frequently featured guest: Generally, recipients of such large grants from Establishment foundations are reluctant to scrutinize or criticize a foundation world from which they've obtained such a large sums of money. And, like the Nobel prize money (that was initially obtained from Nobel's invention and marketing of dynamite weapons), some of the Inamori Foundation money was originally obtained from DDI's ownership of 75% of the AVX Coroporation--which is an electronic company that (like MIT) is a key contractor in the U.S. aerospace/military industry.
Regarding evidence that the alternative media gatekeepers are reluctant to either air or publish criticism of the Soros/Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation or the MacArthur Foundation or encourage much fair of discussion of 9/11 conspiracy evidence in their media: I don't think much evidence exists of any foundation-sponsored gatekeeper eagerness to either scrutinize the Establishment foundations or welcome 9/11 conspiracy discussion. Yet as G. William Domhoff wrote long ago in his book Who Rules America?: "The foundation boards have the power to accept or reject various scientific, educational, and culture ventures. They therefore have the power to exert considerable influence over the noneconomic aspects of American life." Refusing to acknowledge that the multi-billion or multi-million dollar foundations possess great power to influence alternative media editorial priorities through their funding policies, seems like an illogical interpretation of current U.S. political/social reality.
Brian Salter replies:
To clarify, Mike Ruppert is of the opinion that the Left "gatekeepers" phenomenon to which we are drawing attention is the result of a classic COINTELPRO-style infiltration. Given his expertise and personal experience in this area, he is more than justified in voicing that opinion. In certain cases, the egregious and unconscionable behavior of some "Left" media figures literally begs the question -- but again, one should note that we have not made this type of claim, and the title of Feldman's article itself says "Sponsored by the Ford Foundation," not "Controlled by the Ford Foundation."
The burden of proof is not on us to verify the existence of a formalized arrangement or quid pro quo in order to raise the issue of foundation funding of Left media as a crucial concern. Instead, the burden of proof is on those who receive foundation funding to demonstrate (against all historical precedents and common sense) that they are capable of providing unbiased and unfettered coverage on the most sensitive issues involving the US ruling establishment. The most logical starting point is not to ask, "are these media figures being controlled and censored by an outside agency?" but instead to ask "are these media figures controlling and censoring themselves?" John Moyers of TomPaine.com could not have said it better:
"If they don't like what we're doing, we don't get paid next year."
Even more fundamentally, one of the most damning points of all is already made by the prima facie evidence itself. As Feldman notes above, with an informed and responsible understanding of political and social realities, it would be very naieve to adopt the default assumption that "philanthropic" foundation funding is neutral and benign until proven otherwise. Elite foundations do not throw their money around without looking for a return on their investment, and the rapidly broadening and expanding foundation funding of establishment Left media indicates that they have been getting the return they desire. The elites are paying to promote the type of opposition which they believe is most compatible with their interests; they are paying to promote the type of "dissidence" which will do them the least harm.
Even giving the most generous benefit of the doubt, assuming that the establishment Left media orgainizations and individuals in question are all completely sincere and unhesitant in their pursuits and clear of any conflicts of interest, one still cannot avoid this basic question: if they (and their general school of thought) have found such positive favor with the Ford Foundation and other well-known elite instruments of mass control and social engineering, are they really doing the job that needs to be done? And how can one find any continuing credibility in their rigidly controlled ideological positions as a genuinely effective and viable basis for "dissent"?
As the threat of a new war in the Persian Gulf builds day by day, it becomes increasingly important to ask these kinds of questions. Those who have fully studied the issues and facts concerning 9/11 and the Bush administration's inexplicable coverup and lies understand rationally that this is not a topic of "conspiracy theory" but instead a true scandal of serious proportions. This can no longer be denied. It is a scandal which, if aggressively pursued by the media, should have helped hamstring and sideline the Bush administration months ago, which would have made it politically impossible for them to push ahead with their war plans in the first place. Thus, for those who have been striving to uncover the underlying truths behind 9/11 and the "War on Terror," the imminent possibility of this terrifying new war is a double tragedy. For this reason, we feel there is an urgent imperative to expose and scrutinize the institutional factors which have steered the establishment Left media toward their current gatekeeping / censorship agendas.
original article:
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES' EDELMAN-BUNDY CONNECTION
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
by bob feldman
Part 10:
POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES' EDELMAN-BUNDY CONNECTION
In a 1998 book that was subsidized by the MacArthur Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, entitled THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND WILLIAM BUNDY: BROTHERS IN ARMS, a contributing editor of Katrina vanden Heuvel's NATION magazine, Kai Bird, recalled that in June 1968, then-Ford Foundation President McGeorge "Bundy arranged fellowships totaling $131,000 for eight members of" the mysteriously-slain Robert F. "Kennedy's campaign staff." Bird also noted that recipients "included Frank Mankiewicz ($15,000 for a study of the Peace Corps in Latin America), Adam Walinsky ($22,200 for a study of community action programs) and Peter Edelman ($19,090 for a study of community development programs around the world)."
In recent years Peter Edelman has been sitting on the board of a foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, which subsidizes the alternative media work of Chip Berlet's Political Research Associates [PRA] group. In 2002, for instance, Peter Edelman's Public Welfare Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to Political Research Associates to provide "general support for research center that collects and disseminates information on extremist groups and provides information and training to local, state, and national organizations working to counter extremist activity." PRA's form 990 also indicates at least $90,000 in additional grant money was given to Political Research Associates by Peter Edelman's Public Welfare Foundation between 1993 and 1996; and in 1999, another grant of $50,000 was given to the Political Research Associates group by the Public Welfare Foundation.
Prior to working as a staffperson for RFK and then receiving his Ford Foundation fellowship from former National Security Affairs advisor Bundy, Public Welfare Foundation board member Edelman worked as a law clerk to a Supreme Court Justice named Arthur Goldberg. According to the 1982 book Rooted In Secrecy: The Clandestine Element in Australian Politics by Joan Coxsedge: "Arthur Goldberg, the General Counsel of the CIO engineered the expulsion of the Left from this organization...After the left-wing purge of the CIO, Goldberg worked to achieve union with the conservative American Federation of Labor [AFL] headed by rabid anti-communist and long-time CIA stooge, George Meany, and what was left of the CIO." Public Welfare Foundation board member Edelman is also both the political godfather/rabbi of U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton and a former Clinton Administration official. According to the Center for Responsive Politics' web site, Public Welfare Foundation board member Peter Edelman also gave two campaign contributions, totalling $1,500, to Hillary Rodham-Clinton's campaign on September 26, 2000 and another $1,000 campaign contribution to SenatorRodham-Clinton's campaign on November 9, 2000. Marian Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund NGO also gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to Hillary Rodham-Clinton on November 9, 2000.
In the late 1990s, the Massachusetts-based Political Research Associates [PRA] was also given a $120,000 grant by the San Francisco Foundation. The board of trustees and/or the investment committee of the San Francisco Foundation has included the following members of the Bay Area Establishment in recent years: 1. Levi Strauss Foundation Board Member Peter Haas Jr.; 2. Advent Software Inc. Chair and U. of California-Berkeley Foundation board member Stephanie Marco; 3. Equidex Inc. Chair and former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg James Hormel; 4. Oakland Private Industry Council CEO Gay Plair Cobb; 5. Brookings Institute Trustee Emeritus and U. of California-Berkeley Foundation board member F. Warren Hellman; 6. Stanford University Trustee Leslie Hume; 7. Pacific Gas & Electric [PG&E] Chief Finance Officer Kent Hardy; 8. Seneca Capital Management Founder Gail Seneca; and 9. Foundation for Chinese Democracy Chair/President Rolland C. Lowe. In addition, the San Francisco Foundation presently controls over $695 million in assets and takes in about $15 million a year in investment income from its corporate stock portfolio.
Contributions exceeding $5,000 were also made to Political Research Associates by the following other individuals or foundations between 1993 and 1996: William & Robie Harris ($32,000); Jean Hardisty ($125,588), Thomas P. Jalkut ($85,000), Hannah Kranzberg ($5,000), Sister Fund ($20,000), CS Fund ($30,000); Funding Exchange ($12,000); Haymarket Peoples Fund ($17,000); Ms. Foundation for Women ($15,000); Nathan Cummings Foundation ($80,000); the Stresand Foundation ($7,500); Threshold Foundation ($27,825); Tides Foundation ($69,260); Unitarian Universalist Veatch ($50,000; Sylvia Goodman ($11,000); Michael Kieschnick ($29,279); Albert A. List Foundation ($75,000); US Trust ($5,032); The New Land Foundation ($5,000); and PRRAC ($10,000). In 1999, additional contributions exceeding $5,000 were made to Political Research Associates by the following individuals and foundations: Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program ($25,000); The Prentice Foundation ($5,000); Stephen & Diana Goldberg Foundation ($10,000); Tides Foundation ($57,550); Albert A. List Foundation ($25,000); Carol Bernstein ($5,000); Irving Harris Foundation ($25,000); Nathan Cummings Foundation ($55,000); Thomas Jalkut ($15,000); Nancy Meier ($15,025);; Warsh-Mott Legacy ($20,000); Chambers Family Fund ($25,000); and the Ms. Foundation For Women ($15,000).
At least $11,000 in politically partisan campaign contributions have also been made by a Jean Hardisty of Political Research Associates since 1992, according to the Center for Responsive Politics web site. On November 15, 1999, for instance Ms. Hardisty gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And on September 12, 2000, Ms. Hardisty gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to KidPAC.
In the acknowledgment section of the 1995 Eyes Right! book which Chip Berlet edited, the Establishment Foundation-sponsored Political Research Asociates executive wrote: "An extra tip of the hat to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive for his special assistance." Coincidentally, in recent months Berlet joined PROGRESSIVE magazine editor Rothschild in attempting to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers, while apparently failing to do much political research into possible links between the Ford Foundation, the Trilateral Commission, the Carlyle Group and/or the Bush White House.
back to intro...
[click here for email-formatted version of this page]
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SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
by bob feldman
Part 10:
POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES' EDELMAN-BUNDY CONNECTION
In a 1998 book that was subsidized by the MacArthur Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, entitled THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND WILLIAM BUNDY: BROTHERS IN ARMS, a contributing editor of Katrina vanden Heuvel's NATION magazine, Kai Bird, recalled that in June 1968, then-Ford Foundation President McGeorge "Bundy arranged fellowships totaling $131,000 for eight members of" the mysteriously-slain Robert F. "Kennedy's campaign staff." Bird also noted that recipients "included Frank Mankiewicz ($15,000 for a study of the Peace Corps in Latin America), Adam Walinsky ($22,200 for a study of community action programs) and Peter Edelman ($19,090 for a study of community development programs around the world)."
In recent years Peter Edelman has been sitting on the board of a foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, which subsidizes the alternative media work of Chip Berlet's Political Research Associates [PRA] group. In 2002, for instance, Peter Edelman's Public Welfare Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to Political Research Associates to provide "general support for research center that collects and disseminates information on extremist groups and provides information and training to local, state, and national organizations working to counter extremist activity." PRA's form 990 also indicates at least $90,000 in additional grant money was given to Political Research Associates by Peter Edelman's Public Welfare Foundation between 1993 and 1996; and in 1999, another grant of $50,000 was given to the Political Research Associates group by the Public Welfare Foundation.
Prior to working as a staffperson for RFK and then receiving his Ford Foundation fellowship from former National Security Affairs advisor Bundy, Public Welfare Foundation board member Edelman worked as a law clerk to a Supreme Court Justice named Arthur Goldberg. According to the 1982 book Rooted In Secrecy: The Clandestine Element in Australian Politics by Joan Coxsedge: "Arthur Goldberg, the General Counsel of the CIO engineered the expulsion of the Left from this organization...After the left-wing purge of the CIO, Goldberg worked to achieve union with the conservative American Federation of Labor [AFL] headed by rabid anti-communist and long-time CIA stooge, George Meany, and what was left of the CIO." Public Welfare Foundation board member Edelman is also both the political godfather/rabbi of U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton and a former Clinton Administration official. According to the Center for Responsive Politics' web site, Public Welfare Foundation board member Peter Edelman also gave two campaign contributions, totalling $1,500, to Hillary Rodham-Clinton's campaign on September 26, 2000 and another $1,000 campaign contribution to SenatorRodham-Clinton's campaign on November 9, 2000. Marian Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund NGO also gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to Hillary Rodham-Clinton on November 9, 2000.
In the late 1990s, the Massachusetts-based Political Research Associates [PRA] was also given a $120,000 grant by the San Francisco Foundation. The board of trustees and/or the investment committee of the San Francisco Foundation has included the following members of the Bay Area Establishment in recent years: 1. Levi Strauss Foundation Board Member Peter Haas Jr.; 2. Advent Software Inc. Chair and U. of California-Berkeley Foundation board member Stephanie Marco; 3. Equidex Inc. Chair and former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg James Hormel; 4. Oakland Private Industry Council CEO Gay Plair Cobb; 5. Brookings Institute Trustee Emeritus and U. of California-Berkeley Foundation board member F. Warren Hellman; 6. Stanford University Trustee Leslie Hume; 7. Pacific Gas & Electric [PG&E] Chief Finance Officer Kent Hardy; 8. Seneca Capital Management Founder Gail Seneca; and 9. Foundation for Chinese Democracy Chair/President Rolland C. Lowe. In addition, the San Francisco Foundation presently controls over $695 million in assets and takes in about $15 million a year in investment income from its corporate stock portfolio.
Contributions exceeding $5,000 were also made to Political Research Associates by the following other individuals or foundations between 1993 and 1996: William & Robie Harris ($32,000); Jean Hardisty ($125,588), Thomas P. Jalkut ($85,000), Hannah Kranzberg ($5,000), Sister Fund ($20,000), CS Fund ($30,000); Funding Exchange ($12,000); Haymarket Peoples Fund ($17,000); Ms. Foundation for Women ($15,000); Nathan Cummings Foundation ($80,000); the Stresand Foundation ($7,500); Threshold Foundation ($27,825); Tides Foundation ($69,260); Unitarian Universalist Veatch ($50,000; Sylvia Goodman ($11,000); Michael Kieschnick ($29,279); Albert A. List Foundation ($75,000); US Trust ($5,032); The New Land Foundation ($5,000); and PRRAC ($10,000). In 1999, additional contributions exceeding $5,000 were made to Political Research Associates by the following individuals and foundations: Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program ($25,000); The Prentice Foundation ($5,000); Stephen & Diana Goldberg Foundation ($10,000); Tides Foundation ($57,550); Albert A. List Foundation ($25,000); Carol Bernstein ($5,000); Irving Harris Foundation ($25,000); Nathan Cummings Foundation ($55,000); Thomas Jalkut ($15,000); Nancy Meier ($15,025);; Warsh-Mott Legacy ($20,000); Chambers Family Fund ($25,000); and the Ms. Foundation For Women ($15,000).
At least $11,000 in politically partisan campaign contributions have also been made by a Jean Hardisty of Political Research Associates since 1992, according to the Center for Responsive Politics web site. On November 15, 1999, for instance Ms. Hardisty gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And on September 12, 2000, Ms. Hardisty gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to KidPAC.
In the acknowledgment section of the 1995 Eyes Right! book which Chip Berlet edited, the Establishment Foundation-sponsored Political Research Asociates executive wrote: "An extra tip of the hat to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive for his special assistance." Coincidentally, in recent months Berlet joined PROGRESSIVE magazine editor Rothschild in attempting to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers, while apparently failing to do much political research into possible links between the Ford Foundation, the Trilateral Commission, the Carlyle Group and/or the Bush White House.
back to intro...
[click here for email-formatted version of this page]
questionsquestions.net
Time For Ford Foundation & CFR To Divest?
Time For Ford Foundation & CFR To Divest?
by bob feldman
8 October 2002
Like MIT and Harvard University, the Ford Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] also may invest in Big Oil stock, U.S. war machine stock, and in the stock of U.S. corporations that do business under the Sharon regime in Israel/Palestine. One way to more effectively resist the U.S. Establishment's militaristic foreign policy might be to seriously demand that MIT, Harvard, the Ford Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations divest themselves of their Big Oil, war machine and Israeli-linked corporate stockholdings.
Some of the investment income which the multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation may gain from its investment in Big Oil, war machine stock and Israeli-linked corporations is used to pay excessively high salaries to Ford Foundation executives. Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations member Susan Berresford, for instance, was paid an annual salary of $615,934 (plus an additional $114,095 in benefits) in 2001 by the "non-profit" Ford Foundation for serving as the Ford Foundation President. The chief investment officer of the Ford Foundation (who also moonlights as the Ms.Foundation for Women board member responsible for managing that "non-profit" group's investment portfolio), Linda Strump, was paid an even greater annual salary in 2001 of $890,217 by the "non-profit" Ford Foundation.
Some of the Ford Foundation's investment income is also used to fund the alternative media work of groups that generally exclude 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers from their radio and tv shows, such as FAIR and DEMOCRACY NOW/Deep Dish TV/Pacifica. And an even greater portion of the Ford Foundation's investment income is used to help fund the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] Inc. which has played an especially influential role in developing the U.S. Establishment's militaristic foreign policy--in addition to (like the Ford Foundation) receiving dividends from a stock portfolio which may contain Big Oil, war machine and Israeli-linked stock. As Thomas Dye noted in a book that was published during the Bush I Administration, entitled WHO'S RUNNING AMERICA? THE BUSH ERA:
The most influential policy-planning group in foreign affairs is the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR]...The CFR by-laws limit membership to 1,900 individuals who are proposed by existing members...The CFR's list of former members includes every person of influence in foreign affairs...CFR meetings are secret...A discussion of the CFR would be incomplete without some reference to its multinational arm, the Trilateral Commission...The Trilateral Commission was established by CFR Board Chairman David Rockefeller in 1972, with the backing of the Council and the Rockefeller Foundation.
THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE by Victor Marchetti and John Marks also made the following reference to the Council on Foreign Relations:
It was no accident that former Clandestine Services Chief Richard Bissell...was talking to a Council on Foreign Relations discussion group in 1968 when he made his 'confidential' speech on covert action. For the influential but private Council, composed of several hundred of the country's top political, military, business and academic leaders, has long been the CIA's principal 'constituency' in the American public. When the agency has needed prominent citizens to front for its proprietary companies or for other special assistance, it has often turned to Council members.
Former Ford Foundation executive and CIA official Bissell apparently told the Council on Foreign Relations discussion group the following in 1968:
If the agency is to be effective, it will have to make use of private institutions on an expanding scale, though those relations which have been 'blown' cannot be resurrected. We need to operate under deeper cover, with increased attention to the use of 'cut-outs' (i.e., intermediaries). CIA's interface with the rest of the world needs to be better protected. If various groups hadn't been aware of the source of their funding, the damage subsequent to disclosure might have been far less than occurred. The CIA interface with various private groups, including business and student groups, must be remedied. (quote contained in THE PIED PIPER: ALLARD K. LOWENSTEIN AND THE LIBERAL DREAM by Richard Cummings)
Seventeen years before he moved into the Ford Foundation presidential office, the now-deceased former Ford Foundation President, McGeorge Bundy, also worked with the Council on Foreign Relations. As NATION magazine contributing editor Kai Bird recalled in his MacArthur Foundation, LBJ Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation-subsidized book THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND WILLIAM BUNDY: BROTHERS IN ARMS:
[In 1949,] Mac took on a project with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York to study Marshall Plan aid to Europe...The council's study group on aid to Europe included some of the foreign policy establishment's leading figures. Working with young Bundy on the project were Allen Dulles, David Lilienthal, Dwight Eisenhower, Will Clayton, George Kennan, Richard M. Bissell and Franklin A. Lindsay. Dulles, Bissell and Lindsay...would shortly become high-ranking officials of the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency...Their meetings were considered so sensitive that the usual off-the-record transcript was not distributed to council members. There was good reason for the secrecy. These were probably the only private citizens privy to the highly classified fact that there was a covert side to the Marshall Plan. Specifically, the CIA was tapping into the $200 million a year in local currency counterpart funds contributed by the recipients of Marshall Plan aid. These unvouchered monies were being used by the CIA to finance anti-communist electoral activities in France and Italy and to support sympathetic journalists, labor union leaders and politicians.
Both Bundy brothers were also good friends of Frank Wisner, the legendary intelligence officer who ran these covert programs in Western Europe. They socialized with Wisner and his...wife Polly, often at dinner parties hosted by Joe Alsop...Phil and Kay Graham of the WASHINGTON POST were also part of the same social scenery. In short, the council's study group placed Mac Bundy among a small group of like-minded men who fully understood and endorsed the necessity for waging psychological warfare against the Soviet Union.
The policy paper Mac wrote that summer, "Working Paper on the Problem of Political Equilibrium," assumed that such covert activities in Western Europe were worthy endeavors.
THE COLOR OF TRUTH book also contains the following additional reference to the ties between former Ford Foundation President Bundy, the CIA and the Council on Foreign Relations:
Bundy...thought it only natural that the historian William L. Langer...had taken a leave from Harvard to organize the CIA's Office of National Estimates [ONE]...Langer had gone to Washington at the call of the CIA and promptly hired Mac's brother Bill as one of his top aides. They were old friends and political allies...Mac had published a review in THE REPORTER of a massive two volume study of America's entry into World War II written by Langer and S. Everett Gleason. Langer had finished the project while at the CIA and Gleason was a high-ranking official in the National Security Council. Bundy called it a "magnificent achievement...so thorough that it will never be done again"...Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations to the tune of $139,000--an extraordinary sum in those years--and written with privileged acces to classified documents, the Langer-Gleason volumes were official history parading as independent scholarship...
According to a chapter entitled "How The Power Elite Make Foreign Policy" that appeared in the 1970 book THE HIGHER CIRCLES by G. William Domhoff, the Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations has historically operated in the following way:
...Political scientist Lester Milbrath notes that "The council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council actions stimulated by government from autonomous actions"...Aside from membership dues, dividends from invested gifts and bequests, and profits from the sale of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, the most important sources of income are leading corporations and major foundations. In 1957-58, for example, Chase Manhattan, Continental Can, Ford Motor, Bankers Trust, Cities Service, Gulf, Otis Elevator, General Motors Overseas Operations, Brown Brothers, Harriman, and International General Electric were paying from $1,000 to $10,000 per year for the corporation service, depending upon the size of the company and its interest in international affairs...More generally, in 1960-61, eighty-four large corporations and financial institutions contributed 12% ($112,200) of CFR's total income. As to the foundations, the major contributors over the years have been the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, with the Ford Foundation joining in with a large grant in the 1950's. According to [newspaper columnist Joseph] Kraft, a $2.5 million grant in the early 1950's from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations made the Council "the most important single private agency conducting research in foreign affairs." In 1960-61, foundation money accounted for 25% of CFR income.
All foundations which support the CFR are in turn directred by men from Bechtel Construction, Chase Manhattan, Cummins Engine, Corning Glass, Kimberly-Clark, Monsanto Chemical, and dozens of other corporations. Further, to complete the circle, most foundation directors are members of CFR. In the early 1960's, Dan Smoot found that twelve of twenty Rockefeller Foundation trustees, ten of fifteen Ford Foundation trustees, and ten of fourteen Carnegie Corporation trustees were members of CFR. Nor is this interlock of recent origin. In 1922, for example, former Secretary of State Elihu Root, a corporation lawyer, was honorary CFR president as well as president of the Carnegie Corporation, while John W. Davis, the corporation lawyer who ran for President on the Democratic ticket in 1924, was a trustee of both the Carnegie Corporation and CFR...
Turning to the all-important question of government involvement, the presence of CFR members in government has been attested to by Kraft, Cater, Smoot, CFR histories and THE NEW YORK TIMES, but the point is made most authoritatively by John J. McCloy, Wall Street lawyer, former chairman of Chase Manhattan, trustee of the Ford Foundation, director of CFR and a government appointee in a variety of roles since the early 1940's: "Whenever we needed a man," said McCloy in explaining the presence of CFR members in the modern defense establishment that fought World War II, "we thumbed through the roll of council members and put through a call to New York."...
Despite the importance of speeches and publications, I think the most important aspects of the CFR program are its special discussion groups and study groups. These small groups of about twenty-five bring together businessmen, government officials, military men an d scholars for detailed discussions of specific topics in the area of foreign affairs. Discussion groups explore problems in a general way, trying to define issues and alternatives. Such groups often lead to a study group as the next stage. Study groups revolve around the work of a Council research fellow (financed by Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller) or a staff member...In 1957-58...the Council published six books which grew out of study groups. Perhaps the most famous of these was written by Henry Kissinger, a bright young McGeorge Bundy protege at Harvard who was asked by the CFR to head a study group. His NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND FOREIGN POLICY was "a best seller which has been closely read in the highest Administration circles and foreign offices abroad"...
It is within these discussion groups and study groups, where privacy is the rule to encourage members to speak freely, that members of the power elite study and plan as to how best to attain American objectives in world affairs...It was supposedly a special CFR briefing session in early 1947 that convinced Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett of Brown Brothers, Harriman that "it would be our principal task at State to awaken the nation to the dangers of Communist aggression."
Despite the fact that the CFR is an organization most Americans have never heard of, I think we have clearly established by a variety of means that it is a key connection between the federal government and the owners and managers of the country's largest financial institutions and corporations. It is an organization of the power elite...In my view, what knowledge we have of CFR suggests that through it the power elite formulate general guidelines for American foreign policy and provide the personnel to carry out this policy...
From a $135,057,600 stock portfolio which may be invested in Big Oil stock, U.S. war machine stock and Israeli-linked corporate stock, the Council on Foreign Relations, itself, earned an investment income of $2,905,350 between July 21, 2000 and June 30, 2001. Some of this investment income of the "non-profit" Council on Foreign Relations Inc. was then used to pay Council on Foreign Relations President Leslie Gelb an annual salary of $258,686.
The Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations is one of the U.S. governing elite institutions responsible for formulating the U.S. Establishment's militaristic foreign policy and an institution that may profit from investments in Big Oil, U.S. war machine and Israeli-linked corporate stock. So it might be politically productive for the U.S. anti-war movement to seriously start making stock divestment demands on both the Countil on Foreign Relations and the Ford Foundation, as well as on MIT and Harvard University.
questionsquestions.net
by bob feldman
8 October 2002
Like MIT and Harvard University, the Ford Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] also may invest in Big Oil stock, U.S. war machine stock, and in the stock of U.S. corporations that do business under the Sharon regime in Israel/Palestine. One way to more effectively resist the U.S. Establishment's militaristic foreign policy might be to seriously demand that MIT, Harvard, the Ford Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations divest themselves of their Big Oil, war machine and Israeli-linked corporate stockholdings.
Some of the investment income which the multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation may gain from its investment in Big Oil, war machine stock and Israeli-linked corporations is used to pay excessively high salaries to Ford Foundation executives. Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations member Susan Berresford, for instance, was paid an annual salary of $615,934 (plus an additional $114,095 in benefits) in 2001 by the "non-profit" Ford Foundation for serving as the Ford Foundation President. The chief investment officer of the Ford Foundation (who also moonlights as the Ms.Foundation for Women board member responsible for managing that "non-profit" group's investment portfolio), Linda Strump, was paid an even greater annual salary in 2001 of $890,217 by the "non-profit" Ford Foundation.
Some of the Ford Foundation's investment income is also used to fund the alternative media work of groups that generally exclude 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers from their radio and tv shows, such as FAIR and DEMOCRACY NOW/Deep Dish TV/Pacifica. And an even greater portion of the Ford Foundation's investment income is used to help fund the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] Inc. which has played an especially influential role in developing the U.S. Establishment's militaristic foreign policy--in addition to (like the Ford Foundation) receiving dividends from a stock portfolio which may contain Big Oil, war machine and Israeli-linked stock. As Thomas Dye noted in a book that was published during the Bush I Administration, entitled WHO'S RUNNING AMERICA? THE BUSH ERA:
The most influential policy-planning group in foreign affairs is the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR]...The CFR by-laws limit membership to 1,900 individuals who are proposed by existing members...The CFR's list of former members includes every person of influence in foreign affairs...CFR meetings are secret...A discussion of the CFR would be incomplete without some reference to its multinational arm, the Trilateral Commission...The Trilateral Commission was established by CFR Board Chairman David Rockefeller in 1972, with the backing of the Council and the Rockefeller Foundation.
THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE by Victor Marchetti and John Marks also made the following reference to the Council on Foreign Relations:
It was no accident that former Clandestine Services Chief Richard Bissell...was talking to a Council on Foreign Relations discussion group in 1968 when he made his 'confidential' speech on covert action. For the influential but private Council, composed of several hundred of the country's top political, military, business and academic leaders, has long been the CIA's principal 'constituency' in the American public. When the agency has needed prominent citizens to front for its proprietary companies or for other special assistance, it has often turned to Council members.
Former Ford Foundation executive and CIA official Bissell apparently told the Council on Foreign Relations discussion group the following in 1968:
If the agency is to be effective, it will have to make use of private institutions on an expanding scale, though those relations which have been 'blown' cannot be resurrected. We need to operate under deeper cover, with increased attention to the use of 'cut-outs' (i.e., intermediaries). CIA's interface with the rest of the world needs to be better protected. If various groups hadn't been aware of the source of their funding, the damage subsequent to disclosure might have been far less than occurred. The CIA interface with various private groups, including business and student groups, must be remedied. (quote contained in THE PIED PIPER: ALLARD K. LOWENSTEIN AND THE LIBERAL DREAM by Richard Cummings)
Seventeen years before he moved into the Ford Foundation presidential office, the now-deceased former Ford Foundation President, McGeorge Bundy, also worked with the Council on Foreign Relations. As NATION magazine contributing editor Kai Bird recalled in his MacArthur Foundation, LBJ Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation-subsidized book THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND WILLIAM BUNDY: BROTHERS IN ARMS:
[In 1949,] Mac took on a project with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York to study Marshall Plan aid to Europe...The council's study group on aid to Europe included some of the foreign policy establishment's leading figures. Working with young Bundy on the project were Allen Dulles, David Lilienthal, Dwight Eisenhower, Will Clayton, George Kennan, Richard M. Bissell and Franklin A. Lindsay. Dulles, Bissell and Lindsay...would shortly become high-ranking officials of the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency...Their meetings were considered so sensitive that the usual off-the-record transcript was not distributed to council members. There was good reason for the secrecy. These were probably the only private citizens privy to the highly classified fact that there was a covert side to the Marshall Plan. Specifically, the CIA was tapping into the $200 million a year in local currency counterpart funds contributed by the recipients of Marshall Plan aid. These unvouchered monies were being used by the CIA to finance anti-communist electoral activities in France and Italy and to support sympathetic journalists, labor union leaders and politicians.
Both Bundy brothers were also good friends of Frank Wisner, the legendary intelligence officer who ran these covert programs in Western Europe. They socialized with Wisner and his...wife Polly, often at dinner parties hosted by Joe Alsop...Phil and Kay Graham of the WASHINGTON POST were also part of the same social scenery. In short, the council's study group placed Mac Bundy among a small group of like-minded men who fully understood and endorsed the necessity for waging psychological warfare against the Soviet Union.
The policy paper Mac wrote that summer, "Working Paper on the Problem of Political Equilibrium," assumed that such covert activities in Western Europe were worthy endeavors.
THE COLOR OF TRUTH book also contains the following additional reference to the ties between former Ford Foundation President Bundy, the CIA and the Council on Foreign Relations:
Bundy...thought it only natural that the historian William L. Langer...had taken a leave from Harvard to organize the CIA's Office of National Estimates [ONE]...Langer had gone to Washington at the call of the CIA and promptly hired Mac's brother Bill as one of his top aides. They were old friends and political allies...Mac had published a review in THE REPORTER of a massive two volume study of America's entry into World War II written by Langer and S. Everett Gleason. Langer had finished the project while at the CIA and Gleason was a high-ranking official in the National Security Council. Bundy called it a "magnificent achievement...so thorough that it will never be done again"...Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations to the tune of $139,000--an extraordinary sum in those years--and written with privileged acces to classified documents, the Langer-Gleason volumes were official history parading as independent scholarship...
According to a chapter entitled "How The Power Elite Make Foreign Policy" that appeared in the 1970 book THE HIGHER CIRCLES by G. William Domhoff, the Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations has historically operated in the following way:
...Political scientist Lester Milbrath notes that "The council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council actions stimulated by government from autonomous actions"...Aside from membership dues, dividends from invested gifts and bequests, and profits from the sale of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, the most important sources of income are leading corporations and major foundations. In 1957-58, for example, Chase Manhattan, Continental Can, Ford Motor, Bankers Trust, Cities Service, Gulf, Otis Elevator, General Motors Overseas Operations, Brown Brothers, Harriman, and International General Electric were paying from $1,000 to $10,000 per year for the corporation service, depending upon the size of the company and its interest in international affairs...More generally, in 1960-61, eighty-four large corporations and financial institutions contributed 12% ($112,200) of CFR's total income. As to the foundations, the major contributors over the years have been the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, with the Ford Foundation joining in with a large grant in the 1950's. According to [newspaper columnist Joseph] Kraft, a $2.5 million grant in the early 1950's from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations made the Council "the most important single private agency conducting research in foreign affairs." In 1960-61, foundation money accounted for 25% of CFR income.
All foundations which support the CFR are in turn directred by men from Bechtel Construction, Chase Manhattan, Cummins Engine, Corning Glass, Kimberly-Clark, Monsanto Chemical, and dozens of other corporations. Further, to complete the circle, most foundation directors are members of CFR. In the early 1960's, Dan Smoot found that twelve of twenty Rockefeller Foundation trustees, ten of fifteen Ford Foundation trustees, and ten of fourteen Carnegie Corporation trustees were members of CFR. Nor is this interlock of recent origin. In 1922, for example, former Secretary of State Elihu Root, a corporation lawyer, was honorary CFR president as well as president of the Carnegie Corporation, while John W. Davis, the corporation lawyer who ran for President on the Democratic ticket in 1924, was a trustee of both the Carnegie Corporation and CFR...
Turning to the all-important question of government involvement, the presence of CFR members in government has been attested to by Kraft, Cater, Smoot, CFR histories and THE NEW YORK TIMES, but the point is made most authoritatively by John J. McCloy, Wall Street lawyer, former chairman of Chase Manhattan, trustee of the Ford Foundation, director of CFR and a government appointee in a variety of roles since the early 1940's: "Whenever we needed a man," said McCloy in explaining the presence of CFR members in the modern defense establishment that fought World War II, "we thumbed through the roll of council members and put through a call to New York."...
Despite the importance of speeches and publications, I think the most important aspects of the CFR program are its special discussion groups and study groups. These small groups of about twenty-five bring together businessmen, government officials, military men an d scholars for detailed discussions of specific topics in the area of foreign affairs. Discussion groups explore problems in a general way, trying to define issues and alternatives. Such groups often lead to a study group as the next stage. Study groups revolve around the work of a Council research fellow (financed by Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller) or a staff member...In 1957-58...the Council published six books which grew out of study groups. Perhaps the most famous of these was written by Henry Kissinger, a bright young McGeorge Bundy protege at Harvard who was asked by the CFR to head a study group. His NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND FOREIGN POLICY was "a best seller which has been closely read in the highest Administration circles and foreign offices abroad"...
It is within these discussion groups and study groups, where privacy is the rule to encourage members to speak freely, that members of the power elite study and plan as to how best to attain American objectives in world affairs...It was supposedly a special CFR briefing session in early 1947 that convinced Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett of Brown Brothers, Harriman that "it would be our principal task at State to awaken the nation to the dangers of Communist aggression."
Despite the fact that the CFR is an organization most Americans have never heard of, I think we have clearly established by a variety of means that it is a key connection between the federal government and the owners and managers of the country's largest financial institutions and corporations. It is an organization of the power elite...In my view, what knowledge we have of CFR suggests that through it the power elite formulate general guidelines for American foreign policy and provide the personnel to carry out this policy...
From a $135,057,600 stock portfolio which may be invested in Big Oil stock, U.S. war machine stock and Israeli-linked corporate stock, the Council on Foreign Relations, itself, earned an investment income of $2,905,350 between July 21, 2000 and June 30, 2001. Some of this investment income of the "non-profit" Council on Foreign Relations Inc. was then used to pay Council on Foreign Relations President Leslie Gelb an annual salary of $258,686.
The Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations is one of the U.S. governing elite institutions responsible for formulating the U.S. Establishment's militaristic foreign policy and an institution that may profit from investments in Big Oil, U.S. war machine and Israeli-linked corporate stock. So it might be politically productive for the U.S. anti-war movement to seriously start making stock divestment demands on both the Countil on Foreign Relations and the Ford Foundation, as well as on MIT and Harvard University.
questionsquestions.net
THE NATION's NED Connection
THE NATION's NED Connection—part 1
by bob feldman
"Bill vanden Heuvel suggested that the Freedom Award be given to General Powell for the new role of the military in these efforts. Leo Cherne referred Mr. vanden Heuvel's suggestions to the Special Events Committee for consideration. He expressed his hesitancy at this point to address issues of the war itself, beyond the expression of applause for the military's humanitarian work..."
—from the International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board's May 22, 1991 Meeting Minutes
...The National Endowment for Democracy [NED] was set up to "support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts."...
Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED was quite candid when he said in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.
...NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996 and helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992. In Haiti in the late 1990s, NED was busy working on behalf of right-wing groups who were united in their opposition to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his progressive ideology...
...Cuban dissident groups and media are heavily supported...Between 1990 and 1997, the Endowment donated a quarter-million dollars of taxpayers' money to the Cuban-American National Fund, the ultra-fanatic anti-Castro Miami group...
The NED, like the CIA before it, calls what it does supporting democracy. The governments and movements whom the NED targets call it destabilization. (ROGUE STATE by William Blum, 2000)
The editor of THE NATION, Katrina vanden Heuvel, is also a member of the board of directors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI]. Her father, International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board Member William vanden Heuvel, has, in recent years been both the co-chairperson of the FERI board and FERI's president.
Sitting between NATION Editor Vanden Heuvel and IRC Board Member Vanden Heuvel on the FERI board recently has been the Texaco director that Bill Clinton appointed to be the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] Chairman in the 1990s: NYU President Emeritus John Brademas. FERI Director Brademas held his position as NED Chairman between 1993 and 2001; and on January 18, 2001, FERI Board Member Brademas was presented with the NED's "Democracy Service Medal" in recognition for his years of service on the NED board of directors.
Prior to serving as NYU's president between 1981 and 1992, FERI board member Brademas was a Congressional representative from South Bend, Indiana for 22 years. According to CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, in October 1976 the former NED Chairman "acknowledged that he had accepted about $5,000 in campaign funds in 1970, 1972 and 1974 from Park Tong Sun, the Washington party fixture under federal investigation for influence-peddling" in the "Koreagate Affair." As NYU's president, FERI Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, Scholastic Inc., Loew's Corp., RCA/NBC and Texaco.
While a member of the Texaco board of directors before Texaco was acquired by Chevron in 2001, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's colleague on the FERI board sat on both the "Audit Committee" and the "Public Responsibility Committee" of Texaco's corporate board. Other members of these Texaco board committees included then-Capital cities/ABC board chairman Thomas Murphy and a retired chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, William Crowe. A long-time colleague of FERI Board Co-Chair William vanden Heuvel on the IRC board--the now-deceased former CIA Director William Casey--used to also sit on the Capital Cities/ABC board. FERI Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Texaco Foundation during the 1990s.
In July 1999 a subsidiary of Texaco, Saudi Arabian Texaco Inc., was given a $506 million award by the United Nations "for damage sustained in Middle East oil fields" during the early 1990s. The $506 million that was given to Texaco's subsidiary came from a "UN Compensation Committe" account--which was funded by seizing 30 percent of Iraqi oil sales revenues, instead of allowing the Iraqi government to use all of its oil sales revenues to decrease the human suffering in Iraq that U.S. economic sanctions and U.S. militarism have produced there since 1991. But according to its web site, in Iraq the NED which FERI Board Member Brademas used to chair "supports institutions--both abroad and inside the country--which promote concepts and programs of liberal democracy." A $40,000 grant, for instance, was given by the NED in 2001 to the "American Society for Kurds," which "trained journalists in the rights, duties and role of journalists in democratic societies, and helped in the formation of a working group of independent journalists."
In 2001, the NED also has been providing money to groups in Belgrade. Radio-Television B-92, for instance, was given a $100,000 grant by the NED; and a $228,000 grant from the NED was given to the Otpon (Resistance] Movement. Around $760,000 in grants were also given in 2001 by the NED to groups like the "Center for a Free Cuba," the "Cuban Committee for Human Rights," the "Cuban-American Military Council," the "Information Bureau on Human Rights in Cuba" and "Cuba Net." "Cuba Net," for instance, was given a $35,000 grant from the NED "to support independent journalists inside of Cuba."
THE NATION's NED Connection—part 2
by bob feldman
One of the co-chairs of the January 18, 2001 National Endowment for Democracy [NED] event in which Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI] Board Member Brademas received his "Democracy Service Medal"--former Reagan Administration Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead--is, like Brademas, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And, like NATION Editor vanden Heuvel's father, the January 18, 2001 NED event Co-chair Whitehead has long been actively involved in the International Rescue Committee[IRC]'s activities around the globe.
On May 4, 1984, for instance, Whitehead (who was also a Senior Partner at Goldman Sachs at the time) sent the following telegram to then-Vice President George Bush I:
"Dear George:
"I thought I should let you know that I will also be in Pakistan from May 14 [1984] to May 18 [1984] in my capacity as president of the International Rescue Committee...I have an appointment with President Zia and other Cabinet memebers...If I can assist you in any way or coordinate visits with you I would be delighted to do so."
And on May 18, 1984, then-IRC president Whitehead sent the following telex to then-IRC Chairperson Leo Cherne:
"Our time in Pakistan only serves to renew our dedication to the heroic cause of the Afghan people...We have stood with President Zia and Vice President Bush at the Khyber Pass..."
After former CIA Director Bush had become the U.S. president and ordered the 1991 high-technology aerial attack on Iraq, Whitehead and Cherne also sent an April 12, 1991 letter to then-President Bush I, on IRC stationery, which stated: "The IRC is the first American private voluntary agency to have begun the work of helping these victims of the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein."
In the 1980s, the long-time IRC colleague of NATION Editor vanden Heuvel's father, IRC Chairperson Cherne, was also a colleague of Henry Kissinger on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [Pfiab]. In addition, Cherne also asked Kissinger to appeal for more corporate funds for the IRC. In a September 3, 1986 letter to Leo Cherne, Kissinger Associates Chairperson Henry Kissinger wrote:
"Dear Leo:
"Your August 18th [1986] letter did reach its destination, and while I am sorry to hear of the circumstances under which the IRC has been operating, it will be an honor to help in any way. I will await your draft.
"Looking forward to seeing you at PFIAB.
"Warm regards,
"Henry A. Kissinger."
An article by Jeff Gerth and Sara Bartlett that appeared in the April 30, 1989 issue of the NY TIMES, entitled "Kissinger and Friends and Revolving Doors," characterized the PFIAB as "a little-known, but powerful group" of 16 scientists, business executives and former U.S. government officials which advise the U.S. President about intelligence issues and intelligence activities.
According to this TIMES article, during the 1980s IRC Board member Kissinger "had a continuous window into the government's most sensitive information as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board or Pfiab." At least one former PFIAB official, "who asked not to be identified because of the board's secrecy pledge," told the TIMES that during the 1980s Kissinger, "using his authority as a board member, frequently reviewed intelligence documents outside the regular board meetings." The former PFIAB official also told the TIMES that he believed Kissinger's PFIAB membership gave Kissinger special business benefit because Kissinger "could not have separated the insights gained from his access to United States intelligence data from his continuing analysis and advice" to his Kissinger Associates clients.
In reply to Kissinger's September 3, 1986 letter, IRC Chairperson Cherne wrote:
"Dear Henry:
"I am so pleased that you are willing to send an IRC appeal to the chief executives of the Fortune 1000 corporations...Although I will have a copy of the draft with me when we met at PFIAB, I thought there was a possibility that draft might reach you before just in case you wish to make any changes in the text.
"Cordially, "Leo Cherne."
Like the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Rescue Committee (on whose board FERI Co-Chairperson vanden Heuvel still sits) apparently supported the political opponents of the Sandinista government, as well as opponents of the Cuban government. As the IRC's Latin America Advisory Committee noted in a 9/22/93 annual review document:
"In Nicaragua with the election of Violet Chamorro in 1990, democracy took fragile hold and IRC assisted with the repatriation of Nicaraguans...The Committee recommends appropriate support be given to Brothers to the Rescue, an organization rescuing Cuban refugees fleeing the country on rafts."
Although Harry Belafonte has worked to provide humanitarian aid to refugees in Africa and elsewhere for many years, IRC officials apparently didn't want to invite Belafonte to become one of its "celebrity" board members. In an October 26, 1994 letter to the then-chairman of the IRC's executive committee, James Strickland, long-time IRC official Leo Cherne indicated why he didn't want Harry Belafonte to be an IRC board member:
"I happen to have some reservations about Belafonte. I have found him, in certain circumstances, beyond my tastes for the elements of left wing predisposition. He played a significant relief role in Ethiopia at a time when Ethiopia was under the control of the left wing dictator Mengistu, at the very time that the Castro military forces were playing an active support role in Ethiopia..."
But a few months later, Cherne was still apparently on good political terms with FERI Co-Chair vanden Heuvel. In a February 14, 1995 letter to the NATION editor's father, former IRC Chairperson Cherne wrote: "I deeply appreciate your having encouraged Columbia University's oral history project to press me on overcoming my neglect...The effort you have made to encourage funding of this project is indispensable..."
As Co-Chair of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI]'s board of directors, NATION editor vanden Heuvel's father apparently joined FERI Chair Emeritus Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in attempting to influence U.S. media coverage of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's historical record. In an article that appeared in the May 9, 1994 issue of CURRENT, entitled "FDR defenders enlist TV critics to refute Holocaust film," Karen Everhart Bedfort noted:
Weeks before the debut of an AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film on the U.S. resposne to the Holocaust, defenders of President Franklin Roosevelt undertook a quiet campaign to influence and later discredit historical analysis presented in "America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference."
In a summary of their complaints for the press, [FERI Chair Emeritus] Schlesinger and vanden Heuvel said the film makes "unwarranted attacks on President Roosevelt" in its treatment of his response to the Wagner-Rogers Act in 1939, a bill to allow child refugees into the country that died in Congress; his motivations in creating the War Refugee Board as an act of "political expedience," and assertions that the Allies should not have hesitated to bomb the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Roosevelt "did what he could do" to help the Jews, Schlesinger wrote in an April 18 [1994] NEWSWEEK column.
Yet according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn:
"The plight of Jews in German-occupied Europe, which many people thought was at the heart of the war against the Axis, was not a chief concern of Roosevelt. Henry Feingold's research (THE POLITICS OF RESCUE) shows that, while the Jews were being put in camps and the process of annihilation was beginning that would end in the horrifying extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews, Roosevelt failed to take steps that might have saved thousands of lives. He did not see it as a high priority; he left it to the State Department, and in the State Department anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles to action.
...Despite the urgent need for wartime labor, blacks were still being discriminated against for jobs...Roosevelt never did anything to enforce the orders of the Fair Employment Practices Commission he had set up...
In one of its policies, the United States came close to direct duplication of Fascism. This was in its treatment of the Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. After the Pearl Harbor attack, anti-Japanese hysteria spread in the government...
Franklin D. Roosevelt did not share this frenzy, but he calmly signed Executive Order 9066, in February 1942, giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast--110,000 men, women and children--to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions. Three-fourths of these were Nisei--children born in the United States of Japanese parents and therefore American citizens...
But don't expect THE NATION to publish much investiative reporting about either the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy or the International Rescue Committee's corporate and political connections or global activities--as long as FERI Board Member Katrina vanden Heuvel is still THE NATION magazine's editor.
(end)
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by bob feldman
"Bill vanden Heuvel suggested that the Freedom Award be given to General Powell for the new role of the military in these efforts. Leo Cherne referred Mr. vanden Heuvel's suggestions to the Special Events Committee for consideration. He expressed his hesitancy at this point to address issues of the war itself, beyond the expression of applause for the military's humanitarian work..."
—from the International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board's May 22, 1991 Meeting Minutes
...The National Endowment for Democracy [NED] was set up to "support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts."...
Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED was quite candid when he said in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.
...NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996 and helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992. In Haiti in the late 1990s, NED was busy working on behalf of right-wing groups who were united in their opposition to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his progressive ideology...
...Cuban dissident groups and media are heavily supported...Between 1990 and 1997, the Endowment donated a quarter-million dollars of taxpayers' money to the Cuban-American National Fund, the ultra-fanatic anti-Castro Miami group...
The NED, like the CIA before it, calls what it does supporting democracy. The governments and movements whom the NED targets call it destabilization. (ROGUE STATE by William Blum, 2000)
The editor of THE NATION, Katrina vanden Heuvel, is also a member of the board of directors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI]. Her father, International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board Member William vanden Heuvel, has, in recent years been both the co-chairperson of the FERI board and FERI's president.
Sitting between NATION Editor Vanden Heuvel and IRC Board Member Vanden Heuvel on the FERI board recently has been the Texaco director that Bill Clinton appointed to be the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] Chairman in the 1990s: NYU President Emeritus John Brademas. FERI Director Brademas held his position as NED Chairman between 1993 and 2001; and on January 18, 2001, FERI Board Member Brademas was presented with the NED's "Democracy Service Medal" in recognition for his years of service on the NED board of directors.
Prior to serving as NYU's president between 1981 and 1992, FERI board member Brademas was a Congressional representative from South Bend, Indiana for 22 years. According to CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, in October 1976 the former NED Chairman "acknowledged that he had accepted about $5,000 in campaign funds in 1970, 1972 and 1974 from Park Tong Sun, the Washington party fixture under federal investigation for influence-peddling" in the "Koreagate Affair." As NYU's president, FERI Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, Scholastic Inc., Loew's Corp., RCA/NBC and Texaco.
While a member of the Texaco board of directors before Texaco was acquired by Chevron in 2001, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's colleague on the FERI board sat on both the "Audit Committee" and the "Public Responsibility Committee" of Texaco's corporate board. Other members of these Texaco board committees included then-Capital cities/ABC board chairman Thomas Murphy and a retired chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, William Crowe. A long-time colleague of FERI Board Co-Chair William vanden Heuvel on the IRC board--the now-deceased former CIA Director William Casey--used to also sit on the Capital Cities/ABC board. FERI Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Texaco Foundation during the 1990s.
In July 1999 a subsidiary of Texaco, Saudi Arabian Texaco Inc., was given a $506 million award by the United Nations "for damage sustained in Middle East oil fields" during the early 1990s. The $506 million that was given to Texaco's subsidiary came from a "UN Compensation Committe" account--which was funded by seizing 30 percent of Iraqi oil sales revenues, instead of allowing the Iraqi government to use all of its oil sales revenues to decrease the human suffering in Iraq that U.S. economic sanctions and U.S. militarism have produced there since 1991. But according to its web site, in Iraq the NED which FERI Board Member Brademas used to chair "supports institutions--both abroad and inside the country--which promote concepts and programs of liberal democracy." A $40,000 grant, for instance, was given by the NED in 2001 to the "American Society for Kurds," which "trained journalists in the rights, duties and role of journalists in democratic societies, and helped in the formation of a working group of independent journalists."
In 2001, the NED also has been providing money to groups in Belgrade. Radio-Television B-92, for instance, was given a $100,000 grant by the NED; and a $228,000 grant from the NED was given to the Otpon (Resistance] Movement. Around $760,000 in grants were also given in 2001 by the NED to groups like the "Center for a Free Cuba," the "Cuban Committee for Human Rights," the "Cuban-American Military Council," the "Information Bureau on Human Rights in Cuba" and "Cuba Net." "Cuba Net," for instance, was given a $35,000 grant from the NED "to support independent journalists inside of Cuba."
THE NATION's NED Connection—part 2
by bob feldman
One of the co-chairs of the January 18, 2001 National Endowment for Democracy [NED] event in which Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI] Board Member Brademas received his "Democracy Service Medal"--former Reagan Administration Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead--is, like Brademas, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And, like NATION Editor vanden Heuvel's father, the January 18, 2001 NED event Co-chair Whitehead has long been actively involved in the International Rescue Committee[IRC]'s activities around the globe.
On May 4, 1984, for instance, Whitehead (who was also a Senior Partner at Goldman Sachs at the time) sent the following telegram to then-Vice President George Bush I:
"Dear George:
"I thought I should let you know that I will also be in Pakistan from May 14 [1984] to May 18 [1984] in my capacity as president of the International Rescue Committee...I have an appointment with President Zia and other Cabinet memebers...If I can assist you in any way or coordinate visits with you I would be delighted to do so."
And on May 18, 1984, then-IRC president Whitehead sent the following telex to then-IRC Chairperson Leo Cherne:
"Our time in Pakistan only serves to renew our dedication to the heroic cause of the Afghan people...We have stood with President Zia and Vice President Bush at the Khyber Pass..."
After former CIA Director Bush had become the U.S. president and ordered the 1991 high-technology aerial attack on Iraq, Whitehead and Cherne also sent an April 12, 1991 letter to then-President Bush I, on IRC stationery, which stated: "The IRC is the first American private voluntary agency to have begun the work of helping these victims of the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein."
In the 1980s, the long-time IRC colleague of NATION Editor vanden Heuvel's father, IRC Chairperson Cherne, was also a colleague of Henry Kissinger on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [Pfiab]. In addition, Cherne also asked Kissinger to appeal for more corporate funds for the IRC. In a September 3, 1986 letter to Leo Cherne, Kissinger Associates Chairperson Henry Kissinger wrote:
"Dear Leo:
"Your August 18th [1986] letter did reach its destination, and while I am sorry to hear of the circumstances under which the IRC has been operating, it will be an honor to help in any way. I will await your draft.
"Looking forward to seeing you at PFIAB.
"Warm regards,
"Henry A. Kissinger."
An article by Jeff Gerth and Sara Bartlett that appeared in the April 30, 1989 issue of the NY TIMES, entitled "Kissinger and Friends and Revolving Doors," characterized the PFIAB as "a little-known, but powerful group" of 16 scientists, business executives and former U.S. government officials which advise the U.S. President about intelligence issues and intelligence activities.
According to this TIMES article, during the 1980s IRC Board member Kissinger "had a continuous window into the government's most sensitive information as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board or Pfiab." At least one former PFIAB official, "who asked not to be identified because of the board's secrecy pledge," told the TIMES that during the 1980s Kissinger, "using his authority as a board member, frequently reviewed intelligence documents outside the regular board meetings." The former PFIAB official also told the TIMES that he believed Kissinger's PFIAB membership gave Kissinger special business benefit because Kissinger "could not have separated the insights gained from his access to United States intelligence data from his continuing analysis and advice" to his Kissinger Associates clients.
In reply to Kissinger's September 3, 1986 letter, IRC Chairperson Cherne wrote:
"Dear Henry:
"I am so pleased that you are willing to send an IRC appeal to the chief executives of the Fortune 1000 corporations...Although I will have a copy of the draft with me when we met at PFIAB, I thought there was a possibility that draft might reach you before just in case you wish to make any changes in the text.
"Cordially, "Leo Cherne."
Like the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Rescue Committee (on whose board FERI Co-Chairperson vanden Heuvel still sits) apparently supported the political opponents of the Sandinista government, as well as opponents of the Cuban government. As the IRC's Latin America Advisory Committee noted in a 9/22/93 annual review document:
"In Nicaragua with the election of Violet Chamorro in 1990, democracy took fragile hold and IRC assisted with the repatriation of Nicaraguans...The Committee recommends appropriate support be given to Brothers to the Rescue, an organization rescuing Cuban refugees fleeing the country on rafts."
Although Harry Belafonte has worked to provide humanitarian aid to refugees in Africa and elsewhere for many years, IRC officials apparently didn't want to invite Belafonte to become one of its "celebrity" board members. In an October 26, 1994 letter to the then-chairman of the IRC's executive committee, James Strickland, long-time IRC official Leo Cherne indicated why he didn't want Harry Belafonte to be an IRC board member:
"I happen to have some reservations about Belafonte. I have found him, in certain circumstances, beyond my tastes for the elements of left wing predisposition. He played a significant relief role in Ethiopia at a time when Ethiopia was under the control of the left wing dictator Mengistu, at the very time that the Castro military forces were playing an active support role in Ethiopia..."
But a few months later, Cherne was still apparently on good political terms with FERI Co-Chair vanden Heuvel. In a February 14, 1995 letter to the NATION editor's father, former IRC Chairperson Cherne wrote: "I deeply appreciate your having encouraged Columbia University's oral history project to press me on overcoming my neglect...The effort you have made to encourage funding of this project is indispensable..."
As Co-Chair of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI]'s board of directors, NATION editor vanden Heuvel's father apparently joined FERI Chair Emeritus Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in attempting to influence U.S. media coverage of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's historical record. In an article that appeared in the May 9, 1994 issue of CURRENT, entitled "FDR defenders enlist TV critics to refute Holocaust film," Karen Everhart Bedfort noted:
Weeks before the debut of an AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film on the U.S. resposne to the Holocaust, defenders of President Franklin Roosevelt undertook a quiet campaign to influence and later discredit historical analysis presented in "America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference."
In a summary of their complaints for the press, [FERI Chair Emeritus] Schlesinger and vanden Heuvel said the film makes "unwarranted attacks on President Roosevelt" in its treatment of his response to the Wagner-Rogers Act in 1939, a bill to allow child refugees into the country that died in Congress; his motivations in creating the War Refugee Board as an act of "political expedience," and assertions that the Allies should not have hesitated to bomb the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Roosevelt "did what he could do" to help the Jews, Schlesinger wrote in an April 18 [1994] NEWSWEEK column.
Yet according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn:
"The plight of Jews in German-occupied Europe, which many people thought was at the heart of the war against the Axis, was not a chief concern of Roosevelt. Henry Feingold's research (THE POLITICS OF RESCUE) shows that, while the Jews were being put in camps and the process of annihilation was beginning that would end in the horrifying extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews, Roosevelt failed to take steps that might have saved thousands of lives. He did not see it as a high priority; he left it to the State Department, and in the State Department anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles to action.
...Despite the urgent need for wartime labor, blacks were still being discriminated against for jobs...Roosevelt never did anything to enforce the orders of the Fair Employment Practices Commission he had set up...
In one of its policies, the United States came close to direct duplication of Fascism. This was in its treatment of the Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. After the Pearl Harbor attack, anti-Japanese hysteria spread in the government...
Franklin D. Roosevelt did not share this frenzy, but he calmly signed Executive Order 9066, in February 1942, giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast--110,000 men, women and children--to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions. Three-fourths of these were Nisei--children born in the United States of Japanese parents and therefore American citizens...
But don't expect THE NATION to publish much investiative reporting about either the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy or the International Rescue Committee's corporate and political connections or global activities--as long as FERI Board Member Katrina vanden Heuvel is still THE NATION magazine's editor.
(end)
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FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 2:
FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY
The FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/Institute for Public Accuracy alternative media gatekeepers/censors--which includes COUNTERSPIN co-hosts/producers Steve Rendall and Janine Jackson, Institute for Public Accuracy/MAKING CONTACT executive director Norman Solomon, MSNBC/DONAHUE SHOW PRODUCER Jeff Cohen and WORKING ASSETS RADIO show producer Laura Flanders--have also been subsidized by the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations in recent years.
At a June 1988 street fair in Manhattan's Union Square which marked the 35th anniversary of the Rosenbergs' execution, MSNBC DONAHUE SHOW producer Jeff Cohen sat behind a table selling copies of his recently-created Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] group's journal, EXTRA!. Within a few years, Cohen's FAIR alternative media group was airing a weekly media watch show called COUNTERSPIN on Pacifica's WBAI station in New York City. What listeners of COUNTERSPIN were not told in the 1990s, however, was that around 30 percent of FAIR's funding was coming from foundation grants, including grants from Establishment foundations like the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
In 1991, FAIR was given a $20,000 grant from the Rockefeller Family fund "for general support." And then in 1992, annual grants to FAIR started to pour in from the MacArthur Foundation offices in Chicago. In an early 1997 interview, the program officer who was then responsible for the MacArthur Foundation's media program, Patricia Boero, told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN magazine: "MacArthur is funding Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. And in '96, they received $75,000 towards the cost of operations. We've been funding it since 1992, at approximately the same level. It was slightly higher a few years ago, when the media budget was a little bigger." Boero also told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN in 1997 that one reason the MacArthur Foundation began funding FAIR was that FAIR was already being funded by other foundations such as "the Rockefeller Family Fund."
Later in 1997, more MacArthur Foundation money was thrown in FAIR's direction by a MacArthur "genius grant" program--which was then headed by a member of both the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] board and NATION magazine's Nation Institute Board, named Catharine Stimpson. A dancer who was the partner of one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN radio show was given a $290,000 individual grant by the MacArthur Foundation program which Nation Institute and PBS board member Stimpson directed. Since 1997, FAIR has continued to receive grants from the MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 it was given an additional grant of $150,000 by the MacArthur Foundation. And in 2000, another MacArthur Foundation of $125,000 was given to FAIR.
Another Establishment foundation, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation also began subsidizing FAIR's alternative media work in the early 1990s. In 1995, for instance, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave FAIR a $150,000 grant "to support promotion of book THE WAY THINGS AREN'T," which was co-authored by COUNTERSPIN co-host/producer Steve Rendall. And in 1996, an additional grant of $15,000 from the Schumann Foundation (whose president, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary in the 1960s) was given to FAIR. Since 1996 FAIR has continued to receive grants from Moyers' Schumann Foundation, including a post-2000 grant of between $50,000 and $100,000. In addition, one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, Janine Jackson, sits on the board of a group, Citizens for Independent Broadcasting [CIPB]. In 2002, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave the Center for Social Studies Education a $200,000 grant "for continued support for activities of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting [CIPB]."
The executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA]/MAKING CONTACT alternative media group, Norman Solomon, was listed on FAIR's 1997 form 990 as being the "president" of FAIR and has been a FAIR associate in recent years. Like FAIR, former FAIR President Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy, with an annual income of $267,000, has been subsidized by Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation. In 1997, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to Solomon's IPA/International Media project "for effort to hold think tanks to high standards of accuracy."
In addition to being subsdiized by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation and the Schumann Foundation in the 1990s, FAIR also began receiving grants from the Ford Foundation in the mid-1990s. As the WORKING ASSETS RADIO web site noted in 2001: "As the founder of the Women's Desk at the media watchdog FAIR [WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer-host Laura] Flanders received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for a collaborative project to combat racism and sexism in the news. The resulting book, REAL MAJORITY, MEDIA MINORITY: THE COST OF SIDELINING WOMEN IN REPORTING, was published to rave reviews by Common Courage Press in 1997." Besides the Ford Foundation's $200,000 grant to FAIR in 1996 or 1997 to help subsidize the alternative media work of its Women's Desk, an additional grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation was given to FAIR in 1997 or 1998. And in 2001, yet another $150,000 grant was given to FAIR by the Ford Foundation for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States."
In recent months, the Ford Foundation and Schumann Foundation-subsidized "media watchdogs" from FAIR and the Institute for Public Accuracy--Norman Solomon and Steve Rendall--have seemed more interested in preventing 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists from receiving any airtime on Pacifica's radio stations than in revealing the historical links of their funders to the CIA or the Johnson White House to their alternative media listeners and readers. And WORKING ASSETS RADIO--which is aired on San Francisco's KALW and produced by a former co-host/producer of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN and a forme Pacifica Network News staffperson--has apparently not been eager to welcome 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists onto the show.
WORKING ASSETS RADIO
WORKING ASSETS RADIO is a promotional/marketing tool of the $140 million/year, for-profi Working Assets, Inc. telecommunications company. And besides funding its own alternative WORKING ASSETS RADIO show that is aired on KALW in the Bay Area and over the Internet, Working Assets Inc. also helps fund other alternative media groups such as FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA). In 1996, for instance FAIR/COUNTERSPIN was given a $59,723 grant by Working Assets Inc. Among the alternative media groups funded by Working Assets Inc. in 2000, besides FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's IPA were Free Speech TV and the Independent Press Association. That same year, Working Assets Inc. also helped fund a gorup with which DEMOCRACY NOW producer/host Amy Goodman has worked closely, the East Timor Action Network, as well as the National Public Radio News and Information Fund, the Astraea Foundation, People for the American Way Foundation, the Center for Campus Organizing, United for a Fair Economy, Children's Defense Fund, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), MADRE, and the American Friends Service Committee.
Based in San Francisco, Working Assets Inc. is a privately-held, secretive telecommunications company that discloses very little financial information about its for-profit business to either its 400,000 customers or to U.S. consumers in general. One of its founders was Tides Foundation President Drummond Pike. A trustee of Mills College in recent years, Laura Scher, is a top executive at Working Assets Inc. Another top Working Assets Inc. executive, Michael Kieschnick, has also been involved until recently with the board of the National Network of Grantmakers, which also includes representatives of the Funding Exchange and the board of Mother Jones magazine/Foundation for National Progress. Kieschnick still sits on the White House Project Advisory Board between folks like PBS CEO Pat Michell and former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale. The White House Project Advisory Board was set-up to promote the presidential candidacies of mainstream women politicians such as U.S. Senator Rodham-Clinton. Another Working Assets Inc. official in recent years, Lawrence Livak, has also been the Tides Foundation Treasurer in recent years.
Because Working Assets Inc.'s stock is not sold on the stock market, it is not legally obligated to post much financial information about its business operations onto the Internet. In addition, executives at Working Assets Inc. have been reluctant to reveal to Movement writer-activists what kind of salaries it is presently paying its top executives. Working Assets Inc. has also collaborated with J.C. Penney in recent years on a "Shop for Social Change" business project.
Besides having the book she wrote in the 1990s subsidized by the Ford Foundation, the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host/producer, Laura Flanders, also had her journalism work subsidized for awhile in 1998 by another foundation. After the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to the Center for Democracy Studies of The Nation Institute, "to monitor anti-abortion activities of several right-wing groups," Flanders was employed briefly by that Nation magazine think-tank to write an article on the subject, which subsequently appeared in The Nation magazine. In 2000, the Rockefeller Foundation also gave the WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host and two colleagues a $20,000 grant "to support the creation and production of `Action Heroes,' a multidisciplinary work." Members of the Rockefeller Foundation have included World Bank manager, a Ford Motor Company director, a MacArthur Foundation director, and an ITT Sheraton Corp. vice-president in recent years.
Besides being the niece of COUNTERPUNCH editor Alexander Cockburn, WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host Flanders is also the older sister of Stephanie Flanders, who worked in the Clinton Administration as a speechwriter/special assistant to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Around the same time that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers was named the new president of Harvard University, Stephanie Flanders began working as a NEW YORK TIMES reporter. An October 1999 OBSERVER article by Simon Kuper, entitled "The New Elite Who Run Our Equal Society" indicated that the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host's younger sister is part of a British elite group nicknamed "The Young Chiefs." According to Kuper: "Members of this new elite were presented with thrilling opportunities early in life... Another characteristic of the new elite is networks. The Young Chiefs, who tend to live near each other in the centre of London, got the big breaks from old friends or people they meet at their friends' brunches or leaving parties. On the political side, the Young Chiefs are so close that many of them are related. Ed Balls (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, economic adviser to Gordon Brown)...studied in Boston...Ball's wife, Yvette Cooper (Oxford and Harvard, now a Labour MP), is a Young Chief too, as is her sometime tutorial partner at Oxford, Stephanie Flanders (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers)...Nick Denton (Oxford and the Financial Times, founder of Moreover.com) was a friend of Flanders at the Financial Times and through her met the elder Balls"
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SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 2:
FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY
The FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/Institute for Public Accuracy alternative media gatekeepers/censors--which includes COUNTERSPIN co-hosts/producers Steve Rendall and Janine Jackson, Institute for Public Accuracy/MAKING CONTACT executive director Norman Solomon, MSNBC/DONAHUE SHOW PRODUCER Jeff Cohen and WORKING ASSETS RADIO show producer Laura Flanders--have also been subsidized by the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations in recent years.
At a June 1988 street fair in Manhattan's Union Square which marked the 35th anniversary of the Rosenbergs' execution, MSNBC DONAHUE SHOW producer Jeff Cohen sat behind a table selling copies of his recently-created Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] group's journal, EXTRA!. Within a few years, Cohen's FAIR alternative media group was airing a weekly media watch show called COUNTERSPIN on Pacifica's WBAI station in New York City. What listeners of COUNTERSPIN were not told in the 1990s, however, was that around 30 percent of FAIR's funding was coming from foundation grants, including grants from Establishment foundations like the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
In 1991, FAIR was given a $20,000 grant from the Rockefeller Family fund "for general support." And then in 1992, annual grants to FAIR started to pour in from the MacArthur Foundation offices in Chicago. In an early 1997 interview, the program officer who was then responsible for the MacArthur Foundation's media program, Patricia Boero, told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN magazine: "MacArthur is funding Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. And in '96, they received $75,000 towards the cost of operations. We've been funding it since 1992, at approximately the same level. It was slightly higher a few years ago, when the media budget was a little bigger." Boero also told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN in 1997 that one reason the MacArthur Foundation began funding FAIR was that FAIR was already being funded by other foundations such as "the Rockefeller Family Fund."
Later in 1997, more MacArthur Foundation money was thrown in FAIR's direction by a MacArthur "genius grant" program--which was then headed by a member of both the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] board and NATION magazine's Nation Institute Board, named Catharine Stimpson. A dancer who was the partner of one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN radio show was given a $290,000 individual grant by the MacArthur Foundation program which Nation Institute and PBS board member Stimpson directed. Since 1997, FAIR has continued to receive grants from the MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 it was given an additional grant of $150,000 by the MacArthur Foundation. And in 2000, another MacArthur Foundation of $125,000 was given to FAIR.
Another Establishment foundation, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation also began subsidizing FAIR's alternative media work in the early 1990s. In 1995, for instance, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave FAIR a $150,000 grant "to support promotion of book THE WAY THINGS AREN'T," which was co-authored by COUNTERSPIN co-host/producer Steve Rendall. And in 1996, an additional grant of $15,000 from the Schumann Foundation (whose president, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary in the 1960s) was given to FAIR. Since 1996 FAIR has continued to receive grants from Moyers' Schumann Foundation, including a post-2000 grant of between $50,000 and $100,000. In addition, one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, Janine Jackson, sits on the board of a group, Citizens for Independent Broadcasting [CIPB]. In 2002, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave the Center for Social Studies Education a $200,000 grant "for continued support for activities of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting [CIPB]."
The executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA]/MAKING CONTACT alternative media group, Norman Solomon, was listed on FAIR's 1997 form 990 as being the "president" of FAIR and has been a FAIR associate in recent years. Like FAIR, former FAIR President Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy, with an annual income of $267,000, has been subsidized by Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation. In 1997, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to Solomon's IPA/International Media project "for effort to hold think tanks to high standards of accuracy."
In addition to being subsdiized by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation and the Schumann Foundation in the 1990s, FAIR also began receiving grants from the Ford Foundation in the mid-1990s. As the WORKING ASSETS RADIO web site noted in 2001: "As the founder of the Women's Desk at the media watchdog FAIR [WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer-host Laura] Flanders received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for a collaborative project to combat racism and sexism in the news. The resulting book, REAL MAJORITY, MEDIA MINORITY: THE COST OF SIDELINING WOMEN IN REPORTING, was published to rave reviews by Common Courage Press in 1997." Besides the Ford Foundation's $200,000 grant to FAIR in 1996 or 1997 to help subsidize the alternative media work of its Women's Desk, an additional grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation was given to FAIR in 1997 or 1998. And in 2001, yet another $150,000 grant was given to FAIR by the Ford Foundation for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States."
In recent months, the Ford Foundation and Schumann Foundation-subsidized "media watchdogs" from FAIR and the Institute for Public Accuracy--Norman Solomon and Steve Rendall--have seemed more interested in preventing 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists from receiving any airtime on Pacifica's radio stations than in revealing the historical links of their funders to the CIA or the Johnson White House to their alternative media listeners and readers. And WORKING ASSETS RADIO--which is aired on San Francisco's KALW and produced by a former co-host/producer of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN and a forme Pacifica Network News staffperson--has apparently not been eager to welcome 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists onto the show.
WORKING ASSETS RADIO
WORKING ASSETS RADIO is a promotional/marketing tool of the $140 million/year, for-profi Working Assets, Inc. telecommunications company. And besides funding its own alternative WORKING ASSETS RADIO show that is aired on KALW in the Bay Area and over the Internet, Working Assets Inc. also helps fund other alternative media groups such as FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA). In 1996, for instance FAIR/COUNTERSPIN was given a $59,723 grant by Working Assets Inc. Among the alternative media groups funded by Working Assets Inc. in 2000, besides FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's IPA were Free Speech TV and the Independent Press Association. That same year, Working Assets Inc. also helped fund a gorup with which DEMOCRACY NOW producer/host Amy Goodman has worked closely, the East Timor Action Network, as well as the National Public Radio News and Information Fund, the Astraea Foundation, People for the American Way Foundation, the Center for Campus Organizing, United for a Fair Economy, Children's Defense Fund, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), MADRE, and the American Friends Service Committee.
Based in San Francisco, Working Assets Inc. is a privately-held, secretive telecommunications company that discloses very little financial information about its for-profit business to either its 400,000 customers or to U.S. consumers in general. One of its founders was Tides Foundation President Drummond Pike. A trustee of Mills College in recent years, Laura Scher, is a top executive at Working Assets Inc. Another top Working Assets Inc. executive, Michael Kieschnick, has also been involved until recently with the board of the National Network of Grantmakers, which also includes representatives of the Funding Exchange and the board of Mother Jones magazine/Foundation for National Progress. Kieschnick still sits on the White House Project Advisory Board between folks like PBS CEO Pat Michell and former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale. The White House Project Advisory Board was set-up to promote the presidential candidacies of mainstream women politicians such as U.S. Senator Rodham-Clinton. Another Working Assets Inc. official in recent years, Lawrence Livak, has also been the Tides Foundation Treasurer in recent years.
Because Working Assets Inc.'s stock is not sold on the stock market, it is not legally obligated to post much financial information about its business operations onto the Internet. In addition, executives at Working Assets Inc. have been reluctant to reveal to Movement writer-activists what kind of salaries it is presently paying its top executives. Working Assets Inc. has also collaborated with J.C. Penney in recent years on a "Shop for Social Change" business project.
Besides having the book she wrote in the 1990s subsidized by the Ford Foundation, the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host/producer, Laura Flanders, also had her journalism work subsidized for awhile in 1998 by another foundation. After the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to the Center for Democracy Studies of The Nation Institute, "to monitor anti-abortion activities of several right-wing groups," Flanders was employed briefly by that Nation magazine think-tank to write an article on the subject, which subsequently appeared in The Nation magazine. In 2000, the Rockefeller Foundation also gave the WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host and two colleagues a $20,000 grant "to support the creation and production of `Action Heroes,' a multidisciplinary work." Members of the Rockefeller Foundation have included World Bank manager, a Ford Motor Company director, a MacArthur Foundation director, and an ITT Sheraton Corp. vice-president in recent years.
Besides being the niece of COUNTERPUNCH editor Alexander Cockburn, WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host Flanders is also the older sister of Stephanie Flanders, who worked in the Clinton Administration as a speechwriter/special assistant to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Around the same time that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers was named the new president of Harvard University, Stephanie Flanders began working as a NEW YORK TIMES reporter. An October 1999 OBSERVER article by Simon Kuper, entitled "The New Elite Who Run Our Equal Society" indicated that the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host's younger sister is part of a British elite group nicknamed "The Young Chiefs." According to Kuper: "Members of this new elite were presented with thrilling opportunities early in life... Another characteristic of the new elite is networks. The Young Chiefs, who tend to live near each other in the centre of London, got the big breaks from old friends or people they meet at their friends' brunches or leaving parties. On the political side, the Young Chiefs are so close that many of them are related. Ed Balls (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, economic adviser to Gordon Brown)...studied in Boston...Ball's wife, Yvette Cooper (Oxford and Harvard, now a Labour MP), is a Young Chief too, as is her sometime tutorial partner at Oxford, Stephanie Flanders (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers)...Nick Denton (Oxford and the Financial Times, founder of Moreover.com) was a friend of Flanders at the Financial Times and through her met the elder Balls"
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MOTHER JONES / Foundation for National Progress
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 5:
MOTHER JONES / Foundation for National Progress
Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/IPA, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress received a lot of money from Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation in the 1990s. In 1995, for instance, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress was given a $500,000 grant by Moyers' Schumann Foundation "to support MOTHER JONES magazine." A second grant of $150,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1996 "to support the hiring of a new senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine." And an additional grant of $100,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1997 "to promote money in politics investigation by MOTHER JONES magazine." As Rick Edmunds noted in a recent essay on the internet (entitled "Getting Behind the Media: What are the subtle tradeoffs of foundation support for journalism?"): "Though it is often buried in the fine print of the masthead...many journals of opinion are themselves nonprofit, the better to attract foundation funding. That is true of MOTHER JONES."
MOTHER JONES magazine claims to be a non-profit "Foundation for National Progress." Yet MOTHER JONES magazine took in nearly $6 million in annual revenues in 2000, including $822,358 from the sale of advertising space and $176,140 from renting out its subscriber list. From this gross income of $6 million in 2000, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progess then paid out the following salaries to its top alternative media executives:
1. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor-in-Chief Roger Cohn was paid an annual salary of $144,670;
2. MOTHER JONES magazine Publisher and Foundation for National Progress Board President Jay Haris--a former general manager of the Washington Post Company's NEWSWEEK magazine's Pacifica operations--was paid an annual salary of $144,379;
3. MOTHER JONES magazine Director of Sales & Marketing Eric Weiss was paid an annual salary of $105,004;
4. MOTHER JONES magazine Creative Director Jane Palecek was paid an annual salary of $88,197;
5. Foundation for National Progress Secretary/Treasurer and CEO Joan Catherine Braun was paid an annual salary of $85,453;
6. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor Eric Bates was paid an annual salary of $74,716; and
7. MOTHER JONES magazine Advertising Manager Eileen Ellis was paid an annual salary of $67,233; and
8. MOTHER JONES Art Director Caroline Joy was paid an annual salary of $61,187.
MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress also spent $247,000 on fund-raising in 2000; and its board of directors included Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, Kadima Foundation CHair Chara Schreyer, HKH Foundation director Harriet Barlow and MOTHER JONES magazine founder Adam Hochschild. Hochschild also has set up the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund, whose stated tax-exempt purpose is to "promote the charitable literary and educational purposes of Foundation for National Progress." According to its 2000 report, the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund apparently did this by contributing $2.4 million worth of stock to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress. As a result, $1,176,617 worth of Wal Mart Stores stock (19,082 shares) was apparently owned by MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 2001.
Besides receiving money from Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund of one its own board members, another interesting connection to the world of Establishment foundations exists at MOTHER JONES magazine. In 1997, the wife of MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Adam Hochschild--University of California-Berkeley Professor of Sociology Arlie Russell Hochschild--was given a $3 million grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation "to establish a Center for Working Families" at UC-Berkeley, which she now directs. Among the Establishment folks who presently sit on the board of trustees of the Sloan Foundation which funds UC-Berkeley Professor Arlie Russell Hochschild's center is former Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall--who presently represents MIT on the board of trustess of the Pentagon's weapons research think-tank: the Institute for Defense Analyses (www.ida.org). Other members of the Sloan Foundation board include former chairmen of the General Motors, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley corporate boards and two other MIT professors. In 1991, the wife of MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Hochschild also was apparently given a grant by the Ford Foundation.
So it's probably not likely that many muckraking articles about either the Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the CIA, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and Public Affairs TV Inc., the Sloan Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, MIT or UC-Berkeley--or on what evidence has been dug up by 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers--will be published much by the MOTHER JONES magazine alternative media gatekeepers/censors.
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Part 5:
MOTHER JONES / Foundation for National Progress
Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/IPA, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress received a lot of money from Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation in the 1990s. In 1995, for instance, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress was given a $500,000 grant by Moyers' Schumann Foundation "to support MOTHER JONES magazine." A second grant of $150,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1996 "to support the hiring of a new senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine." And an additional grant of $100,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1997 "to promote money in politics investigation by MOTHER JONES magazine." As Rick Edmunds noted in a recent essay on the internet (entitled "Getting Behind the Media: What are the subtle tradeoffs of foundation support for journalism?"): "Though it is often buried in the fine print of the masthead...many journals of opinion are themselves nonprofit, the better to attract foundation funding. That is true of MOTHER JONES."
MOTHER JONES magazine claims to be a non-profit "Foundation for National Progress." Yet MOTHER JONES magazine took in nearly $6 million in annual revenues in 2000, including $822,358 from the sale of advertising space and $176,140 from renting out its subscriber list. From this gross income of $6 million in 2000, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progess then paid out the following salaries to its top alternative media executives:
1. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor-in-Chief Roger Cohn was paid an annual salary of $144,670;
2. MOTHER JONES magazine Publisher and Foundation for National Progress Board President Jay Haris--a former general manager of the Washington Post Company's NEWSWEEK magazine's Pacifica operations--was paid an annual salary of $144,379;
3. MOTHER JONES magazine Director of Sales & Marketing Eric Weiss was paid an annual salary of $105,004;
4. MOTHER JONES magazine Creative Director Jane Palecek was paid an annual salary of $88,197;
5. Foundation for National Progress Secretary/Treasurer and CEO Joan Catherine Braun was paid an annual salary of $85,453;
6. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor Eric Bates was paid an annual salary of $74,716; and
7. MOTHER JONES magazine Advertising Manager Eileen Ellis was paid an annual salary of $67,233; and
8. MOTHER JONES Art Director Caroline Joy was paid an annual salary of $61,187.
MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress also spent $247,000 on fund-raising in 2000; and its board of directors included Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, Kadima Foundation CHair Chara Schreyer, HKH Foundation director Harriet Barlow and MOTHER JONES magazine founder Adam Hochschild. Hochschild also has set up the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund, whose stated tax-exempt purpose is to "promote the charitable literary and educational purposes of Foundation for National Progress." According to its 2000 report, the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund apparently did this by contributing $2.4 million worth of stock to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress. As a result, $1,176,617 worth of Wal Mart Stores stock (19,082 shares) was apparently owned by MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 2001.
Besides receiving money from Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund of one its own board members, another interesting connection to the world of Establishment foundations exists at MOTHER JONES magazine. In 1997, the wife of MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Adam Hochschild--University of California-Berkeley Professor of Sociology Arlie Russell Hochschild--was given a $3 million grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation "to establish a Center for Working Families" at UC-Berkeley, which she now directs. Among the Establishment folks who presently sit on the board of trustees of the Sloan Foundation which funds UC-Berkeley Professor Arlie Russell Hochschild's center is former Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall--who presently represents MIT on the board of trustess of the Pentagon's weapons research think-tank: the Institute for Defense Analyses (www.ida.org). Other members of the Sloan Foundation board include former chairmen of the General Motors, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley corporate boards and two other MIT professors. In 1991, the wife of MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Hochschild also was apparently given a grant by the Ford Foundation.
So it's probably not likely that many muckraking articles about either the Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the CIA, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and Public Affairs TV Inc., the Sloan Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, MIT or UC-Berkeley--or on what evidence has been dug up by 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers--will be published much by the MOTHER JONES magazine alternative media gatekeepers/censors.
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ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 4:
ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS
Although David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show is aired on a number of NPR stations which are subsidized by both corporate underwriters and grants from various Establishment foundations, the Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. (of which ALTERNATIVE RADIO is a part) doesn't appear to have yet been given grants directly from the Ford Foundation or other Establishment foundations. However, one of ALTERNATIVE RADIO's most frequently featured guests, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, was given a $350,000 "Kyoto Prize" by the Japanese Establishment's Inamori Foundation in 1988.
The Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. does business as Z magazine. Ironically, although it may have taken its name from a Costa-Gavras film adaptation of the novel Z (which dramatizes the uncovering of an assassination conspiracy), Z magazine has attempted to marginalize 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists in recent months on its web site and in its printed pages..
According to its 990 form for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2000, Z magazine takes in over $641,000 a year in gross evenues and only has annual expenses of $531,000. A big chunk of Z magazine's annual revenues goes to three members of just one family: the Albert-Sargent family. At least $120,000 per year of Z magazine's total revenues ends up in the pockets of either Michael Albert, his partner Lydia Sargent or Lydia's son Eric Sargent. All three family members are each paid an annual salary of $30,000 by Z magazine. An additional $10,000 in "rent" is paid to each family member by Z magazine for the "office space" that the Albert-Sargent family "rents" from itself, to publish its Z magazine and maintain its web site.
Although the left entrepreneur family that publishes Z magazine took in $120,000 in the fiscal year ending 12/31/2000, all the writers it published were only paid $38,700 during the year, for the articles they wrote.
Of the $38,700 which the Albert-Sargent family paid its writers in 2000, $4,400 was given to ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer David Barsamian, whose book THE DECLINE AND FALLOF PUBLIC BROADCASTING, was published, with an introduction by DEMOCRACY NOW INC's Amy Goodman, in 2000 by South End Press. Although a chart in Barsamian's book on public broadcasting indicates that the Ford Foundation was among the PBS national programming underwriters who contributed more than $1 million in 2000, the book's index apparently contains no reference to the Ford Foundation's crucial role in setting up the public broadcasting system. Barsamian's book index also contains no reference to the Schumann Foundation, although it makes 3 references to book passages that describe Schumann Foundation President Bill Moyers' Public Affairs TV programs in a favorable way.
South End Press is the business enterprise of the Institute for Social &Cultural Change publishing firm which the Albert-Sargent family started in 1984, apparently with the help of $232,956 in low-interest "loans" from various individuals and organizations, that will no longer have to be paid back. According to the South End Press's form 990 for the fiscal year ending 6/30/200, the book publishing arm of Z magazine (which markets books like PROPAGANDA AND THE PUBLIC MIND: CONVERSATIONS WITH NOAM CHOMSKY that ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer Barsamian co-authored), took in over $1 million from its book sales.
So if Z magazine/web site and South End Press were considered as one left business entitity, we would be talking about a business that takes in about $1.7 million a year from the cultural leftism market. In times of U.S. imperialist war, anti-war books by anti-conspiracy theorist Chomsky, such as 9/11, tend to sell well and even make mainstream media best-seller lists. So, even without being directly dependent upon grants from Establishment Foundations which wish to discourage public opinion from considering the evidence dug up by U.S. conspiracy journalists and researchers, ALTERNATIVE RADIO/Z MAGAZINE/SOUTH END PRESS may have a vested economic interest in attempting to marginalize anti-war journalists involved in 9/11 conspiracy research and journalism.
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SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 4:
ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS
Although David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show is aired on a number of NPR stations which are subsidized by both corporate underwriters and grants from various Establishment foundations, the Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. (of which ALTERNATIVE RADIO is a part) doesn't appear to have yet been given grants directly from the Ford Foundation or other Establishment foundations. However, one of ALTERNATIVE RADIO's most frequently featured guests, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, was given a $350,000 "Kyoto Prize" by the Japanese Establishment's Inamori Foundation in 1988.
The Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. does business as Z magazine. Ironically, although it may have taken its name from a Costa-Gavras film adaptation of the novel Z (which dramatizes the uncovering of an assassination conspiracy), Z magazine has attempted to marginalize 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists in recent months on its web site and in its printed pages..
According to its 990 form for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2000, Z magazine takes in over $641,000 a year in gross evenues and only has annual expenses of $531,000. A big chunk of Z magazine's annual revenues goes to three members of just one family: the Albert-Sargent family. At least $120,000 per year of Z magazine's total revenues ends up in the pockets of either Michael Albert, his partner Lydia Sargent or Lydia's son Eric Sargent. All three family members are each paid an annual salary of $30,000 by Z magazine. An additional $10,000 in "rent" is paid to each family member by Z magazine for the "office space" that the Albert-Sargent family "rents" from itself, to publish its Z magazine and maintain its web site.
Although the left entrepreneur family that publishes Z magazine took in $120,000 in the fiscal year ending 12/31/2000, all the writers it published were only paid $38,700 during the year, for the articles they wrote.
Of the $38,700 which the Albert-Sargent family paid its writers in 2000, $4,400 was given to ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer David Barsamian, whose book THE DECLINE AND FALLOF PUBLIC BROADCASTING, was published, with an introduction by DEMOCRACY NOW INC's Amy Goodman, in 2000 by South End Press. Although a chart in Barsamian's book on public broadcasting indicates that the Ford Foundation was among the PBS national programming underwriters who contributed more than $1 million in 2000, the book's index apparently contains no reference to the Ford Foundation's crucial role in setting up the public broadcasting system. Barsamian's book index also contains no reference to the Schumann Foundation, although it makes 3 references to book passages that describe Schumann Foundation President Bill Moyers' Public Affairs TV programs in a favorable way.
South End Press is the business enterprise of the Institute for Social &Cultural Change publishing firm which the Albert-Sargent family started in 1984, apparently with the help of $232,956 in low-interest "loans" from various individuals and organizations, that will no longer have to be paid back. According to the South End Press's form 990 for the fiscal year ending 6/30/200, the book publishing arm of Z magazine (which markets books like PROPAGANDA AND THE PUBLIC MIND: CONVERSATIONS WITH NOAM CHOMSKY that ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer Barsamian co-authored), took in over $1 million from its book sales.
So if Z magazine/web site and South End Press were considered as one left business entitity, we would be talking about a business that takes in about $1.7 million a year from the cultural leftism market. In times of U.S. imperialist war, anti-war books by anti-conspiracy theorist Chomsky, such as 9/11, tend to sell well and even make mainstream media best-seller lists. So, even without being directly dependent upon grants from Establishment Foundations which wish to discourage public opinion from considering the evidence dug up by U.S. conspiracy journalists and researchers, ALTERNATIVE RADIO/Z MAGAZINE/SOUTH END PRESS may have a vested economic interest in attempting to marginalize anti-war journalists involved in 9/11 conspiracy research and journalism.
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Progressive
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 6:
PROGRESSIVE
The editor of PROGRESSIVE magazine, Matthew Rothschild, also attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers a few months ago. Coincidentally, the Madison, Wisconsin-based PROGRESSIVE enterprise has also been receiving a lot of money from the foundations of a politically unprogressive U.S. Establishment since the 1990s.
In 1992, for instance, a $50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation (on whose board ABC News radio commentator Paul Harvey and Enron Global Power & Pipelines director Thomas Theobald have sat for many years) "to solicit and disseminate opinion pieces relevant to U.S. foreign policy and international security." That same year, "several MacArthur staff members" were "called to consult with staff members of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign," according to THE CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY. And, during the late 1990s, one of the top Clinton Administration economic policymakers, Laura Tyson, became a member of the MacArthur Foundation board of directors.
An additional $150,000 grant was also given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation in 1994. And in 2002, the MacArthur Foundation gave $120,000 more in grant money to the PROGRESSIVE enterprise, whose magazine anti-conspiracy theorist Matthew Rothschild edits.
Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and PACIFICA/DEMOCRACY NOW, the PROGRESSIVE enterprise has also been receiving a lot of money from the Ford Foundation since the 1990s. In 1998, for instance, PROGRESSIVE was given a $200,000 grant by the Ford Foundation (on whose board of trustees sat Clinton crony Vernon Jordan). And in 2000, two more grants, totalling $250,000, were given to PROGRESSIVE by the Ford Foundation.
Besides receiving grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, PROGRESSIVE has also obtained funds from The Rockefeller Foundation in recent years. In 1998, for instance, a $50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by The Rockefeller Foundation.
In 2000, PROGRESSIVE Inc. took in an annual income of $1.7 million, including $69,727 from its sale of advertising space. And its editor, Matthew Rothschild, has apparently been paid an annual salary of $44,468 in recent years--for putting out a Democratic Party-oriented magazine that rarely mentions the Ford Foundation's historic relation to the CIA and rarely publishes articles written by 9/11 conspiracy journalists or researchers.
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SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 6:
PROGRESSIVE
The editor of PROGRESSIVE magazine, Matthew Rothschild, also attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers a few months ago. Coincidentally, the Madison, Wisconsin-based PROGRESSIVE enterprise has also been receiving a lot of money from the foundations of a politically unprogressive U.S. Establishment since the 1990s.
In 1992, for instance, a $50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation (on whose board ABC News radio commentator Paul Harvey and Enron Global Power & Pipelines director Thomas Theobald have sat for many years) "to solicit and disseminate opinion pieces relevant to U.S. foreign policy and international security." That same year, "several MacArthur staff members" were "called to consult with staff members of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign," according to THE CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY. And, during the late 1990s, one of the top Clinton Administration economic policymakers, Laura Tyson, became a member of the MacArthur Foundation board of directors.
An additional $150,000 grant was also given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation in 1994. And in 2002, the MacArthur Foundation gave $120,000 more in grant money to the PROGRESSIVE enterprise, whose magazine anti-conspiracy theorist Matthew Rothschild edits.
Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and PACIFICA/DEMOCRACY NOW, the PROGRESSIVE enterprise has also been receiving a lot of money from the Ford Foundation since the 1990s. In 1998, for instance, PROGRESSIVE was given a $200,000 grant by the Ford Foundation (on whose board of trustees sat Clinton crony Vernon Jordan). And in 2000, two more grants, totalling $250,000, were given to PROGRESSIVE by the Ford Foundation.
Besides receiving grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, PROGRESSIVE has also obtained funds from The Rockefeller Foundation in recent years. In 1998, for instance, a $50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by The Rockefeller Foundation.
In 2000, PROGRESSIVE Inc. took in an annual income of $1.7 million, including $69,727 from its sale of advertising space. And its editor, Matthew Rothschild, has apparently been paid an annual salary of $44,468 in recent years--for putting out a Democratic Party-oriented magazine that rarely mentions the Ford Foundation's historic relation to the CIA and rarely publishes articles written by 9/11 conspiracy journalists or researchers.
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THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 3:
THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE
The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show is a promotional/advertising tool for a liberal-left establishment magazine, THE NATION, that generally tends to be a Democratic Party-oriented publication. Neither the magazine nor its radio tie-in show that is aired on Pacifica radio stations and many college radio stations may be eager to encourage much discussion about the historic relationship between foundations and the CIA or about the evidence of a 9/11 conspiracy which grassroots journalists and researchers have discovered. Yet in a 1996 interview with former BOSTON PHOENIX media critic Dan Kennedy, NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel claimed that "We have a monopoly on weekly progressive journalism in this country." But are RADIO NATION listeners and readers of THE NATION magazine actually being provided with authentically progressive anti-war, anti-corporate and anti-establishment journalism each week by THE NATION editor?
THE NATION magazine, a for-profit limited-partnership, was started in 1865 by a British abolitionist named E.L. Godkin and in the early 20th-century it was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard, a descendent of U.S. abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. It was subsequently owned by a Wall Street financier--the father of a NATION writer named Bobby Tuckman--who sold it to then-NATION editor Freda Kirchwey in the 1930s for $35,000 (which he loaned to her). NATION editor-owner Kirchwey was a former member of the early 20th-century Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) campus group that Jack London and Upton Sinclair had headed.
By the early 1940s, however, THE NATION was an increasingly large money-loser and was in danger of folding because of its financial difficulties. So in early 1943, Kirchwey decided on a reorganization plan to keep THE NATION publishing. She divested herself of her individual ownership and created a new, nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, which would own THE NATION on a nonprofit basis--although Kirchwey would still determine the magazine's editorial direction by serving as its publisher. In 1955, Kirchwey retired and a health insurance industry executive named George C. Kirstein became the magazine's publisher and the principal financial backer of the nonprofit Nation Associates, which continued to own the magazine.
In the 1970s, however, THE NATION was on the verge of bankruptcy again, until a group of investors led by Hamilton Fish III purchased ownership of THE NATION. Although Hamilton Fish's group of investors sold THE NATION in 1985 to a former Wall Street investment banker (whose real estate and utilities properties were worth about $200 million in 1991) named Arthur Carter, as recently as 2000 Hamilton Fish was being paid $83,000 a year salary by the magazine's tax-exempt Nation Institute affiliate for being the Nation Institute's president.
After purchasing THE NATION in 1985, Arthur Carter began publishing his NEW YORK OBSERVER weekly newspaper in 1987, under the initial supervision of former New York Times Company Vice-Chairman James Goodale, a Wall Street corporate lawyer at Debevoise & Plimplton who was a member of the Democratic Party National Convention's rules committee in 1988. Although NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Carter sold THE NATION magazine in 1995 to a group of investors that included Columbia University Magazine Journalism Center Director Victor Navasky, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairperson Alan Sagner, Hollywood actor Paul Newman, novelist E.I. Doctorow and the current editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arthur Carter has continued to sit on the board of trustees of the Nation Institute in recent years.
NATION magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is the daughter of International Rescue Committee [IRC] board member William vanden Heuvel. NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father is mentioned in the book THE CULTURAL COLD WAR by Frances Stoner Saunders in the following reference to the CIA-linked Farfield Foundation: "First presdient of the Farfield [Founcation], and the CIA's most significant front-man, was Julius `Junkie' Fleischmann, the millionaire heir to a high yeast and gin fortune...He had helped finance THE NEW YORKER...`The Farfield Foundation was a CIA foundation and there were many such foundations,' Tom Braden went on to explain...Other Farfield directors included William vanden Heuvel a New York lawyer who was close to both John and Bobby Kennedy."
A short review by Michael Rogin of THE CULTURAL COLD WAR book, entitled "When The CIA Was The NEA," appeared in THE NATION's June 12, 2000 issue. It also made a reference to "small CIA-created nonprofits, especially the Farfield foundation," yet failed to disclose to THE NATION readers that the father of the magazine's editor used to sit on the Farfield Foundation board.
In the 1950s, the Farfield Foundation helped subsidize the activity of the liberal anti-communist American Committee for Cultural Freedom. As the book THE HIGHER CIRCLES by G. William Domhoff noted in 1970: "It seems that in the mid-fifties the head of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom was having trouble getting money for his project. So he wrote to Edward Lilly, a member of a governmental agency for coordinating intelligence and psychological warfare operations, to plead his case. At the same time he wrote to [non-communist leftist Norman] Thomas, asking him to get in touch with [then-CIA Director] Allen Dulles via telephone. Shortly thereafter the American Commitee for Cultural Freedom received $14,000 from the Farfield Foundation and the Asia Foundation...Thomas then wrote to the committee head: `I am, of course, delighted that the Farfield Foundation came through...'" The 1982 book ROOTED IN SECRECY: THE CLANDESTINE ELEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS by Joan Coxsedge also observed that: "The CIA is not so crude as to simply hand over money directly. It normally uses wealthy philanthropists such as the J.M. Kaplan Fund and foundations such as the Asia Foundation, the Farfield Foundation and the Hoblitzelle Foundation."
Born in 1930, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father apparently served between 1953 and 1954 as the executive assistant to CIA founder William "Wild Bill" Donovan, when Donovan was the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand. In their 1998 book WHITE OUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair make the following references to the political role that U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Donovan played around the time that IRC board member Vanden Heuvel apparently was Ambassador Donovan's executive assistant:
General Phao ahd been made director of Thailand's national police after the CIA-backed coup of 1948 led by Major General Phin Choohannan. Phao's 40,000-member police force, the Police Knights, immediately engaged in a campaign of assassinations of Phin and Phao's political enemies. These troops also assumed control of Thailand's lucrative opium trade...Phao's control of the opium trade was directly abetted by the CIA, which had funnelled him $35 million in aid...
In the 1950s the CIA backed General Phao in a struggle with another Thai general for monopoly of control of Thailand's opium and heroin trade...Backed by squads of CIA advisers, Phao set about the task of turning Thailand into a police state. The country's leading dissidents and academics were jailed...Phao also cornered the country's gold market, played a leading role on the top twenty corporate boards in the country, charged leading executives and businessmen protection fees and ran prostitution houses and gambling dens. Phao became great friends with Bill Donovan, at that time U.S. ambassador to Thailand.
In the early 1960s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father served as U.S. Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy's special assistant. According to WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, around the time that William Vanden Heuvel was his special assistant, RFK "was obsessed with the elimination of Castro," and "told Allen Dulles that he didn't care if the Agency employed the Mob for the hit as long as they kept him fully briefed."
During the 1960s and 1970s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also became increasingly active in the International Rescue Committee [IRC] In addition to being a current board member of the IRC, William vanden Heuvel has, in the past, held the posts of IRC President, IRC Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Planning Committee of the IRC.
In an essay that appeared in the Summer 1997 issue of NEW POLITICS magazine, entitled "Albert Shanker: No Flowers," Paul Buhle made the following reference to the International Rescue Committee's historical role: "Eric Chester's important recent volume, COVERT NETWORKS: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE AND THE CIA, offers a well-researched perspective on one of the most interesting Cold War (and post-Cold War) operations linked on one side to favorite causes of prominent liberals and on the other to assorted intelligence agency projects...The International Rescue Committee [IRC] became a central mechanism--through its spin-off American Friends of Vietnam [AFVN]--for selling the impending Vietnam War to the U.S. public...The young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, working as its public relations officer, had described the IRC as the `ideal instrument of Psychological Warfare.'
"The IRC was subsequently involved directly or indirectly in a shef of other operations...As during the U.S. saturation bombing in Southeast Asia, the IRC followed U.S. trained and funded military forces decimating large districts of El Salvador..."
The book cited by Buhle, COVERT NETWORK: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE, AND THE CIA by Eric THomas Chester, was published in 1995 by M.E. Sharpe Inc. An unsigned review of the book that appeared on the Internet described Chester's book in the following way: "The Cold War period in American history was characterized by a seamless cooperation among international charities, quasi-governmental organizations, major foundation, funding conduits, and the CIA...This book singles out the International Rescue Commitee, and to a lesser extent the Ford Foundation."
During the 1980s, the Interhemisperic Resource Center in Albuquerque also examined the political role that the IRC has played historically. Besides noting that the IRC board members in the 1980s included folks like Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Lauder, Albert Shanker and William vanden Heuvel, the Interhemisperic Resource Center also observed:
The IRC has consistently followed policies which have indeed coincided with U.S. foreign policy interests. It has operated in such geopolitical hotspots as Southeast Asia, Central America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe, conducting programs which have bolstered Washington's anti-communist activities...
Many of IRC's members have ties to the intelligence community, and at least one author calls the IRC "a long-time ally of the Central Intelligence Agency."
...In 1987, it received approximately 72 percent of its fundings from U.S. government contracts and grants...
In 1987, IRC received a $1 million grant from the National Endowment for Democracy [NED], which was appropriated by the U.S. Congress throught he Agency for International development [AID], to "assist the independent Polish trade union Solidarity..." ...Recently, IRC's major focus has been on the Afghan refugees...IRC has published 10 books for the National Endowment for Democracy-funded American Friends of Afghanistan [AFA]...
[Former IRC Chairperson] Leo Cherne [since-deceased] has a long history of intelligence connections. He served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1973-1976, the chairman from 1976-1979, and most recently, served as the vice-chair on former President Ronald Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board...In 1954 Cherne sent a cable to a U.S. government official about the situation in Vietnam, "If free elections were held today all agree privately communists would win...Future depends on organizing all resources to resettle refugees, sustain now bankrupt government..." During the Reagan Administration, Cherne was involved in private fundraising efforts coordinated by the National Security Council aimed at disseminating propaganda supporting U.S. foreign policy.
William Casey [former IRC president] was one of the members of an IRC commission that visited INdochinese refugee camps in 1978 and advocated "a virtual open-door policy" for letting the refugees into the U.S. Under Reagan, Casey was head of the CIA until his death in 1987...
John Richardson [former IRC president} was the Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs from 1969-1977. He served as the head of the U.S. Information AGency's [USIA] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1961-1968. During those years, it was closely linked to the CIA...
The IRC was heavily involved in supporting the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. In fact, the executive committee for the pro-Diem lobby, the American Friends of Vietnam, was virtually identical to that of the IRC. The strongest supporer of Diem in the group was former IRC official Joseph Buttinger..."
In the late 1960s, THE NATION editor's father was the president of the IRC at the same time former CIA Director William Casey was the chairman of the IRC's executive committee. And according to the minutes of the IRC board of directors meeting of June 15, 1967, "Leo Cherne appointed the following Middle East Subcommittee: William Casey, Leo Cherne, David Sher, William vanden Heuvel and Edwin Wesley" and "The Board meeting adjourned at 7:10 and was followed by the first meeting of the Middle East Subcommittee."
Besides sitting on the IRC board next to NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel's father in both the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, former CIA Director Casey was also one of the original investors and a director of the Capital Cities media conglomerate that gobbled-up ABC in the 1980s--before, itself, being gobbled-up by the Disney Company media conglomerate in the 1990s. Former IRC President Casey also sat on the board of directors of the LILCO utility company, which operated the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, despite the opposition of U.S. anti-nuclear power activists in the 1970s. Prior to managing Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, IRC board member Casey had also worked in the corporate law firm of Rogers & Wells, where he represented the special interests of clients like Saudia American Lines, International Crude Oil Refining Company and the Government of Indonesia. As Reagan's CIA director until his death in 1987, former IRC board member Casey continued to retain control of over $3 million worth of stock in companies like DuPont and Exxon while he simultaneously made decisions at the CIA which affected the profitability of his personal stockholdings.
Casey was not the only IRC director who became involved in politically partisan Establishment party presidential campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s. During the 1976 presidential campaign, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also chaired the New York State presidential primary campaign committee of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In a January 12, 1976 letter to Robert Shnayerson, the then-editor-in-chief of HARPER'S magazine, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father wrote:
It is my understanding that you were considering an article regarding the presidential candidacy of former governor Jimmy Carter in your March issue of Harper's magazine. In that context, I send you a copy of a telegram from Congressman Andrew Young addressed to a recent column published by the Village Voice. I hope you will find it interesting and relevant.
If there are any questions, please call me at either 425-XXXX or 757-XXXX.
Yours sincerely, William vanden Heuvel.
The telegram referred to in IRC board member William vanden Heuvel's letter (sent by former Carter Administration Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young to a Bardle B. at Carter Headquarters on 1/9/76) made the following reference to a column written by Alexander Cockburn: "The January 12 column by Alexander Cockburn, `The Riddle of Jimmy Carter, Can A Dark Horse Change His Spots,' is a wonderful example of the creation of `The Big Lie' by a compilation of half truth and distorted facts.
"Jimmy Carter is not and never has been guilty of the kind of implied racism of these charges. He is one of the finest products of a most misunderstood region of our nation."
But according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn: "The Democratic candidate for President in 1976, Jimmy Carter, was a member of the Trilateral Commission...Indeed, the number of Trilateral Commission members appointed to important posts in the Carter administration was startling. Brzezinski became his National Security Adviser...Walter Mondale, the new Vice-President, was a member of the Trilateral Commission. So were Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal, and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown...The price of food and the necessities of life continued to rise faster than wages were rising. Unemployment remained officially at 6 or 8 percent--unofficially, the rates were higher. For certain key groups in the population--young people, and especially young black people--the unemployment rate was 20 percent or 30 percent.
"By 1978 it was clear that blacks in the United States, the group most in support of Carter for President, and without whose support he could not have been elected, were bitterly disappointed with his policies. He opposed federal aid to poor people who needed abortions, and when it was pointed out to him that this was unfair, because rich women could get abortions with ease, he replied: `Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cannot.'"
On October 6, 1976 the then-executive vice president of THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sydney Gruson, also wrote the following letter to William vanden Heuvel (on New York Times Company stationary), which was apparently mailed to Carter/Mondale Headquarters at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan: "Dear Bill: Enclosed is the resume of my brother that I spoke to you about. He is an extremely talented fellow. Anything you can do will be deeply appreciated. How about bringing your fellow in for lunch before the election? As ever, Sydney."
The NATION editor's father then wrote the following letter on October 12, 1976 to one of the people who apparently would be responsible for offering people jobs in a new Carter Administration--Jack Watson of the King & Spalding corporate law firm. (Disclosure note: a King & Spalding lawyer in Manhattan is currently representing his landlord father in a frivolous, harassment-type lawsuit against a rent-stabilized tenant who is a sister of the writer of this article): "Dear Jack, Sydney Gruson is the Executive Vice President of the New York Times. He made a special point the other evening of taking me aside and asking me to forward a resume for his brother, Edward Gruson. It would be helpful if you could have someone review the resume--and perhaps a note from you to Sydney Gruson as well as to his brother would be most useful. Sincerely, William vanden Heuvel."
That same day, the 1976 Carter/Mondale New York Campaign official Vanden Heuvel also wrote the following letter to New York Times Executive Vice President Sydney Gruson:
Dear Sidney, I have forwarded Edward's resume with a special note to Jack Watson. If Governor Carter does win the election, I assume Jack will have a major transitional role, including personnel. In my next conversation with him, I will pursue the matter.
My guess is that Governor Carter's schedule is not going to permit lunch before the election. The debates make scheduling almost impossible because they require essentially three days for each event.
Hoping to see you very soon.
As ever, William vanden Heuvel
After Trilateral Commission member Carter was elected president, he eventually named William vanden Heuvel to be his deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. The IRC board member vanden Heuvel's daughter, Katrina, meanwhile attended Princeton University, majoried in politics and apparently graduated from Princeton in 1981. According to an article by Van Wallach which appeared in a March 20, 1996 issue of a Princeton alumni publication, Katrina vanden Heuvel began working "as a NATION intern for nine months after taking the `Politics and the Press' course taught by Blair Clark, the magazine's editor from 1976 to 1978" and "returned to THE NATION in 1984 as assistant editor for foreign affairs." In 1988 she married a professor named Stephen F. Cohen, who was also a contributing editor of THE NATION in 1996. In recent years, a "Stephen F. Cohen--NYU" has also been on a POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS magazine editorial board that also includes a "James Noren--Central Intelligence Agency." In 1989, IRC board member vanden Heuvel's daughter was then named "THE NATION editor-at-large, responsible for its coverage of the USSR" and "in 1990 she co-founded LYI I MYI...a quarterly journal linking American and Russian women," according to the Princeton alumni publication.
After the former NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE editor-turned NATION magazine editor, Victor Navasky, organized the for-profit business partnership (which included Katrina vanden Heuvel as one of the business partners) to buy THE NATION magazine from NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Arthur Carter, Navasky appointed Katrina vanden Heuvel as the editor, while he assumed the title of publisher and editorial director.
By 1996, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel had "moved the magazine's content into new venues through a syndicated radio program and a World-Wide web page," according to the Princeton alumni publication article. Like Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW show and FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, the syndicated NATION magazine radio show, RADIO NATION, is also subsidized by Establishment foundation money. The money is granted to the non-profit division of THE NATION magazine, The Nation Institute, on whose board of trustees sits NATION editor Vanden Heuvel and the former member of the PBS board of directors who used to head the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant" program, Catharine Stimpson. The Dean of an NYU Graduate School in recent years, Stimpson has also been the treasurer of The Nation Institute in recent years. Of the $1.4 million in annual revenues which The Nation Institute takes in, around $88,000 is spent on producing the magazine's syndicated RADIO NATION show, which is aired on around 100 U.S. radio stations, including Pacifica Radio's stations. NATION magazine editors and writers who have attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers in recent months, like David Corn, have also apparently been using RADIO NATION as a self-promotional, radio tie-in media outlet for advancing their careers as professional journalists in the Establishment's mainstream media world.
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SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
Part 3:
THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE
The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show is a promotional/advertising tool for a liberal-left establishment magazine, THE NATION, that generally tends to be a Democratic Party-oriented publication. Neither the magazine nor its radio tie-in show that is aired on Pacifica radio stations and many college radio stations may be eager to encourage much discussion about the historic relationship between foundations and the CIA or about the evidence of a 9/11 conspiracy which grassroots journalists and researchers have discovered. Yet in a 1996 interview with former BOSTON PHOENIX media critic Dan Kennedy, NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel claimed that "We have a monopoly on weekly progressive journalism in this country." But are RADIO NATION listeners and readers of THE NATION magazine actually being provided with authentically progressive anti-war, anti-corporate and anti-establishment journalism each week by THE NATION editor?
THE NATION magazine, a for-profit limited-partnership, was started in 1865 by a British abolitionist named E.L. Godkin and in the early 20th-century it was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard, a descendent of U.S. abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. It was subsequently owned by a Wall Street financier--the father of a NATION writer named Bobby Tuckman--who sold it to then-NATION editor Freda Kirchwey in the 1930s for $35,000 (which he loaned to her). NATION editor-owner Kirchwey was a former member of the early 20th-century Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) campus group that Jack London and Upton Sinclair had headed.
By the early 1940s, however, THE NATION was an increasingly large money-loser and was in danger of folding because of its financial difficulties. So in early 1943, Kirchwey decided on a reorganization plan to keep THE NATION publishing. She divested herself of her individual ownership and created a new, nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, which would own THE NATION on a nonprofit basis--although Kirchwey would still determine the magazine's editorial direction by serving as its publisher. In 1955, Kirchwey retired and a health insurance industry executive named George C. Kirstein became the magazine's publisher and the principal financial backer of the nonprofit Nation Associates, which continued to own the magazine.
In the 1970s, however, THE NATION was on the verge of bankruptcy again, until a group of investors led by Hamilton Fish III purchased ownership of THE NATION. Although Hamilton Fish's group of investors sold THE NATION in 1985 to a former Wall Street investment banker (whose real estate and utilities properties were worth about $200 million in 1991) named Arthur Carter, as recently as 2000 Hamilton Fish was being paid $83,000 a year salary by the magazine's tax-exempt Nation Institute affiliate for being the Nation Institute's president.
After purchasing THE NATION in 1985, Arthur Carter began publishing his NEW YORK OBSERVER weekly newspaper in 1987, under the initial supervision of former New York Times Company Vice-Chairman James Goodale, a Wall Street corporate lawyer at Debevoise & Plimplton who was a member of the Democratic Party National Convention's rules committee in 1988. Although NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Carter sold THE NATION magazine in 1995 to a group of investors that included Columbia University Magazine Journalism Center Director Victor Navasky, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairperson Alan Sagner, Hollywood actor Paul Newman, novelist E.I. Doctorow and the current editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arthur Carter has continued to sit on the board of trustees of the Nation Institute in recent years.
NATION magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is the daughter of International Rescue Committee [IRC] board member William vanden Heuvel. NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father is mentioned in the book THE CULTURAL COLD WAR by Frances Stoner Saunders in the following reference to the CIA-linked Farfield Foundation: "First presdient of the Farfield [Founcation], and the CIA's most significant front-man, was Julius `Junkie' Fleischmann, the millionaire heir to a high yeast and gin fortune...He had helped finance THE NEW YORKER...`The Farfield Foundation was a CIA foundation and there were many such foundations,' Tom Braden went on to explain...Other Farfield directors included William vanden Heuvel a New York lawyer who was close to both John and Bobby Kennedy."
A short review by Michael Rogin of THE CULTURAL COLD WAR book, entitled "When The CIA Was The NEA," appeared in THE NATION's June 12, 2000 issue. It also made a reference to "small CIA-created nonprofits, especially the Farfield foundation," yet failed to disclose to THE NATION readers that the father of the magazine's editor used to sit on the Farfield Foundation board.
In the 1950s, the Farfield Foundation helped subsidize the activity of the liberal anti-communist American Committee for Cultural Freedom. As the book THE HIGHER CIRCLES by G. William Domhoff noted in 1970: "It seems that in the mid-fifties the head of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom was having trouble getting money for his project. So he wrote to Edward Lilly, a member of a governmental agency for coordinating intelligence and psychological warfare operations, to plead his case. At the same time he wrote to [non-communist leftist Norman] Thomas, asking him to get in touch with [then-CIA Director] Allen Dulles via telephone. Shortly thereafter the American Commitee for Cultural Freedom received $14,000 from the Farfield Foundation and the Asia Foundation...Thomas then wrote to the committee head: `I am, of course, delighted that the Farfield Foundation came through...'" The 1982 book ROOTED IN SECRECY: THE CLANDESTINE ELEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS by Joan Coxsedge also observed that: "The CIA is not so crude as to simply hand over money directly. It normally uses wealthy philanthropists such as the J.M. Kaplan Fund and foundations such as the Asia Foundation, the Farfield Foundation and the Hoblitzelle Foundation."
Born in 1930, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father apparently served between 1953 and 1954 as the executive assistant to CIA founder William "Wild Bill" Donovan, when Donovan was the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand. In their 1998 book WHITE OUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair make the following references to the political role that U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Donovan played around the time that IRC board member Vanden Heuvel apparently was Ambassador Donovan's executive assistant:
General Phao ahd been made director of Thailand's national police after the CIA-backed coup of 1948 led by Major General Phin Choohannan. Phao's 40,000-member police force, the Police Knights, immediately engaged in a campaign of assassinations of Phin and Phao's political enemies. These troops also assumed control of Thailand's lucrative opium trade...Phao's control of the opium trade was directly abetted by the CIA, which had funnelled him $35 million in aid...
In the 1950s the CIA backed General Phao in a struggle with another Thai general for monopoly of control of Thailand's opium and heroin trade...Backed by squads of CIA advisers, Phao set about the task of turning Thailand into a police state. The country's leading dissidents and academics were jailed...Phao also cornered the country's gold market, played a leading role on the top twenty corporate boards in the country, charged leading executives and businessmen protection fees and ran prostitution houses and gambling dens. Phao became great friends with Bill Donovan, at that time U.S. ambassador to Thailand.
In the early 1960s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father served as U.S. Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy's special assistant. According to WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, around the time that William Vanden Heuvel was his special assistant, RFK "was obsessed with the elimination of Castro," and "told Allen Dulles that he didn't care if the Agency employed the Mob for the hit as long as they kept him fully briefed."
During the 1960s and 1970s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also became increasingly active in the International Rescue Committee [IRC] In addition to being a current board member of the IRC, William vanden Heuvel has, in the past, held the posts of IRC President, IRC Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Planning Committee of the IRC.
In an essay that appeared in the Summer 1997 issue of NEW POLITICS magazine, entitled "Albert Shanker: No Flowers," Paul Buhle made the following reference to the International Rescue Committee's historical role: "Eric Chester's important recent volume, COVERT NETWORKS: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE AND THE CIA, offers a well-researched perspective on one of the most interesting Cold War (and post-Cold War) operations linked on one side to favorite causes of prominent liberals and on the other to assorted intelligence agency projects...The International Rescue Committee [IRC] became a central mechanism--through its spin-off American Friends of Vietnam [AFVN]--for selling the impending Vietnam War to the U.S. public...The young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, working as its public relations officer, had described the IRC as the `ideal instrument of Psychological Warfare.'
"The IRC was subsequently involved directly or indirectly in a shef of other operations...As during the U.S. saturation bombing in Southeast Asia, the IRC followed U.S. trained and funded military forces decimating large districts of El Salvador..."
The book cited by Buhle, COVERT NETWORK: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE, AND THE CIA by Eric THomas Chester, was published in 1995 by M.E. Sharpe Inc. An unsigned review of the book that appeared on the Internet described Chester's book in the following way: "The Cold War period in American history was characterized by a seamless cooperation among international charities, quasi-governmental organizations, major foundation, funding conduits, and the CIA...This book singles out the International Rescue Commitee, and to a lesser extent the Ford Foundation."
During the 1980s, the Interhemisperic Resource Center in Albuquerque also examined the political role that the IRC has played historically. Besides noting that the IRC board members in the 1980s included folks like Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Lauder, Albert Shanker and William vanden Heuvel, the Interhemisperic Resource Center also observed:
The IRC has consistently followed policies which have indeed coincided with U.S. foreign policy interests. It has operated in such geopolitical hotspots as Southeast Asia, Central America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe, conducting programs which have bolstered Washington's anti-communist activities...
Many of IRC's members have ties to the intelligence community, and at least one author calls the IRC "a long-time ally of the Central Intelligence Agency."
...In 1987, it received approximately 72 percent of its fundings from U.S. government contracts and grants...
In 1987, IRC received a $1 million grant from the National Endowment for Democracy [NED], which was appropriated by the U.S. Congress throught he Agency for International development [AID], to "assist the independent Polish trade union Solidarity..." ...Recently, IRC's major focus has been on the Afghan refugees...IRC has published 10 books for the National Endowment for Democracy-funded American Friends of Afghanistan [AFA]...
[Former IRC Chairperson] Leo Cherne [since-deceased] has a long history of intelligence connections. He served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1973-1976, the chairman from 1976-1979, and most recently, served as the vice-chair on former President Ronald Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board...In 1954 Cherne sent a cable to a U.S. government official about the situation in Vietnam, "If free elections were held today all agree privately communists would win...Future depends on organizing all resources to resettle refugees, sustain now bankrupt government..." During the Reagan Administration, Cherne was involved in private fundraising efforts coordinated by the National Security Council aimed at disseminating propaganda supporting U.S. foreign policy.
William Casey [former IRC president] was one of the members of an IRC commission that visited INdochinese refugee camps in 1978 and advocated "a virtual open-door policy" for letting the refugees into the U.S. Under Reagan, Casey was head of the CIA until his death in 1987...
John Richardson [former IRC president} was the Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs from 1969-1977. He served as the head of the U.S. Information AGency's [USIA] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1961-1968. During those years, it was closely linked to the CIA...
The IRC was heavily involved in supporting the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. In fact, the executive committee for the pro-Diem lobby, the American Friends of Vietnam, was virtually identical to that of the IRC. The strongest supporer of Diem in the group was former IRC official Joseph Buttinger..."
In the late 1960s, THE NATION editor's father was the president of the IRC at the same time former CIA Director William Casey was the chairman of the IRC's executive committee. And according to the minutes of the IRC board of directors meeting of June 15, 1967, "Leo Cherne appointed the following Middle East Subcommittee: William Casey, Leo Cherne, David Sher, William vanden Heuvel and Edwin Wesley" and "The Board meeting adjourned at 7:10 and was followed by the first meeting of the Middle East Subcommittee."
Besides sitting on the IRC board next to NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel's father in both the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, former CIA Director Casey was also one of the original investors and a director of the Capital Cities media conglomerate that gobbled-up ABC in the 1980s--before, itself, being gobbled-up by the Disney Company media conglomerate in the 1990s. Former IRC President Casey also sat on the board of directors of the LILCO utility company, which operated the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, despite the opposition of U.S. anti-nuclear power activists in the 1970s. Prior to managing Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, IRC board member Casey had also worked in the corporate law firm of Rogers & Wells, where he represented the special interests of clients like Saudia American Lines, International Crude Oil Refining Company and the Government of Indonesia. As Reagan's CIA director until his death in 1987, former IRC board member Casey continued to retain control of over $3 million worth of stock in companies like DuPont and Exxon while he simultaneously made decisions at the CIA which affected the profitability of his personal stockholdings.
Casey was not the only IRC director who became involved in politically partisan Establishment party presidential campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s. During the 1976 presidential campaign, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also chaired the New York State presidential primary campaign committee of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In a January 12, 1976 letter to Robert Shnayerson, the then-editor-in-chief of HARPER'S magazine, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father wrote:
It is my understanding that you were considering an article regarding the presidential candidacy of former governor Jimmy Carter in your March issue of Harper's magazine. In that context, I send you a copy of a telegram from Congressman Andrew Young addressed to a recent column published by the Village Voice. I hope you will find it interesting and relevant.
If there are any questions, please call me at either 425-XXXX or 757-XXXX.
Yours sincerely, William vanden Heuvel.
The telegram referred to in IRC board member William vanden Heuvel's letter (sent by former Carter Administration Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young to a Bardle B. at Carter Headquarters on 1/9/76) made the following reference to a column written by Alexander Cockburn: "The January 12 column by Alexander Cockburn, `The Riddle of Jimmy Carter, Can A Dark Horse Change His Spots,' is a wonderful example of the creation of `The Big Lie' by a compilation of half truth and distorted facts.
"Jimmy Carter is not and never has been guilty of the kind of implied racism of these charges. He is one of the finest products of a most misunderstood region of our nation."
But according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn: "The Democratic candidate for President in 1976, Jimmy Carter, was a member of the Trilateral Commission...Indeed, the number of Trilateral Commission members appointed to important posts in the Carter administration was startling. Brzezinski became his National Security Adviser...Walter Mondale, the new Vice-President, was a member of the Trilateral Commission. So were Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal, and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown...The price of food and the necessities of life continued to rise faster than wages were rising. Unemployment remained officially at 6 or 8 percent--unofficially, the rates were higher. For certain key groups in the population--young people, and especially young black people--the unemployment rate was 20 percent or 30 percent.
"By 1978 it was clear that blacks in the United States, the group most in support of Carter for President, and without whose support he could not have been elected, were bitterly disappointed with his policies. He opposed federal aid to poor people who needed abortions, and when it was pointed out to him that this was unfair, because rich women could get abortions with ease, he replied: `Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cannot.'"
On October 6, 1976 the then-executive vice president of THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sydney Gruson, also wrote the following letter to William vanden Heuvel (on New York Times Company stationary), which was apparently mailed to Carter/Mondale Headquarters at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan: "Dear Bill: Enclosed is the resume of my brother that I spoke to you about. He is an extremely talented fellow. Anything you can do will be deeply appreciated. How about bringing your fellow in for lunch before the election? As ever, Sydney."
The NATION editor's father then wrote the following letter on October 12, 1976 to one of the people who apparently would be responsible for offering people jobs in a new Carter Administration--Jack Watson of the King & Spalding corporate law firm. (Disclosure note: a King & Spalding lawyer in Manhattan is currently representing his landlord father in a frivolous, harassment-type lawsuit against a rent-stabilized tenant who is a sister of the writer of this article): "Dear Jack, Sydney Gruson is the Executive Vice President of the New York Times. He made a special point the other evening of taking me aside and asking me to forward a resume for his brother, Edward Gruson. It would be helpful if you could have someone review the resume--and perhaps a note from you to Sydney Gruson as well as to his brother would be most useful. Sincerely, William vanden Heuvel."
That same day, the 1976 Carter/Mondale New York Campaign official Vanden Heuvel also wrote the following letter to New York Times Executive Vice President Sydney Gruson:
Dear Sidney, I have forwarded Edward's resume with a special note to Jack Watson. If Governor Carter does win the election, I assume Jack will have a major transitional role, including personnel. In my next conversation with him, I will pursue the matter.
My guess is that Governor Carter's schedule is not going to permit lunch before the election. The debates make scheduling almost impossible because they require essentially three days for each event.
Hoping to see you very soon.
As ever, William vanden Heuvel
After Trilateral Commission member Carter was elected president, he eventually named William vanden Heuvel to be his deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. The IRC board member vanden Heuvel's daughter, Katrina, meanwhile attended Princeton University, majoried in politics and apparently graduated from Princeton in 1981. According to an article by Van Wallach which appeared in a March 20, 1996 issue of a Princeton alumni publication, Katrina vanden Heuvel began working "as a NATION intern for nine months after taking the `Politics and the Press' course taught by Blair Clark, the magazine's editor from 1976 to 1978" and "returned to THE NATION in 1984 as assistant editor for foreign affairs." In 1988 she married a professor named Stephen F. Cohen, who was also a contributing editor of THE NATION in 1996. In recent years, a "Stephen F. Cohen--NYU" has also been on a POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS magazine editorial board that also includes a "James Noren--Central Intelligence Agency." In 1989, IRC board member vanden Heuvel's daughter was then named "THE NATION editor-at-large, responsible for its coverage of the USSR" and "in 1990 she co-founded LYI I MYI...a quarterly journal linking American and Russian women," according to the Princeton alumni publication.
After the former NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE editor-turned NATION magazine editor, Victor Navasky, organized the for-profit business partnership (which included Katrina vanden Heuvel as one of the business partners) to buy THE NATION magazine from NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Arthur Carter, Navasky appointed Katrina vanden Heuvel as the editor, while he assumed the title of publisher and editorial director.
By 1996, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel had "moved the magazine's content into new venues through a syndicated radio program and a World-Wide web page," according to the Princeton alumni publication article. Like Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW show and FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, the syndicated NATION magazine radio show, RADIO NATION, is also subsidized by Establishment foundation money. The money is granted to the non-profit division of THE NATION magazine, The Nation Institute, on whose board of trustees sits NATION editor Vanden Heuvel and the former member of the PBS board of directors who used to head the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant" program, Catharine Stimpson. The Dean of an NYU Graduate School in recent years, Stimpson has also been the treasurer of The Nation Institute in recent years. Of the $1.4 million in annual revenues which The Nation Institute takes in, around $88,000 is spent on producing the magazine's syndicated RADIO NATION show, which is aired on around 100 U.S. radio stations, including Pacifica Radio's stations. NATION magazine editors and writers who have attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers in recent months, like David Corn, have also apparently been using RADIO NATION as a self-promotional, radio tie-in media outlet for advancing their careers as professional journalists in the Establishment's mainstream media world.
to part 4
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