Are All of The Left's Mouthpieces CIA?

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?

by bob feldman
The mass-circulation weekly TEMPO accused Ford of having once played, at the urging of
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a covert role in Indonesian political affairs by
consciously supporting the work of individuals who were deemed to be sympathetic to the
anti-communist aims of American foreign policy.
— Chronicle of Philanthropy, 12/13/01
The Ford Foundation's history of collaboration and interlock with the CIA in pursuit of
U.S. world hegemony is now a well-documented fact...The Ford Foundation has in some
ways refined their style of collaboration with Washington's attempt to produce world
cultural domination, but retained the substance of that policy...The ties between the top
officials of the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government are explicit and continuing.
—James Petras in "The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic
collaboration with the Secret Police" on 12/15/2001
The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency
[CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's
COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO
NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of
PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation
and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers /
censors.
PACIFICA / DEMOCRACY NOW / DEEP DISH TV
Take Pacifica / DEMOCRACY NOW, an alternative radio network with annual revenues of $10 million
in 2000, whose National Program Director was paid $63,000 in that year. In the early 1950s--when the
CIA was using the Ford Foundation to help fund a non-communist "parallel left" as a liberal
Establishment alternative to an independent, anti-Establishment revolutionary left--the Pacifica
Foundation was given a $150,000 grant in 1951 by the Ford Foundation's Fund for Education.
According to James Ledbetter's book Made Possible By..., "the Fund's first chief was Alexander Fraser,
the president of the Shell Oil Company."
Besides subsidizing the Pacifica Foundation in the early 1950s, the Ford Foundation also spent a lot of
money subsidizing many other noncommercial radio or television stations in the United States.
According to Ledbetter's Made Possible By..., between 1951 and 1976, the Ford Foundation "spent
nearly $300 million on noncommercial radio and television."
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pacifica relied primarily on listener-sponsor contributions to fund the
operations of its radio stations. And in the early 1970s, Pacifica also began to accept funds from the
U.S. Establishment's Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB], according to Rogue State author
William Blum--who worked as a KPFA staff person in the early 1970s. But in the early 1990s, some
Pacifica administrators decided to again seek grants from the Ford Foundation and other Establishment
foundations. As former Pacifica Development Director Dick Bunce wrote in the appendix to the "A
http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html page 1 of 32
by bob feldman
Strategy for National Programming" document which was prepared for the Pacifica National Board in
September 1992, entitled "Appendix Foundation Grant seeking National Programming Assumptions for
Foundation Fund raising":
The national foundation grant seeking arena has changed enough in recent years to make
activity in this arena potentially worthwhile--for organizations prepared to be players and
partners in the same field as NPR, APR, maybe some others...The foundation funding of
interest is in gifts of $100,000 or more a year, for several years...Three of America's six
largest foundations (Ford, MacArthur, Pew) have begun to fund public broadcasting, public
radio in particular, and evidently intend to continue doing so. Pacifica requested meetings
with each of these foundations earlier this year and was treated seriously enough in
subsequent meetings to give us some hope of securing funding possibly from all three. A
`Report Sheet' on this work is included in Appendix 3.
Beyond these three foundations there are no others among the country's 100 largest which
have made substantial grants to public broadcasting. So the second tier of foundation
prospects look substantially different from the first tier requiring more work on our part to
open doors, establish `standing' and find a workable `fit.'
There are nonetheless a number of interesting prospects--in some cases only because of
particular people who are currently involved, or because of formal criteria which we could
try to fit. The second tier list includes several from the top 100--Rockefeller, Irvine, Surdna,
George Gund--Nathan Cummings--and a number of smaller foundations, but still capable
of 6 figure grants: Aaron Diamond, Revson, Rockefeller Family & Associates, New World,
Winston Foundation for World Peace.
Once we drop to the $35,000 to $75,000 grant range, the list enlarges, but these take as long
to cultivate as the bigger ones, so it makes sense to start from the top.
Foundation fund raising at this level has extraordinary payoffs--but it takes senior staff
time, not `grant writing' but in communicating. It is therefore expensive, and not
successfully done as an afterthought to everything else in the day. It also requires `venture
capital visits' to the foundations to open doors and conversations that lead to partnerships.
In initiating three top level contacts in April, May and June, and attempting to capitalize on
the opportunities apparent to us, we have already been stretched beyond our capacity to
really interface effectively with these funders--although admittedly much of the problem to
date has been due to the fact that we don't yet have a clear business plan for national
programming.
Foundation grant making will most likely proceed as short-term funding. Funders will want
by bob feldman
to `fund projects, not operations.' We should presume that we can succeed in raising serious
money to launch or establish new programs, etc. but not to sustain them beyond start-up.
The standard of self-sufficiency will be required for many proposals we submit, and our
own planning will be most successful if we relate to this funding source accordingly.
Short-Run Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grant seeking Program
Seek Development Committee leadership in planning for Foundation grant seeking
Pursue 3 ànchor' grants to acquire funding beginning in FY'93 from the Big 3 foundations
we've already begun to work with.
Long-Range Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grant seeking Program
Initiate an informal `feasibility inquiry' of foundation support for Pacifica's objectives by

requesting visits with the dozen top prospects to shape proposals and establish
relationships...
Foundation Grants Summary: Late this spring we began our first efforts in national
foundation grant seeking on behalf of national programming. We have a good chance of
securing six figure grants in the coming fiscal year from any or all of the 3 foundations
we're working with, but our approach is still dependent upon our own organizational
progress toward a business plan that we are committed to following through on.
The second tier of foundation prospects is more challenging, and will require increased
staff resources, a modest feasibility inquiry and active planning with the Board
Development Committee.
By 1995, billionaire speculator George Soros' Open Society Institute had given the Pacifica Foundation
a $40,000 grant. And in 1996, the Carnegie Corporation of New York gave Pacifica a $25,000 grant to
launch its DEMOCRACY NOW show. In 1997 came a $13,000 grant from the J.M. Kaplan Fund to
Pacifica to provide support for DEMOCRACY NOW. And in 1998 came a $25,000 grant to Pacifica
from the Public Welfare Foundation "to report on hate crimes and related issues as part of its
`DEMOCRACY NOW!" public-affairs radio program and an additional $10,000 grant to support
DEMOCRACY NOW from the J.M. Kaplan Fund. That same year the Ford Foundation gave a $75,000
grant to Pacifica "toward marketing consultancy, promotional campaign and program development
activities for radio program, DEMOCRACY NOW." In 1998 and 1999, two grants, totaling $22,500,
were also given to Pacifica by the Boehm Foundation, to support its DEMOCRACY NOW show.
In early 2002, an additional Ford Foundation grant of $75,000 was given to Deep Dish TV "for the
by bob feldman
television news series, DEMOCRACY NOW, to continue incorporating the aftermath of the September
11th attack into future broadcasts." Besides being presently subsidized by the Ford Foundation to air
Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW show, Deep Dish TV, with an annual income of $158,000 in 2000, was
also subsidized by the MacArthur Foundation in the 1990s. Between 1993 and 1998, $190,000 in
grants were given to Deep Dish TV by the MacArthur Foundation. And one of the members of Deep
Dish TV's board of directors in recent years has apparently been a WBAI staff person named Mario
Murillo.
Another Ford Foundation grant of $200,000 was given in April 2002 to the Astraea Foundation, whose
former board finance committee chairperson, Leslie Cagan, is presently the chairperson of Pacifica's
national board. Three other grants have been given to the Astraea Foundation by the Ford Foundation
since 2000: two grants, totaling $75,000, in 2000; and a $200,000 grant in 2001 "for general support
and subgrants to community-based organizations addressing social, political and economic justice,
especially those focused on lesbians and other sexual minorities." The former finance committee
chairperson of the Ford Foundation-sponsored Astraea Foundation recently signed a $2 million "golden
handshake / sweetheart contract" with the Ford Foundation-sponsored, soon-to-be-privatized
DEMOCRACY NOW producer (who has apparently been receiving a $90,000/year salary from
Pacifica in recent years for her alternative journalism work).
Part 2:
FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY
The FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/Institute for Public Accuracy alternative media gatekeepers/censors--which
includes COUNTERSPIN co-hosts/producers Steve Rendall and Janine Jackson, Institute for Public
Accuracy/MAKING CONTACT executive director Norman Solomon, MSNBC/DONAHUE SHOW
PRODUCER Jeff Cohen and WORKING ASSETS RADIO show producer Laura Flanders--have also
been subsidized by the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations in recent years.
At a June 1988 street fair in Manhattan's Union Square which marked the 35th anniversary of the
Rosenbergs' execution, MSNBC DONAHUE SHOW producer Jeff Cohen sat behind a table selling
copies of his recently-created Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] group's journal, EXTRA!.
Within a few years, Cohen's FAIR alternative media group was airing a weekly media watch show
called COUNTERSPIN on Pacifica's WBAI station in New York City. What listeners of
COUNTERSPIN were not told in the 1990s, however, was that around 30 percent of FAIR's funding
was coming from foundation grants, including grants from Establishment foundations like the
Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Ford
Foundation.
In 1991, FAIR was given a $20,000 grant from the Rockefeller Family fund "for general support." And
then in 1992, annual grants to FAIR started to pour in from the MacArthur Foundation offices in
Chicago. In an early 1997 interview, the program officer who was then responsible for the MacArthur
Foundation's media program, Patricia Boero, told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN magazine: "MacArthur
by bob feldman
is funding Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. And in '96, they received $75,000 towards the cost of
operations. We've been funding it since 1992, at approximately the same level. It was slightly higher a
few years ago, when the media budget was a little bigger." Boero also told
AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN in 1997 that one reason the MacArthur Foundation began funding FAIR
was that FAIR was already being funded by other foundations such as "the Rockefeller Family Fund."
Later in 1997, more MacArthur Foundation money was thrown in FAIR's direction by a MacArthur
"genius grant" program--which was then headed by a member of both the Public Broadcasting Service
[PBS] board and NATION magazine's Nation Institute Board, named Catharine Stimpson. A dancer
who was the partner of one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN radio show was given
a $290,000 individual grant by the MacArthur Foundation program which Nation Institute and PBS
board member Stimpson directed. Since 1997, FAIR has continued to receive grants from the
MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 it was given an additional grant of $150,000 by the MacArthur
Foundation. And in 2000, another MacArthur Foundation of $125,000 was given to FAIR.
Another Establishment foundation, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann
Foundation also began subsidizing FAIR's alternative media work in the early 1990s. In 1995, for
instance, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave FAIR a $150,000 grant "to support promotion of book
THE WAY THINGS AREN'T," which was co-authored by COUNTERSPIN co-host/producer Steve
Rendall. And in 1996, an additional grant of $15,000 from the Schumann Foundation (whose president,
Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary
in the 1960s) was given to FAIR. Since 1996 FAIR has continued to receive grants from Moyers'
Schumann Foundation, including a post-2000 grant of between $50,000 and $100,000. In addition, one
of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, Janine Jackson, sits on the board of a
group, Citizens for Independent Broadcasting [CIPB]. In 2002, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave
the Center for Social Studies Education a $200,000 grant "for continued support for activities of
Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting [CIPB]."
The executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA]/MAKING CONTACT alternative
media group, Norman Solomon, was listed on FAIR's 1997 form 990 as being the "president" of FAIR
and has been a FAIR associate in recent years. Like FAIR, former FAIR President Solomon's Institute
for Public Accuracy, with an annual income of $267,000, has been subsidized by Bill Moyers'
Schumann Foundation. In 1997, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to Solomon's
IPA/International Media project "for effort to hold think tanks to high standards of accuracy."
In addition to being subsidized by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation and the
Schumann Foundation in the 1990s, FAIR also began receiving grants from the Ford Foundation in the
mid-1990s. As the WORKING ASSETS RADIO web site noted in 2001: "As the founder of the
Women's Desk at the media watchdog FAIR [WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer-host Laura]
Flanders received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for a collaborative project to combat
racism and sexism in the news. The resulting book, REAL MAJORITY, MEDIA MINORITY: THE
COST OF SIDELINING WOMEN IN REPORTING, was published to rave reviews by Common
Courage Press in 1997." Besides the Ford Foundation's $200,000 grant to FAIR in 1996 or 1997 to help
by bob feldman
subsidize the alternative media work of its Women's Desk, an additional grant of $150,000 from the
Ford Foundation was given to FAIR in 1997 or 1998. And in 2001, yet another $150,000 grant was
given to FAIR by the Ford Foundation for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of
the news media in the United States."
In recent months, the Ford Foundation and Schumann Foundation-subsidized "media watchdogs" from
FAIR and the Institute for Public Accuracy--Norman Solomon and Steve Rendall--have seemed more
interested in preventing 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists from receiving any airtime on
Pacifica's radio stations than in revealing the historical links of their funders to the CIA or the Johnson
White House to their alternative media listeners and readers. And WORKING ASSETS RADIO--which
is aired on San Francisco's KALW and produced by a former co-host/producer of FAIR's
COUNTERSPIN and a former Pacifica Network News staff person--has apparently not been eager to
welcome 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists onto the show.
WORKING ASSETS RADIO
WORKING ASSETS RADIO is a promotional/marketing tool of the $140 million/year, for-profit
Working Assets, Inc. telecommunications company. And besides funding its own alternative
WORKING ASSETS RADIO show that is aired on KALW in the Bay Area and over the Internet,
Working Assets Inc. also helps fund other alternative media groups such as FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and
Norman Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA). In 1996, for instance FAIR/COUNTERSPIN
was given a $59,723 grant by Working Assets Inc. Among the alternative media groups funded by
Working Assets Inc. in 2000, besides FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's IPA were Free
Speech TV and the Independent Press Association. That same year, Working Assets Inc. also helped
fund a group with which DEMOCRACY NOW producer/host Amy Goodman has worked closely, the
East Timor Action Network, as well as the National Public Radio News and Information Fund, the
Astraea Foundation, People for the American Way Foundation, the Center for Campus Organizing,
United for a Fair Economy, Children's Defense Fund, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights
Action League (NARAL), MADRE, and the American Friends Service Committee.
Based in San Francisco, Working Assets Inc. is a privately-held, secretive telecommunications
company that discloses very little financial information about its for-profit business to either its
400,000 customers or to U.S. consumers in general. One of its founders was Tides Foundation
President Drummond Pike. A trustee of Mills College in recent years, Laura Scher, is a top executive at
Working Assets Inc. Another top Working Assets Inc. executive, Michael Kieschnick, has also been
involved until recently with the board of the National Network of Grantmakers, which also includes
representatives of the Funding Exchange and the board of Mother Jones magazine/Foundation for
National Progress. Kieschnick still sits on the White House Project Advisory Board between folks like
PBS CEO Pat Michell and former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale. The White House Project
Advisory Board was set-up to promote the presidential candidacies of mainstream women politicians
such as U.S. Senator Rodham-Clinton. Another Working Assets Inc. official in recent years, Lawrence
Livak, has also been the Tides Foundation Treasurer in recent years.
Because Working Assets Inc.'s stock is not sold on the stock market, it is not legally obligated to post
by bob feldman
much financial information about its business operations onto the Internet. In addition, executives at
Working Assets Inc. have been reluctant to reveal to Movement writer-activists what kind of salaries it
is presently paying its top executives. Working Assets Inc. has also collaborated with J.C. Penney in
recent years on a "Shop for Social Change" business project.
Besides having the book she wrote in the 1990s subsidized by the Ford Foundation, the WORKING
ASSETS RADIO host/producer, Laura Flanders, also had her journalism work subsidized for awhile in
1998 by another foundation. After the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to the
Center for Democracy Studies of The Nation Institute, "to monitor anti-abortion activities of several
right-wing groups," Flanders was employed briefly by that Nation magazine think-tank to write an
article on the subject, which subsequently appeared in The Nation magazine. In 2000, the Rockefeller
Foundation also gave the WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host and two colleagues a $20,000
grant "to support the creation and production of Àction Heroes,' a multidisciplinary work." Members
of the Rockefeller Foundation have included World Bank manager, a Ford Motor Company director, a
MacArthur Foundation director, and an ITT Sheraton Corp. vice-president in recent years.
Besides being the niece of COUNTERPUNCH editor Alexander Cockburn, WORKING ASSETS
RADIO producer/host Flanders is also the older sister of Stephanie Flanders, who worked in the
Clinton Administration as a speech writer/special assistant to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Around the same time that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers was named the new president of
Harvard University, Stephanie Flanders began working as a NEW YORK TIMES reporter. An October
1999 OBSERVER article by Simon Kuper, entitled "The New Elite Who Run Our Equal Society"
indicated that the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host's younger sister is part of a British elite group
nicknamed "The Young Chiefs." According to Kuper: "Members of this new elite were presented with
thrilling opportunities early in life... Another characteristic of the new elite is networks. The Young
Chiefs, who tend to live near each other in the center of London, got the big breaks from old friends or
people they meet at their friends' brunches or leaving parties. On the political side, the Young Chiefs
are so close that many of them are related. Ed Balls (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times,
economic adviser to Gordon Brown)...studied in Boston...Ball's wife, Yvette Cooper (Oxford and
Harvard, now a Labor MP), is a Young Chief too, as is her sometime tutorial partner at Oxford,
Stephanie Flanders (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury
Secretary Larry Summers)...Nick Denton (Oxford and the Financial Times, founder of Moreover.com)
was a friend of Flanders at the Financial Times and through her met the elder Balls"
Part 3:
THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE
The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show is a promotional/advertising tool for a liberal-left
establishment magazine, THE NATION, that generally tends to be a Democratic Party-oriented
publication. Neither the magazine nor its radio tie-in show that is aired on Pacifica radio stations and
many college radio stations may be eager to encourage much discussion about the historic relationship
between foundations and the CIA or about the evidence of a 9/11 conspiracy which grassroots
journalists and researchers have discovered. Yet in a 1996 interview with former BOSTON PHOENIX
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media critic Dan Kennedy, NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel claimed that "We have a monopoly
on weekly progressive journalism in this country." But are RADIO NATION listeners and readers of
THE NATION magazine actually being provided with authentically progressive anti-war, anti-
corporate and anti-establishment journalism each week by THE NATION editor?
THE NATION magazine, a for-profit limited-partnership, was started in 1865 by a British abolitionist
named E.L. Godkin and in the early 20th-century it was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard, a
descendant of U.S. abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. It was subsequently owned by a Wall Street
financier--the father of a NATION writer named Bobby Tuckman--who sold it to then-NATION editor
Freda Kirchwey in the 1930s for $35,000 (which he loaned to her). NATION editor-owner Kirchwey
was a former member of the early 20th-century Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) campus group
that Jack London and Upton Sinclair had headed.
By the early 1940s, however, THE NATION was an increasingly large money-loser and was in danger
of folding because of its financial difficulties. So in early 1943, Kirchwey decided on a reorganization
plan to keep THE NATION publishing. She divested herself of her individual ownership and created a
new, nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, which would own THE NATION on a nonprofit basis--
although Kirchwey would still determine the magazine's editorial direction by serving as its publisher.
In 1955, Kirchwey retired and a health insurance industry executive named George C. Kirstein became
the magazine's publisher and the principal financial backer of the nonprofit Nation Associates, which
continued to own the magazine.
In the 1970s, however, THE NATION was on the verge of bankruptcy again, until a group of investors
led by Hamilton Fish III purchased ownership of THE NATION. Although Hamilton Fish's group of
investors sold THE NATION in 1985 to a former Wall Street investment banker (whose real estate and
utilities properties were worth about $200 million in 1991) named Arthur Carter, as recently as 2000
Hamilton Fish was being paid $83,000 a year salary by the magazine's tax-exempt Nation Institute
affiliate for being the Nation Institute's president.
After purchasing THE NATION in 1985, Arthur Carter began publishing his NEW YORK OBSERVER
weekly newspaper in 1987, under the initial supervision of former New York Times Company Vice-
Chairman James Goodale, a Wall Street corporate lawyer at Debevoise & Plimplton who was a
member of the Democratic Party National Convention's rules committee in 1988. Although NEW
YORK OBSERVER owner Carter sold THE NATION magazine in 1995 to a group of investors that
included Columbia University Magazine Journalism Center Director Victor Navasky, former
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairperson Alan Sagner, Hollywood actor Paul Newman,
novelist E.I. Doctorow and the current editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arthur Carter has continued to sit
on the board of trustees of the Nation Institute in recent years.
NATION magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is the daughter of International Rescue Committee
[IRC] board member William vanden Heuvel. NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father is mentioned in
the book THE CULTURAL COLD WAR by Frances Stoner Saunders in the following reference to the
CIA-linked Farfield Foundation: "First president of the Farfield [Foundation], and the CIA's most
significant front-man, was Julius `Junkie' Fleischmann, the millionaire heir to a high yeast and gin
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fortune...He had helped finance THE NEW YORKER...`The Farfield Foundation was a CIA foundation
and there were many such foundations,' Tom Braden went on to explain...Other Farfield directors
included William vanden Heuvel a New York lawyer who was close to both John and Bobby Kennedy."
A short review by Michael Rogin of THE CULTURAL COLD WAR book, entitled "When The CIA
Was The NEA," appeared in THE NATION's June 12, 2000 issue. It also made a reference to "small
CIA-created nonprofits, especially the Farfield foundation," yet failed to disclose to THE NATION
readers that the father of the magazine's editor used to sit on the Farfield Foundation board.
In the 1950s, the Farfield Foundation helped subsidize the activity of the liberal anti-communist
American Committee for Cultural Freedom. As the book THE HIGHER CIRCLES by G. William
Domhoff noted in 1970: "It seems that in the mid-fifties the head of the American Committee for
Cultural Freedom was having trouble getting money for his project. So he wrote to Edward Lilly, a
member of a governmental agency for coordinating intelligence and psychological warfare operations,
to plead his case. At the same time he wrote to [non-communist leftist Norman] Thomas, asking him to
get in touch with [then-CIA Director] Allen Dulles via telephone. Shortly thereafter the American
Committee for Cultural Freedom received $14,000 from the Farfield Foundation and the Asia
Foundation...Thomas then wrote to the committee head: Ì am, of course, delighted that the Farfield
Foundation came through...'" The 1982 book ROOTED IN SECRECY: THE CLANDESTINE
ELEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS by Joan Coxsedge also observed that: "The CIA is not so
crude as to simply hand over money directly. It normally uses wealthy philanthropists such as the J.M.
Kaplan Fund and foundations such as the Asia Foundation, the Farfield Foundation and the Hoblitzelle
Foundation."
Born in 1930, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father apparently served between 1953 and 1954 as the
executive assistant to CIA founder William "Wild Bill" Donovan, when Donovan was the U.S.
Ambassador to Thailand. In their 1998 book WHITE OUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS,
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair make the following references to the political role that U.S.
Ambassador to Thailand Donovan played around the time that IRC board member Vanden Heuvel
apparently was Ambassador Donovan's executive assistant:
General Phao had been made director of Thailand's national police after the CIA-backed
coup of 1948 led by Major General Phin Choohannan. Phao's 40,000-member police force,
the Police Knights, immediately engaged in a campaign of assassinations of Phin and
Phao's political enemies. These troops also assumed control of Thailand's lucrative opium
trade...Phao's control of the opium trade was directly abetted by the CIA, which had
funneled him $35 million in aid...
In the 1950s the CIA backed General Phao in a struggle with another Thai general for
monopoly of control of Thailand's opium and heroin trade...Backed by squads of CIA
advisers, Phao set about the task of turning Thailand into a police state. The country's
leading dissidents and academics were jailed...Phao also cornered the country's gold
market, played a leading role on the top twenty corporate boards in the country, charged
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leading executives and businessmen protection fees and ran prostitution houses and
gambling dens. Phao became great friends with Bill Donovan, at that time U.S. ambassador
to Thailand.
In the early 1960s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father served as U.S. Attorney-General Robert F.
Kennedy's special assistant. According to WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, around
the time that William Vanden Heuvel was his special assistant, RFK "was obsessed with the elimination
of Castro," and "told Allen Dulles that he didn't care if the Agency employed the Mob for the hit as
long as they kept him fully briefed."
During the 1960s and 1970s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also became increasingly active
in the International Rescue Committee [IRC] In addition to being a current board member of the IRC,
William vanden Heuvel has, in the past, held the posts of IRC President, IRC Vice-Chairman and
Chairman of the Planning Committee of the IRC.
In an essay that appeared in the Summer 1997 issue of NEW POLITICS magazine, entitled "Albert
Shanker: No Flowers," Paul Buhle made the following reference to the International Rescue
Committee's historical role: "Eric Chester's important recent volume, COVERT NETWORKS:
PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE AND THE CIA, offers a well-
researched perspective on one of the most interesting Cold War (and post-Cold War) operations linked
on one side to favorite causes of prominent liberals and on the other to assorted intelligence agency
projects...The International Rescue Committee [IRC] became a central mechanism--through its spin-off
American Friends of Vietnam [AFVN]--for selling the impending Vietnam War to the U.S. public...The
young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, working as its public relations officer, had described the IRC as the
ìdeal instrument of Psychological Warfare.'
"The IRC was subsequently involved directly or indirectly in a shef of other operations...As during the
U.S. saturation bombing in Southeast Asia, the IRC followed U.S. trained and funded military forces
decimating large districts of El Salvador..."
The book cited by Buhle, COVERT NETWORK: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL
RESCUE COMMITTEE, AND THE CIA by Eric Thomas Chester, was published in 1995 by M.E.
Sharpe Inc. An unsigned review of the book that appeared on the Internet described Chester's book in
the following way: "The Cold War period in American history was characterized by a seamless
cooperation among international charities, quasi-governmental organizations, major foundation,
funding conduits, and the CIA...This book singles out the International Rescue Committee, and to a
lesser extent the Ford Foundation."
During the 1980s, the Interhemispheric Resource Center in Albuquerque also examined the political
role that the IRC has played historically. Besides noting that the IRC board members in the 1980s
included folks like Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Lauder, Albert Shanker and William
vanden Heuvel, the Interhemispheric Resource Center also observed:
The IRC has consistently followed policies which have indeed coincided with U.S. foreign
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policy interests. It has operated in such geopolitical hotspots as Southeast Asia, Central
America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe, conducting programs which have bolstered
Washington's anti-communist activities...
Many of IRC's members have ties to the intelligence community, and at least one author
calls the IRC "a long-time ally of the Central Intelligence Agency."
...In 1987, it received approximately 72 percent of its fundings from U.S. government
contracts and grants...
In 1987, IRC received a $1 million grant from the National Endowment for Democracy
[NED], which was appropriated by the U.S. Congress through the Agency for International
development [AID], to "assist the independent Polish trade union Solidarity..." ...Recently,
IRC's major focus has been on the Afghan refugees...IRC has published 10 books for the
National Endowment for Democracy-funded American Friends of Afghanistan [AFA]...
[Former IRC Chairperson] Leo Cherne [since-deceased] has a long history of intelligence
connections. He served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
from 1973-1976, the chairman from 1976-1979, and most recently, served as the vice-chair
on former President Ronald Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board...In 1954 Cherne
sent a cable to a U.S. government official about the situation in Vietnam, "If free elections
were held today all agree privately communists would win...Future depends on organizing
all resources to resettle refugees, sustain now bankrupt government..." During the Reagan
Administration, Cherne was involved in private fund raising efforts coordinated by the
National Security Council aimed at disseminating propaganda supporting U.S. foreign
policy.
William Casey [former IRC president] was one of the members of an IRC commission that
visited Indochinese refugee camps in 1978 and advocated "a virtual open-door policy" for
letting the refugees into the U.S. Under Reagan, Casey was head of the CIA until his death
in 1987...
John Richardson [former IRC president} was the Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural
Affairs from 1969-1977. He served as the head of the U.S. Information Agency's [USIA]
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1961-1968. During those years, it was closely
linked to the CIA...
The IRC was heavily involved in supporting the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. In
fact, the executive committee for the pro-Diem lobby, the American Friends of Vietnam,
was virtually identical to that of the IRC. The strongest supporter of Diem in the group was
former IRC official Joseph Buttinger..."
by bob feldman
In the late 1960s, THE NATION editor's father was the president of the IRC at the same time former
CIA Director William Casey was the chairman of the IRC's executive committee. And according to the
minutes of the IRC board of directors meeting of June 15, 1967, "Leo Cherne appointed the following
Middle East Subcommittee: William Casey, Leo Cherne, David Sher, William vanden Heuvel and
Edwin Wesley" and "The Board meeting adjourned at 7:10 and was followed by the first meeting of the
Middle East Subcommittee."
Besides sitting on the IRC board next to NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel's father in both the late
1960s and the mid-1970s, former CIA Director Casey was also one of the original investors and a
director of the Capital Cities media conglomerate that gobbled-up ABC in the 1980s--before, itself,
being gobbled-up by the Disney Company media conglomerate in the 1990s. Former IRC President
Casey also sat on the board of directors of the LILCO utility company, which operated the Shoreham
nuclear power plant on Long Island, despite the opposition of U.S. anti-nuclear power activists in the
1970s. Prior to managing Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination,
IRC board member Casey had also worked in the corporate law firm of Rogers & Wells, where he
represented the special interests of clients like Saudia American Lines, International Crude Oil Refining
Company and the Government of Indonesia. As Reagan's CIA director until his death in 1987, former
IRC board member Casey continued to retain control of over $3 million worth of stock in companies
like DuPont and Exxon while he simultaneously made decisions at the CIA which affected the
profitability of his personal stock holdings.
Casey was not the only IRC director who became involved in politically partisan Establishment party
presidential campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s. During the 1976 presidential campaign, NATION
editor Vanden Heuvel's father also chaired the New York State presidential primary campaign
committee of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In a January 12, 1976 letter to Robert Shnayerson,
the then-editor-in-chief of HARPER'S magazine, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father wrote:
It is my understanding that you were considering an article regarding the presidential
candidacy of former governor Jimmy Carter in your March issue of Harper's magazine. In
that context, I send you a copy of a telegram from Congressman Andrew Young addressed
to a recent column published by the Village Voice. I hope you will find it interesting and
relevant.
If there are any questions, please call me at either 425-XXXX or 757-XXXX.
Yours sincerely, William vanden Heuvel.
The telegram referred to in IRC board member William vanden Heuvel's letter (sent by former Carter
Administration Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young to a Bardle B. at Carter Headquarters on 1/9/76)
made the following reference to a column written by Alexander Cockburn: "The January 12 column by
Alexander Cockburn, `The Riddle of Jimmy Carter, Can A Dark Horse Change His Spots,' is a
wonderful example of the creation of `The Big Lie' by a compilation of half truth and distorted facts.
by bob feldman
"Jimmy Carter is not and never has been guilty of the kind of implied racism of these charges. He is
one of the finest products of a most misunderstood region of our nation."
But according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn: "The
Democratic candidate for President in 1976, Jimmy Carter, was a member of the Trilateral
Commission...Indeed, the number of Trilateral Commission members appointed to important posts in
the Carter administration was startling. Brzezinski became his National Security Adviser...Walter
Mondale, the new Vice-President, was a member of the Trilateral Commission. So were Ambassador to
the United Nations Andrew Young, Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal, and Secretary of
Defense Harold Brown...The price of food and the necessities of life continued to rise faster than wages
were rising. Unemployment remained officially at 6 or 8 percent--unofficially, the rates were higher.
For certain key groups in the population--young people, and especially young black people--the
unemployment rate was 20 percent or 30 percent.
"By 1978 it was clear that blacks in the United States, the group most in support of Carter for President,
and without whose support he could not have been elected, were bitterly disappointed with his policies.
He opposed federal aid to poor people who needed abortions, and when it was pointed out to him that
this was unfair, because rich women could get abortions with ease, he replied: `Well, as you know,
there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cannot.'"
On October 6, 1976 the then-executive vice president of THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sydney Gruson,
also wrote the following letter to William vanden Heuvel (on New York Times Company stationary),
which was apparently mailed to Carter/Mondale Headquarters at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan: "Dear
Bill: Enclosed is the resume of my brother that I spoke to you about. He is an extremely talented
fellow. Anything you can do will be deeply appreciated. How about bringing your fellow in for lunch
before the election? As ever, Sydney."
The NATION editor's father then wrote the following letter on October 12, 1976 to one of the people
who apparently would be responsible for offering people jobs in a new Carter Administration--Jack
Watson of the King & Spalding corporate law firm. (Disclosure note: a King & Spalding lawyer in
Manhattan is currently representing his landlord father in a frivolous, harassment-type lawsuit against a
rent-stabilized tenant who is a sister of the writer of this article): "Dear Jack, Sydney Gruson is the
Executive Vice President of the New York Times. He made a special point the other evening of taking
me aside and asking me to forward a resume for his brother, Edward Gruson. It would be helpful if you
could have someone review the resume--and perhaps a note from you to Sydney Gruson as well as to
his brother would be most useful. Sincerely, William vanden Heuvel."
That same day, the 1976 Carter/Mondale New York Campaign official Vanden Heuvel also wrote the
following letter to New York Times Executive Vice President Sydney Gruson:
Dear Sidney, I have forwarded Edward's resume with a special note to Jack Watson. If
Governor Carter does win the election, I assume Jack will have a major transitional role,
including personnel. In my next conversation with him, I will pursue the matter.
by bob feldman
My guess is that Governor Carter's schedule is not going to permit lunch before the
election. The debates make scheduling almost impossible because they require essentially
three days for each event.
Hoping to see you very soon.
As ever, William vanden Heuvel
After Trilateral Commission member Carter was elected president, he eventually named William
vanden Heuvel to be his deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. The IRC board
member vanden Heuvel's daughter, Katrina, meanwhile attended Princeton University, majored in
politics and apparently graduated from Princeton in 1981. According to an article by Van Wallach
which appeared in a March 20, 1996 issue of a Princeton alumni publication, Katrina vanden Heuvel
began working "as a NATION intern for nine months after taking the `Politics and the Press' course
taught by Blair Clark, the magazine's editor from 1976 to 1978" and "returned to THE NATION in
1984 as assistant editor for foreign affairs." In 1988 she married a professor named Stephen F. Cohen,
who was also a contributing editor of THE NATION in 1996. In recent years, a "Stephen F. Cohen--
NYU" has also been on a POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS magazine editorial board that also includes a
"James Noren--Central Intelligence Agency." In 1989, IRC board member vanden Heuvel's daughter
was then named "THE NATION editor-at-large, responsible for its coverage of the USSR" and "in
1990 she co-founded LYI I MYI...a quarterly journal linking American and Russian women," according
to the Princeton alumni publication.
After the former NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE editor-turned NATION magazine editor, Victor
Navasky, organized the for-profit business partnership (which included Katrina vanden Heuvel as one
of the business partners) to buy THE NATION magazine from NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Arthur
Carter, Navasky appointed Katrina vanden Heuvel as the editor, while he assumed the title of publisher
and editorial director.
By 1996, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel had "moved the magazine's content into new venues through
a syndicated radio program and a World-Wide web page," according to the Princeton alumni
publication article. Like Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW show and FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, the
syndicated NATION magazine radio show, RADIO NATION, is also subsidized by Establishment
foundation money. The money is granted to the non-profit division of THE NATION magazine, The
Nation Institute, on whose board of trustees sits NATION editor Vanden Heuvel and the former
member of the PBS board of directors who used to head the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant"
program, Catharine Stimpson. The Dean of an NYU Graduate School in recent years, Stimpson has
also been the treasurer of The Nation Institute in recent years. Of the $1.4 million in annual revenues
which The Nation Institute takes in, around $88,000 is spent on producing the magazine's syndicated
RADIO NATION show, which is aired on around 100 U.S. radio stations, including Pacifica Radio's
stations. NATION magazine editors and writers who have attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11
conspiracy journalists and researchers in recent months, like David Corn, have also apparently been
by bob feldman
using RADIO NATION as a self-promotional, radio tie-in media outlet for advancing their careers as
professional journalists in the Establishment's mainstream media world.
Part 4:
ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS
Although David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show is aired on a number of NPR stations
which are subsidized by both corporate underwriters and grants from various Establishment
foundations, the Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. (of which
ALTERNATIVE RADIO is a part) doesn't appear to have yet been given grants directly from the Ford
Foundation or other Establishment foundations. However, one of ALTERNATIVE RADIO's most
frequently featured guests, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, was given a $350,000 "Kyoto Prize" by the
Japanese Establishment's Inamori Foundation in 1988.
The Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. does business as Z magazine.
Ironically, although it may have taken its name from a Costa-Gavras film adaptation of the novel Z
(which dramatizes the uncovering of an assassination conspiracy), Z magazine has attempted to
marginalize 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists in recent months on its web site and in its
printed pages..
According to its 990 form for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2000, Z magazine takes in over
$641,000 a year in gross revenues and only has annual expenses of $531,000. A big chunk of Z
magazine's annual revenues goes to three members of just one family: the Albert-Sargent family. At
least $120,000 per year of Z magazine's total revenues ends up in the pockets of either Michael Albert,
his partner Lydia Sargent or Lydia's son Eric Sargent. All three family members are each paid an annual
salary of $30,000 by Z magazine. An additional $10,000 in "rent" is paid to each family member by Z
magazine for the "office space" that the Albert-Sargent family "rents" from itself, to publish its Z
magazine and maintain its web site.
Although the left entrepreneur family that publishes Z magazine took in $120,000 in the fiscal year
ending 12/31/2000, all the writers it published were only paid $38,700 during the year, for the articles
they wrote.
Of the $38,700 which the Albert-Sargent family paid its writers in 2000, $4,400 was given to
ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer David Barsamian, whose book THE DECLINE AND FALLOF
PUBLIC BROADCASTING, was published, with an introduction by DEMOCRACY NOW INC's
Amy Goodman, in 2000 by South End Press. Although a chart in Barsamian's book on public
broadcasting indicates that the Ford Foundation was among the PBS national programming
underwriters who contributed more than $1 million in 2000, the book's index apparently contains no
reference to the Ford Foundation's crucial role in setting up the public broadcasting system.
Barsamian's book index also contains no reference to the Schumann Foundation, although it makes 3
references to book passages that describe Schumann Foundation President Bill Moyers' Public Affairs
TV programs in a favorable way.
by bob feldman
South End Press is the business enterprise of the Institute for Social &Cultural Change publishing firm
which the Albert-Sargent family started in 1984, apparently with the help of $232,956 in low-interest
"loans" from various individuals and organizations, that will no longer have to be paid back. According
to the South End Press's form 990 for the fiscal year ending 6/30/200, the book publishing arm of Z
magazine (which markets books like PROPAGANDA AND THE PUBLIC MIND:
CONVERSATIONS WITH NOAM CHOMSKY that ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer Barsamian co-
authored), took in over $1 million from its book sales.
So if Z magazine/web site and South End Press were considered as one left business entity, we would
be talking about a business that takes in about $1.7 million a year from the cultural leftism market. In
times of U.S. imperialist war, anti-war books by anti-conspiracy theorist Chomsky, such as 9/11, tend
to sell well and even make mainstream media best-seller lists. So, even without being directly
dependent upon grants from Establishment Foundations which wish to discourage public opinion from
considering the evidence dug up by U.S. conspiracy journalists and researchers, ALTERNATIVE
RADIO/Z MAGAZINE/SOUTH END PRESS may have a vested economic interest in attempting to
marginalize anti-war journalists involved in 9/11 conspiracy research and journalism.
Part 5:
MOTHER JONES / Foundation for National Progress
Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/IPA, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress received a lot
of money from Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation in the
1990s. In 1995, for instance, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress was given a
$500,000 grant by Moyers' Schumann Foundation "to support MOTHER JONES magazine." A second
grant of $150,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1996 "to
support the hiring of a new senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine." And an additional grant of
$100,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1997 "to promote
money in politics investigation by MOTHER JONES magazine." As Rick Edmunds noted in a recent
essay on the Internet (entitled "Getting Behind the Media: What are the subtle trade offs of foundation
support for journalism?"): "Though it is often buried in the fine print of the masthead...many journals
of opinion are themselves nonprofit, the better to attract foundation funding. That is true of MOTHER
JONES."
MOTHER JONES magazine claims to be a non-profit "Foundation for National Progress." Yet
MOTHER JONES magazine took in nearly $6 million in annual revenues in 2000, including $822,358
from the sale of advertising space and $176,140 from renting out its subscriber list. From this gross
income of $6 million in 2000, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress then paid out the
following salaries to its top alternative media executives:
1. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor-in-Chief Roger Cohn was paid an annual salary of $144,670;
2. MOTHER JONES magazine Publisher and Foundation for National Progress Board President Jay
Haris--a former general manager of the Washington Post Company's NEWSWEEK magazine's Pacifica
operations--was paid an annual salary of $144,379;
by bob feldman
3. MOTHER JONES magazine Director of Sales & Marketing Eric Weiss was paid an annual salary of
$105,004;
4. MOTHER JONES magazine Creative Director Jane Palecek was paid an annual salary of $88,197;
5. Foundation for National Progress Secretary/Treasurer and CEO Joan Catherine Braun was paid an
annual salary of $85,453;
6. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor Eric Bates was paid an annual salary of $74,716; and
7. MOTHER JONES magazine Advertising Manager Eileen Ellis was paid an annual salary of $67,233;
and
8. MOTHER JONES Art Director Caroline Joy was paid an annual salary of $61,187.
MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress also spent $247,000 on fund-raising in 2000; and
its board of directors included Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, Kadima Foundation Chair Chara
Schreyer, HKH Foundation director Harriet Barlow and MOTHER JONES magazine founder Adam
Hochschild. Hochschild also has set up the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund, whose
stated tax-exempt purpose is to "promote the charitable literary and educational purposes of Foundation
for National Progress." According to its 2000 report, the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia
Fund apparently did this by contributing $2.4 million worth of stock to MOTHER JONES/Foundation
for National Progress. As a result, $1,176,617 worth of WalMart Stores stock (19,082 shares) was
apparently owned by MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 2001.
Besides receiving money from Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Hochschild Charitable
Trust/Sequoia Fund of one its own board members, another interesting connection to the world of
Establishment foundations exists at MOTHER JONES magazine. In 1997, the wife of MOTHER
JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Adam Hochschild--University of California-
Berkeley Professor of Sociology Arlie Russell Hochschild--was given a $3 million grant by the Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation "to establish a Center for Working Families" at UC-Berkeley, which she now
directs. Among the Establishment folks who presently sit on the board of trustees of the Sloan
Foundation which funds UC-Berkeley Professor Arlie Russell Hochschild's center is former Secretary
of the Air Force Sheila Widnall--who presently represents MIT on the board of trustees of the
Pentagon's weapons research think-tank: the Institute for Defense Analyses (www.ida.org). Other
members of the Sloan Foundation board include former chairmen of the General Motors, JP Morgan
and Morgan Stanley corporate boards and two other MIT professors. In 1991, the wife of MOTHER
JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Hochschild also was apparently given a grant
by the Ford Foundation.
So it's probably not likely that many muckraking articles about either the Ford Foundation's historic
relationship to the CIA, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and Public Affairs TV Inc., the Sloan
Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, MIT or UC-Berkeley--or on what evidence has been
dug up by 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers--will be published much by the MOTHER
JONES magazine alternative media gatekeepers/censors.
by bob feldman
Part 6:
PROGRESSIVE
The editor of PROGRESSIVE magazine, Matthew Rothschild, also attempted to smear and marginalize
9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers a few months ago. Coincidentally, the Madison, Wisconsin-
based PROGRESSIVE enterprise has also been receiving a lot of money from the foundations of a
politically unprogressive U.S. Establishment since the 1990s.
In 1992, for instance, a $50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation (on
whose board ABC News radio commentator Paul Harvey and Enron Global Power & Pipelines director
Thomas Theobald have sat for many years) "to solicit and disseminate opinion pieces relevant to U.S.
foreign policy and international security." That same year, "several MacArthur staff members" were
"called to consult with staff members of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign," according to THE
CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY. And, during the late 1990s, one of the top Clinton
Administration economic policymakers, Laura Tyson, became a member of the MacArthur Foundation
board of directors.
An additional $150,000 grant was also given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation in
1994. And in 2002, the MacArthur Foundation gave $120,000 more in grant money to the
PROGRESSIVE enterprise, whose magazine anti-conspiracy theorist Matthew Rothschild edits.
Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and PACIFICA/DEMOCRACY NOW, the PROGRESSIVE enterprise has
also been receiving a lot of money from the Ford Foundation since the 1990s. In 1998, for instance,
PROGRESSIVE was given a $200,000 grant by the Ford Foundation (on whose board of trustees sat
Clinton crony Vernon Jordan). And in 2000, two more grants, totaling $250,000, were given to
PROGRESSIVE by the Ford Foundation.
Besides receiving grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, PROGRESSIVE
has also obtained funds from The Rockefeller Foundation in recent years. In 1998, for instance, a
$50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by The Rockefeller Foundation.
In 2000, PROGRESSIVE Inc. took in an annual income of $1.7 million, including $69,727 from its
sale of advertising space. And its editor, Matthew Rothschild, has apparently been paid an annual salary
of $44,468 in recent years--for putting out a Democratic Party-oriented magazine that rarely mentions
the Ford Foundation's historic relation to the CIA and rarely publishes articles written by 9/11
conspiracy journalists or researchers.
Part 7:
FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA & U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY — part 1
In her book THE CULTURAL COLD WAR, Frances Stoner Saunders recalled how the Ford
Foundation collaborated with the CIA in the past--on behalf of the Ultra-Rich families of the U.S.
Establishment's power elite--to perpetuate a globalized corporate economic system which denies
political, economic and cultural freedom and equality to the majority of humanity:
by bob feldman
"Incorporated in 1936, the Ford Foundation was the tax-exempt cream of the vast Ford
fortune...The foundation had a record of close involvement in covert actions in Europe,
working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials on specific projects...On 21 January
1953, Allen Dulles, insecure about his future in the CIA under the newly elected
Eisenhower, had met his friend David Rockefeller for lunch. Rockefeller hinted heavily that
if Dulles decided to leave the Agency, he could reasonably expect to be invited to become
president of the Ford Foundation. Dulles need not have feared for his future...Allen Dulles
was to become Director of Central Intelligence.
"The new president of the Ford Foundation was announced shortly after. He was John
McCloy...By the time he came to the Ford Foundation, he had been Assistant Secretary of
War, president of the World Bank...In 1953 he also became chairman of the Rockefellers'
Chase Manhattan Bank, and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. After John F.
Kennedy's assassination, he was a Warren Commission appointee...McCloy took a
pragmatic view of the CIA's inevitable interest in the Ford Foundation when he assumed its
presidency. Addressing the concerns of some of the foundation's executives, who felt that
its reputation for integrity and independence was being undermined by involvement with
the CIA, McCloy argued that if they failed to cooperate, the CIA would simply penetrate
the foundation quietly by recruiting or inserting staff at lower levels. McCloy's answer to
this problem was to create an administrative unit within the Ford Foundation specifically to
deal with the CIA. Headed by McCloy and two foundation officers, this three-man
committee had to be consulted every time the Agency wanted to use the foundation, either
as a pass-through, or as cover. `They would check in with this particular committee, and if
it was felt that this was a reasonable thing and would not be against the foundation's long-
term interests, then the project would be passed along to the internal staff and other
foundation officers (without them) knowing the origins of the proposal,' explained
McCloy's biographer, Kai Bird.
"With this arrangement in place, the Ford Foundation became officially engaged as one of
those organizations the CIA was able to mobilize for political warfare...The foundation's
archives reveal a raft of joint projects. The East European Fund, a CIA front in which
George Kennan played a prominent role, got most of its money from the Ford
Foundation...The foundation gave $500,000 to Bill Casey's International Rescue Committee
[of which NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father was also an official], and substantial
grants to another CIA front, the World Assembly of Youth. It was also one of the single
largest donors to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think-tank which
exerted enormous influence on American foreign policy, and which operated (and continues
to operate) according to strict confidentiality rules which include a twenty-five-year
embargo on the release of its records...
"McGeorge Bundy, became president of the Ford Foundation in 1966 (coming straight from
by bob feldman
his job as Special Assistant to the President in Charge of National Security, which meant,
among other things, monitoring the CIA)...The Congress for Cultural Freedom...was one of
Ford Foundation's largest grantees, receiving $7 million by the early 1960s..."
THE CULTURAL COLD WAR book also recalled how the money from the J.M. Kaplan family (some
of which has been thrown towards Pacifica/DEMOCRACY NOW in recent years) was used in the past
by the CIA: "In 1956...J.M. Kaplan, president of the Welch Grape Juice Company, and president and
treasurer of the Kaplan Foundation (assets: $14 million), wrote to Allen Dulles offering his
services...Dulles subsequently arranged for a CIA `representative' to make an appointment with Kaplan.
The Kaplan Foundation could soon be counted as an asset, a reliable `pass-through' for secret funds
earmarked for CIA projects, amongst them the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and an institute headed
by veteran socialist and chairman of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, Norman Thomas.
"The use of philanthropic foundations was the most convenient way to pass large sums of
money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source. By the mid-1950s,
the CIA's intrusion into the foundation field was massive. Although figures are not
available for this period, the general counsel of a 1952 Congress committee appointed to
investigate US foundations concluded that Àn unparalleled amount of power is
concentrated increasingly in the hands of an interlocking and self-perpetuating group.
Unlike the power of corporate management, it is unchecked by stockholders; unlike the
power of government, it is unchecked by the people; unlike the power of the churches, it is
unchecked by any firmly established canons of value.' In 1976, a Select Committee
appointed to investigate US intelligence activities reported on the CIA's penetration of the
foundation field by the mid-1960s: during 1963-6, of the 700 grants over $10,000 given by
164 foundations, at least 108 involved partial or complete CIA funding. More importantly,
CIA funding was involved in nearly half the grants made by these 164 foundations in the
field of international activities during the same period.
"`Bona fide' foundations such as Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie were considered `the best
and most plausible kind of funding cover.' A CIA study of 1966 argued that this technique
was `particularly effective for democratically run membership organizations, which need to
assure their own unwitting members and collaborators, as well as their hostile critics, that
they have genuine, respectable, private sources of income.' Certainly, it allowed the CIA to
fund a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs affecting youth groups, labor
unions, universities, publishing houses, and other private institutions from the early 1950s."
Among the liberal-left Establishment anti-war folks sponsored by the Ford Foundation during the
1960s was a former head of the CIA-subsidized National Student Association [NSA] named Allard
Lownestein (who was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in 1980 by Dennis Sweeney).
According to the 1985 book THE PIED PIPER: ALLARD K. LOWENSTEIN AND THE LIBERAL
DREAM by Richard Cummings:
by bob feldman
"Students followed Lowenstein in his quest for a just and peaceful world. But they did not
know that his deep sense of patriotism and intense anti-Communism led him to work for
the CIA in Africa and Spain and to inform on suspected Communists in the civil rights
movement...In 1962...according to sources with background in intelligence work, he was
formally recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. Although the author's attempts to
obtain Lowenstein's CIA file under the Freedom of Information-Privacy Act from the CIA
and from his lawyer Gary Bellow proved unavailing, other evidence overwhelmingly
supports these sources...Lowenstein's work in the CIA involved southern Africa, and
because Franco supported Portugal and South Africa, it also involved Spain, where
Lowenstein worked with the anti-Communist left opposed to Franco...Lowenstein came to
believe that his greatest enemies were to his left...
"According to sources, Lowenstein was separated from the CIA sometime in 1967 (the
sources say Lowenstein `was in the agency from 1962 to 1967')...During 1975, Lowenstein
became deeply involved in the politics of Portugal because of his relationship with
Portugese Socialist Mario Soares, who was foreign minister at a period when the
Portuguese revolution was pushing increasingly leftward. Involving Lowenstein was his
friend Frank Carlucci, who served as U.S. ambassador to Portugal from 1975 to 1978 and
then as Jimmy Carter's deputy director of the CIA...
"To further supplement his income, Lowenstein was to work for the Ford Foundation, a
consultancy having been arranged for him by a friend...Lowenstein's job with the Ford
Foundation, which, according to his diary, included a $2,500 fee, all expenses, and freedom
to decide when and where he would work (an NSA grant had been approved as well),
enabled him to fly to various campuses, study the causes of the unrest, and prepare a report.
He particularly focused on Berkeley where President Martin Meyerson attempted to use
Lowenstein as a peacemaker...A new generation of student leaders was now openly
challenging authority in more extreme ways than Lowenstein had...Their rebellion was
growing beyond the confines of the liberal National Student Association, which Lowenstein
had continued to monitor. It was taking dangerous and unpredictable forms...On April 1,
1965, Paul Ylvisaker, the director of the Ford Foundation project on campus unrest, wrote
to Lowenstein: `This will confirm the arrangements made with Mr. John Ehle for you to
serve as a consultant to the Foundation for a maximum of five days between April 1 and 9
to explore the possibility of involving youth and student groups in community action
programs. We understand you will make brief visits in institutions in North Carolina,
Massachusetts, California and New York. "`The Foundation will provide a daily fee of $50
and reimbursement for first-class round-trip air transportation to your destinations.
Enclosed you will find expense report forms and certificates of time worked, which we
would appreciate your filling out, signing and returning to us. Please send your
transportation stubs and hotel bills, and receipts for expenses of $25 or more.'"
by bob feldman
Former Ford Foundation Consultant Lowenstein's friend, Carlucci, later became the Secretary of
Defense under Reagan and has been a top executive at the Bush II White House and Ford Foundation
Board of Trustees-linked Carlyle Assets firm in recent years. In her 1982 book ROOTED IN
SECRECY: THE CLANDESTINE ELEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS by Joan Coxsedge noted
that "the Ford Foundation" also "took over the funding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom after its
CIA cover was blown in 1966."
Eric Chester's book COVERT NETWORKS: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE
COMMITTEE AND THE CIA also contains some information about how the Ford Foundation has
historically worked with the CIA:
"The Ford Foundation...maintained a close and continuing relationship with the intelligence
community throughout the most confrontational years of the Cold War.
"In particular, the Foundation established in 1951 a subsidiary affiliate, the East European
Fund, which disbursed its considerable resources to projects oriented toward political exiles
from the Soviet Union. Over the next few years, the Foundation and its affiliated fund
worked closely with other organizations within the covert network, including the
International Rescue Committee...
"The New York office was headed by Bernard Gladieux...After shifting to the Ford
Foundation in 1950, Gladieux remained a committed proponent of psychological warfare
programs targeted at the Soviet bloc countries. He continued to maintain contacts with high
officials in the Agency; while an officer of the Foundation, he also `served in a consultant
and liaison capacity with the Central Intelligence Agency involving certain highly sensitive
matters.' Soon after being appointed director of Central Intelligence in February 1953,
Allen Dulles reassured Gladieux that he had been kept `fully-advised of recent
developments' and that he wanted `to work closely with' Gladieux in the future.
"Within the New York office, John Howard had primary responsibility for screening
overseas grant proposals. This meant that Howard was a key liaison between the
Foundation and the CIA...
"[On March 5, 1958] Don Price...an associate director of the Foundation, wrote Matthew
Baird of the CIA to set up a discussion on `potential ideas for future action.' Joining Price
would be John Howard, still a central figure in the oversight of overseas programs. Baird
responded by inviting Price and Howard to a meeting at CIA headquarters with `40 or 50
Agency representatives' from the Clandestine Services Division. The agenda would feature
a presentation by Price and Howard in which they would `discuss informally those
programs of the Foundation' that they felt would `be of general interest to the Agency.'
Afterward, the Ford Foundation officials would meet with smaller groups of CIA staff to
discuss specific projects.
by bob feldman
"The CIA and the Ford Foundation maintained close relations throughout the 1950s and
into the 1960s...
"Although the full extent of the Ford Foundation's cooperation with the CIA over the last
three decades cannot be determined as long as the relevant files remain closed or
unavailable, it is clear that the Foundation worked closely with the intelligence community
on several sensitive operations during the 1950s..."
According to Chester's 1995 COVERT NETWORKS book, a Ford Foundation grant of $150,000 was
apparently used during the 1950s to subsidize the activity of a right-wing anti-communist paramilitary
group, the "Fighting Group" in East Germany: "The Ford Foundation was interested in funding the
activities of the Fighting Group from the start...Having approached top Agency officials, Howard and
Gladieux, of the New York office, concluded that `CIA officials were unanimous in their view that
Foundation support of the Fighting Group would be most helpful...Fighting Group commandos blew up
a railroad bridge near Berlin just before an express train coming from Warsaw was due to pass over
it...A bridge over a canal was damaged with explosives..."
The same book also noted how the IRC board member that NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father
apparently worked for, William Donovan, apparently also intervened in 1950s German domestic
politics: "The [International Rescue] Committee established a special Redefection Commission in
February 1956, with William Donovan, IRC board member...as chair...Donovan and the rest of the
commission immediately embarked on an inspection tour of West German and France...Donovan was
utilizing the trip as a cover for a covert mission to provide funds for cooperative politicians...While
visiting West Berlin, Donovan arranged to have couriers give [former West German Chancellor Willy]
Brandt one hundred thousand Deutschmarks in cash at a clandestine rendezvous. The cash drop, worth
twenty-five thousand dollars at the time, was employed by Brandt to strengthen his position within the
Social Democratic Party."
Part 8:
For 13 years, a former national security affairs advisor in the Kennedy and Johnson White House
during the Vietnam War Era, McGeorge Bundy, was the Ford Foundation's president. As James
Ledbetter recalled in his book MADE POSSIBLE BY... "The Ford effort took a new twist in 1966,
when the Foundation began plotting a system that would unite satellite communication with
educational broadcasting. McGeorge Bundy, the former national security advisor who had personally
ordered American bombing raids on North Vietnam in early 1965, left the government and moved to
the Ford Foundation to oversee this plan...Bundy obtained his position without being knowledgeable
about, or even comfortable with, the medium of television..."
In a September 26, 1996 press release that was issued by the Ford Foundation following its former
long-time president's death, the Trustees of the Ford Foundation stated:
by bob feldman
"The Trustees of the Ford Foundation are deeply saddened by the death of McGeorge Bundy on
September 16 [1996]. Mr. Bundy served as President of the Foundation from 1966 to 1979. He forged
new lines of work in such critically important areas as civil rights, overseas development, and security
and arms control. His intellect, candor, and high standards left an indelible mark on the Foundation's
culture. The work of the Foundation today builds on Mac's legacy and we are in his debt."
Yet evidence exists that former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy was apparently one of the
White House officials responsible for planning crimes against humanity during the Vietnam War Era, in
violation of the Nuremberg Accords.
On May 11, 1961, for instance, former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy signed "National
Security Action Memorandum 52" which approved a program for covert action against North Vietnam
that included forming "network of resistance, covert bases and teams for sabotage and light
harassment" in North Vietnam. And on September 10, 1964, former Ford Foundation President
McGeorge Bundy signed "National Security Action Memorandum No. 314," which approved the
resumption of naval patrols and covert maritime operations off the coast of North Vietnam.
According to THE PENTAGON PAPERS, each maritime operation against North Vietnam after
October 1964 had to be approved in advance by former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy.
And among the maritime operations approved in advance by the now-deceased former Ford Foundation
president were "ship-to-shore bombardment of North Vietnam radar site" and "underwater demolition
team assaults on bridges along coastal roads, bridges and rails" in North Vietnam.
In a February 7, 1965 memorandum to Democratic Party Leader Lyndon Johnson, former Ford
Foundation President McGeorge Bundy next recommended that the U.S. adopt "a policy of `sustained
reprisal'" against North Vietnam; and on March 2, 1965 the Johnson White House's "Rolling Thunder"
bombing campaign against North Vietnam was begun.
On April 6, 1965, former Ford Foundation President Bundy signed "National Security Action
Memorandum No. 328," in which he stated:
"We should continue roughly the present slowly ascending tempo of ROLLING THUNDER
Operation...We should continue to vary the type of target, stepping up attack on lines of communication
in the near future, and possibly moving in a few weeks to attacks on the rail lines north and northeast of
Hanoi.
"Leaflet operations should be expanded to obtain maximum practicable psychological effect on the
North Vietnamese population.
"Blockade or aerial mining of North Vietnamese ports needs further study and should be considered for
future operations...Air operations in Laos...should be stepped up to the maximum remunerative rate..."
By the time McGeorge Bundy retired as Ford Foundation president in 1979, millions of people in
Indochina and over 57,000 U.S. military personnel had lost their lives, as a result of the militaristic
actions authorized by the "National Security Action Memorandum" which the former Ford Foundation
president personally signed.
by bob feldman
A few years before his death in 1996, the former Ford Foundation president had been named as a
"Scholar-in-Residence" by the same Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation which was to give a
$25,000 grant to Pacifica in 1996 to launch the DEMOCRACY NOW! show. As the Carnegie
Corporation of New York's "Scholar-in-Residence," former Ford Foundation President Bundy co-
authored a 1993 book with Stanford University Professor Sidney Drell and former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff William J. Crowe (who also sat on the board of directors of a Big Oil company
called Texaco in the early 1990s), entitled REDUCING NUCLEAR DANGER.
In the acknowledgement section of their book, Bundy and his co-authors noted that "the book is the
product of a decision in 1990 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to invite the three of us to
work as co-chairmen of a Carnegie Commission on Reducing the Nuclear Danger;" and "we must
express our warmest personal thanks to Dr. David A. Hamburg, the president of the Carnegie
Corporation" and "the staff of the Carnegie Corporation has helped with unfailing kindness and
understanding."
Former Ford Foundation President Bundy and his co-authors then expressed their support for the
immoral 1991 high-technology U.S. military attack on the people of Iraq, on behalf of Big Oil's special
interests, by writing:
"Saddam Hussein has provided a sharp reminder of a different nuclear danger--that nuclear weapons
may come into the hands of unpredictable and adventurous rulers. We learned in Iraq that when
international awareness, will, and capability are all three sufficient, it is possible to take effective action
against such danger...The case of Saddam is unique both in the breadth of the international judgment
that a bomb under his control would be unacceptably dangerous and in the strength of the American
presence and engagement created by his aggression against Kuwait. Multinational action against the
Iraqi bomb has been effective, at least in the short run...
"It is now evident that if Saddam's effort had not been interrupted by the war he provoked, he would
probably have had nuclear weapons sometime in the 1990s--quite possibly in the first half of the
decade. Knowing Saddam as it now does, the world has been shocked by this narrow escape. It is not
surprising that an effective consensus has developed, growing in strength as the process of inquiry and
dismantling has continued in Iraq, that the international community should see to it that leaders such as
Saddam do not get the bomb."
Yet three years after the former Ford Foundation president who was one of the U.S. Establishment
leaders responsible for crimes against humanity in Vietnam joined his co-authors in rationalizing a pro-
war policy in relation to Iraq, the Ford Foundation board of trustees asserted in 1996 that "the work of
the Foundation today builds on Mac's legacy and we are in his debt."
Perhaps a brief look at some of the corporate connections of those who sit on the Ford Foundation
board of trustees--and at how the Ford Foundation operates--might indicate how "the Foundation today
builds on Mac's legacy" by, for instance, sponsoring alternative media groups which generally attempt
to marginalize anti-war/anti-corporate 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers?.
Part 9:
by bob feldman

The Ford Foundation's Vice-President for Media in recent years, Alison Bernstein, was an associate
dean at Princeton University between 1990 and 1992. But for most of the last twenty years she has
been on the Ford Foundation payroll. [A poster to the WBAI Listener's Bulletin Board a few months
ago remembered Ford Foundation Vice-President for Media Bernstein as being a family relation of the
now-deceased former conductor of the New York Philharmonic orchestra, Leonard Bernstein; and as
someone who, as a college student, claimed to be anti-Establishment in her politics. But the accuracy of
the WBAI listener's memory of Alison Bernstein could not be confirmed.]
As the Ford Foundation's Vice-President for Media, Bernstein implements the media policy priorities
that are determined by committees of the Ford Foundation board of trustees and authorized by the Ford
Foundation president. In recent years the Ford Foundation board of trustees has included two former
CEOs and former board chairmen of the Xerox Corporation, the CEO and board chairman of ALCOA,
an executive vice-president and general counsel of Coca Cola Company, the chairman and CEO of Levi
Strauss & Co., the chairman of Reuters Holdings, PLC, the senior partner of the Akin, Gump,Straus
Hauser & Feld lobbying firm, and the president of Vassar College. Other corporations with directors
who sat on the Ford Foundation board of trustees in the late 1990s or after 2000 included Time Warner,
Chase Manhattan Bank, Ryder Systems, CBS, AT & T, Adolph Coors Company, Dayton-Hudson, the
Bank of England, J.P. Morgan, Marine Midland Bank, Southern California Edison, KRCX Radio, the
Central Gas & Electric Corp. DuPont, Citicorp and the New York Stock Exchange. A vice-president
and general counsel of Texaco Inc. named Deval Laurdine Patrick has also sat on the Ford Foundation
board of trustees in recent years.
The Ford Foundation's Board of Trustees' Education, Media, Arts and Culture Committee in the late
1990s, for instance, included the president of Vassar College, the chairman of Reuters Holdings PLC,
the former chairman and CEO of Xerox and Clinton crony Vernon Jordan--also a director of Revlon,
American Express, J.C. Penney, Sara Lee, Xerox, Bankers Trust, Dow Jones, Union Carbide and Ryder
Systems. Clinton crony Jordan also was the chair of the Ford Foundation Board of Trustee's Audit and
Management Committee in the late 1990s.
Currently, the wife of the Bush II White House's presidential historian (Michael Beschloss] sits on the
Ford Foundation board of trustees. Ford Foundation Trustee Afsaneh Mashayetkhi Beschloss, a former
World Bank managing officer, also is the CEO/president of the Carlyle Asset Management Group.
President Bush II's father George Bush, former Secretary of Defense and former Deputy CIA Director
Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of State James Baker and Billionaire Speculator George Soros are
also involved in the Carlyle Group that Ford Foundation Trustee Mashayetkhi Beschloss manages. The
Ford Foundation board-linked Carlyle Group received $1.3 billion in Pentagon war contracts in 1999,
was the 11th-largest recipient of Pentagon war contracts in 2000 and invests heavily in war stock.
A former member of the board of directors of Chase Manhattan Bank, Susan Berresford has been the
Ford Foundation president since 1996. Ford Foundation President Berresford is presently a member of
the North American Committee of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission--sitting next to other
U.S. Establishment figures, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeline Albright.
by bob feldman
Ford Foundation President Berresford is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which
the Ford Foundation gave a grant of $100,000 "for the development of a Council Task Force on
Terrorism" in 2002. Featured on the Council on Foreign Relations web site at www.cfr.org on 9/26/02
was an advertisement for "a New Council book," which stated "Invasion Is The Only Realistic Option
to Head off the Threat from Iraq, Argues Kenneth Pollack in THE THREATENING STORM." In
recent years, the vice-chairman of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, Carla
Hill, has sat on the board of directors of Chevron (as has National Security Affairs Adviser and former
Carnegie Corporation of NY Trustee Condoleezza Rice). Other members of the Council on Foreign
Relations include former CIA Director John Deutch, former CIA Consultant/MacArthur Foundation
Consultant and current Northwestern University President Henry Bienen, Richard Holbrooke,
Billionaire Speculator George Soros and former MacArthur Foundation Director Laura D'Andreas
Tyson. A few years ago, the Ford Foundation also gave a $701,130 grant to the Council on Foreign
Relations for "core support for the activities of the Program on Alternative Future for Southern Asia, its
Energy and United States Policy."
In a 2000 interview with PHILANTHROPY MAGAZINE, Trilateral Commission member Susan
Berresford gave the official version of how the Ford Foundation operates:
We have a senior management team that meets every Monday morning in my office...I
approve all grants over $100,000. Grants up to $100,000 can be made by staff at various
levels. We budget on a two-year basis, and we work with our board...Every grant maker
writes what we call a program office memo. That is ultimately approved by his or her
immediate supervisor and then by someone at a vice-presidential program level. Then, all
grants that they make under $100,000 pursuant to that memo, they and their immediate
supervisors approve. And anything over that needs my approval. We meet every other week
for an entire morning; and all the grants over $100,000 that have been recommended in the
prior two-week period are on a list and we talk about them.
I get a write-up on every single grant. There may be 50 on the list, or ten on the list. I read
them all, think about them all, and we discuss some of them...The meeting is really a group
discussion. I lead it, and I have to put my signature on the grant in the end, but all the
officers of the foundation are there, and any program officer or any staff member who
wants to attend can attend and participate.
...We make grants of $1,000 and we make $50 million grants. We make endowment grants
and project grants and general support grants...
It's a policy-making board instead of a grant making board...
In our foundation we draw our board members from all over the world...It makes more
sense for the board to set foundation policy.
by bob feldman
They set the budget level and broad allocations...We set our budget at 5.8 percent of a
three-year rolling average of our portfolio value. Then, depending on our judgment about
the stock market and other things, we may move around a little bit from that...
We convene groups of our grantees with groups of our staff who make grants to them...
...Linda Strumpf is the vice president for investment at the foundation. We have an
investment committee of the board. They are in touch regularly and Linda and I talk
frequently. We all think hard about asset allocation and the broad investment choices we
make...In recent years, we have put a significant amount of money into venture capital and
a lot of that in technology, and have done very, very well with those investments.
...We do not, other than in a very few cases, screen investments.
Besides managing the Ford Foundation's multi-billion dollar unscreened investment portfolio and the
rest of the Ford Foundation's $10.7 billion in assets, Ford Foundation Vice-President for Investments
Linda Strumpf also has been a member of the investment committee of the Ms. Foundation for Women
—which has received millions of dollars in grants from the Ford Foundation in recent years. In
addition, Ford Foundation Vice-President for Investments Strumpf is a member of the investment
committee of Penn State University—which received over $58 million in war research contracts from
the Pentagon in 1999. That same year, the "non-profit," tax-exempt Ford Foundation paid Linda
Strumpt, its vice-president for investments, an annual salary of $852,911.
In the December 1988 issue of MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, Jim Donahue reported, in an article
entitled "The Foundations of Apartheid and The Nuclear Industry," that in 1988, during the apartheid
era, the Ford Foundation had $1.32 billion invested in companies doing business in South Africa,
accounting for 43 percent of tis total investment value at that time. The MULTINATIONAL
MONITOR also noted that in 1988, "eighteen million dollars" of the MacArthur Foundation's
investments were in apartheid South Africa-tied companies and "the Rockefeller Foundation held $233
million in corporations doing business in or with South Africa" during the apartheid era.
MULTINATIONAL MONITOR also observed in 1988 that "Nuclear Weapons-Linked Investment
Corporations that receive government contracts to build components for nuclear weapons are popular
among leading foundations" and "the Ford Foundation...holdings account for 16 percent of Ford's total
investment value, or $496 million, with the largest holding being in nuclear-contract-linked IBM and
General Electric."
Although the Ford Foundation posts a list of its recent grants on its web site, it's not that easy to locate
on the Internet a list of all the current corporate stocks that are currently contained in the Ford
Foundation's unscreened stock portfolio. Establishment foundations have a long tradition of not being
eager to make it easy for the U.S. public to know which corporate stocks they own. As Ferdinand
Lundberg observed in his AMERICA's 60 FAMILIES book long ago: "E.C. Lindeman, the outstanding
authority on the internal functioning of foundations, states in his monumental WEALTH AND
by bob feldman
CULTURE, published in 1936, that his `first surprise was to discover that those who managed
foundations and trusts did not wish to have these instruments investigated. Had it occurred to me then,'
he continued, `that it would require eight years of persistent inquiry at a wholly disproportionate cost to
disclose even the basic quantitative facts desired, I am sure that the study would have been promptly
abandoned."
What can be easily discovered on the Internet is that over $4 billion of the Ford Foundation's $10.7
billion in assets in 2001 was invested in U.S. corporate stock and over $1.3 billion in foreign corporate
stock. From its billions of dollars in corporate stock holdings in 2001, the "non-profit" Ford Foundation
received $343 million in dividends and interest income and earned an additional capital gains income
of $992 million. Yet on its 2001 annual income, the "non-profit" Ford Foundation only paid a 1%
excise tax.
But despite the great power that control over such excess wealth gives to Establishment foundations
like the Ford Foundation to influence world history and manage social change on behalf of Ultra-Rich
power elite interests, the foundation-subsidized alternative media groups rarely report critically on the
world of Big Foundations--or on the U.S. Establishment conspiracies that may may be hatched in either
the foundation, corporate or national security state apparatus boardrooms. Yet without an understanding
of the political economic and cultural role that Big Foundations and Ultra-Rich power elite conspiracy
plays in global politics, one can't really understand how the System operates or how world history is
determined. And one's political and intellectual consciousness and analysis is going to remain
incomplete and partial, in a significant way.
In his article, entitled "Getting Behind the Media: What are the subtle trade offs of foundation support
for journalists?", Rick Edmunds characterized the ethical issues that develops when journalists--even
alternative media journalists--begin to rely on subsidies from the Big Foundation to fund their
alternative media work:
In research published...by the Poynter Institute on the rising number, scope, and dollar
amounts of foundation grants for journalism, I found that media recipients are becoming
ever more comfortable--and perhaps less reflective--about taking the money...When they
show up with much-needed funding for an investigative series or pay the freight for a
reporter working on an underreported beat, foundations don't receive the same due-
diligence scrutiny for hidden subtext that journalists apply to a corporate press release or a
politician's statement. The effect that foundation money may have on the news business is
subtle but real, and increasingly troubling on the ethical front...In public television and
radio and at certain serious magazines, foundation funding has become a way of life, and
grants can run to seven figures...The percentage of public broadcasting revenue coming
from foundations has doubled in the past two decades. And in the world of nonprofit media,
a few million a year goes a long way...
...The lack of overt editorial should not blind us to the more subtle, one might say cultural,
ties that bind these news organizations to their funders. There are, for example, any number
by bob feldman
of opportunities for grant makers to shape the editorial product as it is developed...If the
foundations' and recipients' goals have been properly àligned' not much more may be
needed to see that the intent is carried out...
Lost in the benevolent fog that surrounds most foundations is the notion that they may have
more of an agenda, not less, than a sponsoring corporation...Cultural affinity can sometimes
make it difficult for editors and journalists to draw the distinction between accepting a grant
and accepting a funders point of view...
National Public Radio is the heavyweight champion in harvesting these grants...Its income
is pushing $100 million, about 40 percent of that from corporations and foundations. NPR
consistently declines to say what share of the grants that it receives are restricted to specific
content areas...Also, for several years, NPR's reporting unit on money and politics has been
supported by a grant from the...Schumann Foundation...
Speaking of the Schumann Foundation, a KPFA listener and 9/11 conspiracy journalist recently
discovered that its President, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, also now sits on
the board of directors of Billionaire Speculator George Soros' Open Society Institute. But since the
former publisher of the Schumann Foundation-subsidized COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW,
Joan Konner, is both a board member of Open Society Institute board member Moyers' Schumann
Foundation and the president of Open Society Institute board member Moyers' Public Affairs TV Inc.,
don't expect the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW to question too much the ethical
appropriateness of this Schumann Foundation/Open Society Institute board interlocking directorate.
And certainly don't expect too much questioning of such institutional relationships by the Schumann
Foundation-subsidized FAIR group or by the Open Society Institute-subsidized
Pacifica/DEMOCRACY NOW or NATION/RADIO NATION.
And if, by some chance, the Ford Foundation's publicity shield ever gets penetrated in a "parallel left"
alternative media world which it has been heavily subsidizing in recent years, it still can move quickly
to neutralize any negative publicity—by calling upon a "counter-cultural" public relations firm that
used to represent the Pacifica Foundation, called Fenton Communications. In addition to having the
Ford Foundation as one of its clients during the 1990s, the Ford Foundation web site now indicates that
Fenton Communications was apparently given a $300,000 grant "for communications activities
designed to promote informed dialogue in response to the September 11 activity, with an emphasis on
protecting civil liberties and preventing discrimination"--by a Ford Foundation on whose board sits the
wife of the Bush White House presidential historian.
Part 10:
POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES' EDELMAN-BUNDY CONNECTION
In a 1998 book that was subsidized by the MacArthur Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson
by bob feldman
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 staff person 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,
totaling $1,500, to Hillary Rodham-Clinton's campaign on September 26, 2000 and another $1,000
campaign contribution to Senator Rodham-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;
by bob feldman
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 Associates 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.

Are All of The Left's Mouthpieces CIA?

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Are All of The Left's Mouthpieces CIA?

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ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:

SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?

Short-Run Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grant seeking Program

Seek Development Committee leadership in planning for Foundation grant seeking

Long-Range Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grant seeking Program

Initiate an informal `feasibility inquiry' of foundation support for Pacifica's objectives by

If there are any questions, please call me at either 425-XXXX or 757-XXXX.

Yours sincerely, William vanden Heuvel.

Hoping to see you very soon.

As ever, William vanden Heuvel

FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA & U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY — part 3

It's a policy-making board instead of a grant making board...

...We do not, other than in a very few cases, screen investments.

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