A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

"Alternative" media paymasters: Carlyle, Alcoa, Xerox, Coca Cola...? The Ford Foundation, historically closely linked to the CIA and the military-industrial-academic complex, has in recent years provided substantial funding grants to a number of "alternative" media organizations, such as FAIR, Progressive magazine, and Pacifica. Also participating in this type of funding are other elite foundations such as MacArthur, Soros, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Schumann.

The Paymasters





In May 2002, the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees welcomed a new member, Afsaneh M. Beschloss, former World Bank investment officer and CEO / President of Carlyle Asset Management Group, which is a division of the Carlyle Group, the defence-related international investment firm which enjoys all-star revolving door influence in the Bush White House and is enjoying a post-9/11 profit bonanza. Beschloss first joined Carlyle Asset Management Group in 2001 as a managing director. She also happens to be married to George W. Bush's official presidential historian, Michael Beschloss.



It would appear that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees is within the Bush administration's sphere of cronyism. Is this who should be entrusted to decide how grant money gets doled out to "alternative" media organizations? Is the CEO of Carlyle Asset Management Group and wife of a current presidential historian likely to smile upon funding alternative media organizations which are eager to go beyond offering the usual cut-and-paste complaints about Carlyle Group influence in the White House, and ask more probing questions about this company's role the "War on Terrorism", such as its alleged investment in anthrax vaccine maker Bioport or its past business ties with the not-quite-completely-estranged-from-their-errant-son bin Laden family?



In 1999 the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees was joined by Deval L. Patrick, currently Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Coca Cola. As General Counsel, Patrick currently has a difficult task to contend with at Coca Cola: defending the company against an historic lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of America on behalf of the largest Coca Cola union in Columbia. The charges are that the company is guilty of willful negligence and complicity during a long-running campaign of kidnapping, violence, and murder committed against unionists at Colomian bottling factories by paramilitary death squads (conditions which have kept labor costs conveniently low). A number of humanitarian and labor rights groups have lent their support to the lawsuit. Incidentally, this wouldn't be Mr. Patrick's first run-in with paramilitary death squads: in 1995, as Clinton's Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, he declined to pursue any serious action following an internal Justice Department report which recommended criminal prosecution of the Federal agents who massacred the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge in 1992. Prior to joining Coca Cola, Patrick was the Vice President and General Counsel for Texaco.



Also on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees are Paul A. Allaire, Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation and Former Chairman / CEO of Xerox Corporation, and David T. Kearns, another former Chairman / CEO of Xerox. Xerox happens to be one of the corporations implicated in the ongoing accounting scandals. Can we fully depend on media organizations funded by the Ford Foundation to turn up the heat and beyond the limited, damage-controllable cover story of "greedy, reckless CEOs" and "excess deregulation" to examine the deeper aspects of the corporate scandals which seem to indicate a calculated mass transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich? Even more significant are much larger related ripoffs in the US government, such as the HUD scandal and the disappearance of roughly THREE TRILLION dollars from the US Treasury (according to official US audits which failed to produce audited financial statements as required by law). Financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts (who helped with the official clean-up of the Savings & Loan and BCCI scandals and helped implement the requirement that Federal agencies had to produce audited financial statements as an Assistant Secretary for HUD in the first Bush administration) argues that such extraordinary failures to produce audited financial statements along with trillions of undocumentable adjustments to get the books to "balance" could not have occured without a conspiracy involving high officials of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. Is the Ford Foundation likely to support media efforts to tell the truth about concerted upper class looting of public resources?



Another powerful elite corporate interest represented on the Board of Trustees is aluminum manufacturing giant Alcoa. Alain J. P. Belda, Chairman and CEO of Alcoa, joined the Ford Foundation in 2000 (he is also a director of Citigroup and DuPont). Alcoa is also linked to the Bush administration through Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was Belda's predecessor and who has also served as the chairman of war industry think tank Rand Corporation. Alcoa happens to posess some uniquely repellent skeletons in its corporate closet. Originally founded by the powerful right-wing Mellon family (whose Mellon Bank is currently the Carlyle Group's sole outside partner), the company was centrally involved in the conspiracy amongst a group of US industrialists and Wall Street interests in the 1930s to support and trade with the Nazis through a cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, the notorious industrial giant which built the Nazi war machine and ran their concentration camps. This would continue even into the early part of World War II, and Alcoa's sabotage of the US Air Force's aluminum production program with this cartel agreement led Secretary of Interior Harold Ickles to warn in June 1941, "If America loses the war it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America." Some of the other elite names involved in this crime were Rockefeller, Ford, Harriman, DuPont, and Bush; all were strong supporters of the racial eugenics movement which inspired some of Hitler's own policies.



There doesn't seem to be much indication that the "alternative" media recepients of Ford Foundation funding have any interest in exposing this still heavily suppressed treasonous episode in US history, nor does there seem to be much interest in exposing how these same elite families continue to fund racial eugenics-related organizations, one example being the Manhattan Institute (funded by the Mellon-Scaife fortune and the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank) which originated President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" policies. It hardly seems likely that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees would want to fund alternative researchers and journalists who are inclined to connect these kinds of dots and bring critical scrutiny to the alarming fact that the US elite interests who have had the closest historical relationship with fascism, eugenics, and genocide (in addition, being closely connected with the biotech & biowarfare industries) are in a position of great influence over the planning of US bioterrorism defence policy, including new proposals for mass forced vaccinations.



Is it any more likely that the Ford Foundation, given its long and well-documented history as a back channel for CIA covert funding streams, would favor the kind of alternative media which might be expected to ask troublesome questions about the CIA's recent activities? For example, many questions need asking about the CIA's close connections with its subordinate in Pakistan, the ISI, which was a main supporter of the Taliban before 9/11. The former head of the ISI was discovered to have organized a wire transfer of $100,000 to the enigmatic alleged 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in Summer of 2001, and yet also wound up visiting Washington D.C. for high-level meetings with US officials the week of 9/11. Any competent investigative journalist would find information like this to be compellingly in need of further inquiry, but the "alternative" media who receive Ford Foundation grants don't seem to find it very interesting at all.



Is it likely that the Ford Foundation would fund the kind of alternative media which would be inclined to look deeply into the long-running control over US foreign policy exerted by the private and secretive Council on Foreign Relations, given the fact that the CFR counts among its funding sources the Ford Foundation and Xerox? Or would the Ford Foundation more likely favor those who could be relied upon to toe the party line that the CFR (and other elite policymaking NGOs like the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group) functions only as a stuffy intellectual debate society, and that anyone who argues otherwise is a "paranoid nut"?



Is it likely that establishment foundations, which are invested heavily in Big Oil, would choose to fund the kind of alternative journalists and researchers who are asking challenging questions about the formative role of oil politics in 9/11 and the so-called "War on Terrorism"? Or those who have been pursuing urgent investigations into the stunning array of evidence pointing to Bush administration complicity in the 9/11 attacks?



Of course not. Instead, the big establishment foundations are likely to seek out "alternative" media that is more bark than bite, which they can rely on to ignore and dimiss sensitive topics like those mentioned above -- and many more -- as "irrelevant distractions" or "conspiracy theory." Recipients of funding will always protest that they are not swayed by any conflicts of interest and don't allow the sources of funding to affect their decisions, but whether or not these claims are actually true is already somewhat of a red herring. The more important question is, what sort of "alternative" journalism garners the goodwill of the Ford Foundation corporate rogues' gallery in the first place? Or the Rockefeller Foundation? Or Carnegie, Soros, and Schumann?



Judging by the journalism being offered (and not offered) by Nation magazine, FAIR, Pacifica, Progressive magazine, IPA, Mother Jones, Alternet, and other recipients of their funding, the big establishment foundations are successfully sponsoring the kind of "opposition" that the US ruling elite can tolerate and live with.





Brian Salter, questionsquestions.net

29 September 2002





ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:

SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?



Part 2:



FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY



The FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/Institute for Public Accuracy alternative media gatekeepers/censors--which includes COUNTERSPIN co-hosts/producers Steve Rendall and Janine Jackson, Institute for Public Accuracy/MAKING CONTACT executive director Norman Solomon, MSNBC/DONAHUE SHOW PRODUCER Jeff Cohen and WORKING ASSETS RADIO show producer Laura Flanders--have also been subsidized by the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations in recent years.



At a June 1988 street fair in Manhattan's Union Square which marked the 35th anniversary of the Rosenbergs' execution, MSNBC DONAHUE SHOW producer Jeff Cohen sat behind a table selling copies of his recently-created Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] group's journal, EXTRA!. Within a few years, Cohen's FAIR alternative media group was airing a weekly media watch show called COUNTERSPIN on Pacifica's WBAI station in New York City. What listeners of COUNTERSPIN were not told in the 1990s, however, was that around 30 percent of FAIR's funding was coming from foundation grants, including grants from Establishment foundations like the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Ford Foundation.



In 1991, FAIR was given a $20,000 grant from the Rockefeller Family fund "for general support." And then in 1992, annual grants to FAIR started to pour in from the MacArthur Foundation offices in Chicago. In an early 1997 interview, the program officer who was then responsible for the MacArthur Foundation's media program, Patricia Boero, told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN magazine: "MacArthur is funding Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. And in '96, they received $75,000 towards the cost of operations. We've been funding it since 1992, at approximately the same level. It was slightly higher a few years ago, when the media budget was a little bigger." Boero also told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN in 1997 that one reason the MacArthur Foundation began funding FAIR was that FAIR was already being funded by other foundations such as "the Rockefeller Family Fund."



Later in 1997, more MacArthur Foundation money was thrown in FAIR's direction by a MacArthur "genius grant" program--which was then headed by a member of both the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] board and NATION magazine's Nation Institute Board, named Catharine Stimpson. A dancer who was the partner of one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN radio show was given a $290,000 individual grant by the MacArthur Foundation program which Nation Institute and PBS board member Stimpson directed. Since 1997, FAIR has continued to receive grants from the MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 it was given an additional grant of $150,000 by the MacArthur Foundation. And in 2000, another MacArthur Foundation of $125,000 was given to FAIR.



Another Establishment foundation, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation also began subsidizing FAIR's alternative media work in the early 1990s. In 1995, for instance, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave FAIR a $150,000 grant "to support promotion of book THE WAY THINGS AREN'T," which was co-authored by COUNTERSPIN co-host/producer Steve Rendall. And in 1996, an additional grant of $15,000 from the Schumann Foundation (whose president, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary in the 1960s) was given to FAIR. Since 1996 FAIR has continued to receive grants from Moyers' Schumann Foundation, including a post-2000 grant of between $50,000 and $100,000. In addition, one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, Janine Jackson, sits on the board of a group, Citizens for Independent Broadcasting [CIPB]. In 2002, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave the Center for Social Studies Education a $200,000 grant "for continued support for activities of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting [CIPB]."



The executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA]/MAKING CONTACT alternative media group, Norman Solomon, was listed on FAIR's 1997 form 990 as being the "president" of FAIR and has been a FAIR associate in recent years. Like FAIR, former FAIR President Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy, with an annual income of $267,000, has been subsidized by Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation. In 1997, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to Solomon's IPA/International Media project "for effort to hold think tanks to high standards of accuracy."



In addition to being subsdiized by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation and the Schumann Foundation in the 1990s, FAIR also began receiving grants from the Ford Foundation in the mid-1990s. As the WORKING ASSETS RADIO web site noted in 2001: "As the founder of the Women's Desk at the media watchdog FAIR [WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer-host Laura] Flanders received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for a collaborative project to combat racism and sexism in the news. The resulting book, REAL MAJORITY, MEDIA MINORITY: THE COST OF SIDELINING WOMEN IN REPORTING, was published to rave reviews by Common Courage Press in 1997." Besides the Ford Foundation's $200,000 grant to FAIR in 1996 or 1997 to help subsidize the alternative media work of its Women's Desk, an additional grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation was given to FAIR in 1997 or 1998. And in 2001, yet another $150,000 grant was given to FAIR by the Ford Foundation for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States."



In recent months, the Ford Foundation and Schumann Foundation-subsidized "media watchdogs" from FAIR and the Institute for Public Accuracy--Norman Solomon and Steve Rendall--have seemed more interested in preventing 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists from receiving any airtime on Pacifica's radio stations than in revealing the historical links of their funders to the CIA or the Johnson White House to their alternative media listeners and readers. And WORKING ASSETS RADIO--which is aired on San Francisco's KALW and produced by a former co-host/producer of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN and a forme Pacifica Network News staffperson--has apparently not been eager to welcome 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists onto the show.



WORKING ASSETS RADIO



WORKING ASSETS RADIO is a promotional/marketing tool of the $140 million/year, for-profi Working Assets, Inc. telecommunications company. And besides funding its own alternative WORKING ASSETS RADIO show that is aired on KALW in the Bay Area and over the Internet, Working Assets Inc. also helps fund other alternative media groups such as FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA). In 1996, for instance FAIR/COUNTERSPIN was given a $59,723 grant by Working Assets Inc. Among the alternative media groups funded by Working Assets Inc. in 2000, besides FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's IPA were Free Speech TV and the Independent Press Association. That same year, Working Assets Inc. also helped fund a gorup with which DEMOCRACY NOW producer/host Amy Goodman has worked closely, the East Timor Action Network, as well as the National Public Radio News and Information Fund, the Astraea Foundation, People for the American Way Foundation, the Center for Campus Organizing, United for a Fair Economy, Children's Defense Fund, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), MADRE, and the American Friends Service Committee.



Based in San Francisco, Working Assets Inc. is a privately-held, secretive telecommunications company that discloses very little financial information about its for-profit business to either its 400,000 customers or to U.S. consumers in general. One of its founders was Tides Foundation President Drummond Pike. A trustee of Mills College in recent years, Laura Scher, is a top executive at Working Assets Inc. Another top Working Assets Inc. executive, Michael Kieschnick, has also been involved until recently with the board of the National Network of Grantmakers, which also includes representatives of the Funding Exchange and the board of Mother Jones magazine/Foundation for National Progress. Kieschnick still sits on the White House Project Advisory Board between folks like PBS CEO Pat Michell and former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale. The White House Project Advisory Board was set-up to promote the presidential candidacies of mainstream women politicians such as U.S. Senator Rodham-Clinton. Another Working Assets Inc. official in recent years, Lawrence Livak, has also been the Tides Foundation Treasurer in recent years.



Because Working Assets Inc.'s stock is not sold on the stock market, it is not legally obligated to post much financial information about its business operations onto the Internet. In addition, executives at Working Assets Inc. have been reluctant to reveal to Movement writer-activists what kind of salaries it is presently paying its top executives. Working Assets Inc. has also collaborated with J.C. Penney in recent years on a "Shop for Social Change" business project.



Besides having the book she wrote in the 1990s subsidized by the Ford Foundation, the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host/producer, Laura Flanders, also had her journalism work subsidized for awhile in 1998 by another foundation. After the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to the Center for Democracy Studies of The Nation Institute, "to monitor anti-abortion activities of several right-wing groups," Flanders was employed briefly by that Nation magazine think-tank to write an article on the subject, which subsequently appeared in The Nation magazine. In 2000, the Rockefeller Foundation also gave the WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host and two colleagues a $20,000 grant "to support the creation and production of `Action Heroes,' a multidisciplinary work." Members of the Rockefeller Foundation have included World Bank manager, a Ford Motor Company director, a MacArthur Foundation director, and an ITT Sheraton Corp. vice-president in recent years.



Besides being the niece of COUNTERPUNCH editor Alexander Cockburn, WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host Flanders is also the older sister of Stephanie Flanders, who worked in the Clinton Administration as a speechwriter/special assistant to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Around the same time that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers was named the new president of Harvard University, Stephanie Flanders began working as a NEW YORK TIMES reporter. An October 1999 OBSERVER article by Simon Kuper, entitled "The New Elite Who Run Our Equal Society" indicated that the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host's younger sister is part of a British elite group nicknamed "The Young Chiefs." According to Kuper: "Members of this new elite were presented with thrilling opportunities early in life... Another characteristic of the new elite is networks. The Young Chiefs, who tend to live near each other in the centre of London, got the big breaks from old friends or people they meet at their friends' brunches or leaving parties. On the political side, the Young Chiefs are so close that many of them are related. Ed Balls (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, economic adviser to Gordon Brown)...studied in Boston...Ball's wife, Yvette Cooper (Oxford and Harvard, now a Labour MP), is a Young Chief too, as is her sometime tutorial partner at Oxford, Stephanie Flanders (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers)...Nick Denton (Oxford and the Financial Times, founder of Moreover.com) was a friend of Flanders at the Financial Times and through her met the elder Balls"





ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:

SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?



Part 3:



THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE



The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show is a promotional/advertising tool for a liberal-left establishment magazine, THE NATION, that generally tends to be a Democratic Party-oriented publication. Neither the magazine nor its radio tie-in show that is aired on Pacifica radio stations and many college radio stations may be eager to encourage much discussion about the historic relationship between foundations and the CIA or about the evidence of a 9/11 conspiracy which grassroots journalists and researchers have discovered. Yet in a 1996 interview with former BOSTON PHOENIX media critic Dan Kennedy, NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel claimed that "We have a monopoly on weekly progressive journalism in this country." But are RADIO NATION listeners and readers of THE NATION magazine actually being provided with authentically progressive anti-war, anti-corporate and anti-establishment journalism each week by THE NATION editor?



THE NATION magazine, a for-profit limited-partnership, was started in 1865 by a British abolitionist named E.L. Godkin and in the early 20th-century it was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard, a descendent of U.S. abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. It was subsequently owned by a Wall Street financier--the father of a NATION writer named Bobby Tuckman--who sold it to then-NATION editor Freda Kirchwey in the 1930s for $35,000 (which he loaned to her). NATION editor-owner Kirchwey was a former member of the early 20th-century Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) campus group that Jack London and Upton Sinclair had headed.



By the early 1940s, however, THE NATION was an increasingly large money-loser and was in danger of folding because of its financial difficulties. So in early 1943, Kirchwey decided on a reorganization plan to keep THE NATION publishing. She divested herself of her individual ownership and created a new, nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, which would own THE NATION on a nonprofit basis--although Kirchwey would still determine the magazine's editorial direction by serving as its publisher. In 1955, Kirchwey retired and a health insurance industry executive named George C. Kirstein became the magazine's publisher and the principal financial backer of the nonprofit Nation Associates, which continued to own the magazine.



In the 1970s, however, THE NATION was on the verge of bankruptcy again, until a group of investors led by Hamilton Fish III purchased ownership of THE NATION. Although Hamilton Fish's group of investors sold THE NATION in 1985 to a former Wall Street investment banker (whose real estate and utilities properties were worth about $200 million in 1991) named Arthur Carter, as recently as 2000 Hamilton Fish was being paid $83,000 a year salary by the magazine's tax-exempt Nation Institute affiliate for being the Nation Institute's president.



After purchasing THE NATION in 1985, Arthur Carter began publishing his NEW YORK OBSERVER weekly newspaper in 1987, under the initial supervision of former New York Times Company Vice-Chairman James Goodale, a Wall Street corporate lawyer at Debevoise & Plimplton who was a member of the Democratic Party National Convention's rules committee in 1988. Although NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Carter sold THE NATION magazine in 1995 to a group of investors that included Columbia University Magazine Journalism Center Director Victor Navasky, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairperson Alan Sagner, Hollywood actor Paul Newman, novelist E.I. Doctorow and the current editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arthur Carter has continued to sit on the board of trustees of the Nation Institute in recent years.



NATION magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is the daughter of International Rescue Committee [IRC] board member William vanden Heuvel. NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father is mentioned in the book THE CULTURAL COLD WAR by Frances Stoner Saunders in the following reference to the CIA-linked Farfield Foundation: "First presdient of the Farfield [Founcation], and the CIA's most significant front-man, was Julius `Junkie' Fleischmann, the millionaire heir to a high yeast and gin fortune...He had helped finance THE NEW YORKER...`The Farfield Foundation was a CIA foundation and there were many such foundations,' Tom Braden went on to explain...Other Farfield directors included William vanden Heuvel a New York lawyer who was close to both John and Bobby Kennedy."



A short review by Michael Rogin of THE CULTURAL COLD WAR book, entitled "When The CIA Was The NEA," appeared in THE NATION's June 12, 2000 issue. It also made a reference to "small CIA-created nonprofits, especially the Farfield foundation," yet failed to disclose to THE NATION readers that the father of the magazine's editor used to sit on the Farfield Foundation board.



In the 1950s, the Farfield Foundation helped subsidize the activity of the liberal anti-communist American Committee for Cultural Freedom. As the book THE HIGHER CIRCLES by G. William Domhoff noted in 1970: "It seems that in the mid-fifties the head of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom was having trouble getting money for his project. So he wrote to Edward Lilly, a member of a governmental agency for coordinating intelligence and psychological warfare operations, to plead his case. At the same time he wrote to [non-communist leftist Norman] Thomas, asking him to get in touch with [then-CIA Director] Allen Dulles via telephone. Shortly thereafter the American Commitee for Cultural Freedom received $14,000 from the Farfield Foundation and the Asia Foundation...Thomas then wrote to the committee head: `I am, of course, delighted that the Farfield Foundation came through...'" The 1982 book ROOTED IN SECRECY: THE CLANDESTINE ELEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS by Joan Coxsedge also observed that: "The CIA is not so crude as to simply hand over money directly. It normally uses wealthy philanthropists such as the J.M. Kaplan Fund and foundations such as the Asia Foundation, the Farfield Foundation and the Hoblitzelle Foundation."



Born in 1930, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father apparently served between 1953 and 1954 as the executive assistant to CIA founder William "Wild Bill" Donovan, when Donovan was the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand. In their 1998 book WHITE OUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair make the following references to the political role that U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Donovan played around the time that IRC board member Vanden Heuvel apparently was Ambassador Donovan's executive assistant:



General Phao ahd been made director of Thailand's national police after the CIA-backed coup of 1948 led by Major General Phin Choohannan. Phao's 40,000-member police force, the Police Knights, immediately engaged in a campaign of assassinations of Phin and Phao's political enemies. These troops also assumed control of Thailand's lucrative opium trade...Phao's control of the opium trade was directly abetted by the CIA, which had funnelled him $35 million in aid...





In the 1950s the CIA backed General Phao in a struggle with another Thai general for monopoly of control of Thailand's opium and heroin trade...Backed by squads of CIA advisers, Phao set about the task of turning Thailand into a police state. The country's leading dissidents and academics were jailed...Phao also cornered the country's gold market, played a leading role on the top twenty corporate boards in the country, charged leading executives and businessmen protection fees and ran prostitution houses and gambling dens. Phao became great friends with Bill Donovan, at that time U.S. ambassador to Thailand.





In the early 1960s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father served as U.S. Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy's special assistant. According to WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, around the time that William Vanden Heuvel was his special assistant, RFK "was obsessed with the elimination of Castro," and "told Allen Dulles that he didn't care if the Agency employed the Mob for the hit as long as they kept him fully briefed."



During the 1960s and 1970s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also became increasingly active in the International Rescue Committee [IRC] In addition to being a current board member of the IRC, William vanden Heuvel has, in the past, held the posts of IRC President, IRC Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Planning Committee of the IRC.



In an essay that appeared in the Summer 1997 issue of NEW POLITICS magazine, entitled "Albert Shanker: No Flowers," Paul Buhle made the following reference to the International Rescue Committee's historical role: "Eric Chester's important recent volume, COVERT NETWORKS: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE AND THE CIA, offers a well-researched perspective on one of the most interesting Cold War (and post-Cold War) operations linked on one side to favorite causes of prominent liberals and on the other to assorted intelligence agency projects...The International Rescue Committee [IRC] became a central mechanism--through its spin-off American Friends of Vietnam [AFVN]--for selling the impending Vietnam War to the U.S. public...The young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, working as its public relations officer, had described the IRC as the `ideal instrument of Psychological Warfare.'



"The IRC was subsequently involved directly or indirectly in a shef of other operations...As during the U.S. saturation bombing in Southeast Asia, the IRC followed U.S. trained and funded military forces decimating large districts of El Salvador..."



The book cited by Buhle, COVERT NETWORK: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE, AND THE CIA by Eric THomas Chester, was published in 1995 by M.E. Sharpe Inc. An unsigned review of the book that appeared on the Internet described Chester's book in the following way: "The Cold War period in American history was characterized by a seamless cooperation among international charities, quasi-governmental organizations, major foundation, funding conduits, and the CIA...This book singles out the International Rescue Commitee, and to a lesser extent the Ford Foundation."



During the 1980s, the Interhemisperic Resource Center in Albuquerque also examined the political role that the IRC has played historically. Besides noting that the IRC board members in the 1980s included folks like Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Lauder, Albert Shanker and William vanden Heuvel, the Interhemisperic Resource Center also observed:



The IRC has consistently followed policies which have indeed coincided with U.S. foreign policy interests. It has operated in such geopolitical hotspots as Southeast Asia, Central America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe, conducting programs which have bolstered Washington's anti-communist activities...





Many of IRC's members have ties to the intelligence community, and at least one author calls the IRC "a long-time ally of the Central Intelligence Agency."





...In 1987, it received approximately 72 percent of its fundings from U.S. government contracts and grants...





In 1987, IRC received a $1 million grant from the National Endowment for Democracy [NED], which was appropriated by the U.S. Congress throught he Agency for International development [AID], to "assist the independent Polish trade union Solidarity..." ...Recently, IRC's major focus has been on the Afghan refugees...IRC has published 10 books for the National Endowment for Democracy-funded American Friends of Afghanistan [AFA]...





[Former IRC Chairperson] Leo Cherne [since-deceased] has a long history of intelligence connections. He served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1973-1976, the chairman from 1976-1979, and most recently, served as the vice-chair on former President Ronald Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board...In 1954 Cherne sent a cable to a U.S. government official about the situation in Vietnam, "If free elections were held today all agree privately communists would win...Future depends on organizing all resources to resettle refugees, sustain now bankrupt government..." During the Reagan Administration, Cherne was involved in private fundraising efforts coordinated by the National Security Council aimed at disseminating propaganda supporting U.S. foreign policy.





William Casey [former IRC president] was one of the members of an IRC commission that visited INdochinese refugee camps in 1978 and advocated "a virtual open-door policy" for letting the refugees into the U.S. Under Reagan, Casey was head of the CIA until his death in 1987...





John Richardson [former IRC president} was the Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs from 1969-1977. He served as the head of the U.S. Information AGency's [USIA] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1961-1968. During those years, it was closely linked to the CIA...





The IRC was heavily involved in supporting the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. In fact, the executive committee for the pro-Diem lobby, the American Friends of Vietnam, was virtually identical to that of the IRC. The strongest supporer of Diem in the group was former IRC official Joseph Buttinger..."





In the late 1960s, THE NATION editor's father was the president of the IRC at the same time former CIA Director William Casey was the chairman of the IRC's executive committee. And according to the minutes of the IRC board of directors meeting of June 15, 1967, "Leo Cherne appointed the following Middle East Subcommittee: William Casey, Leo Cherne, David Sher, William vanden Heuvel and Edwin Wesley" and "The Board meeting adjourned at 7:10 and was followed by the first meeting of the Middle East Subcommittee."



Besides sitting on the IRC board next to NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel's father in both the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, former CIA Director Casey was also one of the original investors and a director of the Capital Cities media conglomerate that gobbled-up ABC in the 1980s--before, itself, being gobbled-up by the Disney Company media conglomerate in the 1990s. Former IRC President Casey also sat on the board of directors of the LILCO utility company, which operated the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, despite the opposition of U.S. anti-nuclear power activists in the 1970s. Prior to managing Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, IRC board member Casey had also worked in the corporate law firm of Rogers & Wells, where he represented the special interests of clients like Saudia American Lines, International Crude Oil Refining Company and the Government of Indonesia. As Reagan's CIA director until his death in 1987, former IRC board member Casey continued to retain control of over $3 million worth of stock in companies like DuPont and Exxon while he simultaneously made decisions at the CIA which affected the profitability of his personal stockholdings.



Casey was not the only IRC director who became involved in politically partisan Establishment party presidential campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s. During the 1976 presidential campaign, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also chaired the New York State presidential primary campaign committee of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In a January 12, 1976 letter to Robert Shnayerson, the then-editor-in-chief of HARPER'S magazine, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father wrote:



It is my understanding that you were considering an article regarding the presidential candidacy of former governor Jimmy Carter in your March issue of Harper's magazine. In that context, I send you a copy of a telegram from Congressman Andrew Young addressed to a recent column published by the Village Voice. I hope you will find it interesting and relevant.





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





Yours sincerely, William vanden Heuvel.





The telegram referred to in IRC board member William vanden Heuvel's letter (sent by former Carter Administration Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young to a Bardle B. at Carter Headquarters on 1/9/76) made the following reference to a column written by Alexander Cockburn: "The January 12 column by Alexander Cockburn, `The Riddle of Jimmy Carter, Can A Dark Horse Change His Spots,' is a wonderful example of the creation of `The Big Lie' by a compilation of half truth and distorted facts.



"Jimmy Carter is not and never has been guilty of the kind of implied racism of these charges. He is one of the finest products of a most misunderstood region of our nation."



But according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn: "The Democratic candidate for President in 1976, Jimmy Carter, was a member of the Trilateral Commission...Indeed, the number of Trilateral Commission members appointed to important posts in the Carter administration was startling. Brzezinski became his National Security Adviser...Walter Mondale, the new Vice-President, was a member of the Trilateral Commission. So were Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal, and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown...The price of food and the necessities of life continued to rise faster than wages were rising. Unemployment remained officially at 6 or 8 percent--unofficially, the rates were higher. For certain key groups in the population--young people, and especially young black people--the unemployment rate was 20 percent or 30 percent.



"By 1978 it was clear that blacks in the United States, the group most in support of Carter for President, and without whose support he could not have been elected, were bitterly disappointed with his policies. He opposed federal aid to poor people who needed abortions, and when it was pointed out to him that this was unfair, because rich women could get abortions with ease, he replied: `Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cannot.'"



On October 6, 1976 the then-executive vice president of THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sydney Gruson, also wrote the following letter to William vanden Heuvel (on New York Times Company stationary), which was apparently mailed to Carter/Mondale Headquarters at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan: "Dear Bill: Enclosed is the resume of my brother that I spoke to you about. He is an extremely talented fellow. Anything you can do will be deeply appreciated. How about bringing your fellow in for lunch before the election? As ever, Sydney."



The NATION editor's father then wrote the following letter on October 12, 1976 to one of the people who apparently would be responsible for offering people jobs in a new Carter Administration--Jack Watson of the King & Spalding corporate law firm. (Disclosure note: a King & Spalding lawyer in Manhattan is currently representing his landlord father in a frivolous, harassment-type lawsuit against a rent-stabilized tenant who is a sister of the writer of this article): "Dear Jack, Sydney Gruson is the Executive Vice President of the New York Times. He made a special point the other evening of taking me aside and asking me to forward a resume for his brother, Edward Gruson. It would be helpful if you could have someone review the resume--and perhaps a note from you to Sydney Gruson as well as to his brother would be most useful. Sincerely, William vanden Heuvel."



That same day, the 1976 Carter/Mondale New York Campaign official Vanden Heuvel also wrote the following letter to New York Times Executive Vice President Sydney Gruson:



Dear Sidney, I have forwarded Edward's resume with a special note to Jack Watson. If Governor Carter does win the election, I assume Jack will have a major transitional role, including personnel. In my next conversation with him, I will pursue the matter.





My guess is that Governor Carter's schedule is not going to permit lunch before the election. The debates make scheduling almost impossible because they require essentially three days for each event.





Hoping to see you very soon.





As ever, William vanden Heuvel





After Trilateral Commission member Carter was elected president, he eventually named William vanden Heuvel to be his deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. The IRC board member vanden Heuvel's daughter, Katrina, meanwhile attended Princeton University, majoried in politics and apparently graduated from Princeton in 1981. According to an article by Van Wallach which appeared in a March 20, 1996 issue of a Princeton alumni publication, Katrina vanden Heuvel began working "as a NATION intern for nine months after taking the `Politics and the Press' course taught by Blair Clark, the magazine's editor from 1976 to 1978" and "returned to THE NATION in 1984 as assistant editor for foreign affairs." In 1988 she married a professor named Stephen F. Cohen, who was also a contributing editor of THE NATION in 1996. In recent years, a "Stephen F. Cohen--NYU" has also been on a POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS magazine editorial board that also includes a "James Noren--Central Intelligence Agency." In 1989, IRC board member vanden Heuvel's daughter was then named "THE NATION editor-at-large, responsible for its coverage of the USSR" and "in 1990 she co-founded LYI I MYI...a quarterly journal linking American and Russian women," according to the Princeton alumni publication.



After the former NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE editor-turned NATION magazine editor, Victor Navasky, organized the for-profit business partnership (which included Katrina vanden Heuvel as one of the business partners) to buy THE NATION magazine from NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Arthur Carter, Navasky appointed Katrina vanden Heuvel as the editor, while he assumed the title of publisher and editorial director.



By 1996, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel had "moved the magazine's content into new venues through a syndicated radio program and a World-Wide web page," according to the Princeton alumni publication article. Like Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW show and FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, the syndicated NATION magazine radio show, RADIO NATION, is also subsidized by Establishment foundation money. The money is granted to the non-profit division of THE NATION magazine, The Nation Institute, on whose board of trustees sits NATION editor Vanden Heuvel and the former member of the PBS board of directors who used to head the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant" program, Catharine Stimpson. The Dean of an NYU Graduate School in recent years, Stimpson has also been the treasurer of The Nation Institute in recent years. Of the $1.4 million in annual revenues which The Nation Institute takes in, around $88,000 is spent on producing the magazine's syndicated RADIO NATION show, which is aired on around 100 U.S. radio stations, including Pacifica Radio's stations. NATION magazine editors and writers who have attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers in recent months, like David Corn, have also apparently been using RADIO NATION as a self-promotional, radio tie-in media outlet for advancing their careers as professional journalists in the Establishment's mainstream media world.







ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:

SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?



Part 4:



ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS



Although David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show is aired on a number of NPR stations which are subsidized by both corporate underwriters and grants from various Establishment foundations, the Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. (of which ALTERNATIVE RADIO is a part) doesn't appear to have yet been given grants directly from the Ford Foundation or other Establishment foundations. However, one of ALTERNATIVE RADIO's most frequently featured guests, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, was given a $350,000 "Kyoto Prize" by the Japanese Establishment's Inamori Foundation in 1988.



The Institute for Social & Cultural Change Communications Inc. does business as Z magazine. Ironically, although it may have taken its name from a Costa-Gavras film adaptation of the novel Z (which dramatizes the uncovering of an assassination conspiracy), Z magazine has attempted to marginalize 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists in recent months on its web site and in its printed pages..



According to its 990 form for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2000, Z magazine takes in over $641,000 a year in gross evenues and only has annual expenses of $531,000. A big chunk of Z magazine's annual revenues goes to three members of just one family: the Albert-Sargent family. At least $120,000 per year of Z magazine's total revenues ends up in the pockets of either Michael Albert, his partner Lydia Sargent or Lydia's son Eric Sargent. All three family members are each paid an annual salary of $30,000 by Z magazine. An additional $10,000 in "rent" is paid to each family member by Z magazine for the "office space" that the Albert-Sargent family "rents" from itself, to publish its Z magazine and maintain its web site.



Although the left entrepreneur family that publishes Z magazine took in $120,000 in the fiscal year ending 12/31/2000, all the writers it published were only paid $38,700 during the year, for the articles they wrote.



Of the $38,700 which the Albert-Sargent family paid its writers in 2000, $4,400 was given to ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer David Barsamian, whose book THE DECLINE AND FALLOF PUBLIC BROADCASTING, was published, with an introduction by DEMOCRACY NOW INC's Amy Goodman, in 2000 by South End Press. Although a chart in Barsamian's book on public broadcasting indicates that the Ford Foundation was among the PBS national programming underwriters who contributed more than $1 million in 2000, the book's index apparently contains no reference to the Ford Foundation's crucial role in setting up the public broadcasting system. Barsamian's book index also contains no reference to the Schumann Foundation, although it makes 3 references to book passages that describe Schumann Foundation President Bill Moyers' Public Affairs TV programs in a favorable way.



South End Press is the business enterprise of the Institute for Social &Cultural Change publishing firm which the Albert-Sargent family started in 1984, apparently with the help of $232,956 in low-interest "loans" from various individuals and organizations, that will no longer have to be paid back. According to the South End Press's form 990 for the fiscal year ending 6/30/200, the book publishing arm of Z magazine (which markets books like PROPAGANDA AND THE PUBLIC MIND: CONVERSATIONS WITH NOAM CHOMSKY that ALTERNATIVE RADIO producer Barsamian co-authored), took in over $1 million from its book sales.



So if Z magazine/web site and South End Press were considered as one left business entitity, we would be talking about a business that takes in about $1.7 million a year from the cultural leftism market. In times of U.S. imperialist war, anti-war books by anti-conspiracy theorist Chomsky, such as 9/11, tend to sell well and even make mainstream media best-seller lists. So, even without being directly dependent upon grants from Establishment Foundations which wish to discourage public opinion from considering the evidence dug up by U.S. conspiracy journalists and researchers, ALTERNATIVE RADIO/Z MAGAZINE/SOUTH END PRESS may have a vested economic interest in attempting to marginalize anti-war journalists involved in 9/11 conspiracy research and journalism.





ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:

SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?



Part 5:



MOTHER JONES / Foundation for National Progress



Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/IPA, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress received a lot of money from Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation in the 1990s. In 1995, for instance, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress was given a $500,000 grant by Moyers' Schumann Foundation "to support MOTHER JONES magazine." A second grant of $150,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1996 "to support the hiring of a new senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine." And an additional grant of $100,000 was given to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 1997 "to promote money in politics investigation by MOTHER JONES magazine." As Rick Edmunds noted in a recent essay on the internet (entitled "Getting Behind the Media: What are the subtle tradeoffs of foundation support for journalism?"): "Though it is often buried in the fine print of the masthead...many journals of opinion are themselves nonprofit, the better to attract foundation funding. That is true of MOTHER JONES."



MOTHER JONES magazine claims to be a non-profit "Foundation for National Progress." Yet MOTHER JONES magazine took in nearly $6 million in annual revenues in 2000, including $822,358 from the sale of advertising space and $176,140 from renting out its subscriber list. From this gross income of $6 million in 2000, MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progess then paid out the following salaries to its top alternative media executives:



1. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor-in-Chief Roger Cohn was paid an annual salary of $144,670;



2. MOTHER JONES magazine Publisher and Foundation for National Progress Board President Jay Haris--a former general manager of the Washington Post Company's NEWSWEEK magazine's Pacifica operations--was paid an annual salary of $144,379;



3. MOTHER JONES magazine Director of Sales & Marketing Eric Weiss was paid an annual salary of $105,004;



4. MOTHER JONES magazine Creative Director Jane Palecek was paid an annual salary of $88,197;



5. Foundation for National Progress Secretary/Treasurer and CEO Joan Catherine Braun was paid an annual salary of $85,453;



6. MOTHER JONES magazine Editor Eric Bates was paid an annual salary of $74,716; and



7. MOTHER JONES magazine Advertising Manager Eileen Ellis was paid an annual salary of $67,233; and



8. MOTHER JONES Art Director Caroline Joy was paid an annual salary of $61,187.



MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress also spent $247,000 on fund-raising in 2000; and its board of directors included Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, Kadima Foundation CHair Chara Schreyer, HKH Foundation director Harriet Barlow and MOTHER JONES magazine founder Adam Hochschild. Hochschild also has set up the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund, whose stated tax-exempt purpose is to "promote the charitable literary and educational purposes of Foundation for National Progress." According to its 2000 report, the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund apparently did this by contributing $2.4 million worth of stock to MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress. As a result, $1,176,617 worth of Wal Mart Stores stock (19,082 shares) was apparently owned by MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress in 2001.



Besides receiving money from Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund of one its own board members, another interesting connection to the world of Establishment foundations exists at MOTHER JONES magazine. In 1997, the wife of MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Adam Hochschild--University of California-Berkeley Professor of Sociology Arlie Russell Hochschild--was given a $3 million grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation "to establish a Center for Working Families" at UC-Berkeley, which she now directs. Among the Establishment folks who presently sit on the board of trustees of the Sloan Foundation which funds UC-Berkeley Professor Arlie Russell Hochschild's center is former Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall--who presently represents MIT on the board of trustess of the Pentagon's weapons research think-tank: the Institute for Defense Analyses (www.ida.org). Other members of the Sloan Foundation board include former chairmen of the General Motors, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley corporate boards and two other MIT professors. In 1991, the wife of MOTHER JONES/Foundation for National Progress board member Hochschild also was apparently given a grant by the Ford Foundation.



So it's probably not likely that many muckraking articles about either the Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the CIA, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and Public Affairs TV Inc., the Sloan Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, MIT or UC-Berkeley--or on what evidence has been dug up by 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers--will be published much by the MOTHER JONES magazine alternative media gatekeepers/censors.





ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:

SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?



Part 6:



PROGRESSIVE



The editor of PROGRESSIVE magazine, Matthew Rothschild, also attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers a few months ago. Coincidentally, the Madison, Wisconsin-based PROGRESSIVE enterprise has also been receiving a lot of money from the foundations of a politically unprogressive U.S. Establishment since the 1990s.



In 1992, for instance, a $50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation (on whose board ABC News radio commentator Paul Harvey and Enron Global Power & Pipelines director Thomas Theobald have sat for many years) "to solicit and disseminate opinion pieces relevant to U.S. foreign policy and international security." That same year, "several MacArthur staff members" were "called to consult with staff members of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign," according to THE CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY. And, during the late 1990s, one of the top Clinton Administration economic policymakers, Laura Tyson, became a member of the MacArthur Foundation board of directors.



An additional $150,000 grant was also given to PROGRESSIVE by the MacArthur Foundation in 1994. And in 2002, the MacArthur Foundation gave $120,000 more in grant money to the PROGRESSIVE enterprise, whose magazine anti-conspiracy theorist Matthew Rothschild edits.



Like FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and PACIFICA/DEMOCRACY NOW, the PROGRESSIVE enterprise has also been receiving a lot of money from the Ford Foundation since the 1990s. In 1998, for instance, PROGRESSIVE was given a $200,000 grant by the Ford Foundation (on whose board of trustees sat Clinton crony Vernon Jordan). And in 2000, two more grants, totalling $250,000, were given to PROGRESSIVE by the Ford Foundation.



Besides receiving grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation, PROGRESSIVE has also obtained funds from The Rockefeller Foundation in recent years. In 1998, for instance, a $50,000 grant was given to PROGRESSIVE by The Rockefeller Foundation.



In 2000, PROGRESSIVE Inc. took in an annual income of $1.7 million, including $69,727 from its sale of advertising space. And its editor, Matthew Rothschild, has apparently been paid an annual salary of $44,468 in recent years--for putting out a Democratic Party-oriented magazine that rarely mentions the Ford Foundation's historic relation to the CIA and rarely publishes articles written by 9/11 conspiracy journalists or researchers.



Source: http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html General policy for grant-making at the Ford Foundation is handled by the Board of Trustees. Approval for all grants over $100,000 must be personally signed by Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford, who is also a member of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission and the Ford Foundation-subsidized Council on Foreign Relations Inc.. So, for example, a $150,000 grant to FAIR by the Ford Foundation in 2001 for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States" was approved directly by Trilateral Commission member Berresford, in accordance with the grantmaking policy guidelines established by the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees. Given the tremendous power that the Ford Foundation has historically wielded in influencing cultural, academic, and political affairs, one must ask, who makes up this board of directors whose policies the Ford Foundation president implements­and what interests do they represent?In May 2002, the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees welcomed a new member, Afsaneh M. Beschloss, former World Bank investment officer and CEO / President of Carlyle Asset Management Group, which is a division of the Carlyle Group, the defence-related international investment firm which enjoys all-star revolving door influence in the Bush White House and is enjoying a post-9/11 profit bonanza. Beschloss first joined Carlyle Asset Management Group in 2001 as a managing director. She also happens to be married to George W. Bush's official presidential historian, Michael Beschloss.It would appear that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees is within the Bush administration's sphere of cronyism. Is this who should be entrusted to decide how grant money gets doled out to "alternative" media organizations? Is the CEO of Carlyle Asset Management Group and wife of a current presidential historian likely to smile upon funding alternative media organizations which are eager to go beyond offering the usual cut-and-paste complaints about Carlyle Group influence in the White House, and ask more probing questions about this company's role the "War on Terrorism", such as its alleged investment in anthrax vaccine maker Bioport or its past business ties with the not-quite-completely-estranged-from-their-errant-son bin Laden family?In 1999 the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees was joined by Deval L. Patrick, currently Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Coca Cola. As General Counsel, Patrick currently has a difficult task to contend with at Coca Cola: defending the company against an historic lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of America on behalf of the largest Coca Cola union in Columbia. The charges are that the company is guilty of willful negligence and complicity during a long-running campaign of kidnapping, violence, and murder committed against unionists at Colomian bottling factories by paramilitary death squads (conditions which have kept labor costs conveniently low). A number of humanitarian and labor rights groups have lent their support to the lawsuit. Incidentally, this wouldn't be Mr. Patrick's first run-in with paramilitary death squads: in 1995, as Clinton's Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, he declined to pursue any serious action following an internal Justice Department report which recommended criminal prosecution of the Federal agents who massacred the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge in 1992. Prior to joining Coca Cola, Patrick was the Vice President and General Counsel for Texaco.Also on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees are Paul A. Allaire, Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation and Former Chairman / CEO of Xerox Corporation, and David T. Kearns, another former Chairman / CEO of Xerox. Xerox happens to be one of the corporations implicated in the ongoing accounting scandals. Can we fully depend on media organizations funded by the Ford Foundation to turn up the heat and beyond the limited, damage-controllable cover story of "greedy, reckless CEOs" and "excess deregulation" to examine the deeper aspects of the corporate scandals which seem to indicate a calculated mass transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich? Even more significant are much larger related ripoffs in the US government, such as the HUD scandal and the disappearance of roughly THREE TRILLION dollars from the US Treasury (according to official US audits which failed to produce audited financial statements as required by law). Financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts (who helped with the official clean-up of the Savings & Loan and BCCI scandals and helped implement the requirement that Federal agencies had to produce audited financial statements as an Assistant Secretary for HUD in the first Bush administration) argues that such extraordinary failures to produce audited financial statements along with trillions of undocumentable adjustments to get the books to "balance" could not have occured without a conspiracy involving high officials of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. Is the Ford Foundation likely to support media efforts to tell the truth about concerted upper class looting of public resources?Another powerful elite corporate interest represented on the Board of Trustees is aluminum manufacturing giant Alcoa. Alain J. P. Belda, Chairman and CEO of Alcoa, joined the Ford Foundation in 2000 (he is also a director of Citigroup and DuPont). Alcoa is also linked to the Bush administration through Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was Belda's predecessor and who has also served as the chairman of war industry think tank Rand Corporation. Alcoa happens to posess some uniquely repellent skeletons in its corporate closet. Originally founded by the powerful right-wing Mellon family (whose Mellon Bank is currently the Carlyle Group's sole outside partner), the company was centrally involved in the conspiracy amongst a group of US industrialists and Wall Street interests in the 1930s to support and trade with the Nazis through a cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, the notorious industrial giant which built the Nazi war machine and ran their concentration camps. This would continue even into the early part of World War II, and Alcoa's sabotage of the US Air Force's aluminum production program with this cartel agreement led Secretary of Interior Harold Ickles to warn in June 1941, "If America loses the war it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America." Some of the other elite names involved in this crime were Rockefeller, Ford, Harriman, DuPont, and Bush; all were strong supporters of the racial eugenics movement which inspired some of Hitler's own policies.There doesn't seem to be much indication that the "alternative" media recepients of Ford Foundation funding have any interest in exposing this still heavily suppressed treasonous episode in US history, nor does there seem to be much interest in exposing how these same elite families continue to fund racial eugenics-related organizations, one example being the Manhattan Institute (funded by the Mellon-Scaife fortune and the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank) which originated President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" policies. It hardly seems likely that the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees would want to fund alternative researchers and journalists who are inclined to connect these kinds of dots and bring critical scrutiny to the alarming fact that the US elite interests who have had the closest historical relationship with fascism, eugenics, and genocide (in addition, being closely connected with the biotech & biowarfare industries) are in a position of great influence over the planning of US bioterrorism defence policy, including new proposals for mass forced vaccinations.Is it any more likely that the Ford Foundation, given its long and well-documented history as a back channel for CIA covert funding streams, would favor the kind of alternative media which might be expected to ask troublesome questions about the CIA's recent activities? For example, many questions need asking about the CIA's close connections with its subordinate in Pakistan, the ISI, which was a main supporter of the Taliban before 9/11. The former head of the ISI was discovered to have organized a wire transfer of $100,000 to the enigmatic alleged 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in Summer of 2001, and yet also wound up visiting Washington D.C. for high-level meetings with US officials the week of 9/11. Any competent investigative journalist would find information like this to be compellingly in need of further inquiry, but the "alternative" media who receive Ford Foundation grants don't seem to find it very interesting at all.Is it likely that the Ford Foundation would fund the kind of alternative media which would be inclined to look deeply into the long-running control over US foreign policy exerted by the private and secretive Council on Foreign Relations, given the fact that the CFR counts among its funding sources the Ford Foundation and Xerox? Or would the Ford Foundation more likely favor those who could be relied upon to toe the party line that the CFR (and other elite policymaking NGOs like the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group) functions only as a stuffy intellectual debate society, and that anyone who argues otherwise is a "paranoid nut"?Is it likely that establishment foundations, which are invested heavily in Big Oil, would choose to fund the kind of alternative journalists and researchers who are asking challenging questions about the formative role of oil politics in 9/11 and the so-called "War on Terrorism"? Or those who have been pursuing urgent investigations into the stunning array of evidence pointing to Bush administration complicity in the 9/11 attacks?Of course not. Instead, the big establishment foundations are likely to seek out "alternative" media that is more bark than bite, which they can rely on to ignore and dimiss sensitive topics like those mentioned above -- and many more -- as "irrelevant distractions" or "conspiracy theory." Recipients of funding will always protest that they are not swayed by any conflicts of interest and don't allow the sources of funding to affect their decisions, but whether or not these claims are actually true is already somewhat of a red herring. The more important question is, what sort of "alternative" journalism garners the goodwill of the Ford Foundation corporate rogues' gallery in the first place? Or the Rockefeller Foundation? Or Carnegie, Soros, and Schumann?Judging by the journalism being offered (and not offered) by Nation magazine, FAIR, Pacifica, Progressive magazine, IPA, Mother Jones, Alternet, and other recipients of their funding, the big establishment foundations are successfully sponsoring the kind of "opposition" that the US ruling elite can tolerate and live with.Brian Salter, questionsquestions.net29 September 2002ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?Part 2:FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACYThe FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/Institute for Public Accuracy alternative media gatekeepers/censors--which includes COUNTERSPIN co-hosts/producers Steve Rendall and Janine Jackson, Institute for Public Accuracy/MAKING CONTACT executive director Norman Solomon, MSNBC/DONAHUE SHOW PRODUCER Jeff Cohen and WORKING ASSETS RADIO show producer Laura Flanders--have also been subsidized by the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations in recent years.At a June 1988 street fair in Manhattan's Union Square which marked the 35th anniversary of the Rosenbergs' execution, MSNBC DONAHUE SHOW producer Jeff Cohen sat behind a table selling copies of his recently-created Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] group's journal, EXTRA!. Within a few years, Cohen's FAIR alternative media group was airing a weekly media watch show called COUNTERSPIN on Pacifica's WBAI station in New York City. What listeners of COUNTERSPIN were not told in the 1990s, however, was that around 30 percent of FAIR's funding was coming from foundation grants, including grants from Establishment foundations like the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Ford Foundation.In 1991, FAIR was given a $20,000 grant from the Rockefeller Family fund "for general support." And then in 1992, annual grants to FAIR started to pour in from the MacArthur Foundation offices in Chicago. In an early 1997 interview, the program officer who was then responsible for the MacArthur Foundation's media program, Patricia Boero, told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN magazine: "MacArthur is funding Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. And in '96, they received $75,000 towards the cost of operations. We've been funding it since 1992, at approximately the same level. It was slightly higher a few years ago, when the media budget was a little bigger." Boero also told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN in 1997 that one reason the MacArthur Foundation began funding FAIR was that FAIR was already being funded by other foundations such as "the Rockefeller Family Fund."Later in 1997, more MacArthur Foundation money was thrown in FAIR's direction by a MacArthur "genius grant" program--which was then headed by a member of both the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] board and NATION magazine's Nation Institute Board, named Catharine Stimpson. A dancer who was the partner of one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN radio show was given a $290,000 individual grant by the MacArthur Foundation program which Nation Institute and PBS board member Stimpson directed. Since 1997, FAIR has continued to receive grants from the MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 it was given an additional grant of $150,000 by the MacArthur Foundation. And in 2000, another MacArthur Foundation of $125,000 was given to FAIR.Another Establishment foundation, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation also began subsidizing FAIR's alternative media work in the early 1990s. In 1995, for instance, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave FAIR a $150,000 grant "to support promotion of book THE WAY THINGS AREN'T," which was co-authored by COUNTERSPIN co-host/producer Steve Rendall. And in 1996, an additional grant of $15,000 from the Schumann Foundation (whose president, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary in the 1960s) was given to FAIR. Since 1996 FAIR has continued to receive grants from Moyers' Schumann Foundation, including a post-2000 grant of between $50,000 and $100,000. In addition, one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, Janine Jackson, sits on the board of a group, Citizens for Independent Broadcasting [CIPB]. In 2002, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave the Center for Social Studies Education a $200,000 grant "for continued support for activities of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting [CIPB]."The executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA]/MAKING CONTACT alternative media group, Norman Solomon, was listed on FAIR's 1997 form 990 as being the "president" of FAIR and has been a FAIR associate in recent years. Like FAIR, former FAIR President Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy, with an annual income of $267,000, has been subsidized by Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation. In 1997, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to Solomon's IPA/International Media project "for effort to hold think tanks to high standards of accuracy."In addition to being subsdiized by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation and the Schumann Foundation in the 1990s, FAIR also began receiving grants from the Ford Foundation in the mid-1990s. As the WORKING ASSETS RADIO web site noted in 2001: "As the founder of the Women's Desk at the media watchdog FAIR [WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer-host Laura] Flanders received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for a collaborative project to combat racism and sexism in the news. The resulting book, REAL MAJORITY, MEDIA MINORITY: THE COST OF SIDELINING WOMEN IN REPORTING, was published to rave reviews by Common Courage Press in 1997." Besides the Ford Foundation's $200,000 grant to FAIR in 1996 or 1997 to help subsidize the alternative media work of its Women's Desk, an additional grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation was given to FAIR in 1997 or 1998. And in 2001, yet another $150,000 grant was given to FAIR by the Ford Foundation for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States."In recent months, the Ford Foundation and Schumann Foundation-subsidized "media watchdogs" from FAIR and the Institute for Public Accuracy--Norman Solomon and Steve Rendall--have seemed more interested in preventing 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists from receiving any airtime on Pacifica's radio stations than in revealing the historical links of their funders to the CIA or the Johnson White House to their alternative media listeners and readers. And WORKING ASSETS RADIO--which is aired on San Francisco's KALW and produced by a former co-host/producer of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN and a forme Pacifica Network News staffperson--has apparently not been eager to welcome 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists onto the show.WORKING ASSETS RADIOWORKING ASSETS RADIO is a promotional/marketing tool of the $140 million/year, for-profi Working Assets, Inc. telecommunications company. And besides funding its own alternative WORKING ASSETS RADIO show that is aired on KALW in the Bay Area and over the Internet, Working Assets Inc. also helps fund other alternative media groups such as FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA). In 1996, for instance FAIR/COUNTERSPIN was given a $59,723 grant by Working Assets Inc. Among the alternative media groups funded by Working Assets Inc. in 2000, besides FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's IPA were Free Speech TV and the Independent Press Association. That same year, Working Assets Inc. also helped fund a gorup with which DEMOCRACY NOW producer/host Amy Goodman has worked closely, the East Timor Action Network, as well as the National Public Radio News and Information Fund, the Astraea Foundation, People for the American Way Foundation, the Center for Campus Organizing, United for a Fair Economy, Children's Defense Fund, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), MADRE, and the American Friends Service Committee.Based in San Francisco, Working Assets Inc. is a privately-held, secretive telecommunications company that discloses very little financial information about its for-profit business to either its 400,000 customers or to U.S. consumers in general. One of its founders was Tides Foundation President Drummond Pike. A trustee of Mills College in recent years, Laura Scher, is a top executive at Working Assets Inc. Another top Working Assets Inc. executive, Michael Kieschnick, has also been involved until recently with the board of the National Network of Grantmakers, which also includes representatives of the Funding Exchange and the board of Mother Jones magazine/Foundation for National Progress. Kieschnick still sits on the White House Project Advisory Board between folks like PBS CEO Pat Michell and former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale. The White House Project Advisory Board was set-up to promote the presidential candidacies of mainstream women politicians such as U.S. Senator Rodham-Clinton. Another Working Assets Inc. official in recent years, Lawrence Livak, has also been the Tides Foundation Treasurer in recent years.Because Working Assets Inc.'s stock is not sold on the stock market, it is not legally obligated to post much financial information about its business operations onto the Internet. In addition, executives at Working Assets Inc. have been reluctant to reveal to Movement writer-activists what kind of salaries it is presently paying its top executives. Working Assets Inc. has also collaborated with J.C. Penney in recent years on a "Shop for Social Change" business project.Besides having the book she wrote in the 1990s subsidized by the Ford Foundation, the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host/producer, Laura Flanders, also had her journalism work subsidized for awhile in 1998 by another foundation. After the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation gave a $50,000 grant to the Center for Democracy Studies of The Nation Institute, "to monitor anti-abortion activities of several right-wing groups," Flanders was employed briefly by that Nation magazine think-tank to write an article on the subject, which subsequently appeared in The Nation magazine. In 2000, the Rockefeller Foundation also gave the WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host and two colleagues a $20,000 grant "to support the creation and production of `Action Heroes,' a multidisciplinary work." Members of the Rockefeller Foundation have included World Bank manager, a Ford Motor Company director, a MacArthur Foundation director, and an ITT Sheraton Corp. vice-president in recent years.Besides being the niece of COUNTERPUNCH editor Alexander Cockburn, WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host Flanders is also the older sister of Stephanie Flanders, who worked in the Clinton Administration as a speechwriter/special assistant to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Around the same time that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers was named the new president of Harvard University, Stephanie Flanders began working as a NEW YORK TIMES reporter. An October 1999 OBSERVER article by Simon Kuper, entitled "The New Elite Who Run Our Equal Society" indicated that the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host's younger sister is part of a British elite group nicknamed "The Young Chiefs." According to Kuper: "Members of this new elite were presented with thrilling opportunities early in life... Another characteristic of the new elite is networks. The Young Chiefs, who tend to live near each other in the centre of London, got the big breaks from old friends or people they meet at their friends' brunches or leaving parties. On the political side, the Young Chiefs are so close that many of them are related. Ed Balls (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, economic adviser to Gordon Brown)...studied in Boston...Ball's wife, Yvette Cooper (Oxford and Harvard, now a Labour MP), is a Young Chief too, as is her sometime tutorial partner at Oxford, Stephanie Flanders (Oxford, Harvard and the Financial Times, senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers)...Nick Denton (Oxford and the Financial Times, founder of Moreover.com) was a friend of Flanders at the Financial Times and through her met the elder Balls"ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?Part 3:THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINEThe Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show is a promotional/advertising tool for a liberal-left establishment magazine, THE NATION, that generally tends to be a Democratic Party-oriented publication. Neither the magazine nor its radio tie-in show that is aired on Pacifica radio stations and many college radio stations may be eager to encourage much discussion about the historic relationship between foundations and the CIA or about the evidence of a 9/11 conspiracy which grassroots journalists and researchers have discovered. Yet in a 1996 interview with former BOSTON PHOENIX media critic Dan Kennedy, NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel claimed that "We have a monopoly on weekly progressive journalism in this country." But are RADIO NATION listeners and readers of THE NATION magazine actually being provided with authentically progressive anti-war, anti-corporate and anti-establishment journalism each week by THE NATION editor?THE NATION magazine, a for-profit limited-partnership, was started in 1865 by a British abolitionist named E.L. Godkin and in the early 20th-century it was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard, a descendent of U.S. abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. It was subsequently owned by a Wall Street financier--the father of a NATION writer named Bobby Tuckman--who sold it to then-NATION editor Freda Kirchwey in the 1930s for $35,000 (which he loaned to her). NATION editor-owner Kirchwey was a former member of the early 20th-century Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) campus group that Jack London and Upton Sinclair had headed.By the early 1940s, however, THE NATION was an increasingly large money-loser and was in danger of folding because of its financial difficulties. So in early 1943, Kirchwey decided on a reorganization plan to keep THE NATION publishing. She divested herself of her individual ownership and created a new, nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, which would own THE NATION on a nonprofit basis--although Kirchwey would still determine the magazine's editorial direction by serving as its publisher. In 1955, Kirchwey retired and a health insurance industry executive named George C. Kirstein became the magazine's publisher and the principal financial backer of the nonprofit Nation Associates, which continued to own the magazine.In the 1970s, however, THE NATION was on the verge of bankruptcy again, until a group of investors led by Hamilton Fish III purchased ownership of THE NATION. Although Hamilton Fish's group of investors sold THE NATION in 1985 to a former Wall Street investment banker (whose real estate and utilities properties were worth about $200 million in 1991) named Arthur Carter, as recently as 2000 Hamilton Fish was being paid $83,000 a year salary by the magazine's tax-exempt Nation Institute affiliate for being the Nation Institute's president.After purchasing THE NATION in 1985, Arthur Carter began publishing his NEW YORK OBSERVER weekly newspaper in 1987, under the initial supervision of former New York Times Company Vice-Chairman James Goodale, a Wall Street corporate lawyer at Debevoise & Plimplton who was a member of the Democratic Party National Convention's rules committee in 1988. Although NEW YORK OBSERVER owner Carter sold THE NATION magazine in 1995 to a group of investors that included Columbia University Magazine Journalism Center Director Victor Navasky, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairperson Alan Sagner, Hollywood actor Paul Newman, novelist E.I. Doctorow and the current editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arthur Carter has continued to sit on the board of trustees of the Nation Institute in recent years.NATION magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is the daughter of International Rescue Committee [IRC] board member William vanden Heuvel. NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father is mentioned in the book THE CULTURAL COLD WAR by Frances Stoner Saunders in the following reference to the CIA-linked Farfield Foundation: "First presdient of the Farfield [Founcation], and the CIA's most significant front-man, was Julius `Junkie' Fleischmann, the millionaire heir to a high yeast and gin fortune...He had helped finance THE NEW YORKER...`The Farfield Foundation was a CIA foundation and there were many such foundations,' Tom Braden went on to explain...Other Farfield directors included William vanden Heuvel a New York lawyer who was close to both John and Bobby Kennedy."A short review by Michael Rogin of THE CULTURAL COLD WAR book, entitled "When The CIA Was The NEA," appeared in THE NATION's June 12, 2000 issue. It also made a reference to "small CIA-created nonprofits, especially the Farfield foundation," yet failed to disclose to THE NATION readers that the father of the magazine's editor used to sit on the Farfield Foundation board.In the 1950s, the Farfield Foundation helped subsidize the activity of the liberal anti-communist American Committee for Cultural Freedom. As the book THE HIGHER CIRCLES by G. William Domhoff noted in 1970: "It seems that in the mid-fifties the head of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom was having trouble getting money for his project. So he wrote to Edward Lilly, a member of a governmental agency for coordinating intelligence and psychological warfare operations, to plead his case. At the same time he wrote to [non-communist leftist Norman] Thomas, asking him to get in touch with [then-CIA Director] Allen Dulles via telephone. Shortly thereafter the American Commitee for Cultural Freedom received $14,000 from the Farfield Foundation and the Asia Foundation...Thomas then wrote to the committee head: `I am, of course, delighted that the Farfield Foundation came through...'" The 1982 book ROOTED IN SECRECY: THE CLANDESTINE ELEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS by Joan Coxsedge also observed that: "The CIA is not so crude as to simply hand over money directly. It normally uses wealthy philanthropists such as the J.M. Kaplan Fund and foundations such as the Asia Foundation, the Farfield Foundation and the Hoblitzelle Foundation."Born in 1930, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father apparently served between 1953 and 1954 as the executive assistant to CIA founder William "Wild Bill" Donovan, when Donovan was the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand. In their 1998 book WHITE OUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair make the following references to the political role that U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Donovan played around the time that IRC board member Vanden Heuvel apparently was Ambassador Donovan's executive assistant:General Phao ahd been made director of Thailand's national police after the CIA-backed coup of 1948 led by Major General Phin Choohannan. Phao's 40,000-member police force, the Police Knights, immediately engaged in a campaign of assassinations of Phin and Phao's political enemies. These troops also assumed control of Thailand's lucrative opium trade...Phao's control of the opium trade was directly abetted by the CIA, which had funnelled him $35 million in aid...In the 1950s the CIA backed General Phao in a struggle with another Thai general for monopoly of control of Thailand's opium and heroin trade...Backed by squads of CIA advisers, Phao set about the task of turning Thailand into a police state. The country's leading dissidents and academics were jailed...Phao also cornered the country's gold market, played a leading role on the top twenty corporate boards in the country, charged leading executives and businessmen protection fees and ran prostitution houses and gambling dens. Phao became great friends with Bill Donovan, at that time U.S. ambassador to Thailand.In the early 1960s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father served as U.S. Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy's special assistant. According to WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS, around the time that William Vanden Heuvel was his special assistant, RFK "was obsessed with the elimination of Castro," and "told Allen Dulles that he didn't care if the Agency employed the Mob for the hit as long as they kept him fully briefed."During the 1960s and 1970s, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also became increasingly active in the International Rescue Committee [IRC] In addition to being a current board member of the IRC, William vanden Heuvel has, in the past, held the posts of IRC President, IRC Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Planning Committee of the IRC.In an essay that appeared in the Summer 1997 issue of NEW POLITICS magazine, entitled "Albert Shanker: No Flowers," Paul Buhle made the following reference to the International Rescue Committee's historical role: "Eric Chester's important recent volume, COVERT NETWORKS: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE AND THE CIA, offers a well-researched perspective on one of the most interesting Cold War (and post-Cold War) operations linked on one side to favorite causes of prominent liberals and on the other to assorted intelligence agency projects...The International Rescue Committee [IRC] became a central mechanism--through its spin-off American Friends of Vietnam [AFVN]--for selling the impending Vietnam War to the U.S. public...The young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, working as its public relations officer, had described the IRC as the `ideal instrument of Psychological Warfare.'"The IRC was subsequently involved directly or indirectly in a shef of other operations...As during the U.S. saturation bombing in Southeast Asia, the IRC followed U.S. trained and funded military forces decimating large districts of El Salvador..."The book cited by Buhle, COVERT NETWORK: PROGRESSIVES, THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE, AND THE CIA by Eric THomas Chester, was published in 1995 by M.E. Sharpe Inc. An unsigned review of the book that appeared on the Internet described Chester's book in the following way: "The Cold War period in American history was characterized by a seamless cooperation among international charities, quasi-governmental organizations, major foundation, funding conduits, and the CIA...This book singles out the International Rescue Commitee, and to a lesser extent the Ford Foundation."During the 1980s, the Interhemisperic Resource Center in Albuquerque also examined the political role that the IRC has played historically. Besides noting that the IRC board members in the 1980s included folks like Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Lauder, Albert Shanker and William vanden Heuvel, the Interhemisperic Resource Center also observed:The IRC has consistently followed policies which have indeed coincided with U.S. foreign policy interests. It has operated in such geopolitical hotspots as Southeast Asia, Central America, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe, conducting programs which have bolstered Washington's anti-communist activities...Many of IRC's members have ties to the intelligence community, and at least one author calls the IRC "a long-time ally of the Central Intelligence Agency."...In 1987, it received approximately 72 percent of its fundings from U.S. government contracts and grants...In 1987, IRC received a $1 million grant from the National Endowment for Democracy [NED], which was appropriated by the U.S. Congress throught he Agency for International development [AID], to "assist the independent Polish trade union Solidarity..." ...Recently, IRC's major focus has been on the Afghan refugees...IRC has published 10 books for the National Endowment for Democracy-funded American Friends of Afghanistan [AFA]...[Former IRC Chairperson] Leo Cherne [since-deceased] has a long history of intelligence connections. He served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1973-1976, the chairman from 1976-1979, and most recently, served as the vice-chair on former President Ronald Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board...In 1954 Cherne sent a cable to a U.S. government official about the situation in Vietnam, "If free elections were held today all agree privately communists would win...Future depends on organizing all resources to resettle refugees, sustain now bankrupt government..." During the Reagan Administration, Cherne was involved in private fundraising efforts coordinated by the National Security Council aimed at disseminating propaganda supporting U.S. foreign policy.William Casey [former IRC president] was one of the members of an IRC commission that visited INdochinese refugee camps in 1978 and advocated "a virtual open-door policy" for letting the refugees into the U.S. Under Reagan, Casey was head of the CIA until his death in 1987...John Richardson [former IRC president} was the Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs from 1969-1977. He served as the head of the U.S. Information AGency's [USIA] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1961-1968. During those years, it was closely linked to the CIA...The IRC was heavily involved in supporting the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. In fact, the executive committee for the pro-Diem lobby, the American Friends of Vietnam, was virtually identical to that of the IRC. The strongest supporer of Diem in the group was former IRC official Joseph Buttinger..."In the late 1960s, THE NATION editor's father was the president of the IRC at the same time former CIA Director William Casey was the chairman of the IRC's executive committee. And according to the minutes of the IRC board of directors meeting of June 15, 1967, "Leo Cherne appointed the following Middle East Subcommittee: William Casey, Leo Cherne, David Sher, William vanden Heuvel and Edwin Wesley" and "The Board meeting adjourned at 7:10 and was followed by the first meeting of the Middle East Subcommittee."Besides sitting on the IRC board next to NATION editor Katrina vanden Heuvel's father in both the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, former CIA Director Casey was also one of the original investors and a director of the Capital Cities media conglomerate that gobbled-up ABC in the 1980s--before, itself, being gobbled-up by the Disney Company media conglomerate in the 1990s. Former IRC President Casey also sat on the board of directors of the LILCO utility company, which operated the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, despite the opposition of U.S. anti-nuclear power activists in the 1970s. Prior to managing Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, IRC board member Casey had also worked in the corporate law firm of Rogers & Wells, where he represented the special interests of clients like Saudia American Lines, International Crude Oil Refining Company and the Government of Indonesia. As Reagan's CIA director until his death in 1987, former IRC board member Casey continued to retain control of over $3 million worth of stock in companies like DuPont and Exxon while he simultaneously made decisions at the CIA which affected the profitability of his personal stockholdings.Casey was not the only IRC director who became involved in politically partisan Establishment party presidential campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s. During the 1976 presidential campaign, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father also chaired the New York State presidential primary campaign committee of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In a January 12, 1976 letter to Robert Shnayerson, the then-editor-in-chief of HARPER'S magazine, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's father wrote:It is my understanding that you were considering an article regarding the presidential candidacy of former governor Jimmy Carter in your March issue of Harper's magazine. In that context, I send you a copy of a telegram from Congressman Andrew Young addressed to a recent column published by the Village Voice. I hope you will find it interesting and relevant.If there are any questions, please call me at either 425-XXXX or 757-XXXX.Yours sincerely, William vanden Heuvel.The telegram referred to in IRC board member William vanden Heuvel's letter (sent by former Carter Administration Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young to a Bardle B. at Carter Headquarters on 1/9/76) made the following reference to a column written by Alexander Cockburn: "The January 12 column by Alexander Cockburn, `The Riddle of Jimmy Carter, Can A Dark Horse Change His Spots,' is a wonderful example of the creation of `The Big Lie' by a compilation of half truth and distorted facts."Jimmy Carter is not and never has been guilty of the kind of implied racism of these charges. He is one of the finest products of a most misunderstood region of our nation."But according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn: "The Democratic candidate for President in 1976, Jimmy Carter, was a member of the Trilateral Commission...Indeed, the number of Trilateral Commission members appointed to important posts in the Carter administration was startling. Brzezinski became his National Security Adviser...Walter Mondale, the new Vice-President, was a member of the Trilateral Commission. So were Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal, and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown...The price of food and the necessities of life continued to rise faster than wages were rising. Unemployment remained officially at 6 or 8 percent--unofficially, the rates were higher. For certain key groups in the population--young people, and especially young black people--the unemployment rate was 20 percent or 30 percent."By 1978 it was clear that blacks in the United States, the group most in support of Carter for President, and without whose support he could not have been elected, were bitterly disappointed with his policies. He opposed federal aid to poor people who needed abortions, and when it was pointed out to him that this was unfair, because rich women could get abortions with ease, he replied: `Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cannot.'"On October 6, 1976 the then-executive vice president of THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sydney Gruson, also wrote the following letter to William vanden Heuvel (on New York Times Company stationary), which was apparently mailed to Carter/Mondale Headquarters at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan: "Dear Bill: Enclosed is the resume of my brother that I spoke to you about. He is an extremely talented fellow. Anything you can do will be deeply appreciated. How about bringing your fellow in for lunch before the election? As ever, Sydney."The NATION editor's father then wrote the following letter on October 12, 1976 to one of the people who apparently would be responsible for offering people jobs in a new Carter Administration--Jack Watson of the King & Spalding corporate law firm. (Disclosure note: a King & Spalding lawyer in Manhattan is currently representing his landlord father in a frivolous, harassment-type lawsuit against a rent-stabilized tenant who is a sister of the writer of this article): "Dear Jack, Sydney Gruson is the Executive Vice President of the New York Times. He made a special point the other evening of taking me aside and asking me to forward a resume for his brother, Edward Gruson. It would be helpful if y