Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work--Part 1

The purpose of the Project Jason group of U.S. university professors that Columbia University’s Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank set up in the late 1950s was described by Princeton University Professor John Wheeler in the following way, in a Dec. 11, 1963 letter to former IDA Vice President and Director of Research Albert Hill:

“Project Jason of the Institute for Defense Analyses has served as one mechanism to draw a new generation into defense issues. It has had the great advantage of making defense work seem to scientists not as a second rate activity, as it is often regarded in other countries, but as something deserving the attention of the very best minds.”

On Friday, Oct. 20, 1961 at 1710 H Street NW in Washington, D.C., for example, the Jason Division of Columbia’s IDA held the initial session of its annual Fall meeting. At 9:00 a.m., Seymour Deitchman of IDA’s RESD Division spoke and led a discussion about “Problems of Limited War.” Then, at 11:30 a.m., Dr. Michael May spoke and led a discussion about “Limited War Technology.” After a lunch break, the U.S. university professors who were members of the Jason Division then heard Richard DuBois of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division speak and lead a discussion at 3:30 p.m. on “Carrier Tactical Forces Through 1963.”

The following morning at 9:00 a.m. on Sat., Oct. 21, 1961, Dr. M. Ruderman and Columbia University Professor of Physics Henry Foley, both members of the Jason Division, began the second day’s session of Jason’s annual Fall meeting by leading a discussion on “Midas.” Then at 1:00 p.m., former Columbia Professor of Physics Charles Townes led a discussion on “CORWA.” And the second day’s session ended with a 2:45 p.m. discussion led by Dr. Paul Hansen of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group on the “Tactical Aircraft Penetration Study.”

The Jason Division of Columbia’s IDA also held a summer weapons research study session between June 14, 1965 and July 30, 1965 in Building N. 3614 at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts during the 1960s. Half of the Pentagon weapons researchers attending this summer Jason Division meeting were ARPA, RAND and IDA staff employees and half of the attendees were U.S. university professors who were Jason Division members. Besides former Columbia University Professor Townes, the steering committee for the 1965 Jason summer study session included Columbia Professor or Physics Henry Foley, Columbia Professor of Physics Leon Lederman and Columbia Professor Richard Garwin, who also directed Columbia’s IBM Watson Laboratory.

Next: Columbia University’s IDA Jason Project 1960s Work—Part 2

Some Poems From The 1970s, 1980s & Early 1990s

Written during the late 1970s, the 1980s and early 1990s, these poems might reflect some of the historical mood of those decades:

The Forgotten Majority

We speak for the Forgotten Majority.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority of the 1980s that refuses to vote for new dictators in the media-rigged elections.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority that owns no stock in the exploitative corporations of the USA.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority which lives in poverty and either walks the streets without jobs or is locked in 9 to 5 slavery in offices or factories that pay wages too low.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority that can’t afford next month’s rent for a slum apartment and can’t afford the price of a new house or a new condo and must move from old neighborhoods because the rent has been gentrified.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority that is denied jobs, housing, and an adequate standard of living because of colonialism, neo-colonialism and racial discrimination.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority that the capitalist patriarchy oppresses and exploits.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority that opposes the Pentagon’s war moves in Central America, Europe and the Middle East, but is excluded from mass media access.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority that wants an end to the oppression of gay men and lesbians and an end to the rule of Democratic and Republican Party politicians and their white capitalist allies.

We speak for the Forgotten Majority that demands its freedom now!

Target Nicaragua

They’re lining up the robots and the troops
The mass media cheerleaders are telling us why we should be thankful
The jackasses and bird-brains are trying to manage the flesh and blood and minds and spirits of the acid-opened-up people
The Catholic Church is pumping out more leaflets from central headquarters
In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost and the Vatican, Inc.
The Russian-American intellectuals are conspiring on the mattress with the women refugees from the wife-beaters.

The covert aggressors are overtly murdering civilians with U.S. guns in Nicaragua.

The Pentagon is drawing up the bombing plans and ordering a new supply of napalm.

The ghost of Walt Whitman is marching through the academic departments and crying out: “Stop the bull-shit!”

The professors are developing more weapons
The homeless are herded into the armories
The students are studying computers
The people in Nicaragua are preparing for the worst
The CIA has issued a new secret plan of aggression
Called
“Target Nicaragua.”

Summer 1983

To be old and unpublished and poor
In the USA
Makes you wonder what the point is
Of writing another unrecorded song
Or unpublished novel
Or unmarketable non-fiction.
You're just a slave, obviously,
Trapped in those 9 to 5 coffins
With other slaves who don't know they're slaves
While the pigs rip everyone off
And the middle-class lefties preach left gradualism from their soft middle-class job slots
And middle-class gatekeepers with middle-class critical standards, mentalities and politics
Won't let you get into print.

Yes, Revolution will come
But you might starve too soon to see it.
Although the nuke war may come sooner for you the way things are going these days.

Wasted Lives

Wasted lives
So many wasted lives
Wasted minds
So many wasted minds
Wasted hands
So many wasted hands
Wasted men
And many wasted women.

Ugly greed surrounds my soul
Sammy Glicks and corporate females
Pig professors bullying the young
Cornering the jobs behind armed guards.

Within The Skyscraper

Within the skyscraper
Men plot evil deeds
Women sell their made-up faces, their egoistic minds and their aerobic bodies
To the highest bidder.
They talk about their markets
And how to manipulate all the fools;
Money is their god,
Weapons is their product
Theft is their profession.
But beneath the fluorescent lamps and above the carpeted floors
The Resistance to the tyrants in suits and ties
Cries out:
“Justice, Equality, Freedom!
Wall Street Will Fall!”
And the spirit of this Resistance
Invincible
Rides the elevators up and down the skyscrapers
And across each floor
And leaves its sign in the corners of cluttered desks and cubicles
Within the skyscrapers.

The Question

To read, to write or to fight,
That is the question;
And if to read
To read what?
Fiction or history or language?
And if to write,
To write what?
Poetry, plays, novels, short stories
Or biography or non-fiction?
And if to fight,
To fight how?
When others are demoralized and psyched out by the media
Or opportunist.
To be free and loving,
That is the answer;
And to avoid literary egotism.

Thanksgiving 1988

It's still a day of mourning for those people
Trampled on by the land lust of the settlers
And their corporate and yuppie descendents
But, accidentally,
I'm attempting to jump from coast-to-coast again
In search of freedom
In search of community
In search of a part of my youth
In search of the new 'Frissco
And a place to get through the '90s
And my '40s
While stuck in the middle of
Corporate Fascist Amerika.
Farewell loveless yuppie New York!

Thanksgiving 1991

Be thankful you’re still alive
Be thankful you haven’t starved
Be thankful the government
Didn’t lock you behind bars.

Be thankful you have a job
Where you can be a slave all day
Be thankful you have a landlord
Who steals most of your pay.

Be thankful for all the yuppies
And all the rich businessmen
Be thankful for all the generals
Be thankful for all the pigs.

Be thankful that no one spits on you
When you sit in a subway car
Be thankful if you’re lonely
Be thankful if you can’t find much love.

Goodbye America (written on Sepember 23, 1986)

Goodbye America
I hope to be back soon
To continue to bear witness to the inhumanity of your ruling class towards the rest of the world
You can continue to try to lock me out of your cultural world
And sentence me and my sisters and brothers to the 9 to 5 boxes
But we will continue to fight the class responsible for the mass media manipulation of U.S. working class consciousness
And even when I'm gone
Which may be soon or may be later
The flag of spiritual resistance to America's pig social system and anti-democratic pig value structure and pig cultural/intellectual/academic Establishment
Will be raised by future generations of rebels
Until leissure-oriented
Equality and freedom
And small "c" communism
Is established
Right here on The Lower East Side
And right her on the island of Manhattan.
Venceremos!
Take The Man's Mass Media!
And fight the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the corporations and Pentagon
To your last breath
Until all are free and equal.

Next: Columbia University’s IDA Jason Project 1960s Work—Part 1

Remembering The `Karibian vs. Columbia University Sexual Harassment Case'

Columbia University was able to get a jury to rule in favor of Columbia University in the “Karibian vs. Columbia University Sexual Harassment Case.” But this excerpt from the text of the June 28, 1996 court decision (930 F.Supp 134) reveals some interesting facts on how some Columbia University supervisors apparently treated their women employees, historically, in the late 1980s:

“Plaintiff Sharon Karibian brought suit against the alleged perpetrator, Mark Urban; against Columbia University, the former employer of Karibian and Urban; and against John Borden, a vice president at Columbia…

“Karibian claimed that Urban sexually harassed her by engaging in unwelcome sexual activities with Karibian and indicating to her that she would receive employment advantages if she submitted and disadvantages in her employment if she did not. Karibian claimed that she in fact was benefited in her employment while submitting to Urban’s sexual demands and suffered detriment after she discontinued the relationship. Karbian also claimed that Urban retaliated against her because she complained to Columbia…

“…Urban produced a lengthy written statement…The statement by no means admitted any coerced or harassing sexual activity or any pressure relating to the conditions of Karibian’s employment. The statement did, however, admit that Urban had pursued Karibian romantically, that a sexual relationship had ultimately developed, and that it extended, with some breaks, until the spring of 1989. The statement described other matters relating to Karibian, including the fact that Urban had helped Karibian obtain compensation for hours in September 1987 which Karibian had not actually worked.

“…After reviewing the statement, Borden and the other people at Columbia involved with this matter decided to ask Urban to resign. Borden felt that he had been misled by Urban on an earlier occasion about what was going on between him and Karibian, and Borden and the others took the view at this time that it was improper management on the part of Urban to develop a sexual relationship with his subordinate. Another factor influencing the Columbia people was Urban’s involvement in having Karibian paid for unworked hours…”

Next: Some Poems From the 1970s and 1980s

Columbia University's Superior Bank/"Obamagate" Scandal Link?

Although Columbia University is a tax-exempt, “non-profit” institution that is supposed to be legally prohibited from engaging in partisan political politics, Columbia University Trustee Eric Holder is currently a 2008 Obama presidential campaign adviser.
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/08/eric_holder_joins_obama.html . Besides being an Obama campaign adviser, Columbia University Trustee Holder also became a law partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling after serving as a Deputy Attorney General in the Democratic Clinton Administration until 2001. (See the following link: http://www.cov.com/eholder/ )

But as the Covington & Burling web site at http://www.cov.com/practice/white_collar_and_investigations/financial_insitutions_investigations/
notes, Holder's law firm "represented Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation in government inquiries and civil litigation regarding the failure of its subsidiary, Superior Bank, fsb, the largest bank failure in recent years."

Coincidentally, the Obama Campaign's National Finance Chair, Penny Pritzker, sat on the board of the Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation whose special corporate interests Columbia Trustee and Obama Campaign Adviser Holden's law firm represented before U.S. government regulators and in federal court. As the Feb. 6, 2002 Office of Inspector General's report noted:

"Superior was orginally established in 1988 when the Pritzker and Dworman interests acquired Lyons Savings Bank...The corporate structure consisted of Superior being wholly-owned by Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation (CCFC), the holding company, with the Pritzker and Dworman interests each owning 50 percent of the holding company..."

Yet the Office of Inspector General's Feb. 6, 2002 report also observed:

"Oftentimes the line between poor business judgment and fraud and abuse is difficult to draw. Nevertheless, based on our review of the failure of Superior Bank it appears that some of the decisions made by Superior management rise to the level of insider abuse...

"As early as 1996, Superior submitted Thrift Financial Reports that were inaccurate...

"Questionable management practices were evident at Superior for many years...

"...Examiners discovered that during the fourth calendar quarter of 2000 Superior sold loans at fixed prices to Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation. This transaction violates various federal regulations by selling assets to an affiliate at a price less than fair market value..."

Next: Remembering The “Karibian vs. Columbia University Sexual Harassment Case”

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

To mark the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Columbia Anti-War Student Revolt against Columbia University’s complicity with U.S. imperialism, veterans of the 1968 Columbia Student Strike will be gathering at Columbia’s School of Journalism between April 24 and April 27, 2008. See the following link for the schedule of commemoration events:

http://www.columbia1968.com/


Next: Columbia University’s Superior Bank/”Obamagate” Scandal Link?

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