Attorney General Robert Kennedy was the first, in 1967, to investigate the use of the Ford Foundation and other foundations as “conduits,” “pass-throughs,” and “fronts” to disguise CIA funding for domestic operations (it’s technically illegal for the CIA to operate on US soil under federal law). The investigation ended with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in 1968 but in 1976 was taken up by the Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee formed in the aftermath of Watergate. The Church Committee found that between 1963-1966, 164 foundations gave out 700 grants over $10,000. Of these, 108 involved partial or complete funding by the CIA (Frances Stoner Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War)

Saunder’s work was the first, in an impressive body of research by progressive academics and investigative journalists:

• Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999) by British historian and journalist Frances Stonor Saunders
• Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (2003) by New Hampshire political science professor Joan Roelof
• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007) by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
• The Shock Doctrine (2007) by Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein
• Towers of Deception: the Media Cover-up of 911 (2006) by Canadian journalist, documentary producer and political activist Barry Zwicker
• Barack H. Obama: the Unauthorized Biography (2008) by historian and journalist Webster Tarpley

CIA Funding of Alternative Media

Most of the research into left gatekeeping foundations involves the funding of so-called alternative media outlets, largely based on information derived from tax returns. The most prolific writer in this area is Massachusetts-based investigative journalist Bob Feldman. Feldman published the bulk of his research in a paper in Critical Sociology “Report from the Field: Left Media and Left Think Tanks – Foundation-Managed Protest?” Although Critical Sociology charges a fee to download this paper, Feldman and others have republished excerpts elsewhere on the Internet. Edward Ulrich published a helpful digest of Feldman’s work in March 2011 at his blog “News of Interest” at http://www.newsofinterest.tv/politics/media_issues/demnow_npr_controlled.php

The History of CIA/Ford Foundation Collaboration

Feldman starts (http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html) by recapping the history Frances Sanders lays out in Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War).

The Ford Foundation was created in 1936 from the immense Ford family fortune. Historically its governance and mission has been conservative and pro-corporate, in line with its namesake Henry Ford, a rabid anti-Semite who admired Adolph Hitler and helped finance his rise to power.

The International Jew by Henry Ford

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The CIA-Ford Foundation collaboration began in 1953, when John McCloy, another Nazi sympathizer, because the director of the Ford Foundation. McCloy’s corporate credentials include serving as chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, Westinghouse, AT&T, Allied Chemical and United Fruit Company. As a lawyer, he served as chief counsel to Standard Oil of New Jersey, Mobil, Texaco and Gulf I.G. Farben (German chemical company that was Hitler’s primary German sponsor and which developed the nerve gas used in the mass execution of European Jews). Mcloy watched the 1936 Berlin Olympics from Hitler’s box seat and as the Assistant Secretary of War, blocked Jewish immigration to the US, as well as the bombing of railroads leading to Nazi concentration camps. As High Commissioner of Germany following the war, he pardoned a large majority of Nazi war criminals and assisted in their secret repatriation in the US and South America. Finally in 1963-64 he served on the Warren Commission, which like the 911 Commission, played a critical role covering up FBI, CIA and Pentagon involvement in the JFK assassination.

McCloy publicly advocated for the Ford Foundation to cooperate with the CIA. He argued that open collaboration was a better alternative than having the Agency secretly infiltrate the Foundation’s lower echelons and subvert their work. McCloy also chaired a three man committee that had to be consulted every time the CIA wanted to use the Foundation as a pass-through.

Ford Foundation archives reveal a raft of joint Foundation-CIA projects. The most prominent of these CIA fronts are the Eastern European Fund, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and International Rescue Committee (where William van den Heuvel, father of Nation editor and publisher Katrina van den Heuvel, was a long time board member). The Ford Foundation has also been the primary funder of two secret elite planning groups, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

Alternative Media Outlets Funded by the Ford Foundation

According to Feldman, the so-called alternative media outlets receiving Ford Foundation funding (based on their tax returns) include:

• Democracy Now!
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and their radio program Counterspin
• Working Assets Radio
• The Progressive
• Mother Jones
• South End Press (Z Magazine)
• Alternative Radio
• Ms. Magazine
• Political Research Associates (run by rabid anti-conspiracist Chip Berlet)

As Feldman points out, each of these outlets has systematically marginalized independent researchers who have systematically studied 9-11 and the JFK and other political assassinations. Feldman currently blogs at “Where’s the Change?” http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/

To be continued.

As Dana Priest’s recent Washington Post expose reveals, the use of private contractors to spy on Americans (in addition to the proliferation of government spy agencies) has gone viral since the 2002 enactment of the Patriot Act. In fact some civil libertarians warn that Americans’ shrinking privacy and personal freedom is rapidly approaching that of communist East Germany under the Stasi (the East German secret police) – where one in sixteen residents were paid to report on their friends on neighbors.

Was There Domestic Spying Before 2002?

Based on 20 years experience as an anti-war and single payer activist in Seattle, I would hazard that that spying on political and community groups didn’t suddenly leap from non-existent to astronomic levels when it was “legalized” in 2002. It has always been my impression that it increased at a fairly steady rate with the rightward drift at all levels of government following Reagan’s election in 1980. I also believe that prior to the enactment of the Patriot Act, much of this domestic “counterinsurgency” activity occurred under the auspices of “left” identified foundations and think-tanks. These are private entities, funded through a combination of CIA monies and right wing philanthropy, that give the appearance of being autonomous – and genuinely progressive and liberal. However it appears that their true function is to restrict the acceptable range of progressive debate and political activity. Barry Zwicker calls them “left gatekeeprs (see July 19 and 24 blog)” and Webster Tarpley “counterinsurgency” foundations.

Left Gatekeeping Foundations and the Single Payer Movement

Most of my personal experience with these left gatekeeping foundations occurred as a single payer activist. In Washington State, the single payer movement was started by doctors in 1988, under the auspices of Physicians for a National Health Program. Between 1988 and 1993, when the Seattle chapter was run by and for health professionals, it expanded rapidly, attracted much public and media attention. It was also an important partner in a broader coalition that pressured the governor to appoint a blue ribbon health commission to develop a proposal for state based, publicly financed universal health care.

Then in 1993, when the health provider joined with Washington Gray Panthers to build a broad based coalition, we suddenly hit a roadblock. There were suddenly all kinds of difficulties, which on the surface amounted to a textbook case of Cointelpro infiltration. However unlike Cointelpro, the problems didn’t appear to originate with the FBI or the police, but with local “left” leaning think tanks and foundations. The tactics, however, were classic – with the appearance of quirky outsiders who tampered with our database, seized control of our contact list to launch rumor and character assassination campaigns, split our coalitions by launching parallel, competing organizations (focused on safer lobbying activities and mild reformism), and scared off new members by repeatedly picking fights at our meetings.

A Clear Pattern

In one case we discovered the operative had a history of similar behavior in Seattle’s first Anti-Gulf War Coalition (1991) and the Seattle chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. The pattern in all three cases was the same – getting control of the database and leadership and shutting all three down – including the single payer coalition.

It was only when Washington State joined a regional coalition with single payer activists from Oregon and California – the Pacific Rim Single Payer Summit – that I got some inkling of what was happening. The synchronicity activists from other states described – down to the exact political rhetoric and targeted personal attacks – was uncanny.

It’s safe to assume that specific left gatekeeping foundations involved in suppressing the single payer movement receive generous support from the powerful insurance lobby and Big Pharma – in addition to any CIA and right wing philanthropy. Both the insurance and the pharmaceutical industry stand to lose big under a publicly funded health care system (as the sole purchaser of medication for 300 million Americans, the government would force the drug companies to agree to massive volume discounts – this occurs in all industrialized countries with publicly funded health care).

I write about my personal experience, as a single payer activist, with left gatekeeping foundations in my recent memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Winner of 2011 Allbooks Editor’s Choice Award

Available in soft cover from Amazon

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Other good links regarding left gatekeeper foundations:

Lila Rajiva:

http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/06/17/barry-zwicker-noam-chomsky-and-the-left-gatekeepers/

Bob Feldman:

http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2010/07/from-rag-blog-bob-feldman-gives-us.html

Michael Barker Do Capitalists Fund Revolutions? (Barker has particular concerns about the foundations that fund the World Social Forum):

http://www.zcommunications.org/do-capitalists-fund-revolutions-part-1-of-2-by-michael-barker

Who Did Obama Work for in Chicago?

From Webster Tarpley Barrack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography

Obama’s “official” biography reveals that he first gained public prominence in Chicago as the first chairman of the board of the “liberal” Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). However his first job out of law school was with the right leaning Business International Corporation, which was exposed in 1977 by the New York Times (on 12/27/77) as a front company for the CIA. Former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leader Carl Oglesby asserts in his recent biography (Ravens in the Storm) that BIC’s main goal was to infiltrate Left and student groups for US intelligence.

After leaving BIC, Obama became a civil rights lawyer and involved himself in a number of “progressive” foundations like CAC. However Tarpley, who examines the funding and specific activities of these foundations, questions the genuineness of their progressive credentials. All the evidence suggests they actually played a “gatekeeper” or “counterinsurgency” function similar to the programs McGeorge Bundy pioneered as head of the Ford Foundation (see July 21 blog).

McGeorge Bundy’s Toxic Legacy

In fact CAC itself, where Obama was a board member for six years (three years as chair), appears to have replicated Bundy’s 1968 strategy to pit minority boards (in Chicago they were called Local School Councils) against the New York City teachers’ unions. As Tarpley discovered, the campaign to give LSC’s the power to fire teachers and several hundred school principals – was championed, not by grassroots minorities groups, but by business interests headed by Thomas Ayers. Ayers, by coincidence, happens to be the father of Obama’s pal the former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. Tom Ayers also has impeccable corporate credentials, which include heading Commonwealth Edison for seven years in the seventies, and serving on the board of General Dynamics, Searle, Chico Pacific, Zenith, Northwest Industries, First National Bank of Chicago and the Chicago Tribune.

This may possibly explain his son Bill Ayers’ “magical ability” to secure foundation funding. Ayers wrote the grant to secure Annenberg funding for the CAC and he credits himself as one of its co-founders. He was also influential in getting his buddy Barack Obama, a 34 year old with no educational credentials whatsoever, appointed as CAC’s first chairman, for which he received an annual salary of $70,000 (in addition to the substantial income from his law practice).

By Obama’s own admission, the project on which CAC spent $100 million was unsuccessful. It not only failed to improve the educational achievement of black students, but also to meet “soft” targets, such as “self image,” “personal efficacy,” school attendance and persistence. What the CAC did accomplish, very successfully, was to drive a wedge between minority parents and the teachers unions when they could have united to block extensive federal and state educational cutbacks. It also threw Chicago schools into such chaos (deliberately it seems) that they became ripe for school privatization efforts, championed by the same elite business lobby that pushed through the 1988 School Reform Act (creating the Local School Councils).

Terrorist Bill Ayers’ Magical Transformation

This raises the tricky question of how Obama’s pal Bill Ayers transformed himself from a bomb making terrorist to a tenured Professor of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and an pre-eminent education reformer. Tarpley, like other authors and researchers, alleges the Weather Underground was actually a US intelligence creation, formed with the specific objective of infiltrating and shutting down SDS. This view is substantiated by FBI documents that came to light 1973 revealing the role of agent provocateurs in infiltrating and instigating much of the violence attributed to the Weathermen – which Ayers used to have his weapons and bomb making charges dismissed.

Former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche has always alleged that the Weather Underground was funded by left “gatekeeping” foundations and think-tanks, specifically the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Policy Studies (founded in 1963 by an aide to McGeorge Bundy) and the Institute for Social Research. However as Tarpley points out, it has proven impossible to corroborate LaRouche’s charges without access to government and foundation archives, which at this point are closed to public scrutiny.

Nevertheless considerable circumstantial evidence supports these allegations.  First and foremost is the striking “coincidence” that many of the Weather Underground leadership were, like Bill Ayers, the sons and daughters of wealthy members of the corporate elite. Second is the report of contemporary SDS members that the Weathermen, who did no fundraising to speak of, appeared to have unlimited funds to spend on organizing and military style training. Third are their classic (successful) Cointelpro style tactics in destroying SDS. And last the troubling question of how Bill Ayers can openly brag about his terrorist activities in his 2002 book Fugitive Days – and yet instead of facing the death penalty for conspiracy to commit murder, enjoys status and privilege as a tenured Professor of Education.

Andrew Murphy’s recent guest blog on Harry’s Place updates and lends further support to the scenario Tarpley lays out in his 2008 Barrack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography.

http://hurryupharry.org/index.php?s=andrew+murphy&x=0&y=0