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.

(end of article)

-------------------------------------------------------------
original url for this article:
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/nation_ned_2.html