THE NATION's NED Connection—part 1

by bob feldman

"Bill vanden Heuvel suggested that the Freedom Award be given to General Powell for the new role of the military in these efforts. Leo Cherne referred Mr. vanden Heuvel's suggestions to the Special Events Committee for consideration. He expressed his hesitancy at this point to address issues of the war itself, beyond the expression of applause for the military's humanitarian work..."

—from the International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board's May 22, 1991 Meeting Minutes

The editor of THE NATION, Katrina vanden Heuvel, is also a member of the board of directors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI]. Her father, International Rescue Committee [IRC] Board Member William vanden Heuvel, has, in recent years been both the co-chairperson of the FERI board and FERI's president.

Sitting between NATION Editor Vanden Heuvel and IRC Board Member Vanden Heuvel on the FERI board recently has been the Texaco director that Bill Clinton appointed to be the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] Chairman in the 1990s: NYU President Emeritus John Brademas. FERI Director Brademas held his position as NED Chairman between 1993 and 2001; and on January 18, 2001, FERI Board Member Brademas was presented with the NED's "Democracy Service Medal" in recognition for his years of service on the NED board of directors.

Prior to serving as NYU's president between 1981 and 1992, FERI board member Brademas was a Congressional representative from South Bend, Indiana for 22 years. According to CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, in October 1976 the former NED Chairman "acknowledged that he had accepted about $5,000 in campaign funds in 1970, 1972 and 1974 from Park Tong Sun, the Washington party fixture under federal investigation for influence-peddling" in the "Koreagate Affair." As NYU's president, FERI Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, Scholastic Inc., Loew's Corp., RCA/NBC and Texaco.

While a member of the Texaco board of directors before Texaco was acquired by Chevron in 2001, NATION editor Vanden Heuvel's colleague on the FERI board sat on both the "Audit Committee" and the "Public Responsibility Committee" of Texaco's corporate board. Other members of these Texaco board committees included then-Capital cities/ABC board chairman Thomas Murphy and a retired chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, William Crowe. A long-time colleague of FERI Board Co-Chair William vanden Heuvel on the IRC board--the now-deceased former CIA Director William Casey--used to also sit on the Capital Cities/ABC board. FERI Board Member Brademas also was the chairman of the Texaco Foundation during the 1990s.

In July 1999 a subsidiary of Texaco, Saudi Arabian Texaco Inc., was given a $506 million award by the United Nations "for damage sustained in Middle East oil fields" during the early 1990s. The $506 million that was given to Texaco's subsidiary came from a "UN Compensation Committe" account--which was funded by seizing 30 percent of Iraqi oil sales revenues, instead of allowing the Iraqi government to use all of its oil sales revenues to decrease the human suffering in Iraq that U.S. economic sanctions and U.S. militarism have produced there since 1991. But according to its web site, in Iraq the NED which FERI Board Member Brademas used to chair "supports institutions--both abroad and inside the country--which promote concepts and programs of liberal democracy." A $40,000 grant, for instance, was given by the NED in 2001 to the "American Society for Kurds," which "trained journalists in the rights, duties and role of journalists in democratic societies, and helped in the formation of a working group of independent journalists."

In 2001, the NED also has been providing money to groups in Belgrade. Radio-Television B-92, for instance, was given a $100,000 grant by the NED; and a $228,000 grant from the NED was given to the Otpon (Resistance] Movement. Around $760,000 in grants were also given in 2001 by the NED to groups like the "Center for a Free Cuba," the "Cuban Committee for Human Rights," the "Cuban-American Military Council," the "Information Bureau on Human Rights in Cuba" and "Cuba Net." "Cuba Net," for instance, was given a $35,000 grant from the NED "to support independent journalists inside of Cuba."

to part 2...