300 Columbia University Professors Were IDA Consultants In 1968

Prior to the April 1968 Columbia University anti-war student revolt of 40 years ago, Columbia University was an institutional member of the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think tank that developed the electronic battlefield technology which was used against the people of Indochina during the Vietnam War Era and against the people of Iraq in the 1990s and 21st-century. In addition, then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk and then-Columbia University Trustee William Burden represented Columbia University on IDA’s executive committee and on IDA’s board of trustees.

One reason many Columbia University professors did not support the demand by Columbia and Barnard anti-war students in 1968 that Columbia University end its institutional affiliation with IDA may have been because many Columbia University professors, themselves, were personally affiliated with IDA as “part-time consultants.” As even Time magazine reported in its May 17, 1968 issue, “despite all the fuss at Columbia over IDA, none of its professors are actually on the IDA payroll, although about 300 have signed up to serve when needed as part-time consultants.”

Columbia University’s institutional involvement in the Pentagon’s IDA weapons research think-tank began in 1959. In a May 22, 1959 letter, for example, IDA’s then-Vice President and Director of Research Albert Hill wrote that Columbia Trustee “Bill Burden will probably succeed Jim McCormack as Chairman of the Board of IDA, effective Tuesday May 26th” but “until you hear to the contrary, this is confidential.” A copy of a June 29, 1959 memo from Stanford University’s representative on the IDA board of trustees, Fred Terman, to IDA Vice-President Hill was then sent to Columbia University Trustee Burden which stated “that summer study groups are being set up every year to tackle particular problems of interest to the military.” IDA Trustee Terman also subsequently acted as the technical advisor on the electronics industry to Columbia Trustee Burden’s investment firm.

Besides representing Columbia University on IDA’s board of trustees, as “Chairman of the Board” of IDA, Columbia Trustee Burden also represented Columbia University on IDA’s executive committee. IDA’s executive committee determined “the broad general policy of” IDA on behalf of the IDA board of trustees, according to a June 8, 1959 letter from then-IDA Vice-President Albert Hill to Dr. Marvin Stern of the General Dynamics weapons manufacturer.

That same year, Columbia University Professor of Physics Charles Townes moved to Washington, D.C. to replace Albert Hill as IDA’s Vice-President and Director of Research when Hill decided to return to MIT as a professor of physics. As former Columbia University Professor Townes recalled in his 1995 book, Making Waves:

“…In 1947 I was offered a suitable professorship at Columbia University, and I accepted…Eventually I was asked to chair a national committee to determine how to distribute funds designated by the Navy for research on short microwaves. The Navy was interested in developing the field primarily for exploratory reasons…

“I was asked to go to Washington…The proposed position for me was Vice President and Director of Research for the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA]. The Institute was a non-profit `think-tank’ with a very important role, run by five or six prominent universities on the East Coast, Columbia University being one of them. It managed what was known as the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group. We had to pick the right people who would be responsible for analyzing how and whether a weapon worked and its effectiveness. We also advised a new organization, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, whose aim was to consider what could be done in space, and to help initiate new ideas and technologies of importance to national security…”
On Sept. 28 and Sept. 29, 1959, former Columbia University Professor Townes next attended an IDA meeting with then-CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell Jr., another CIA official named RW Komer and then-MIT Professor Jerome Wiesner. Among the topics discussed at this Sept. 28-29, 1959 meeting were “Project Principia” weapons research for better chemical propellant and research related to U.S. military requirements in the field of human behavior. Another topic discussed at this September 1959 IDA meeting was a proposal to set up an “Institute for Naval Studies” to examine “future possibilities in naval warfare.”

Near the end of the year, on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 1959 an IDA Trustees Executive Committee Meeting was held at the MIT Faculty Club between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. Among the 11 items discussed at this Dec. 16, 1959 IDA Executive Committee Meeting was a proposed Navy long-rang study group contract, the status of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA], the status of the Pentagon’s Weapons System Evaluation Group [WSEG], the “proposed Townes’ Group Contract,” and “new university members.”

According to the minutes of this Dec. 16, 1959 meeting of the IDA Executive Committee, at this meeting IDA executive committee members voted in favor of accepting a contract with the Pentagon’s Department of the Navy for a long-range study group and voted authorization to operate the Townes Group Project. In addition, according to the IDA Executive Committee Meeting minutes, “it was agreed that certain specific universities which were named and discussed, would be welcomed as additions to the present university Members.”

One of the universities “welcomed as additions to the present university Members” of IDA at the Dec. 16, 1959 IDA Executive Committee meeting was Columbia University. The Columbia University board of trustees then apparently also passed an unpublicized resolution at its meeting that same month (without notifying either the Columbia University faculty, the Columbia University student body or the Columbia Daily Spectator student newspaper) accepting IDA’s invitation for Columbia University to become an institutional Member of IDA and authorizing then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk to also represent Columbia University on the IDA board of trustees and IDA executive committee.

Next: Protest Columbia University’s Complicity With U.S. Imperialism: April 24-27, 2008

Did TV News Show of Columbia University Provost's Father Support Vietnam War in 1960s?

One reason that GE-NBC’s evening news television show may not be eager to air many news segments that are critical of Columbia University is that the current provost of Columbia University, Alan Brinkley, is the son of the now-deceased former co-anchor of NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley” evening news television show of the 1960s, David Brinkley.

The father of Columbia University Provost Brinkley was no friend of the U.S. anti-war movement during the 1960s. As Lyle Johnston recalled in his 2003 book, Good Night, Chet”: A Biography of Chet Huntley, when 100,000 anti-war protesters marched to the Pentagon on Oct. 21, 1967 to confront the U.S. war makers, Columbia University Provost Brinkley’s father, David Brinkley, called the march “a coarse, vulgar episode by people who seemed more interested in exhibitionistic displays than [in] any redress of grievances.”

The same book also observed:

“The Vietnam `conflict’…kept `The Huntley-Brinkley Report’ busy reporting it. NBC broadcast an average of 12 Vietnam War-related stories per week between 1965 and 1970…

“…In the early part of 1962, the Pentagon’s public-affairs office director assured Kennedy that NBC had been convinced that United States interests would be negatively reflected if NBC presented coverage of `rough treatment’ by South Vietnamese soldiers to Viet Cong prisoners with a United States Army captain appearing in the sequence. The film did not appear on `The Huntley-Brinkley Report’ and was shelved…

“…J. Fred MacDonald…stated about Huntley, `At a time when his profession needed the utmost objectivity to report accurately to the American citizenry,’ Huntley `lavished praise’ on the military…

“In 1965…Chet narrated a Department of Defense film on the A-4 Skyhawk…

“At his retirement from NBC in 1970, he [Chet Huntley] mentioned, `We’ve listened to the extremists long enough—and rather politely: they are arrogant, ill-mannered boors [who] have no program—only a tantrum.’...

“Dr. Charles Bailey, in analyzing the 1965-70 `Huntley-Brinkley Reports’ stated Huntley `seemed to interpret stories in a way to emphasize his judgment that the war, although ugly, was just.’…”

The `Good Night, Chet’ book also revealed that after Martin Luther King was eliminated a few weeks before the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, “NBC News, by way of a memo from Robert Northshield, decided to present the `minimum amount of riot footage’ following” King’s assassination.

One reason NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report” was apparently willing to serve as a U.S. Establishment propaganda tool during the 1960s was that its co-anchors were extremely well-paid. As the `Good Night, Chet’ book noted:

“By the time Huntley retired he was earning about $300,000 a year…Huntley had financial interests in three radio stations in New York State: WRIV, Riverhead, and WALK-AM and FM in Patchogue on Long Island. Also, the following television stations were part of the Horizon Communications’ umbrella: KPAT, Berkeley, Calif., WKOW-TV, Madison, Wisconsin, WXOW-TV, La Crosse, Wisconsin and WAOW-TV, Warsaw, Wisconsin. He owned 23.9 percent of Horizon’s stock.”

Huntley also owned $2 million worth of stocks, bonds and property; and after he retired as the co-anchor of Columbia University Provost Brinkley’s father in 1970, Huntley earned another $300,000 for being American Airlines’ ad man on television.

Speaking of high salaries, the son of former NBC TV evening news show Co-Anchor Brinkley, Alan Brinkley, was paid an annual salary of $396,250 by tax-exempt, “non-profit” Columbia University in 2005 for being Columbia University’s provost.

Next: 300 Columbia University Professors Were IDA Consultants In 1968

Nazi Leader Goring Denied Responsibility For War Crimes At Nuremberg Trials

Over a million people in Iraq have been killed since the Pentagon first bombed Iraq in January 1991. Yet the Democratic and Republican party politicians who have sat in the White House Oval Office, served as U.S. Vice-President or held cabinet and national security advisor posts since 1991 in either the Bush I, the Clintons’ Administration or the Bush II-Cheney Administration generally reject the U.S. anti-war movement’s allegation that they are personally responsible for war crimes in Iraq.

Coincidentally, as the following excerpt from the transcript of the March 21, 1946 and March 22, 1946 sessions of the Trial of The Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg indicates, former German Third Reich Marshall Hermann Goring also rejected the allegation that he was personally responsible for any war crimes during World War II:

Thursday, March 21, 1946 (87th day of international trial)

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: …Are you telling the Tribunal that you, who up to 1943 were the second man in the Reich, knew nothing about concentration camps?

GORING: …I did not know anything about what took place and what methods were used in the concentration camps later, when I was no longer in charge.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Let me remind you of the evidence that has been given before this Court, that as far as Auschwitz alone is concerned, 4,000,000 people were exterminated. Do you remember that?

GORING: This I have heard as a statement here, but I consider it in no way proved—that figure, I mean.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If you do not consider it proved, let me remind you of the affidavit of Hoeftl, who was Deputy Group Leader of the Foreign Section of the Security Section of the Amt IV of the RSHA. He says that approximately 4,000,000 Jews have been killed in the concentration camps, while an additional 2,000,000 met death in other ways. Assume that these figures—one is a Russian figure, the other a German—assume they are even 50 percent correct, assume it was 2,000,000 and 1,000,000, are you telling this Tribunal that a Minister with your power in the Reich could remain ignorant that this was going on?

GORING: This I maintain, and the reason for this is that these things were kept secret from me. I might add that in my opinion not even the Fuhrer knew the extent of what was going on.

This is also explained by the fact that Himmler kept all these matters very secret. We were never given figures or any other details.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But, Witness, haven’t you access to the foreign press, the press department in your ministry, to foreign broadcasts? You see, there is evidence that altogether, when you take the Jews and other people, something like 10,000,000 people have been done to death in cold blood, apart from those killed in battle. Something like 10,000,000 people. Do you say that you never saw or heard from the foreign press in broadcast, that this was going on?

GORING: First of all, the figure 10,000,000 is not established in any way. Secondly, throughout the war I did not read the foreign press, because I considered it nothing but propaganda. Thirdly, though I had the right to listen to foreign broadcasts, I never did so, simply because I did not want to listen to propaganda. Neither did I listen to home propaganda.

Only during the last 4 days of the war did I—and this I could prove—listen to a foreign broadcasting station for the first time.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You told Mr. Justice Jackson yesterday that there were various representatives in Eastern territories, and you have seen the films of the concentration camps, haven’t you, since this Trial started? You knew that there were millions of garments, millions of shoes, 20,952 kilograms of gold wedding rings, 35 wagons of furs—all that stuff which these people who were exterminated at Maidanek or Auschwitz left behind them. Did nobody ever tell you, under the development of the Four Year Plan, or anyone else, that they were getting all these amounts of human material? Do you remember we heard from the Polish Jewish gentleman, who gave evidence, that all he got back from his family, of his wife and mother and daughter, I think, were their identity cards? His work was to gather up clothes. He told us that so thorough were the henchmen of your friend Himmler that it took 5 minutes extra to kill the women because they had to have their hair cut off as it was to be used for making mattresses. Was nothing ever told you about this accretion to German material, which came from the effects of these people who were murdered?

GORING: No, and how can you imagine this? I was laying down the broad outlines for the German economy, and that certainly did not include the manufacture of mattresses from women’s hair or the utilization of old shoes and clothes. I leave the figure open. But, also I do want to object to your reference to my “friend Himmler.”

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, I will say, “your enemy Himmler,” or simply “Himmler,” whichever you like. You know what I mean, don’t you?

GORING: Yes, indeed…

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The Fuhrer, at any rate, must have had full knowledge of what was happening with regard to concentration camps, the treatment of the Jews, and the treatment of the workers, must he not?

GORING: I already mentioned it as my opinion that the Fuhrer did not know about details in concentration camps, about atrocities as described here. As far as I know him, I do not believe he was informed. But insofar as…

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I am not asking about details; I am asking about the murder of four or five million people. Are you suggesting that nobody in power in Germany, except Himmler and perhaps Kaltenbrunner, knew about that?

GORING: I am still of the opinion that the Fuhrer did not know about these figures…

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Will you please answer my question. Do you still say neither Hitler nor you knew of the policy to exterminate the Jews?

GORING: As far as Hitler is concerned, I have said I do not think so. As far as I am concerned, I have said I did not know, even approximately, to what extent these things were taking place.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You did not know to what degree, but you knew there was a policy that aimed at the extermination of Jews?

GORING: No, a policy of emigration, not liquidation of the Jews. I knew only that there had been isolated cases of such perpetrations…

GEN. RUDENKO:…You admit that as chief of the German Air Force and Reich Marshall you participated in preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union?

GORING: I once more repeat that I prepared for the possibility of an attack, mainly because of Hitler’s assumption that Soviet Russia was adopting a dangerous attitude. In the beginning the certainty of an attack was not discussed, and that is stated clearly in the directive of November 1940.

Secondly, I want to emphasize that my position as Reich Marshall is of no importance there. That is a title and a rank.

GEN. RUDENKO: But you do not deny—rather you agree—that the plan was already prepared in November 1940?

GORING: Yes.

GEN. RUDENKO: …Do you admit that the objectives of the war against the Soviet Union consisted of invading and seizing Soviet territory up to the Ural Mountains and joining it to the German Reich, including the Baltic territories, the Crimea, the Caucasus; also the subjugation by Germany of the Ukraine, of Bielorussia, and of other regions of the Soviet Union? Do you admit that such were the objective of that plan?

GORING: That I certainly do not admit…

GEN. RUDENKO: And so, summing this up on the basis of the replies which you gave to my question, it has become quite clear, and I think you will agree, that the war aims were aggressive.

GORING: The one and only decisive war aim was to eliminate the danger which Russia represented to Germany.

GEN. RUDENKO: And to seize the Russian territories.

GORING: I have tried repeatedly to make this point clear, namely, that before the war started this was not discussed. The answer is that the Fuhrer saw in the attitude of Russia, and in the lining up of troops on our frontier, a mortal threat to Germany, and he wanted to eliminate that threat. He felt that to be his duty. What might have been done in peace, after a victorious war, is quite another question, which at that time was not discussed in any way. But to reply to your question, by that I do not mean to say that after a victorious war in the East, we would have had no thoughts of annexation…

GEN. RUDENKO: You must have known about the mass extermination of the Soviet citizens from the occupied territories of the Soviet Union with the help of the SD and the Security Police. Is it not true that the Einsatz Kommandos and their activities were the result of the plan prepared in advance for the extermination of Jews and other groups of Soviet citizens?

GORING: No. Einsatz Kommandos were an internal organ which was kept very secret…

Friday, March 22, 1946 (88th day of international trial)

GEN. RUDENKO: If you thought it possible to co-operate with Hitler, do you recognize that, as the second man in Germany, you are responsible for the organizing on a national scale of murders of millions of innocent people, independently of whether you knew about those facts or not? Tell me briefly, “yes” or “no.”

GORING: No, because I did not know anything about them and did not cause them.

GEN. RUDENKO: I should like to underline again, “whether you were informed of these facts or not.”

GORING: If I actually do not know them, then I cannot be held responsible for them…

GEN. RUDENKO: …Was it your duty to know about these facts?

GORING: In what way my duty? Either I know the fact or I do not know it. You can ask me only whether I was negligent in failing to obtain knowledge.

GEN. RUDENKO: You ought to know yourself better—Millions of Germans knew about the crimes which were being perpetrated, and you did not know about them?

GORING: Neither did millions of Germans know about them. That is a statement which has in no way been proved…

Next: Did TV News Show of Columbia University Provost’s Father Support Vietnam War in 1960s?

Obama's Platitudes vs. National Black Independent Political Party's 1980 Charter

Besides mouthing platitudes about how he’ll be an “agent of change” once he moves into the White House in 2009, U.S. Foreign Relations Committee Member Barack Obama hasn’t provided U.S. voters with a specific program for radical democratic change. Yet in its 1980 charter, the National Black Independent Political Party included the following 40 specific demands in its 1980 program for radical democratic change, most of which have still not been implemented by the U.S. Militaristic Establishment’s politicians of both major parties:

Demand 1: Massive employment programs specifically targeted at the Black community, to alleviate the disproportionate levels of unemployment among our people and especially among Black youth…

Demand 2: Free and low-cost education training for job opportunities for all our people…

Demand 3: An end to plant closings and runaway shops.

Demand 4: Full unemployment compensation for all who are laid off and unemployed.

Demand 5: Increased funding and improved administration for social security and other income maintenance programs for those unable to work.

Demand 6: An end to “right to work” labor laws.

Demand 7: Tuition-free education and open admissions to all institutions of higher learning as well as special technical and professional schools.

Demand 8: Full financial support by the federal government for Black colleges and universities, commensurate with the tax dollars now given to Harvard, Yale, University of California and other institutions of higher education…

Demand 9: A national comprehensive health care services program to make quality health care free and available to all who need it regardless of social status or income…

Demand 10: That the FBI and CIA be abolished, as they are incapable of being reformed to act justly.

Demand 11: That all repressive legislation such as the death penalty be eliminated from the criminal statutes.

Demand 12: That prisons be abolished and alternatives to cruelly punitive, torturous and degrading incarceration be developed…

Demand 13: Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Demand 14: Free day care for all who need it…

Demand 15: Fight against all constitutional or legal barriers to abortion…

Demand 16: Guaranteed livable income for the elderly with cost of living adjustments…

Demand 17: That the elderly be provided for economically, medically and emotionally…

Demand 18: The immediate implementation and enforcement of meaningful and workable affirmative action programs with specific goals, time limits, and quotas and penalties for failure to fully comply in all private and public employment, job training and education.

Demand 19: That the government allocate all the necessary funds and human resources to building and providing low cost houses and apartments for all who need them, especially for poor and middle income people.

Demand 20: That the maximum interest rates on loans for financing construction, rehabilitation and purchasing of single and multi-family units be rolled back immediately…

Demand 21: The immediate cessation of all gentrification and spatial deconcentration projects in urban centers that seek to disperse and displace Black people and destroy our culture.

Demand 22: That not more than 10% (ten percent) of a person’s annual income be paid on rent (which constitutes a rent control program).

Demand 23: The cessation of all discriminatory and anti-family housing, practices, e.g. red-lining, denial of public housing to ex-offenders and families with children, etc.

Demand 24: Nationalization of the energy industry at all levels and in all sections with full participation of Black and poor people in the management, control, and decision-making policies of the industry.

Demand 25: Strict government regulation on the prices of essential energy sources to curb skyrocketing energy prices.

Demand 26: Full government funding for research and development of new and/or cheaper energy resources.

Demand 27: An end to all propaganda which blames the…energy crisis on the energy producing Third World nations and OPEC.

Demand 28: Full disclosure of the corporate records of the energy monopolies.

Demand 29: Immediate halt to the use of nuclear power.

Demand 30: The immediate cessation of the seizure of Black-owned land.

Demand 31: The implementation of a radical reform program to meet the social needs of Black farmers and rural dwellers.

Demand 32: An end to military arms transfers to nations which violate human rights and who violate the sovereignty and independence of other nations.

Demand 33: An end to the huge and wasteful expenditures on the military…

Demand 34: An end to draft registration…

Demand 35: An end to U.S. military interventions and CIA covert operations in other nations.

Demand 36: The payment of wages to prisoners in accordance with laws and practices governing all workers for comparable or equal work.

Demand 37: The right to a single cell.

Demand 38: The right to free relevant training while in prison.

Demand 39: The abolition of the death penalty.

Demand 40: The abolition of all laws which try and incarcerate youth as adults.

Next: Nazi Leader Goring Denied Responsibility For War Crimes At Nuremberg Trials

`Canada Lee'

(chorus)
They called him Canada Lee
And he was Broadway’s Native Son
He spoke out for human rights
So they took away his acting jobs.

(verses)
His father came from the Caribbean
In the early twentieth century
And Lee was born in New York
And grew up in the big city
He studied the violin
And performed in the concert hall
But soon he began to notice
How white were their orchestras.

He ran away to a racetrack
And learned to ride a horse
He quickly became a jockey
And won more than he lost
But the era of Black jockeys
Was in the nineteenth century
Only whites were now allowed
To ride in their Kentucky Derby. (chorus)

So Lee next tried boxing
And fought well in the ring
He won more than he lost
And was renamed “Canada Lee”
Despite his many KOs
They would not give him a title fight
For in the Roaring Twenties
Welterweight champs could be only white.
But boxing can be brutal
And in the head he got hit one night
With a blow that caused bad damage
So in one eye he lost his sight
Retiring from the ring,
He formed himself a band
Yet gigs were hard to find
So he hunted for a new job. (chorus)

He found the Federal Theatre
In an Uptown Harlem church
They discovered that he could act
If the role was realistic
In `Stevedore’ and `The Big White Fog’
In `Native Son’, his big hit
He earned fame and applause
And much praise from the critics.

For eight years in the forties
On stage, radio or screen
He used his celebrity
In the fight for equality
Ed Sullivan smeared him as a “commie”
For acting in `Body and Soul’
And when he refused to condemn Paul Robeson
They cancelled all his radio shows. (chorus)

The Canada Lee biographical protest folk song was written a few years ago to remind people how, historically, the U.S. corporate entertainment industry has not been reluctant to discriminate against certain actors and actresses on the basis of their political beliefs.

(You can listen to some of the other protest folk songs I've written by checking out the "Columbia Songs for a Democratic Society" site at the following link:
http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music


Next: Obama’s Platitudes vs. National Black Independent Political Party’s 1980 Charter

`Times-Mirror-Newsday''s Shoreham/LILCO Nuclear Power Connection

(The following article about Times-Mirror-Newsday’s hidden history was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. In May 2008 the Tribune Company announced the sale of its Newsday subsidiary to the Cablevision media conglomerate. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

Times-Mirror-Newsday also acted as a public relations tool of the U.S. nuclear power industry and the deceased CIA Director Casey’s LILCO utility company in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. When LILCO first revealed its plans to build what many felt to be an unsafe nuclear power plant at Shoreham in 1965, the newspaper endorsed the idea. When then-Suffolk County Executive John Klein expressed opposition to building a Jamesport nuclear power plant on Long Island. Times-Mirror-Newsday attacked him editorially. Times-Mirror-Newsday developed a cozy relationship with LILCO in the 1970s, according to Keeler’s Newsday book:

“By 1979, Newsday had developed a reputation as a good friend of LILCO. Privately (local publisher) Bill Attwood regularly ate meals at the Westbury Manor during the 1970s with the chairman of LILCO John J. Tuohy…When Attwood’s son, Peter, was graduated from college and started to look for work in the computer field, Tuohy arranged an interview for him, and LILCO hired him. Later, when Newsday moved to Melville, LILCO bought the old Newsday Garden City plant, for future expansion of a substation. Publicly, the editorials kept up a steady drumbeat of support for the nuclear plant (at Shoreham).”

Even after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the late 1970s revealed the unsafe nature of U.S. nuclear power plants, Times-Mirror-Newsday still declared, editorially, according to Keeler’s Newsday book, that “despite all the shortcomings, continuing work on Shoreham still appears to be the best way to meet Long Island’s short-term energy needs.”

Although the Times-Mirror-Newsday conglomerate earned a gross income exceeding $3 billion per year in the early 1990s and posed as a journalistic watchdog of government institutions, it had sought government financial subsidies whenever it could get them. After building a new $44 million printing plant in the town of Hempstead which opened in October 1979, for example, Times-Mirror-Newsday applied for a tax abatement from the New York State government’s “Job Incentive Board” and was granted a tax abatement by the government.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: Canada Lee folk song lyrics

`Times-Mirror-Newsday''s Connection To Former CIA Director Casey Historically

(The following article about Times-Mirror-Newsday’s hidden history was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. In May 2008 the Tribune Company announced the sale of its Newsday subsidiary to the Cablevision media conglomerate. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

Times-Mirror-Newsday has not been reluctant to function as an organizing tool of the Long Island power structure, historically. According to Keeler’s Newsday book, in its May 31, 1978 issue, “Newsday concluded that Long Island needed a formal power structure to make choices for the island’s future” and so Times-Mirror-Newsday’s then-Suffolk County Editor, Robert Greene, “pulled together a group that became known as the Long Island Action Committee.” According to the same book, “It was Greene who called up Long Island leaders, Greene who chose the influential Republican, William Casey, as its initial chairman, Greene who sold Casey to others, and Greene who hovered over the committee’s early meetings.”

A few years later, the initial chairman of Times-Mirror-Newsday’s “Long Island Action Committee,” the now-deceased William Casey, was named by then-President Ronald Reagan to be his CIA director. As Reagan’s CIA director, Casey helped organize the U.S.-backed Contra War against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and supplied CIA satellite-gathered military intelligence to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military machine during the Iraqi-Iran war of the 1980s.

The day before Casey was to testify before a U.S. Senate Committee in December 1986 on his role in arranging for the sale of arms to Iran to raise funds for the Nicaraguan Contras, in violation of a congressional law, he was hospitalized. In May 1987, the day before a congressional hearing witness testified that Casey was involved in the “Contragate” scandal, the 74-year-old former Fordham University Trustee and Long Island Trust Company, LILCO and Capital Cities Communications director died.

In 1970, the deceased CIA Director Casey, himself, had attempted to purchase Newsday prior to the finalizing of Harry Guggenheim’s sale of the newspaper to the Times-Mirror Company. Casey was both one of the original investors and a director of the Capital Cities Communications media conglomerate and he visited Bill Moyers around this time and told Moyers that Capital Cities Communications could offer Guggenheim $20 million or $30 million more than Times-Mirror for Newsday. Although Guggenheim went ahead with the sale of Newsday to Los Angeles’ Times-Mirror, when Casey was CIA Director in the 1980s his Capital Cities Communications Company was able to gobble up an even more influential mass media institution than Newsday—a television broadcasting conglomerate named ABC [before the Disney media conglomerate subsequently purchased Capital Cities Communications/ABC during the 1990s].

Prior to managing Reagan’s successful 1980 campaign for the presidency, Times-Mirror-Newsday’s friend Casey had worked in former U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers’ law firm of Rogers & Well. Among the law firm clients whom Casey had billed for his services during the five years before he moved into his CIA director’s office were the following: Saudi American Lines, international Crude Oil Refining Company, the Government of Indonesia and the Republic of Korea. As Reagan’s CIA director until he died, Casey continued to share ownership of over $3 million worth of stock in companies like Dome Petroleum, Kerr-McGee, Standard Oil of Indiana, Mobil-Superior Oil, DuPont, and Exxon, according to the book Reagan’s Ruling Class by Ronald Brownstein and Nina Easton.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: Times-Mirror-Newsday’s Shoreham/LILCO Nuclear Power Connection Historically