`New York Times' Coverage of 1932 to 1948 History Revisited: Conclusion

Between 1932 and 1948, the New York Times newspaper claimed to always be providing its readers with accurate information about what was going on during the 1932 to 1948 period of world history. But between 1932 and 1948, the New York Times sometimes printed articles that turned out to be historically accurate; and sometimes also printed articles that turned out to be historically inaccurate.

In an October 19, 1945, headlined "Germans Indicted In Massacre Of 11,000 Poles In Katyn Forest," for example, the New York Times reported that "if the" July 1941 "crime was committed after the date when the Germans overran their last resting place it could not have been committed by the Russians" and "the Germans overran the Katyn Forest in 1941."

Then in a March 12, 1946 article, headlined "Pravda Denounces Churchill's Speech As Threat Of War," the New York Times reported that the then-Soviet Union's Pravda newspaper declared in an editorial:

"What does the proposal of Churchill come to? The formation of an Anglo-American military alliance that would assure Anglo-American rule throughout the world...and make a policy of force the dominant factor in the development of the world...

"...Churchill convulsively grabs for the coat-tails of Uncle Sam...in the hope that an Anglo-American military alliance would enable the British Empire, although in the role of a junior partner, to continue the policy of imperialist expansion..."

But in its October 16, 1946 issue, the New York Times printed an article about what eventually happened to some of the Nuremberg Trial defendants, following their convictions of war crimes and crimes against humanity, headlined "Goering Ends Life By Poison, Ten Others Hanged;" and which included the following names of the ten German war criminals who were hanged: "Joachim von Ribbentrop, former Foreign Minister; Field Marshal Gen. Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German High Command; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Gestapo; Alfred Rosenberg, Minister for Occupied Territories; Hans Frank, who led in the killing of thousands of Poles; Wilhelm Frick, former Minister of the Interior; Julius Streicher, leader of Nazi anti-Semitism; Fritz Sauckel, director of the German General Staff; Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, head of the German General Staff; and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who sold out Austria..."

And in a December 12, 1948 article, headlined "Tojo And 6 Others Hanged By Allies As War Criminals," the New York Times listed the following names of the Japanese war criminals who were hanged: Hideki Tojo, former dictator of Japan; Koki Hirota, former Premier of Japan; General Kenji Doihara; General Iwane Matsui; General Akira Muto; Seishiro Itagati, former War Minister; and General Hitaro Kimwa. (end of article)

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 14

Former Ford Foundation president McGeorge Bundy With LBJ in 1960s

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 14 

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

When the Ford Foundation helped fund Democracy Now! between 1998 and 2004, not much historical information about Henry Ford, the Ford Foundation or past Ford Foundation presidents--like a former Kennedy and Johnson White House National Security Affairs Advisor during the Vietnam War Era named McGeorge Bundy-- was provided to Democracy Now! listeners and viewers. But as U.S. antiwar movement activist David Dellinger wrote in his 1993 autobiography, From Yale to Jail:

“Given the U.S. preoccupation with Vietnamese war crimes trials, when [Telford] Taylor [the U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials] returned from his visit to [North Vietnam], he was pressed by Dick Cavett on Cavett’s popular TV show to say whether under Nuremberg statutes…McGeorge Bundy…would be adjudged guilty off war crimes. His answer was, `Yes, of course.’”

Yet for 13 years McGeorge Bundy, was the Ford Foundation's president. As James Ledbetter recalled in his book Made Possible By…:

"The Ford effort took a new twist in 1966, when the Foundation began plotting a system that would unite satellite communication with educational broadcasting. McGeorge Bundy, the former national security advisor who had personally ordered American bombing raids on North Vietnam in early 1965, left the government and moved to the Ford Foundation to oversee this plan...Bundy obtained his position without being knowledgeable about, or even comfortable with, the medium of television..."

In a Sept. 26, 1996 press release that was issued by the Ford Foundation only two years before the foundation issued its 1998 grant of $75,000 [equal to over $114,000 in 2018] to the Pacifica Foundation “toward marketing consultancy, promotional campaign and program development activities for radio program, DEMOCRACY NOW!,” following its former long-time president's death, the Trustees of the Ford Foundation stated:

"The Trustees of the Ford Foundation are deeply saddened by the death of McGeorge Bundy on September 16 [1996]. Mr. Bundy served as President of the Foundation from 1966 to 1979. He forged new lines of work in such critically important areas as civil rights, overseas development, and security and arms control. His intellect, candor, and high standards left an indelible mark on the Foundation's culture. The work of the Foundation today builds on Mac's legacy and we are in his debt."

But evidence exists that former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy was apparently one of the White House officials responsible for planning crimes against humanity during the Vietnam War Era, in violation of the Nuremberg Accords.

On May 11, 1961, for instance, former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy signed "National Security Action Memorandum 52" which approved a program for covert action against North Vietnam that included forming "network of resistance, covert bases and teams for sabotage and light harassment" in North Vietnam. And on Sept. 10, 1964, former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy signed "National Security Action Memorandum No. 314," which approved the resumption of naval patrols and covert maritime operations off the coast of North Vietnam.

According to The Pentagon Papers, each maritime operation against North Vietnam after October 1964 had to be approved in advance by former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy. And among the maritime operations approved in advance by the now-deceased former Ford Foundation president were "ship-to-shore bombardment of North Vietnam radar site" and "underwater demolition team assaults on bridges along coastal roads, bridges and rails" in North Vietnam.

In a Feb. 7, 1965 memorandum to Democratic Party Leader Lyndon Johnson, former Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy next recommended that the U.S. adopt "a policy of `sustained reprisal'" against North Vietnam; and on March 2, 1965 the Johnson White House's "Rolling Thunder" bombing campaign against North Vietnam was begun.

On Apr. 6, 1965, former Ford Foundation President Bundy signed "National Security Action Memorandum No. 328," in which he stated:

"We should continue roughly the present slowly ascending tempo of ROLLING THUNDER Operation...We should continue to vary the type of target, stepping up attack on lines of communication in the near future, and possibly moving in a few weeks to attacks on the rail lines north and northeast of Hanoi.

"Leaflet operations should be expanded to obtain maximum practicable psychological effect on the North Vietnamese population.

"Blockade or aerial mining of North Vietnamese ports needs further study and should be considered for future operations...Air operations in Laos...should be stepped up to the maximum remunerative rate..."

By the time McGeorge Bundy retired as Ford Foundation president in 1979, millions of people in Indochina and over 57,000 U.S. military personnel had lost their lives, as a result of the militaristic actions authorized by the "National Security Action Memorandum" which the former Ford Foundation president personally signed.

A few years before his death in 1996, the former Ford Foundation president had been named as a "Scholar-in-Residence" by the same Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation which was to give a $25,000 grant to Pacifica in 1996 to launch the Democracy Now! show. As the Carnegie Corporation of New York's "Scholar-in-Residence," former Ford Foundation President Bundy co-authored a 1993 book with Stanford University Professor Sidney Drell and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff William J. Crowe (who also sat on the board of directors of a Big Oil company called Texaco in the early 1990s), entitled Reducing Nuclear Danger.

In the acknowledgement section of their book, Bundy and his co-authors noted that "the book is the product of a decision in 1990 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to invite the three of us to work as co-chairmen of a Carnegie Commission on Reducing the Nuclear Danger;" and "we must express our warmest personal thanks to Dr. David A. Hamburg, the president of the Carnegie Corporation" and "the staff of the Carnegie Corporation has helped with unfailing kindness and understanding."

Former Ford Foundation President Bundy and his co-authors then expressed their support for the immoral 1991 high-technology U.S. military attack on the people of Iraq, on behalf of Big Oil's special interests, by writing:

"Saddam Hussein has provided a sharp reminder of a different nuclear danger--that nuclear weapons may come into the hands of unpredictable and adventurous rulers. We learned in Iraq that when international awareness, will, and capability are all three sufficient, it is possible to take effective action against such danger...The case of Saddam is unique both in the breadth of the international judgment that a bomb under his control would be unacceptably dangerous and in the strength of the American presence and engagement created by his aggression against Kuwait. Multinational action against the Iraqi bomb has been effective, at least in the short run..
.
"It is now evident that if Saddam's effort had not been interrupted by the war he provoked, he would probably have had nuclear weapons sometime in the 1990s--quite possibly in the first half of the decade. Knowing Saddam as it now does, the world has been shocked by this narrow escape. It is not surprising that an effective consensus has developed, growing in strength as the process of inquiry and dismantling has continued in Iraq, that the international community should see to it that leaders such as Saddam do not get the bomb."

Yet three years after the former Ford Foundation president who was one of the U.S. Establishment leaders responsible for crimes against humanity in Vietnam joined his co-authors in rationalizing a pro-war policy in relation to Iraq that helped provide the pretext for the second attack on Iraq in 2003 by the U.S. War Machine, the Ford Foundation board of trustees asserted in 1996 that "the work of the Foundation today builds on Mac's legacy and we are in his debt."

Former Ford Foundation president/Citicorp/ Director Thomas with Former Ford Foundation president Bundy

Former White House National Security Affairs Adviser Bundy’s successor as Ford Foundation President between 1979 and 1996 was a former U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command Captain and former New York City Deputy Police Commissioner in charge of legal matters named Franklin A. Thomas. During his 17 years as the Ford Foundation’s president, Thomas also, simultaneously, served as the GOP Reagan Administration’s chairman of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on South Africa and sat on the corporate boards of ALCOA, Cummins Engine, CBS and Citicorp/Citibank, whose special corporate interests the Democracy Now! show co-hosts claimed to be opposing during the 1998 and 2004 period when their show received Ford Foundation funding.

But in its 1980 edition, the Everybody’s Business:An Almanac book, that Milton Moskowitz, Michael Katz and Robert Levering edited, indicated who were some of the co-directors that the former president of the Ford Foundation (who continued to serve as a Ford Foundation consultant during the late 1990s period when the foundation initially helped fund Democracy Now!)  sat next to on the Citicorp/Citibank corporate board:

“Citicorp’s board of directors is about as powerful a group as you’re ever likely to find gathered in one place at one time. In 1980 they included the chairmen of Exxon, Standard Oil of California [Chevron], DuPont, Xerox, Monsanto, Union Pacific, Kimberly-Clark, United Technologies, J.C. Penney, Corning Glass Works…and Franklin A. Thomas, president of the Ford Foundation. Citicorp’s top executives sit on the boards of such giant companies as General Electric, J.C. Penney, United Technologies, Beatrice Foods, and Sears, Roebuck…”

In addition, in its 1980 edition, the Everybody’s Business book also observed that, not surprisingly, at the Levi Straus corporation in 1980, “Franklin A. Thomas, a trustee of the Ford Foundation is a director, as is Mary Lothrop Bundy, an educator and wife of the former president of the Ford Foundation, McGeorge Bundy.” (end of part 14)

Does Cambridge's Draper Laboratory's Work For Trump's Pentagon Violate Nuremberg Accords and International Law?

According to Principle VI of the 1950 Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunals, “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances” are “crimes against peace.” And according to Principle VII of the 1950 Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunals, “complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.”

Yet at 555 Technology Square in the “Warmakers’ Republic of Cambridge” some of the folks at the “non-profit” Draper Laboratory who have apparently been personally enriching themselves by working for the U.S. military-industrial-university complex’s “permanent war machine” in the 21^st-century are still being allowed by the “People’s Republic of Cambridge” to now do weapons technology development work for the Trump administration’s Pentagon in 2017—even if such war preparation research violates international law and helps prepare the Pentagon for a possible Trump administration military attack on North Korea.