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Posts Tagged ‘bob feldman’

15
Apr
The Nation Magazine and the CIA
by stuartbramhall in Challenging the Corporate Media, Things That Aren't What They Seem
5 Comments Comments

Bob Feldman’s unraveling of the indirect CIA funding received by the Nation and Radio Nation is the most instructive in demonstrating how “pass-through” funding works (see http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/nation_ned_1.html). According to their tax returns, the Nation Institute receives major funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the J. M. Kaplan Family Foundation. Both, according to Frances Stoner Saunders (Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War), have a history of accepting CIA “pass-through” funding and collaborating with them on cold war projects. The Nation also also has an interesting relationship with a third left gatekeeping foundation the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI), in that publisher, editor and part owner Katrina van den Heuvel serves on the FERI governing board and her father, William vanden Heuvel, on the board of directors. FERI, like its namesake Eleanor Roosevelt has always pursued a clear mandate of supporting the development of anti-communist “parallel left” political groups.
Nation editor Katrina van den Heuvel

Nation editor Katrina van den Heuvel

Moreover William van den Heuvel himself has well-established intelligence credentials, as a protege and executive assistant to “Wild Bill” Donovan, the founder and director of OSS (Office of Strategic Services). The OSS, which oversaw intelligence operations during World War II, became the CIA in 1947. In 1953-54 van den Heuvel accompanied Donovan to Thailand, where he served as ambassador (and lead CIA agent) to Thailand. Later as executive assistant to Robert Kennedy, van den Heuvel was the architect of the Kennedy administration’s staunch anti-Castro policy.

Other Left Gatekeepers Funding Alternative Media

Here is a brief summary of “alternative” media outlets that Feldman has linked to foundations the Church Committee identified as receiving CIA pass-through funding (see http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/legacy/research/edu20/moments/1976church.html?cms_page=edu20/moments/1976church.html). It is also of note that they all systematically marginalize journalistic and academic research into 911 and CIA-linked political assassinations.

Feldman’s co-author Eric Salter has drawn up a more detailed flow sheet demonstrating these complex inter-relationships at http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html

MacArthur Foundation

FAIR
The Progressive
Working Assets Radio

Rockefeller Foundation

FAIR
The Progressive
Working Assets Radio

Carnegie Foundation

Democracy Now!

J. M. Kaplan Family Foundation

Democracy Now!

Soros Family Foundation

Pacifica Radio
The Nation

Although Soros himself has no known CIA connections, he’s strongly linked to the military industrial complex as a major stockholder in Bush senior’s Carlyle Group and through his direct funding of “color” revolutions in Eastern Europe.

Schumann Foundation

Mother Jones
Alternet
Fair
Z Magazine

Run for many years by “progressive-lite” Bill Moyers, the Schuman Foundation (as evidenced by the projects it funds) has a rabidly pro-capitalist agenda. According to Feldman, Moyers himself, has engaged in some pretty anti-progressive behavior, such as orchestrating (as Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary) the wiretapping of Martin Luther King and leaking the transcripts to the media. And his heavy promotion of the rabid anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Joseph Campbell on PBS (see http://www.undueinfluence.com/schumann_foundation.htm, http://www.undueinfluence.com/bill_moyers.htm, http://constantineinstitute.blogspot.com/2009/06/profiles-of-americas-beloved-tv.html and http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/06/17/barry-zwicker-noam-chomsky-and-the-left-gatekeepers/)

Feldman notes that the alternative magazine Counterpunch receives no direct left gatekeeper funding, although one of their editors is on the Nation payroll (which does).

To be continued.
13
Apr
The Ford Foundation and the CIA
by stuartbramhall in Challenging the Corporate Media, Things That Aren't What They Seem
2 Comments Comments

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 Internation Jew by Henry Ford

The International Jew by Henry Ford

***

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 executive 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.
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CIA front foundations Who funds the official left?