How `Democracy Now! Funder Bill Moyers Helped Elect LBJ In 1964 Election

Democracy Now! Funder/ex-LBJ  Special Assistant Bill Moyers With LBJ

In his 1995 book, Barry Goldwater, University of Utah Professor of History Robert Alan Goldberg recalled that on June 18, 1964 the right-wing 1964 Republican Party presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, "was one of 27 senators" in the U.S. Senate "to vote no" on the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and, during the last weeks of the 1964 U.S. presidential election campaign, "Goldwater...reiterated, in Cleveland, his opposition to the Civil Rights Act" and "in Columbia, South Carolina, he appeared with recent GOP convert Senator Strom Thurmond, and in a speech carried on television throughout the South he reminded listeners: `We are being asked to destroy the rights of some under the false banner of promoting the civil rights of others." So, not surprisingly, according to the same book, "...African-Americans read Goldwater and rallied enmasse against him..;" and "the 94 percent of black men and women who voted against Goldwater are credited with delivering Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina to LBJ" in the November 1964 U.S. presidential election.

Yet prior to the November 1964 presidential election, according to University of Utah Professor of History Goldberg's 1995 book, the Democratic President and 1964 Democratic Party presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson "had authorized covert military action against North Vietnamese targets." As the same book recalled:

"Begun in February 1964, the American-conceived Operation Plan 34A deployed South Vietnamese forces in sabotage activities, commando raids, and the shelling of northern coastal facilities...U.S. Navy destroyers, while not officially part of these actions, patrolled in close proximity, monitored North Vietnamese responses, and gathered military information. By spring [1964], staffers had designated targets in North Vietnam for a future air war...To effect this, they drew plans for the deployment of U.S. air strike forces to Southeast Asia...Publicly, Johnson...gave no hint of Operation Plan 34A and did not reveal administration scenarios to increase America's military commitment...

"During the first week of August 1964, President Johnson announced that Navy destroyers Maddox and C.TurnerJoy had been subjected to `unprovoked' attack in the Tonkin Gulf off the North Vietnamese coast. On Aug. 7, (1964), Congress took Johnson at his word and approved the Tonkin Gulf Resolution...American warplanes proceeded...to bomb naval and storage facilities along the northern coast..."

Democracy Now! Funder/Schumann Media Center Inc. foundation Prez Bill Moyers

The 1995 book Barry Goldwater also recalled how the former Johnson White House Chief of Staff/Press Secretary whose Schumann Media Center Inc. foundation has funded the parallel left Democracy Now! Productions media firm in a big way during the 21st-century, Bill Moyers, historically helped LBJ win the November 1964 presidential election, prior to the Johnson White House's escalation of U.S. aerial attacks on people in Vietnam in early 1965:

"...Johnson loyalists Bill Moyers, Abe Fortas, and Clark Clifford, among others, planned a negative campaign that caricatured Goldwater as...dangerous...Goldwater as president would unleash nuclear war...The Johnson White House established the Five O'Clock Club, which planted spies like E. Howard Hunt (on leave from the Central Intelligence Agency) in the Goldwater camp. Reporters were encouraged to feed Goldwater's off-the record remarks to the White House staffers and to provide advance copies of the Republican's speeches for simultaneous rebuttal. The `Anti-Goldwater Program' also led to collusion between the press and the government to manipulate the news (according to `Anti-Goldwater Program' memo to Bill Moyers of Sept. 10, 1964 that can be found in Box 117, `Republican Party' Subject File of White House Central Files in Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library)...

"The Department of Defense supplied facts and figures to seemingly neutral journalists to bolster Democratic claims and refute the Republicans. White House aide Walter Heller furnished `ammunition' to syndicated columnists Walter Lippmann and Sylvia Porter...Advertising was LBJ's most prized weapon...Among Bill Moyers' suggestions to the advertising firm Doyle Dane Bernback was a television spot in which `he [Goldwater] could have his finger--or that of some field commander--on the nuclear trigger.' [Bill Moyers to Lloyd Wright, Sept. 14, 1964, Box 481, Frederick Panze Papers, Johnson Presidential Library]. Agency executives accepted the theme and developed it further. The images of Goldwater they eventually pitched to the American people remain case studies in the art of negative campaigning..."

Ironically, after the 1964 GOP presidential candidate apparently pledged on Sept. 3, 1964 to abolish the U.S. military draft if elected and before the Democratic Johnson administration's pre-September 1964 covert military actions against North Vietnamese targets became more overt and escalated in South Vietnam in 1965, LBJ said on Sept. 28, 1964 that "We are not going north and drop bombs at this stage of the game;" and, according to Professor of History Goldberg's 1995 book:

"In the last weeks of the campaign Johnson hammered Goldwater...on the issue of war and peace...In Akron, Ohio, Johnson observed: `...We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to do for themselves.'"

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 23

Ex-Newsday Publisher Bill Moyers with Harry Guggenheim in 1967

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 23 

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers. 

Forty years before the Schumann Foundation/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation gave its first $25,000 [equal to over $33,000 in 2018] grant to Democracy Now! “to fund Special 2004 election coverage for Democracy Now!,”, the FBI apparently spied on civil rights Movement demonstrators at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City and then, ironically, reported back to longtime Schumann Foundation president Bill Moyers—who was then LBJ’s 30-year-old Special Assistant to the President in the White House. According, for example, to an Aug. 29, 1964 memo to FBI Assistant Director John Mohr, which appeared in From The Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover (edited by Arthur Theoharis) from FBI Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach: 

“By means of informant coverage, by use of various confidential techniques,…by infiltration of key groups through use of undercover agents and through utilization of agents using appropriate cover as reporters, we were able to keep the White House fully apprised of all major developments during the Convention’s course…Through our highly confidential coverage of…Martin Luther King…together with similar coverage we established on the headquarters of CORE-SNCC, we were in a position to advise the White House in advance of all plans made by these two sources…I kept…MOYERS constantly advised by telephone of minute by minute developments…”

On Sept. 10, 1964, then-FBI Assistant Director DeLoach also wrote a personal letter to Democracy Now! funder Moyers (a copy of which is in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library) which stated:

“Thank you for your very thoughtful and generous note concerning our operation in Atlantic City. Please be assured that it was a pleasure and privilege to be able to be of assistance…I think everything worked out well, and I’m certainly glad that we were able to come through with vital tidbits from time to time which were of assistance to you…You know you have only to call on us when a similar situation arises…”\

Democracy Now! Funder/Ex-LBJ Special Assistant Moyers with LBJ

And as Aquarian Weekly noted in its Oct. 30, 1996 issue, Moyers apparently also used the FBI in a politically partisan way during the 1964 U.S. presidential campaign, when the Democracy Now! funder was LBJ’s special assistant. According, for example, to Victor Laskey’s It Didn’t Start With Watergate book:

“Another piece of skullduggery in which Moyers was involved occurred two weeks before Election Day. As special assistant to the President he ordered the FBI to run a name check on numerous members of [1964 GOP presidential candidate Barry] Goldwater’s campaign and Senate staffers…What the President was looking for, Moyers told the FBI, was information about `fags’…on the Arizonan’s staff…The FBI, which had no right to do so, did conduct inquiries into the bedroom proclivities of the Goldwater staffers…”

The same book also noted that “according to a staff report of the Senate Intelligence Committee released in 1976, it was none other than Bill Moyers…who `expressly approved’ the circulation within the Executive Branch of a secret FBI report on King.”

But in late January 1967, Democracy Now! funder Moyers finally left his position as Johnson White House Press Secretary and LBJ’s Special Assistant to work as the Publisher-Manager of Guggenheim Dynasty member Harry Guggenheim’s Newsday corporate media newspaper for a few years. The son of the organizer of the `Alaska Syndicate’ that destroyed some of Alaska’s earth, Multi-Millionaire Harry Guggenheim had used a small portion of the Guggenheim Dynasty’s fortune he had inherited to purchase a suburban Long Island newspaper in 1940 for his third wife, Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim, to operate under the name of Newsday.

After his much younger wife died in 1963, however, the then-73-year-old Harry Guggenheim began to play a more active daily editorial role in running Newsday and began to search for a male heir for both his share of the Guggenheim fortune and his newspaper, in the event of his own death; and in 1967 this member of the Guggenheim dynasty decided that Democracy Now! funder Moyers should succeed him as Newsday owner and inherit much of his $50 million [equal to over $374 million in 2018] share of the Guggenheim fortune.

According to David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be book, “Bill Moyers had always, first with Lyndon Johnson, then with Harry Guggenheim, shown an ability to charm older men…” So Moyers was then brought into the Newsday editorial office as publisher to run the newspaper for Harry Guggenheim for a few years.

But Harry Guggenheim, being a Republican, eventually changed his mind about letting the former Democratic Party political operative Moyers be his heir; and, instead, Guggenheim decided in May 1970, less than a year before his death in January 1971, to sell his Newsday newspaper to the Los Angeles, California-based Times-Mirror media conglomerate, that was then owned by the Chandler Dynasty family.

Consequently, Democracy Now! funder Moyers then began working for both the CBS corporate media conglomerate’s news department and the U.S. power elite’s foundation, government and corporate-funded Public Broadcasting Service [PBS], during the 1970s and 1980s.

After leaving CBS in 1986, however, Moyers was mostly then just seen on U.S. television hosting the programs that his U.S. power elite foundation-funded Public Affairs Television Inc. media firm produced for foundation, corporate or U.S. government-funded PBS-affiliated television stations to broadcast; and after 1991 LBJ’s former Vietnam Era White House Special Assistant and  White House Press Secretary also was the president of the Schumann Foundation/Center for Media and Democracy--which some Schumann family members had established with the millions they inherited from an IBM founder and former president of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation.

Schumann Foundation Prez Moyers: Gave Democracy Now! $1.5 Million Since 2004

In an article, titled “Journalistic Foundations,” that Michael Getler posted on the internet on Jul. 20, 2009, Getler noted that, according to a Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation spokesperson and “Moyers deputy,” Moyers met the Schumann family members in 1986 “when the then president of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, Bill Mullins, read in the New York Times that Moyers was leaving CBS News to start his own independent production company to create programs for public broadcasting.” According to the same Moyers deputy and Schumann Center for Media and Democracy spokesperson:

“Mullins introduced him to the Schumanns who then made a large grant to help launch the operation. Over the next three years Bill made periodic reports in person to the Schumann Board. In 1991…when…Mullins suddenly was stricken with a…cancer that took his life in six months, the family asked Bill to succeed him even while continuing his journalism….It would have been inappropriate for the Foundation he was then running to support his own work on the air. Since assuming the presidency at the Foundation, no Schumann funds have ever been used for Bill's own journalism or for any PAT [Public Affairs Television] programming.”

But in 1998 Public Affairs Television CEO and Democracy Now! funder Moyers was paid a total annual compensation of over $104,000 [equal to over $158,000 in 2018] by the Schumann Foundation/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy for serving as its part-time President; and Democracy Now! funder Moyer’s son, John Moyers, also was being paid a total annual compensation exceeding $100,000 by the Schumann Foundation for being its executive director--at the same time Moyers’ son also utilized Schumann Foundation grant money to fund the TomPaine.com parallel left media website project of the Florence Fund of which he also was the executive director. 

So although “no Schumann funds” may “have ever been used for” Moyers’ “own journalism” or to help directly fund his Public Affairs Television media firm since 1991, Schumann funds from longtime Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President Moyers’ foundation were used to fund the TomPaine.com media project and journalism work of Democracy Now! funder Moyers’ son, John Moyers. According, for example, to Michael Gellert’s 2009 article on journalism foundations:

“…In 2004, according to IRS filings, the Schumann Center sponsored a grant of $2 million to The Florence Fund "to support the TomPaine.com project and operating costs. Balance of $1.5 million was rescinded on May 18, 2004." TomPaine.com was founded in 1999 by John Moyers, Bill's son, and he left in 2003, before the 2004 Schumann grant. But the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, which was the Center's earlier name, also supported TomPaine.com with an earlier $2.5 million grant via The Florence Fund in 2001, according to IRS records.”

As the Moyers deputy and Schumann Center for Media and Democracy spokesperson also noted:

"John Moyers was the program officer at Schumann when it was the Florence and John Schumann Foundation. The two brothers, Ford and Robert Schumann, had a special affinity for John, having met him when he proposed an environmental series for NPR which they funded (that's how he came to work for the Foundation later.) When John Moyers then proposed to them creating a web operation based in Washington as an independent operation, they agreed. Bill…was pleased with their decision. They formed a new entity called the Florence Fund…with John as its publisher and editor. Bill… was very proud when John Moyers…received the Herblock Award for… journalism at an occasion in Washington at which Bill was asked to speak. After five years...John…resigned to return to Vermont where he is…in business. He has twice declined the Schumann brothers' invitation to take over the Schumann Center as Bill's successor because he prefers his life in Vermont.” (end of part 23)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 22

Democracy Now! Funder and Ex-LBJ Special Assistant/Press Secretary Moyers with LBJ

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 22

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers. 

In his 1969 book, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, a Princeton University Professor of History named Eric Goldman described the historical role that 21st-century Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers played within the White House in the 1960s Vietnam War Era during the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson in the following way:

“…With the confidence and affection of President Johnson…he was in a freewheeling position. He carried on some activities like…determining who was to meet with the President…He also supervised the planning of presidential trips and had a good deal to do with determining not only where President Johnson went but how he projected himself. But the Moyers role was sweeping well beyond. He was…writing a number of important speeches and heavily editing the drafts others prepared.

“Increasingly Moyers sat in on presidential conferences and talked for long hours alone with President Johnson…The President…permitted Bill Moyers to assume increasingly the role of chief of staff…This meant that Moyers delegated many of the tasks within the White House; often spoke in the name of the President to officials from the Vice-President on down and to powerful people outside the government; sometimes okayed or vetoed proposals of varying importance without consulting the Oval Office; had a hand—on occasion, a decisive hand—in making many top-level appointments; and was likely to be called by the President for long talks about developments…”

Schumann Foundation Prez Moyers: Gave Democracy Now! $1.5 Million Since 2004

But during the period when Democracy Now! funder Moyers was also the Johnson White House Press Secretary, then-New York Times columnist James Reston asserted, in a Jan. 7, 1966 New York Times article, that the Johnson “White House misleads public by not being completely truthful with newsmen,” according to the New York Times Index 1966 book. In addition, Moyers apparently attempted to manage news coverage of the Johnson White House’s actions and manipulate public opinion in the USA as LBJ’s press secretary by planting questions for some corporate media Establishment journalists to ask President Johnson during LBJ’s White House press conferences. According to page 579 of the New York Times Index 1966 book a Jan. 11, 1966 New York Times article reported the following:

“Press Secretary Moyers says press conferences are designed to serve `convenience of President, not convenience of press,’ TV interview; says they are device to let President say what is on his mind; defends `planting’ questions with newsmen beforehand; admits he plants questions…”

Although Moyers officially remained LBJ’s White House Press Secretary until late January 1967, in April 1966 Moyers moved from the White House press office to an office in the West Executive wing of the Johnson White House where (according to an entry, related to an Apr. 3, 1966 New York Times article, on page 573 of New York Times Index 1966), the Democracy Now! funder was “seen influencing Johnson more than anyone else;” and his “ability to understand Johnson and satisfy his wishes,” as LBJ escalated U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, was “noted.” The same New York Times Index 1966 entry for Apr. 3, 1966 also noted that Moyers “handles day-to-day decision-making” in the Johnson White House. 

According to the book Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Papers that David Barrett edited, for example, a file labeled "Meeting Notes File, Box 1," at the LBJ Library in Texas contains a copy of a Feb. 10, 1965 document, titled "Summary Record of NSC Meeting No. 548…Cabinet Room, 2:10 P.M. Re: Vietnam," which includes a reference to Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers and states the following:

“…Secretary McNamara said that Ambassador Taylor, the Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense recommended a retaliatory strike today at daylight. He explained to the President the targets in North Vietnam which could be hit today…The President stressed the importance of preventing any leaks to newspapers…In response to the President’s questions, Secretary McNamara said about 130 planes would be used in the strike recommended for approval…The President asked whether all those present agreed we should launch a retaliatory strike…The President received affirmative answers when he asked Director McCone, Secretary Dillon, and Director Rowan whether they agreed with the recommended strike plan. MR. MOYERS said he thought the strike should be made to meet domestic public opinion requirements…”

A file labeled "Reference File, Vietnam, Box 1" at the LBJ Library also contains a copy of an Apr. 27, 1965 memo that Bill Moyers wrote to "The President" in which the longtime president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy Foundation that funds Democracy Now! stated:

"Goodwin and I have heard reports that the State Department is going to do another White Paper on Vietnam.

“We think this one should be much better—and much more effective—than the last one. We would like to write it (as, in fact other White Papers in the past were prepared in the White House, the one on Cuba, being the most prominent example).

"This paper should not be an effort to `fool' people.  It should be honest, straightforward--strongly buttressed by facts--and designed to appeal to liberals and intellectuals, those people who have the most problem right now with our position in South Vietnam."

Another file labeled "Meeting Notes, File, Box 1" at the LBJ Library also contains a copy of a Sept. 19, 1965 "Memorandum for the record, re: Luncheon Meeting with the President, Ball, McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Raborn, MOYERS and Califano," which includes the following reference to Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers:

“MOYERS said that we had been too defensive in our public handling of the tear gas situation, that we should remind the world that the Viet Cong slit throats and bomb children and that any human being in one of the Vietnam caves would prefer to cry from tear gas rather than be killed by hand grenades…”

Another interesting reference to Moyers is contained in a file labeled "NS File, M. Bundy Files, Memos to President, Box 2," at the LBJ Library.  In a Feb. 2, 1965 memo to "The President," re: "A Deputy or Potential Successor in my office," the now-deceased former National Security Affairs Advisor and Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy wrote:

“Some weeks ago you asked me who should take over if, for any reason, I was no longer on this job, and I told you I had thought some about it.

“The ideal man for this job is BILL MOYERS…”

According to a 1991 book, Film and Propaganda In America: A Documentary History, Volume IV: 1945 and After that Lawrence Suid edited, a file related to John Wayne's pro-war Sixties movie, The Green Berets, at the LBJ Library also contains an interesting April 21, 1966 letter from Bill Moyers to John Wayne, in which Democracy Now! funder Moyers wrote:

“Dear Mr. Wayne:

"…We are grateful for your continuing support of the President's policy to put an end to aggression in Vietnam.

"Best wishes,

"Sincerely,

"BILL MOYERS

"Special Assistant to the President."

And a de-classified transcript of a taped Johnson White House Oval Office conversation between LBJ and Democracy Now! funder and long-time Schumann Foundation/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President Moyers that took place at 9:15 p.m. on M 13, 1965 reveals what Moyers said to LBJ prior to McGeorge Bundy’s appearance at a campus teach-in to argue in defense of the Johnson administration’s escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam:

“I just hate for the President’s representative to be debating with that bunch of…a lot of (them) will be kooks, a lot of them are just misguided zealots. It just sort of demeans our position. I don’t think the White House ever has to debate. I think if—you don’t make decisions by debating. You make your decisions and then history will justify them. You can’t get out and debate in favor of support for them.

“I’m certain Mac [McGeorge Bundy] will control his temper. If he were to lose it once, it would be bad…” (end of part 22)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 21

Schumann Foundation Prez Moyers: Gave Democracy Now! $1.5 Million Since 2004

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 21

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

Although large numbers of people from the Dominican Republic now live in New York City area from which the parallel left Democracy Now! radio and cable tv show originates, since 2004 Democracy Now! has not provided its listeners with many news segments examining which special U.S. corporate interests benefited most from the Democratic Johnson White House’s decision to order U.S. military troops to occupy the Dominican Republic in 1965 or many weekly updates on the 21st-century political and economic situation within the Dominican Republic.

One reason might be because the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation has given the Democracy Now! media firm over $1.5 million in grants since 2004; and the long-time president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation, Bill Moyers, was one of the Johnson White House officials responsible for the decision to order U.S. troops to invade and occupy the Dominican Republic in late April 1965, in violation of the United Nations Charter.

LBJ's Military Occupation of Dominican Republic Protected G. and W. Investments

But a year before U.S. troops were sent to the Dominican Republic by the Johnson White House in 1965 the U.S.-based Gulf and Western corporation had also begun, coincidentally, to spend $54 million [equal to over $426 million in 2018] to acquire, by 1967, control of the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company that owned 450 square miles or 300,000 acres of Dominican Republic land and a sugar mill in La Romana, Dominican Republic; and the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company was then merged with Gulf and Western Industries.

As a result, Gulf and Western, now controlling 8 percent of all arable land in the Dominican Republic, became that country’s largest landowner and largest private employer between 1967 and 1985; and it produced sugar cane on about 50 percent of the land it now owned. In addition, by the early 1980s the U.S.-based corporation owned and operated the Hotel Santo Domingo and Hispaniola in Santo Domingo and the Casa de Campo Resort Complex in La Romana. According to a June 13, 1984 New York Times article:

“In 1974 and 1975, G.and W. made millions by speculating in sugar in the republic. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which later investigated G. and W., estimated that G. and W. may have made as much as $64.5 million [equal to between $306 million and $340 million in 2018] during those years. In 1979, the S.E.C. sued G. and W. charging that…[then-Gulf and Western Chairman Charles] Bluhdorn had made a secret agreement with high officials of the Dominican Government to speculate in sugar….”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] also accused Gulf and Western in 1975 of illegally failing to pay the Dominican Republic’s government more than $38 million [equal to over $180 million in 2018] in profits generated by its business activities in the Dominican Republic that it was under a legal obligation to pay; and Gulf and Western was compelled by the SEC in 1980 to agree to spend $39 million during the next 7 years funding some kind of development program in the Dominican Republic.

Around 19,000 agricultural workers were exploited by Gulf and Western in the Dominican Republican each year during the cane-cutting season between 1967 and the early 1980s. So, not surprisingly, when the National Council of Churches requested that Gulf and Western fully disclose detailed data on what its agricultural workers in the Dominican Republic were being paid in hourly wages in 1976, Gulf and Western executives refused to disclose this information.

In the early 1980s, however, “rising poverty, unassailable unemployment and inflation running at over 50 percent became the norm” in the Dominican Republic; and following the Balageur government’s imposed “price hike under the IMF-induced austerity measures” on Apr. 23, 1984, street protests “spread out” from Santo Domingo “leaving the nation rocked from three days of civic protest” and with “as many as 112 civilians dead, hundreds more wounded in the streets, and over 4,000 demonstrators imprisoned,” according to the 2000 book Dominican Republic: A Guide To The People, Politics and Culture.

So, also not surprisingly, in 1985 Gulf and Western sold its Dominican assets after 18 years of exploiting the country’s sugar production resources. As the New York Times reported in its June 13, 1984 article, “in a move that would end nearly 20 years of involvement in the Dominican Republic, Gulf and Western Industries said yesterday that it would try to sell its sugar growing operations and holdings there” and “analysts had expected G. and W. to try to rid itself of its troubled sugar operations.”

Yet “registered U.S. private investment in the Dominican Republic” still “stood at approximately $660 million [equal to over $1.2 billion in 2018] in 1990” and “a multitude of North American companies and their subsidiaries” still operated “in the country: Abbott Laboratories, Citibank, Colgate Palmolive, Esso, Falconbridge, Ford, IBM, Texaco and Xerox,” according to James Ferguson’s 1992 book The Dominican Republic: Behind The Lighthouse. And  “almost half of all” Dominican “companies” were still “owned by U.S. or Canadian interests” in 2000, according to the 2000 book Dominican Republic: A Guide To The People, Politics and Culture.

Democracy Now! Funder and Ex-LBJ Special Assistant/Press Secretary Moyers with LBJ

Democracy Now! funder Moyers also participated in both a May 13, 1965 meeting with the former long-time Ford Foundation president Bundy, then-CIA official Helms and then-Defense Secretary McNamara and a May 14, 1965 meeting with Bundy that discussed U.S. policy decisions related to the Dominican Republic. And at the May 14, 1965 meeting, former Ford Foundation president “Bundy advocated having United States troops clean out the northern section of Santo Domingo,” according to a declassified Johnson White House document.

As payment for his participation as President Lyndon Johnson’s special assistant in the Johnson White House policy decision meetings like the April and May 1965 meetings that discussed the situation in the Dominican Republic, Democracy Now! funder and long-time Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation president Moyers was paid an annual salary in 1965 of $28,500 [equal to over $225,000  in 2018], according to a Jan. 17, 1965 New York Times article. And on Jul. 9, 1965, Moyers was appointed by LBJ to be his acting White House Press Secretary.

Subsequently, Moyers became Johnson’s permanent White House Press Secretary and filled that Johnson White House staff position until Jan. 25, 1967. According to a Dec. 14, 1965 New York Times article, Newsweek magazine later then reported that Democracy Now! funder Moyers’ annual salary from his White House gig as LBJ’s press secretary was to be increased to $30,000 [equal to over $237,000 in 2018] in 1966.

But when the Johnson White House’s National Security Affairs Advisor Bundy announced in December 1965 that he was resigning his White House position as of Feb. 25, 1966 to become the president of the Ford Foundation (which, coincidentally, later also helped fund the Democracy Now! show in the late 1990s and early 21st-century), a Dec. 9, 1965 New York Times article reported that “Johnson will not shift Moyers to Bundy post” because “Johnson wants Moyers free to be troubleshooter,” according to the New York Times Index 1965 book. (end of part 21)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 20

Democracy Now! Funder and Ex-LBJ Special Assistant Moyers With LBJ

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 20

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers. 

In the Dominican Republic “in February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president” of that country “since 1924;” and “he called for land reform; low-rent housing; modest nationalization of business; foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies,” according to William Blum’s 2000 book, Rogue State. But “a number of American officials and congressmen expressed their discomfort with Bosch’s plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States,” according to the same book.

So, not surprisingly, as David Howard’s Dominican Republic: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture book recalled in 2000, “Bosch…lasted only 7 months in office” as Dominican Republic “military officers” overthrew his democratically elected “government and annulled the constitution; and their troops surrounded the National Palace on Sept. 5, 1963."  But, as Rogue State observed, “nineteen months later,” in April 1965, “a widespread popular revolt broke out” in the Dominican Republic “which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power.”

The Democratic Johnson White House, in which longtime Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation president Bill Moyers then worked as LBJ’s Special Presidential Assistant, however, ordered 23,000 U.S. troops to invade the island on Apr. 28, 1965; and “by the end of the invasion, more than 3,000 Dominicans and 31 American servicemen had lost their lives” as “the Marines deprived the people of the Dominican Republic of self-determination.” according to an article by Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, titled “40 Years Later, U.S. Invasion Still Haunts Dominican Republic,” that was posted on Apr. 21, 2005 on The Progressive magazine’s website. “

Commander of U.S. occupation troops in Dominican Republic in 1965-66

Johnson administration officials then “personally groomed Joaquin Balaguer,” who had been a close advisor to long-time Dominican dictator Trujillo prior to the CIA-backed assassination of Trujillo in 1961, “to head the Dominican government in 1966” and “U.S. aid insured Balaguer's control over the country,” according to a 1978 NACLA article by Philip E. Wheaton about the fraudulent 1978 Dominican Republic elections, that NACLA reposted on its website on Sept. 25, 2007. 

The Dominican Republic: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture book described what happened politically in the Dominican Republic in the three decades between 1966 and 1996 (the year in which the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation gave Pacifica a $25,000 [equivalent to over $40,000 in 2018] grant to launch the parallel left Democracy Now! daily radio news show):

“Dr. Joaquin Balaguer won the…elections in June 1966, following a violent electoral campaign during which 350 supporters of Bosch’s PRD (Dominican Revolutionary Party) were killed...President Balaguer was not slow to use coercive tactics and force…His main opponent, Juan Bosch, went into voluntary exile as a result of political repression and threats on his life. During the 1966 presidential elections, he had been unable to conduct a political campaign beyond daily radio broadcasts, while Balaguer had been able to tour the country. The…Balaguer administration gave rise to heightened repression, and the 1970 elections were carried out in an atmosphere of violence. La Banda, a group of government-sponsored thugs, carried out 190 political assassinations between 1970 and 1972. Police harassment of political opponents continued unabated…”

James Ferguson’s 1992 book The Dominican Republic: Behind The Lighthouse also recalled that “between…1966 and the end of 1971 over 1,000 political assassinations took place in the Dominican Republic,” although “little of this was reported in the U.S. media.”

In addition, according to David Howard’s Dominican Republic: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture book:

“…Balaguer…defeated his principal opponent, Juan Bosch, at the…elections in 1990 amid allegations of widespread fraud…The 1994 elections followed a similar course…Balaguer was adjudged to have won, but further accusation of fraud threatened to paralyze the country with growing popular discontent…International observers  agreed that opposition parties were disenfranchised…Government supporters were given multiple cedulas or voting cards, and opponents were excluded from the electoral list or intimidated…Many stations were kept closed by armed government supporters or by the police…Fraudulent mandates and the exclusion of the majority of the population from state politics has meant that the Dominican political system has consistently lacked credibility and legitimacy…Balaguer…served as president for 22…years…”

Not surprisingly, in the years between the Johnson White House’s late April 1965 decision to invade the Dominical Republic and 2018, large numbers of people from the Dominican Republic migrated to the United States. By 2000, the Dominican Republic was being described by David Howard in his Dominican Republic: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture book as “a transitional society with over one-tenth of its population living in the United States;” and as Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova noted in an article, “Dominican Immigrants in the United States,” that was posted on the Migration Policy Institute’s website on Apr. 11, 2018:

 “…U.S. intervention accelerated the departure of Dominicans in the 1960s and the decades that followed. In 2016, nearly 1.1 million Dominican immigrants lived in the United States…The Dominican population in the United States, which stood at 12,000 in 1960, reached 169,000 by 1980 and then doubled by 1990 and more than doubled again by 2010…The top four counties by Dominican population were all in New York: Bronx County, New York County (Manhattan), Kings County, and Queens County. Together these counties were home to 41 percent of Dominicans in the United States…The Dominican diaspora in the United States is comprised of about 2.2 million individuals who were either born in the Dominican Republic or reported Dominican ethnicity or ancestry, according to tabulations from the U.S. Census Bureau 2016 ACS...” 

Although large numbers of people from the Dominican Republic now live in New York City area from which the parallel left Democracy Now! radio and cable tv show originates, since 2004 Democracy Now! has provided its listeners with neither very many news segments examining the role that the Democratic Johnson White House played in Dominican Republic history in 1965 nor weekly updates on the 21st-century political and economic situation within the Dominican Republic. One reason might be because the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation has given the Democracy Now! media firm over $1.5 million in grants since 2004; and the long-time president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation, Bill Moyers, was one of the Johnson White House officials responsible for the decision to order U.S. troops to invade and occupy the Dominican Republic in late April 1965, in violation of the United Nations Charter.

Schumann Foundation Prez Moyers: Gave $1.5 Million to Democracy Now! since 2004

In 2004, for example, Moyers’ foundation gave a $25,000 [equal to over $33,000 in 2018] grant to Democracy Now! “to fund Special 2004 election coverage for Democracy Now!,” according to the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation’s 2004 Form 990 financial filing. And the 2009 Form 990 financial filing for the same foundation indicates that Moyers’ foundation gave a $300,000 [equal to over $350,000 in 2018] grant to Democracy Now! Productions in 2009.

A grant of $750,000 [equal to over $810,000 in 2018] was next given to Democracy Now! Productions by former Johnson White House Special Presidential Assistant Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation in 2013, according to this foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2013; and, the following year, Moyers’ foundation gave an additional grant of $292,600 to help fund the parallel left Democracy Now! show according to the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2014.

In addition, another grant of $214,074 was given by Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation to Democracy Now! Productions, according to the foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2015; and between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2016 yet another grant of $250,000, was given to help fund Democracy Now! by Moyers’ foundation, according to the 2016 Form 990 financial filing of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation. 

Yet according to Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s daily diary, on Apr. 28, 1965—the day on which U.S. troops had been ordered by LBJ to begin occupying Dominican Republic territory—Johnson was in the lounge of the White House Oval office from 4:45 p.m. to 6:21 p.m. meeting with then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, then-Assistant Secretary of State George Ball, then-National Security Advisor and future long-time Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy and then-LBJ Special Presidential Assistant and future long-time Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President and Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers. And during this White House meeting a conference call took place, in which Democracy Now! funder Moyers participated, that began at 5:45 p.m., in which “the President said we were not going to announce anything until they have landed” and “the President said that…he would say help was needed to protect the lives of the Americans,” according to a now-declassified Johnson White House document, titled “Memorandum of Telephone Conversation 4/28/1965 5:45 p.m.”.

Democracy Now! funder Moyers also participated in a meeting on the situation in the Dominican Republic that was held in the White House Cabinet Room from 8:40 a.m. to 10:35 a.m. on May 1, 1965 and in a White House meeting that was held on the following day on the situation in the Dominican Republic. Then on May 6, 1965, Moyers joined future Ford Foundation President Bundy, then-Defense Secretary McNamara, Richard Helms of the Central Intelligence Agency and other top-level Johnson administration officials at another meeting in which the situation in the Dominican Republic was discussed. And, according to a new declassified Johnson White House document, titled “Memorandum for the Record May 6, 1965 3:00 p.m.,” at this meeting:

“The group discussed at some length the problem of the communists. The communists possibly ought to be kicked out of the country…In this regard, we must put more emphasis on rounding-up the communists…The group discussed the problem of the Peace Corps people in the Dominican Republic who are giving interviews that are damaging to our interests. Mr. Moyers said that Sargent Shriver is dealing with the problem…”

In an article by Fred Rosen about NACLA’s history that was posted on September 25, 2007 on NACLA’s website, NACLA founder Mike Locker indicated whose special “interests” the Peace Corps people in the Dominican Republic who Democracy Now! funder Moyers wanted  to stop from “giving interviews,” were actually “damaging” by their interviews:

“Suddenly, the United States invaded the Dominican Republic in a massive, overwhelming way, under the pretext of defeating a Communist insurgency. It was quite obvious to me that the pretext was 99% baloney… But when you look at the Dominican Republic and you look at the Caribbean—more so in that period than now—you see that sugar was the dominant force.

“So I started doing some research on who influenced sugar policy in the United States. What was the ‘sugar power elite’? And who pops up but Ellsworth Bunker. Bunker was Lyndon Johnson’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) and special envoy to the Dominican Republic. He was the former president and a large shareholder of National Sugar Refining Corporation, the second largest sugar company in the United States. Right off the bat, this was interesting. Then there was Abe Fortas, Special Counsel to the President: board member of the Sucrest Corporation, very big in Puerto Rico, a large molasses importer. Then there was Averell Harriman, on the Board of Directors and with strong financial ties to the National Sugar Refining Corporation.

“So here was a power structure that I felt was largely influencing what U.S. policy and direction was all about. Was it a conspiracy? No, it wasn’t a conspiracy; it was a culture. Interests were clearly articulated. Preserving interests and preserving environments friendly to those interests was essential, and the U.S. government was obviously making itself available in that capacity.” (end of part 20)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 9

Public Welfare Foundation Founder and Texas Media Baron Charles Marsh

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 9

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

Besides receiving the $10,000 grant from the J.M. Kaplan Fund in 1998 to support its Democracy Now! show, Pacifica was also given a $25,000 [equivalent to nearly $40,000 in 2018] grant in that same year by the Public Welfare Foundation to help fund the news reporting of the Democracy Now! show. So, not surprisingly, during the last two decades the Democracy Now! producers have not aired many radio or cable tv news segments that examine how the Public Welfare Foundation (whose current assets exceed $480 million) obtained its grant money historically or how this “non-profit” foundation currently obtains its grant money.

Yet, as the Public Welfare Foundation website indicates, the foundation was established in 1947 after an Austin, Texas corporate media baron named Charles E. Marsh “made a formal commitment to philanthropy by incorporating the Public Welfare Foundation and designating it to receive his newspapers’ assets upon his death;” and “Marsh oversaw the Foundation’s work until his health began to decline in 1953.” In addition, after Charles Marsh died in 1964, his third wife. Claudia Haines Marsh, “was the Foundation’s president from 1952 to 1974, and she remained a guiding influence until her own death, at the age of 100, in the year 2000.”

Until late 2011, “a granddaughter of Claudia Marsh” and “the daughter of Donald Warner who chaired the foundation’s Board for 10 years,” named Beth Warner, “was a valued member of the Board’s Finance committee,” according to a Nov. 8, 2011 Public Welfare Foundation press release; and Beth Warner’s 21^st-century presence on the Public Welfare Foundation’s board of trustees continued “a tradition of family members and close associates of Charles Marsh serving on the board,” according to the same 2011 press release.

In his 2009 book, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, Bryan Burrough indicated how the Public Welfare Foundation founder who owned both the Austin-American and Austin Statesman newspapers (which later merged into the Austin American-Statesman newspaper in 1973), Charles Marsh, was a business associate of ultra-rich Texas oilman Sid Richardson during the 1930s:

“Charles E. Marsh, co-owner of several Texas newspapers, including the politically influential Austin-American…was using his spare cash to bankroll several Texas wildcatters… It is a measure of how totally Sid Richardson cloaked his business in secrecy that the name of Charles Marsh, the man whose backing made Richardson’s fortune possible, remained unknown to Richardson’s family…

“Marsh…had begun negotiating a complicated deal involving First National Bank of Dallas… It appears that Marsh agreed to guarantee Richardson’s debt to the bank. In return, the bank agreed to loan Richardson an additional $210,000 [equal to over $3.8 million in 2018], followed by another $150,000 [equal to over $2.7 million in 2018]… By the summer of 1935 Richardson had used most of Charles Marsh’s investment to buy land all around Gulf’s drill sites…

Marsh also loaned Richardson $30,000 [equivalent to over $560,000 in 2018] in 1934 and when Richardson’s oil firm discovered oil in 1935 on its drill sites, the profits were split between Marsh and Richardson. But then, according to the same book:

“In 1938, Marsh encountered a sudden…financial reversal… From a single mention in a letter to Richardson — contained in Marsh’s papers at the Johnson Presidential Library — it appears that the Internal Revenue Service served Marsh with a request for $1.2 million [equal to over $20.5 million in 2018] in overdue taxes… Marsh was forced to repay much of the money. To raise it, he ended up selling all his Texas newspapers.”

Coincidentally, like Sid Richardson, former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson also apparently was backed by the founder of the Public Welfare Foundation (that helped fund Pacifica’s Democracy Now! show with a $25,000 grant in 1998) during the 1930s, when LBJ (also using $10,000 [equal to over $176,000 in 2018] that was given to him by the father of former First Lady Claudia “Ladybird” Johnson) decided in 1937 that he wanted to get himself elected as Austin’s representative in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938. As Ronnie Dugger observed in his 1982 book The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson:

“Johnson had a special advantage: the partisanship of the Austin newspapers. Charles Marsh… was owner and publisher of the Austin American-Statesman as well as the dailies in 4 or 5 other Texas cities, and he was for Lyndon from the first. Marsh…had been in oil deals…since as early as 1934… Marsh was also… a director and president of Richardson Oils, Inc., which gave Johnson a direct connection to oilman Sid Richardson…

“Although the Austin dailies did not formally endorse anyone, Marsh turned them into Lyndon’s harmonicas. `These papers went all-out for him’ said Edmonds Travis, one of their earliest editors… From the time the Johnsons arrived in Washington they frequented `Longlea,’ the plantation home of their friend, publisher Charles Marsh, in Culpeper, Virginia…The publisher also flew Johnson about in his private plane….”

From the profits he obtained by co-owning a chain of newspapers in Austin, Waco, Wichita Falls, Breckenridge, Brownsville, Cisco, Cleburne, Corpus Christi, Eastland, Harlingen, Laredo, McAllen, Mineral Wells, Paris, Port Arthur, Ranger and Texarkana after World War I, Public Welfare Foundation founder Marsh had become a millionaire by the time he was in his early 40’s during the late 1920s.  A biographical entry for Charles Marsh on the Spartacus-educational.com website noted that, according to Robert Caro, the author of the 1982 book The Path To Power: The years of Lyndon Johnson, by 1936:

                        

"Marsh owned newspapers in fifteen Texas cities, and in another dozen cities in other states... He was Richardson's partner in some of the most profitable oil wells in West Texas, and the sole owner of other profitable wells of his own. And in Austin, he owned the streetcar franchise and the largest single bloc of stock in the Capital National Bank, as well as vast tracts of real estate.”

The Spartacus-education.com website also recalled another way that the Public Education Welfare foundation founder helped the future Democratic President (who would later be responsible for the post-1964 escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam that caused the deaths of millions of Vietnamese people, as well as the wounding of over 153,000 and deaths of over 57,000 members of the U.S. military, during the 1960s and early 1970s):

“Johnson complained that he found it difficult managing on his Congress salary. Marsh arranged for Johnson's wife to buy nineteen acres on Lake Austin for $8,000, which he knew was an area that was likely to be developed and would increase dramatically in value. Lady Bird Johnson later sold the land for $330,000. He also provided the money for Johnson to buy the Fort Worth radio station that he said would be `some day worth $3 million’. “ (end of part 9)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: LBJ's Memo To General Cabell

Prior to being fired by JFK following the CIA's 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, former Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell's brother--then-CIA Deputy Director (Gen.) Charles Cabell--apparently was warned by then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson that JFK intended to decrease the CIA's power in Washington, D.C. As former CIA operative Robert Morrow revealed in his early 1990s book First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated In The CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy:


"On Sunday, April 24, 1961, one week after the fiasco on the beaches, I received a call from [former CIA official] Tracy Barnes...He requested that I meet him at the Golden Parrot in Washington for lunch on Monday...I agreed to see General Charles Cabell and was in his office one hour after leaving the Golden Parrot...A third man was with Cabell when Barnes and I entered his office. He was introduced as the Deputy Director of Plans for the Agency, Richard Bissell.

"The General did not waste time with further amenities and chatter...

"`Well, young man, I assume Tracy has told you about the Agency's problems with the White House.'...

"He then reached into his top desk drawer, removed a large file folder and handed it to me.

"The first item I removed from the folder was a memorandum, handwritten on the official stationery created exclusively for the vice-president of the United States. Beneath the stationery's engraved: `Office of the Vice President of the United States,' the salutation read: `My dear Charles':

"...After a number of critical, self-serving comments abaout the intention of the president and his brother to build a Kennedy dynasty in the White House, Lyndon Johnson proceeded forthrightly to the crux of his message.

"The vice-president had learned, `strictly by accident' of the secret directives issued to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara by President Kennedy...McNamara was ordered to employ any and all means at his disposal, which would result in the revocation of the CIA's power...McNamara was further authorized to establish an alternative intelligence agency...

"Immediately beneath the last-written line were the vice-president's initials, `LBJ'."

Morrow also recalled that, after being shown LBJ's memo to the soon-to-be-axed CIA deputy director, he was allowed to "read through numerous reports dealing with everything from unsavory campaign tactics authorized by Kennedy to surveillance reports which explicitly detailed the manner in which he [JFK] occupied many of his nights," during the next half-hour.

Coincidentally, prior to former CIA Deputy Director [Gen.] Cabell's 1971 death, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was apparently preparing to accuse the former deputy CIA director of "conspiring to assassinate" JFK.

(Downtown 1/18/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: LBJ's Hoover Commission

Although former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was apparently not too fond of JFK, he was apparently quite fond of LBJ. As Alien Ink: The FBI's War On Freedom Of Expression recalled:

"On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas...A Hoover friend of over 20 years was sworn in as President...Johnson was the only American President whose autographed photograph hung on the living-room wall of J. Edgar Hoover's home. The Director also kept a bust of Johnson in his dining room.

In his 1970 book, Hoover's FBI: The Men And The Myth, former FBI Agent William Turner described the nature of LBJ's relationship to former FBI Director Hoover:

"One of Lyndon Johnson's first requests upon ensconcing himself in the White House was for 1,200 dossiers on his political adversaries from the FBI's supposedly confidential files, plus the Bobby Baker volume [of LBJ's former aide]. Hoover, whose time for mandatory retirement was looming (only the president could extend it), was happy to oblige...

"Popular fable has it that the Hoover-Johnson friendship stemmed from nothing more than the fact they were neighbors when Johnson was in the Senate...

"But it was much deeper than that. In a very real sense, Hoover was part of the Texan's political family. [LBJ aide] Walter Jenkins' brother had long been an FBI agent in Amarillo, and one of LBJ's shirttail relatives moved from Texas state politics to the FBI (despite the fact that he was slightly under the height minimum), where his rise through the ranks was mercurial. And then there was old Clint Murchison, Hoover's bosom pal, who was one of Johnson's earliest political benefactors...

"The assassination of President Kennedy brought out the Hoover-Johnson team at its precision best. As Congress cranked up to investigate the momentous crime, Johnson took over with the announcement that he was forming his own blue-ribbon commission of inquiry and had asked the FBI to investigate. Less than three weeks after the assassination, far too little time to cover all the ground, Hoover handed the president a confidential summary report that concluded there was `no conspiracy.' Simultaneously...he leaked the report's contents to the press. Thus was the public inculcated with the `no consnpiracy' theory, and the Warren Commission was handed it as a fait accompli..."

(Downtown 4/14/93)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did LBJ Tell Mistress CIA Eliminated JFK?

Although the Warren Commission Report blamed the assassination of JFK in 1963 on Lee Oswald, U.S. President Johnson apparently told his mistress, Madeline Brown, that the CIA was responsible for the elimination of JFK on November 22, 1963. In his 1992 book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell wrote the following:

"As I was completing the manuscript of this book, it was suggested that I get in touch with Madeline Brown. Between 1948 and 1969, Brown maintains that she was a mistress of Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ's handwriting on numerous letters to Brown has been verified by analysts, and today it is generally accepted that her son Steven, who died of cancer in 1990, was a son of the former president.

"Brown, today 67 [in 1992], came from a wealthy Dallas family, the Duncans, which made its money in real estate and ranching. She decided to go public with what Johnson once imparted to her about the Kennedy assassination...

"Before the assassination, according to Brown, `Lyndon Johnson told me that the Kennedys would never embarrass him again. It was not a threat, but a promise.' Then, as 1963 passed into history, they were together at a New Year's Eve party. `I said to Lyndon, I've got to have my mind put at ease,' Brown remembers. `People are saying you are responsible for the assassination, and I've got to know.' Well, he had a terrible temper tantrum, as he often did. Then he told me: IT WAS THE OIL PEOPLE AND THE CIA.'"

(Downtown 4/14/93)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did LBJ Know JFK Was To Be Eliminated?

In his book The Texas Connection, Craig Zirbel asserted that according to former President Johnson's "girlfriend of over 20 years, Madeline Brown, Lyndon Baines Johnson told her prior to President Kennedy's assassination that Kennedy was going to be killed in Dallas" and LBJ "knew in advance but did nothing." Zirbel also wrote that "according to Johnson's motorcade seatmate, Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough (who smelled gunpowder near the grassy knoll), at the exact time of the assassination Johnson had his ear up against a small walkie-talkie held over the back seat listening to the device which was `turned down real low.'"

Coincidentally, in her book JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, Jean Hill also recalled that a Dallas motorcycle cop who escorted President Kennedy's car on November 22, 1963--J.B. Marshall--told her the following, after President Johnson was inaugurated:

"According to the guys who were escorting his car in the motorcade, our new president is either one jumpy sonofabitch or he knows something he's not telling about the Kennedy thing...

"They say he started ducking down in the car a good 30 or 40 seconds before the first shots were fired...I'd say that's just a little peculiar, wouldn't you?...

"One of them told McGuire he saw Johnson duck down even before the car turned onto Houston Street...

"...This guy said it sure looked like he was expecting bullets to be flying."

(Downtown 2/3/93)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Why Did LBJ Take Oath In Dallas?

Although most U.S. Establishment presidents have been sworn-in as president in Washington, D.C., former President Lyndon B. Johnson was first sworn in by a CIA-linked Hoblitzelle Foundation trustee named Sara Hughes in Dallas, Texas a few hours after JFK was ambushed on November 22, 1963. According to High Treason 2: The Great Cover-Up by Harrison Edward Livingstone:

"The conspiracy that killed President Kennedy was at least to some extent hatched and operated out of Dallas/Fort Worth. The plotters controlled the police and the city government there. Numerous of their relatives and connections were in the military and in the CIA...Some of those, like General Charles Cabell of Dallas, had been fired by Kennedy. The Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, David Atlee Phillips, and numerous others from the CIA were from Dallas or Fort Worth...

"General Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conein wore military uniforms but were CIA...There was long a rumor in the Washington area that the Far Eastern section of the CIA killed President Kennedy, along with propaganda specialists and Bay of Pigs operatives from the Western Hemisphere division. They were also connected to Richard Nixon...

"Lansdale and Lucien Conein were prominent in the Far Eastern Section, along with Desmond Fitzgerald."

(Downtown 1/20/93)

Hidden History of Texas: 1940-1953--Part 12

(This article was originally posted on The Rag Blog on February 11,  2013)

Between 1939 and 1953 the percentage of non-agricultural workers in Texas who were members of labor unions increased from 10.3 to 16.8 percent; and 375,000 workers in Texas were labor union members by 1953. Between 1941 and 1945, CIO-affiliated labor unions “gained nearly 40,000 members in 4 years,” according to F. Ray Marshall’s Labor in the South. The same book also recalled:

"Membership expansion occurred in petroleum refining, and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where, in 1945, the CIO claimed 25,000 new members in one year. Important victories there included the organization of the huge North American Aviation Company to the UAW, the Armour plant by the packinghouse workers, Conroe Manufacturing by the ACWA, and several steel fabricators by the steelworkers. PWOC Local 54 and storehandlers’ Local 59 acquired bargaining rights under a master agreement with Armour. During the war [World War II], the packinghouse workers’ strength in Texas was confined largely to this plant.
"The CIO had 115 locals in Texas in March 1944, the most numerous of which were: autoworkers, 8 locals; oil workers, 30 locals; and steelworkers, with 12 locals. The textile workers had only two locals in Texas in 1944...

"By the 1942 convention, the oil workers’ organization committee had achieved significant results. The most important victory was the Texas Company at Port Arthur... In March 1942, the OWIU won an election at the Southport refinery in Texas City... It also signed up 84 percent of the workers at Standard of New Jersey’s Humble refinery at Baytown, Texas...

"The UCAPAWA (Canning, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers)’s strongest base in Texas was in Houston, where it had 5 contracts covering over 600 Negro and Mexican-American workers, organized by March 1942. UCAPAWA contracts in Houston covered about 150 employees at the Houston Millinery Company and 400 Negro and Spanish-speaking workers in 4 cotton companies, three of which were owned by the Anderson Clayton company... In addition, UCAPAWA had locals among pecan workers at San Antonio, spinach workers at Mathis, and cannery workers at Sugarland…UCAPAWA…organized fruit and vegetable workers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where its contracts covered 1,000 employees during peak seasons."

As Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas observed, “under the auspices of the National War Labor Board,” Texas labor movement “organizers unionized more of the state’s industries by 1945...” And during World War II, “workers at Shell in Pasadena, Texas” even “struck spontaneously” in June 1943 “to secure the reinstatement of a discharged union member,” according to Labor in the South; and there was also a strike by workers at a B.F. Goodrich plant in Texas in February 1944.

The white corporate power structure in Texas (and its ultra-conservative, white supremacist Texas political establishment in Austin) apparently then began to feel that this growing militancy and level of unionization of workers in Texas threatened both its class interests and its ability to continue to economically exploit and politically dominate most people who lived in Texas.

So after the CIO organized plant after plant across Texas in 1946-47,” the Texas “legislature responded in early 1947 by passing a right-to-work law that prohibited requiring union membership as a condition of employment,” according to Gone To Texas, and “the legislature also passed other anti-union laws, including one that prohibited pickets at strikes from being within 50 feet of each other or the entrance of the plant being picketed.”

Public employees in Texas were also denied the right to bargain collectively in 1947. And following a 1953 CIO-led strike in Port Arthur, the then-Democratic Texas Governor Allan Shivers even “called a special session of the legislature in the spring of 1954, which passed a bill making membership in the Communist Party a felony punishable by a fine of $20,000 and 20 years in the penitentiary,” according to the same book.

Coincidentally, according to Ronnie Dugger’s The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson, in Texas “the program of lobbying against labor was carried forward and financed largely by allies of Lyndon Johnson.” As The Politician recalled:

"The public did not know about an even more significant business convert to Johnson, anti-union contractor Herman Brown who, with his brother George, ran the contracting and engineering firm of Brown and Root... A stream of gifts from the Browns to the Johnsons can be traced through the decade starting in 1940... Lyndon was Brown and Root's kept politician...

"By 1947 Brown and Root was so powerful in Texas it led a many-aspected campaign against unions which made Texas one of the most anti-union states in the Union and the only major industrial state that had a law prohibiting workers from voting to be all-union... The Brown brothers were largely responsible for the enactment from 1947 on, of the state’s anti-union laws."

War Department or Department of Defense contractors like Brown and Root apparently made a lot of money during World War II and the Korean War of the early 1950s from the U.S. government contracts that were thrown their way. But at the same time, “22,022 Texans died or suffered fatal wounds in battle” during World War II and “the Texas Division suffered one of the highest casualty rates of any in the Army -- 3,717 killed, 12,685 wounded, and 3,064 missing in action,” according to Going To Texas.

In addition, “the 19th Division, a Texas unit... suffered nearly 18,500 casualties, including 2,963 killed, many of the deaths coming in close fighting in the hedgerow country of Normandy,” according to the same book. And around 1,800 people from Texas were also killed in action after the Democratic Truman Administration decided to intervene militarily on the side of the right-wing Syngman Rhee dictatorship during the civil war in Korea .

Of the 750,000 people from Texas who served in the U.S. military during World War II, about 88,000 were African-Americans from Texas and about 12,000 were women from Texas; and “Texas, which had 5 percent of the nation’s population, provided 7 percent of those who served,” with most Texans serving in the army and air force and “about one-quarter” serving in the navy, marines and coast guard, according to Going To Texas.

Hidden History of Texas: 1930-1940--Part 10

(This article was originally posted on The Rag Blog on January 28, 2013)

In his 2009 book, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, Vanity Fair magazine correspondent Bryan Burrough indicated how ultra-rich Texas folks like Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, and former Austin American and Austin Statesman (they merged into the American-Statesman) owner Charles Marsh were, despite the Great Depression, apparently still able to make big money from Texas’s oil industry between 1930 and 1940:

"Though he knew nothing about pipelines, Murchison decided to try to build one... Murchison was amazed how simple the business was; once a pipeline was built, all he did was sit back and collect checks... The pipe alone cost 3 million dollars, all of which Murchison got on credit... He coaxed every last dollar he could out of the Dallas banks, then pushed back repayment... By 1932 his debt had grown to more than $4 million dollars, far more than his net worth...

"[H.L.] Hunt used most of his inheritance to buy a 960-acre farm... Negroes worked his land, allowing Hunt to spend much of his time playing cards... By that...summer of 1930 he still hadn’t found a drop of oil in Texas. Then, on Sept. 5 [1930], Hunt took a call... Despite Hunt’s later denials, court documents would show he cut a secret deal with the Deep Rock driller to supply his men with inside information in return for $20,000 in cash...

"Charles E. Marsh, co-owner of several Texas newspapers, including the politically influential Austin-American...was using his spare cash to bankroll several Texas wildcatters... It is a measure of how totally Sid Richardson cloaked his business in secrecy that the name of Charles Marsh, the man whose backing made Richardson’s fortune possible, remained unknown to Richardson’s family...

"Marsh...had begun negotiating a complicated deal involving First National Bank of Dallas... It appears that Marsh agreed to guarantee Richardson’s debt to the bank. In return, the bank agreed to loan Richardson an additional $210,000, followed by another $150,000... By the summer of 1935 Richardson had used most of Charles Marsh’s investment to buy land all around Gulf’s drill sites...

"In 1938, Marsh encountered a sudden...financial reversal... From a single mention in a letter to Richardson -- contained in Marsh’s papers at the Johnson Presidential Library -- it appears that the Internal Revenue Service served Marsh with a request for $1.2 million in overdue taxes... Marsh was forced to repay much of the money. To raise it, he ended up selling all his Texas newspapers.”

Coincidentally, like Sid Richardson, former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson also apparently was backed by former Austin-American and Austin-Statesman newspaper owner Charles Marsh during the 1930s, when LBJ (also using $10,000 that was given to him by the father of First Lady Claudia “Ladybird” Johnson) decided in 1937 that he wanted to get himself elected as Austin’s representative in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938. As Ronnie Dugger observed in his 1982 book The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson:

"Johnson had a special advantage: the partisanship of the Austin newspapers. Charles Marsh... was owner and publisher of the Austin American-Statesman as well as the dailies in 4 or 5 other Texas cities, and he was for Lyndon from the first. Marsh...had been in oil deals...since as early as 1934... Marsh was also... a director and president of Richardson Oils, Inc., which gave Johnson a direct connection to oilman Sid Richardson...

"Although the Austin dailies did not formally endorse anyone, Marsh turned them into Lyndon’s harmonicas. "These papers went all-out for him" said Edmonds Travis, one of their earliest editors... From the time the Johnsons arrived in Washington they frequented "Longlea," the plantation home of their friend, publisher Charles Marsh, in Culpeper, Virginia...The publisher also flew Johnson about in his private plane."

And, according to The Big Rich, LBJ also “used Texas Oil’s cash to start his march to... power.”

Besides helping to put Lyndon Johnson into Congress between 1930 and 1940 (and into the U.S. Senate and the White House, eventually, after 1940), Texas “oil money helped bankroll the birth of the religious right;” and “in a very real sense, the influence of Texas conservatives in America today -- in fact, the entire `Texanization’ of right-wing politics that brought George W. Bush and Tom DeLay to national prominence -- can be traced to forces set into motion by restive Texas oilmen during the 1930s,” according to The Big Rich. As the same book also noted:

"By 1935...the Kirby Building in downtown Houston was home to...shadowy, interconnected ultra-conservative groups... The Kirby groups were little more than the Ku Klux Klan in pinstripes, a kind of corporate Klan... One of [former National Association of Manufacturers President John Henry] Kirby’s most active allies was Maco Stewart of Galveston, an attorney who...had seen his wealth mushroom when Humble found oil on land he owned south of Houston... The most extreme of Kirby’s circle was George W. Armstrong, a Fort Worth oilman who owned Texas Steel, which made oil field supplies as well as concrete supports for Texas highways...

"In his definitive study of Texas conservatives, The Establishment in Texas Politics, George Norris Green pinpoints 1938 as the year oil-backed ultra-conservatives took control of the state’s political structure... Pappy O’Daniel’s victory [in 1938] initiated two decades of ultra-conservative rule in Texas. As governor, O’Daniel became Texas Oil’s reliable partner, freezing wellhead taxes and backing oil industry lobbyists’ takeover of the Railroad Commission. His administration was dominated by ultra-conservatives, many of them oilmen, including his key financial backer, Maco Stewart...

"Another ultra-conservative initiative was led by...Texas congressman...Martin Dies, who in 1937 co-sponsored formation of the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC]... John Henry Kirby and Maco Stewart were friends and longtime financial supporters of Dies, who was widely viewed as a tool of business and oil interests in the Beaumont area... Dies’s papers indicate he corresponded regularly with Kirby and Stewart."