After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
After his 1985 election as Manhattan Borough President, Columbia University Professor Dinkins transferred his 558 shares of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock to his son, David Dinkins, Jr. Although Dinkins told Newsday reporter Paul Moses in 1986 that the stock was given at “no charge,” a few years later he told a federal grand jury and a Special Deputy Commissioner investigating the stock transfer that he “sold” the stock to his son at a bargain-basement price.
In a 1991 telephone interview, Paul Moses stated that he stood by the accuracy of his September 26, 1986 Newsday article in which Dinkins said that he transferred his Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock to his son “at no charge.” Moses was unwilling, however, to be interviewed by government investigators looking into the Dinkins stock transfer issue because he felt that speaking to government investigators in relation to a news story would compromise his integrity as a journalist.
The recipient of Dinkins’ stock transfer, David Dinkins, Jr., also refused to speak to Special Deputy Commissioner Elkan Abramowitz and his staff when they conducted their investigation of the Dinkins Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock transfer in 1990—although David Dinkins, Jr. was not a journalist. If David Dinkins, Jr. was actually given the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock by his father in late 1985 as a gift, then there’s a possibility that New York City’s former mayor should have been indicted both for apparently testifying falsely before a grand jury and for apparently failing to pay an appropriate gift tax on his Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock transfer.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 11
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 9
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In 1983—two years before he finally succeeded in winning election as Manhattan Borough President—the then-56-year-old Dinkins was named to be a director of the New York State Urban Development Corporation [UDC]. During the two years Columbia University Professor Dinkins served as a UDC director, UDC contracts were apparently given to his business associates, according to Commentary magazine. The Village Voice also indicated in 1985, after Dinkins announced his support for Denny Farrell for mayor, that some UDC contracts were apparently given to Dinkins’ associates while he served as a UDC Director.
According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? book:
“With $500 million in bonding authority and $1 billion in construction projects, the UDC has become a secretive, unaccountable, self-perpetuating fourth branch of government. It has become almost a private bank that financed luxury and leisure projects for permanent government insiders.”
In the early 1980s, the UDC dished out $1 million to finance the Theatre Row development project on 42nd Street, $80 million to finance Donald Trump’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, $375 million to finance the 34th Street Convention Center, and $241 million to finance the luxury Portman Hotel at 45th Street.
As a member of the UDC board of directors, Dinkins voted for the Times Square Redevelopment Project.
In a 1991 telephone interview, Manhattan Congressional Representative Jerrold Nadler, then a New York State Assembly representative, said he felt the Times Square Redevelopment Project, by raising assessed taxation values of midtown real estate, encouraged commercial landlords to raise the rents for garment and other manufacturers in Manhattan; and thus led to a further decrease in blue-collar manufacturing jobs in New York City, by encouraging manufacturers to relocate to cities where commercial rents are cheaper. In Nadler’s view, between 1980 and 1991 public officials in New York City neglected to create the kind of manufacturing zones within New York City that would provide a sufficient amount of blue-collar employment opportunities for City residents.
“The City administration under Koch and Dinkins has been injurious to the blue-collar manufacturing industry and to blue-collar jobs,” Nadler said in 1991.
“To get the idea out” that, unless government funds were used to create super-manufacturing zones instead of for UDC projects like the Times Square Redevelopment Project, New York City’s economic decline and loss of blue-collar jobs would continue, Nadler decided to run for Manhattan Borough President in 1985 against Dinkins.
When a local government agency had announced plans to subsidize the building of 7,000 units of luxury housing in Hunter’s Point, Queens—an area of New York City that was traditionally a blue-collar manufacturing center and a source of employment for African-American, Latino-American and white working-class industrial workers—Nadler had gone to Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ office and urged him to speak out against the Hunter’s Point development plan.
“I asked him to hold a press conference. Break this open. But he wouldn’t lift a finger to oppose the Hunter’s Point development plan,” Nadler said in 1991.
Democratic Congressional Representative Nadler also recalled in 1991 that during Dinkins’ successful 1985 campaign for Manhattan Borough President, it was revealed that Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ campaign organization failed to pay the taxes it was obligated to pay in relation to its $7,000 per week payroll disbursements.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 10
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In 1983—two years before he finally succeeded in winning election as Manhattan Borough President—the then-56-year-old Dinkins was named to be a director of the New York State Urban Development Corporation [UDC]. During the two years Columbia University Professor Dinkins served as a UDC director, UDC contracts were apparently given to his business associates, according to Commentary magazine. The Village Voice also indicated in 1985, after Dinkins announced his support for Denny Farrell for mayor, that some UDC contracts were apparently given to Dinkins’ associates while he served as a UDC Director.
According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? book:
“With $500 million in bonding authority and $1 billion in construction projects, the UDC has become a secretive, unaccountable, self-perpetuating fourth branch of government. It has become almost a private bank that financed luxury and leisure projects for permanent government insiders.”
In the early 1980s, the UDC dished out $1 million to finance the Theatre Row development project on 42nd Street, $80 million to finance Donald Trump’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, $375 million to finance the 34th Street Convention Center, and $241 million to finance the luxury Portman Hotel at 45th Street.
As a member of the UDC board of directors, Dinkins voted for the Times Square Redevelopment Project.
In a 1991 telephone interview, Manhattan Congressional Representative Jerrold Nadler, then a New York State Assembly representative, said he felt the Times Square Redevelopment Project, by raising assessed taxation values of midtown real estate, encouraged commercial landlords to raise the rents for garment and other manufacturers in Manhattan; and thus led to a further decrease in blue-collar manufacturing jobs in New York City, by encouraging manufacturers to relocate to cities where commercial rents are cheaper. In Nadler’s view, between 1980 and 1991 public officials in New York City neglected to create the kind of manufacturing zones within New York City that would provide a sufficient amount of blue-collar employment opportunities for City residents.
“The City administration under Koch and Dinkins has been injurious to the blue-collar manufacturing industry and to blue-collar jobs,” Nadler said in 1991.
“To get the idea out” that, unless government funds were used to create super-manufacturing zones instead of for UDC projects like the Times Square Redevelopment Project, New York City’s economic decline and loss of blue-collar jobs would continue, Nadler decided to run for Manhattan Borough President in 1985 against Dinkins.
When a local government agency had announced plans to subsidize the building of 7,000 units of luxury housing in Hunter’s Point, Queens—an area of New York City that was traditionally a blue-collar manufacturing center and a source of employment for African-American, Latino-American and white working-class industrial workers—Nadler had gone to Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ office and urged him to speak out against the Hunter’s Point development plan.
“I asked him to hold a press conference. Break this open. But he wouldn’t lift a finger to oppose the Hunter’s Point development plan,” Nadler said in 1991.
Democratic Congressional Representative Nadler also recalled in 1991 that during Dinkins’ successful 1985 campaign for Manhattan Borough President, it was revealed that Columbia University Professor Dinkins’ campaign organization failed to pay the taxes it was obligated to pay in relation to its $7,000 per week payroll disbursements.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 10
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 8
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In September, 1975, Mayor Beame appointed Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Director Dinkins to the New York City Clerk patronage post. According to the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook, the “City Clerk does little besides process marriage licenses and the financial disclosure forms of public officials, but the plum patronage post afforded Dinkins an opportunity to rehabilitate his reputation and establish political ties that would later prove useful.”
Dinkins held his City Clerk patronage post from 1975 to 1985, during which time he sought election as Manhattan Borough President three times.
When his Inner City Broadcasting Corporation business partner, Sutton, decided to run for Mayor in 1977, Dinkins unsuccessfully attempted to succeed him as Manhattan Borough President and thus keep the post in the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation “business family.” In 1981, Dinkins again attempted to win election as Manhattan Borough President and again the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Director/New York City Clerk/Carver Clubhouse politician lost. In 1985, however, after receiving an additional patronage appointment from white corporate establishment interests to the New York Urban Development Corporation [UDC] in 1983, Dinkins finally was elected Manhattan Borough President. In his 1985 campaign for Manhattan Borough President, Columbia University Professor Dinkins was also supported financially by real estate developers Donald Trump and Peter Kalikow.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 9
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In September, 1975, Mayor Beame appointed Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Director Dinkins to the New York City Clerk patronage post. According to the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook, the “City Clerk does little besides process marriage licenses and the financial disclosure forms of public officials, but the plum patronage post afforded Dinkins an opportunity to rehabilitate his reputation and establish political ties that would later prove useful.”
Dinkins held his City Clerk patronage post from 1975 to 1985, during which time he sought election as Manhattan Borough President three times.
When his Inner City Broadcasting Corporation business partner, Sutton, decided to run for Mayor in 1977, Dinkins unsuccessfully attempted to succeed him as Manhattan Borough President and thus keep the post in the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation “business family.” In 1981, Dinkins again attempted to win election as Manhattan Borough President and again the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Director/New York City Clerk/Carver Clubhouse politician lost. In 1985, however, after receiving an additional patronage appointment from white corporate establishment interests to the New York Urban Development Corporation [UDC] in 1983, Dinkins finally was elected Manhattan Borough President. In his 1985 campaign for Manhattan Borough President, Columbia University Professor Dinkins was also supported financially by real estate developers Donald Trump and Peter Kalikow.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 9
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 7
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
On May 8, 1972—while holding a “public service” office of President of the New York City Board of Elections—Dinkins became a founding shareholder of the privately-owned Inner City Broadcasting Corporation by purchasing 50 shares of stock for $5,000. By December 31, 1985—while holding the “public service” office of New York City Clerk—Dinkins had increased his holdings in the privately-owned Inner City Broadcasting Corporation to 588 shares.
By February 4, 1983, the market value of Dinkins’ $5,000 investment in Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock had increased to $1,009,230. The privately-owned broadcasting corporation, which he and Sutton directed, then owned WLIB and 7 other radio stations in New York, Michigan, Los Angeles, San Antonio and Berkeley. That same year, a subsidiary of Sutton and Dinkins’ Inner City Broadcasting Corporation, Queens Inner Unity Cable System, won the bidding for a lucrative cable-TV franchise in Queens which was awarded by the then-existing New York City Board of Estimate. Inner City Broadcasting Corporation then-Chairman of the Board Sutton, of course, had been a member of the Board of Estimate for over 11 years, prior to getting it to award his company the lucrative Queens cable-TV franchise. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? by Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul:
“Advances in satellite, electronics, and computer technology have made this the period in which fortunes can be made in cable television…A 20 percent return on investment is predicted for the companies that win the bidding.”
By the 1990s, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation brought in over $19 million per year from its annual business operations and then-Chairman of the Board Percy Sutton’s son, Pierre Sutton, was the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation President; while Columbia University Professor and former New York City Mayor Dinkins’ son, David Dinkins, Jr. was a major Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stockholder.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 8
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
On May 8, 1972—while holding a “public service” office of President of the New York City Board of Elections—Dinkins became a founding shareholder of the privately-owned Inner City Broadcasting Corporation by purchasing 50 shares of stock for $5,000. By December 31, 1985—while holding the “public service” office of New York City Clerk—Dinkins had increased his holdings in the privately-owned Inner City Broadcasting Corporation to 588 shares.
By February 4, 1983, the market value of Dinkins’ $5,000 investment in Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock had increased to $1,009,230. The privately-owned broadcasting corporation, which he and Sutton directed, then owned WLIB and 7 other radio stations in New York, Michigan, Los Angeles, San Antonio and Berkeley. That same year, a subsidiary of Sutton and Dinkins’ Inner City Broadcasting Corporation, Queens Inner Unity Cable System, won the bidding for a lucrative cable-TV franchise in Queens which was awarded by the then-existing New York City Board of Estimate. Inner City Broadcasting Corporation then-Chairman of the Board Sutton, of course, had been a member of the Board of Estimate for over 11 years, prior to getting it to award his company the lucrative Queens cable-TV franchise. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? by Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul:
“Advances in satellite, electronics, and computer technology have made this the period in which fortunes can be made in cable television…A 20 percent return on investment is predicted for the companies that win the bidding.”
By the 1990s, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation brought in over $19 million per year from its annual business operations and then-Chairman of the Board Percy Sutton’s son, Pierre Sutton, was the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation President; while Columbia University Professor and former New York City Mayor Dinkins’ son, David Dinkins, Jr. was a major Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stockholder.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 8
Monday, November 26, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 6
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In its Nov. 29, 1973 issue, The New York Times noted that Columbia University Professor Dinkins was “a consultant to Percy Sutton,” the Manhattan Borough President from 1966 to 1977. By 1991, former Manhattan Borough President Sutton was the Chairman of the Board of the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation and a director of the New York Board of Trade and the New York City Partnership organizations of New York City’s corporate establishment.
Percy Sutton’s father, S.J. Sutton, was a principal of the Phyllis Wheatley High School in San Antonio, Texas, who also owned a cattle farm. Percy Sutton’s brother, G.J. Sutton, entered Texas state politics and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from San Antonio.
Another brother of Percy Sutton, Oliver Sutton, migrated north to New York City like Percy Sutton did and became a Justice of the New York Supreme Court. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? by Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul:
“Judgeships are not exempt from the subtleties of legal graft…A politically beholden judiciary is essential to the clubhouse system, especially to disqualify opponents who want to run against the machine in primary elections, and to dispense fees and guardianships to the right lawyers…State justices are chosen by party leaders in private brokered deals.”
After attending Columbia University Law School, Percy Sutton served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer during the U.S. military intervention in Korea and then, in 1953, he set up a law partnership with his brother, Oliver, and a third partner named George Covington, which had law offices on 125th Street in Harlem.
Along with Harlem’s long-time current Congressional Representative, Charles Rangel, Percy Sutton formed the new Harlem Democratic Party political club in 1963 and Sutton was elected to the New York State Assembly from Harlem in November 1964. Less than two years later, Dinkins’ political “godfather-rabbi,” Tammany Hall leader J. Raymond Jones, appointed Sutton to be Manhattan Borough President. According to Jones in The Harlem Fox book:
“The business of the Borough Presidency was easy…My first choice was Percy Sutton…the other five Manhattan Democratic Councilmen may not have been thinking along these lines, but I knew that once it was understood that I wanted Sutton, there would be little opposition.”
Sutton was later elected to the Manhattan Borough Presidency in November 1966 and held the position until 1977, when he unsuccessfully attempted to get elected as Mayor of New York, himself, on an “anti-crime” platform.
While each held public office in the early 1970s, Manhattan Borough President Sutton and his then-consultant, now-Columbia University Professor David Dinkins, enriched themselves by forming a privately-owned broadcasting corporation, the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 7
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In its Nov. 29, 1973 issue, The New York Times noted that Columbia University Professor Dinkins was “a consultant to Percy Sutton,” the Manhattan Borough President from 1966 to 1977. By 1991, former Manhattan Borough President Sutton was the Chairman of the Board of the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation and a director of the New York Board of Trade and the New York City Partnership organizations of New York City’s corporate establishment.
Percy Sutton’s father, S.J. Sutton, was a principal of the Phyllis Wheatley High School in San Antonio, Texas, who also owned a cattle farm. Percy Sutton’s brother, G.J. Sutton, entered Texas state politics and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from San Antonio.
Another brother of Percy Sutton, Oliver Sutton, migrated north to New York City like Percy Sutton did and became a Justice of the New York Supreme Court. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? by Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul:
“Judgeships are not exempt from the subtleties of legal graft…A politically beholden judiciary is essential to the clubhouse system, especially to disqualify opponents who want to run against the machine in primary elections, and to dispense fees and guardianships to the right lawyers…State justices are chosen by party leaders in private brokered deals.”
After attending Columbia University Law School, Percy Sutton served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer during the U.S. military intervention in Korea and then, in 1953, he set up a law partnership with his brother, Oliver, and a third partner named George Covington, which had law offices on 125th Street in Harlem.
Along with Harlem’s long-time current Congressional Representative, Charles Rangel, Percy Sutton formed the new Harlem Democratic Party political club in 1963 and Sutton was elected to the New York State Assembly from Harlem in November 1964. Less than two years later, Dinkins’ political “godfather-rabbi,” Tammany Hall leader J. Raymond Jones, appointed Sutton to be Manhattan Borough President. According to Jones in The Harlem Fox book:
“The business of the Borough Presidency was easy…My first choice was Percy Sutton…the other five Manhattan Democratic Councilmen may not have been thinking along these lines, but I knew that once it was understood that I wanted Sutton, there would be little opposition.”
Sutton was later elected to the Manhattan Borough Presidency in November 1966 and held the position until 1977, when he unsuccessfully attempted to get elected as Mayor of New York, himself, on an “anti-crime” platform.
While each held public office in the early 1970s, Manhattan Borough President Sutton and his then-consultant, now-Columbia University Professor David Dinkins, enriched themselves by forming a privately-owned broadcasting corporation, the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 7
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 5
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
By 1970, the 43-year-old Dinkins had utilized his Democratic Party Harlem Clubhouse position to secure a part-time patronage position as “Counsel to the New York City Board of Elections” which enabled him to continue working as a partner in his Dyett, Alexander and Dinkins law firm, at the same time he was on the public payroll. In 1972, the Democratic Party political bosses told their New York City Council member-puppets to appoint Dinkins to the higher-salaried, full-time New York City Board of Elections member patronage post and the 45-year-old Clubhouse politician Dinkins held his New York City Board of Elections Presidency post until June 1973.
In 1973, the Democratic Party clubhouse politicians successfully pushed Abraham Beame as their candidate for Mayor of New York City. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? by Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul, “When it came time for Mayor Beame to staff the government of New York City, he relied most heavily on the civil service and the political back rooms…Beame appointed unqualified hacks for his own staff and as commissioners.”
As a reward for securing votes for Beame in the 1973 Mayoralty campaign, Dinkins was named by Mayor-Elect Beame to be Deputy Mayor for Planning on November 28, 1973.
Within a month after being named Deputy Mayor by Mayor-Elect Beame, however, Dinkins was forced by Beame to refuse the job because of the emerging “1969-1972 Dinkins Income Tax Scandal.” During December 1973, it was revealed that Dinkins had apparently failed to pay any federal, state and city personal income taxes in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972, and had apparently failed to even file any federal, state, or city personal income tax forms during these same years. As a result, when Dinkins was appointed Deputy Mayor on November 28, 1973, he still owed about $25,000 in taxes and penalties to federal, state and city tax agencies from the income he took in from his law-firm job and his New York City Board of Elections political patronage job between 1969 and 1972. (Ironically, in 1978, Dinkins’ wife, Joyce Burrows, was named to be the Coordinator of Metropolitan Affairs for the New York State Division of Taxation and Finance).
When asked at a December 28, 1973 news conference why he failed to file income tax returns between 1969 and 1972, Dinkins replied: “I was busy taking care of other people’s business.”
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 6
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
By 1970, the 43-year-old Dinkins had utilized his Democratic Party Harlem Clubhouse position to secure a part-time patronage position as “Counsel to the New York City Board of Elections” which enabled him to continue working as a partner in his Dyett, Alexander and Dinkins law firm, at the same time he was on the public payroll. In 1972, the Democratic Party political bosses told their New York City Council member-puppets to appoint Dinkins to the higher-salaried, full-time New York City Board of Elections member patronage post and the 45-year-old Clubhouse politician Dinkins held his New York City Board of Elections Presidency post until June 1973.
In 1973, the Democratic Party clubhouse politicians successfully pushed Abraham Beame as their candidate for Mayor of New York City. According to The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? by Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul, “When it came time for Mayor Beame to staff the government of New York City, he relied most heavily on the civil service and the political back rooms…Beame appointed unqualified hacks for his own staff and as commissioners.”
As a reward for securing votes for Beame in the 1973 Mayoralty campaign, Dinkins was named by Mayor-Elect Beame to be Deputy Mayor for Planning on November 28, 1973.
Within a month after being named Deputy Mayor by Mayor-Elect Beame, however, Dinkins was forced by Beame to refuse the job because of the emerging “1969-1972 Dinkins Income Tax Scandal.” During December 1973, it was revealed that Dinkins had apparently failed to pay any federal, state and city personal income taxes in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972, and had apparently failed to even file any federal, state, or city personal income tax forms during these same years. As a result, when Dinkins was appointed Deputy Mayor on November 28, 1973, he still owed about $25,000 in taxes and penalties to federal, state and city tax agencies from the income he took in from his law-firm job and his New York City Board of Elections political patronage job between 1969 and 1972. (Ironically, in 1978, Dinkins’ wife, Joyce Burrows, was named to be the Coordinator of Metropolitan Affairs for the New York State Division of Taxation and Finance).
When asked at a December 28, 1973 news conference why he failed to file income tax returns between 1969 and 1972, Dinkins replied: “I was busy taking care of other people’s business.”
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 6
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 4
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In the 1950s and 1960s, Dinkins worked as a loyal shitworker for Harlem’s Carver Democratic Club leader J. Raymond Jones, who became the head of Tammany Hall in the 1960s. Carver Clubhouse leader Jones had earned the trust of the Downtown White Establishment political bosses by organizing the 1949 electoral defeat of Harlem’s politically radical African-American City Council representative, Ben Davis. Davis had been jailed on the trumped-up charge of “teaching and advocating the violent overthrow of the government” of the United States because of his U.S. Communist Party membership in the 1940s. In The Harlem Fox, the now-deceased Jones recalled:
“The job fell to me to devise some means to defeat Davis at the polls in 1949. So into this drama I placed one of my own boys, Earl Brown—we knew Brown could not win without the backing of Republicans, so we decided to make him a sort of fusion candidate—Brown was elected to the City Council that fall…”
Carver Clubhouse leader Jones also made a deal with Democratic Party Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn in 1960 to support Lyndon Johnson’s 1960 presidential candidacy, in exchange for Rayburn’s agreement to appoint former Harlem Congressional Representative Adam Clayton Powell to be Chairman of the House of Representative’s Education and Labor Committee.
After making his 1960 deal with Rayburn and LBJ in Washington, D.C., Jones “returned to New York that night and the very next day—received a telephone call from Ed Weizl, Johnson’s New York lawyer,” according to The Harlem Fox. According to Jones, “Weizl informed me that Lyndon’s top strategist, John B. Connally, the man who had masterminded Johnson’s senatorial campaign in 1948, would like to see me the next day."
Carver Club leader Jones then met with John Connally at Weizl’s apartment on Central Park South and they “decided on a public relations campaign to sell Johnson as a Southwesterner and a supporter of civil rights,” according to The Harlem Fox. Jones next “set up an agency we called the Holloway-Rand Agency, named after my wife and sister-in-law” with J. Dayton Brooks, the politician who coined the phrase “All The Way With LBJ.” To finance the Carver Club leader’s Holloway-Rand Agency, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign manager gave Jones $25,000 [in 1960s money].
After Lyndon Johnson became the U.S. Vice-President in 1961, he also rewarded Jones for his campaign support by securing the Democratic Administration’s appointment of Jones’ wife, Ruth Jones, to the well-paid job as Collector of Customs for the U.S. Virgin Islands. A few years later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on a visit to Lyndon Johnson’s home state of Texas, Johnson became President and an even more rapid escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam began.
By the early 1960s, Carver Club head Jones had made the loyal Dinkins his protégé and, according to the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook, “With Jones’ support, Dinkins was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1965.” In 1966, a reapportionment law eliminated Dinkins’ assembly district. But, in 1967, Tammany Hall leader Jones named Dinkins to succeed him as the Carter Democratic Club District Leader and Dinkins continued to head the club for the next 20 years at the same time he held New York City government patronage jobs.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 5
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
In the 1950s and 1960s, Dinkins worked as a loyal shitworker for Harlem’s Carver Democratic Club leader J. Raymond Jones, who became the head of Tammany Hall in the 1960s. Carver Clubhouse leader Jones had earned the trust of the Downtown White Establishment political bosses by organizing the 1949 electoral defeat of Harlem’s politically radical African-American City Council representative, Ben Davis. Davis had been jailed on the trumped-up charge of “teaching and advocating the violent overthrow of the government” of the United States because of his U.S. Communist Party membership in the 1940s. In The Harlem Fox, the now-deceased Jones recalled:
“The job fell to me to devise some means to defeat Davis at the polls in 1949. So into this drama I placed one of my own boys, Earl Brown—we knew Brown could not win without the backing of Republicans, so we decided to make him a sort of fusion candidate—Brown was elected to the City Council that fall…”
Carver Clubhouse leader Jones also made a deal with Democratic Party Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn in 1960 to support Lyndon Johnson’s 1960 presidential candidacy, in exchange for Rayburn’s agreement to appoint former Harlem Congressional Representative Adam Clayton Powell to be Chairman of the House of Representative’s Education and Labor Committee.
After making his 1960 deal with Rayburn and LBJ in Washington, D.C., Jones “returned to New York that night and the very next day—received a telephone call from Ed Weizl, Johnson’s New York lawyer,” according to The Harlem Fox. According to Jones, “Weizl informed me that Lyndon’s top strategist, John B. Connally, the man who had masterminded Johnson’s senatorial campaign in 1948, would like to see me the next day."
Carver Club leader Jones then met with John Connally at Weizl’s apartment on Central Park South and they “decided on a public relations campaign to sell Johnson as a Southwesterner and a supporter of civil rights,” according to The Harlem Fox. Jones next “set up an agency we called the Holloway-Rand Agency, named after my wife and sister-in-law” with J. Dayton Brooks, the politician who coined the phrase “All The Way With LBJ.” To finance the Carver Club leader’s Holloway-Rand Agency, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign manager gave Jones $25,000 [in 1960s money].
After Lyndon Johnson became the U.S. Vice-President in 1961, he also rewarded Jones for his campaign support by securing the Democratic Administration’s appointment of Jones’ wife, Ruth Jones, to the well-paid job as Collector of Customs for the U.S. Virgin Islands. A few years later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on a visit to Lyndon Johnson’s home state of Texas, Johnson became President and an even more rapid escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam began.
By the early 1960s, Carver Club head Jones had made the loyal Dinkins his protégé and, according to the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook, “With Jones’ support, Dinkins was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1965.” In 1966, a reapportionment law eliminated Dinkins’ assembly district. But, in 1967, Tammany Hall leader Jones named Dinkins to succeed him as the Carter Democratic Club District Leader and Dinkins continued to head the club for the next 20 years at the same time he held New York City government patronage jobs.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 5
Friday, November 23, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 3
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
Former Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Director David Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1927 and is the son of a prosperous Trenton realtor named William Dinkins. While living in a predominantly African-American middle-class neighborhood in Trenton in the early 1940s, Dinkins attended the predominantly white Trenton high school—which refused to allow its African-American students to use the Trenton High School swimming pool.
Because Dinkins didn’t graduate from Trenton High School until June 1945, he didn’t see too much World War II combat action. But after being drafted into the U.S. Army and then being transferred to the U.S. Marine Corps, Dinkins spent much of his July 1945 to August 1946 military service at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he worked much of the time as the Colonel’s chauffeur.
After leaving the Marines in August 1946, Dinkins enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., received his degree in mathematics in 1950 and was awarded a Rutgers University mathematics fellowship. Yet, despite being a college math mayor, Dinkins has sometimes blamed his accountants whenever mistakes are discovered on income tax or financial disclosure forms which he has filed or failed to file during his years in public life.
After dropping out of Rutgers in the early 1950s, Dinkins sold insurance for a Red Bank, New Jersey firm for a while before coming to New York City to live at the age of 26 and enrolling in Brooklyn Law School in 1953.
On August 30, 1953, Dinkins married the daughter of Harlem State Assemblyman Daniel Burrows, Joyce Burrows (who held a state government patronage post in New York between 1978 and 1989). Assemblyman Burrows introduced his son-in-law to Harlem clubhouse politics and gave him a job in the Burrows family liquor store while Dinkins studied law at Brooklyn Law School. After marrying into the Burrows political family, Dinkins also “ran errands for local politicians,” according to the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook.
According to Who’s Who In America, Who’s Who In Black America, the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook and the Martindale-Hubble Directory of Lawyers, Dinkins received his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1956, at the age of 29. Reached by telephone, a Brooklyn Law School alumni office spokesperson also stated in 1991 that Dinkins received his law degree from the school in 1956.
Yet, in the book The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany, 1920-1970, J. Raymond Jones noted that “Dinkins, a 1950 graduate of Howard University, obtained his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1965, some fifteen years after graduating from college,” at the age of 38.
Asked to comment on the discrepancy between the claimed 1956 law school graduation date and the passage in the J. Raymond Jones biography that “Dinkins…obtained his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1965,” a spokesperson in then-Mayor Dinkins’ press office replied, in a 1991 phone interview, that “The Mayor’s biography gives the 1956 date as his graduation date.”
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 4
Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
Former Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Director David Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1927 and is the son of a prosperous Trenton realtor named William Dinkins. While living in a predominantly African-American middle-class neighborhood in Trenton in the early 1940s, Dinkins attended the predominantly white Trenton high school—which refused to allow its African-American students to use the Trenton High School swimming pool.
Because Dinkins didn’t graduate from Trenton High School until June 1945, he didn’t see too much World War II combat action. But after being drafted into the U.S. Army and then being transferred to the U.S. Marine Corps, Dinkins spent much of his July 1945 to August 1946 military service at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he worked much of the time as the Colonel’s chauffeur.
After leaving the Marines in August 1946, Dinkins enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., received his degree in mathematics in 1950 and was awarded a Rutgers University mathematics fellowship. Yet, despite being a college math mayor, Dinkins has sometimes blamed his accountants whenever mistakes are discovered on income tax or financial disclosure forms which he has filed or failed to file during his years in public life.
After dropping out of Rutgers in the early 1950s, Dinkins sold insurance for a Red Bank, New Jersey firm for a while before coming to New York City to live at the age of 26 and enrolling in Brooklyn Law School in 1953.
On August 30, 1953, Dinkins married the daughter of Harlem State Assemblyman Daniel Burrows, Joyce Burrows (who held a state government patronage post in New York between 1978 and 1989). Assemblyman Burrows introduced his son-in-law to Harlem clubhouse politics and gave him a job in the Burrows family liquor store while Dinkins studied law at Brooklyn Law School. After marrying into the Burrows political family, Dinkins also “ran errands for local politicians,” according to the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook.
According to Who’s Who In America, Who’s Who In Black America, the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook and the Martindale-Hubble Directory of Lawyers, Dinkins received his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1956, at the age of 29. Reached by telephone, a Brooklyn Law School alumni office spokesperson also stated in 1991 that Dinkins received his law degree from the school in 1956.
Yet, in the book The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany, 1920-1970, J. Raymond Jones noted that “Dinkins, a 1950 graduate of Howard University, obtained his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1965, some fifteen years after graduating from college,” at the age of 38.
Asked to comment on the discrepancy between the claimed 1956 law school graduation date and the passage in the J. Raymond Jones biography that “Dinkins…obtained his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1965,” a spokesperson in then-Mayor Dinkins’ press office replied, in a 1991 phone interview, that “The Mayor’s biography gives the 1956 date as his graduation date.”
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 4
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 2
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
Following, is a section of an article that I wrote on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
Exhibit A: “Dinkins, a 1950 graduate of Howard University, obtained this law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1965, some fifteen years after graduating from college.”…J. Raymond Jones in The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany, 1920-1970
Exhibit B: “Mr. Dinkins testified that he sold the stock to his son in late 1985, and that his son paid for the stock by promising to pay him $58,000, plus interest by January 1991.”—page 8 of the Report of the Special Deputy Commissioner Concerning The Transfer of Inner City Broadcasting Stock By David N. Dinkins on January 10, 1991
Exhibit C: “Dinkins said that before taking office, he transferred his stock in the company, at no charge, to his 32-year-old son to avoid any conflict of interest”—Paul Moses in his September 26, 1986 Newsday article, “Dinkins’ Cable Link: Lists Stock On City Form.”
Exhibit D: “The financial disclosure report for 1985 was completed by Mr. Dinkins in 1986, and the report for 1986 was completed by Mr. Dinkins in 1987. At no time did Mr. Dinkins disclose on the financial disclosure reports that his son owed him any money.”—page 21 of the Report of the Special Deputy Commissioner Concerning the Transfer of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Stock By David N. Dinkins.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 3
Following, is a section of an article that I wrote on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:
Exhibit A: “Dinkins, a 1950 graduate of Howard University, obtained this law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1965, some fifteen years after graduating from college.”…J. Raymond Jones in The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany, 1920-1970
Exhibit B: “Mr. Dinkins testified that he sold the stock to his son in late 1985, and that his son paid for the stock by promising to pay him $58,000, plus interest by January 1991.”—page 8 of the Report of the Special Deputy Commissioner Concerning The Transfer of Inner City Broadcasting Stock By David N. Dinkins on January 10, 1991
Exhibit C: “Dinkins said that before taking office, he transferred his stock in the company, at no charge, to his 32-year-old son to avoid any conflict of interest”—Paul Moses in his September 26, 1986 Newsday article, “Dinkins’ Cable Link: Lists Stock On City Form.”
Exhibit D: “The financial disclosure report for 1985 was completed by Mr. Dinkins in 1986, and the report for 1986 was completed by Mr. Dinkins in 1987. At no time did Mr. Dinkins disclose on the financial disclosure reports that his son owed him any money.”—page 21 of the Report of the Special Deputy Commissioner Concerning the Transfer of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation Stock By David N. Dinkins.
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 3
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 1
After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.
In addition, the Columbia University Executive Vice-President who recently demanded that a representative of the local community board be excluded from a negotiating session with student hunger strikers that discussed university expansion policy plans which affects the West Harlem community, former Philadelphia City Planning Commission Executive Director and Regional Plan Association board member Maxine Griffith ( http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gca/vp-staff/vp-list.html#griffith ) , was previously appointed by Dinkins to sit on the New York City Planning Commission when Columbia Professor Dinkins was New York City’s Mayor.
Coincidentally, although Columbia University Professor Dinkins promised to provide homes for homeless families when he campaigned for mayor in 1989, the Dinkins administration failed to provide enough homes for the homeless during the early 1990s. As the publication of the Metropolitan Council On Housing, Tenant (5/93) noted in the early 1990s:
“Dinkins’ record on the homeless is` long on rhetoric and short on achievement,’ says Steve Banks, coordinator of the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Family Rights Project. There are more and more homeless instead of fewer, with the administration equally unable to stem the tide of recession-rooted evictions or help those who find themselves without a home. The number of homeless families in the city’s shelter system has nearly doubled from 3,200 in July 1990 to a record 5,600 in January of this year [1993].”
(Downtown 6/9/93)
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 2
In addition, the Columbia University Executive Vice-President who recently demanded that a representative of the local community board be excluded from a negotiating session with student hunger strikers that discussed university expansion policy plans which affects the West Harlem community, former Philadelphia City Planning Commission Executive Director and Regional Plan Association board member Maxine Griffith ( http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gca/vp-staff/vp-list.html#griffith ) , was previously appointed by Dinkins to sit on the New York City Planning Commission when Columbia Professor Dinkins was New York City’s Mayor.
Coincidentally, although Columbia University Professor Dinkins promised to provide homes for homeless families when he campaigned for mayor in 1989, the Dinkins administration failed to provide enough homes for the homeless during the early 1990s. As the publication of the Metropolitan Council On Housing, Tenant (5/93) noted in the early 1990s:
“Dinkins’ record on the homeless is` long on rhetoric and short on achievement,’ says Steve Banks, coordinator of the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Family Rights Project. There are more and more homeless instead of fewer, with the administration equally unable to stem the tide of recession-rooted evictions or help those who find themselves without a home. The number of homeless families in the city’s shelter system has nearly doubled from 3,200 in July 1990 to a record 5,600 in January of this year [1993].”
(Downtown 6/9/93)
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 2
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
`High-Technology Homeless'
They got this high-technology to send shuttles to the moon
They got this high-technology to blow up this world in two
They got this high-technology to produce more plastic food
And they got the high-technology homeless, too.
They got this high-technology to solve math equations quick
They got this high-technology to help keep Bill Gates rich
They got this high-technology to monitor your every move
And they got the high-technology homeless, too.
They got this high-technology to automate the winds of war
They got this high-technology to make laid-off workers poor
They got this high-technology to solve all problems complex
And also they got the high-technology homeless.
They got this high-technology to help “keep Amerika great”
They got this high-technology which they want to control our fate
They got this high-technology to cover their brutal greed
And they got the high-technology homeless in the streets.
The High-Technology Homeless protest folk song was written during the Reagan Era of the 1980s, when the term “yuppies” acquired a negative connotation, the proponents of high-technology promised us that high-technology would soon create a free market/capitalist/corporate-oriented utopia and the number of homeless people in the United States increased dramatically.
(To listen to High-Technology Homeless, click on the following link:
http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music )
Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part I
Monday, November 19, 2007
`New York Times' Foreign Editor Worked With CIA
In his 1980 book, Without Fear Or Favor, a former New York Times Moscow correspondent named Harrison Salisbury revealed that the CIA:
“was interested in talking to Times men when they come back from assignment abroad and this, too, was set up…The contact for this, for many, many years was Emanuel Freedman, The Times foreign editor, now dead. The same CIA case officer who had handled these contacts since the early 1950s was still on duty in New York, still handling the same chores in 1979. He had been in the New York office for 30 years, but didn’t want his name mentioned. The CIA New York man got to know many Times correspondents and editors quite well although always on a business basis.”
(Downtown 9/23/92)
Next: High-Technology Homeless lyrics
“was interested in talking to Times men when they come back from assignment abroad and this, too, was set up…The contact for this, for many, many years was Emanuel Freedman, The Times foreign editor, now dead. The same CIA case officer who had handled these contacts since the early 1950s was still on duty in New York, still handling the same chores in 1979. He had been in the New York office for 30 years, but didn’t want his name mentioned. The CIA New York man got to know many Times correspondents and editors quite well although always on a business basis.”
(Downtown 9/23/92)
Next: High-Technology Homeless lyrics
Sunday, November 18, 2007
`New York Times' Collaborated With FBI Historically
During the McCarthy Era, the New York Times apparently collaborated with the FBI. As Compromised Campus by Sigmund Diamond revealed:
“On Oct. 2, 1953, Assistant FBI Director Louis Nichols wrote Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover’s closest associate, that he had been visited that day by General Julius Ochs Adler, general manager of the Times, to discuss matters of mutual interest. Adler had left a letter, dated Oct. 1, 1953, for Hoover. Nichols wrote:
“`Adler further stated he is very glad to cooperate with the Bureau in any respect in this matter, and while he appreciates the confidential character of the bureau’s work, he wondered if the Bureau could possibly assist him. Adler further advised, of course, he doesn’t want any Communists on the New York Times…’”
Compromised Campus also revealed the following:
“According to a memorandum from the FBI official Alan Belmont to (D.M.) Ladd, June 15, 1953, Assistant SAC Whelan of New York had called that very evening: `(Name deleted) of the New York Times had informally discussed with him a campaign being waged by the Rosenbergs…for clemency or a stay of execution. The informant wondered whether it was not possible for the Government to hit back through the medium of newspapers…He wondered if there was any slant we would want to give the New York Times for this purpose.’”
(Downtown 4/19/95)
Next: New York Times Foreign Editor Worked With CIA
“On Oct. 2, 1953, Assistant FBI Director Louis Nichols wrote Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover’s closest associate, that he had been visited that day by General Julius Ochs Adler, general manager of the Times, to discuss matters of mutual interest. Adler had left a letter, dated Oct. 1, 1953, for Hoover. Nichols wrote:
“`Adler further stated he is very glad to cooperate with the Bureau in any respect in this matter, and while he appreciates the confidential character of the bureau’s work, he wondered if the Bureau could possibly assist him. Adler further advised, of course, he doesn’t want any Communists on the New York Times…’”
Compromised Campus also revealed the following:
“According to a memorandum from the FBI official Alan Belmont to (D.M.) Ladd, June 15, 1953, Assistant SAC Whelan of New York had called that very evening: `(Name deleted) of the New York Times had informally discussed with him a campaign being waged by the Rosenbergs…for clemency or a stay of execution. The informant wondered whether it was not possible for the Government to hit back through the medium of newspapers…He wondered if there was any slant we would want to give the New York Times for this purpose.’”
(Downtown 4/19/95)
Next: New York Times Foreign Editor Worked With CIA
Saturday, November 17, 2007
`Times' Coverage of JFK Assassination
Although the Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times claims to be interested in printing “all the news that’s fit to print,” the Times has apparently felt that news which contradicts the Warren Commission’s official version of how President Kennedy was actually eliminated in Dallas isn’t fit to print. As Destiny Betrayed by James DiEugenio recalled in the early 1990s:
“A summary of the Times’ early devotion to the Warren Report includes Tom Wicker’s unprofessional failure in November 1963 to follow up diligently on the Parkland doctor’s statement that JFK suffered wounds of entry into his throat; Arthur Krock’s appraisal of the Report as `the definitive history of the tragedy’; Wicker’s unqualified testimonial in the preface for Warren Commission counsel David Belin’s book;…the Times’ shamelessly doctored and biased selection of testimony in The Witnesses…its flagrant headline November 24, 1963, when Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby; the systematic violation of the pledge, taken after Oswald’s death by then-managing editor Turner Catledge, to refer to Oswald as `the alleged assassin’; the removal on Dec. 1, 1970, of searching pro-conspiracy questions in John Leonard’s book review of Jim Garrison’s Heritage of Stone from all but the early bulldog edition…”
(Downtown 5/12/93)
Next: New York Times Collaborated With FBI Historically
“A summary of the Times’ early devotion to the Warren Report includes Tom Wicker’s unprofessional failure in November 1963 to follow up diligently on the Parkland doctor’s statement that JFK suffered wounds of entry into his throat; Arthur Krock’s appraisal of the Report as `the definitive history of the tragedy’; Wicker’s unqualified testimonial in the preface for Warren Commission counsel David Belin’s book;…the Times’ shamelessly doctored and biased selection of testimony in The Witnesses…its flagrant headline November 24, 1963, when Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby; the systematic violation of the pledge, taken after Oswald’s death by then-managing editor Turner Catledge, to refer to Oswald as `the alleged assassin’; the removal on Dec. 1, 1970, of searching pro-conspiracy questions in John Leonard’s book review of Jim Garrison’s Heritage of Stone from all but the early bulldog edition…”
(Downtown 5/12/93)
Next: New York Times Collaborated With FBI Historically
Friday, November 16, 2007
Big Media Coverage of JFK Assassination
During the early 1990s, Big Media institutions like the New York Times, CBS and the Washington Post did not appear too eager to finally let people in the U.S. know who really was responsible for the elimination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. As Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and The Garrison Case by James DiEugenio noted in the early 1990s:
“The Kennedy assassination and the Garrison investigation highlighted the shortcomings of the American print and electronic media. Their lack of vigor in seriously investigating the assassination and their gullibility in accepting the Warren Commission Report was staggering…Then with the exposure of the Garrison inquiry in February of 1967, we saw the other side of this eager embrace of the Report: a vicious smear campaign against those who expressed reservations about it…
“Some publications like the New York Times had then and still have a vested interest in seeing the official story prevail. Likewise, the Washington Post for years after the assassination had a policy of not reviewing books critical of the Warren Report…Many journalists just completely missed the story the first time around and do not like to admit that fact…”
(Downtown 5/12/93)
Next: Times Coverage of JFK Assassination
“The Kennedy assassination and the Garrison investigation highlighted the shortcomings of the American print and electronic media. Their lack of vigor in seriously investigating the assassination and their gullibility in accepting the Warren Commission Report was staggering…Then with the exposure of the Garrison inquiry in February of 1967, we saw the other side of this eager embrace of the Report: a vicious smear campaign against those who expressed reservations about it…
“Some publications like the New York Times had then and still have a vested interest in seeing the official story prevail. Likewise, the Washington Post for years after the assassination had a policy of not reviewing books critical of the Warren Report…Many journalists just completely missed the story the first time around and do not like to admit that fact…”
(Downtown 5/12/93)
Next: Times Coverage of JFK Assassination
Thursday, November 15, 2007
CIA Countered Critics of Warren Report
In his introduction to Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case by James DiEugenio, Zachary Sklar noted that “Although we still do not know the full extent of the disinformation campaign against Garrison, some evidence of it surfaced in a CIA memo dated April 1, 1967, and released in 1977 under the Freedom of Information Act.”
The CIA’s April 1, 1967 memo, titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report,” was apparently sent to “Chiefs, Certain Stations and Bases,” and it included the following recommendations:
“Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us…
“…We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active, however, addressees are requested:
“a. To discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)…Urge them to use their influence…
“b. To employ propaganda assets…Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for the purpose…”
According to Chapter VI of the Warren Commission Report, titled “Investigation of Possible Conspiracy,” then-CIA Director John McCone and then-CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms “testified before the Commission that no one connected with the CIA had ever interviewed Oswald or communicated with him in any way.” Yet, according to a book published in the 1990s, the U.S. diplomat who interviewed Oswald prior to his “defection” to Russia in 1959—Richard Snyder—was apparently connected to the CIA. As Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and The Garrison Case by James DiEugenio noted:
“Oswald’s defection and entry into the U.S.S.R. and his departure were both handled by U.S. Moscow Embassy Consul Richard E. Snyder. Snyder was, in his own words, `the sole officer handling the Oswald case.’ Snyder sent Oswald his passport, months before his return, and processed Oswald and Marina’s exit from the Soviet Union as well. CIA document #609-786 says that Snyder joined the CIA in 1949…Julius Mader’s 1968 Who’s Who In CIA…lists Snyder as still in the Agency.”
(Downtown 5/12/93)
Next: Big Media Coverage of JFK Assassination
The CIA’s April 1, 1967 memo, titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report,” was apparently sent to “Chiefs, Certain Stations and Bases,” and it included the following recommendations:
“Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us…
“…We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active, however, addressees are requested:
“a. To discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)…Urge them to use their influence…
“b. To employ propaganda assets…Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for the purpose…”
According to Chapter VI of the Warren Commission Report, titled “Investigation of Possible Conspiracy,” then-CIA Director John McCone and then-CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms “testified before the Commission that no one connected with the CIA had ever interviewed Oswald or communicated with him in any way.” Yet, according to a book published in the 1990s, the U.S. diplomat who interviewed Oswald prior to his “defection” to Russia in 1959—Richard Snyder—was apparently connected to the CIA. As Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and The Garrison Case by James DiEugenio noted:
“Oswald’s defection and entry into the U.S.S.R. and his departure were both handled by U.S. Moscow Embassy Consul Richard E. Snyder. Snyder was, in his own words, `the sole officer handling the Oswald case.’ Snyder sent Oswald his passport, months before his return, and processed Oswald and Marina’s exit from the Soviet Union as well. CIA document #609-786 says that Snyder joined the CIA in 1949…Julius Mader’s 1968 Who’s Who In CIA…lists Snyder as still in the Agency.”
(Downtown 5/12/93)
Next: Big Media Coverage of JFK Assassination
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
More On The CIA's Mass Media Program Historically
Although CIA: The Pike Report of a House Committee found that the largest officially approved covert action category of the CIA between 1965 and 1975 was its “Election Support” category, the same report also stated that “It is believed that if the correct number of all media and propaganda projects could be determined it would exceed Election Support as the largest single category of covert action projects undertaken by the CIA.” Among the secret actions utilized by the CIA to manipulate public opinion through mass media manipulation, according to CIA: The Pike Report, were “support of friendly media, major propaganda efforts, insertion of articles into the local press, and distribution of books and leaflets.”
In its CIA: The Pike Report, a House Committee also concluded that:
“The free flow of information…has been threatened as a result of CIA’s use of the world media for cover and for clandestine information-gathering.
“There are disturbing indications that the accuracy of many news stories has been undermined as well. Information supplied to the Committee suggests that some planted, falsified articles have reached readers in the U.S.”
CIA: The Pike Report also observed that “The CIA’s Cover and Commercial staff files show that in 1975, 11 CIA employees used media cover with 15 news field companies—TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines” and “The CIA had fiduciary relations with 5 full-time correspondents of major American news organizations.”
In their 1970s book, The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John Marks estimated that “as late as November 1973…there were still about 40 fulltime reporters and free-lancers on the CIA payroll” and “Under [former CIA Director] Helms, the CIA also continued its practice of intervening with editors and publishers to try to stop publication of books either too descriptive or too critical of the agency.”
The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence also noted that “Many…anti-communist publishing concerns in Germany, Italy, and France were also supported and encouraged by the agency during the post-WW II years.” Ironically, in support of its anticommunist political goals, the CIA also “subsidized the New York communist paper, the Daily Worker,…in the form of several thousand secretly purchased prepaid subscriptions,” according to The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence. According to the same book, by subsidizing the U.S. Communist Party’s daily newspaper after World War II, “The CIA apparently hoped to demonstrate by this means to the American public that the threat of communism in this country was real.”
Marchetti and Marks’ book also pointed out that “only about 20 percent of the CIA’s career employees (spending less than 10 percent of the budget) work on intelligence analysis and information processing,” but “about 2/3” of all CIA funds and manpower are spent on its “covert operations,” such as its manipulation of public opinion and elections and its mass media manipulation activity. The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence also reminded its readers that:
“The CIA is big, very big. Officially, it has authorized manpower of 16,500…The 16,500 figure does not reflect the tens of thousands who serve under contract (mercenaries, agents, consultants, etc.) or who work for the agency’s proprietary companies.”
During the early 1990s, the CIA still had authorized manpower of about 25,000, according to the 1990s book Games of Intelligence by Nigel West a/k/a British Tory MP Rupert Allason. [Yet what happened on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center was apparently not stopped by any of the CIA’s 25,000 employees].
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: CIA Countered Critics of Warren Report
In its CIA: The Pike Report, a House Committee also concluded that:
“The free flow of information…has been threatened as a result of CIA’s use of the world media for cover and for clandestine information-gathering.
“There are disturbing indications that the accuracy of many news stories has been undermined as well. Information supplied to the Committee suggests that some planted, falsified articles have reached readers in the U.S.”
CIA: The Pike Report also observed that “The CIA’s Cover and Commercial staff files show that in 1975, 11 CIA employees used media cover with 15 news field companies—TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines” and “The CIA had fiduciary relations with 5 full-time correspondents of major American news organizations.”
In their 1970s book, The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John Marks estimated that “as late as November 1973…there were still about 40 fulltime reporters and free-lancers on the CIA payroll” and “Under [former CIA Director] Helms, the CIA also continued its practice of intervening with editors and publishers to try to stop publication of books either too descriptive or too critical of the agency.”
The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence also noted that “Many…anti-communist publishing concerns in Germany, Italy, and France were also supported and encouraged by the agency during the post-WW II years.” Ironically, in support of its anticommunist political goals, the CIA also “subsidized the New York communist paper, the Daily Worker,…in the form of several thousand secretly purchased prepaid subscriptions,” according to The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence. According to the same book, by subsidizing the U.S. Communist Party’s daily newspaper after World War II, “The CIA apparently hoped to demonstrate by this means to the American public that the threat of communism in this country was real.”
Marchetti and Marks’ book also pointed out that “only about 20 percent of the CIA’s career employees (spending less than 10 percent of the budget) work on intelligence analysis and information processing,” but “about 2/3” of all CIA funds and manpower are spent on its “covert operations,” such as its manipulation of public opinion and elections and its mass media manipulation activity. The CIA and The Cult of Intelligence also reminded its readers that:
“The CIA is big, very big. Officially, it has authorized manpower of 16,500…The 16,500 figure does not reflect the tens of thousands who serve under contract (mercenaries, agents, consultants, etc.) or who work for the agency’s proprietary companies.”
During the early 1990s, the CIA still had authorized manpower of about 25,000, according to the 1990s book Games of Intelligence by Nigel West a/k/a British Tory MP Rupert Allason. [Yet what happened on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center was apparently not stopped by any of the CIA’s 25,000 employees].
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: CIA Countered Critics of Warren Report
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Yale University's Historical CIA Connection
Coincidentally, former President Bush I, current U.S. President Bush II and 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are Yale University alumni, as was former Warren Commission member and former U.S. President Gerald Ford.
Yale University and its alumni have long played an influential role in relation to the CIA. According to Cloak and Gown: Scholars In The Secret War by Robin Winks, “Rightly or wrongly, a historian could, in assessing the link between the university and the agency, declare in 1984 that Yale had influenced the CIA more than any other university had…”
During the years when George W. Bush II’s father attended Yale and excelled as an Ivy League athlete, “Skip Walz, Yale crew coach from 1946 to 1950, working simultaneously for the university and for the Central Intelligence Agency on a salary of $10,000 from each, laid his arms on the shoulders of athletic young men, introducing them to official recruiters who would apply the appropriate persuasion,” according to Cloak and Gown. The same book also noted that Yale Crew Coach Walz “looked for bright undergraduates in other sports than crew as well, who were going into business careers after graduation, so that they might use their business connection as a cover” and “Once every three weeks he would meet with a CIA agent at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, passing on names and evaluations.” Coincidentally, after his graduation from Yale University in 1948, Bush I began his business career and, along with a major Chevron/Gulf stockholder in the early 1990s named J. Hugh Liedtke, founded Zapata/Pennzoil in the early 1950s.
In addition to being an athletic young man at Yale in the late 1940s, Bush I (like his son) was a member of the Skull & Bones society at Yale. Cloak and Gown noted that “Yale’s most prestigious social life turned on secret societies, of which perhaps Skull and Bones was the most exclusive” and that “It was widely rumored that the secret societies were recruiting grounds as well,” for the CIA.
Although former President Bush I claimed on the Establishment’s television screen in the early 1990s to be opposed to discrimination against women, on May 20, 1991, the New York Times reported on its back pages that “Mr. Bush” belonged “to only four clubs, and they” were “men-only organizations: the Alibi Club, the Alfalfa Club, the Bohemian Club and Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society that recently locked its crypt rather than admit women.”
After 1980, George W. Bush II’s father, former President Bush I, sought to play down his 1970s membership in David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. In his 1989 book, The Right Place, The Right Time, former NYU Trustee, former Time Inc. director and former Trilateral Commission member Hedley Donovan recalled:
“When I congratulated George Bush on his election as vice-president in 1980, I said I hoped he didn’t mind receiving correspondence from a member of the Trilateral Commission, to which he belonged. He scrawled a card of thanks and said, `Sh-sh-sh’ about the Trilateral stuff.’ I have kept this exchange secret until now.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: More On The CIA’s Mass Media Program Historically
Yale University and its alumni have long played an influential role in relation to the CIA. According to Cloak and Gown: Scholars In The Secret War by Robin Winks, “Rightly or wrongly, a historian could, in assessing the link between the university and the agency, declare in 1984 that Yale had influenced the CIA more than any other university had…”
During the years when George W. Bush II’s father attended Yale and excelled as an Ivy League athlete, “Skip Walz, Yale crew coach from 1946 to 1950, working simultaneously for the university and for the Central Intelligence Agency on a salary of $10,000 from each, laid his arms on the shoulders of athletic young men, introducing them to official recruiters who would apply the appropriate persuasion,” according to Cloak and Gown. The same book also noted that Yale Crew Coach Walz “looked for bright undergraduates in other sports than crew as well, who were going into business careers after graduation, so that they might use their business connection as a cover” and “Once every three weeks he would meet with a CIA agent at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, passing on names and evaluations.” Coincidentally, after his graduation from Yale University in 1948, Bush I began his business career and, along with a major Chevron/Gulf stockholder in the early 1990s named J. Hugh Liedtke, founded Zapata/Pennzoil in the early 1950s.
In addition to being an athletic young man at Yale in the late 1940s, Bush I (like his son) was a member of the Skull & Bones society at Yale. Cloak and Gown noted that “Yale’s most prestigious social life turned on secret societies, of which perhaps Skull and Bones was the most exclusive” and that “It was widely rumored that the secret societies were recruiting grounds as well,” for the CIA.
Although former President Bush I claimed on the Establishment’s television screen in the early 1990s to be opposed to discrimination against women, on May 20, 1991, the New York Times reported on its back pages that “Mr. Bush” belonged “to only four clubs, and they” were “men-only organizations: the Alibi Club, the Alfalfa Club, the Bohemian Club and Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society that recently locked its crypt rather than admit women.”
After 1980, George W. Bush II’s father, former President Bush I, sought to play down his 1970s membership in David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. In his 1989 book, The Right Place, The Right Time, former NYU Trustee, former Time Inc. director and former Trilateral Commission member Hedley Donovan recalled:
“When I congratulated George Bush on his election as vice-president in 1980, I said I hoped he didn’t mind receiving correspondence from a member of the Trilateral Commission, to which he belonged. He scrawled a card of thanks and said, `Sh-sh-sh’ about the Trilateral stuff.’ I have kept this exchange secret until now.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: More On The CIA’s Mass Media Program Historically
Monday, November 12, 2007
CBS News' Coverage Of The JFK Assassination and Bush I's Role
 |
| Former CIA Director Bush's 1970s official "Company" portrait photo |
Downtown asked CBS News’ Director of Communications Tom Goodman in 1992 what was CBS’s official response to a 1992 Village Voice article which charged that CBS News helped cover-up the existence of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK?
“The Village Voice article was absolutely absurd and ludicrous. Had all that time used to prepare that article been used to investigate the assassination, people would have been better served. The article was not at all relevant. CBS News has not been and is not involved in any cover-up regarding the assassination. The article was preposterous,” answered the CBS News spokesperson.
Reached by telephone, a spokesperson for the Village Voice told Downtown in 1992 that the Voice stood by its story.
Coincidentally, a few days after JFK was ambushed, FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum to the U.S. State Department regarding the JFK assassination. According to an article, “`George Bush’ C.I.A. Operative” by Joseph McBride, which appeared in the July 16/23, 1988 issue of The Nation, this Nov. 29, 1963 FBI memorandum was “subject headed `Assassination of President John F. Kennedy Nov. 22, 1963'” and “In it, Hoover reports that the bureau had briefed `Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency’ shortly after the assassination…”
The same Nation article also revealed that “a source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush [I] started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities.” The Nation’s intelligence community source had “worked with the agency in the late 1950s and through the 1960s” and he stated that Bush [I] “was involved in the Caribbean” and “`I know he was involved in the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination.’”
Plausible Denial: Was The CIA Involved in The Assassination Of JFK? By Mark Lane also noted in the early 1990s:
“There is evidence suggesting that [George] de Mohrenschildt served as a CIA control officer who directed Oswald’s actions. De Mohrenschildt died from a gun shot just as he was about to be questioned by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. After his death, his personal telephone book was located. It contained this entry: `Bush, George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland.’”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: Yale University’s Historical CIA Connection
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The CIA and The 1988 Election of Ex-CIA Director Bush I
 |
| Former CIA Director Bush's official CIA portrait of 1970s |
Coincidentally, the father of George W. Bush II, former CIA Director Bush I, received the support of the U.S. Establishment’s mass media in 1988 when he decided he felt like moving into the White House in January 1989. According to Television and The Crisis Of Democracy by Douglas Kellner:
“George Bush [I] was elected president largely due to the failure of the mainstream broadcast media to report in any detail on the many scandals in which he was implicated during the Reagan years—including involvement with Panamanian dictator and drug dealer Manuel Noriega, connections to an illegal Contra supply operation also involved in drug dealings, and participating in the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with the Iranian ayatollahs…
“The mainstream media also failed to investigate either Bush [I]’s record as head of the CIA or well-documented allegations that he was in the CIA as early as 1962—a claim denied by Bush’s team but argued in The Nation and other print media sources.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: CBS News’ Coverage Of The JFK Assassination and Bush I’s Role
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Racism and Sexism at the `New York Times' Historically
During the 1970s, the New York Times was sued by its African-American employees who charged the Sulzberger Dynasty’s newspaper with “racial discrimination in hiring, job classification, salaries and other issues,” according to Fit To Print: A.M. Rosenthal And His `Times’ by Joseph Goulden. New York Times managers were accused by New York Times columnist Roger Wilkins in a deposition of running a “racist paper” and the case was eventually settled out-of-court by the Times. The African-American Times employees covered by the settlement received substantially more than $250,000 in legal settlement money.
Although some U.S. women still like to spend their Sundays and their evenings wading through the Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times, U.S. women were not treated as equals by the Times during most of the 20th Century. As Women And The Mass Media by Matilda Butler and William Paisley noted in 1980:
“In November 1974, six women sued the New York Times. Approximately one year later, the U.S. District Court ordered that the Times release salary information from its computer tapes. In February 1977, the suit was granted a class action status. One year later, analysis of the computer tapes was submitted to the Federal District Court. Although most findings focus on salaries, the report notes that women are 41 percent of the editors and reporters in the United States. However, they are only 16 percent of the editors and reporters at the Times…
“In 1978, the Federal District Court heard testimony that the New York Times pays males more than $3700 more than women. This difference is attributable to sex discrimination…
“When John Aboud analyzed 10 years of salary data from the New York Times, he was able to assess the relative promotion patterns of males and females. He found, for instance, that 84 percent of the women versus 70 percent of the men who were in the lower salary group (one to eight) in 1965 were still there 10 years later. Among those individuals hired in that 10-year period, 71 percent of the women and 49 percent of the men were still in the lower salary levels in 1974.”
(Downtown 4/14/93)
Although the Ochs-Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times sometimes poses as being against institutional sexism, the historical practice of the Ochs-Sulzberger Dynasty’s Times in relation to women has never been too democratic. Times publisher Sulzberger’s great-grandfather—Adolph Ochs—“fought personally and in his paper’s editorials against women’s right to vote” and “during the four decades that Adolph Ochs held sway, only four women worked as reporters in the Times’ city room,” according to The Girls In The Balcony: Women, Men and the `New York Times’ by Nan Robertson. The same book also revealed the following news about the Times that is not often seen as being “fit to print” by the editors of the New York Times:
“In 1987 the average salary of men in the news division hired within the previous five years was $13,000 higher than the average salary of women hired during the same period…In 1987 men in the business division with 6 to 10 years of experience earned, on average, $25,000 more than women with the same experience…The masthead, at the top of the editorial page, tells people where the real power lies within the New York Times…By early 1991, only two women were listed there…
“By early 1991 in the newsroom—23 percent of the reporters, correspondents, and critics were women—only 10 percent higher than in 1972, when the women of the Times began organizing. In 1990, the new hires of non-minority women reporters amounted to only 18 percent of the total.”
(Downtown 6/9/93)
Next: The CIA and The 1988 Election of Ex-CIA Director Bush I
Although some U.S. women still like to spend their Sundays and their evenings wading through the Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times, U.S. women were not treated as equals by the Times during most of the 20th Century. As Women And The Mass Media by Matilda Butler and William Paisley noted in 1980:
“In November 1974, six women sued the New York Times. Approximately one year later, the U.S. District Court ordered that the Times release salary information from its computer tapes. In February 1977, the suit was granted a class action status. One year later, analysis of the computer tapes was submitted to the Federal District Court. Although most findings focus on salaries, the report notes that women are 41 percent of the editors and reporters in the United States. However, they are only 16 percent of the editors and reporters at the Times…
“In 1978, the Federal District Court heard testimony that the New York Times pays males more than $3700 more than women. This difference is attributable to sex discrimination…
“When John Aboud analyzed 10 years of salary data from the New York Times, he was able to assess the relative promotion patterns of males and females. He found, for instance, that 84 percent of the women versus 70 percent of the men who were in the lower salary group (one to eight) in 1965 were still there 10 years later. Among those individuals hired in that 10-year period, 71 percent of the women and 49 percent of the men were still in the lower salary levels in 1974.”
(Downtown 4/14/93)
Although the Ochs-Sulzberger Dynasty’s New York Times sometimes poses as being against institutional sexism, the historical practice of the Ochs-Sulzberger Dynasty’s Times in relation to women has never been too democratic. Times publisher Sulzberger’s great-grandfather—Adolph Ochs—“fought personally and in his paper’s editorials against women’s right to vote” and “during the four decades that Adolph Ochs held sway, only four women worked as reporters in the Times’ city room,” according to The Girls In The Balcony: Women, Men and the `New York Times’ by Nan Robertson. The same book also revealed the following news about the Times that is not often seen as being “fit to print” by the editors of the New York Times:
“In 1987 the average salary of men in the news division hired within the previous five years was $13,000 higher than the average salary of women hired during the same period…In 1987 men in the business division with 6 to 10 years of experience earned, on average, $25,000 more than women with the same experience…The masthead, at the top of the editorial page, tells people where the real power lies within the New York Times…By early 1991, only two women were listed there…
“By early 1991 in the newsroom—23 percent of the reporters, correspondents, and critics were women—only 10 percent higher than in 1972, when the women of the Times began organizing. In 1990, the new hires of non-minority women reporters amounted to only 18 percent of the total.”
(Downtown 6/9/93)
Next: The CIA and The 1988 Election of Ex-CIA Director Bush I
Friday, November 9, 2007
`Law School'
(chorus)
They rob you of your life
They beat you when you rebel
They chain you in a cage
George Jackson knew it so well.
(verses)
Law school taught the judge to sentence that man to death
Law school taught the D.A. to try to suppress the Left
Law school trained that youth to lie for the corporate board
Law school pumps out pigs, and justice is ignored. (chorus)
Law school teaches men to twist truth if they can
Law school teaches women to imitate crooked men
Law school trained that youth who sent that Black man to jail
Law school pumps out pigs, and justice does not prevail. (chorus)
Law school excludes the poor who might want to change the rules
Law school excludes the merciful who might seek to be moral
Law school trained that thief to steal for the businessmen
Law school pumps out pigs, and justice does not win. (chorus)
Law school taught the rich to go seek an injunction
Law school taught the tricks so property can be secured
Law school trained that parasite who bullies the working-class
Law school pumps out pigs, but Justice will not submit. (chorus)
The Law School protest folk song was written during the early 1980s, when I was doing political prisoner solidarity work; and when I noticed how uninterested most U.S. university law school professors and U.S. lawyers were in protecting the civil liberties of anti-imperialist political activists, eliminating institutional racism and institutional classism or resisting the growth of the U.S. prisoner-industrial complex during the last years of the 20th century.
Next: Racism and Sexism at the New York Times Historically
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Hillary Clinton's "Yucaipagate" Connection
One of the best friends of 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s husband is a billionaire named Ron Burkle. Besides contributing a lot of money to Democratic Party political campaigns, Burkle is a founder and managing partner of Yucaipa Companies and also sits on the board of directors of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation.
Coincidentally, after he was unable to run for a third-term as U.S. President because of the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Hillary Clinton’s husband was given a multi-million dollar per year job as a “consultant” at Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. And by September 26, 2007, Hillary’s husband was a partner and senior advisor at Burkle’s Los Angeles-based investment and money management firm.
Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies manages about $3 billion for clients like the State of California’s Public Employees Pension System. As a counselor, partner and senior advisor at Burkle’s firm since he moved out of the White House, Hillary’s husband may have used his special political influence to help Yucaipa Companies secure more local and state pension funds as clients for Burkle’s for-profit investment/money management firm. As the New York Times observed in a March 21, 2004 article:
“A small but growing part of the $2 trillion in state and local pension funds is being steered into high-risk investments by pension consultants and others who often have business dealings with the very money managers they recommend…Former President Bill Clinton meets with pension trustees on behalf of the Yucaipa Companies…”
Besides being cozy with Yucaipa Companies founder and Occidental Petroleum corporate board member Burkle [whose Yucaipa firm was the largest shareholder in the Wild Oats grocery store chain before Wild Oats was recently purchased by the Whole Foods grocery store chain), Bill “Yucaipagate” Clinton apparently still exercises a special political influence over Hillary Clinton. As Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodhan Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. observed:
“Since leaving the White House, Mr. Clinton has earned more than $40 million giving speeches—and has entered into business relationship with Mr. Burkle…
“…On…February 15, 2006, the most ambitious money-raising effort for a presidential candidate would be launched in a sumptuous Georgetown home. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the guest of honor. The host was Elizabeth Bagley, President Clinton’s ambassador to Portugal, a friend and confidant of Hillary’s, and an aggressive fund-raiser who had brought in millions for the Clintons and the Democratic Party…
“Even before Hillary announced, Bill served as her advisor, chief strategist, cheerleader and coach.”
Next: Law School protest folk song lyrics
Coincidentally, after he was unable to run for a third-term as U.S. President because of the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Hillary Clinton’s husband was given a multi-million dollar per year job as a “consultant” at Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. And by September 26, 2007, Hillary’s husband was a partner and senior advisor at Burkle’s Los Angeles-based investment and money management firm.
Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies manages about $3 billion for clients like the State of California’s Public Employees Pension System. As a counselor, partner and senior advisor at Burkle’s firm since he moved out of the White House, Hillary’s husband may have used his special political influence to help Yucaipa Companies secure more local and state pension funds as clients for Burkle’s for-profit investment/money management firm. As the New York Times observed in a March 21, 2004 article:
“A small but growing part of the $2 trillion in state and local pension funds is being steered into high-risk investments by pension consultants and others who often have business dealings with the very money managers they recommend…Former President Bill Clinton meets with pension trustees on behalf of the Yucaipa Companies…”
Besides being cozy with Yucaipa Companies founder and Occidental Petroleum corporate board member Burkle [whose Yucaipa firm was the largest shareholder in the Wild Oats grocery store chain before Wild Oats was recently purchased by the Whole Foods grocery store chain), Bill “Yucaipagate” Clinton apparently still exercises a special political influence over Hillary Clinton. As Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodhan Clinton by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. observed:
“Since leaving the White House, Mr. Clinton has earned more than $40 million giving speeches—and has entered into business relationship with Mr. Burkle…
“…On…February 15, 2006, the most ambitious money-raising effort for a presidential candidate would be launched in a sumptuous Georgetown home. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the guest of honor. The host was Elizabeth Bagley, President Clinton’s ambassador to Portugal, a friend and confidant of Hillary’s, and an aggressive fund-raiser who had brought in millions for the Clintons and the Democratic Party…
“Even before Hillary announced, Bill served as her advisor, chief strategist, cheerleader and coach.”
Next: Law School protest folk song lyrics
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Interviewing CBS News' Director of Communications In 1992
On April 8, 1976, Rolling Stone magazine reported that “the Washington Post revealed secret meetings of the executives of the Times and CBS with CIA Director George Bush about CIA infiltration of their companies.” So in a 1992 telephone interview, Downtown asked CBS News’ Director of Communications Tom Goodman, what was CBS’s response to criticism that it had acted as an instrument of the CIA since 1948?
“I’ve never heard any criticism of CBS like that. It’s absurd. It’s hard to respond to criticism that I’m not aware has ever been made by anyone. Who ever made such a criticism?” Goodman replied.
When Downtown mentioned that such criticism was made in former CBS News Correspondent Daniel Schorr’s Clearing The Air book of 1977, Goodman said: “That’s 20 years ago. What has that got to do with today? I’ve only been here 6 years and I don’t know anything about what was written 20 years ago. The CIA doesn’t have anything to do with CBS.”
The CBS News Director of Communications adamantly and “flatly denied” that CBS News has ever been connected to the CIA in either the present or the past. “There is no connection between CBS and the CIA and there never has been any connection between CBS and the CIA,” Goodman insisted.
Asked by Downtown if CBS News also denied that it had ever hired CIA employees in the past, or the present, Goodman answered: “We’ve never hired any CIA employees in the present or the past. I’m not familiar with any charge that we have.”
When Downtown mentioned that a Rolling Stone article of the 1970s had indicated that at least one CIA employee had been hired by CBS News and that former CBS Chairman of the Board William Paley had been connected to the CIA in the past, the CBS News spokesperson replied: “That’s a preposterous and off-base charge. There has never been any connection between CBS News and the CIA, regardless of what’s been printed in some book or article years ago.”
Yet the former Washington Post investigative reporter who helped uncover the 1970s Watergate Scandal, Carl Bernstein, revealed in an article, “The CIA and The Media” (http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php ) which appeared in Rolling Stone magazine on Oct. 20, 1977, that “CIA documents show journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the management of America’s leading news organizations” and “By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: Hillary Clinton’s “Yucaipagate” Connection
“I’ve never heard any criticism of CBS like that. It’s absurd. It’s hard to respond to criticism that I’m not aware has ever been made by anyone. Who ever made such a criticism?” Goodman replied.
When Downtown mentioned that such criticism was made in former CBS News Correspondent Daniel Schorr’s Clearing The Air book of 1977, Goodman said: “That’s 20 years ago. What has that got to do with today? I’ve only been here 6 years and I don’t know anything about what was written 20 years ago. The CIA doesn’t have anything to do with CBS.”
The CBS News Director of Communications adamantly and “flatly denied” that CBS News has ever been connected to the CIA in either the present or the past. “There is no connection between CBS and the CIA and there never has been any connection between CBS and the CIA,” Goodman insisted.
Asked by Downtown if CBS News also denied that it had ever hired CIA employees in the past, or the present, Goodman answered: “We’ve never hired any CIA employees in the present or the past. I’m not familiar with any charge that we have.”
When Downtown mentioned that a Rolling Stone article of the 1970s had indicated that at least one CIA employee had been hired by CBS News and that former CBS Chairman of the Board William Paley had been connected to the CIA in the past, the CBS News spokesperson replied: “That’s a preposterous and off-base charge. There has never been any connection between CBS News and the CIA, regardless of what’s been printed in some book or article years ago.”
Yet the former Washington Post investigative reporter who helped uncover the 1970s Watergate Scandal, Carl Bernstein, revealed in an article, “The CIA and The Media” (http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php ) which appeared in Rolling Stone magazine on Oct. 20, 1977, that “CIA documents show journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the management of America’s leading news organizations” and “By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: Hillary Clinton’s “Yucaipagate” Connection
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
CBS's Secret 1976 Luncheon With Former President Bush I
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| 1970s CIA Director Bush's official Company portrait |
Schorr later found out what was talked about at former CIA Director Bush I’s secret meeting with Paley, Cronkite, Wallace and Sevareid. According to Clearing The Air, the CBS luncheon for Bush “did not go as” Paley “had hoped” and “What was to be a sociable welcome for the son of the late Senator Prescott Bush, warmly remembered as an early CBS board member, turned, after dessert, into an argument about CIA agents posing as reporters…” According to Clearing The Air:
“Cronkite demanded that Bush disclose the list of news people who actually had been CIA agents. Bush…flatly refused to uncover those who had served the CIA in the past under a promise of eternal confidentiality. At the height of the argument, Paley stepped in graciously supporting his guest and suggesting that it would be best to bury the past.”
On Feb. 17, 1976, the Washington Post also reported that “at the luncheon with CBS, Bush had found support for his idea of burying the past and not trying to expose journalists who had worked for the CIA.”
Although CBS News’ Director of Communications Tom Goodman told Downtown in 1992 that “We’ve never hired any CIA employees in the present or the past,” in Clearing The Air former CBS News Correspondent Schorr noted that in 1976:
“Sig Mickelson, former president of CBS News, was prepared to state that two former CBS stringers had worked for the CIA. On the telephone, Mickelson…told me he had learned from CIA Director Allen Dulles in 1956 that Frank Kearns, stringer in Cairo, was actually in the agency’s employ. So was Austin Goodrich, one-time stringer in Stockholm, about whom Mickelson said he had learned, of all places, in Paley’s office. In October 1954, just back from his introductory tour of European bureaus as head of CBS News, Mickelson said he was called in by Paley and introduced to two CIA officials. They wanted to know why he had not met with Goodrich while in Stockholm, which would have been useful to Goodrich’s cover.”
Although Schorr was originally asked by the CBS Morning News producer at that time, Charles Thompson, to arrange a live interview with Mickelson to talk about CBS’s hiring of CIA employees, the midnight before the interview was to take place the CBS Morning News producer “called in distress to say that he had been ordered by `higher authority’ to cancel the Mickelson interview for the Morning News,” according to Clearing The Air.
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: Interviewing CBS News’ Director of Communications In 1992
Monday, November 5, 2007
CBS's Historical CIA Connection
The CIA apparently utilized CBS as its tool for many years. CBS’s Chairman of the Board for many years was a Columbia University Trustee named William Paley. According to Deborah Davis’ 1979 book Katharine The Great: Katharine Graham and `The Washington Post’: “Paley’s own friendship with [former CIA Director] Allen Dulles is now known to have been one of the most influential and significant in the communications industry; he provided cover for CIA agents, supplied outtakes of new films, debriefed reporters, and in many ways set the standard for future cooperation between the CIA and the major broadcast companies.”
Davis also noted in her book—which Germany’s Green Party nominated for the 1989 Alternative Nobel Prize, after the book was re-issued—that the CBS Evening News anchorman for many years, former CBS Director and former WNET/Channel 13 Trustee Walter Cronkite, was “a man who had experience with American intelligence” and that during the 1950s and early 1960s Washington Post male employees “continued to see Paley and Cronkite every Christmas at a dinner given by Allen Dulles” in Washington, D.C.’s Alibi Club. Although the New York Times noted in its May 20, 1991 issue that the Alibi Club was “an elite group of 50 business executives and political officials” which “meets in a Washington townhouse that features elephant heads and tiger skulls,” Davis noted in her book that membership in the Alibi Club “is limited to men in or close to intelligence and is by invitation only.” Coincidentally, former CIA Director and U.S. President George Bush I was also a member of the men-only Alibi Club.
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: CBS’s Secret 1976 Luncheon With Former President Bush I
Davis also noted in her book—which Germany’s Green Party nominated for the 1989 Alternative Nobel Prize, after the book was re-issued—that the CBS Evening News anchorman for many years, former CBS Director and former WNET/Channel 13 Trustee Walter Cronkite, was “a man who had experience with American intelligence” and that during the 1950s and early 1960s Washington Post male employees “continued to see Paley and Cronkite every Christmas at a dinner given by Allen Dulles” in Washington, D.C.’s Alibi Club. Although the New York Times noted in its May 20, 1991 issue that the Alibi Club was “an elite group of 50 business executives and political officials” which “meets in a Washington townhouse that features elephant heads and tiger skulls,” Davis noted in her book that membership in the Alibi Club “is limited to men in or close to intelligence and is by invitation only.” Coincidentally, former CIA Director and U.S. President George Bush I was also a member of the men-only Alibi Club.
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: CBS’s Secret 1976 Luncheon With Former President Bush I
Sunday, November 4, 2007
The `New York Times' ' Historical CIA Connection
At the New York Times, according to Carl Bernstein’s Oct. 20, 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article (“The CIA And The Media” http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php), the “major” individual in top management whom former CIA Director Allen Dulles dealt with in the 1950s was its then-publisher, former Columbia University Trustee Arthur Hays Sulzberger--who actually signed a “secrecy agreement” with the CIA, vowing to keep the Times’ collaborative relationship to the CIA a secret. Bernstein was told by “a high-level CIA official with a prodigious memory” that “the New York Times provided cover for about 10 CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966.”
The now-deceased former Columbia University Trustee Arthur Hays Sulzberger was the Times’ publisher from 1935 to 1961 and he also served as a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation between 1948 and 1967. The Dec. 8, 1990 issue of the Irish People weekly newspaper also reported that “the senior Sulzberger allowed members of the Times staff to be used for covert CIA operations in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s nephew, Cyrus Sulzberger, also was reported to have ties to the CIA while he worked as the Times’ chief European reporter in the late 1940s and the 1950s, and as a columnist in the 1960s. According to the Dec. 8, 1990 issue of the Irish People: “Cy owned a villa on the Greek Island of Spatsais, and his connections with the CIA—he was a close friend of [now-deceased former CIA Director] Richard Helms—caused many to believe that he himself was an asset of the covert group.” The same newspaper also noted that former Times columnist Cyrus Sulzberger “was also a close friend of Frank Wisner, CIA chief of clandestine operations” and that “there were many persons who publicly and privately said Cy was a CIA man using the Times as a cover.”
From the late 1940s until 1979, according to the Irish People, “Times reporters were routinely debriefed by the CIA after coming back from European assignments” and this policy “may very well continue today [in 1990], if not with the approval of the present publisher, then less formally by agreement of the reporter and his CIA handler.”
Coincidentally, the Times published an article about CIA Operations in 1966. But, according to the Irish People, “the article did not touch on any relationship of the CIA and the media despite the many questions already raised about the Times’ own connection to the Agency.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: CBS’s Historical CIA Connection
The now-deceased former Columbia University Trustee Arthur Hays Sulzberger was the Times’ publisher from 1935 to 1961 and he also served as a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation between 1948 and 1967. The Dec. 8, 1990 issue of the Irish People weekly newspaper also reported that “the senior Sulzberger allowed members of the Times staff to be used for covert CIA operations in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Arthur Hays Sulzberger’s nephew, Cyrus Sulzberger, also was reported to have ties to the CIA while he worked as the Times’ chief European reporter in the late 1940s and the 1950s, and as a columnist in the 1960s. According to the Dec. 8, 1990 issue of the Irish People: “Cy owned a villa on the Greek Island of Spatsais, and his connections with the CIA—he was a close friend of [now-deceased former CIA Director] Richard Helms—caused many to believe that he himself was an asset of the covert group.” The same newspaper also noted that former Times columnist Cyrus Sulzberger “was also a close friend of Frank Wisner, CIA chief of clandestine operations” and that “there were many persons who publicly and privately said Cy was a CIA man using the Times as a cover.”
From the late 1940s until 1979, according to the Irish People, “Times reporters were routinely debriefed by the CIA after coming back from European assignments” and this policy “may very well continue today [in 1990], if not with the approval of the present publisher, then less formally by agreement of the reporter and his CIA handler.”
Coincidentally, the Times published an article about CIA Operations in 1966. But, according to the Irish People, “the article did not touch on any relationship of the CIA and the media despite the many questions already raised about the Times’ own connection to the Agency.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: CBS’s Historical CIA Connection
Saturday, November 3, 2007
U.S. Mass Media Collaboration With The CIA Historically
In his Oct. 20, 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, “The CIA And The Media,” ( http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php ) Carl Bernstein wrote that “More than 400 American journalists…have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.” Bernstein reported that for at least 25 years U.S. Establishment “journalists provided a full-range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies.” According to Bernstein, “reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA,” “Editors shared their staffs,” and “some of the journalists” who collaborated with the CIA prior to 1977 “were Pulitzer Prize winners.” Bernstein also revealed in his unpublicized 1977 article that:
“Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System [CBS], Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company [ABC], The National Broadcasting Company [NBC], the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald…”
The U.S. Establishment mass media’s policy of collaboration with the CIA proved to be of great use to the CIA in its spying activity, as well as in its public opinion manipulation activities. According to Bernstein, “the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA.” Bernstein also reported in 1977 that:
“The Agency’s special relationships with the so-called `majors’ in publishing and broadcasting enabled the CIA to post some of its most valuable operatives abroad without exposure for more than two decades…Agency files show officials at the highest levels of the CIA (usually director or deputy director) dealt personally with a single designated individual in the top management of the cooperating news organization. The aid furnished often took two forms: providing jobs and credentials…for CIA operatives about to be posted in foreign capitals; and lending the Agency the undercover services of reporters already on staff, including some of the best-known correspondents in the business.”
Bernstein also indicated that “The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed session with members of Congress." And according to the Clearing The Air book by former CBS News Correspondent Daniel Schorr:
“The congressional investigations failed to get to the bottom of the CIA infiltration of the news media…[the now-deceased former CIA Director] Colby said that during 1975, the CIA was using `media cover’ for 11 agents…but no amount of questioning would persuade him to talk about the publishers and network chieftains who had cooperated at the top.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: The New York Times ' Historical CIA Connection
“Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System [CBS], Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company [ABC], The National Broadcasting Company [NBC], the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald…”
The U.S. Establishment mass media’s policy of collaboration with the CIA proved to be of great use to the CIA in its spying activity, as well as in its public opinion manipulation activities. According to Bernstein, “the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA.” Bernstein also reported in 1977 that:
“The Agency’s special relationships with the so-called `majors’ in publishing and broadcasting enabled the CIA to post some of its most valuable operatives abroad without exposure for more than two decades…Agency files show officials at the highest levels of the CIA (usually director or deputy director) dealt personally with a single designated individual in the top management of the cooperating news organization. The aid furnished often took two forms: providing jobs and credentials…for CIA operatives about to be posted in foreign capitals; and lending the Agency the undercover services of reporters already on staff, including some of the best-known correspondents in the business.”
Bernstein also indicated that “The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed session with members of Congress." And according to the Clearing The Air book by former CBS News Correspondent Daniel Schorr:
“The congressional investigations failed to get to the bottom of the CIA infiltration of the news media…[the now-deceased former CIA Director] Colby said that during 1975, the CIA was using `media cover’ for 11 agents…but no amount of questioning would persuade him to talk about the publishers and network chieftains who had cooperated at the top.”
(Downtown 6/24/92)
Next: The New York Times ' Historical CIA Connection
Friday, November 2, 2007
Vice-President Dick Cheney's Pre-1991 Rise To Power
The current U.S. Vice-President, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney, gained experience representing Chevron’s special Wyoming interests when he served as Wyoming’s Republican Congressional Representative between 1979 and 1989 and voted for limiting the size of the windfall profit taxes on Chevron’s profits. As Wyoming’s only representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, Vice-President Cheney also voted against the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights for women, opposed busing to achieve racial desegregation in the public schools and voted in favor of draft registration, continued military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and prayer in the public schools.
In addition, Cheney voted against a nuclear moratorium, against a nuclear arms freeze and against a proposal requiring the U.S. president to notify Congress within 48 hours of the start of any secret intelligence operation. In 1989, Current Biography noted that then-Secretary of Defense Cheney believed “that the president’s ability to implement foreign policy had been hampered by repeated congressional attempts to impose restrictions on the White House” and that Cheney “sided with the House’s so-called conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats on every one of the 50 votes in which the two groups joined forces.”
Cheney first acquired the political power to serve transnational oil company interests during the Nixon-Watergate era. And by 1990 the power of then-Pentagon Czar Cheney included the power to influence the allocation of public funds to U.S. cultural institutions and artistic and literary individuals. Former Secretary of Defense Cheney’s wife, Lynne Vincent-Cheney, was the chairperson of the national Endowment for the Humanities (which dishes out public grant money each year in the U.S. cultural world) in the early 1990s, for instance.
The husband of former National Endowment for the Humanities Chairperson Lynne Vincent-Cheney was quick to order huge numbers of U.S. military forces to mass both in Panama and near the borders of Kuwait and Iraq, after George W. Bush’s father (former U.S. President Bush I) named him Secretary of Defense in March 1989. Yet during the Vietnam War era the staunchly pro-war and politically conservative Dick Cheney did not risk his own life on the battlefield. After graduating from the University of Wyoming at the age of 24, Cheney went into Republican Party politics instead of the U.S. military and did not personally fight in the Indochina War that he helped prolong, by serving as former President Nixon’s Deputy White House press counselor. Unlike many 1990s [and 21st-century] antiwar activists like Ron Kovic, former Secretary of Defense and current U.S. Vice-President Cheney lacks any kind of military combat experience.
The U.S. civilian responsible for coordinating the 1991 U.S. military attack on Iraq was born in Nebraska in 1941, grew up in Wyoming, attended Yale University for three semesters before dropping out and graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1965. After receiving academic recognition and an internship recommendation from NYU’s Center for Education in Politics, Cheney secured the job in 1969 which enabled him to quickly jump into Washington D.C. Establishment circles. He was hired as a special assistant to President Nixon’s Office of Economic Opportunity Director Donald Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld, a former Republican Congressional Representative from Illinois, became Nixon’s White House press counselor in 1970, Cheney followed Rumsfeld into the White House as Rumsfeld’s deputy. When Rumsfeld became Nixon’s Cost-of-Living Council director in 1971, Cheney was named Rumsfeld’s Assistant Director for Operations. In 1973, however, Cheney gave up his government job to become a 32-year-old vice-president of Bradley Woods & Co., which is, according to Current Biography, “a Washington-based investment firm that advises private industry on legislative issues.”
After Nixon was forced to resign because of his Watergate affair crimes in August 1974, however, Cheney’s “Godfather-Rabbi” called upon the 33-year-old to again become his “deputy” when President Gerald Ford appointed Rumsfeld to head his presidential transition team. When Rumsfeld was named by Ford to become the new U.S. President’s special assistant, Rumsfeld again brought Cheney along with him as “deputy” to the President’s special assistant. According to Current Biography, during the first year of the Ford Presidency “in all but title, Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff and Cheney was his alter ego.” When Rumsfeld was named Ford’s Secretary of Defense in November 1975, Cheney succeeded him as White House Chief of Staff. Nearly 14 years later, Cheney, himself, was named U.S. Defense Secretary—despite his health problem of having had three heart attacks before reaching the age of 50. Cheney’s “Godfather-Rabbi,” Rumsfeld, meanwhile, sat on the board of directors of Sears Roebuck, Kellogg Company, Union Camp, Vulcan Materials and the RAND Corporation military research think-tank during the 1990s (after sitting on the board of directors of G.D. Searle & Co., Eastern Airlines, Bendix Corporation and the People’s Energy Corporation in the 1980s).
(Downtown 12/12/90)
[And when Rumsfeld’s “alter ego” became U.S. Vice-President in 2001, Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon as U.S. Secretary of Defense again during the early years of the administration of former President Bush I’s son, George W. Bush.]
Next: U.S. Mass Media Collaboration With The CIA Historically
In addition, Cheney voted against a nuclear moratorium, against a nuclear arms freeze and against a proposal requiring the U.S. president to notify Congress within 48 hours of the start of any secret intelligence operation. In 1989, Current Biography noted that then-Secretary of Defense Cheney believed “that the president’s ability to implement foreign policy had been hampered by repeated congressional attempts to impose restrictions on the White House” and that Cheney “sided with the House’s so-called conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats on every one of the 50 votes in which the two groups joined forces.”
Cheney first acquired the political power to serve transnational oil company interests during the Nixon-Watergate era. And by 1990 the power of then-Pentagon Czar Cheney included the power to influence the allocation of public funds to U.S. cultural institutions and artistic and literary individuals. Former Secretary of Defense Cheney’s wife, Lynne Vincent-Cheney, was the chairperson of the national Endowment for the Humanities (which dishes out public grant money each year in the U.S. cultural world) in the early 1990s, for instance.
The husband of former National Endowment for the Humanities Chairperson Lynne Vincent-Cheney was quick to order huge numbers of U.S. military forces to mass both in Panama and near the borders of Kuwait and Iraq, after George W. Bush’s father (former U.S. President Bush I) named him Secretary of Defense in March 1989. Yet during the Vietnam War era the staunchly pro-war and politically conservative Dick Cheney did not risk his own life on the battlefield. After graduating from the University of Wyoming at the age of 24, Cheney went into Republican Party politics instead of the U.S. military and did not personally fight in the Indochina War that he helped prolong, by serving as former President Nixon’s Deputy White House press counselor. Unlike many 1990s [and 21st-century] antiwar activists like Ron Kovic, former Secretary of Defense and current U.S. Vice-President Cheney lacks any kind of military combat experience.
The U.S. civilian responsible for coordinating the 1991 U.S. military attack on Iraq was born in Nebraska in 1941, grew up in Wyoming, attended Yale University for three semesters before dropping out and graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1965. After receiving academic recognition and an internship recommendation from NYU’s Center for Education in Politics, Cheney secured the job in 1969 which enabled him to quickly jump into Washington D.C. Establishment circles. He was hired as a special assistant to President Nixon’s Office of Economic Opportunity Director Donald Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld, a former Republican Congressional Representative from Illinois, became Nixon’s White House press counselor in 1970, Cheney followed Rumsfeld into the White House as Rumsfeld’s deputy. When Rumsfeld became Nixon’s Cost-of-Living Council director in 1971, Cheney was named Rumsfeld’s Assistant Director for Operations. In 1973, however, Cheney gave up his government job to become a 32-year-old vice-president of Bradley Woods & Co., which is, according to Current Biography, “a Washington-based investment firm that advises private industry on legislative issues.”
After Nixon was forced to resign because of his Watergate affair crimes in August 1974, however, Cheney’s “Godfather-Rabbi” called upon the 33-year-old to again become his “deputy” when President Gerald Ford appointed Rumsfeld to head his presidential transition team. When Rumsfeld was named by Ford to become the new U.S. President’s special assistant, Rumsfeld again brought Cheney along with him as “deputy” to the President’s special assistant. According to Current Biography, during the first year of the Ford Presidency “in all but title, Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff and Cheney was his alter ego.” When Rumsfeld was named Ford’s Secretary of Defense in November 1975, Cheney succeeded him as White House Chief of Staff. Nearly 14 years later, Cheney, himself, was named U.S. Defense Secretary—despite his health problem of having had three heart attacks before reaching the age of 50. Cheney’s “Godfather-Rabbi,” Rumsfeld, meanwhile, sat on the board of directors of Sears Roebuck, Kellogg Company, Union Camp, Vulcan Materials and the RAND Corporation military research think-tank during the 1990s (after sitting on the board of directors of G.D. Searle & Co., Eastern Airlines, Bendix Corporation and the People’s Energy Corporation in the 1980s).
(Downtown 12/12/90)
[And when Rumsfeld’s “alter ego” became U.S. Vice-President in 2001, Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon as U.S. Secretary of Defense again during the early years of the administration of former President Bush I’s son, George W. Bush.]
Next: U.S. Mass Media Collaboration With The CIA Historically
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Is Columbia University's 21st-Century Campus Expansion Project Legal?
The Columbia University administration wants to expand its campus into a West Harlem residential neighborhood that’s north of West 125th Street. Yet there is apparently some legal basis for arguing that elite private universities like Columbia should not be allowed to locate in residential districts as a matter of right. Some city governments, for instance, have been allowed to legally exclude universities like Columbia from expanding their campuses into residential neighborhoods when the campus expansion projects weren’t in the public interest or were primarily for business purposes.
Next: Vice-President Dick Cheney’s Pre-1991 Rise To Power
Next: Vice-President Dick Cheney’s Pre-1991 Rise To Power
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