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
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