U.S. Political Prisoner Marilyn Buck: A 1994 "Downtown" Interview--Part 1

Marilyn Buck is a former 1960s antiwar radical and 1970s and 1980s fugitive who is presently serving an 80-year sentence in a federal prison for women in Dublin, California. Buck was targeted in the early 1970s by the FBI’s COINTELPRO because of her support for the Black liberation movement and in 1973 she received a 10-year sentence for buying two boxes of ammunition with false ID.

In 1977, after more than four years in prison, and repeated parole denial, she was granted a furlough from which she did not return. She remained a fugitive until being captured in 1985. She was then tried and convicted in Downtown Manhattan in 1987 for participating in several bank robberies and in the freeing of Assata Shakur, an African-American political prisoner. In the 1990s, additional time was added to her sentence after she and six other activists were charged in Washington, D.C. with conspiring to bomb the U.S. Capitol.

After the surrender of former 1960s radical and fugitive Kathy Power in 1993, Newsweek magazine published a cover story on Power’s odyssey. Following is the first part of a 1994 interview with Buck that appeared in the January 19, 1994 issue of Downtown in which she commented on the Newsweek article about Kathy Power.

Why do you think Newsweek chose to do the story on Kathy Power at this time?
Marilyn Buck: In a capitalist society, fame and recognition are commodities, usually with very short sales life. The moment is exploited for all its worth; often times by the individual or institution in the spotlight, but all the time by the media, the illusion makers. They create the saints and the demons.

Captures, particularly surrenders, are moments of celebration for the state—a chance to affirm its power, despite its being disavowed or challenged. Imagine challenging the power of the biggest, baddest, domestic and international military machine on the planet! How dare they, we, she…me! To psychologize, and label such behavior as deviant is imperative. Never again does the state want to see an uncontrollable or unpredictable rise of different sectors of the population against its policies and programs, or its existence as such. The U.S. incessantly broadcast that the bombing of Iraq and the supposed national consensus supporting that manufactured military maneuver has laid to rest the infamy of the defeat in Vietnam. It has a pathological fear of decolonialization and national self-determination. Standing in the ‘90s, the propaganda establishment seizes every opportunity to declare the ‘60s—that time of standing up for liberation, justice, self-determination, and against the status quo of white Amerika—dead, an aberration.

Kathy Power’s surrender was perfect for spectatularization. Her surrender was a perfect vehicle to reinforce—to use a psychological term—the `see-what-happens-when-you-stray-from-white-Amerika’ line. This is not the first time sensational stories have hit the press about the radical returned to the fold. Most recently, there was an interview in the New York Times Living Section with Bernardine Dohrn. There is a fascination with a woman who defied the system, who she is today; and a reassurance that she has been cured of `excessive opposition.’

How would you characterize Newsweek’s political and ideological slant on the Power article and the accompanying piece by Jane Alpert?
Buck: Newsweek fulfilled its ideological and political role in how it presented this story: Woman-in-misery-because-of-her-political-past. They would have liked to have squeezed out an admission of remorse, but an admission of depression was all they could get.

I think it’s interesting that the Newsweek article chose not to say anything substantial about her current political views. Is she still an antiracist, pro-Black, against U.S. imperialism? Her statement upon surrender is not reported in this article. Perhaps because she did not capitulate in her earlier beliefs that the war was wrong, that Black liberation was important to support?

Newsweek ignored what she said, and instead relied on a pseudo-psychological rendering—a focus on depression and the Betty Crocker lifestyle. Of course, they forget to cite any statistics on the prevalence of clinical depression in white middle-class women in their 40s.

By concentrating on the past, the `moment’ and the flight, as well as the reintegration into the safe white world, the media did not have to say a word about who Kathy Power is as a political person living in the world. Another reassurance to the readers. From reading Newsweek and other articles, I don’t have much of a clue as to who she is socially or politically. My first response was, `oh, the prodigal son/daughter line.’

If Kathy Power’s depression doesn’t provide an example of `divine punishment,’ then Jane’s middle Amerikan nightmare should flesh it out—struggle against the system is a childish illusion, a romantic diversion that turns out not to be such a lark after all. Jane’s piece is intended to say `resistance doesn’t pay,’ from one who can say she too challenged the state, but repented. Under the guise of feminism, Alpert continues to be quite a vocal mouthpiece for reconciliation with the system, patriarchal or not.

The actual intent of the Newsweek article, as well as the majority of the `establishment’ media is to continue to delegitimize resistance to U.S. imperialism and capitalism touted as `democracy.’ Despite its inherent weaknesses, the U.S. has emerged more predatory in the absence of any countervailing power. It is a warning…`Don’t even try it.’

Even the `Revisiting the Radicals’ gallery sidebar, while stating the bare facts, is designed to say, `see, it is only a phase, YOU CANNOT WIN!’

Why do you think Newsweek uses a lot of psychological jargon in this spread?
Buck: Newsweek uses a psychological format to examine `objects’ of its focus. Also to convince people they know what they are talking about.

The state is obsessed with trying to understand why white people would `drop out’ or challenge the system. They won’t admit that there is something seriously pathological in the system, so they seek to convince the public there is something wrong with those who opposed their system.

The expectations and heady sensation of change of the `60s and ‘70s may be overwhelmed by two decades of unrelenting conformism and systematic desensitization of political, social and moral consciences, but the reality of oppression, exploitation and social injustice is greater than ever. It will not disappear. Even now it is intolerable. Too much white supremacy, too much poverty, prison and social repression. Too little justice and too few jobs. The L.A. uprising was only one seismic shock to this structure. The demand for justice and national liberation has not subsided.

Here in the oppressor nation, there is still a segment of white youth who drop out, become antiestablishment punkers drawn to hip-hop and the rap of the besieged African-American youth, who are alienated and angry, sometimes not yet exactly sure why, but squatting, looking for new forms of protest, examining history, asking questions and rejecting a history of racism and genocide. Youth who are consciously, deliberately opposed to this system. There are still socialists, anarchists, antiracists, antifascists. There are thousands and thousands of women, lesbians who refuse to go back. The potential for struggle within this oppressor nation has not been crushed or thrown into the wastebin of history. (end of part 1).

Next: Hillary Clinton & Madison Guaranty S& L Scandal

Why Clintons' Blind Trust Should Have Been Blind

Any Clinton White House staff member reading Barron’s (6/25/90), Forbes (8/2/93), Pensions & Investment (9/6/93) or Money (11/93) magazine or telephoning CDA Spectrum in Rockville, MD during the 1990s could have obtained a list of specific stocks that 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Blind Trust stock portfolio was likely to then include. Yet there were good reasons why the first Clinton Administration’s Office of Government Ethics should have insured that Bill and Hillary were actually blind to which stocks would likely be contained in their stock portfolio. As the Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance noted:

“An underlying concept is that if a government official does not know the identity of his…financial interests, his…official actions should not be subject to collateral attack by questions of conflict of interest or the appearance of such a conflict. In other words, if the government official does not know what he…owns, it is impossible for him…intentionally to take actions to benefit specifically his…own personal interests.

“Therefore, the general public policy goal to be achieved through the use of blind trusts is an actual `blindness’ or lack of knowledge by the government official with respect to the holdings held in trust…

“…The interested parties will have no knowledge of the trustee’s acquisitions; and thus the government official and the other interested parties will be truly blind with respect to these holdings…Every proposed trustee…must be approved by the Office of Government Ethics. This is essential so that the office can ensure…that the proposed trust arrangement satisfies the letter and spirit of the established standards.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 11/13/96)

After it apparently rubber-stamped the Hillary Clinton’s choice of Essex Investment to begin managing her Blind Trust stock portfolio in July 1993, the Office of Government Ethics apparently talked numerous times by phone with Essex. But in 1996 it wasn’t willing to answer many specific questions from the press about the Clintons’ Blind Trust arrangement. An Official of Government Ethics spokesperson, Norman Smith, told Downtown/Aquarian at that time:

“We’d be happy to answer general questions about our Blind Trust program. But we don’t answer specific questions of the type you ask.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 11/20/96)

After Hillary chose Joseph McNay’s Essex Investment Management firm to handle her “blind trust” in July 1993, Merrill Lynch & Company broker Robert Malloy told the New York Times (10/4/93) that Essex Investment head McNay “had 25 percent of his holdings in insurance stocks” in the early 1980s. The Times also reported that McNay “`still feels good’ about…insurance and reinsurance companies” and “is also interested in health care, especially health care management.” Coincidentally, during her husband’s first term in the White House, Hillary Clinton tried to sell us a health care reform plan that would have likely increased the value of Big Five insurance company stock (such as Prudential's stock) and health care management organization stock.

Besides apparently investing Clintons’ money in insurance company and health care management stock during the 1990s, McNay’s Essex Investment Management firm also managed a $34.8 million stock investment portfolio for Arkansas’s Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in that decade. (Downtown 10/27/93)

The Blind Trust portfolio which Essex Investment managed for Hillary Clinton during the 1990s may also have contained Starbucks stock. When Boston Globe reporters asked Essex honcho Joe McNay “Where are you moving money right now?” in April 1996, the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate’s money manager replied:

“We continue to own…a wide variety of technology and communications stock, and a few highly specialized consumer stocks where there are strong franchises…A reasonable example of that would be Starbucks, where we think there is a strong franchise and good business.”

Next: U.S. Political Prisoner Marilyn Buck: A 1994 Downtown Interview—Part 1

"The Men of Murdoch"

See the men of Murdoch
Read how they do lie
See the men of Murdoch
See how white their minds
Enemies of the workers
Enemies of women
Censors of the Greens:
Boycott Murdoch’s men.

See the men of Murdoch
Defend the white gentry
See the men of Murdoch
Distort our history
Enemies of the ghetto
Enemies of the left
Censors of the Greens:
Boycott Murdoch’s press.

See the men of Murdoch
Lord over women
See the men of Murdoch
With liberal sexist heads
Enemies of the young
Enemies of the poor
Ripping off our culture:
Boycott Murdoch’s corps.

See the men of Murdoch
Remember their names well
`New York Times” castoffs
Versus Green people;
And when we make our move
Against the fascist dogs
All of Murdoch’s men
Won’t save him from our law.

Freedom of the press
Is just another myth
If all Murdoch papers
Exclude all women tough
Enemies of the people
Apologists for male pigs
Traitors to the Greens:
Murdoch’s loyal men.


To listen to "The Men of Murdoch" song, click on the following link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Protest+Folk+Songs/The+Men+of+Murdoch

The Men of Murdoch protest folk song was written during the early 1980s when the Australian global media baron still owned the Village Voice, hadn’t yet created his Fox News television network and was still not considered a serious political threat by most economically secure U.S. left activists.

When Murdoch’s global media empire was on the verge of financial bankruptcy in the early 1990s because of its $8.1 billion debt, Citibank apparently rushed to Murdoch’s financial aid, since “Citibank…had a large investment” in Murdoch’s company, according to Murdoch by William Shawcross. The same book also revealed the following about Citibank’s 1990s connection to Rupert Murdoch:

“Citibank, as News [Corporation]’s largest creditor, was charged with unraveling the mess and restructuring the company. The project, code-named `Dolphin,’ was put in the hands of a 34-year-old vice-president of the bank, Ann Lane. In the next few months Murdoch came to depend on Lane as he had on no one else in his life.

“Lane…attended Berkeley and then spent several years in finance before joining Citibank in 1982.

“She had spent the first part of 1990 restructuring Donald Trump’s company…Lane came to admire Murdoch and to like him…”

As a result, in October 1991, “Murdoch’s empire was saved by the combined efforts of Ann Lane, Dave DeVoe, Richard Searby and others…,” who sold Murdoch’s creditors on a $7.6 billion refinancing plan, according to the Murdoch book.

Although the FCC isn’t supposed to grant U.S. television broadcasting licenses to Australian businessmen who discriminate against women, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation media conglomerate was still licensed to operate the Fox Television network TV stations in the United States in the early 1990s. Yet, according to Murdoch by William Shawcross, “few women were promoted very high in the News Corp. army. (Even Murdoch’s closest admirers have acknowledged his difficulty in dealing with women as senior executives).” (Downtown 5/12/93)

Although the FCC’s cross-ownership rule used to ban one person from owning a TV station and a daily newspaper in the same city, during the early 1990s Rupert Murdoch was allowed to own both the WNYW-TV-Channel 5 station and the New York Post in Manhattan. But in its March 30, 1993 issue, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Rainbow Broadcasting Inc.—a group of Los Angeles-area Hispanic broadcasters and community leaders who have been fighting [Murdoch’s] Fox Television Stations Inc.’s application to renew its FCC license for KTTV-TV in Los Angeles since 1988—and the New York Chapter of the National Hispanic Media Coalition” were opposing Murdoch’s attempt to get the FCC to waive the media cross-ownership ban in Manhattan. The Wall Street Journal also noted that “the two groups—claim the lengthy litigation in the KTTV-TV case has shown a pattern of misconduct by Fox and Mr. Murdoch, and that joint ownership would lead to unjustifiable concentration of media ownership in the New York market.”

Under Murdoch’s ownership in the 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Post became the symbol of U.S. “gutter journalism.” (Downtown 4/14/93)

Coincidentally, Murdoch’s global media conglomerate has recently apparently been seeking to gain control over the Dow Jones Company that publishes the Wall Street Journal. And don’t be surprised if Murdoch ends up gaining control of the New York Times/Boston Globe media conglomerate in the 21st-century, in the same way that he gained control of The Times of London during the 20th century.

Next: Why Clintons’ Blind Trust Should Have Been Blind

"Grit TV" Host and "Blue Grit" Author Laura Flanders: A 1991 Downtown Interview--Part 1

Long before she began working as a Grit TV producer-host, Blue Grit author Laura Flanders used to co-produce and host a non-commercial daily alternative morning news show called Undercurrents with Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight of KPFA’s Flashpoints (http://www.flashpoints.net/) daily alternative evening news show. Following is the first part of a 1991 interview with Flanders that appeared in the June 26, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newsweekly Downtown.

What are you trying to accomplish with the Undercurrents show?
Laura Flanders: I think the goal of the Undercurrents program is to do two things. One is to try to go beyond the surface level of a lot of stories that people are aware of—stories about U.S. intervention in other countries, about covert manipulation of situations in this country and others. Stuff like that. So one part of it is to go deeper into stories.

And the other part of it is to make connections between issues that people are dealing with on a domestic level, on a personal level, and the global outlook. So that, for example, when we talk about a story about worker rights—or what’s happening with certain corporations’ employment practices in Honduras—I really like to be able to look at that same corporation in this country. And try to make a connection to what people are working on here with respect to worker rights or ecology or the involvement of corporations in their government or local administration.

Had you thought you were going to get into radio before you started working on the Undercurrents show?
Flanders: I hadn’t really thought about it. I had been working in film and video. And before that writing a little bit. And it didn’t seem completely foreign to go into radio. I grew up listening to the radio. I was always aware of the existence of radio and would listen to it. I listened to Contragate before I ever worked with the team.

What was Contragate?
Flanders: Contragate was the original program out of which Undercurrents developed. It was an investigation that was begun by Robert Knight and Dennis Bernstein and others into the `Iran-Contra Scandal.’ And it really helped to unravel what became `Contragate.’ Often months and months before details emerged in the mainstream—if they ever did—they were kind of dug up by the reporters of Undercurrents, which at that point was called Contragate.

Why did they change the name, by the way?
Flanders: After two years of fairly strict concentration on the “Iran-Contra Affair” and U.S. covert operations in Central America and the Middle East, the program expanded to address U.S. foreign policy and its impact at home and abroad—and its execution through covert and overt policies—on a much broader scale. I was actually brought in at just the time at which it was kind of expanding beyond just the “Iran-Contra Affair.” We started to address a lot more issues. So we thought we should change the name. And Robert Knight actually came up with the name of Undercurrents, which was meant to suggest the sort of current that flows against the mainstream. It was a play on those two words that represents a kind of alternative way of thinking of things, and an alternative body of opinion and strength. It’s a very sort of strong current that flows against what appears on the surface.

How do you go about producing Undercurrents? Does it involve a lot of work—or do you just go into the studio?
Flanders: A lot of work. Enormous amounts of work. On the producing side, it involves the work, obviously, of any report. Of doing research and trying to understand the issues and look at, in any given situation, what has been written before about a story. What angle has been taken before. What areas haven’t been covered. What areas connect to what other areas we’re involved in, in terms of issues and stories that we’ve been following.

But I think the one thing that people don’t understand is that Undercurrents is more than just a radio program. It’s actually an institution. Because we’re not funded by any sort of parent organization. So a lot of the work of the producers is to actually keep the bills paid. And to try and maintain our office and phone and all of that kind of expense, which isn’t very glamorous or very much to do with straight reporting. But without it, you wouldn’t hear the program in the morning.

Are you limited by having to devote so much time to searching for funds?
Flanders: Yes, I think we really are. And I think particularly in the last few months I’ve really noticed the limitations imposed on us by having to do that work. Because it is very easy, when a crisis is breaking, to go, and delve into a particular story. I think it was quite easy at the beginning of the `Iran-Contra Affair’ to focus all the attention of the programmers on the research and in the investigation. I know, for myself, at other times when I was functioning more just as a producer it was much easier to spend my day calling this resource and that source and trying to piece together a story, when I didn’t have to carve out some part of the day to write grant proposals and write letters to foundations. And I think it really affects the type of research that we’re able to do, in terms of in-depth research. It’s part of the control mechanism imposed on us by the market. That we don’t have the liberty just to devote ourselves to the research that we could be devoting ourselves to…I feel very constrained by having to do the institution-building side of things.

How does Undercurrents differ from a commercial radio program and why don’t you just try to get a job with a commercial news network?
Flanders: The quick answer to that is that the way it differs is that we have no money.

There are a lot of more complicated answers. Everything from the freedom that we have to say whatever we want at 8 o’clock in the morning to the freedom that we have to really challenge what’s being said in the mainstream and question it and, in some cases, deride what the mainstream reporters are pretending is their coverage of a story.

As far as, would I ever take a job or why don’t I go get a job?

I don’t see anywhere where I would like to work at this moment. I don’t see the opportunities to do the kind of political reporting that I’m interested in in the mainstream. I come at my reporting work very much as an activist. I came out of an activist background. I mean my experience before reporting was organizing and being involved in progressive movements. And I see journalism as a way to empower people to act. But that’s not the attitude of most mainstream news purveyors.

But I don’t have a principled position that if some wonderful job was offered to me I would oppose it because of allergic reaction to a healthy income.” (end of part 1)

Next: The Men of Murdoch lyrics

Woody Guthrie's Post-1950's FBI File

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

“It is not just a question of you, as an artist, selling out, and becoming harmless to the owning side. No, you are never actually bought nor bribed till they have decided that they can use you in one way or another to rob, to deceive, to blind, confuse, to misrepresent, or just to harass, worry, bedevil, and becloud the path of the militant worker on his long hard fight from slavery to freedom. Your art helps to preserve, to prolong, to keep alive, and to glorify the essences and the principles of the owning, ruling side. If your art did not add new life to their side, kid not yourself, they would certainly never shake your hand and drop their bloody money down into your lap. And it is the highest form of your owner’s joy when he buys you out from the union side (where you) have spent several years of your life getting people to follow, to hear, or to stand for a while and listen to what you have to say, or to live their lives in spirit and in action in the way that you lived your own. This makes you worth lots more to your owner…

“This is the bad part of a capitalist system, this dog eat dog, this spying, tracing, tracking and trailing after one another always under the covers of night and the shades and shadows of day…This is the system which the owners would like to prolong, to keep alive, to prolong as long as they possibly can, because in the wild blindness of it all, they get all of us to fighting against one another, and rob us coming in the fields of production, and going, in the realm of distribution. This is the system I would like to see die out. It killed several members of my family, it gassed several and shell shocked several more in the last world war, and in this world war just past, it scattered lots more. It drove families of my relatives and friends by the hundreds of thousands to wander more homeless than dogs and to live less welcome than hogs, sheep, or cattle. This is the system I started out to expose by every conceivable way that I could think of with songs and with ballads, and even with poems, stories, newspaper articles, even by humor, by fun, by nonsense, ridicule and by any other way that I could lay hold on.”
Coincidentally, among the pages contained in Woody Guthrie’s declassified post-1950s FBI file (100-29988-5,6,7,8) is a June 2, 1950 memorandum sent to the FBI Director by the FBI’s Los Angeles office on the subject “Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, Security Matter,” which states:

“Re: El Paso letter to New York dated 2-15-50 in captioned matter, report of Special Agent [censored] dated 4-30-50 at Los Angeles entitled `Factionalists Sabotage Group,’ Internal Security-C:
“On April 18, 1950 CNDI [censored] identified a photograph of GUTHRIE as being the individual to whom he had previously referred to as (WOODY), and who was a member of the Factionalist Sabotage Group. According to CNDI [censored] GUTHRIE from approximately April 15, 1950 to May 15, 1950 resided at the home of [censored] Los Angeles, California, and an individual who has also been identified as a member of the above group.
“On May 15, 1950 CNDI [censored] ascertained that GUTHRIE left Los Angeles on that date and on May 18, 1950 CNDI [censored] was advised by [censored] that GUTHRIE was in El Paso, Texas where he would contact his children and former wife. Reference telbu reflects that GUTHRIE’s children resided at 4002 Bliss Street, El Paso, Texas.
“For the information of the El Paso office CNDIS [censored] have furnished this office since [censored] with information concerning a group of approximately thirty men and women, some veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and expelled Communist Party members who are regularly meeting in Los Angeles. According to [censored] this group has a headquarters in Mexico City, Mexico, and one of the group [censored], known to your office, left Los Angeles in December 1949 to work in this headquarters; her residence has been verified in Cuernevaca, Mexico.
“The [censored] of this group, [censored] has advised CNDI [censored] that the ultimate purpose of this group is sabotage against the United States during war with Russia and has outlined to him group policy in recruitment, method of operation, publications, finances, and has advised the informant that his group has a direct contact with the `Comintern.’
“By letter dated May 15, 1950 in the referenced matter the Bureau requested that individual investigations be opened concerning members of this group and security index cards be considered.
“El Paso is requested to verify the residence of the subject in El Paso through [censored], El Paso County Court House, El Paso, Texas, it being noted that [censored] has previously furnished your office with information regarding GUTHRIE.

“Upon receipt of this verification, Los Angeles will submit a RUC report covering GUTHRIE’s activities known to this office.”
And a July 21, 1950 memorandum to the FBI Director from the FBI’s Los Angeles office on the same subject states:

“Rebutel dated July 14, 1950, entitled `FACTIONALIST SABOTAGE GROUP, INTERNAL SECURITY C ‘Bufile 100-369268’…

“CNDI [censored] on July 4, 1950, advised he had ascertained from [censored], also a member of the referenced group, that the subject was presently residing at 3520 Mermaid Avenue, Brooklyn 24, New York.

“A pending report setting out leads to verify the subject’s residence in New York is presently being transcribed and will be forwarded to the New York and El Paso Offices at an early date.”
Also included in Woody Guthrie’s declassified post-1950’s FBI file is an August 3, 1950 document summarizing the articles that appeared in the left-wing Daily People’s World in 1948 and 1949 that either mentioned Woody or were written by Woody; and which states that “T-1 advised that he specifically recalls Guthrie having attended” six political meetings between March 26, 1950 and May 6, 1950 that were held at 932 or 932 ½ North Lucile Ave. in Los Angeles. Yet this August 3, 1950 admits that “[censored] Guthrie [censored] advised that he personally has never, [censored] made any statement relative to sabotage…”

For more information about Woody Guthrie’s life and work, you can check out the official Woody Guthrie site at www.woodyguthrie.org .

Next: Grit TV Host and Blue Grit Author Laura Flanders: A 1991 Downtown Interview—Part 1

Hillary Clinton's Blind Trust Revisited Again

When asked at a January 1996 press conference about the Money magazine report which implied that the Clintons "were nearly broke,” 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s husband answered that “I suppose that that probably is right” and “I’ve never added it all up, but that’s probably right.” Yet when asked by Downtown/Aquarian Weekly to respond to reports that the Clintons were now “broke,” a source at Boston Harbor Trust (the trustee of the Clintons’ blind trust stock portfolio) initially replied that it was “highly unlikely” that the Clintons were broke in 1996 and characterized the Clintons as “one of our accounts.”

When Boston Harbor, a subsidiary of United Asset Management’s Pell, Rudman & Co., was appointed trustee of the Clintons’ blind trust in July 1993, the value of the Clintons’ blind trust portfolio was nearly $1.2 million. Although, according to the Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance, “the trustee” of a blind trust “must be empowered to make investment decisions independent of any consultation with or control by the interested parties,” the Clintons—not their Boston Harbor trustee—decided to have Essex Investment Management begin managing this $1.2 million blind trust portfolio in July 1993; following a May 1993 consultation with Essex Investment head Joseph McNay at the White House in which McNay talked with Hillary Clinton “about his investment philosophy,” according to the Boston Globe (8/31/93).

Among the assets contained in the Clintons’ “blind trust” when Essex began managing their stock portfolio were the following: AT & T; Bell Atlantic; Bell South; NYNEX; TCBY Enterprise, Wal-Mart Stores; Liz Clairborne and Box Energy Stock; Louisiana and Arkansas state bonds; individual retirement accounts in the Janus Fund, the Strong Opportunity Fund and the Charles Schwab CEF Government Money Market Fund; and partnership interests in Value Partners I Ltd.

After United Asset Management’s Pell, Rudman & Co. subsidiary, Boston Harbor Trust, was appointed trustee of the Clintons’ blind trust in July 1993, the Boston Globe (8/31/93) noted that the United Asset Management-affiliated firm would “handle bookkeeping and asset transfers” and would “file returns and financial reports for the Clinton blind trust.”

Coincidentally, in its Jan. 17, 1994 issue, the New York Times reported that “United Asset Management, close to…J.P.Morgan & Co. in asset size, is a little-known financial giant” and “under controversial accounting approaches…included in President Clinton’s tax package, United Asset can completely write off the cost of its acquisitions.” The Times also noted that “this means United Asset gets to reduce from taxes the amount it spends to buy money management firms;” and, “as a result of this tax break, has an enormously powerful cash flow.”

Ironically, according to United Asset Management’s 1994 Annual Report, the owner of the trustee of the Clintons’ blind trust had its “federal income tax returns for the years ending Dec. 31, 1984 through 1992…under audit by the Internal Revenue Service.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 2/14/96)

In his book The Great Whitewater Fiasco, Martin Gross noted that while her husband was governor of Arkansas, former Rose Law firm partner Hillary Clinton “was very active financially, dabbling in a whole range of money instruments to make the family fortune;” and “bought oil-drilling partnerships that generated tax deductions, which she took, along with deductions for playing the market with losing stock index futures.” In addition to earning $203,000 a year as a Rose Law firm partner in 1992, the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate also “was taking in $64,000 a year just for serving on the board of such Arkansas-based giants as Wal-Mart and TCBY” in 1992.

In acquiring their $1.6 million pre-Clinton White House era total fortune by combining Hillary’s role as a corporate lawyer-lobbyist in Arkansas with Bill’s role as Arkansas’ governor, “Hillary’s ongoing conflicts of interest…didn’t seem to bother either her or Bill,” according to The Great Whitewater Fiasco. The same book also noted that “With Bill silently approving, over the years Hillary became more and more obsessed with money;” and “she has been very secretive about her moneymaking schemes and has sworn her friends-in-investment to secrecy.” During the Clintons’ first two terms in the White House, the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate had “a full-time staff of 13 and an office in the Executive West Wing” and “her expenditure of taxpayer money” was “perhaps $2 million,” according to The Great Whitewater Fiasco book.
(Downtown 12/13/95)

Next: Woody Guthrie’s Post-1950’s FBI File

Phil Ochs' 429-Page FBI File

(Phil Ochs--by Kenneth Tash - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45279727)

In his book Death Of A Rebel: A Biography of Phil Ochs, Marc Eliot described what happened at the Chicago 8 trial when Ochs arrived to testify in Dec. 1969:

“…After a brief series of questions to establish that Phil was a singer by profession, Kunstler began to weave Phil into the pattern of the defense:

KUNSTLER: Now Mr. Ochs, can you indicate what kind of songs you sing?

OCHS: I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news, which goes back to journalism, and you can call them topical songs, songs about the news and then developing into more philosophical songs later…

KUNSTLER: Now did there come a time when there was any discussion of Yippie plans with reference to the convention, the Democratic National Convention?

OCHS: Yes, there were. I don’t remember the exact date because there were several meetings, probably, Jan. or Feb. of 1968…

KUNSTLER: Where did these discussions take place?

OCHS: The Lower East Side, different apartments, sometimes Jerry’s apartment and sometimes Abbie’s apartment…

KUNSTLER: Can you indicate in general to the court and jury what the plans were for Yippies in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention?...

OCHS…What Jerry Rubin said to me was that he planned to have a Festival of Life in Chicago during the Democratic Convention, basically representing an alternative culture on the assumption that they felt the Democratic Party did not represent them or a whole large mass of the American public. They wanted to have, therefore, an alternate convention. They would theatrically sort of spoof the Convention and show the public, the media, that the Convention was not to be taken seriously because it wasn’t fair, and wasn’t going to be honest, and wasn’t going to be a Democratic Convention, and so they would have essentially events they hoped to do in Lincoln Park. They hoped to get permits. They discussed flying to Chicago to talk with Mayor Daley or people working with Mayor Daley. They several times mentioned they wanted to avoid any violence…” (Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 4/10/96)

Coincidentally, until his suicide on April 9, 1976, the FBI showed a special interest in investigating Phil Ochs. As The Politics of Rock Music by John Orman recalled in 1984:

“The quintessential ‘60s person not only had a cult following of politicos, folk junkies, protest fans, and movement freaks but also had a `following’ in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, it is clear that the FBI kept a domestic file on Ochs from 1963 until his suicide. As Ochs always said, `They [the government] have files on me this thick,’ and then he would laugh. He was absolutely correct. The FBI has released over 400 pages from the Phil Ochs file, and it is clear from the documents that the FBI spent an extraordinary amount of time following, checking up on, and detailing the activities of Phil Ochs…

“Agents checked Selective Service, insurance companies, the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 in New York, neighbors at 139 Thompson Street in New York City, the Credit Bureau of Greater New York, Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Bureau of Special Services (Red Squad), Board of Elections—Manhattan, and other sources…The FBI then checked with an acquaintance of Ochs who resided in Greenwich Village who was a folksinger and guitarist. This person was also the subject of an FBI New York file…

“The Los Angeles FBI office investigated Ochs from Aug. 31 to Dec. 12, 1968, and forwarded data to the New York office…

“…Ochs…refused to be interrogated by FBI agents on Oct. 1, 1968…

“…He was busted for possession of marijuana on Oct. 5, 1968 by the Los Angeles police department’…

“In 1973 the Agency added Ochs’ phone number to their computerized telephone file…”

(Downtown 4/13/94)

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Blind Trust Revisited Again