IDA's Current War-Related Research Questions

The Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] continues to recruit graduate students from U.S. university campuses to perform Iraq war-related research for the Pentagon in this 21st-century “era of permanent war and anti-war blogging.” According to the IDA website (www.ida.org), U.S. graduate students who become research staff members at IDA’s Alexandria, Virginia research facility “will be challenged” by the following types of war-related research questions:

“What are the new roles and responsibilities of the various combatant commands as the United States confronts new threats and adversaries?

“How can the Department of Defense exploit advanced technologies and new operating concepts?

“How do you develop new, robust networking among soldiers, sensors and systems?

“What technologies should be used to detect mines and unexploded ordnance? and

“What economic effect does the increased rate of guard and reserve mobilizations have on employers?”
Perhaps IDA research staff members and the U.S. university-affiliated folks who sit on the IDA board of trustees these days should also be asked to answer a sixth war-related research question: How many Afghan and Iraqi civilians have been killed since 2001 by the weapons systems that IDA research staff members and U.S. university researchers have helped develop since the Institute for Defense Analyses was created in 1956?

Next: The People’s Folksinger lyrics (for Phil Ochs)

Hillary Clinton's Blind Trust Revisited

Among the files pulled from the White House office of 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s former law firm and business partner, Vince Foster, following his death in July 1993 was apparently a file titled “Clintons’ Blind Trust.” As Blood Sport by James Stewart noted in 1996:

“[Former White House Counsel] Nussbaum called Maggie Williams, the first lady’s chief of staff, and asked her to remove the Clintons’ personal papers…Among the materials were files on `Whitewater Development’; the Clintons’ income taxes, including materials on how to treat the sale of the Clintons’ interest in Whitewater; the `CLINTONS’ BLIND TRUST’; `HRC: Personal And Confidential’; `HRC: Financial’; and a file labelled `Clintons financial statement.’”

Prior to being named by the Clintons to invest their Blind Trust stock portfolio, Essex Investment Management Chairman Joseph McNay revealed his investment philosophy in a chart that was published in the June 25, 1990 issue of Barron’s, titled “McNay’s Picks,” which indicated the specific stocks which the Clintons’ stock portfolio would likely contain. The stocks McNay “picked” in June 1990 were: 1. Amgen; 2. Chiron; 3. Cosillium; 4. Geraghty & Miller; 5. Harding Associates; 6. Intel; 7. Knowledgeware; 8. Motorola; 9. Sage Software; 10. Schlumberger; 11. Structural Dynamics; 12. Synooptics; 13. Waste Management [WAX]; and 14. Weatherford I.G.P..

McNay again revealed his investment philosophy in an article which appeared in the August 1993 issue of Forbes magazine, titled “The Long And The Short Of It.” In this article, McNay indicated that he liked Motorola, L.M. Ericsson, General Instruments, McCaw, MCI, TCI, Time Warner, Associated Natural Gas, Tejas Gas, Seagull Energy, Enron Oil & Gas, Apache, Noble Affiliates, Parker & Parsley Petroleum, Western Co. of North America, BJ Services and Weatherford International; but remained `short’ on “stocks that shone during most of the 1980s and early 1990s: Philip Morris, WalMart, Nike” and “on Dell, Apple Compaq and Structural Dynamics.”

A U.S. government official apparently called Essex to warn McNay not to talk to the press about his “investment philosophy.” But the Clinton Administration’s Office of Government Ethics didn’t order the Clintons’ Blind Trust trustee, Boston Harbor Trust, to pick a new money manager; so that Bill and Hillary would actually be “blind” as to how their portfolio was being invested while Hillary’s husband made White House decisions affecting its profitability. (Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 11/6/96)

According to CDA/Spectrum, a Rockville, Maryland research firm, Essex Investment Management’s stock holdings at the end of June 1996 included $1.7 million in Amoco, $10 million in Belco Oil & Gas, $2.5 million in Benton Oil & Gas, $613,000 in Chevron, $1.3 million in Exxon, $770,000 in Mobil, $12.6 million in Ranger Oil, $661,000 in Royal Dutch Petroleum, $1 million in Rutherford-Moran Oil and $816,000 in Texaco stocks. In July 1993, Bill and Hillary picked Essex to invest their blind trust stock portfolio after a May 1993 consultation in the White House between Hillary and Essex honcho Joe McNay in which McNay discussed his “investment philosophy.” (Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 12/25/96)

Next: IDA’s Current War-Related Research Questions

Hillary Clinton's Republican Party Ties

After the right-wing Australian-bred global media baron, Rupert Murdoch, began to politically support 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton in her 2006 campaign to recapture one of New York State’s seats in the U.S. Senate and held a fund-raiser for the former Arkansas governor’s wife, some liberal Democratic voters who grew up in New York State were surprised. Yet long before Hillary Clinton also accepted an individual campaign contribution of $4,200 from Rupert Murdoch on July 26, 2006, she had had historical ties to the Republican Party. For most of the 1960s, Hillary Clinton actually worked for Republican Party candidates, including the 1964 Republican Party presidential candidate who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act: Barry Goldwater. As Hillary: Her True Story by Norman King recalled:

“Hillary’s grandfather and several uncles…were involved in local politics in Chicago. They were Republicans, of course…Hillary was a teenage Goldwater supporter…She was the daughter of Republicans, and a Republican at that point in time by heritage. Kennedy’s presidency—and his assassination—had not changed her political leanings at all…”

The same book also noted that Hillary Clinton’s “favourite poli-sci professor” at Wellesley College was a man named Dr. Alan Schechter and that Schechter said that “Hillary was never radical.” (Downtown 11/24/93)

Perhaps that’s one reason the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate was possibly involved in Arkansas’s “Whitewatergate Scandal” which, according to the New York Times (11/2/93) “focuses on questionable financial dealings involving the savings and loan, called Madison Guaranty, from which Mr. Clinton benefited both personally and politically” which was owned by James McDougal—“one of Mr. Clinton’s closest associates in Arkansas” who was “at various times, his business partner, political fund raiser, family banker and senior aide when Mr. Clinton was Governor of Arkansas.” The Times also noted that in 1978 McDougal and his wife “brought Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton into a real estate deal, buying 200 acres of the Ozarks in northern Arkansas” and set up a real estate business called Whitewater Development.

The Clintons’ Whitewater business partner then bought Arkansas’s Madison Guaranty Bank and during the 1980s—while Bill Clinton was Arkansas governor—McDougal hired Hillary Clinton to be a Madison Guaranty lawyer. He then apparently shifted funds from Madison Guaranty to the Clintons’ Whitewater real estate firm, before his savings and loan association eventually folded.

Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story by Judith Warner also recalled:

“…It turned out that the Clintons had improperly deducted at least $5,000 on their personal tax returns in 1984 and 1985 for interest paid on a portion of at least $30,000 in bank loan payments that the real estate company, Whitewater Development, made for them. The deduction saved them about $1,000 in taxes.”

Yet, ironically, despite their apparent failure to fill out their 1984 and 1985 tax returns in a legally proper way, both former Democratic President Bill Clinton and 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton were Yale Law School graduates. (Downtown 1/19/94)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Blind Trust Revisited

Woody Guthrie's FBI File Revisited

In a July 15, 1946 letter, Woody Guthrie wrote the following:

“I have decided, long ago, that my songs and ballads would not get the hugs and kisses of the capitalistic `experts,’ simply because I believe that the real folk history of this country finds its center and its hub in the fight of the union members against the hired gun thugs of the big owners. It is for this reason I have never really, sincerely, expected nor dimly prayed, nor hoped for a single solitary minute for a penny’s worth of help from the hand of our landlord and ruler….
“To the big owners, an artist of any note or fame, that can be said to work or fight over on the union side, is classed by the big boys as a soldier, a technical, or an artistic captain or a general. The money paid to clip off working class artists may start at a measley Ten or Fifteen Thousand, and run up very quick to the sum of, A Hundred, Two Hundred Thousand, or a Half Million long greens. (This is no money at all to the big handlers that toss bales of money back and forth across their tables to the tune of a Million, a Billion, or more, Dollars)….
“It is not only a question of buying you and your art out of circulation, to keep you from stirring up your people against their blind owners; it is, lots of times a question of blocking your hand on every side, or causing you to get all lost and tangled up in a thousand traps of their psychological, emotional, economical, legal and illegal sorts of personal warfare. This will take the form of bribery, social disgrace, exposes’, running down your work, discouraging your talents, and insulting you on every turn.”
Coincidentally, among the 55 pages contained in Woody Guthrie’s de-classified FBI file (100-29988-5) is a July 15, 1943 Memorandum for E.A. Tamm, regarding “Department of Agriculture Nationwide Production `It’s Up To You’,” from D. M. Ladd of the FBI which states:

“I am attaching a program of the production `It’s Up To You,’ which was staged at the Department of Agriculture Auditorium in Washington, D.C. for a ten day period commencing on June 22, 1943. The production was attended by Special Agent [censored] and because of the tenor of the production Agent [censored] checked the Bureau file and ascertained that the following named individuals connected with the production of this show are either closely associated with the Communist Party or members thereof: Earl Robinson, Woody Guthrie…

“…In November, 1942 the Baltimore Field Office reported that through the medium of a confidential informant it was learned that a mass meeting was held at the negro Elk’s Hall in Baltimore, on which occasion the speakers were James Ford, an official of the Communist Party, USA, and Woody Guthrie. Guthrie is identified as having associated with one John R. Forrest, a song writer…Forrest is the subject of a Bureau file and is closely associated with Communist and Communist infiltrated groups in and around Los Angeles, California. Guthrie has been a resident of both New York City and Los Angeles.”
For more information about Woody Guthrie’s life and his historical impact on U.S. cultural life, you can check out the official Woody Guthrie website at www.woodyguthrie.org

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Republican Party Ties

Columbia University President Opposes Palestinian Solidarity Boycott

As the Stop The Wall website (www.stopthewall.org) notes in its boycott section:

“The academic boycott calls upon universities, academic institutions, students, and scholars to stop cooperation with their Israeli counterparts. Israeli academic institutions and scholars are not only instrumental in perpetuating and teaching Israeli racist and colonial ideologies and repressing internal dissent, but these institutions are also places where the theories, plans, and projects of Israeli Occupation and Apartheid are elaborated and intellectually supported. The academic boycott asks the student movements and the international academic community to take up their responsibility as intellectual leaders to uphold and promote the ideals of justice, freedom, and equality and to oppose colonial apartheid policies such as those inflicted upon the Palestinian people. Academia can never be “neutral”; academics need to choose between supporting the status quo or being part of a movement to promote social change and justice.”

But on June 12, 2007, Washington Post Company board member and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said:

“…I am profoundly disturbed by the recent vote by Britain’s new University and College Union to advance a boycott against Israeli academic institutions. …At Columbia I am proud to say that we embrace Israeli scholars and universities that the UCU is now all too eager to isolate….Therefore, if the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish. Boycott us, then, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education.”

Yet as the Stop The Wall website’s boycott section reveals:

“Noted Israeli historian and University of Haifa Professor Ilan Pappe has estimated that only 100 out of 9,000 Israeli academics have `raised their voice against the occupation,' and some of those 100 are in danger of losing their jobs because of their stated political positions. (Quotation from www.inminds.com).

“Over the last 50 years, during which Israel has committed incessant crimes against the Palestinian population, no clear opposition has come from Israeli universities…. Instead, Israeli academic institutions have continued to maintain their strong ties with the state’s political and military elite through close cooperation, developing research, strategies, and projects for the oppression of the Palestinian people…..

“The Palestinian population, as well as other political opponents of Israeli state ideology, cannot see these institutions as anything but instruments for perpetuating discrimination and apartheid rule…. Israeli academics who support the boycott understand and accept this as a temporary personal inconvenience that is incomparable with the systematic suffering of the Palestinian people.

“At this very moment, Israel is destroying the Palestinian academy and educational system as a whole through closures, the targeting of students and professors, and the denial of access to educational facilities through the construction of the Apartheid Wall and other forms of Bantustanization of the Palestinian people. At such a moment, safeguarding an Israeli academy that is supportive of these crimes is not supporting intellectual freedom, but rather supporting its destruction.”

Ironically, although Columbia University is still eager to “embrace Israeli scholars and universities,” it apparently hasn’t rushed to hire the U.S. scholar who was denied tenure at DePaul University for political reasons, Norman Finkelstein, to teach a course at Columbia on Zionism during the 2007-2008 academic year.

Next: Woody Guthrie’s FBI File Revisited

Hillary Clinton's Rose Law Firm Clients

In 1991, 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton took home over $200,000 from her Senior Partner position in the Rose Law firm. In addition to representing GM, Hillary’s corporate law firm represented the special interests of the following clients in 1991: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Stephens Inc., Worthen Banking Corporation; Arkansas-Oklahoma Gas Corp.; ALCOA; The Equitable Life Assurance Society; General Electric; John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.; International Paper Co.; Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.; New York Life Insurance Co.; Prudential Insurance Co.; USX Corp; and the Union National Bank of Arkansas. (Downtown 8/26/92)

Coincidentally, the New York Times (2/26/94) noted that Rose Law firm Administrative Partner Ronald Clark “said the Rose Law firm began a policy of shredding confidential client material in 1992, as the law firm was becoming the focus of more attention because of Mr. Clinton’s campaign” for U.S. president during 1992. The Times also reported that “Mrs. Clinton was also among the most important state figures involved in the selection of judges” and that Hillary’s critics “say Mrs. Clinton represented her own business partner before state officials appointed by her husband.” (Downtown March 16, 1994)

Next: Columbia University President Opposes Palestinian Solidarity Boycott

Woody Guthrie's FBI File

In a July 15, 1946 letter, Woody Guthrie wrote the following:

“I have never sung nor made songs just to entertain the upper classes, but to curse their clawing, reckless racketeers, and to warn the nervous ones that live and die by greed....

“Not all of us folk and ballad makers and singers stand where I stand. Not all of them see the world as I see it. Some would rather be a `character’ and to be fotographed and filmed, broadcast and recorded, and paid big money by the big money side. They would rather occupy a certain social position, to be well known, to play the game of publicity gangsters and to enjoy the crowds that clap and yell when you tell them directly or indirectly that this old world is okie dokie, she is all right, she is a nice good place to live on, and if you kick or argue, or make too much noise with your mouth, then you are just a native barnkicker, and a griper, and you are kicked out by your own inability to `cooperate’ with the high moguls…

“If your work gets to be labeled as communist or even as communistic or even as radically leaning in the general direction of bolshevism, then, of course, you are black balled, black listed, chalked up as a revolutionary bomb thrower, and you invite the whole weight of the capitalist machine to be thrown against you…”
Coincidentally, among the 55 pages in Woody Guthrie’s de-classified FBI file [100-29988] , is a July 18, 1941 “Memorandum to Mr. Matthew F. McGuire, The Assistant to the Attorney General” from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover which states:

“From a confidential source, information has been furnished this Bureau that one Woodrow W. Guthrie, who is employed by the Department of the Interior, is allegedly a member of the Communist Party. This individual is reported as being at the present time on the West Coast, engaged in the making of a motion picture for the Department of the Interior…”

Also contained in Woody Guthrie’s de-classified FBI file is an October 17, 1941 letter to the “Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco, California” from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, “Re: Woodrow W. Guthrie, Internal Security”, which states:

“…Guthrie is no longer an employee of another Governmental agency and in the event the files of your field division reflect the desirability of conducting an investigation into his activities and sympathies in order to determine whether they are inimical to the best interests of this Government you are at liberty to do so.”
Next: Hillary Clinton’s Rose Law Firm Clients