Ford Foundation, The CIA and U.S. Establishment Conspiracy--Part 1

“Bassma Kodmani…is a Syrian academic and spokesperson of the Syrian National Council… She spent 7 years living in Egypt where she led the Governance and International Cooperation program for the Middle East and North Africa at the Ford Foundation.”

-- Wikipedia

“…President Obama announced the 100,000 Strong Initiative more than two years ago, because the United States wanted to dramatically increase the number of American students traveling to China…When we launched 100,000 Strong in 2010, we originally envisioned it as a four-year effort. But today, I am proud to announce that the Ford Foundation will provide $1 million in seed funding…that will sustain the work of 100,000 Strong beyond these four years. This is an excellent model; it took our government and our government backing to get 100,000 Strong off the ground, but now we look to our civil society and our private sector to sustain and amplify it. And I want to thank John Fitzgerald, the president of the Ford Foundation in China, for his leadership and commitment to 100,000 Strong, and I want to thank all the companies who have made donations to support the program….”

--U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on May 4, 2012

(Note: The following historical article was written in 2002.)

Ford Foundation, The CIA and U.S. Establishment Conspiracy—Part 1

In her book The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stoner Saunders recalled how the Ford Foundation collaborated with the CIA in the past--on behalf of the Ultra-Rich families of the U.S. Establishment's power elite--to perpetuate a globalized corporate economic system which denies political, economic and cultural freedom and equality to the majority of humanity:

"Incorporated in 1936, the Ford Foundation was the tax-exempt cream of the vast Ford fortune...The foundation had a record of close involvement in covert actions in Europe, working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials on specific projects...On 21 January 1953, Allen Dulles, insecure about his future in the CIA under the newly elected Eisenhower, had met his friend David Rockefeller for lunch. Rockefeller hinted heavily that if Dulles decided to leave the Agency, he could reasonably expect to be invited to become president of the Ford Foundation. Dulles need not have feared for his future...Allen Dulles was to become Director of Central Intelligence.


"The new president of the Ford Foundation was announced shortly after. He was John McCloy...By the time he came to the Ford Foundation, he had been Assistant Secretary of War, president of the World Bank...In 1953 he also became chairman of the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank, and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. After John F. Kennedy's assassination, he was a Warren Commission appointee...McCloy took a pragmatic view of the CIA's inevitable interest in the Ford Foundation when he assumed its presidency. Addressing the concerns of some of the foundation's executives, who felt that its reputation for integrity and independence was being undermined by involvement with the CIA, McCloy argued that if they failed to cooperate, the CIA would simply penetrate the foundation quietly by recruiting or inserting staff at lower levels. McCloy's answer to this problem was to create an administrative unit within the Ford Foundation specifically to deal with the CIA. Headed by McCloy and two foundation officers, this three-man committee had to be consulted every time the Agency wanted to use the foundation, either as a pass-through, or as cover. `They would check in with this particular committee, and if it was felt that this was a reasonable thing and would not be against the foundation's long-term interests, then the project would be passed along to the internal staff and other foundation officers (without them) knowing the origins of the proposal,' explained McCloy's biographer, Kai Bird.


"With this arrangement in place, the Ford Foundation became officially engaged as one of those organizations the CIA was able to mobilize for political warfare...The foundation's archives reveal a raft of joint projects. The East European Fund, a CIA front in which George Kennan played a prominent role, got most of its money from the Ford Foundation...The foundation gave $500,000 to Bill Casey's International Rescue Committee [of which Nation editor Vanden Heuvel's father was also an official], and substantial grants to another CIA front, the World Assembly of Youth. It was also one of the single largest donors to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think-tank which exerted enormous influence on American foreign policy, and which operated (and continues to operate) according to strict confidentiality rules which include a twenty-five-year embargo on the release of its records...


"McGeorge Bundy, became president of the Ford Foundation in 1966 (coming straight from his job as Special Assistant to the President in Charge of National Security, which meant, among other things, monitoring the CIA)...The Congress for Cultural Freedom...was one of Ford Foundation's largest grantees, receiving $7 million by the early 1960s..."

The Cultural Cold War book also recalled how the money from the J.M. Kaplan family (some of which has been thrown towards Pacifica/Democracy Now! in recent years) was used in the past by the CIA:

"In 1956...J.M. Kaplan, president of the Welch Grape Juice Company, and president and treasurer of the Kaplan Foundation (assets: $14 million), wrote to Allen Dulles offering his services...Dulles subsequently arranged for a CIA `representative' to make an appointment with Kaplan. The Kaplan Foundation could soon be counted as an asset, a reliable `pass-through' for secret funds earmarked for CIA projects, amongst them the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and an institute headed by veteran socialist and chairman of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, Norman Thomas.


"The use of philanthropic foundations was the most convenient way to pass large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source. By the mid-1950s, the CIA's intrusion into the foundation field was massive. Although figures are not available for this period, the general counsel of a 1952 Congress committee appointed to investigate US foundations concluded that `An unparalleled amount of power is concentrated increasingly in the hands of an interlocking and self-perpetuating group. Unlike the power of corporate management, it is unchecked by stockholders; unlike the power of government, it is unchecked by the people; unlike the power of the churches, it is unchecked by any firmly established canons of value.' In 1976, a Select Committee appointed to investigate US intelligence activities reported on the CIA's penetration of the foundation field by the mid-1960s: during 1963-6, of the 700 grants over $10,000 given by 164 foundations, at least 108 involved partial or complete CIA funding. More importantly, CIA funding was involved in nearly half the grants made by these 164 foundations in the field of international activities during the same period.


"`Bona fide' foundations such as Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie were considered `the best and most plausible kind of funding cover.' A CIA study of 1966 argued that this technique was `particularly effective for democratically run membership organizations, which need to assure their own unwitting members and collaborators, as well as their hostile critics, that they have genuine, respectable, private sources of income.' Certainly, it allowed the CIA to fund`a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities, publishing houses, and other private institutions from the early 1950s."

Among the liberal-left Establishment anti-war folks sponsored by the Ford Foundation during the 1960s was a former head of the CIA-subsidized National Student Association [NSA] named Allard Lowenstein (who was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in 1980 by Dennis Sweeney). According to the 1985 book The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and The Liberal Dream by Richard Cummings:

"Students followed Lowenstein in his quest for a just and peaceful world. But they did not know that his deep sense of patriotism and intense anti-Communism led him to work for the CIA in Africa and Spain and to inform on suspected Communists in the civil rights movement...In 1962...according to sources with background in intelligence work, he was formally recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. Although the author's attempts to obtain Lowenstein's CIA file under the Freedom of Information-Privacy Act from the CIA and from his lawyer Gary Bellow proved unavailing, other evidence overwhelmingly supports these sources...Lowenstein's work in the CIA involved southern Africa, and because Franco supported Portugal and South Africa, it also involved Spain, where Lowenstein worked with the anti-Communist left opposed to Franco...Lowenstein came to believe that his greatest enemies were to his left...


"According to sources, Lowenstein was separated from the CIA sometime in 1967 (the sources say Lowenstein `was in the agency from 1962 to 1967')...During 1975, Lowenstein became deeply involved in the politics of Portugal because of his relationship with Portugese Socialist Mario Soares, who was foreign minister at a period when the Portugese revolution was pushing increasingly leftward. Involving Lowenstein was his friend Frank Carlucci, who served as U.S. ambassador to Portugal from 1975 to 1978 and then as Jimmy Carter's deputy director of the CIA...


"To further supplement his income, Lowenstein was to work for the Ford Foundation, a consultancy having been arranged for him by a friend...Lowenstein's job with the Ford Foundation, which, according to his diary, included a $2,500 fee, all expenses, and freedom to decide when and where he would work (an NSA grant had been approved as well), enabled him to fly to various campuses, study the causes of the unrest, and prepare a report. He particularly focused on Berkeley where President Martin Meyerson attempted to use Lowenstein as a peacemaker...A new generation of student leaders was now openly challenging authority in more extreme ways than Lowenstein had...Their rebellion was growing beyond the confines of the liberal National Student Association, which Lowenstein had continued to monitor. It was taking dangerous and unpredictable forms...On April 1, 1965, Paul Ylvisaker, the director of the Ford Foundation project on campus unrest, wrote to Lowenstein: `This will confirm the arrangements made with Mr. John Ehle for you to serve as a consultant to the Foundation for a maximum of five days between April 1 and 9 to explore the possibility of involving youth and student groups in community action programs. We understand you will make brief visits in institutions in North Carolina, Massachusetts, California and New York. "`The Foundation will provide a daily fee of $50 and reimbursement for first-class round-trip air transportation to your destinations. Enclosed you will find expense report forms and certificates of time worked, which we would appreciate your filling out, signing and returning to us. Please send your transportation stubs and hotel bills, and receipts for expenses of $25 or more.'"

Former Ford Foundation Consultant Lowenstein's friend, Carlucci, later became the Secretary of Defense under Reagan and has been a top executive at the Bush II White House and Ford Foundation Board of Trustees-linked Carlyle Assets firm in recent years. In her 1982 book Rooted In Secrecy: The Clandestine Element In Australian Politics by Joan Coxsedge noted that "the Ford Foundation" also "took over the funding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom after its CIA cover was blown in 1966."

Eric Chester's book Covert Networks: Progressives, The International Rescue Committee and The CIA also contains some information about how the Ford Foundation has historically worked with the CIA:

"The Ford Foundation...maintained a close and continuing relationship with the intelligence community throughout the most confrontational years of the Cold War.


"In particular, the Foundation established in 1951 a subsidiary affiliate, the East European Fund, which disbursed its considerable resources to projects oriented toward political exiles from the Soviet Union. Over the next few years, the Foundation and its affiliated fund worked closely with other organizations within the covert network, including the International Rescue Committee...


"The New York office was headed by Bernard Gladieux...After shifting to the Ford Foundation in 1950, Gladieux remained a committed proponent of psychological warfare programs targeted at the Soviet bloc countries. He continued to maintain contacts with high officials in the Agency; while an officer of the Foundation, he also `served in a consultant and liaison capacity with the Central Intelligence Agency involving certain highly sensitive matters.' Soon after being appointed director of Central Intelligence in February 1953, Allen Dulles reassured Gladieux that he had been kept `fully-advised of recent developments' and that he wanted `to work closely with' Gladieux in the future.


"Within the New York office, John Howard had primary responsibility for screening overseas grant proposals. This meant that Howard was a key liasion between the Foundation and the CIA...


"[On March 5, 1958] Don Price...an associate director of the Foundation, wrote Matthew Baird of the CIA to set up a discussion on `potential ideas for future action.' Joining Price would be John Howard, still a central figure in the oversight of overseas programs. Baird responded by inviting Price and Howard to a meeting at CIA headquarters with `40 or 50 Agency representatives' from the Clandestine Services Division. The agenda would feature a presentation by Price and Howard in which they would `discuss informally those programs of the Foundation' that they felt would `be of general interest to the Agency.' Afterward, the Ford Foundation officials would meet with smaller groups of CIA staff to discuss specific projects.


"The CIA and the Ford Foundation maintained close relations throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s...


"Although the full extent of the Ford Foundation's cooperation with the CIA over the last three decades cannot be determined as long as the relevant files remain closed or unavailable, it is clear that the Foundation worked closely with the intelligence community on several sensitive operations during the 1950s..."

According to Chester's 1995 Covert Networks book, a Ford Foundation grant of $150,000 was apparently used during the 1950s to subsidize the activity of a right-wing anti-communist paramilitary group, the "Fighting Group" in East Germany:

 "The Ford Foundation was interested in funding the activities of the Fighting Group from the start...Having approached top Agency officials, Howard and Gladieux, of the New York office, concluded that `CIA officials were unanimous in their view that Foundation support of the Fighting Group would be most helpful...Fighting Group commandos blew up a railroad bridge near Berlin just before an express train coming from Warsaw was due to pass over it...A bridge over a canal was damaged with explosives..."

The same book also noted how the IRC board member that Nation editor Vanden Heuvel's father apparently worked for, William Donovan, apparently also intervened in 1950s German domestic politics:

"The [International Rescue] Committee established a special Redefection Commission in February 1956, with William Donovan, IRC board member...as chair...Donovan and the rest of the commission immediately embarked on an inspection tour of West German and France...Donovan was utilizing the trip as a cover for a covert mission to provide funds for cooperative politicians...While visiting West Berlin, Donovan arranged to have couriers give [former West German Chancellor Willy] Brandt one hundred thousand Deutschmarks in cash at a clandestine rendezvous. The cash drop, worth twenty-five thousand dollars at the time, was employed by Brandt to strengthen his position within the Social Democratic Party."

(end of part 1 of 2002-written historical article)


  

Alternative Media Censorship: Sponsored By CIA's Ford Foundation?--Part 6

"The Progressive Media Project is an affiliate of The Progressive, Inc., the nonprofit educational institution that also publishes The Progressive magazine….In 1993, Allen Hunter, then of the Havens Center at the University of Wisconsin, and Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive, came up with the idea for the Progressive Media Project….With crucial…help from the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Progressive Media Project began to assign, edit, and distribute 200 op-ed commentaries every year….”

--from the Progressive Media Project website

(Note: The following historical article about the hidden financial history of the U.S. alternative media and its historical left gatekeepers was written in 2002. So in 2012, some of the left gatekeepers mentioned in this 2002 historical article may have moved on to other positions within the U.S. alternative media/left subculture or mainstream U.S. media or academic world during the last 10 years.)

Progressive

The editor of Progressive magazine, Matthew Rothschild, also attempted to 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 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.

(end of part 6 of 2002-written historical article)

Alternative Media Censorship: Sponsored By CIA's Ford Foundation (and Billionaire Pritzker Family/Hyatt Hotels Dynasty)?--Part 5

“Although Susan and Nicholas Pritzker purchased their $2.5-million ranch several years ago, it was not until they disclosed plans to build a 10-structure family compound totaling 54,000 square feet that residents learned of the renowned hotelier's desire to go rural -- very rural.


“An hour's drive north of San Francisco, Nicasio's population of 589 could fit into just one of the Pritzker family's 212 Hyatt hotels.


“Yet this is the community in which Nicholas Pritzker, chairman and president of Hyatt Development Corp. and president of Hyatt Equities, and his wife, Susan, a part-time philanthropist and full-time mother, want to settle.


“A privately held company, Hyatt manages and owns hotels, resorts, apartment complexes, casinos, senior citizen housing and health care businesses. The large Pritzker family is among the wealthiest in the nation.


“Not all of Nicasio embraces the Pritzker plan. That the Pritzkers want to build a complex of oversized houses, critics say, despoils the very beauty that drew them to Nicasio…


“Initial plans for the Pritzkers' 845-acre ranch call for a 12,000-square-foot main ranch house, a caretaker's residence and an agricultural building. The pool house, garages, farming facilities and other houses, for their four children and two grandchildren, would be built over the course of many years…

--from a March 16, 2003 article in the Los Angeles Times

“Susan [Pritzker] has…has been a on the board of Pitzer College since 1990 and the chair since 2001. ..Susan is also chair of the board of directors of the Chicago Foundation for Women…Susan is married to Nick Pritzker, whose family are owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain.”

--from the Mother Jones/motherjones.com/ Foundation for National Progress website’s board of directors’ biographies page

“This week, Hyatt hotel workers and their allies are holding demonstrations in London and cities across the United States, marking the launch of a global boycott of Hyatt hotels. The far-reaching boycott is a response to the hotel company’s extensive abuse of its workers and low wages…Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst employer in the hotel industry. Hyatt has abused its housekeepers and other hotel workers, replacing longtime employees with minimum wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on those who remain…”
--from the Hyatt Hurts website on July 24, 2012

(Note: The following historical article about the hidden financial history of the U.S. alternative media and its historical left gatekeepers was written in 2002. So in 2012, some of the left gatekeepers mentioned in this 2002 historical article may have moved on to other positions within the U.S. alternative media/left subculture or mainstream U.S. media or academic world during the last 10 years.)

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[Schumann Center for Media and Democracy] 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 an early 21st century 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 Progress then paid out the following salaries to its top alternative media executives:

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

2. Mother Jones magazine Publisher and Foundation for National Progress Board President Jay Harris--a former general manager of the Washington Post Company's Newsweek magazine's Pacific 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;

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 [now-deceased] 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. [In recent years, Susan Prtizker, the wife of a member of the billionaire Pritzker family of Chicago that both controls Hyatt Hotels and played a leading role in raising campaign funds for the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign of Barack Obama, has also been a member of the Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress board of directors.]

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 represented 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 the Pritzker Family and Hyatt Hotels]--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.

(end of part 5 of 2002-written historical article)

Alternative Media Censorship: Sponsored By CIA's Ford Foundation?--Part 4

"...We know that money matters in society, but we don't seem to realize that money matters on the Left...The area I have some experience with, alternative media, is graphically if not universally donor, and donor dynamics, dominated. For example, The Nation was begun and financed by large donors who, at most points, occupied the key decision positions in the periodical. The same holds true for Monthly Review, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, In These Times, and New Left Review. In cases where the big donor didn't come aboard, it was generally the best fund-raiser or most financially connected participant who had the corner office. With our activist hats on we decry mainstream media for being owned and thus beholding to big money in its motivations and structural choices, but then, when we don our media hats, we construct operations no less beholden to big-money interests, but now via the largesse of donors rather than direct owners. When leftists I have known have talked about a major nonprofit--say the Ford Foundation--they...certainly haven't described an institution free of constraint...


“Mother Jones magazine was financed into existence by Adam Hochschild. Adam's money allowed MJ to do massive mailings over and over, to build up and maintain a readership. It turns out that Adam's money came from African mining...Adam not only put his money into MJ but put himself into MJ too, in the corner office...But the salient point about Adam was the amount of cash he had available versus the amount that he made available. It seemed that Adam was richer than Adam would admit to himself. What he was giving, which was quite considerable by Left accounts, wasn't even denting his capacity. He was doing a fraction of what he might have done, given his actual resources...


"David Hunter...managed the Stern Foundation...I got an invitation to see David Hunter in New York City at the Stern Foundation offices...The meeting was held over lunch at the Harvard Club. We chatted a bit and Hunter asked to see our financial statement...Hunter told me...that he paid no attention to the actual numbers in such documents because he took it for granted that everyone asking for donations lied. He required the documents but he looked at them only to see if they were done properly...You got Hunter's aid, and even more, you got aid from other donors, if they liked you, pure and simple...


"...In the ZNet forum system, at its outset, I felt I had to do something to engender participation...To prod participation, I logged on with numerous false names, writing messages under each name, giving the system a flow of content that seemed to come from diverse people. I would engage in long debates, not only under my name, but also under four or five other names--including masquerading as two women..."

--from Remembering Tomorrow by Michael Albert

(Note: The following historical article about the hidden financial history of the U.S. alternative media and its historical left gatekeepers was written in 2002. So in 2012, some of the left gatekeepers mentioned in this 2002 historical article may have moved on to other positions within the U.S. alternative media/left subculture or mainstream U.S. media or academic world during the last 10 years.)



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

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

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

Of the $38,700 which the Albert-Sargent family paid its writers in 2000, $4,400 was given to Alternative Radio producer David Barsamian, whose book The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting, was published, with an introduction by Democracy Now! Productiions 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/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, although it makes 3 references to book passages that describe Schumann Foundation/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President Bill Moyers' Public Affairs TV programs in a favorable way.

South End Press is [was] the business enterprise of the Institute for Social and Cultural Change publishing firm which the Albert-Sargent family started in 1984, apparently with the help of $232,956 in low-interest "loans" from various individuals and organizations, that will no longer have to be paid back. According to the South End Press's form 990 for the fiscal year ending 6/30/200, the book publishing arm of Z magazine (which markets books like Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations With Noam Chomsky that Alternative Radio producer Barsamian co-authored), took in over $1 million from its book sales.

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

(end of part 4 of 2002-written historical article)

Alternative Media Censorship: Sponsored By CIA's Ford Foundation?--Part 3

"The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute is dedicated to improving the scope and overall quality of investigative reporting in the independent press and beyond….Founded as a pilot project in 1996 with the support of the Lear Foundation, The Investigative Fund expanded to its current size in 2005 with generous support from Lannan Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and others. We now collaborate with multiple media partners and produce several dozen in-depth investigations each year….”

-- from The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute’s website)

(Note: The following historical article about the hidden financial history of the U.S. alternative media and its historical left gatekeepers was written in 2002. So in 2012, some of the left gatekeepers mentioned in this 2002 historical article may have moved on to other positions within the U.S. alternative media/left subculture or mainstream U.S. media or academic world during the last 10 years.)

The Nation Institute/Radio Nation/The Nation Magazine

The Nation Institute's Radio Nation show is [was] 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 [was] 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 [were] 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 [which was sold in the 21st-century], under the initial supervision of former New York Times Company Vice-Chairman James Goodale, a Wall Street corporate lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton who was a member of the Democratic Party National Convention's rules committee in 1988. Although [former] 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 [CPB] Chairperson Alan Sagner, Hollywood actor Paul Newman, novelist E.I. Doctorow and the current editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arthur Carter has continued to sit on the board of trustees of the Nation Institute in recent years.

Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is the daughter of International Rescue Committee [IRC] board member William vanden Heuvel. Nation editor Vanden Heuvel's father is mentioned in the book The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stoner Saunders in the following reference to the CIA-linked Farfield Foundation:

"First president of the Farfield [Foundation], and the CIA's most significant front-man, was Julius `Junkie' Fleischmann, the millionaire heir to a high yeast and gin 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 made the following references to the political role that U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Donovan played around the time that IRC board member Vanden Heuvel apparently was Ambassador Donovan's executive assistant:

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


"In the 1950s the CIA backed General Phao in a struggle with another Thai general for monopoly of control of Thailand's opium and heroin trade...Backed by squads of CIA advisers, Phao set about the task of turning Thailand into a police state. The country's leading dissidents and academics were jailed...Phao also cornered the country's gold market, played a leading role on the top twenty corporate boards in the country, charged 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 Politcs 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, through the Agency for International development [AID], to `assist the independent Polish trade union Solidarity...'Recently, IRC's major focus has been on the Afghan refugees...IRC has published 10 books for the National Endowment for Democracy-funded American Friends of Afghanistan [AFA]...


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

"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 [former] 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 [was] also subsidized by Establishment foundation money. The money is [was] 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 [was] spent on producing the magazine's syndicated Radio Nation show, which is [was] aired on around 100 U.S. radio stations, including Pacifica Radio's stations. Nation magazine editors and writers who attempted to smear and marginalize 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers in recent months, like David Corn, also apparently attempted to use 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.

(end of part 3 of 2002-written historical article)

[Update on this 2002-written historical article: In 2008, The Nation/Nation Institute “non-profit” and tax-exempt alternative left-liberal politically partisan media group was, coincidentally, the recipient of 3 “charitable” grants, totaling $545,000, from the tax-exempt Lannan Foundation “philanthropy.”]


  

`Democracy Now!' and FAIR/`CounterSpin'''s Park Foundation Connection--Conclusion

At the time of his death on October 25, 1993, Roy H. Park was still the Park Communications’ Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer, and the owner of the 90 percent of the Park Communications’ stock that the Park family and its Park Foundation then inherited. And on December 10, 1993, Roy Park’s widow, former Park Communications board member/board secretary and Park Foundation president emeritus Dorothy D. Park, was authorized to act as the Personal Representative of Roy Park’s estate.

As Personal Representative of her husband’s estate, Dorothy Park then informed Park Communications board member and former U.S. Senator Harry Byrd Jr. and her other colleagues on the Park Communications board of directors (at a Special Meeting on March 25, 1994 of the company’s board of directors) that the Park family had decided to sell all the Park Communications stock that the family and its Park Foundation had inherited. And, in response, the Park Communications board of directors voted to hire the Goldman Sachs investment banking firm on Wall Street to help it arrange the sale of the entire Park Communications media empire.

A private investment concern, Park Acquisitions, Inc., (that was headed by Alabama real estate developer Gary Knapp and Lexington, Kentucky stockbroker Donald Tomlin) then agreed on October 25, 1994 to purchase the Park Communications media empire for $711.4 million. But $573.4 million of the $711.4 million that the Park family, the Park Foundation, and the other Park Communications received from the sale of Park Communications apparently came from a “loan” of public pension fund money of The Retirement Systems of Alabama [RSA] to Knapp and Tomlin’s Park Acquisitions, Inc..

And the remaining $138 million that the Park family, the Park Foundation and the other Park Communications stockholders received from their own company’s sale was just “derived from cash on the Company’s books at the closing of the acquisition,” according to a 1995 S.E.C. financial filing. As the American Journalism Review noted in its May 1999 issue:

“…David Bronner, head of the Alabama pension fund…provided the money when two businessmen, Donald Tomlin and Gary Knapp, first acquired Park Communications from the estate of media mogul Roy Park; in effect, it had loaned money…. Bronner, 54, is known for such unorthodox ventures as the $120 million, seven-course Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail across Alabama and a half dozen downtown Montgomery high-rises… Bronner says he earns…$240,000 a year…”

After Bronner’s Retirement Systems of Alabama [RSA] pension fund “loaned” $573,4 million in public money for the purchase of Park Communications (that eventually ended up in the hands of the Park family and its Park Foundation), the RSA pension fund then “spent $2.5 billion to take control of Raycom Media, a television chain that has grown under its ownership from six small stations to 34 stations in 18 states…,and…invested $1.8 billion in Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., which now owns hundreds of small daily and weekly newspapers around the country,” according to a December 2002 article by Rob Gurwith, “David Bronner: High-Roller,” that was posted on the www.governing.com website. The same article also noted that Bronner’s RSA/Raycom Media/Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. “pension fund” also “bought 55 Water Street, one of the largest office buildings in Manhattan” and “owns real estate throughout Alabama, including a project to build a 35-story hotel in Mobile.” Coincidentally, “the newspapers and television stations” that Bronner’s pension fund in Alabama “controls are required to give the state free publicity.”

At the time of its 1994 sale to the recipients of the $573.4 million Retirement Systems of Alabama “loan”, the following television and radio broadcasting stations were then controlled by Park Communications:

WBMG-TV (CBS) Birmingham, Alabama
WTVQ-TV (ABC) Lexington, Kentucky
KALB-TV (NBC) Alexandria, Louisiana
WUTR-TV (ABC) Utica, New York
WNCT-TV (CBS) Greenville, North Carolina
WDEF-TV (CBS) Chattanooga, Tennessee
WJHL-TV (CBS) Johnson City, Tennessee
WTVR-TV (CBS) Richmond, Virginia
WSLS-TV (NBC) Roanoke, Virginia

WNLS-AM/WTNT-FM Tallahassee, Florida
KWLO-AM/KFMW-FM Waterloo, Iowa
KJJO-AM/FM Minneapolis, Minnesota
WPAT-AM/FM serving the Greater New York City Area
WHEN-AM/FM Syracuse, New York
WNCT-AM/FM Greenville, North Carolina
KWJJ-AM/FM Portland, Oregon
WNAX-AM/FM Yankton, South Dakota
WDEF-AM/FM Chattanooga, Tennessee
WTVR-AM/FM Richmond, Virginia
KEZX-AM/FM Seattle, Washington

Between Roy Park’s death and the finalization of its sale of Park Communications in 1995, the Park Foundation president emeritus, Dorothy D. Park, was both the Park Communications chairman of the board and the corporate board’s secretary. And besides former U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr., the Park Communications board of directors included a Goldman Sachs executive named J. Markham Green, a Wachovia Bank of North Carolina executive named John McNair III, a Park Foundation director named Wright Thomas and Roy H. Park and Dorothy Park’s son: Park Outdoor Advertising of New York Chairman of the Board, President and CEO Roy H. Park Jr..
In addition, Park Foundation and Park Communications directors Dorothy Park and Wright Thomas also sat next to Park Communications and Park Outdoor Advertising of New York director Roy H. Park Jr. on the board of directors of RHP Incorporated, Inc. –which was wholly owned by the Estate of Roy H. Park, Dorothy Park and a marital trust for the benefit of Dorothy Park. And, coincidentally, according to its February 24, 1995 S.E.C. financial filing, Park Communications “purchased 10 buildings and one tower from RHF Incorporated and its subsidiaries at the…market value of $4,415,000” in 1994; and during 1994, Park Communications “placed $84,298 of promotional advertising with Park Outdoor Advertising of New York Inc., which is controlled by Roy H. Park Jr. a director of the company.”

After the Park family and its Park Foundation added most of the $711.4 million from the sale of its Park Communications media empire to its personal and foundation bank accounts in the mid-1990s, the son and daughter of Roy H. Park apparently decided to divide the Park Foundation into two different foundations: the Triad Foundation (run by Roy H. Park Jr.) and the Park Foundation (run by Adelaide Park Gomer ).

As president and chairman of his tax-exempt, “non-profit” Triad Foundation, Roy Park Jr. was paid an annual salary of $220,706 in 2010 by the Triad Foundation for spending only 20 hours a week “working” for his own foundation, according to the Triad Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for the year beginning August 1, 2010 and ending July 31, 2011. And the grandson of Roy H. Park—Roy H. Park III—was paid an annual salary of $173,492 in 2010 by the Triad Foundation for “working” only 13 hours a week as an executive vice-president and secretary of his family’s Triad Foundation.

Of the over $226 million in assets that Roy Park Jr.’s Triad Foundation controlled in 2010, over $110 million consisted of stocks and bonds in both foreign and U.S. corporations and over $68 million in hedge fund and limited partnership investments Between 2008 and 2011 the Triad Foundation owned large chunks of stock, for example, in the following companies: Royal Dutch Shell; BASF; Daimler Chrysler; Bank of America; Boeing; AOL, Inc.; Apache Corp.; Bank NY Mellon; Caterpillar; ConocoPhillips; Dreamworks; General Electric; Honeywell; Marathon Oil; McDonald’s; Pfizer; Merck; Time-Warner; Viacom; Wells Fargo; Occidental Petroleum; Microsoft; Newmont Mining; Halliburton; JP Morgan Chase; Goldman Sachs; and the New York Times Company. And from its stocks and bonds portfolio, the Triad Foundation received around $2 million in dividends and interests between August 2010 and August 2011. After over $39 million of Park Foundation president emeritus Dorothy Park’s personal wealth was “contributed” to the Triad Foundation during this period, the revenues of the “non-profit” Roy Park Jr.’s foundation between August 2010 and August 2011 ended up exceeding the foundation’s expenses by over $40 million; and the foundation’s assets increased from over $174 million to over $226 million between 2010 and 2011.

The market value of assets controlled by Adelaide Park Gomer’s Park Foundation in 2011, however, still apparently exceeded the market value of assets controlled by her brother’s Triad Foundation. According to the Form 990 financial filing for 2010 of the Park Foundation, the foundation that funds Democracy Now! Productions, F.A.I.R./CounterSpin, and Mother Jones magazine, as well as NPR and the PBS NewsHour, controlled over $315 million in assets in 2010—including over $233 million worth of corporate stocks and bonds—and received over $3.3 million in dividends and interests from its stocks and bonds portfolio in 2010.

The January 2007 will of Park Foundation president emeritus Dorothy Park originally indicated that the $200 million personal fortune that she was expected to leave behind was “to be split evenly between the Park Foundation and Park Jr.’s Triad Foundation,” according to an article that appeared in the November 11, 2010 issue of Cornell University’s student newspaper, The Ithacan. But as The Ithacan observed:

“On Aug. 7 [2010], Dorothy Park signed a power of attorney agreement naming Park Jr. as her agent, including a New York Statutory Major Gifts Rider that would grant him the right to contribute major gifts on her behalf….According to court documents, Dorothy Park’s will was altered Aug. 15 while Park Jr. was designated as her agent...The change made Aug. 15 designated $120 million to go to the Triad Foundation and $80 million to the Park Foundation….”

A big chunk of the “charitable” grants that Roy Park Jr’s Triad Foundation distributes goes to help fund “needy”, tax-exempt, “non-profit” institutions like the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Cornell University. Between 2008 and 2011, for example, nine grants, totaling nearly $4 million, were given to the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism by the Triad Foundation; while 22 “charitable” grants, totaling over $2 million, were given to Cornell University in 2010 alone, by the Triad Foundation. And besides giving “charitable” grants to the University of North Carolina and Cornell University, the Triad Foundation—whose president and chairman was the Park Outdoor Advertising of New York’s chairman and CEO during the 1990s—gave, coincidentally, two “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000, to the Foundation for Outdoor Advertising Research and Education between 2008 and 2010.

Like his sister’s Park Foundation, Roy Park Jr.’s Triad Foundation also uses some of its tax-exempt foundation money to help fund various politically partisan media groups and think-tanks. But, unlike the Park Foundation, the Triad Foundation helps fund politically partisan right-wing conservative media groups and think-tanks like National Review Institute/National Review magazine, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute. Between 2008 and August 2011, for example, the Triad Foundation gave “charitable” grants to the following right-wing conservative or neo-conservative organizations:

1. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000, to National Review Institute/National Review magazine—whose editor and president, Kate O’Bierne, was paid an annual salary of $240,000 in 2010 by the “non-profit” National Review Institute;

2. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $10,00, to the David Horowitz Freedom Center for “support for…Defense of Israel campaign”;
3. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $25,000, to the Heritage Foundation;

4. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $60,000, to the American Enterprise Institute;

5. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $20,000, to the Media Research Center;

6. A $2,500 “charitable” grant to Capital Research Center;

7. A $7,500 “charitable” grant to the Independent Women’s Forum;

8. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $10,000, to the Cato Institute;

9. A $10,000 “charitable” grant to the Manhattan Institute;

10. A $5,000 “charitable” grant to the American Conservative Foundation;

11. Four “charitable” grants, totaling $27,000, to the Young America Foundation [YAF]—including a $12,000 “charitable” grant “to bring Mike Huckabee to speak at Cornell in Spring 2008”; and

12. A $500 “charitable” grant to the George W. Bush Foundation.

So although the brother of the big Democratic Party campaign contributor (whose Park Foundation helps fund Democracy Now!, F.A.I.R./CounterSpin and Mother Jones magazine) doesn’t contribute as much money to the Republican Party as his sister, Adelaide Park Gomer, contributes to the Democratic Party, some of the surplus wealth that the Park family obtained from the sale of Roy Park Sr.’s media empire in the 1990s is also being used to fund right-wing conservative groups in the 21st-century. (end of article)

Remembering Alexander Cockburn

`Democracy Now!' and FAIR/`CounterSpin''s Park Foundation Connection--Part 2

“Mrs. Park is the Personal Representative of the Estate of Roy H. Park, former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Company and holder of…89.65% of the Company's outstanding Common Stock. 18,684,505 of the shares…are held by Mrs. Park…Under Mr. Park's will, an amount of shares previously held by Mr. Park equal to 51% of the Company's outstanding Common Stock was bequeathed to Park Foundation, Inc….Mrs. Park is the Secretary and one of three current members of the Board of Directors of Park Foundation. The other two Directors of Park Foundation are Wright M. Thomas (President, Chief Operating Officer and a Director of the Company) and Adelaide Park Gomer, daughter of Dorothy D. Park and the late Roy H. Park…The residue of Mr. Park's Estate…was also bequeathed to Park Foundation. On March 25, 1994, at a Special Meeting of the Company's Board of Directors, Mrs. Park…informed the Company of the Estate's decision to sell the Estate-held shares of the Company. In response to this announcement, the Board voted to seek a sale of the entire Company…Park Foundation has consented to the decision to sell the Estate-held shares…”

--from a 3/31/94 SEC filing of Park Communications

Democracy Now! and FAIR/CounterSpin’s Park Foundation Connection—Part 2

Not surprisingly, much of the tax-exempt “charitable” grant money that the Park Foundation has been pouring into alternative media groups like Democracy Now! Productions, Mother Jones magazine and F.A.I.R./CounterSpin and into subsidizing various PBS news-oriented programming in recent years is derived from the $3 million-plus in Wall Street dividends and interest that it obtains annually from a Park Foundation stock and bonds portfolio—whose fair market value exceeded $233.5 million in 2010, according to the Park Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing.

Until Roy Park’s family sold its Park Communications media empire for $711.4 million in October 1994 to an Alabama real estate developer and a Lexington, Kentucky stockbroker (who subsequently re-sold the media properties to the Media General media conglomerate in 1996), most of the Park family’s Park Foundation “charitable” grant money was apparently derived from owning around 90 percent of the stock in Park Communications—whose annual revenues exceeded $148 million in the late 1980s.

Prior to October 26, 1983, 100 percent of the stock in the Park family’s mainstream media empire was just owned by Roy Park and not sold on any of the Wall Street stock exchanges. And in their 1980 edition, the editors of Everybody’s Business: An Almanac described how Roy H. Park went about accumulating much of the surplus wealth that he later used to set up his tax-exempt Park Foundation:

“…He has stations in a dozen cities stretching from Birmingham, Alabama, to Seattle, Washington. The biggest of his TV stations is Birmingham’s WBMG, a CBS affiliate...There’s nothing to stop Park from gathering newspapers. And he keeps picking them up, one after another. In mid-1980 he had 42 under his belt, all small-town papers: 17 are dailies, 12 are weeklies; and 13 are shoppers’ weeklies that are given away…


“Park operates through a maze of companies—about 50 of them—and they are not consolidated under any one corporation…The two principal corporate entities are Park Broadcasting and Park Newspapers. But Park’s interests extend to other areas too; he’s in the outdoor advertising business (renting billboard space), and he’s active in real estate. How much of his estimated $60 million annual sales comes from publishing and broadcasting is not known, nor is Park required to tell anyone. His companies are private…In addition to his media empire, Roy Park owns citrus groves in Florida, a real estate enterprise in South Carolina, farm and timberlands in North Carolina, and a lot of real estate in Ithaca, including 88,000 square feet at the Terrace Hill complex…”

In 1980, for example, the Park family owned the following mainstream television and radio broadcasting stations:

1. WTVR-TV (CBS) and WTVR-AM/FM in Richmond, Virginia;

2. WBMG-TV (CBS) in Birmingham, Alabama;

3. WNCT-TV (CBS) and WNCT-AM/FM in Greenville, North Carolina;

4. WDEF-TV (CBS) and WDEF-AM/FM in Chattanooga, Tennessee;

5. WJHL-TV (CBS) in Johnson City, Tennessee;

6. WUTR-TV (ABC) Utica, New York;

7. WHEN-AM and WONO-FM in Syracuse, New York;

8. KEZX-FM in Seattle, Washington;

9. KWJJ-AM and KJIB-FM in Portland, Oregon;

10. WNAX-AM in Yankton, South Dakota; and

11. KRSI-AM/FM in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

Yet in the early 1970s the Black Broadcasting Coalition [BBC] of Richmond opposed the FCC’s renewal, without any hearing, of the licenses of the Roy H. Park Broadcasting of Virginia, Inc. to operate the Park family’s WTVR-TV and WTVR-AM/FM television and radio stations in Richmond because of its stations' alleged racial discrimination in employment during the 1969-1972 license period and the inadequacy of their affirmative action effort both during and after that period. As the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit and District judges observed in an April 20, 1977 decision in the Black Broadcasting Coalition of Richmond vs. FCC and Roy H. Park Broadcasting of Virginia, Inc. case:

“…. In short, the record disclosed responsible claims that WTVR had engaged in overt discrimination…In addition…BBC hotly contested the adequacy of WTVR's efforts to reach out into the minority community to recruit qualified or qualifiable minority employees…Perhaps the best statement of WTVR's attitude toward its obligation to reach into the community to develop contacts is its response to BBC's uncontested allegation that WTVR had had no contact with any of the black organizations which routinely assisted minority applicants in getting jobs…Appellant also alleged that the stations' initial ascertainment of community needs was defective in that it ignored the attitudes of blacks who lived outside the City of Richmond and took insufficient account of black interests within the City, which has a 42 percent black population…In the year immediately following BBC's petition to deny, WTVR hired six additional black employees. In the next year, however, only two and then one black was added, although total employment at the station increased by nine….Similarly, the movement of blacks into the upper four job categories…after an immediate increase by five in 1973, has slowed to two and then zero. Such a pattern of minority hiring and advancement is at best erratic and at worst demonstrates a declining trend…”

The small-town newspapers that the Park family’s Park Newspaper firm published were apparently quite profitable in some cases. For example “when Roy Park owned the [Jeffersonville, Indiana] Evening News, profit margins reached 40 percent,” according to an article by Mary Walton, titled “The Selling Of Small-town America,” that appeared in the May 1999 issue of American Journalism Review. And on October 26, 1983, Roy Park’s private company went “public” and began to sell some of its stock to Wall Street investors, when “the Company made a public offering of 2,219,625 shares…of the Company’s Common Stock, representing 9.5 percent of the total shares,” according to a 1995 S.E.C. financial filing.

Coincidentally, between August 22, 1983 and Roy Park’s death in October 1993, a former U.S. Senator from Virginia named Harry F. Byrd Jr. (who replaced his father, Harry Byrd Sr., in the U.S. Senate as Virginia’s representative in 1965 and held his family’s U.S. Senate seat there until 1983) sat next to Roy Park on the board of directors of Park Communications. According to Wikipedia, former Park Communications board member Byrd Jr. “like his father” had “a very conservative voting record;” and “in 1971, Byrd proposed a bill to allow the importation of various metals from Rhodesia, contradicting the position of…the United Nations Security Council which forbade most forms of trade or financial exchange with Rhodesia, which had a white-controlled government” and “the 1971 Byrd Amendment allowed Rhodesia to evade these sanctions.” Wikipedia also noted that:

“…Even as a senator, Byrd contributed regular editorial content to his newspapers, blending journalism and politics…Byrd served as Chairman of the Board of the Winchester Star that had been owned by the family for more than 100 years until 1990, and did not hire an African-American reporter until 2000…”

(end of part 2)

Bain & Company/Bain Capital's Obama Administration Connection

The Obama Administration’s Office of Management and Budget deputy director, Jeff Zients, apparently used to work for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Bain & Company during the late 1980s. As the Bain & Company website observed:

“When Barack Obama took office in 2009, the new president was looking for someone to fill a new—and daunting—post: the first-ever chief performance officer, housed in OMB. Zients had a reputation in Washington circles as a veteran business executive who produced results. He landed the job even though he had no government experience. `In many ways, the content of the job is similar to what I did at Bain and in the private sector,’ recalls Zients….

“From his marriage, to his White House appointment, Zients' career path is populated with Bainies. He met his wife, Mary, at the Boston office, and a Bain recommendation led to his hiring at The Advisory Board. Its founder, David Bradley, wasn't a Bain alum, but he was connected: Bradley went to the Harvard Business School with a group of future Bain Partners, including Bain Chairman Orit Gadiesh. Zients' path crossed with Gadiesh while he was an AC. She was on a Bain team that gave Zients a crash course in delivering results. Two decades later, the results-oriented approach Zients learned as a consultant is guiding his strategy to weed out waste and make government more productive and efficient.

“The task is remarkably similar to one of his initial Bain assignments. Back in 1988, 21-year-old Zients was dispatched to Detroit to work with a Big Three automaker... His team included Orit Gadiesh, David Harding and Jon Mark….After cutting his teeth on one of the Detroit Big Three, Zients now is applying those lessons as he faces the behemoth of complexity—a $3.55 trillion federal budget. He calls the Bain approach `central’ to his efforts to tame government complexity. `[They] taught me to be rigorous analytically and then how to take the insights and present them in a simple fashion so that the client could understand and implement them,’ says Zients. `It's served me well.’

“To help him navigate through the federal budget thicket, Zients brought in Michael D'Amato, a former Bain Senior Partner and colleague at The Advisory Board and Corporate Executive Board. D'Amato describes the chief performance officer's job as `a Bain consultant's dream.’ As Zients' right-hand man, D'Amato and his boss spent the first three months mapping the government, and then setting priorities that could generate quick wins.`We ended up with six areas, chosen because they all affect structural aspects of government, and therefore are changes which will have the longest-term impact on government performance,’ explains D'Amato.
“The job grew even more complicated last summer when Zients took on the added responsibility as acting OMB head…”

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bain & Company apparently exercised veto power over Bain Capital's investment decisions. And the fundinguniverse.com website includes the following additional interesting information about Bain & Company/Bain Capital's business history during the 1980s and early 1990s:

“Despite criticism, Bain achieved some notable successes in the early 1980s. When National Steel hired Bain in 1981, it was the highest-cost steel producer, but by 1984, after applying Bain's recommendations that it simultaneously downsize and modernize, it became the lowest-cost producer...Rather than just rely on fees to provide growth, Bain began to look for direct investment in companies, which ultimately led to the acceptance of equity as part of its compensation, not only to more closely align its interest with the clients but also to reap the rewards of its successful strategies…In 1984, it created Bain Capital, a limited partnership headed by W. Mitt Romney, son of politician George Romney, which invested in start-up companies and buyouts that could be readily improved. According to The New York Times, Bain Capital "has managed to steer clear of conflicts of interest by having Bain & Company retain veto power over investments. But it is not entirely a neutral operation.’… The firm was…housed in the same building as Bain & Company and its employees shared the same cafeteria.

“Bain Capital provided an investment opportunity for Bain partners…In 1987, the firm… became entangled in a scandal involving one of its clients, Guinness plc, which had been one of Bain's notable success stories. The relationship began in 1981, at a time when Guinness shares were trading at penny stock levels after a decade of diversification efforts that took the company far from its core business. After selling off some 150 companies, Guinness' head, Ernest Saunders, then took Bain's advice and looked to move into the hard liquor market by acquiring two scot whiskey producers: Arthur Bell & Sons and Distillers Inc. By the end of fiscal 1986, Guinness and Bain were flying high, with the client posting profits of nearly $400 million, a six-fold increase since contracting Bain, while at the same time the company's stock reached a high of $5.75 per share. In December 1986, however, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry began to investigate the $3.8 billion stock acquisition of Distillers, masterminded by a "war cabinet" that included a Bain associate named Olivier Roux, who had been "lent" to Saunders and became one of his top aides. At issue were acts taken by Guinness to illegally inflate the price of its stock to fend off a competing offer from Argyll Group, including the charge that Guinness bought its own stock during the offering period and indemnified other companies against loss if they purchased stock on behalf of Guinness. In the end, Saunders went to jail for his part in the scheme...To bring peace to the situation, Mitt Romney was brought in to replace Bill Bain as the head the company….

“…A major step in the revitalization of Bain's fortunes came in 1993 when one of the younger partners, Orit Gadiesh, was named the new chairman...Born in Israel, she earned a degree in psychology from Hebrew University, then spent two years in the Israeli army, serving in military intelligence...When Romney left to pursue politics, Gadiesh continued the revitalization of Bain that he had initiated…”