Revisiting Emily Tamkin's "The Influence Of Soros" 2020 Book: Pt. 1

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"...In 2015...Jacobin ran an article titled `Counting on Billionaires,' which argued that `Philanthrocapitalists like George Soros want us to believe they can remedy the economic misery that they themselves create.'...

"...George Soros has wielded and continues to have tremendous influence...It may be an understatement to say that George Soros is influential in finance...He became one of the fathers of the modern-day hedge fund, establishing his own fund, Quantum (advised through the firm retaining his name, Soros Fund Management). He is perhaps the most famous currency speculator in history, credited with...`breaking the Bank of England'...

"Soros...survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary...by pretending to be a Christian...

"It is...an understatement to say that Soros is influential in philanthropy. In the late 1970s...he began a foundation called `Open Society.'..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 24

Bill Moyers and  his 1970s PBS show managing editor Charlie Rose in 2006 

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 24 

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

Although parallel left media firms like Democracy Now! do not generally directly fund their operations by selling advertising time to corporations for the broadcasting of commercials as do corporate media firms like CBS, the U.S. power elite foundations and liberal establishment foundations that fund parallel left media groups like Democracy Now! Productions obtain the grant money they distribute by obtaining, buying and selling stock of the corporations that exploit working class people and middle-class consumers around the globe and receiving dividends from the profits of these same corporations. As Aquarian Weekly observed in its Feb. 12, 1997 issue, during the 1980s Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers’ Schumann Foundation, for example, “invested in the Philip Morris tobacco company.” And in the same issue, Aquarian Weekly also noted:

“On Dec. 31, 1983, the Schumann Foundation’s portfolio contained $34 million [equal to over $86 million in 2018] in corporate stock, including $1 million [equal to over $2.5 million in 2018] in Philip Morris stock. Other companies in which the Schumann Foundation invested in 1983 were IBM ($14.6 million), GE ($1.7 million), Nabisco ($1.2 million), Standard Oil of Indiana ($1 million), Exxon ($882,000), Johnson & Johnson ($817,000), and Atlantic Richfield ($756,000). 

Democracy Now! Funder-Schumann Foundation President Moyers

And according to its Form 990 financial filings from the late 1990s, only a few years before Democracy Now! received its first grant money from Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media and Democracy/Schumann Foundation, the Schumann Foundation was still investing in environmentally destructive energy corporations like British Petroleum (2,000 shares of stock), Columbia Gas Systems (5,000 shares of stock), Conoco, Inc. (4,200 shares of stock), Pioneer Natural Resource Company (10,200 shares of stock), Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (10,000 shares of stock) and Shell Transportation and Trading Company (10,000 shares of stock), as well as in automobile corporations like Ford Motor Company (12,500 shares of stock).

Democracy Now! Funder Moyers With LBJ in White HOuse

When Democracy Now! Productions! was given a grant of $300,000 [equal to over $350,000 in 2018] by the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy in 2009, Bill Moyers’ foundation was still obtaining its grant money by either obtaining dividends from the corporations it owned stock in or selling some of the corporate stock of corporations it had been given or purchased in previous years. For example, in 2009 the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy earned $988,640 [equal to over $1.1 million in 2018] in “dividends and interests from securities” it owned; and, during that same year, it obtained $11,401,043 [equal to over $13.3 million in 2018] from the sale of a portion of shares of stocks it had owned in corporations (like Dell, Bank America, Wells Fargo, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Sara Lee, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Time Warner, Yahoo, Delta, Borg Warner, Best Buy, Gannett and Microsoft, etc.) at the beginning of the year, according to the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2009.

The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy 2009 Form 990 financial filing also indicates that the market value of the foundation’s corporate stock investments at the beginning of the year, of $29,775,884, increased by over $2 million, to $31,928,576 by the end of the year of 2009. And, according to the same 2009 Form 990 financial filing, during the same year that the parallel left Democracy Now! Productions media firm accepted its $300,000 grant from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, this foundation continued to own:

1. 1,150 shares of Google stock--worth $712,977;

2. 11,000 shares of Pepsico stock—worth $668,800;

3. 3,700 shares of Goldman Sachs stock—worth $624,708;

4. 11,700 shares of Target stock—worth $565,929;

5. 7,200 shares of Royal Dutch Shell A stock—worth $432,792;

6. 9,628 shares of JP Morgan stock—worth $401,199;

7. 10,080 shares of Merck stock—worth $368,323;

8. 6,000 shares of Wal-Mart stock—worth $320,700;

9. 3,572 shares of Chevron stock—worth $275,008;

10. 4,400 shares of Procter and Gamble stock—worth $266,772;

11. 1,200 shares of Apple stock—worth $252,878;

12. 7,700 shares of Walt Disney-ABC stock—worth $248,325;

13. 8,400 shares of Kraft Foods stock—worth $228,312;

14. 2,500 shares of Monsanto stock—worth $204,375;

15. 2,700 shares of Johnson and Johnson stock—worth $175,907;

16. 11,650 shares of CBS stock—worth $163,683;

17. 1,900 shares of Colgate stock—worth $156,085;

18. 2,700 shares of Coca Cola stock---worth $153,900;

19. 5,300 shares of Home Depot stock—worth $153,329;

20. 1,100 shares of IBM stock—worth $143,990;

21. 4,500 shares of Microsoft stock—worth $137,160;

22. 4,350 shares of Viacom stock—worth $129,326;
23. 2,842 shares of Time Warner Cable stock—worth $117,630;

24. 2,200 shares of Hewlett-Packard stock—worth $113,322;

25. 2,600 shares of Scripps Network stock—worth $107,900;

26. 7,100 shares of General Electric [GE] stock—worth $107,423;

27. 2,900 shares of Honda Motor stock—worth $98,310;

28. 1 share of Berkshire Hathaway stock—worth $99,200;

29. 3,200 shares of United Health stock—worth $97,536;

30. 1,700 shares of United Parcel stock—worth $97,529;

31. 1,380 shares of ExxonMobil stock—worth $94,102;

32. 2,500 shares of Aetna stock—worth $79,750;

33. 1,354 shares of Royal Dutch Shell B stock—worth $78,708;

35. 1,400 shares of Boeing stock—worth $75,782;

36. 2,300 shares of AT and T stock—worth $64,469;

37. 800 shares of United Technologies stock—worth $55,528;

38. 1,700 shares of Unilever stock—worth $54,961;

39. 3,600 shares of Gannett media conglomerate stock—worth $53,460;

40. 1,200 shares of Marathon Oil stock—worth $37,464; and

41. 1,100 shares of Bank NY Mellon stock—worth $30,767.

In addition, the 2009 Form 990 financial filing of the foundation that helps fund Democracy Now! Productions also indicates that its longtime president and trustee, former Johnson White House Special Assistant and Press Secretary Bill Moyers, received a total annual compensation of $65,839 from his Schumann Center for Media and Democracy gig in 2009; and the same corporate tax-exempted and “non-profit” foundation also paid Schumann Center for Media and Democracy Vice-President-Administration Lynn Welhorsky in 2009 a total annual compensation of $186,551 [equal to over $218,000 in 2018], while only just paying $15,239 in “excise taxes.”  (end of part 24)

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

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

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dear Mr. Wayne:

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

"Best wishes,

"Sincerely,

"BILL MOYERS

"Special Assistant to the President."

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

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

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

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

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

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 17

Democracy Now! Funder Glaser's RealNetworks Inc. Partnered With Microsoft

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 17

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

Even after Democracy Now! funder Glaser finally left Microsoft in 1993 to establish his own for-profit company which, according to Robert Reid’s Architects of the Web book, he “started ramping up” in 1994, that was initially called “Progressive Networks” (but renamed RealNetworks Inc. in 1997), the former Microsoft VP continued to be connected on a business level to Gates, Microsoft and current or former Microsoft executives in the late 1990s. As Randall Stross’s The Microsoft Way book noted in 1996:

“…Among Gates’s advisors, Rob Glaser made the biggest early bet on the Internet…In late 1993, after 10 years, he left Microsoft as a full-time employee and temporarily continued on a part-time, contractual basis while he founded Progressive Networks…”

According to James Wallace’s 1997 Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race To Control Cyberspace book:

“[In September 1993]…Gates phoned, and the two met at Gates’s office to talk about Glaser doing some consulting work on the Marvel project headed by Siegelman. Gates said the work would be only for a few months and no more than 10 to 15 hours a week. Glaser accepted the assignment, even though at the time he was busy preparing a business plan for his own company. He had helped recruit …Siegelman to Microsoft…

“But Gates had another assignment for Glaser in addition to the consulting work on what would become the Microsoft Network. He wanted Glaser to work directly for him, helping evaluate whether Microsoft should create an alliance with cable-TV titans Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc….Now, Gates’s vision of Microsoft’s dominance included the home television using Microsoft’s software, too…Glaser made 2 rounds of recommendations to Gates… At Microsoft’s insistence, Glaser would not be…specific in an interview about his recommendations…Even though Glaser was no longer working at Microsoft, he and Siegelman had talked several times since that day in mid-September when Gates had asked Glaser to evaluate Microsoft’s on-line service and how it fit with the Internet…Glaser…formed his own company, called Progressive Networks. Several of his Microsoft pals…became investors…”

Charles Ferguson’s 1999 High Stakes, No Prisoners book also recalled:

“In August 1995…Rob Glaser, who had just resigned from Microsoft, visited the Electronic Frontier Foundation…Glaser used Mosaic and the Web for the first time and was impressed. A month later, Glaser was hired by Gates as a consultant to advise on Web/Internet issues…Then Rob Glaser founded Progressive Networks to develop `streaming’ audio technology to permit large-scale audio distribution over the Internet. Glaser was a former Microsoft executive who had recently consulted to Gates on precisely these subjects…Microsoft bought an equity stake in RealNetworks…”

And according to the 1997 Architects of the Web book:

“Rob’s vice president of software development was Phil Barrett…Phil…ran `a couple of product development teams’ over at Microsoft…Rob called a compression-expert that he knew from Microsoft days…The core notions behind Real Audio were fixed in no time…Rob settled firmly on the notion that Progressive would be a for-profit company…He decided that the company…would sell the software that served Real Audio files over the Internet (the Real Audio Server)…Real Audio debuted on the Web on April 10, 1995, along with content from ABC News, National Public Radio [NPR] and others…Within 2 days of Real Audio’s launch, Progressive announced that Microsoft…had agreed to distribute the Real Audio Player with their browser software…By the summer of 1996, Real Audio accounted for an extraordinary 85 percent share of the Web’s audio content…

“Rob…works hard to position himself as a partner, not competitor, to…two important companies. Microsoft is in fact one of Progressive’s biggest customers. This, plus its crosstown location and the fact that Rob has 10 years of relationship to draw on there (including one with the Boss), makes it easy for him to keep the lines of communication and diplomacy open…”

Coincidentally, A co-founder of Glaser’s Progressive Networks/RealNetworks Inc. in 1993 and 1994, David Halperin, had previously worked as former Democratic Johnson Administration Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s research assistant in 1985 and 1986; and, between 1991 and 1993, the co-founder of Glaser’s Real Networks firm worked as a counsel to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.  In addition, between 1997 and 2001, Halperin later worked as the special assistant to the president for national security affairs and director for speechwriting at the National Security Council in the Clinton White House.

Ex-Clinton White House Staff Assistant David Halperin: Co-founded RealNetworks

According to an Aug. 1, 1999 Wired magazine article by Randall Rothenberg:  

“The product of a suburban New York prep school favored by…liberals… Glaser may have seemed like an atypical Microsoftie…. In 1993, after rising to become the company's youngest vice president and gaining a reputation as a demanding boss, Glaser lost a bureaucratic tussle over control of the company's multimedia operations to Nathan Myhrvold, prompting Glaser to resign.

“With a Yale friend, David Halperin, Glaser hatched vague plans for a company that would link television to the nascent Internet...Glaser, with some of his Microsoft millions, quickly hired a trio of engineers to develop the software…. Not long after, the two demonstrated the system to an informal group of liberal advisers at a Washington, DC, hotel…. his friends convinced him to drop the politics, focus on streaming, and donate the resulting profits to their favored causes….Lotus founder Mitch Kapor and Mike Slade, who'd left Microsoft…were early investors. Kapor also introduced Glaser to the venture capital firm Accel Partners. Glaser, who retains 40 percent of his company (currently valued in excess of $1.5 billion [in 1999]), sold more than 10 percent to Accel for $5 million….Shares …have risen almost tenfold since the public offering in late 1997… In fiscal 1998, software licensing fees - primarily from server software - were $47 million. Eighty-five percent of streaming media broadcasts, Real says, use its technology [in 1999]…” 

In a Sept. 4, 2000 Fortune magazine article, Amy Kovner indicated how Glaser’s RealNetworks Inc. firm made some big money in the late 1990s (when its co-founder, David Halperin, was working as a special assistant to Democratic President Clinton for national security affairs):
   
“…Glaser has been expanding RealNetworks' reach into every nook and cranny of the digital-media terrain….Real firmly dominates the $900 million streaming-media business. Over 85% of the streaming content on the Web comes in Real's format. The company has at least four revenue sources, ranging from digital-media players to content-delivery networks. Its sales have grown 135% a year, reaching $131 million in 1999, when Real managed the undot-commy feat of turning a $7 million profit….

“If you're wondering how RealNetworks makes any money at all, you're not alone. … First off, more than 1% of the people who download the RealPlayer…actually buy a souped-up version known as the RealPlayerPlus. At $29.99 a pop, Real has raked in about $40 million from that tiny sliver of users. Real also makes money from the Websites whose songs you listen to….About 600,000 Websites use Real to deliver their audio and video content, accounting for about a quarter of Real's revenues…Last quarter, Real's ad revenues…increased by 350%, to more than $14 million. …`We've really benefited from being able to show streaming-media ads,’ says Lucy Mohl, the head of programming for RealNetworks and a former movie critic for NBC…So Real is rolling in dough. …CNN.com and ABC are both major buyers of Real technology….”

But Randall Rothenberg’s Wired magazine article by Randall Rothenberg article also contained the following reference in 1999 to the RealNetworks Inc. CEO whose tax-exempt Glaser Progress Foundation has been funding the parallel left Democracy Now!  show since 2001:

“Here's what else Glaser knows: The downloadable revolution isn't simply about music…Anything so disruptive is, ultimately, about power, and Glaser is perfectly comfortable with that: His goal is nothing less than ruling the multibillion-dollar future of broadband…. Rob Glaser built his streaming empire...in no small part upon a mastery of the politics necessary…”

And, as David Postman’s July 26, 2004 Seattle Times article, titled “RealNetworks CEO Donates Big Bucks To Politics,” observed in 2004:

 “…So far this year, Glaser has given more than $1 million…making him the top donor in Washington state and one of the most generous givers of any political persuasion in the nation...Through his representatives, Glaser declined to be interviewed for this story….Glaser was an early supporter of America Coming Together (ACT), one of the biggest of the new independent political groups allying themselves with Democrats this year. Glaser has donated $750,000 to ACT and persuaded friends to give as well. When Bill Clinton visited town to promote his book, he had dinner with Glaser...His friends work for the State Department — or did during the Clinton-Gore years…Glaser met with Soros at his Long Island home to discuss funding America Coming Together...RealNetworks has been a political incubator of sorts. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., worked there between her 1994 loss of a congressional seat and her 2000 Senate victory. She largely financed her campaign using money she made at RealNetworks… In 2000, Glaser began to give more serious money — about $95,000, including $50,000 to the Democratic National Committee….He has helped fund Democracy Now…” (end of part 17)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 15

Microsoft Founder Gates and Ex-Microsoft VP/Democracy Now! Funder Rob Glaser 

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 15 

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

In his 2012 book Philanthropy In America: A History, University of Virginia Commonwealth Professor of History Oliver Zunz indicated why politically progressive people in the United States have, historically, been reluctant to accept U.S. power elite foundation funding of their politically left Movement projects and public libraries:

“…Muckrakers frequently denounced those who gave money away as hypocrites and their philanthropies as fronts to distract the public from illegal corporate strategies…In the 1890s, many communities…were reluctant to accept Carnegie libraries. Twenty of the 46 solicited towns in Pennsylvania turned down the offer…Social gospel minister Washington Gladden denounced `tainted money’…

“The [Rockefeller] foundation was denounced…as a `Trojan Horse’ ready to undo democracy. U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham criticized it as `an indefinite scheme for perpetuating vast wealth, ` believing it to be `entirely inconsistent with the public interest.’ Attorney Frank Walsh—who was pro-labor, denounced the Rockefeller family’s `huge philanthropic trusts as a menace to the welfare of society’…”

But between 2001 and 2016, fifteen “charitable grants”, totaling $1.1 million, were accepted from the Glaser Progress Foundation of Seattle-based RealNetworks/Progressive Networks Inc. founder, chairman of the Board and CEO Rob Glaser by the "parallel left" Democracy Now! show producers-hosts.
. 
Yet according to the RealNetworks website, before establishing his Glaser Progress Foundation in 1993 and “prior to founding RealNetworks, Inc.” in 1994 ”Mr. Glaser worked for” Multi-billionaire Bill Gates’s “Microsoft for 10 years in a number of executive positions, including Vice President of Multimedia and Consumer Systems.” As Robert H. Reid’s 1997 book, Architects of the Web, recalled:

“…A lot about Rob said Microsoft, where he had spent …10 years of his career…College was Yale…During Rob’s senior year, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen came to town…Rob…signed up to interview and was soon offered a job…

“He started out by managing the company’s relationships with some outside engineering teams that were helping it develop products. After about a year of that he was staffed to relaunch Microsoft Word…By 1987, Rob’s responsibilities were touching on product planning for all of the company’s application software.

“Around that time…he was invited to join Microsoft’s networking group…He spent 2 years there. Then in the summer of 1989 CEO Bill Gates put him onto a project in the then-new area of multimedia computing…Rob’s task was to help IBM develop the specification of an MPC [Multimedia-enabled Personal Computer]…By the time it was over, Rob was Microsoft’s vice president of multimedia and consumer systems, and a de facto direct report to Gates himself…”

According to James Wallace’s 1997 book Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race To Control Cyberspace:

“…In mid-September 1993, Gates called Glaser, who at the time was on a leave of absence and arranged a meeting at which he asked Glaser to prepare an analysis of how the Internet might affect the Marvel project, Microsoft’s…effort headed by Russ Siegelman to develop an online service…

“Glaser…had arrived at Microsoft in 1983, at age 21…He quickly became one of the key people in the organization who advised Gates...It was Glaser who pioneered Microsoft’s push into multimedia and oversaw Microsoft’s transformation from a software company focused primarily on Windows and DOS to one where content became increasingly important.

“`One of my jobs at Microsoft was to be something of an advance scout,’ said Glaser. `And one of the reasons that I had so much fun at Microsoft was there was a…role to play for being…one of the people who figured out how to get there from here.’

“…After a decade at Microsoft, Glaser…took his millions in stock options…A year earlier, Glaser…dipped into those stock options to buy a multimillion-dollar percentage of the [Seattle] Mariners baseball team…”

Besides using some of the big money he obtained, from his 1980s and early 1990s involvement in helping Bill Gates build his for-profit Microsoft business empire, to buy part of a baseball team and start his RealNetworks/ProgressiveNetworks Inc. for-profit company in 1990s, former Microsoft VP Glaser also used some of his Microsoft-obtained wealth to establish the Glaser Progress Foundation that has helped fund Democracy Now! Productions since 2001. And, not surprisingly, not many news segments letting listeners and viewers know how either Glaser, Bill Gates or Microsoft acquired their personal or corporate wealth during the 1980s and 1990s have been aired or broadcast by Democracy Now! since 2001.

Yet as Gary Rivlin’s 1999 book, The Plot To Get Bill Gates, observed:

“…Rob Glaser, a trusted lieutenant of Gates until he left to start his own company…described [in a 1993 Business Week interview] what he labeled the `Machiavellian poker games he had played as Gate’s designated negotiator on many a deal. `You hid things even if it would blindside people you were working with,’ he confessed.” (end of part 15)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a "parallel left" media network--Part 14

Former Ford Foundation president McGeorge Bundy With LBJ in 1960s

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 14 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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