40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Conclusion

One immediate result of the CIA and ITT-promoted September 11, 1973 military coup in Chile was that, “a right-wing military junta took over in Santiago and soon after opened negotiations with ITT regarding compensation for Chiltelco;” and “on December 22 [1973] it was announced that the new Chilean government would pay $125.2 million for ITT’s equity and debt investments in Chiltelco, over a 10-year period,” according to Robert Sobel’s 1982 book "ITT: The Management of Opportunity".

The Chilean people, however, failed to profit as much from the CIA-ITT conspiracy to overthrow the democratically-elected Allende regime as did the corporation on whose board of directors sat the founder of the Lannan Foundation. According to "Nixon, Kissinger and Allende: U.S. Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile":

“By the end of 1973, 1,500 Chileans had perished…Judge [Juan] Guzman estimated that 3,500 Chileans were either killed or `disappeared’ during the 17 years of military rule…Indeed, the death toll could have been as high as 4,000…”

But other books have estimated the number of Chileans killed by the U.S. government-supported Pinochet regime during and after the September 11, 1973 military coup as being much higher. For example, according to Samuel Chavkin’s 1989 book "Storm Over Chile: The Junta Under Siege":

“…Immediately after the overthrow of the Allende regime, Washington rejected charges that it had had a hand in the coup, and it disclaimed having had advance knowledge of its imminence…It was only after the fact,…after some 30,000 Chileans had been tortured to death or shot by firing squads, after upwards of 100,000 others were languishing in prisons and concentration camps, that official documentation of this conspiracy came to light before the Senate Select Committee in 1975…”

If the editorial judgments and reporting about the role of the ITT Board of Directors and ITT in promoting the September 11, 1973 military coup in Chile of alternative media/left gatekeeper groups like "Democracy Now!", "The Nation", and "Mother Jones" magazine have been negatively affected as a result of their acceptance of “charitable grant”/blood money from the Lannan Foundation that ITT Director J. Patrick Lannan, Sr. set up, it would not be the first time that a Lannan family-linked organization attempted to influence news reporting and editorial judgments of a media organizations. When ITT Director Lannan’s firm attempted unsuccessfully to win U.S. Justice Department and U.S. court approval for a merger with ABC in the late 1960s, for example, the U.S. Justice Department noted the following in an August 3, 1970 memo:

“…In the course of the ABC-ITT proceeding, ITT exhibited its readiness to interfere with the judgment of reporters of independent news media; specific testimony covered attempts of ITT executives to influence the reporting of the ABC-ITT proceeding by newspaper reporters of the leading dailies. Some of this testimony included statements by ITT officials that reporters should be concerned about potential economic consequences in reporting news and making editorial judgments…The Department argues that the proposed merger was likely to result in significant and substantial detriment to the public interest, including loss of competition…”

Perhaps the “merger” of "Democracy Now!", "The Nation" and "Mother Jones" with ITT Director J. Patrick Lannan, Sr.’s Lannan Foundation in the 21st--century also results “in significant and substantial detriment to the public interest”—40 years after the CIA and ITT’s 1973 coup in Chile?
(end of article)

40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 8

Lubea Qureshi’s 2009 book "Nixon, Kissinger and Allende: U.S. Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile" observed that when the CIA funded and organized strikes by right-wing Chilean truck industry owners in the fall of 1972 and the summer of 1973 in order to attempt to create economic chaos in Chile prior to the September 1973 military coup, “ITT extended $400,000” to the right-wing anti-Allende regime strikers. The same book also noted that “Henry Hecksher, “ the CIA’s “chief of station in Santiago” in 1970, “directed ITT operatives to a Chilean who could serve as a secret channel for” ITT “funds” in the early 1970s; and $1 million traveled from ITT coffers to Chilean recipients,” with right-wing presidential candidate “Jorge Alessandri and his National party” receiving “at least $400,000 of this enormous corporate investment” by ITT.

"The Pinochet File" also recalled that “by the fall of 1971, the CIA Station” in Chile “was conducting a `deception operation’…in order to `arouse the” Chilean `military’ to `move against’ Allende `if necessary’;” and “by early 1972” the CIA’s “Santiago Station began compiling arrest lists, installation targets, and other operational data necessary for coup contingency planning.” Then, according to the same book:

“…On September 27, 1972…a CIA informant, inside Pinochet’s camp reported that…Pinochet now believes `that Allende must be forced to step down or be eliminated;’ these were, in his words, the `only alternatives.’ When Pinochet traveled to Panama that month to negotiate the transfer of U.S. tanks to the Chilean army,…a member of his entourage reported back to a CIA handler. And U.S. army officers at the Southern Command, according to this source, passed an important message along to Pinochet’s delegation: the `U.S. will support coup against Allende’ with whatever means necessary `when the time comes.’”

So, not surprisingly, “in October 1972, a team of `appropriate CIA elements’—officials and analysts” then “gathered at Langley headquarters and `brainstormed the current Chilean situation from every conceivable angle,’ weighing `various courses of action…to accelerate current Chilean events leading toward a coup’ as [then-CIA Western Hemisphere Division Chief Theodore] Shackley reported to the Senior Review Group (SRG) on October 17 [1972],” according to "The Pinochet File."
(end of part 8)

40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 7

"The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier On Atrocity and Accountability" recalled that there were “some 40 contacts between highest-level CIA and ITT officials on Chile in 1970 and 1971.”

ITT’s involvement in the CIA’s secret funding of the anti-Allende right-wing Chilean newspaper, "El Mercurio", between 1970 and 1973 apparently helped to bring about the September 11, 1973 military coup in Chile which installed Chilean General Pinochet as the Chilean dictator for many years. As "The Pinochet File" noted:

“The covert operation that, according to the CIA’s own internal records, played `a significant role’ in bringing about a coup was clandestine funding for the `El Mercurio' project…After the paper’s owner, Agustin Edwards, came to Washington in September 1970 to lobby Nixon for action against Allende, the CIA used `El Mercurio' as a key outlet for a massive propaganda campaign…Additional secret monies flowed to `El Mercurio' through the CIA’s main corporate collaborator in Chile—the ITT Corporation. A declassified May 15, 1972 memorandum of a conversation between CIA officer Jonathan Hanke and ITT official Hal Hendrix recorded a discussion about $100,000 bank deposits ITT was secretly making to Agustin Edwards. `He had told me money for the Edwards group went through a Swiss account,’ Hanke reported to his superiors…The CIA asserted that the propaganda effort, in which `El Mercurio' was the dominant actor, `played a significant role in setting the stage for the military coup of 11 September 1973.’”…
(end of part 7)

40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 6

Not all the facts about what the CIA and ITT were covertly up to in Chile between 1970 and 1973 were apparently fully disclosed by CIA officials and ITT executives who testified before U.S. Senator Frank Church’s Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations during the early 1970s. As Peter Kornbluh noted in his 2003 book, "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier On Atrocity and Accountability":

“Senator Church’s Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations suffered…deceptions…Under the supervision of the [then-] Western Hemisphere chief, Theodore Shackley, the CIA conspired with ITT officers to deceive the Church Committee. In early May 1972, ITT senior vice president Raymond Brittenham traveled to Washington to discuss `with the Agency what ITT might say in the Senate hearings, what the Agency might say, etc.,’ according to one memorandum of conversation. Shackley, according to David Corn’s biography, `Blond Ghost', ordered his deputy Jonathan Hanke to meet with ITT operative Hal Hendrix for further discussions on withholding information…According to Hanke’s summary of the meeting, Hendrix advised him on efforts by ITT executives to keep incriminating documents on the covert transfer of funds in Chile from falling into the hands of the Senate…

“ITT officials, among them CEO Harold Geneen, senior vice president Edward Gerrity, and Southern Cone manager Robert Berrellez, all deceived the subcommittee. Geneen claimed that ITT `did not take any steps to block the election of Salvador Allende.’ Gerrity claimed the $1 million that ITT had offered to the CIA to help block Allende was for `low-cost housing…a farming program.’ And Berrellez repeatedly misled the Church subcommittee by denying any ITT contact with CIA officials in Chile…”

According to the same book, in the early 1970s ITT was “the third largest American conglomerate” in Chile and “certainly ITT was the most interventionist.” As an April 3, 1972 Intercontinental Press article noted:

“What prompted ITT to launch its scheme was fear that it would lose its highly profitable control over the Chile Telephone Company. `The telephone company, the largest in Chile with 360,000 telephones,’ wrote Juan de Onis in the March 24 [1972] `New York Times', `was one of the biggest earners in the ITT world system, regularly earning over $10-million a year.’

“The concession contract ITT signed in 1930 to operate the telephone company guaranteed it a 10 percent annual profit on its investment. ITT, however, in effect sold itself the equipment necessary for maintenance and expansion. According to a `Washington Post' dispatch from Santiago, a spokesman for the company…estimated that `these sales, largely by European plants of ITT, raised the company’s recent annual profits to about 25 percent of its investment.’”
(end of part 6)

40 Years After CIA's and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 5

Former ITT Director Felix Rohatyn—who sat next to Lannan Foundation founder J.Patrick Lannan, Sr. on the ITT board of directors before, during and after the CIA and ITT-promoted 1973 military coup in Chile (which was dramatized in Costa Gavras’s 1980s movie "Missing")—apparently uses some of the blood money he accumulated from his many years as an ITT Director to attempt to manipulate the outcome of U.S. elections by funding the campaigns of Democratic Party candidates in a big way. Between 1990 and 2013, for example, over $990,000 in individual campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Party campaign committees or individual Democratic Party politicians running for federal office were made by former ITT Director Rohatyn, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website.

On October 18, 1996, for example, former ITT Director Rohatyn gave a $125,000 campaign contribution to the Democratic National Committee; and as recently as March 31, 2012 a campaign contribution of $30,800 was accepted by the DNC Services Corporation from the former ITT Director. In addition, between July 7, 2008 and March 6, 2012 the campaign committee of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama accepted four campaign contributions, totaling $9,600, from Felix Rohatyn—despite Rohatyn’s past involvement on the ITT board of directors’ executive committee at the time of the bloody 1973 military coup in Chile by Pinochet, which was promoted by ITT and the CIA.
(end of part 5)

40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 4

According to the 1973 book, "The Anderson Papers" by Jack Anderson:

“There had been a pattern of influence-peddling in ITT’s dealings with the government…Students of tax loopholes pointed out that by manipulating its tax payments, ITT in 1970 paid only 21 percent on its earnings as opposed to the statutory corporate income tax rate of 48 percent…ITT plotted…drastic action against any government that dared to oppose the company’s financial interests. There had been talk in Argentina, for example, of nationalizing the ITT telephone system; the conglomerate immediately began plotting a revolution. In 1968 the governor of Puerto Rico considered taking over ITT’s profitable but poorly serviced telephone company; ITT threw its resources against the governor, who was defeated at the polls….On October 23, 1970, ITT’s Washington vice president, William Merriam, sent a message to Henry Kissinger in the White House. It was stilted, rather ungraceful demand for tough American action to stop Allende.

“Kissinger’s reply, dated November 9 [1970], was a short acknowledgment: `I have read it carefully and I have passed it to those members of my staff who deal with Latin American matters…’”

And as the June 23, 1973 report of U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Member Frank Church’s Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, that was titled “The International Telephone and Telegraph Company and Chile 1970-73,” recalled:

“The Chilean political situation was discussed at an ITT Board meeting in the spring of 1970 and at the June 1970 board meeting…Mr. John McCone, a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, at the time a consultant to the Agency and a Director of ITT, held a number of conversations about Chile with Richard Helms, the CIA Director. At least two conversations took place in Langley, Virginia, and one at Mr. McCone’s home in San Marino, California. During these conversations, Mr. McCone told Helms that ITT expected Dr. Allende to win the election. He pointed out that Allende was campaigning on a platform calling for expropriation of American business, including ITT’s properties, and expressed the opinion that the American national interest, as well as business interests were involved…Mr. McCone asked Mr. Helms whether the United States intended to intervene…

“During one of the conversations, Mr. McCone suggested to Mr. Helms that someone on Helms’ staff contact Mr. Geneen [the ITT CEO], and this suggestion led directly to a meeting between Mr. Geneen and Mr. Broe, the [then-] Chief of the CIA’s Clandestine Services (also known as the Directorate of Plans), Western Hemisphere Division, on July 16, 1970, in the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel, Washington, D.C. In response to Mr. McCone’s request, Mr. Helms told Mr. Broe that Mr. Geneen, ITT’s Chief Executive Officer, would be in Washington on July 16, 1970, and that he should get in touch with Geneen to arrange a meeting. Thus it was Mr. McCone, through his suggestion to Helms, who set in motion a series of contacts between the ITT and CIA in connection with Chile.

“Mr. Broe was contacted by William Merriam, head of ITT’s Washington office, who told him that Mr. Geneen wanted to meet late in the evening. Mr. Broe waited for Mr. Geneen in the lobby of the hotel. Mr. Merriam arrived, introduced himself, and then took Mr. Broe up to Mr. Geneen’s suite to wait for him. Mr. Merriam left the suite before the conversation began…Mr. Geneen offered to assemble an election fund…Mr. Geneen said the fund would be `substantial’ and that he wanted the fund controlled and channeled through the CIA…Mr. Geneen…testified that he made a similar offer to the CIA in 1964…Following the meeting, Mr. Geneen told Mr. Broe to contact ITT Vice President Ned Gerrilty if Geneen was out of town.

“Mr. Broe called Mr. Geneen on July 27 [1970]…

“On September 9, 1970, the ITT Board of Directors met for its monthly meeting in New York City. Mr. Geneen expressed his concern to John McCone over the political situation in Chile. In Mr. McCone’s words: `What he told me at that time was that he was prepared to put up as much as a million dollars, in support of any plan that was adopted by the government for the purpose of bringing about a coalition of the opposition to Allende…’ Mr. Geneen asked Mr. McCone to support his proposal. Mr. McCone agreed and came to Washington several days later and met with Henry Kissinger, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and Richard Helms. He communicated to both Kissinger and Helms Mr. Geneen’s offer of a $1,000,000 fund…to stop Allende. Dr. Kissinger, according to Mr. McCone, thanked him…

“On September 11, 1970, at roughly the same time Mr. McCone was meeting with Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Helms, Jack Neal, the International Relations Director in the ITT Washington office, telephoned Viron P. Vaky, Dr. Kissinger’s assistant for Latin American Affairs. He informed him that Mr. Geneen was willing to come to Washington to discuss his interest and that the company was willing to contribute a sum of money in seven figures…Vaky testified that he understood the officer of funds by Neal to be in the context of blocking Allende from becoming president…

“…Two ex-newspapermen, Hal Hendrix and Robert Berrellez, were responsible for reporting for ITT’s Corporate Relations Department on Chilean political developments…Following the Washington activities of Mr. McCone and Mr. Neal, Mr. Hendrix joined Mr. Berrellez in Santiago. On September 17 [1970] they cabled a joint report to ITT in the United States…The report…contained specific recommendations for supporting Chileans working to block Dr. Allende’s election…These recommendations were the following:

“`1. We and other U.S. firms in Chile pump some advertising into [the anti-Allende right-wing Chilean newspaper] Mercurio (this has been started)

“`2. We help with getting some propagandists working again on radio and television…’

“On September 29 [1970]…Mr. Broe, at the instruction of CIA Director Richard Helms, called Mr. Gerrity in New York and arranged to meet him there on September 29….Mr. Broe proposed a plan to accelerate economic chaos in Chile…As Gerrity summed it up, Broe made suggestions based on recommendations from `our representatives on the scene’…The specific suggestions were the following:…

“`…2. Companies should drag their feet in sending money, in making deliveries, in shipping spare parts, etc…’

“The contacts between ITT and the CIA continued after Mr. Broe’s meeting with Mr. Gerrity. On October 6 [1970], Mr. Broe talked to the deputy head of ITT’s Washington office, John Ryan, about the prospects of stopping Dr. Allende. Mr. Ryan testified…that Mr. Broe had urged ITT to keep the pressure on, and had suggested a run on the banks.

“Mr. Merriam met Mr. Broe for lunch on several occasions after that and when cables arrived from Santiago he called Broe and arranged to have a CIA messenger pick up copies…The company’s thinking is reflected in Mr. Merriam’s October 23 [1970] letter to Dr. Kissinger…The letter and memorandum proposed that the U.S. Government take a number of measures against the Allende government…The only apparent dissent in the company came from Richard Dillenbeck of the ITT Legal Department…The letter was acknowledged by Dr. Kissinger…

“In early 1971, ITT began to follow a two-track strategy with respect to the Allende government…Mr. Merriam invited the Washington representatives of major U..S. corporations having investments in Chile to form an Ad Hoc Committee on Chile. There were several meetings, the first of which took place in early January, 1971, in ITT’s Washington offices…The purpose was described in a memorandum by Mr. Ronald Raddatz, the Bank of America representative: …`ITT,’ said the memo, `believes the place to apply pressure is through the office of Henry Kissinger.’ `That is what we have been doing for the last year or so,’ said Mr. Merriam…

“…ITT’s primary investment in Chile was a 70 percent interest in the Chilean telephone company (Chiltelco). The estimated book value of this ITT investment was placed at approximately $153 million…$92.5 million of ITT’s $153 million interest in Chiltelco was covered by investment guaranty agreements administered by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) which provided insurance, among other things against expropriation…In addition to the Chiltelco property, ITT had other lesser holdings in Chile, including two hotels, a telephone directory book service, and an international cable company. The estimated book value of ITT’s investment in Chile, including Chiltelco, amounted to approximately $160 million…

“…Mr. Guilfoyle summed up the strategy in a July 9, 1971 note to the ITT Board…On September 29 [1971], the Chilean Government took over the management of Chiltelco…The government alleged that Chiltelco was deliberately allowing service to deteriorate…Shortly after the intervention in Chiltelco by the Chilean Government, Mr. Merriam…requested a meeting for Mr. Geneen with Henry Kissinger and Peter Peterson, Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs. A luncheon meeting was scheduled.

“Because of the demands on Dr. Kissinger’s time, General Haig, his deputy, joined Mr. Peterson at lunch with Mr. Geneen…Following the meeting, Mr. Geneen instructed Mr. Merriam to put ITT’s suggestions in writing and forward them to Mr. Peterson. In response to the requrest, Merriam sent a letter to Peterson dated October 1, 1971, which had attached an 18-point action plan. Among other things the plan proposed the following specific measures to see to it that Allende would not `make it through the next six months’:

“`…Discuss with CIA how it can assist the six-month squeeze.

“`Get to reliable sources within the Chilean Military. Delay fuel delivery to Navy and gasoline to Air Force. (This would have to be carefully handled, otherwise would be dangerous. However, a false delay could build up their planned discontent against Allende, thus, bring about necessity of his removal.)…’

“In accordance with the company’s usual distribution procedures, the Merriam letter and 18-point plan were distributed within the company…Felix Rohatyn testified that the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors…was informed in April 1972, of McCone’s and Geneen’s 1970 offer of funds to the CIA…The highest officials of the ITT sought to engage the CIA in a plan covertly to manipulate the outcome of the Chilean presidential election…”
(end of part 4)

40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 3

According to the "Palm Beach Daily News" (9/26/83), “Lannan was a senior member of the board of ITT;” and, according to the "New York Daily News" (10/18/95), "Lannan, who was running about $2 billion in assets in the 1960s, had assets ranging from the Oakland A's to a majority stake in International Telephone & Telegraph [ITT]" and "upon Lannan's death, his heirs squabbled over control of $100 million in assets that he left to a foundation." In its December 1959 issue, "Fortune" magazine characterized J.Patrick Lannan, Sr. as “an influential investor in enterprises such as International Telephone & Telegraph [ITT];” and according to Robert Schoenberg’s 1985 book "Geneen", during the 1970s “of the outside directors” of ITT “only Pat Lannan had more than two or three thousand shares” of ITT stock. A July 1, 2009 article on the Santafe.com website also observed that “the Lannan Foundation has always been and continues to be a family-run organization” and former ITT Director Lannan’s son, J. Patrick Lannan, Jr., “took over the reins of the Lannan Foundation in 1985.”

In "A People’s History of the United States", Howard Zinn indicated how ITT was apparently able to exercise a special influence in U.S. and foreign political life during the 36 years that Lannan Foundation founder J. Patrick Lannan, Sr. sat on the ITT board of directors:

“International Telephone and Telegraph [ITT] was an old hand at giving money on both sides. In 1960 it had made illegal contributions to Bobby Baker, who worked with Democratic Senators, including Lyndon Johnson. A senior vice-president of ITT was quoted by one of his assistants as saying the board of directors `have it set up to `butter’ both sides so we’ll be in good position whoever wins.’ And in 1970, an ITT director, John McCone, who also had been head of the CIA, told Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, and Richard Helms, CIA director, that ITT was willing to give $1 million to help the U.S. government in its plans to overthrow the Allende government in Chile…The CIA—with the collusion of a secret Committee of Forty headed by Henry Kissinger—had worked to `destabilize’ the Chilean government headed by Salvador Allende, a Marxist who had been elected president…ITT…played a part in this operation.”
(end of part 3)

40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 2

On Sept. 28, 1973 the now-defunct Weather Underground anti-imperialist political group sent a letter and communique to various underground newspapers and aboveground U.S. media outlets. The letter from the Weather Underground stated the following:

“Dear Friends,

“We are sending this communique to newspapers and radio stations around the country. Our purpose is to help explain the role of ITT and the U.S. in the overthrow of President Salvador Allende and the popular government of Chile…This communique accompanies the bombing of the Headquarters for Latin America of ITT in New York City, which was carried out today…”

And the Weather Underground’s September 28, 1973 communique included the following text:

“Tonight we attacked the ITT headquarters for America in New York City, in support of the people in Chile, and to add our voice to the international expression of outrage and anger at the involvement of ITT and the U.S. government in the overthrow of socialist Chile…

“Without the machinations of ITT and the U.S. government these events would not have happened. In spite of their insolent denials they stand indicted by their own words and deeds. The blood of thousands of people is on their hands.

“Indictment:

“1. ITT attempted to subvert Chile’s elections and government. The secret ITT memos exposed in March 1972 explicitly state that in 1970 ITT financed Allende’s opponent and cooperated with the CIA to try to create economic chaos in Chile and instigate a military coup. ITT offered the White House a million dollars to finance anti-Allende activities. In 1971 ITT sent to General Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s deputy, an 18-point program which urged that `everything should be done quietly but effectively to see that Allende does not get through the crucial next six months.’

“2. ITT and the two other major investors in Chile, Anacondaa nd Kennecott copper companies, robbed the people of their subsistence. Chile is a country with a great wealth of natural resources but her people are very poor. Her wealth has been extracted by these giant multinational corporations in the form of exorbitant profits. ITT has assets there amounting to more than $200 million…

“ITT is a symbol to the whole world of U.S. greed and ruthlessness the way Dow Chemical Corporation, the manufacturers of napalm, came to symbolize the Vietnam war makers. ITT can be understood by millions of people as an international enemy. They have offices in every major U.S. city and in seventy countries. They recruit on college campuses. They own the telephone company in Puerto Rico. They created the electronic battlefield in Vietnam. They made the avionics system that guided Nixon’s bombs to the hospitals of Hanoi. They should be attacked throughout this country. This is one way to show support for Chile…”

Yet, ironically, some of the blood money that the now-deceased J. Patrick Lannan, Sr. collected from owning stock in ITT and sitting on the ITT board of directors--before and after the CIA and ITT-promoted military coup in Chile overthrew the democratically-elected Allende regime in Chile in September 1973--was used to set up the Lannan family’s Lannan Foundation that provides hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in operating funds for alternative media/left gatekeeper groups like "Democracy Now!", "The Nation", and "Mother Jones" magazine. Between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2011, for example, the producers of "Democracy Now!" accepted $1.4 million in “charitable grant”/blood money from the foundation that former ITT Director and ITT stockholder Lannan established: $375,000 in 2008; $350,000 in 2009; $375,000 in 2010; and $300,000 in 2011.

As the Lannan Foundation’s website notes, “in 1960 J. Patrick Lannan, Sr., entrepreneur and financier, established Lannan Foundation” and “died in 1983 at the age of 78; and “in 1986 Lannan Foundation received a substantial endowment from his estate.” And as the "New York Times" observed in an obituary of J. Patrick Lannan, Sr. which it published in its September 27, 1983 issue, “Mr. Lannan was a director of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation [ITT] for 36 years” and “retired as director emeritus” of ITT in May of 1983.
(end of part 2)

40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 1

“Not only do we suffer the financial blockade, we are also the victims of clear aggression. Two firms that are part of the central nucleus of the large transnational companies that sunk their claws into my country, the International Telegraph and Telephone Company and the Kennecott Copper Corporation, tried to run our political life.

“ITT, a huge corporation whose capital is greater than the budget of several Latin American nations put together and greater than that of some industrialized countries, began, from the very moment that the people's movement was victorious in the elections of September 1970, a sinister action to keep me from taking office as President.

“Between September and November of 1970, terrorist actions that were planned outside of my country took place there, with the aid of internal fascist groups. All this led to the murder of General Rene Schneider Chereau, Commander in Chief of the Army, a just man and a great soldier who symbolized the constitutionalism of the armed forces of Chile….ITT…has admitted that in 1970 it even made suggestions to the Government of the United States that it intervene in political events in Chile….

“Last July the world learned with amazement of different aspects of a new plan of action that ITT had presented to the US Government in order to overthrow my Government in a period of six months. I have with me the document, dated in October 1971, that contains the 18-point plan that was talked about. They wanted to strangle us economically, carry out diplomatic sabotage, create panic among the population and cause social disorder so that when the Government lost control, the armed forces would be driven to eliminate the democratic regime and impose a dictatorship.

“While the ITT was working out this plan, its representatives went through the motions of negotiating a formula for the Chilean state to take over ITT's share in the Chilean telephone company. From the first days of my administration, we had started talks to purchase the telephone company that ITT controlled, for reasons of national security.

“On two occasions I received high officials of the firm. My Government acted in good faith in the discussions. On the other hand, ITT refused to accept payment at prices that had been set in keeping with the verdict of international experts. It posed difficulties for a rapid and fair solution, while clandestinely it was trying to unleash chaos in my country.

“ITT's refusal to accept a direct agreement and knowledge of its sneaky maneuvers has forced us to send to Congress a bill calling for its nationalization….

“Distinguished representatives, before the conscience of the World I accuse ITT of trying to provoke a civil war in my country -the supreme state of disintegration for a country. This is what we call imperialist intervention….”

--from Chilean President Salvador Allende’s December 4, 1972 speech to the United Nations General Assembly

“In 1970, a democratic election in Chile had voted in a leftist government led by Dr. Salvador Allende…American companies, including International Telephone and Telegraph , had spent their money in the South American nation, and the CIA was determined to protect their investments. Years of meddling followed…ITT was the focus of outrage worldwide. Its offices were bombed in Italy and Switzerland.

“At 2 a.m., September 28 [1973], the night telephone supervisor at the New York Times received a call. `Take this down because I’m only going to say this once,’ a man told her. `I am the Weatherman Underground. At the ITT-American building, a bomb is going to go off in 15 minutes. This is in retaliation of the ITT crimes they committed against Chile.’

“Nineteen minutes later, a dynamite bomb detonated on the ninth floor of ITT’s 50th Street office. Window panes crashed down to the sidewalk below, which was deserted.”

--from "Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements and Communiques of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974"

“…In 1947, a group of rich stockholders decided to organize a revolt—led by Clendennin Ryan—who with his family and friends owned a sixth of the ITT shares…After a dramatic proxy fight, a compromise was agreed on with the help of another very tough customer, J. Patrick Lannan, a tall, cold Irishman from Minnesota. Seven new directors would join the board, including Ryan and Lannan (who is still a director today)…”

--from Anthony Sampson’s 1973 book, "The Sovereign State of ITT"

“Patrick Lannan Jr., 70, heads the foundation his financier father founded in 1960. With $222 million in assets, it is Santa Fe’s biggest by far…”

--the Santa Fe Reporter on September 8, 2009
(end of part 1)

John Swinton: On U.S. Press and Role of U.S. Newspaper Editors

In a 1901 speech to a banquet of New York City newspaper editors, a late 19th-century U.S. newspaper editor and journalist named John Swinton characterized the U.S. press and the role of U.S. newspaper editors in the following way:

"There is no such thing in America as an independent press.

"You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

"I am paid $150,000 a week [in late 19th and early 20th-century money] for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with--others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things--and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.

"The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.

"You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an `Independent Press.'

"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

 

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.”]


  

Alterternative Media/Left Gatekeeper Censorship In 2002: Sponsored By CIA's Ford Foundation (and Roy Park's Foundation)?--Part 2

“Jeff Cohen is the founding Director of the Park Center for Independent Media and Endowed Chair / Associate Professor…In 1986, he founded FAIR…He…helped launch its magazine, Extra!, and its syndicated radio show, “CounterSpin…He was senior producer at MSNBC's Phil Donahue show until it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war….--from the Park Foundation-subsidized Park Center for Independent Media of Ithaca College’s website

“The Park Foundation was established by the late Roy Hampton Park, Sr. — founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Park Communications, Inc….In 1949, Mr. Park launched a business relationship with famed restaurant expert Duncan Hines. The first product of Hines-Park Foods was the Duncan Hines Cake Mix…Procter & Gamble purchased the company in 1956, and Mr. Park launched his second career — mass communications. Ultimately, what became Park Communications, Inc. acquired or built 22 radio stations, 11 television stations, and 144 publications of which 41 were daily newspapers.


“Mr. Park's influence in the communications industry was felt across the country…The Park School of Communications at Ithaca College was named in his honor.


"The Park Foundation was formed in 1966. Its original focus was on education and grant-making in communities where Park Communications had interests. When he died in 1993, Mr. Park bequeathed more than 70 percent of his holdings to the Foundation….


“The Foundation is dedicated to the aid and support of …selected areas of interest to the Park family….Public broadcasting is a particularly meaningful recipient of funding…Mr. Park's family continues an active involvement in the Foundation, with his daughter, and granddaughter serving as trustees, and his wife serving as President Emeritus.” --from the Park Foundation website

“Stephanie Flanders was the Economics Editor for BBCs Newsnight programme from 2002. She often appears on other BBC television and radio programmes…She has also written for the…Financial Times…She left the FT in 1997 to become speech-writer and special advisor to US Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers during the Clinton Administration…She left Washington in 2001 to become a correspondent at the New York Times…Stephanie was educated at St Pauls Girls School, Balliol College, Oxford and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University…” --from the BCC international speakers’ bureau 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.)

Part 2:

FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In late 2001 and 2002, the Ford Foundation and Schumann Foundation-subsidized "media watchdogs" from FAIR and the Institute for Public Accuracy--Norman Solomon and Steve Rendall--have seemed more interested in preventing 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists from receiving any airtime on Pacifica's radio stations than in revealing the historical links of their funders to the CIA or the Johnson White House to their alternative media listeners and readers. And WORKING ASSETS RADIO--which is aired on San Francisco's KALW and produced by a former co-host/producer of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN and a forme Pacifica Network News staffperson--has apparently not been eager to welcome 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists onto the show.

WORKING ASSETS RADIO

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

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

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

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

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

(end of part 2 of 2002-written historical article)