New School University Got $14 Million In A.I.G.-Linked Foundation `Bonus' Grants

Since 2004, New School University has been given over $14 million in “bonus” grants from a foundation which is financed largely by stock of the U.S. government bailed-out American International Group [A.I.G] and run by A.I.G insiders and former executives. As a press release that was posted on the New School University’s web site on November 4, 2004 noted:

“…New School University announced that it has received…gifts…The Starr Foundation has given a grant of $10 million - the largest foundation gift in the University’s history - to establish the India China Institute (ICI)….

“We are very grateful to The Starr Foundation for this $10 million grant…,” said New School University President Bob Kerrey. “One of the things I came to recognize as a member of the 9-11 Commission is that: the homeland is the planet….The Starr Foundation’s funding of the India China Institute is fundamentally important for collaborative work among scholars and policy-makers here at The New School and abroad….”

“The Starr Foundation was established in 1955 by Cornelius Vander Starr, an insurance entrepreneur who founded the American International family of insurance and financial services companies, now known as American International Group, Inc. …He died in 1968 at the age of 76, leaving his estate to the Foundation. The Foundation currently has assets of approximately $3.5 billion, making it one of the largest private foundations in the United States… “

An additional “bonus” grant of $4 million was given to New School University in 2007 by the A.I.G.-linked Starr Foundation, according to the foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2007.

In May of 2008, 15.5 million shares of A.I.G stock were owned by the Starr Foundation. Until the end of 2006, 39.1 million shares of A.I.G stock—then worth about $2.8 billion-- were owned by the Starr Foundation. But “as the stock price began to slip in recent years, the foundation sold about 30 million shares of A.I.G stock between January 2006 and May 2008, or about two-thirds of its holdings,” according to an article, titled “Starr Foundation Plans Smaller Grants After A.I.G Stock Plunges,” that was posted on the Bloomberg.com site on September 24, 2008.

The Starr Foundation’s Chairman, Maurice (Hank) Greenberg, was A.I.G.’s Chairman and CEO from 1989 until 2005 and is, coincidentally, the past Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that promoted the recent use of U.S. government taxpayer money to provide corporate welfare grants and bail-out funds for A.I.G. executives. Starr Foundation Chairman and former A.I.G. Chairman and CEO Greenberg was also accused in 2005, in a lawsuit initiated by former New York State Attorney General and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, of defrauding the Starr Foundation. As an article by Gretchen Morgenson that appeared in the December 15, 2005 issue of the New York Times reported:

“Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, submitted a report yesterday as part of his lawsuit against Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of American International Group, contending that Mr. Greenberg unfairly enriched himself and other A.I.G. executives in a series of transactions that violated the will of Cornelius Vander Starr, the company's founder, and defrauded a foundation he created.

“The questionable transactions took place more than 35 years ago as the far-flung insurance operations built by Mr. Starr starting in 1919 were being melded into A.I.G., the report said. After Mr. Starr died in 1968, Mr. Greenberg and his colleagues, as executors of his estate, benefited by selling assets at fire-sale prices to companies they controlled, it stated.

“Almost immediately, the report said, these executives turned around and sold the assets at far higher prices to A.I.G., which then set some of them aside for use as a compensation pool for the company's executives. Because those shares ultimately amounted to 12 percent of A.I.G.'s outstanding stock, Mr. Greenberg was able to cement his control of the company.

“According to the report, Mr. Greenberg and his associates cheated the Starr Foundation…by selling assets that were worth more than $30 million for just $2 million.

“`Mr. Greenberg and the other executors directed a series of transactions that advanced their own interests in controlling A.I.G. at the expense of the foundation,’ said Michele Hirshman, first deputy attorney general…

“Yesterday's report turns up the volume in an already vehement battle between Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Greenberg, who was ousted by the A.I.G. board in March, when he refused to testify to regulators about a questionable insurance transaction.

“Mr. Spitzer has decided not to pursue possible criminal charges against Mr. Greenberg. But he still has a civil case against him, as well as against Howard I. Smith, the former chief financial officer of A.I.G., and A.I.G. itself, contending that they manipulated financial statements and misled regulators and investors. The company, which is in settlement talks with Mr. Spitzer's office, has restated its financial results for the last five years to reflect accounting practices it now says were improper…

“Even though the transactions occurred more than three decades ago, Ms. Hirschman of the attorney general's office said that the six-year statute of limitations relating to actions taken by a fiduciary starts running only when the fiduciary resigns from a position of trust. Mr. Greenberg remains chairman of the Starr Foundation, a title he has had since 1981.

“Many of the facts cited in the attorney general's report emerged in documents that Mr. Spitzer's office seized in March from A.I.G.'s offices in Bermuda. Mr. Spitzer secured the documents after receiving a tip that lawyers for Mr. Greenberg were removing boxes from A.I.G.'s offices.

“The documents, in some 80 boxes, included meeting minutes and correspondence that `raised questions about whether the estate had been appropriately compensated for certain assets,’ the report said.

“Among those documents was a memo written by a trustee of the Starr Foundation stating that just before his death in December 1968, Mr. Starr `was planning to change drastically the nature of the foundation, including its personnel, and to divorce it entirely’ from C. V. Starr & Company affairs. To achieve this end, certain unidentified board members tendered their resignations in September 1968, the report said, but in February 1969, two months after Mr. Starr died, they returned to the foundation's board.

“Mr. Starr left almost his entire holdings to his foundation. The executors of his estate were Mr. Greenberg and the other directors of C. V. Starr, who controlled a majority of the shares of all three Starr entities. As president of C. V. Starr, Mr. Greenberg oversaw the disposition of Mr. Starr's assets under the gaze of the Surrogate's Court. Mr. Starr had been Mr. Greenberg's mentor, giving him his first job in the insurance industry.

“Most of the other Starr executors were also directors of the Starr Foundation, which by law could not own stakes in private companies. This put the executors in a position of conflict - they had a duty to sell the Starr assets for the highest price to benefit the foundation but they also had an interest in keeping the price low because they owned the entities buying the shares.

“Mr. Spitzer's report contends that three asset sales victimized the Starr Foundation. In one deal, Mr. Starr's executors sold shares in a company known as Far East for $1 million in cash to the company they controlled, even though the holding was worth $7.2 million.

“The second transaction involved Mr. Starr's 24 percent stake in C. V. Starr, a domestic insurer. According to the report, Mr. Greenberg said the foundation should buy the shares using a formula that the directors of C. V. Starr had decided upon without `independent advice'. The cash proceeds were $1.08 million, even though Morgan Stanley at the time had estimated the value of the stake at $25 million to $30million.

“Finally, the sale of shares in Starr International, a unit that owned foreign insurers, appears to have defrauded the foundation, Mr. Spitzer's report said. Those shares, which constituted a 20 percent stake in a company that in September 1970 was worth $100 million, were sold back to Starr International, controlled by Mr. Greenberg and other executors, for $3,000.

“Mr. Greenberg also misled the Surrogate's Court overseeing Mr. Starr's estate, the report said. His sworn statement, filed in 1978, failed to disclose critical facts on all three transactions; there was no mention of Morgan Stanley's estimated value of the C. V. Starr stake, for example…”

Coincidentally, the A.I.G.-linked foundation that gave New School University $14 million in “bonus” grants is also linked to New York University [NYU]. Starr Foundation President and board member Florence Davis sits on the board of trustees of NYU and NYU’s School of Law

Did CIA Tamper With Abbie Hoffman's Car Brakes In 1988?

Prior to his mysterious death 20 years ago on April 12, 1989, Abbie Hoffman apparently “insisted that the CIA had tampered with the brakes of his car” before his serious 1988 automobile accident “and that there was a government plot to assassinate him because his information about the arms-for-hostage deal was so damaging to the Republicans,” according to For The Hell Of It by Jonah Raskin. The same book also recalled that “Abbie collaborated on an article entitled `An Election Held Hostage’ which he felt…would cost George Bush the 1988 election;” and “Abbie insisted on delivering the manuscript in person to his editor at Playboy,” but “on the road from his home in Bucks County to Newark,…to catch a flight to Chicago, his car was hit by a truck.”

A.I.G. Exec Co-Chaired New School University's Benefit Dinner In 2002

A former CEO of the U.S. government bailed-out American International Group [A.I.G.] insurance firm named Maurice Greenberg co-chaired a New School University benefit dinner that was held on January 30, 2002 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers. As a press release that was posted on New School University's web site on January 31, 2002 revealed:

“New School University held its 2002 La Guardia Award Benefit evening last evening…

"Governor George Pataki gave the keynote address. Also attending the dinner at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers were John Whitehead, Chairman of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation (and former Chairman of Goldman Sachs), former Mayor Ed Koch, John L. Tishman, and many others…The evening, which was attended by close to 600 guests, raised $1.3 million…

“…Proceeds from the dinner will...support programs of New School University's Milano Graduate School headed by Dean Edward J. Blakely…

“Benefit Chairmen included Pete Peterson, Chairman of The Blackstone Group; Brian Roberts, President of Comcast, Inc.; and John L. Tishman, Chairman of Tishman Realty and Construction and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of New School University. Among the dinner's Co-Chairs are Maurice Greenberg of A.I.G. and Sanford Weill of Citigroup.”

Iran History Revisited: Part 16

(See parts 1-15 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

Following the Republican Eisenhower Administration’s 1953 CIA coup, all Iranian political opponents of the Shah of Iran’s monarchical government were immediately repressed. Around 3,000 Tudeh Party members, for example, were either arrested or forced into exile. By January 1954 the number of Tudeh Party members in Iran had dropped to only around 4,000 and 580 Tudeh Party members remained locked up in the Shah of Iran’s prisons.

Backed by the U.S. government, the CIA-installed Shah of Iran’s dictatorial regime lasted from late August 1953 until it was finally overthrown by a mass uprising of the Iranian people in early 1979. Friendly relations with the UK imperialist government were also resumed immediately by the Shah of Iran’s government after the 1953 CIA coup in Iran. Under the Shah of Iran’s post-1953 period of rule, the Iranian government also became more closely aligned with the U.S. government and UK governments on a military level, becoming a member of the pro-Anglo-American imperialist Baghdad Pact.

With CIA and U.S. government backing, the Shah of Iran’s regime also set up a more powerful secret police force, SAVAK, to more efficiently repress the various groups that were politically opposed to the Shah of Iran’s dictatorship. By 1958, several advisers to the Shah of Iran from the U.S. were also on duty in Iran. (end of part 16)

Iran History Revisited: Part 15

(See parts 1-14 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

U.S.-based transnational oil corporations profited enormously from the CIA’s illegal 1953 covert activity in Iran. As University of Alberta Professor of Economics Ed Shaffer noted in his 1983 book The United States and the Control of World Oil:

“The overthrow of Mossadegh, which was engineered by the CIA, paved the way for the displacement of Britain by the United States as the major power in Iran. The displacement took place first in oil…

“After the coup the US sent Herbert Hoover, Jr., a director of Union Oil, to negotiate a new oil pact…Oil exploration and production in southern Iran and the operation of the Abadan refinery, then the world’s largest, were to be carried out by a consortium of companies known as Iranian Oil Participants Ltd….”

Mobil, Exxon, Chevron, Texaco and Gulf Oil were each given the right to receive a 5% share of the Iranian Oil Participants Ltd.’s profits from its Iranian oil industry operations and twelve smaller U.S. oil corporations were each given the right to receive a 1% share of the consortium’s profits. Just forty percent of the Iranian Oil Participants Ltd.’s profits went to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now renamed British Petroleum/BP, which had previously not had to split the profits from its Iranian operations with the U.S.-based transnational oil corporations. According to The United States and the Control of World Oil:

“The establishment of the consortium was the most important factor in making the U.S. the dominant oil power in the Middle East. The entry into Iran unquestionably gave it effective control of most of the known reserves of the non-Communist world. Its basic objective, the control of world oil, had been realized.”

(end of part 15)

U.S. Pacifists and The Military-Industrial-University Complex: An Interview With `Underground' Author Mark Rudd

Mark Rudd was the chairman of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] at the time of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt; and Rudd’s autobiography, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen was finally published in March 2009.

In a recent email interview, Rudd responded to some questions about how U.S. pacifists might consider responding to the role U.S. universities play in the current historical era of “permanent war abroad and economic depression at home” and about his new book.

(1) In 2009, some U.S. pacifists seem to regard elite universities like Columbia as institutions that have, both historically and currently, opposed war and opposed racism—since they hire both anti-war and African-American professors and administrators, implement affirmative action hiring programs, set up “peace studies” and “African-American studies” departments, steer foundation grants and scholarship money in the direction of students from historically oppressed communities and to local community groups, and provide free or low-rent meeting room space for anti-war students and off-campus pacifist groups.

Yet in the preface to your book, you write that between 1965 and 1968 you were “a member of SDS at Columbia University” and “made as much noise and trouble as possible to protest the university’s pro-war and racist policies.” In what ways were Columbia University’s policies “pro-war and racist” in 1968 and in what ways are the policies of Columbia University and other elite U.S. universities “pro-war and racist” in 2009?

Mark Rudd [MR]: The specific demands we raised leading up to the spring of 1968--training and recruitment of military officers for the war in Vietnam, weapons research for the war, the building of a gym in public park land--were only the tip of the iceberg of Columbia's policies. Within months of the strike, the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) produced a book entitled "Who Rules Columbia," in which they detailed the military, State Dept., and CIA contracts and connections with the School of International Affairs, the various geographical "area studies," such as the East Asia Institute, as well as the revolving door between Columbia and the government; also Columbia's expansion into the surrounding community at the expense of non-white residents. Most of these connections and policies are still in place; almost all major research universities are still major war contractors. The point is that student activists have their work cut out for them to research and expose what's correctly called the military-industrial-academic complex.

(2) In chapter 1 of your book, titled “A Good German,” you recall that when you first met the then-chairman of Columbia’s Independent Committee on Vietnam (ICV) anti-war student group--current U.S. political prisoner David Gilbert—in early 1966, Gilbert mentioned that in May 1965 his group had “held an antiwar protest at the Naval ROTC graduation ceremony” at Columbia. And later in the “A Good German” chapter you mention that in March 1967 you had “taken part in a sit-in at a Naval ROTC class” at Columbia.

Why did you oppose Naval ROTC at Columbia in the 1960s? And do you think U.S. pacifists should consider opposing ROTC on U.S. university campuses in 2009?

MR: The issue is fundamentally moral. Is the training of people to wage war against other countries, carrying out a criminally aggressive military policy, appropriate in an institution that pretends to seek the truth? Our answer to this question was NO, because we believed in the necessity to oppose U.S. violence as a moral value. Remember, too, that the time we lived in was essentially post-World War II, and the problem of values in society was still being debated in the aftermath of Nazism. I have no doubt that contemporary students will be taking this up again in the near future.

(3) In chapter 2 of your book, you mention that anti-war students at Columbia protested against recruitment on campus by external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines. Why did you think that it was morally wrong for Columbia University to allow external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus in 1967? And do you think U.S. pacifists in 2009 should also protest against U.S. universities that allow the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus while the Pentagon’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan continues?

MR: Same response as #2 above. Whether recruitment is "external" (e.g., Marine recruiters) or "internal" (Military Science Dept. training future naval officers), it amounts to the same thing. The resources of the university are being used to help wage war.

( 4) In chapter 3 of your book, titled “Action Faction,” you write that on March 27, 1968 “SDS had fifteen hundred names on a petition calling for the severing of “ Columbia University’s “ties with the Pentagon think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA);” and “IDA…became the shorthand symbol for Columbia’s huge network of complicity with the war.”

In 2009, IDA still exists. Do you think that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that IDA be finally shut down by the Democratic Obama Administration and that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that U.S. universities like Columbia, MIT and Harvard stop performing war research for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] in 2009?

MR: I believe that the entire US military budget should be cut back and the money used for social needs both in this country and around the world. Security would be much better served by the development of true international law, not more nuclear weapons. If that doesn't happen in the 21st century, we're doomed. All war research should immediately stop everywhere and the money be put into peace, diplomacy, law, and sustainable energy development. To do less now is not only suicidal, it's downright dumb.

(5) In your book, you mention that you and Abbie Hoffman were both arrested at a November 1967 anti-war protest in Midtown Manhattan against the Foreign Policy Association giving an award to then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

April 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of Abbie’s death. How would you characterize the role that Abbie Hoffman played in U.S. anti-war movement history and his historical relationship to U.S. pacifists and non-violent anti-war activists like Dave Dellinger?

MR: Abbie was essentially a comedian and an organizer. He was not at all violent; he always encouraged mass organizing, though often in the form of provocative guerilla theater, like the Yippies nominating a pig for president in 1968. I forget how he and Dave Dellinger got along in Chicago, both in 1968 and during the conspiracy trial the next year. My guess is that they respected each other. Perhaps you know more specifics.

(6) Speaking of Abbie Hoffman, how would you respond to Professor Jonah Raskin’s assertion in his review of your book which was posted on The Rag Blog that “like Abbie Hoffman, Mark Rudd wasn’t suited for the underground life—he needed attention, and attention is, of course, the last thing that any fugitive wants;” and “Underground suggests, implies, and shows that Rudd is up there, along with Abbie, near the top of the list of 1960s radicals who wanted attention, and who received far more attention than they needed…It undid Abbie, and it also helped to undo Rudd.”?

MR: I wonder if Jonah actually read my book.

(7) Why do you think the right-wing media monitoring pressure group” Accuracy In Media” [A.I.M.] apparently attempted to pressure Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing firm to not promote your book, according to the” Accuracy In Media” web site?

MR: Just another way for the far right to try get at Obama, but it's so indirect that it makes zero sense to anybody else. There was a tiny connection between Obama and Bill Ayers, but that fact gained no votes for John McCain. These people are so stupid that they're still pursuing a tactic that's already failed. I find that a rather comforting fact.

(8) Do you think it’s likely that Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize Board will decide to give you a Pulitzer Prize for writing Underground—after Columbia University’s current president--a current board member of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate named Lee Bollinger—reads what you’ve written about Columbia University?

MR: I'm a shoo-in.

Iran History Revisited: Part 14

(See parts 1-13 below)

In January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti-based Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, reported that “A reliable source said President Bush… held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates…and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.” Yet in 2009 President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is still the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

And as Eric Margolis observed in the February 16, 2009 issue of the Khaleeq Times:

“The CIA… funds at least one extremist Pakistani Sunni group that launches raids into Iran, attacking government posts, soldiers and civilians. Further covert American aid goes to armed separatist groups among Iran’s Arab and Azeri minorities…The US Congress has repeatedly voted hundreds of millions for such covert operations.

“The US has also waged a…financial and economic war against…Iran…

“Israeli elections produced a sharp move to the right, increasing chances Israel may make good on threats to attack Iran…”

Yet most U.S. high school social studies departments, ironically, still don’t require their students to study much 20th-century Iranian history.

In early 1953, the UK imperialist government, the British oil corporation whose property had been nationalized by the Mossadegh government and the Eisenhower Administration’s CIA--in alliance with the Shah of Iran--continued to work for the overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadegh government.

At the same time, the Tudeh Party attempted to push for a more radical democratization of Iranian society by making the following demands of Mossadegh’s National Front government in 1953: legalize the Tudeh Party; release all Iranian political prisoners; end martial law in Iran’s southern oilfields; expel the U.S. military mission in Iran; reject all foreign military aid to Iran; annul a 1947 U.S.-Iranian agreement; and nationalize the U.S. corporation-owned Bahrein fields in Iran.

To commemorate the first anniversary of the 1952 Iranian uprising which restored the democratically-elected Mossadegh to power, a mass demonstration was then held in Tehran on July 21, 1953 in which 50,000 members and sympathizers of the still formally illegal Tudeh Party participated. The demonstrators supported the call of the National Front regime for a referendum to dissolve the Iranian parliament in early August 1953 and hold more fully democratic elections. Dr. Mossadegh’s National Front government then also demanded in mid-August 1953 that all U.S. government special influence in Iran’s internal political affairs be eliminated and that a democratic republic be established in Iran.

In response, the CIA arranged for a group of pro-Shah Iranian army officers--led by General Zahedi--to pull a coup that overthrew the democratically-elected, anti-imperialist, nationalist government of Mossadegh on August 26, 1953 and restored absolute political power to the Shah of Iran’s monarchical regime. As Mark Zepezauer observed in his 1994 book The CIA’s Greatest Hits, in August 1953 “the CIA” also “paid for pro-Shah street demonstrators, who seized a radio station” and “it took a nine-hour battle in the streets of Tehran, killing hundreds, to remove Mossadegh.” (end of part 14)