Ford Foundation's Ex-Prez McGeorge Bundy: Pushed For 1960's Vietnam War Escalation

Former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy and LBJ

During the 1960's most New Left Movement people in the United States protested against the Democratic Johnson administration's policy of escalating U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, following the November 22, 1963 elimination of JFK in Dallas, Texas. Yet between 1966 and 1979, the president of the U.S. power elite's multi-billion dollar corporate tax-exempted Ford Foundation (that has funded many tax-exempt liberal-left NGOs in 21st-century with "charitable grants"), the now-deceased McGeorge Bundy, was one of the Democratic Johnson administration officials responsible for the 1965 escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. As University of Kentucky Alumni Professor of History George C. Herring noted in his 1994 University of Texas Press book, LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War:

"...LBJ inherited...McGeorge Bundy special assistant for national security affairs with an office in the White House basement...Bundy had carved out a position in the Kennedy White House...He was usually the first to see Johnson on an issue and the last one to see him before a decision was made. During the months when the commitment in Vietnam was steadily escalating, Bundy and [then-Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara were the key figures. The national security adviser was in Vietnam...on February 7, 1965 and he came back a firm advocate of escalation...Through the end of 1965...he was at the center of Vietnam policy making...

"Known around Washington as the `awesome foursome.' [Democratic U.S. President Lyndon] Johnson, Bundy, McNamara, and [former Rockefeller Foundation President and then-Secretary of State Dean] Rusk...began to meet informally for lunch at the White House in 1964, usually on Tuesday. The `Tuesday Lunch'...evolved into the primary instrument for management of the Vietnam War...At the top, the `awesome foursome' continued  throughout 1965 to run the war...The Tuesday lunch continued to be the primary means for making major wartime decisions. It stayed small, although Press Secretary [and Schumann Media Center foundation president and Democracy Now! show funder] Bill Moyers and Director of Central Intelligence Adm. William Raborn were added. Over lunch in the White House the president and his top advisers approved bombing targets, discussed force increases...."

The 1999 HarperCollins book by Richard H. Shultz Jr., titled The Secret War Against Hanoi, also contains a reference to the historical role that former Ford Foundation president Bundy played in pushing for an escalation of U.S. military intervention in the 1960's:

"McGeorge Bundy was Kennedy's special assistant for national security affairs. Bundy would chair the 303 Committee,whose jurisdiction came to include all U.S. covert operations, including those directed against North Vietnam by the CIA and the military...The 303 Committee was assigned responsibility for White House control of covert action, including paramilitary operations. Its jurisdiction came to include all important covert operations worldwide. The 303 Committee had responsibility for the CIA's 1961-1963 operations against North Vietnam. In 1964, military-directed covert action against North Vietnam would become one of its principal accounts. Members of the committee included McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser...Bundy chaired the committee...OPLAN 34A was to begin--as a one-year program of operations, divided into three escalating, 4-month phases...In mid-January of 1964, Lyndon Johnson approved the...Bundy recommendations...MacBundy...wanted the squeeze put on Hanoi..."

Yet in his 2002 book, titled Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg recalled:

"[In May 1971] I took the shuttle to go to a lecture at the Council on Foreign Relations by McGeorge Bundy...Someone said it was his bid to be considered for secretary of state in the next Democratic administration, after he left the Ford Foundation...I listened to Bundy iin New York, saying there had been `no intent to mislead Congress' in connection with the passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution; the resolution `was not meant to be (in Nicholas Katzenbach's phrase in 1967) a `functional equivalent of a declaration of war.'..."
"It was a surreal experience...to be sitting in a room surrounded by my fellow war criminals, listening to Johnson's assistant for national security [and then-Ford Foundation president] tell lies about the war...On January 27 [1965] though I didn't know it at the time, McNamara and [later Ford Foundation president] McGeorge Bundy argued forcefully to the president that the time had come `to use our military power in the Far East and to force a change of Communist policy.'...ON January 28 [1965] De Soto patrols, with the mission of provoking an attack, were ordered back into the Tonkin Gulf for the first time in five months. Naval retaliatory forces were to be in position before the patrols commenced on February 3 [1965]..."

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 13

Approved $300,000 for Democracy Now! in 1998-2004 period

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 13

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

 
After the U.S. power elite's Ford Foundation began to provide funding for the parallel left Democracy Now! daily news show in 1998, the total and net revenues of the tax-exemt, "non-profit" Democracy Now! Productions media firm and the annual total compensation received by Democracy Now! host-producer Goodman increased. Between December 2003 and December 2006, for example, Democracy Now! Productions’ total annual revenues increased from over $2.2 million to  over $3.9 million, according to its Form 990 financial filings for 2003 and 2006; and the amount that the “non-profit” media firm’s total annual revenues exceeded its total annual expense increased from over $900,000 to over $1 million during the same period. In addition, between December 2003 and December 2006, Goodman’s annual total compensation for her alternative media work increased from $58,204 to $61,137 [equal to over $75,000 in 2018].

In a 2000 interview with Philanthropy Magazine, Trilateral Commission member and then-Ford Foundation president Susan Berresford gave the official version of how the Ford Foundation, which helped fund the Democracy Now! show with $300,000 in grant money between 1998 and 2004, operated during that period:

“We have a senior management team that meets every Monday morning in my office...I approve all grants over $100,000. Grants up to $100,000 can be made by staff at various levels. We budget on a two-year basis, and we work with our board...Every grantmaker writes what we call a program office memo. That is ultimately approved by his or her immediate supervisor and then by someone at a vice-presidential program level. Then, all grants that they make under $100,000 pursuant to that memo, they and their immediate supervisors approve. And anything over that needs my approval. We meet every other week for an entire morning; and all the grants over $100,000 that have been recommended in the prior two-week period are on a list and we talk about them.

“I get a write-up on every single grant. There may be 50 on the list, or ten on the list. I read them all, think about them all, and we discuss some of them...The meeting is really a group discussion. I lead it, and I have to put my signature on the grant in the end, but all the officers of the foundation are there, and any program officer or any staff member who wants to attend can attend and participate.


“...We make grants of $1,000 and we make $50 million grants. We make endowment grants and project grants and general support grants...”

Besides approving “all grants over $100,000” (including the
$150,000 grant given to Democracy Now! Productions Inc. in 2004) in early 21st-century, former Ford Foundation president Berresford was a former member of the board of directors of Chase Manhattan Bank and a member of the North American Committee of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission--sitting next to other U.S. Establishment figures, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeline Albright. In addition, Berresford  was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which the Ford Foundation gave a grant of $100,000 "for the development of a Council Task Force on Terrorism" in 2002. And featured on the Council on Foreign Relations web site at www.cfr.org on 9/26/02 was an advertisement for "a New Council book," which stated "Invasion Is the Only Realistic Option to Head off the Threat from Iraq, Argues Kenneth Pollack in The Threatening Storm."

In her 2000 interview with Philanthropy Magazine, Berresford also indicated that the Ford Foundations’ board of trustees was “a policy-making board” that “set foundation policy” and “set the budget level and broad allocations,” during the 1998 to 2004 period when the foundation helped fund the parallel left Democracy Now! show.

In the 1990s and early 21st-century the Ford Foundation board of trustees included two former CEOs and former board chairmen of the Xerox Corporation, the CEO and board chairman of ALCOA, an executive vice-president and general counsel of Coca Cola Company, the chairman and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., the chairman of Reuters Holdings, PLC, the senior partner of the Akin, Gump,Straus Hauser and Feld lobbying firm, and the president of Vassar College. Other corporations with directors who sat on the Ford Foundation board of trustees in the late 1990s or after 2000 included Time Warner, Chase Manhattan Bank, Ryder Systems, CBS, AT & T, Adolph Coors Company, Dayton-Hudson, the Bank of England, J.P. Morgan, Marine Midland Bank, Southern California Edison, KRCX Radio, the Central Gas and Electric Corp. DuPont, Citicorp and the New York Stock Exchange.

The Ford Foundation's Board of Trustees' Education, Media, Arts and Culture Committee in the late 1990s, for example, included the president of Vassar College, the chairman of Reuters Holdings PLC, the former chairman and CEO of Xerox and Bill and Hillary Clinton crony Vernon Jordan--also a director of Revlon, American Express, J.C. Penney, Sara Lee, Xerox, Bankers Trust, Dow Jones, Union Carbide and Ryder Systems. Jordan also was the chair of the Ford Foundation Board of Trustee's Audit and Management Committee in the late 1990s.

In 2002, the wife of the Bush II White House's presidential historian (Michael Beschloss] sat on the Ford Foundation board of trustees. Ford Foundation Trustee Afsaneh Mashayetkhi Beschloss, a former World Bank managing officer, also was the CEO/president of the Carlyle Asset Management Group. President Bush II's father George Herbert Walker Bush, former Secretary of Defense and former Deputy CIA Director Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of State James Baker and Billionaire Speculator George Soros were also involved in the Carlyle Group that Ford Foundation Trustee Mashayetkhi Beschloss managed. The Ford Foundation board-linked Carlyle Group received $1.3 billion in Pentagon war contracts in 1999, was the 11th-largest recipient of Pentagon war contracts in 2000 and invested heavily in war stock. In addition, former Texaco vice-president/general counsel, former Coca-Cola executive vice-president/general counsel and former Democratic Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who joined the Bain Capital private equity investment/stock speculation firm that former GOP Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney founded, as its Double Impact business managing director, in 2015, sat on the Ford Foundation board of trustees in early 21st century.

In her 2000 interview with Philanthropy Magazine, then-Ford Foundation president Berresford also indicated where some of the Ford Foundation grant money was coming from when it helped fund Democracy Now! in the early 21st-century:

“We set our budget at 5.8 percent of a three-year rolling average of our portfolio value. Then, depending on our judgment about the stock market and other things, we may move around a little bit from that...Linda Strumpf is the vice president for investment [in 2000] at the foundation. We have an investment committee of the board. They are in touch regularly and Linda and I talk frequently. We all think hard about asset allocation and the broad investment choices we make...In recent years, we have put a significant amount of money into venture capital and a lot of that in technology, and have done very, very well with those investments....We do not, other than in a very few cases, screen investments…”

Besides managing the Ford Foundation's multi-billion dollar unscreened investment portfolio and the rest of the Ford Foundation's $10.7 billion in assets in 2000, then-Ford Foundation Vice-President for Investments Strumpf was also a member of the investment committee of the Ford Foundation-funded Ms. Foundation for Women. In addition, the then-Ford Foundation Vice-President for Investments was also a member of the investment committee of Penn State University—which received over $58 million in war research contracts from the Pentagon in 1999. And in 1999, the "non-profit," tax-exempt Ford Foundation paid its then white female vice-president for investments an annual salary of $852,911 [equal to over $1.2 million in 2018].

During the 6 years that the Ford Foundation helped fund Democracy Now!, the show may not have provided its listeners and viewers with much information about which transnational corporations the Ford Foundation invested in historically or currently. Yet In the December 1988 issue of Multinational Monitor, Jim Donahue reported, in an article entitled "The Foundations of Apartheid and The Nuclear Industry," that in 1988, during the apartheid era, the Ford Foundation had $1.32 billion invested in companies doing business in South Africa, accounting for 43 percent of its total investment value at that time.

Multinational Monitor also observed in 1988 that "Nuclear Weapons-Linked Investment Corporations that receive government contracts to build components for nuclear weapons are popular among leading foundations" and "the Ford Foundation...holdings account for 16 percent of Ford's total investment value, or $496 million, with the largest holding being in nuclear-contract-linked IBM and General Electric."

In 2001, one of the years in which the Ford Foundation helped fund Democracy Now!, over $4 billion of the Ford Foundation's $10.7 billion in assets was invested in U.S. corporate stock and over $1.3 billion in foreign corporate stock. And from its billions of dollars in corporate stockholdings in 2001, the "non-profit" Ford Foundation received $343 million in dividends and interest income and earned an additional capital gains income of $992 million. Yet on its 2001 annual income, the "non-profit" Ford Foundation only paid a 1% excise tax.

But despite the great power that control over such excess wealth gives to Establishment foundations like the Ford Foundation to influence world history and manage social change on behalf of Ultra-Rich power elite interests, the parallel left Democracy Now! show rarely reported critically on the world of Big Foundations. Yet without an understanding of the political economic and cultural role that Big Foundations play in global politics, one can't really understand how the System operates or how world history is determined. And one's political and intellectual consciousness and analysis is going to remain incomplete and partial, in a significant way.

In an article, entitled "Getting Behind the Media: What are the subtle tradeoffs of foundation support for journalists?", Rick Edmunds characterized the ethical issues that develops when journalists--even alternative media journalists--begin to rely on subsidies from the Big Foundation to fund their alternative media work:

“In research published...by the Poynter Institute on the rising number, scope, and dollar amounts of foundation grants for journalism, I found that media recipients are becoming ever more comfortable--and perhaps less reflective--about taking the money...When they show up with much-needed funding for an investigative series or pay the freight for a reporter working on an underreported beat, foundations don't receive the same due-diligence scrutiny for hidden subtext that journalists apply to a corporate press release or a politician's statement. The effect that foundation money may have on the news business is subtle but real, and increasingly troubling on the ethical front...

“...The lack of overt editorial should not blind us to the more subtle, one might say cultural, ties that bind these news organizations to their funders. There are, for example, any number of opportunities for grant makers to shape the editorial product as it is developed...If the foundations' and recipients' goals have been properly `aligned' not much more may be needed to see that the intent is carried out...


“Lost in the benevolent fog that surrounds most foundations is the notion that they may have more of an agenda, not less, than a sponsoring corporation...Cultural affinity can sometimes make it difficult for editors and journalists to draw the distinction between accepting a grant and accepting a funder's point of view...”  (end of part 13)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 12

Ford Foundation Founder gets German Eagle Grand Cross from Nazi officials, 1938.

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 12

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

 

In the same year that the U.S. power elite’s Ford Foundation gave the historically MacArthur Foundation-funded Deep Dish TV  a “charitable grant” of $75,000 [equal to over $104,000 in 2018] “for the television news series, DEMOCRACY NOW!, to continue incorporating the aftermath of the September 11^th attack into future broadcasts,” Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! co-hosts and producers transformed themselves into the “Democracy Now! Productions Inc.” media firm that was now defined as being separated from the Pacifica Foundation. As the Nation magazine senior editor who worked at Democracy Now! from September 2001 to July 2002, Lizzy Ratner, noted in her May 2005 “Amy Goodman’s `Empire’” article:

“…In June 2002 Goodman reached an agreement with Pacifica to turn Democracy Now! into a separate nonprofit organization that would continue to broadcast on the network but would also be free to build up its TV program. The deal generated some grumbling at the time from those who felt that Democracy Now! was abandoning Pacifica…”

Yet according to the same article, in 2005 Pacifica continued “to provide the show with $500,000 in operating support,” although the Democracy Now! Productions firm also collected money “from its TV broadcasters, Link TV and Free Speech TV, as well as through foundation grants, individual donations and sales from its online store.” In April 2004, for example, the U.S. power elite’s Ford Foundation gave Democracy Now! Productions Inc. a $150,000 [equal to around $200,000 in 2018] grant “to produce, broadcast and distribute a series of radio, television and internet reports,” according to the Ford Foundation’s 2004 Form 990 financial filing. And the following year, the Ford Foundation also gave a $50,000 [equal to around $64,000 in 2018] grant to Democracy Now! co-host Gonzalez to support the research for the News for All the People book that the then-NY Daily News mainstream corporate media columnist and former National Association of Hispanic Journalists [NAHJ] president co-authored with former NAHJ deputy director Joseph Torres.  Gonzalez’s News for All the People book co-author is currently the senior external affairs director of the parallel left Free Press media group—which, coincidentally, received 9 grants, totaling $9.5 million, from the Ford Foundation between 2006 and 2017, according to the Ford Foundation website’s grants data base.

At an Oct. 2, 2010 board of directors meeting of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers [NALIP], former NAHJ deputy director Torres was also unanimously nominated to sit on the NALIP board of directors; and in a “Spotlight” item that appeared in the Oct. 18, 2011 issue of the NALIP’s “Latinos In The Industry” newsletter, titled “NALIP Board Member Launches National Book Tour,” described how the Democracy Now! show-linked authors of the Ford Foundation-subsidized News for All the People book, not surprisingly, apparently promoted and marketed their book at events in some of the cities where  Democracy Now! was being aired or televised on a daily basis in 2011:

“NALIP Board Member Joseph Torres' new book News for All the People…,co-authored with Juan Gonzalez, is being launched with a national book tour, starting in NYC with multiple stops in California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Washington, DC.

“The first stop will be on Thursday, Oct. 20, in NYC. Joseph and Juan will be interviewed by Amy Goodman on the stage of the Great Hall of Cooper Union. 7-9 pm…This will be followed by events in San Francisco and Oakland on Friday, Oct. 21. Stops after that include Santa Cruz, Fresno, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Northridge, San Diego, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, San Antonio, Houston, Denver, and Washington DC.”

Democracy Now! host Goodman had also used the daily parallel left media show on Oct. 13, 2011 to help promote and market the Ford Foundation-funded book of the show’s NY Daily News corporate media columnist co-host and the Ford Foundation-funded Free Press parallel left media group’s senior external affairs executive director; by staging an interview with Gonzalez and Torres on its Oct. 13, 2011 broadcast which ended with the following promotional sales pitch by Goodman:

“Well, this is part one of our conversation. Congratulations on this remarkable work, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media , by Juan Gonzalez and Joe Torres. They’re traveling across the country. They will be in New York next Thursday night. We’ll be having a major event with them at Cooper Union, then to Friday it will be in Oakland. You can go to our website for all the dates—Santa Cruz, Fresno, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Northridge, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, San Antonio, Houston, Denver and Washington, D.C. Go to democracynow.org for all of those details that document the book tour of Juan Gonzalez and Joe Torres.”

 

And, also not surprisingly, when Torres noted that “we got some funding from the Ford Foundation, and it led to—to work on this book,” Goodman, whose own daily news show had been funded with $300,000 in Ford Foundation grant money between 1998 and 2004, failed to ask Torres and Gonzalez how much “funding from the Ford Foundation” they got “to work on” their “book;” or whether or not the Ford Foundation still obtains its grant money by investing in corporations that exploit workers and middle-class consumers of all racial backgrounds at home and abroad.

Yet the Ford Foundation was created in 1936 by an early 20^th-century exploiter of automobile industry workers and middle-class consumers named Henry Ford, who also apparently provided support for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in Germany during the 1920s. As a muckraking journalist named George Seldes observed in his 1943 book Facts and Fascism:

“Henry Ford’s picture for years hung over Hitler’s desk in the Brown House in Munich. The Nazis in their early days boasted that they had the moral and financial support of the richest man in America…

“To many persons Ford has always been our No. 1 Fascist. (Newspapermen usually give that spot to William Randolph Hearst, and there is an unending argument as to which of the two has done more harm to the mind of America, but no one doubts that both have spread more fascist poison in this country than any other pair of prominent men…)

“It was general knowledge in the early 1920s, when it was not treason to aid Hitler, that Henry Ford was one of his spiritual and economic backers…The most credible evidence regarding Ford’s financing of early Nazism was given in the treason trial of Herr Hitler himself…On Feb. 7, 1924, Herr Auer, vice-president of the Bavarian Diet, testified in the Hitler trial as follows:

“`The Bavarian Diet has long had the information that the Hitler movement was partly financed by an American anti-Semitic chief, who is Henry Ford. Mr. Ford’s interest in the Bavarian anti-Semitic movement began a year ago…Herr Hitler openly boasts of Mr. Ford’s support…A photograph of Mr. Ford hangs in Herr Hitler’s quarters...’”

Funded Democracy Now! with $300,000 in "charitable grants" 1998 to 2004

The reason Billionaire Ford established the Ford Foundation was to enable his family members to both retain control over his Ford Motor Corporation and avoid paying a fair share of federal taxes after he died. As University of Virginia Commonwealth Professor of History Professor Oliver Zunz recalled in his 2012 book, Philanthropy In America: A History (that he wrote with “the support” he “received from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation”):

“The New Deal inheritance tax was directly responsible…for the creation and vast expansion of the biggest American philanthropic institution of the postwar era—the Ford Foundation…The act went into effect on Jan. 1, 1936. The same month, Henry and his wife Clara, and their son Edsel incorporated the Ford Foundation…The foundation gave the Fords the means simultaneously to avoid the huge inheritance tax and to pass on the company to the next generation without losing control of it…

“…In 1947, the foundation received about 90 percent of the non-voting stock in the company. By this means the Ford family avoided much of the tax burden and Henry II, Edsel’s son, kept full control over the automobile company his grandfather was leaving behind. If it had not been for the foundation, Henry and his two brothers would have paid an estimated federal estate tax of $321,000,000 [equal to around $3.6 billion in 2018] and lost control of the company…Hence the commonly heard charge that the leading American foundation of the 1950s began as a tax-dodge…”

Carl Bakal’s 1979 book, Charity USA: An Investigation into the Hidden World of the Multi-Billion Dollar Charity Industry, also observed:

“All the stock that was given to the foundation was nonvoting. The 10 percent retained by the family had total voting power, maintaining the family domination of the company. Moreover, the voting stock passed to the family tax free, saving another $42 million [equal to around $481 million in 2018], because the wills of Henry and Edsel provided that the taxes on the bequest be paid by the foundation.”

In the late 1940s and 1950s, during the Cold War era of U.S. history, the Ford Foundation began to collaborate with the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] in support of the U.S. power elite’s anti-communist and economically imperialist foreign policy objectives. As Philanthropy In America: A History noted:

“…America’s largest foundations provided funds and collaborated in organizational strategies with the U.S. government…In devising Cold War strategies, the alliance between American diplomats, intelligence agents, and a small group of foundation officials was held together not only by common institutional goals but also by a tight professional and social network linking them. The early history of the Ford Foundation—then a newcomer to the big philanthropic scene…suggests the closeness of these ties….Ford officials conferred directly with officials from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency…”

In her 1999 book The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stoner Saunders also 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:

"The foundation had a record of close involvement in covert actions in Europe, working closely with…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…

"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..."

A Ford Foundation executive in the early 1950s named Richard Bissell--who later became the CIA Deputy Director For Plans responsible for the unsuccessful 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and a “president of the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA], a think-tank that had been formed by a dozen universities (including MIT and Columbia University] to recruit scientific personnel for the evaluation of weapons systems” between 1962 and 1964, according to Bissell’s autobiography Reflections of A Cold Warrior—simultaneously worked, for example, as a CIA consultant. As Bissell recalled in his 1996 book:

“In January 1952 I joined the Ford Foundation…I worked out of a small office in Washington…The arrangement allowed me to work for the foundation while engaging in outside consulting assignments…Working in Washington…enabled me to maintain my close professional relationships…with people like Frank Wisner, Sherman Kent, Desmond Fitzgerald, Tracy Barnes and Max Milliken, all of whom were in the CIA and close to Allen Dulles…

“In the fall of 1952, I became part of the CIA’s Princeton Group of consultants (so named because it met on the university’s campus)…In late 1952…Max Milliken resigned as an assistant director of the CIA…to become director of MIT’s Center for International Studies [CENIS]…I was able to get the trustees of the Ford Foundation to fund research at CENIS.”

During the same decade that the foundation, which in later decades helped fund Democracy Now!,  collaborated with the CIA in support of U.S. power elite foreign policy goals, it apparently did not use its special political influence and economic power in the 1950s to eliminate Jim Crow laws and legalized racial segregation in the southern region of the United States. As the Philanthropy In America: A History book observed, “the Ford Foundation did not come out in favor of racial integration until the 1960s.” (end of part 12)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 11

Funded `Democracy Now!' Show Between 1998 and 2004

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 11

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

 

In his 1971 book The Higher Circles: The Governing Class In America, University of California-Santa Cruz Professor G. William Domhoff observed that “all power elite foundations” are “involved in ideological combat” and “all power elite foundations” are “propaganda fronts which are involved in maintaining the legitimacy and respectability of the present Establishment, even if in some cases this involves no more than giving some bright-eyed novice a few thousand dollars with which to amuse himself;” and “if the” CIA-funded “Farfield Foundation” was “a conduit, so is the Ford Foundation (which is also a tax dodge).” And as Joan Roelofs wrote in her 2003 book Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism:

“The cultural Cold War initiated concerted action by foundations and the CIA…Ford, the Kaplan Foundation, and others became `pass-throughs’ for the CIA project, Congress for Cultural Freedom [CCF]. In addition, starting in 1957, Ford provided funds for the CCF…Ford established a U.S.-type economic program at the Indonesian university and trained faculty at the U.S. universities to run the Indonesian program…When the coup [in September 1965] was instituted to overthrow [the anti-imperialist Indonesian political leader] Sukarno, well-trained leadership was available to run the country and negotiate reasonable deals with multinational corporations…”

Yet during the last two decades the long-time Democracy Now! show co-hosts have generally not provided their listeners or viewers with many news segments that examined in a critical way: (1) the role that Ford Foundation founder Henry Ford and his heirs or former Ford Foundation president McGeorge Bundy played in 20^th-century history; (2) the political role at home and abroad that Ford Foundation has played historically or in recent years; (3) what the special corporate connections and economic interests of Ford Foundation’s present and past board members and the Ford Foundation have been; or (4) how the multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation obtained and retains its assets and the grant money it distributes each year.

One reason might be because, between 1998 and 2004, $300,000 [equal to around $418,000 in 2018] in Ford Foundation "charitable grant" money was used to help fund Democracy Now!; and a $50,000 [equal to around $64,000 in 2018] Ford Foundation "charitable grant" was given to then-NY Daily News columnist, former National Association of Hispanic Journalists [NAHJ] president and long-time Democracy Now! co-host Gonzalez in 2005 to support the research for the News for All the People book. In addition, in 2003--during the period when Democracy Now!’s part-time co-host was also the NAHJ president—the Ford Foundation joined the Knight Foundation in establishing a “Challenge Fund for Journalism” program that provided $240,000 in grant money to NAHJ between 2003 and 2011; and in 2008 a separate grant of $100,000 [equal to over $117,000 in 2018] was given to the NAHJ group by the Ford Foundation.

The Ford Foundation’s historical funding of Democracy Now! began in 1998 when it gave the Pacifica Foundation a $75,000 [equal to over $114,000 in 2018] grant “toward marketing consultancy, promotional campaign and program development activities for radio program, DEMOCRACY NOW!”. But after listener-activists at Pacifica’s 5 radio stations pressured Goodman and Gonzalez in 1999 to break Pacifica Radio’s “gag rule,” and finally provide their listeners with news about Pacifica’s firings between 1995 and early 1999 in California of KPFA and KPFK volunteer or paid staff show producers who opposed the “NPRization” and corporatization of Pacifica’s programming and radio stations, Pacifica’s WBAI station managers stopped the Democracy Now! co-hosts from broadcasting from Pacifica’s Manhattan studios.

In 2002, however, the U.S. power elite’s Ford Foundation continued to help fund Democracy Now! by giving a grant of $75,000 [equal to over $104,000 in 2018] to Deep Dish TV “for the television news series, DEMOCRACY NOW!, to continue incorporating the aftermath of the September 11^th attack into future broadcasts.” According to its Form 990 financial filing for 2000 that Deep Dish TV submitted in June 2001, a few months before the September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, in 2000 Deep Dish TV had previously spent $42,427 of a $46,050 grant from some unidentified foundation, on “Democracy Now Live Coverage of the Democratic and Republican Political Conventions.”

Coincidentally, prior to receiving Ford Foundation money in 2002 to help air Democracy Now!, Deep Dish TV had previously been given 9 grants, totalling $335,000, between 1990 and 2000 by the same MacArthur Foundation that gave the Sound Portraits media firm of Goodman’s former WBAI colleague, David Isay, a $50,000 grant in 1997; and then, only three years later, gave an individual MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” of $500,0000 to the Democracy Now! producer-host’s former WBAI colleague, David Isay, in 2000. In addition, the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation--that the son of the MacArthur Foundation’s billionaire founder established—gave the Institute for Media Analysis a grant of between $60,000 and $85,000 in 2001 to “support the production of Democracy Now!’, according to the J.Roderick MacArthur Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2001.

Funded Deep DishTV  That Ford Foundation Used To Fund Democracy Now!

The wealthier MacArthur Foundation, that the father of the J.Roderick MacArthur established, is named for John D. MacArthur, who owned 410 Park Ave., 61 Broadway, the Gulf & Western Building and the Lincoln Tower Apartments in Manhattan, the Exchange Park Office Complex in Dallas, the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas and property in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, on which he persuaded RCA to build a computer plant. Billionaire MacArthur’s “real estate activities were carried on largely through two private companies, Royal American Industries, Inc., and the Southern Realty & Utility Co.;” other holdings” included “an oil drilling company, and broadcasting and printing interests,” according to The National Cyclopedia of American Biography. In its 1988 pamphlet, John D. MacArthur: The Man and His Legacy, the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation indicated how much of the “charitable grant” money, that was later used to fund parallel left media groups like Deep Dish TV in the 1990s was originally obtained during the 1960s Vietnam War era by John D. MacArthur:

“His new interest was real estate…At one point, he owned 100,000 acres of land in Florida and was the largest individual landowner in the state. He also owned a dozen insurance companies, several development companies and shopping centers, paper and pulp companies, 19 commercial office buildings in New York City, 6,000 apartments in Manhattan, several publishing enterprises, hotels, radio and television stations, and banks. By the 1970s, MacArthur was one of the nation’s two billionaires…”

And in his 1993 book The Assassination Of New York, Robert Fitch indicated how more money for “charitable grants” was obtained by the “non-profit” MacArthur Foundation in the 1980s from the real estate assets in Manhattan that “were part of the original bequest from John D. MacArthur,” according to the foundation’s 1995 Annual Report:

“One of the biggest industries in the city had been throwing people out of their apartments--`condo conversion’ it was called…The MacArthur Foundation…got involved. A team from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation converted thousands of apartments in the boom years. MacArthur managed to unload its total inventory in 1985 for about $500 million [equal to over $1.1 billion in 2018).”

In her May 2005 article, titled “Amy Goodman’s `Empire’,” the Nation magazine senior editor who worked at Democracy Now! from September 2001 to July 2002, Lizzy Ratner, described how Goodman’s media firm, after obtaining its $75,000 grant from the Ford Foundation “toward marketing consultancy, promotional campaign and program development activities for radio program” in 1998, began producing its soon-to-be Ford Foundation-subsidized daily cable-television show in September 2001:

“It was a few days before 9/11, and Goodman had just been forced from the studios of WBAI, the local Pacifica station...In the scramble to keep broadcasting on affiliate stations, she had landed at the firehouse, a small limestone castle of a building owned and operated by Downtown Community Television. The independent media collective also rented space to Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a cable access channel [whose current CEO Dan Coughlin is, coincidentally, both the former news and executive director of Pacifica Radio and a former WBAI colleague of Goodman], and in early September a MNN producer had the notion of switching on the TV cameras and videotaping Goodman's radio broadcast. The idea was to air the show on MNN once or twice a week….”

Former NBC News Anchor/Downtown Community Television Board Member Tom Brokaw in 2002

Also, coincidentally, sitting on the Downtown Community Television Center’s board of directors, when Democracy Now! began broadcasting in September 2001 from Downtown Community Television’s building at 87 Lafayette St. in Manhattan a televised version of its “parallel left” daily radio news show, according to the Downtown Community Television Center’s 2001 Form 990 financial filing, was Tom Brokaw--the then-anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News which the NBC corporate media network, that GE owned at that time, broadcast each evening. Brokaw, the husband of longtime Gannett corporate media conglomerate board member Meredith Brokaw, continued to sit on the Downtown Community Television Center’s board of directors until 2004, the same year he retired as the long-time NBC Nightly News anchor.

Like Deep Dish TV, the NBC Nightly News-linked Downtown Community Television Center was the recipient of MacArthur Foundation funding, in the years before Goodman and her parallel left radio show “landed at the firehouse, a small limestone castle of a building owned and operated by Downtown Community Television” and from which the Democracy Now!  show was broadcast between 2001 and late 2009.  For example, between 1986 and 2000 the MacArthur Foundation gave 8 "charitable grants," totalling $475,000, to the Downtown Community Television Center (including a $100,000 [equal to around $213,000 in 2018] grant in 1988 to “rehabilitate” the building that Democracy Now! would later be broadcasting from), as well as a loan of $375,000 whose loan repayment schedule had been suspended, according to the television center’s 2001 financial filing.

Coincidentally, Democracy Now! Productions, itself, would later receive in December 2007 “an interest free loan” of $6 million [equal to over $7.3 million in 2018] “from a private foundation, due on July 1, 2012…to finance the acquisition of their new office and production studio” at 207 W. 25^th Street in Manhattan, according to its 2007 Form 990 financial filing; and “as part of the loan agreement” with this “private foundation,” whose name the Democracy Now! Productions firm does not fully disclose, “the Organization received a conditional promise to give of $2 million dollars from this private foundation, which is contingent upon the organization’s meeting the loan repayment terms of $4 million dollars by July 1, 2012,” according to the same 2007 financial filing. (end of part 11)   

Ford Foundation Gave $500,000 "Charitable Grant" To ADL Lobbying Group In 2012

Billionaire Ford Foundation Founder Henry Ford Gets Medal From German Nazi Official in 1938s

In 2012, the tax-exempt, "non-profit" Ford Foundation gave a $500,000 "charitable grant" to the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] group, that often acts as a domestic political pressure group within the United States on behalf of the militaristic Israeli establishment. As ADL National Director Abraham Foxman noted in a May 15, 2012 press release: "We are so very proud to count the Ford Foundation among our closest partners in our vital work..."

Another group that often acts as a domestic political pressure group within the United States on behalf  of the militaristic Israeli establishment, the American Jewish Committee, was also given a $500,000 "charitable grant" by the Ford Foundation, according to the Ford Foundation website's grant data base.

Coincidentally, a Goldman Sachs Group Senior Director named Robert Kaplan--who also sits on the board of the State Street Corporation and Google Inc.'s Investment Advisory Committee--is a member of the Ford Foundation board of trustees.

According to its Form 990 financial filing for 2011, the "non-profit" and tax-exempt Anti-Defamation League collected over $53.7 million in 2011 and had operating expenses of only about $49.6 million during that same year; or, to be more exact, the "non-profit" ADL's 2011 total earnings exceeded its total expenses by $4,192,327 in 2011. In addition, the national director of the "non-profit" ADL, Abraham Foxman, apparently receives an annual compensation of $370,000; and the regional director of the ADL's Los Angeles office, Amanda Susskind, apparently receives an annual compensation of $207,000.

Another tax-exempt "non-profit" organization that's affiliated to the ADL, the ADL Foundation, described its "charitable" activity in the following way on its most recent Form 990 financial filing:

"Helps promote the mission of ADL...Specific grants totalling $13,603,358 was made to ADL...Supports ADL through ownership and administration of a building in Los Angeles, California. The building houses ADL's Pacific Southwest regional office in Los Angeles."

The tax-exempt "non-profit" ADL Foundation's most recent Form 990 financial filing also indicated that the value of its "investments in Central America and Caribbean" exceeds $49.6 million; and the total value of all of the ADL Foundation's investments is around $74 million.

Did Founder of Ford Foundation Help Finance Germany's Nazi Party?

Ford Foundation Founder Henry Ford accepting medal from German Nazi Government officials

In the 21st-century, the tax-exempt Ford Foundation (that Billionaire Industrialist Henry Ford apparently set up as a tax-dodge near the middle of the 20th century) redistributes some of the investment income that it obtains from its multi-billion dollar stock and hedge fund portfolio to wealthy tax-exempt universities/real estate development institutions such as Columbia University, in the form of tax-exempt “charitable grants.” In December 2011, for example, the Ford Foundation’s International Fellowship Program division apparently gave a self-serving $1 million “charitable grant” to the Trustees of Columbia University’s private library system “to archive and provide access to” the Ford Foundation’s own International Fellowship Program’s “paper and electronic records.”

Coincidentally, during the 1920s the founder of the Ford Foundation, Henry Ford, apparently helped fund the Nazi Party in Germany. As a muckraking journalist named George Seldes observed in his 1943 book Facts and Fascism:

“Henry Ford’s picture for years hung over Hitler’s desk in the Brown House in Munich. The Nazis in their early days boasted that they had the moral and financial support of the richest man in America…

“To many persons Ford has always been our No. 1 Fascist. (Newspapermen usually give that spot to William Randolph Hearst, and there is an unending argument as to which of the two has done more harm to the mind of America, but no one doubts that both have spread more fascist poison in this country than any other pair of prominent men…)

“It was general knowledge in the early 1920s, when it was not treason to aid Hitler, that Henry Ford was one of his spiritual and economic backers…

“The most credible evidence regarding Ford’s financing of early Nazism was given in the treason trial of Herr Hitler himself…On February 7, 1924, Herr Auer, vice-president of the Bavarian Diet, testified in the Hitler trial as follows:

“`The Bavarian Diet has long had the information that the Hitler movement was partly financed by an American anti-Semitic chief, who is Henry Ford. Mr. Ford’s interest in the Bavarian anti-Semitic movement began a year ago…Herr Hitler openly boasts of Mr. Ford’s support…A photograph of Mr. Ford hangs in Herr Hitler’s quarters..’”

 

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)