THE NATION's NED Connection—part 2

by bob feldman


One of the co-chairs of the January 18, 2001 National Endowment for Democracy [NED] event in which Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI] Board Member Brademas received his "Democracy Service Medal"--former Reagan Administration Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead--is, like Brademas, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And, like NATION Editor vanden Heuvel's father, the January 18, 2001 NED event Co-chair Whitehead has long been actively involved in the International Rescue Committee[IRC]'s activities around the globe.

On May 4, 1984, for instance, Whitehead (who was also a Senior Partner at Goldman Sachs at the time) sent the following telegram to then-Vice President George Bush I:

"Dear George:

"I thought I should let you know that I will also be in Pakistan from May 14 [1984] to May 18 [1984] in my capacity as president of the International Rescue Committee...I have an appointment with President Zia and other Cabinet memebers...If I can assist you in any way or coordinate visits with you I would be delighted to do so."

And on May 18, 1984, then-IRC president Whitehead sent the following telex to then-IRC Chairperson Leo Cherne:

"Our time in Pakistan only serves to renew our dedication to the heroic cause of the Afghan people...We have stood with President Zia and Vice President Bush at the Khyber Pass..."

After former CIA Director Bush had become the U.S. president and ordered the 1991 high-technology aerial attack on Iraq, Whitehead and Cherne also sent an April 12, 1991 letter to then-President Bush I, on IRC stationery, which stated: "The IRC is the first American private voluntary agency to have begun the work of helping these victims of the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein."

In the 1980s, the long-time IRC colleague of NATION Editor vanden Heuvel's father, IRC Chairperson Cherne, was also a colleague of Henry Kissinger on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [Pfiab]. In addition, Cherne also asked Kissinger to appeal for more corporate funds for the IRC. In a September 3, 1986 letter to Leo Cherne, Kissinger Associates Chairperson Henry Kissinger wrote:

"Dear Leo:

"Your August 18th [1986] letter did reach its destination, and while I am sorry to hear of the circumstances under which the IRC has been operating, it will be an honor to help in any way. I will await your draft.

"Looking forward to seeing you at PFIAB.

"Warm regards,

"Henry A. Kissinger."

An article by Jeff Gerth and Sara Bartlett that appeared in the April 30, 1989 issue of the NY TIMES, entitled "Kissinger and Friends and Revolving Doors," characterized the PFIAB as "a little-known, but powerful group" of 16 scientists, business executives and former U.S. government officials which advise the U.S. President about intelligence issues and intelligence activities.

According to this TIMES article, during the 1980s IRC Board member Kissinger "had a continuous window into the government's most sensitive information as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board or Pfiab." At least one former PFIAB official, "who asked not to be identified because of the board's secrecy pledge," told the TIMES that during the 1980s Kissinger, "using his authority as a board member, frequently reviewed intelligence documents outside the regular board meetings." The former PFIAB official also told the TIMES that he believed Kissinger's PFIAB membership gave Kissinger special business benefit because Kissinger "could not have separated the insights gained from his access to United States intelligence data from his continuing analysis and advice" to his Kissinger Associates clients.

In reply to Kissinger's September 3, 1986 letter, IRC Chairperson Cherne wrote:

"Dear Henry:

"I am so pleased that you are willing to send an IRC appeal to the chief executives of the Fortune 1000 corporations...Although I will have a copy of the draft with me when we met at PFIAB, I thought there was a possibility that draft might reach you before just in case you wish to make any changes in the text.

"Cordially, "Leo Cherne."

Like the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Rescue Committee (on whose board FERI Co-Chairperson vanden Heuvel still sits) apparently supported the political opponents of the Sandinista government, as well as opponents of the Cuban government. As the IRC's Latin America Advisory Committee noted in a 9/22/93 annual review document:

"In Nicaragua with the election of Violet Chamorro in 1990, democracy took fragile hold and IRC assisted with the repatriation of Nicaraguans...The Committee recommends appropriate support be given to Brothers to the Rescue, an organization rescuing Cuban refugees fleeing the country on rafts."

Although Harry Belafonte has worked to provide humanitarian aid to refugees in Africa and elsewhere for many years, IRC officials apparently didn't want to invite Belafonte to become one of its "celebrity" board members. In an October 26, 1994 letter to the then-chairman of the IRC's executive committee, James Strickland, long-time IRC official Leo Cherne indicated why he didn't want Harry Belafonte to be an IRC board member:

"I happen to have some reservations about Belafonte. I have found him, in certain circumstances, beyond my tastes for the elements of left wing predisposition. He played a significant relief role in Ethiopia at a time when Ethiopia was under the control of the left wing dictator Mengistu, at the very time that the Castro military forces were playing an active support role in Ethiopia..."

But a few months later, Cherne was still apparently on good political terms with FERI Co-Chair vanden Heuvel. In a February 14, 1995 letter to the NATION editor's father, former IRC Chairperson Cherne wrote: "I deeply appreciate your having encouraged Columbia University's oral history project to press me on overcoming my neglect...The effort you have made to encourage funding of this project is indispensable..."

As Co-Chair of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [FERI]'s board of directors, NATION editor vanden Heuvel's father apparently joined FERI Chair Emeritus Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in attempting to influence U.S. media coverage of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's historical record. In an article that appeared in the May 9, 1994 issue of CURRENT, entitled "FDR defenders enlist TV critics to refute Holocaust film," Karen Everhart Bedfort noted:

Weeks before the debut of an AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film on the U.S. resposne to the Holocaust, defenders of President Franklin Roosevelt undertook a quiet campaign to influence and later discredit historical analysis presented in "America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference."

In a summary of their complaints for the press, [FERI Chair Emeritus] Schlesinger and vanden Heuvel said the film makes "unwarranted attacks on President Roosevelt" in its treatment of his response to the Wagner-Rogers Act in 1939, a bill to allow child refugees into the country that died in Congress; his motivations in creating the War Refugee Board as an act of "political expedience," and assertions that the Allies should not have hesitated to bomb the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

Roosevelt "did what he could do" to help the Jews, Schlesinger wrote in an April 18 [1994] NEWSWEEK column.

Yet according to A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn:

"The plight of Jews in German-occupied Europe, which many people thought was at the heart of the war against the Axis, was not a chief concern of Roosevelt. Henry Feingold's research (THE POLITICS OF RESCUE) shows that, while the Jews were being put in camps and the process of annihilation was beginning that would end in the horrifying extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews, Roosevelt failed to take steps that might have saved thousands of lives. He did not see it as a high priority; he left it to the State Department, and in the State Department anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles to action.

...Despite the urgent need for wartime labor, blacks were still being discriminated against for jobs...Roosevelt never did anything to enforce the orders of the Fair Employment Practices Commission he had set up...

In one of its policies, the United States came close to direct duplication of Fascism. This was in its treatment of the Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. After the Pearl Harbor attack, anti-Japanese hysteria spread in the government...

Franklin D. Roosevelt did not share this frenzy, but he calmly signed Executive Order 9066, in February 1942, giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast--110,000 men, women and children--to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions. Three-fourths of these were Nisei--children born in the United States of Japanese parents and therefore American citizens...

But don't expect THE NATION to publish much investiative reporting about either the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy or the International Rescue Committee's corporate and political connections or global activities--as long as FERI Board Member Katrina vanden Heuvel is still THE NATION magazine's editor.

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