Columbia University's Washington Post Company/`Newsweek' Link & `Newsweek' Magazine's Historical CIA Connection--Part 2

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger currently sits between RAND Corporation Board of Trustees Chairman Ronald Olson and Coca-Cola Company board member Barry Diller on the Washington Post Company media conglomerate’s board of directors. And Washington Post Company Chairman of the Board, Donald Graham, also sits next to Columbia University President Bollinger on the Columbia University School of Journalism’s Pulitzer Prize Board.

So don’t expect the Washington Post Company’s weekly news magazine, Newsweek, to put a photograph of any Columbia or Barnard student anti-war activists on its cover in September 2007, like it did once in September 1968.

Following is the second part of an article about the Washington Post Company and Newsweek magazine’s hidden history which first appeared in the February 17, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper, Downtown:

Newsweek Magazine’s Historical CIA Connection—Part 2

Former Newsweek Owner Philip Graham was the son of a Florida state senator and real estate developer, the half-brother of former U.S. Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the husband of the now-deceased former Washington Post Company chairman of the board Katharine Meyer Graham, and the father of the current Washington Post Company chairman of the board (and a current member of Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize Board)—Donald Meyer-Graham.

After marrying the daughter of Washington Post publisher Eugene Meyer in 1940, Philip Graham spent part of World War II in attendance at the Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg, PA. Following World War II, Graham’s father-in-law named him publisher and editor-in-chief of the Washington Post at the age of 30. And in the Summer of 1946, Graham’s father-in-law provided him and Katharine Meyer-Graham with the money to make a down payment on a house in Washington, D.C. that had belonged to one of the men most responsible for creating the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]—former Office of Strategic Services [OSS] Director “Wild Bill” Donovan.

Top CIA officials like Frank Wisner, Richard Helms, Desmond Fitzgerald and Allen Dulles were also entertained socially by Philip Graham and Katharine Meyer-Graham during the late 1940s and 1950s. CIA Covert Action Chief Frank Wisner and former Newsweek Owner Philip Graham apparently conceived of the CIA’s secret Operation MOCKINGBIRD program to recruit and use journalists for CIA covert action program support. As a result of the Operation MOCKINGBIRD program, Katharine The Great noted that “by the early 1950s, the CIA `owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS, and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, 400 to 600 in all, according to a former CIA analyst.”

The same book also revealed that “Over a period of months, at the Graham salon and other meeting places, as a former Agency man who attended those meetings recalls, Wisner discussed with him [Philip Graham] which journalists were for sale and what price (`You could get a journalist cheaper than good call girl,’ the former Agency man says, `for a couple hundred dollars a month’) on how to handle them, where to place them, and what sorts of stories to produce;” and “Phil [Graham] recommended target reporters for jobs with other newspapers.” The “former Agency man” also told the author of Katharine the Great that since the Washington Post couldn’t afford to hire foreign correspondents in the days when it was still a money-losing operation, the CIA paid for the foreign trips of Washington Post reporters in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Within four years after Philip Graham’s Washington Post media conglomerate acquired Newsweek, the two men who conceived of the CIA’s “Operation MOCKINGBIRD” mass media program—Frank Wisner and Philip Graham—had both committed suicide. According to Katharine The Great, prior to shooting himself in August 1963, Philip Graham had begun to talk “about the CIA’s manipulation of journalists,” “said it disturbed him,” “said it to the CIA,” and “turned against the newsmen and politicians whose code was mutual trust and strangely silence” so that “now the word was that Phil Graham could not be trusted.” At a June 1963 newspaperman’s convention in Phoenix, for instance, Newsweek Owner Philip Graham had “appeared in the banquet room during a speech, grabbed the microphone and announced to the crowd…that he was going to tell them exactly who in Washington was sleeping with whom, beginning with President Kennedy” whose “favorite…was now Mary Meyer, who had been married to CIA official Cord Meyer…and was the sister of Ben Bradley’s wife,” according to Katharine The Great. One Establishment newsman then telephoned JFK, while other Establishment newsmen apparently hustled Graham back to his motel to be injected with a sedative and rushed to the Phoenix Airport in an ambulance, prior to being institutionalized. (end of part 2).
(Downtown 2/17/93)

Next: Columbia University’s Washington Post Company/Newsweek Link and Newsweek Magazine’s Historical CIA Connection—Part 3

Columbia University's Washington Post Company/`Newsweek' Link & `Newsweek' Magazine's Historical CIA Connection--Part 1

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger currently sits between RAND Corporation Board of Trustees Chairman Ronald Olson and Coca-Cola Company board member Barry Diller on the Washington Post Company media conglomerate’s board of directors. Yet, as I noted in a June 1, 2007 blog posting:

“The RAND Corporation think-tank was recently given a $210.6 million `cost-reimbursement plus fee-for need contract' by the U.S. Air Force `to provide for RAND Project Air Force,' which produces studies and analyses for the U.S. war machine. Coincidentally, Donald Rumsfeld was a Trustee of the RAND Corporation from 1977-1987, 1988-1998, and 1999-2001, before serving as the Bush Administration’s Secretary of Defense between 2001 and 2006.”

And the Coca-Cola Company is also currently the target of an anti-corporate boycott campaign (http://www.killercoke.org/) because of its apparent involvement in human rights violations in Colombia and elsewhere around the globe.

Washington Post Company Chairman of the Board, Donald Graham, also sits next to Columbia University President Bollinger on the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Pulitzer Prize Board. So don’t expect the Washington Post Company’s weekly news magazine, Newsweek, to put a photograph of any Columbia or Barnard student anti-war activists on its cover in September 2007, like it did once in September 1968.

Following is the first part of an article about the Washington Post Company and Newsweek magazine’s hidden history which originally appeared in the February 17, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper, Downtown:

Newsweek Magazine’s Historical CIA Connection—Part 1

Downtown telephoned Newsweek magazine’s switchboard in February 1993 and asked to speak to a press spokesperson for the magazine. Newsweek’s switchboard receptionist then connected Downtown to the answering machine of a Newsweek media writer named Josh Hammer, and Downtown asked Hammer for an official comment on whether Newsweek has ever acted as a tool of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency since 1948 and whether there’s ever been any CIA connection to Newsweek?

“I’ve got nothing to tell you. It’s a ridiculous question, to begin with. And, second of all, I’m a media writer here and I have no idea why you asked me that question in the first place…But I can tell you it’s a ridiculous question. There’s been no involvement here with the CIA. And I don’t know why you’re suppositioning that,” the Newsweek media writer replied when he returned Downtown’s telephone call.

Yet in his 1983 book, The Imperial Post: The Meyers, The Grahams and The Paper That Rules Washington, Tom Kelly wrote the following:

“Newsweek did have a CIA connection. One CIA agent who worked in Paris…recalls that agents were told quietly that purposeful stories, true or false, could always be planted in the `Periscope’ column.”

Although Newsweek magazine likes to pose as an independent, politically liberal newsweekly, the Central Intelligence Agency connections with Newsweek and its Washington Post newspaper parent company have apparently been extensive since the late 1940s.

Newsweek’s European correrspondent in Paris between 1953 and 1957 was Ben Bradlee. After 1957, Bradlee worked for Newsweek’s Washington Bureau as a reporter, until he was named to be Newsweek’s Washington Bureau Chief in 1961. By 1965, Bradlee was also a Newsweek Senior Editor. Between 1965 and 1991, Bradlee was the managing editor or executive editor of the Washington Post newspaper of Newsweek’s parent company. During the 1990s, Bradlee sat on the board of directors and was a vice-president of the Washington Post Company.

Bradlee has denied any past connections to the CIA. But during the 1980s, former Village Voice writer Deborah Davis came into possession of a set of revealing Justice Department documents. According to the second edition of Davis’s book, Katharine The Great: Katharine Graham and `The Washington Post’, “the documents show” that in the early 1950s, “Mr. Bradlee went to the Rosenberg prosecutors in New York under orders of `the head of the CIA in Paris,’ as he told an assistant prosecutor, and that from their material he composed his `Operations Memorandum’ on the case, which was the basis of all propaganda subsequently sent out to foreign journalists.”

The grandfather of former CIA Director Richard McGarrah Helms—an international financier named Gates White McGarrah—“was a member of the board of directors of the Astor Foundation which owned Newsweek” prior to its sale to the Washington Post Company in 1961, according to Katharine The Great. The same book also revealed that in 1961 Bradlee “is said to have heard from his friend Richard Helms, who heard it from his grandfather that Newsweek would be put up for sale.” Bradlee then obtained a check from the Washington Post Company head at that time, Philip Graham, for $1 million, to give to former CIA Director Helms’s grandfather as a down payment for the purchase of Newsweek.

At the urging of former Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Bradlee in the mid-1960s, the Washington Post published “the Penkovsky papers, a CIA concoction which had been offered through a legitimate publisher as the authentic revelation of a Soviet double agent,” according to The Imperial Post: The Meyers, The Grahams and The Paper That Rules Washington.

A former wife of CIA European Covert Operations Chief Cord Meyer—Mary Pinchot-Meyer—was the sister-in-law of Bradlee between 1956 and Pinchot-Meyer’s mysterious death in 1964.

Katharine The Great also contends that when Bradlee was the Washington Post’s executive editor during the early 1970s, he directed the investigation which pressured President Nixon to resign in 1974 because “the leaders of the intelligence community” wanted “the president of the U.S. to fall.” Katharine The Great also asserted that “there is no doubt that the use of the Washington Post to take down Nixon was both a counter-intelligence operation of the highest order and the dirty trick par excellence.”

During the 1950s—even before it became a subsidiary of the Washington Post Company—Newsweek had “connections to intelligence,” according to Katharine The Great.

The CIA covertly set up Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty to broadcast CIA propaganda to Eastern Europe and Russia in 1950. In 1976, the former vice-president for radio and television of Newsweek’s parent company—John Hayes—was named to be the chairman of the Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty board of directors.

During the early 1960s, “a secret CIA task force” was set up “to explore methods of beaming American propaganda broadcasts to China,” according to Katharine The Great. The Newsweek-affiliated John Hayes was “named to this secret CIA task force,” as was former CBS News president Richard Salant, now-Schumann Foundation President Bill Moyers, the ex-husband of Ben Bradlee’s sister-in-law [Cord Meyer], CIA Chief of Station in Ethiopia Paul Henze and former Columbia University Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski ("who had been on the agency payroll for several years”), according to Deborah Davis’ Katharine The Great book.

Prior to adding Newsweek to his company’s stable of media properties in 1961, the Washington Post’s publisher from 1946 to 1963—Philip Graham—worked closely with CIA officials. According to Katharine The Great, in a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, Carl Bernstein reported “that Agency officials…thought of Philip Graham as `somebody you could get help from,’ meaning he helped arrange journalistic cover for agents.” Graham was also “one of the architects of a now widespread practice, the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA;” and “individual relations with intelligence had in fact been the reason that the Post Company had grown as fast as it did after the war” since “Philip Graham’s commitment to intelligence had given his friends Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles an interest in helping to make the Washington Post the dominant news vehicle in Washington, which they had done by assisting with its two most crucial acquisitions, the [Washington] Times-Herald and WTOP-TV radio and television stations,” according to Katharine The Great [WTOP-radio was later sold and WTOP-TV was later exchanged in the 1970s by the Washington Post Company, for other media properties]. (end of part 1)
(Downtown 2/17/93)

Next: Columbia University’s Washington Post Company/Newsweek Link and Newsweek Magazine’s Historical CIA Connection—Part 2

`Poison In The Air'

“There’s poison in the air
Right near the factory!”
And children start to die
And mothers start to scream
And fathers start to weep
And workers start to shout:
“The Union Carbide plant—
Its gas is pouring out!”

It went to India
To use the cheap labor
And thousands it did kill
When its poison gas did pour
“Safety, it costs too much”
The bankers all did say
And the silent spring of death
Won’t affect the USA.

The pesticide for insects
Murdered people now instead
The methyl isocyanate
From the storage tank it fled
Morgan Guaranty Director Brown
And Chase Manhattan Director Ferguson
Directed Union Carbide
To use the cheapest gas.

Each day another horror
Or a new atrocity
There is no regulation
As they destroy the air we breathe
Today they poisoned India
Tomorrow your city
A monument to profit
A tribute to corporate greed.


To listen to the "Poison In The Air" folk song, you can click on the following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Protest+Folk+Songs/Poisin+in+the+Air

The Poison In The Air protest folk song was written shortly after the late 1984 disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. Since that time, Union Carbide was purchased by Dow Chemical in 2001; and in the 21st-century there’s a Students for Bhopal group (www.studentsforbhopal.org) which is still fighting for justice for the victims of U.S. corporate greed in India. Coincidentally, a member of the Dow board of directors in recent years, Jacqueline Barton, apparently also used to sit on the board of trustees of Barnard College (whose board of trustees currently includes Columbia University President and Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate board member Lee Bollinger).

Next: Columbia University’s Washington Post Company/Newsweek Link and Newsweek Magazine’s Historical CIA Connection—Part 1

`Non-Profit' Columbia University Teachers College Paid Five Professors Over $210,000 Each In Annual Salaries In 2005

In its Form 990 “return of organization exempt from income tax” for 2004, the Teachers College of Columbia University noted it “receives assistance from the state of New York as well as grants and contracts from a variety of federal, state, and local agencies for its exempt purposes.” Yet between September 1, 2004 and August 31, 2005, the tax-exempt Teachers College of Columbia University apparently paid some of its professors a lot more per year than the annual salaries received by either the typical New York City public school teacher, the typical university grad school teaching assistant or the typical non-tenured adjunct college professor.

According to its Form 990 report for 2004, at least five Columbia University Teachers College professors were paid annual salaries of more than $210,000 between September 2004 and September 2005. Columbia University Teachers College Professor Sharon Kagan, for instance, was paid an annual salary of $274,835, while Columbia University Teachers College Professor Henry Levin was paid an annual salary of $239,729. In addition, during the same period Columbia University Teachers College Professor Ruth Vinz was paid a salary of $216,763, Columbia University Teachers College Professor Thomas Bailey was paid a salary of $213,327 and Columbia University Teachers College Professor Charles Basch was paid a salary of $210,617.

The “non-profit” Teachers College of Columbia University also apparently used its tax-exempt status to pay some of its top administrators a lot more per year than your typical New York City public school teacher receives for actually teaching inside a classroom during the academic year. Between September 2004 and September 2005, the then-Columbia University Teachers College President, Arthur Levine, was paid a $315,600 annual salary, while the Dean of Columbia University Teachers College, Darlyne Bailey, was paid a salary of $270,000. In addition, the Vice President for Finance and Administration at Columbia University Teachers College, Fred Schnur, was paid an annual salary of $241,000, while the Vice President for Development and External Affairs at Columbia University Teachers College, Joseph Bosnan, was paid an annual salary of $240,000 between September 2004 and September 2005. The Assistant to the President of the “non-profit” Columbia University Teachers’ College was also paid an annual salary of $149,300 between September 2004 and September 2005.

Next: Poison In The Air lyrics

`Non-Profit' Columbia University Teachers College's Assets Increased By $12 Million In 2005

For the 2004 fiscal year, the Teachers College of Columbia University filed a “return of organization exempt from income tax.” Yet, according to its Form 990 for 2004, for the year beginning September 1, 2004 and ending September 1, 2005, the Teachers College of Columbia University’s total revenues of $161.5 million exceeded its total expenses of $153.4 million by over $8 million. Although claiming to be a “non-profit” educational institution that received $18.1 million in government grants between September 2004 and September 2005, the Teachers College of Columbia University also earned $4.7 million in dividends and interest from its portfolio of stocks and bonds during this same period and gained an additional $11.8 million in revenues from the sale of some of its assets.

Despite selling some of its stock assets during the fiscal year, between September 2004 and September 2005 the market value of “non-profit” Teachers College of Columbia University’s investment portfolio increased from $174 million to $192.1 million. Over $58 million worth of common stocks and over $68 million worth of hedge fund investment fund holdings were contained in Columbia Teachers College’s portfolio as of September 1, 2005. The “non-profit” Teachers College of Columbia University also owned a “for-profit” education industry business in Japan called TC Kyoika Services/TC Educational Services. The net assets of the tax-exempt Teachers College of Columbia University increased by over $12 million between September 2004 and September 2005, from $191.6 million in 2004 to $203.8 million in 2005.

Besides sitting on the board of directors of the for-profit Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate (which owns Kaplan Inc./Kaplan Higher Education’s $1.7 billion education industry business), Columbia University President Lee Bollinger also sits on the board of trustees of the Teachers College of Columbia University; and the Teachers College of Columbia University apparently shifted $564,512 from its bank account to Columbia University’s bank account between 2004 and 2005.

The former president of Columbia University Teachers College, Arthur Levine, used to sit on the board of directors of Blackboard Inc., while the current Columbia University Teachers College President, Susan Fuhrman, is also a member of the audit and nomination committee of the for-profit Pearson educational publishing firm—which makes a lot of money from the sale of college textbooks and educational materials to the U.S. educational system.

Next: “Non-Profit” Columbia University Teachers College Paid Five Professors Over $210,000 Each In Annual Salaries In 2005

Time To Tax Columbia University & Other NYC "Non-Profit" Institutions?

New York City’s Plutocratic Mayor Bloomberg may claim his government doesn’t have money to provide: 1. high-wage jobs for the unemployed; 2. subsidies for workers’ co-ops; 3. tax relief for alternative businesspeople and small homeowners; 4. apartments for the homeless; 5. rent roll-backs for tenants; 6. fare reductions for subway and bus passengers; 7. a restoration of free tuition at CUNY for students; and 8. steady work for musicians, writers, artists and community activists. Yet the “non-profit” sector of New York City’s economy that includes Columbia University has been loaded with money for many years. As an early 1990s book by Robert Finch, The Assassination Of New York, observed long ago:

“The total budget of the city’s non-profit sector in 1989--$32 billion—well-exceeded the city budget. The non-profits, chiefly foundations, universities, voluntary hospitals, churches own about six percent of the city’s $400 billion property roll—yet they pay no taxes…Why have laws regulating political contributions at all, if by means of foundations, they can be easily evaded—just by calling them `philanthropy’? Why, for example, should the Rockefellers, through the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund be able to give unlimited amounts of money to city government and community organizations to promote their real estate interests?...What does `non-profit’ mean when the average non-profit executive director’s salary in New York is upwards of $175,000 [in 1989] …At a minimum, there should be a stiff wage tax on non-profit executives who make more than the mayor.” [unless the mayor happens to be a billionaire plutocrat from Massachusetts].
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 1/8/97)

Besides making big money in the 1990s from its Manhattan real estate investments, Columbia University pocketed over $29 million in foundation welfare grants per year during the 1990s. Other top recipients of foundation grants in New York State in the mid-1990s were the following tax-exempt institutions: NYU ($18 million); Rockefeller University [$6.5 million); Ms. Foundation for Women ($5.8 million); WNET/Channel 13 ($5.8 million); Council on Foreign Relations ($5.4 million); Yeshiva University ($5.2 million); CUNY Research ($4.9 million); and Barnard College ($4.4 million).
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 2/12/97)

The MacArthur Foundation also gave a grant of $175,000 to Columbia University’s Anthropology Department in 1992 to subsidize Columbia University’s Indonesian project when Indonesia was still under the control of the U.S.-backed Suharto dictatorship. Coincidentally, a Columbia University trustee at that time named Margaret Ellerbe Mahoney also sat on the board of directors of the MacArthur Foundation which approved the $175,000 philanthropic grant that was given to Columbia’s “needy” Anthropology Department.
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 1/8/97)

Next: “Non-Profit” Columbia University Teachers College’s Assets Increased By $12 Million In 2005

Columbia University Uses Israeli-Connected Law Firm To Lobby

One reason Columbia University President Lee Bollinger may have been so eager to issue a statement in June 2007 opposing the Palestinian solidarity academic boycott of Israeli institutions that most anti-war activists in the U.S. and other countries support, is that the law firm that lobbies for Columbia has an “Israel Practice” division. According to the Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel website (www.kramer-levin.com/israel) , for instance, the practice of a firm partner named Richard Gilden “encompasses representation of a number of publicly traded companies based in Israel, as well as representation of major investment banks that have led public offerings of companies based in Israel.” And another Kramer Levin partner, Ernest Wechsler “works extensively with foreign corporations, including a number of companies based in Israel, whose shares are traded in the United States.”

According to the Kramer Levin website, the law firm that lobbies for Columbia serves “a client base that includes some of Israel’s largest and most established companies” and offers “unmatched services and commitment to assist our Israel-based clients in achieving their worldwide objectives.” But Columbia’s legal and lobbying representatives don’t mention that Palestinian territory in the West Bank and elsewhere is still being illegally occupied by the Israeli Establishment’s war machine in 2007. Or that, according to the Jerusalem-based Alternative Information Center website (www.alternativenews.org) :

“Israel’s academic institutions discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel by restricting their enrollment; persecuting them for political involvement; gagging their freedom of expression and actively working to keep international students away from their towns and villages.”

Next: Time To Tax Columbia University & Other NYC “Non-Profit” Institutions?

Columbia University Paid Law Firm $2.6 Million To Lobby In 2005

Columbia University also spent over $37.3 million in “legal fees” between July 2004 and June 2005, according to its Form 990 for 2004 financial filing. The corporate law and lobbying firm of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP (www.kramer-levin.com), with Midtown Manhattan offices at 1177 Ave. of the Americas, was paid over $2.6 million by Columbia University between July 2004 and June 2005.

According to data posted on the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying’s web site, Columbia University paid Kramer Levin over $900,000 in 2004 to lobby on behalf of Columbia’s special interests before government agency lobbying “targets” such as New York City Planning Commission members. In 2005, Columbia University then paid Kramer Levin an additional $258,906 to lobby for Columbia; and, in 2006, $518,000 more was paid by Columbia to Kramer Levin to lobby local and state government agencies for Columbia. Yet another $226,443 lobbying contract was given to Kramer Levin by Columbia University during the first six months of 2007, according to the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying’s data.

One of the partners involved in the Land Use practice division in the Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel law firm that lobbies for Columbia University is Gary Tarnoff. According to the Kramer Levin website, Tarnoff apparently once worked in the New York City Corporation Counsel’s office as a former Deputy Chief of the Administrative Law Division who advised the New York City Mayor’s Office on “land use, zone and regulatory matters.”

Columbia University’s Kramer Levin attorneys appear regularly before City and State agencies that have land use jurisdiction like the City Council, the City Planning Commission and the Manhattan Borough President; and the law firm’s website notes that it is “advising a prominent university with numerous real estate holdings on zoning and development issues and obtaining land use approvals for all of its new development projects.” Columbia’s legal and lobbying representatives are also “representing a major media corporation in the development of an enlarged headquarters facility by securing…zoning approvals for a 120,500 square foot floor area bonus” and “securing tax exemptions…for developers of office buildings, hotels, retail buildings and other commercial projects.”

Next: Columbia University Uses Israeli-Connected Law Firm To Lobby

`Non-Profit' Columbia University Paid Professor $3.6 Million Annual Salary In 2005

Although Columbia University claims to be a “public charity” in its Form 990 financial statement for 2004, between July 2004 and June 2005, the Columbia Administration apparently spent a lot of money on budget items that most New Yorkers would not regard as morally legitimate charity expenditures. It spent over $37.7 million on “travel” expenses and $21.5 million on “fund-raising,” for instance; and the Columbia Administration paid annual salaries exceeding $1 million to at least five Columbia University professors.

Columbia University Clinical Professor of Dermatology David Silvers was paid an annual salary of over $3.6 million by the Columbia Administration, while Columbia University Professor of Medicine Jeffrey Moses was paid an annual salary of over $2.1 million. An annual salary of over $1.9 million was also paid to Columbia University Professor of Surgery Eric Rose, a salary of over $1.6 million was paid to Columbia University Professor of Surgery Mehmet Oz and a salary of over $1.5 million was paid to Columbia University Professor of Surgery Craig Smith by Columbia University between July 2004 and June 2005.

Although Columbia University claims to be a “non-profit” institution, its top administrators in 2005 were also being paid annual salaries that were higher than the salaries received by many executives at for-profit business corporations that are not exempt from corporate taxation like Columbia University.

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, for instance, was paid a salary of $664,180 between July 2004 and June 2005, while Columbia University Senior Executive Vice-President Robert Kasdin took home a salary of $431,120. During this same period, Columbia University Executive Vice-President for Finance John Masten was paid an annual salary of $432,110, while another Columbia University Executive Vice-President for Finance, Al Horvath, was paid $335,516. In addition, Columbia University Provost Alan Brinkley was paid an annual salary of $396,250 between July 2004 and June 2005, while Columbia University’s General Counsel, Elizabeth Keefer, was paid $391,380.

Next: Columbia University Paid Law Firm $2.6 Million To Lobby In 2005

`Non-Profit' Columbia University's Assets Increased By $800 Million In 2005

According to the Form 990 filed by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York for the year beginning July 1, 2004 and ending June 30, 2005, Columbia University claims to be a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) “public charity.” Yet between July 1, 2004 and June 30, 2005, Columbia University’s total earnings of $3.1 billion exceeded its total expenses of nearly $2.6 billion by over $500 million.

From its corporate stock and bonds portfolio of over $2.3 billion, for instance, Columbia University earned over $94.7 million in dividends and interest during this period; and, between July 2004 and June 2005, Columbia’s net rental income exceeded $20 million. An additional $495 million was gained from Columbia’s sale of assets during this period. But despite selling some of its assets for cash, between July 2004 and June 2005 the value of “non-profit” Columbia University’s remaining net assets jumped from $6.1 billion to $6.9 billion.

Between June 30, 2005 and June 30, 2006, Columbia earned another $154 million in dividends and interest from its portfolio, which now included $2.7 billion in hedge funds, $763 million in foreign stocks and bonds and $541 million in U.S. equities, according to a September 13, 2006 audit by PriceWaterhouse Cooper. The value of “non-profit” Columbia University’s net assets also jumped another $900 million to $7.8 billion between June 2005 and June 2006, according to the September 13, 2006 report of PriceWaterhouseCooper.

Next: “Non-Profit” Columbia University Paid Professor $3.6 Million Annual Salary in 2005

"Prisoner In Clinton" (for David Gilbert)

(chorus)
Oh, people locked in jobs
Or locked in middle-class minds
Oh, people locked in sects
Since when is love a crime?

(verses)
There’s a prisoner in Clinton in Upstate New York
The Murdoch press, it tried him
The judge wouldn’t let him talk
Like John Brown at Harper’s Ferry
He put his life on the line
To fight to free the slaves, since when is that a crime? (chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton who resisted their brutal war
Who was with you on their campus
Who never forgot the poor
Like John Brown at Harper’s Ferry
He emerged from the Underground
To fight to free the slaves and bring the System down. (chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton, his sentence is our shame
Betrayed by those who realize
That the guilty smeared his name
The ones who sat out the Sixties
Alone came to his aid
His case got lost in dogma, though he fought to free the slaves. (chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton separated from the woman he loves
While she’s tried before the judge
That sentenced her husband
What kind of law is this
That deals with us all this way?
And convenes an all-white jury to put Black rebels away. [chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton whom the brutes labeled “terrorist”
But no civilians were killed
By the prisoner now locked up
A prisoner of war
Obvious to you and me
And like Lolita Lebron and the rest, people now wish him free. (chorus)

The Prisoner In Clinton protest folk song was originally titled Prisoner In Auburn and was written in the early 1980s when David Gilbert www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/davidgilbert/ was imprisoned in Auburn State Prison. Since this protest folk song was written, Columbia SDS founder Gilbert has continued to serve time at Attica State Prison, at Comstock State Prison and at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, where he is still imprisoned in 2007.

To listen to the Prisoner In Clinton, you can click on the following music site links:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/Prisoner+in+Auburn+%28for+David+Gilbert%29

http://www.mp3.com/artist/bobafeldman/songs/

Next: “Non-Profit” Columbia University’s Assets Increased By $800 Million in 2005

1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader Dave Gilbert: A 1985 Interview--Part 3

The following interview was put together by an exchange of letters from December of 1984 through February of 1985 and through six hours of face-to-face discussion with 1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader David Gilbert in Auburn Prison in New York State on January 27, 1985. Gilbert www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/davidgilbert/ is still a U.S. political prisoner in 2007 and is currently imprisoned at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. This 1985 interview first appeared in the “Broadway” section of the Columbia Daily Spectator on April 2, 1985.

What about the demand for land and independence for a Black nation? A lot of people find that hard to imagine.
David Gilbert: Well, they may be at this point, but it’s certainly not harder to imagine than European settlers coming here and taking over a whole continent from the Native Americans, importing millions of Africans as slaves, conquering half of Mexico. There have been sweeping changes before in history. There can and will be sweeping changes on the side of justice.

I am a supporter of the national liberation position. That position holds that Blacks or New Afrikans have been so systematically oppressed as a people and that white supremacy is so deeply embedded in America that the only route to complete freedom is through independence, through a national liberation struggle.

Did October 20th show that armed struggle can’t work in the U.S.?
Gilbert: Not at all. You have to understand that revolution is not like an instant pancake mix—you know, three easy steps, just follow the instructions on the back of the package. Revolution is a very complex and difficult process. Setbacks will occur. That’s not to excuse mistakes; they must be analyzed and overturned. But, if the general direction is righteous, the movement collectively can learn and advance from setbacks.

There is a very important history and continuity of armed struggle for Black liberation and for Puerto Rican independence. In the past two years [1983-1985] there has also been a very positive development of anti-imperialist actions here in relationship to Central America and South Africa. Armed struggle isn’t a substitute for mass activism, but it can play a leading role in showing the nature and the vulnerability of the enemy. It is essential to forging the ability for waging the protracted struggle ahead of us.

Who is in prison and what are the causes of crime?
Gilbert: That’s a big and complex issue. There are a couple of generalizations that I can make. The biggest common denominator on who ends up in prison is people from poor background. Prison is a tool of repression against those rebellious and unruly elements among the colonized peoples “Black, Puerto Rican, Native Americans, Mexicans” and those among the poorest whites. Here, the population seems to be about 40 to 45 percent Black and 35 percent Latino. And it is very, very rare for someone with money to go to jail.

The other main generalization is that the worst you can say about prisoners is that they tend to apply the values that predominate in capitalist society to their own socio-economic situation.

In the months of October and November 1984, there were three different sets of sensationalized arrests of revolutionaries. In a pre-dawn raid, 8 New Afrikan activists were rounded up by hundreds of New York Police and FBI agents. On November 4th five activists with alleged connections to the Melville Jackson unit and the United Freedom Front were arrested in the Cleveland area. Then on November 30th Susan Rosenberg [who was eventually pardoned in 2001] and Tim Blunk [who was released in the 1990s] were arrested in New Jersey. What are your feelings and assessment of the series of arrests?
Gilbert: First, my love and strong solidarity goes out to any under attack by the state in this way. I know it can be intense and also that people of principle will stand strong. I definitely hope that all revolutionaries being sought by the police remain free and that a resistance grows and flourishes.

I don’t know exactly how all the various individuals define themselves politically and I certainly don’t want to speak for them. Actually, it is important that the means are developed for such comrades to have a louder voice and broader dialogue. Beyond the hardships involved, the situation reveals that we are not just dealing with a few “crazy” individuals, as the media would have us believe. We are talking about real movements, committed to fighting imperialism, with real roots in history and, more importantly, a very crucial potential for the future.

How do you define the movement people now in prison? What should be done about their situation?
Gilbert: There are a range of people now in prison in the U.S. for political reasons: the prisoners of war from the national liberation struggles, anti-imperialist resistance fighters, Grand Jury resisters, draft resisters, busted sanctuary workers. Real justice means freeing all those imprisoned for fighting against oppression. Until that is achieved, there should be recognition of our political statuses and commensurate treatment under United Nations guidelines.

I would urge people reading this to build support for and to demand political status and ultimate release for all captive revolutionaries. This is not only to aid the individuals involved but even more importantly to build the consciousness of a need for a fighting movement against this cruel and blood drenched imperialism.

Sometimes when you talk it sounds as though you think revolution is imminent. Many people consider the idea of revolution in the U.S. farfetched to say the least. Some would say that, whatever the validity of your goals, you are on a quixotic quest.
Gilbert: I’m sure to those who lived in ancient Rome, or under the Egyptian Pharaohs, or in the reign of the Ming Dynasty, those empires looked eternal also. The U.S. empire will fall like all empires before it.

You see, U.S. imperialism seems invincibly powerful, but the sources of its great strength are also the basis of its ultimate weakness. The U.S. rakes in fabulous wealth from Third World countries around the world. But in an era of national liberation, the U.S. will increasingly find its military might over-extended and drained around the globe.

Its economic empire is also based on taking over the land and labor of whole peoples: Native Americans, Blacks, Mexicanos. But these internally colonized people, especially in the context of a U.S. military power over-extended abroad, will develop strong national liberation struggles within the borders.

Within the oppressor nation (i.e. among white Americans) there is an important class contradiction, as well as the oppression of women. The rulers have been able to submerge class conflict with the wealth and power extracted from oppressed nations. That basis will be breaking down, and we will be dealing with conditions of severe economic dislocation and unjust wars.

Well, this all is perhaps too schematic. We’re not trying to write an essay here. The point is that this powerful empire has been built on giant social contradictions which are beginning to crack open.

Well, what do you think Columbia and Barnard students should be doing today [in 1985]?
Gilbert: I think the most dynamic feature right now [in 1985] is the government’s mobilization for war in Central America and the need to stop it. To really stop such imperialist wars, we are going to also have to deal with fundamental structures within the U.S.: internal colonialism and racism, class rule, male supremacy.

On a broader level I want to appeal to students to get back in touch with a basic humanism. The Reagan reign is a rallying call to a terrible cynicism and callousness. But, you know, we can’t feel very full of good about our own self-worth and humanity if we’re denying it for everyone else. Our outlook and commitment must relate to the conditions and aspirations of the vast majority of human kind—the oppressed. If you honestly look at the systematic violence of social conditions and analyze the structures and powers enforcing that…Well, I think that the only fully humane conclusion is revolutionary.” (end of interview)

(Columbia Daily Spectator 4/2/85)

Next: Prisoner In Clinton lyrics

1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader Dave Gilbert: A 1985 Interview--Part 2

The following interview was put together by an exchange of letters from December of 1984 through February of 1985 and through six hours of face-to-face discussion with 1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader David Gilbert in Auburn Prison in New York State on January 27, 1985. Gilbert www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/davidgilbert/ is still a U.S. political prisoner in 2007 and is currently imprisoned at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. This 1985 interview first appeared in the “Broadway” section of the Columbia Daily Spectator on April 2, 1985.

Tell me something about the people who were charged with you.
David Gilbert: We are all people who have fought for human rights and against the tyranny of this system all our adult lives. Sekou Odinga www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/sekou-odinga/ and Kuwasi Balagoon [who died in Auburn Prison, New York on December 13, 1986] were part of the Panther 21 case. (In April 1969 the police charged 21 New York Black Panthers with a giant conspiracy to commit bombings. After a lengthy trial, a jury acquitted them all of charges. But the arrests and the drain on resources, along with other government attacks, had decimated the New York Black Panther chapter). Judith Clark, Kathy Boudin [who was released on parole in August 2003], and I all got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the early ‘60s and the anti-war movement of the mid-‘60s. We’ve been anti-imperialist activists ever since.

Many people I talk to have broad movement sympathies from the Sixties, but such people found your refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the courts to be a very, well, outlandish position and perhaps needlessly self-sacrificing.
Gilbert: I think that is a sign of the repressive power of the courts, you know, that it does seem so outlandish for us to state openly and honestly how we view them. If you study who goes to jail and who doesn’t it becomes crystal clear that the courts definitely aren’t about justice and equality. For example, in North Carolina, Ku Klux Klanners gunned down five anti-Klan demonstrators in front of T.V. cameras; they never served a day for those cold-blooded murders. On the other hand, Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt [ who was finally released in the late 1990s] has done some 13 years [as of 1985] on a life sentence despite evidence in FBI files that proves his innocence.

Kathy Boudin mounted a legal defense and eventually made a plea bargain for 20 years to life. How do you evaluate this?
Gilbert: Of course her sentence, in terms of how the legal system usually works, was incredibly harsh. It’s one sign, as were the sentences the rest of us got, of just how politically motivated the courts were in this case. Even going through the legal procedure and plea bargaining, she got a life sentence for a first conviction and on a felony murder (i.e., indirect involvement). Meanwhile, a gang of white teenagers stomped to death Black transit worker Willie Turks, who was unarmed. One of these thugs got a manslaughter conviction, two others got misdemeanors: that’s it. Or, D.A. Morgenthau gave 8 of 11 cops who beat a handcuffed Michael Stewart to death immunity from possible murder charges to testify at a Grand Jury. Later the same D.A. wouldn’t give the Black youths whom Bernhard Goetz shot in the back immunity, and Goetz was cleared of all attempted murder and assault charges.

Were you, Judy and Kathy part of the Weather Underground Organization?
Gilbert: Historically, we came out of the Weather Underground. In the early Seventies the WUO represented a very positive trend of militancy against imperialism and alliance with national liberation struggles—particularly Viet Nam and Black liberation. Large numbers of white youth identified with that militancy, spirit and direction. But the WUO also had serious problems and eventually played out the same basic history of the white left in general: an abandonment of solidarity with the national liberation struggles and a retreat from militancy.

Were there mistakes involved in October 20th?
Gilbert: Definitely. In response to criticisms and struggle, Judy and I tried to analyze some of the problems from the vantage point of white anti-imperialist freedom fighters. I don’t think this is the place to go into detail, many issues are still being grappled with. But broadly, there is the error of interventionism, sort of a pretense of being special or “exceptional” white individuals acting within the New Afrikan Independence Movement, without taking real responsibility to build our movement. Also there was too much of a belief that military action by small groups itself could spur a political movement. (end of part 2)

(Columbia Daily Spectator 4/2/85)
Next: 1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader Dave Gilbert: A 1985 Interview—Part 3

1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader Dave Gilbert: A 1985 Interview--Part 1

The following interview was put together by an exchange of letters from December of 1984 through February of 1985 and through six hours of face-to-face discussion with 1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader David Gilbert in Auburn Prison in New York State on January 27, 1985. Gilbert ( www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/davidgilbert/ ) is still a U.S. political prisoner in 2007 and is currently imprisoned at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. This 1985 interview first appeared in the “Broadway” section of the Columbia Daily Spectator on April 2, 1985.

On October 6, 1983, you were sentenced to a minimum of 75 years and a maximum of life in prison. How do you feel about facing life in prison?
David Gilbert: I certainly don’t like being in prison. But it would be worse if I had lost my commitment to fight a system which is such an incredible destroyer of human life and dignity. As for the 75 years, well imperialism isn’t going to last that long. Nor do I think that I will spend my natural life in prison. A revolutionary can be killed in or outside, but if we are talking about 30 or 40 years time—very important political changes, even revolutionary changes are bound to take place over that time span.

The people charged with the October 20, 1981 “Brink’s Robbery” were labeled in the media as “terrorists” and “cold-blooded killers.” How do you define yourself?
Gilbert: It makes sense that the police agencies and establishment media would label us this way. Any system of tyranny must discredit those who build resistance to it, and must try to separate such revolutionaries from the people who suffer under the system. Actually, the media charges turn reality on its head; propagate the big lie. This government and the business interests it serves are the great cold-blooded killers and terrorists of the world. When you grasp the reality of all the people who die of hunger, disease, abuse, and the wholesale terror against people’s movements around the world, then the humane response is to find ways to fight U.S. imperialism as effectively as possible.

What, in your view, was the October 20th action all about?
Gilbert: It was an attempted expropriation. That means taking money from those who amassed wealth by exploiting the people and using that money to finance the resistance. Every revolution has had to use expropriations as a method of finance. You’re just not going to get donations from the Ford or Rockefeller Foundations.

This particular expropriation was under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army [BLA] with white revolutionaries participating in alliance with them. The BLA communiqué after the action said that the funds had been intended to build the army, and for nationalist programs, especially for the youth, in the Black community.

What was the day of capture like for you? Were you abused?
Gilbert: The cops were in a rage. They’re used to just rolling over people without anyone fighting back. They tried to make me talk and beat me off and on for about 3 hours. Then they stuck the barrel of a shotgun into my neck telling me to talk. Later the “bad cop” came in to tell each of us that we were going to get the chair; he was followed by the “good cop”—in this case an FBI agent—who said that the first one who ratted would get a big break.

What was that like for you?
Gilbert: It really helps to know that you’re fighting for a just cause and that there is no way you’re ever going to talk; that takes a lot of the internal tension out of the situation.

While I was beaten and Judy Clark had been knocked down, torture was used on two New Afrikan [Black] men. There is a difference between brutality and torture; the latter involves a systematic and more or less scientific infliction of pain. They broke Sam Brown’s neck in two places and then denied him the needed surgery for 11 weeks—until after he had turned informer. That can all be documented by medical records. Sekou Odinga www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/sekou-odinga/ , captured in Queens on October 23, 1981, walked into the police station without a scratch. He was taken out to three months in the hospital including intravenous feeding. The cops systematically worked on his pancreas, put cigarettes out on his body, and other things. Of course Sekou never wavered.

Many people say that they can sympathize with your goals but they abhor your tactics.
Gilbert: Well, I really wish there were a way to defeat imperialism without the pain and bloodshed. Our generation tried to “shake the moral conscience of America” in the Sixties. I think the clear lesson from Viet Nam, from the bloody overthrow of Allende in Chile, from the COINTELPRO campaigns against the Black movement here and the criminal attacks on Nicaragua today [in 1985] is that you have to be able to fight and ultimately defeat imperialism’s force and violence to achieve any real change.

But what about the deaths that day? Two policemen and a Brink’s guard were killed. Some social activists feel that no goal justifies the taking of a human life.
Gilbert: First, to be clear, the purpose of an expropriation is not to hurt or punish the individual police or guards. The goal is to get away as quietly and cleanly as possible with funds for the struggle. The story of the combatants charging out shooting at the Brink’s guard is a pure propaganda creation. In more private moments, the FBI analysts know and even state that the consistent practice of the BLA was not to come out shooting but to try to disarm the guards. The only fire by revolutionaries that day was in response to a clear threat of fire.

People have been conditioned to be sensitive to certain types of deaths but not others. When a policeman is killed we are bombarded with the images of a human tragedy. But the police shootings of Third World people (and occasionally poor whites) are every day events, are almost always treated as routine and acceptable. Today the New York City police are outraged that there is even this one second degree manslaughter charge for their shotgunning 66-year-old Eleanor Bumpurs. The cops just never do time for their violence against the people.

Okay, social violence far exceeds the cost of any revolution to end it. But does that mean anything goes? Isn’t there a danger of becoming like the oppressor?
Gilbert: There is all the difference in the world between reactionary violence and revolutionary violence. Imperialism’s violence is terroristic in that it is usually directed against large numbers of people, especially civilian populations; torture is a standard weapons; a main goal is to terrorize those who might otherwise resist; the ultimate purpose is to maintain intolerable conditions of exploitation and social suffering. Revolutionary violence is the opposite; it must be very strategic and focused on mobilizing the oppressed and breaking the repressive apparatus of the state; we must set very clear standards that express the humanism of the struggle.

What was the specific political position you took at trial?
Gilbert: Kuwasi Balagoon [who died in Auburn Prison, New York on December 13, 1986] and Sekou Odinga took the position of prisoners of war, as fighters in the Black Liberation struggle. They argued that the U.S. has colonized New Afrikan people. The U.S. colonial courts have no legitimate jurisdiction over New Afrikans. There is an internationally recognized right to fight colonial and racist regimes.

Judy Clark [who is still imprisoned at Bedford Hills Prison in New York] and I took the position of anti-imperialists, fighting in solidarity with the Black Liberation Struggle. We recognize that U.S. imperialism is a criminal and anti-human system, and we couldn’t accept the legitimacy of its courts. (end of part 1)

(Columbia Daily Spectator 4/2/85)
Next: 1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader Dave Gilbert: A 1985 Interview—Part 2

Nader's 2007 Critique of Hillary Clinton's Political Record

Long-time U.S. consumer advocate Ralph Nader provided U.S. voters with the following 2007 critique of 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s recent political record as a U.S. Senator in his “In The Public Interest” column of June 18, 2007 that was posted on the www.nader.org site:

“…She has not supported the renegotiation of NAFTA and WTO which the U.S. can force by utilizing the Treaties’ 6 month notice of withdrawal from each of these autocratic systems of transnational governance and secret courts known as NAFTA and WTO….

“As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she has not challenged the many GAO documented boondoggle military contracts…

“Whether the causes are wasteful, corrupt military contracts or generally the corporate crime wave from Enron to Wall Street, Senator Clinton has not been there in the Congress to advance comprehensive corporate crime legislation…

“Nor has she taken on the hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare—subsidies, giveaways, handouts and bailouts for big business—that consume the contributions of millions of small taxpayers.

“Even in New York City, have you heard Senator Clinton object to taxpayer-funded corporate sports stadiums, while health clinics, schools, libraries and public works decay for lack of public investment? Tax dollars for entertainment are ok by her.

“Some of her paucity of candor is not going unnoticed, however. In explaining why she voted for George Bush’s Iraq War resolution in 2002, she said she believed that it called for an attempted diplomatic solution. There were no words in that resolution to support that belief. She is a lawyer. She also knows that an amendment by Senator Carl Levin, a fellow Democrat, demanded just such a prior diplomatic effort. She voted against the Levin proposal.

“Still, Hillary, with Bill right there, is the frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s nomination. The money from commercial interests, which the Clintons have favored and coddled for years, is pouring into her campaign coffers.

“So she travels around the country with her twofer strategy – pandering to powerful audiences and flattering gatherings of Democratic voters. She has watched Bill’s lack of political fortitude win elections in this two-party, elected dictatorship against the hapless Republicans. Why should she be any different?If she wins the primary and the November elections the country will get another kind of twofer in the White House. Here they’ll go again.”

Next: 1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader Dave Gilbert: A 1985 Interview—Part 1

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 3

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger (http://www.pegseeger.com/) has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 3 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

As far as the festivals you’ve been performing at in the Nineties. Is there any difference between the audiences and the performers, compared to the Eighties? In what people are singing about? What response you get?
Peggy Seeger: I’m not much of an authority on what’s happening in America. I really haven’t been here long enough. Ewan MacColl and I didn’t do festivals. Because we didn’t like the “stop-start,” “stop-start” thing that goes on in festivals. I compare it to greyhound racing. You know, the gun goes and you have 5 minutes to do your bit and that’s it. Generally, I prefer concerts. I’ve been doing festivals because I think it’s an important discipline to have. And, probably apart from anything else, it gives me a chance to hear other performers, which I love to do.

I am very impressed at what’s going on at a lot of the festivals. There’s a lot of young people. Quite a lot of children. And it’s an audience with a very catholic taste. They seem to be able to take almost anything that you give them.

Have they heard of you? The U.S. media doesn’t seem to give you much airtime?
Seeger: No. The U.S. media has not given me much airtime. I hope to remedy that. I don’t know that I’m popular stuff. My songs have a lot of words. And some of them take a lot of thinking about. I think I’m probably not “sensational” enough. I’m not “smooth” enough. I don’t know. There’s something that I’m “not enough of.”

What about public television? I know whenever they’ve needed to raise funds, they invite a lot of the folksingers from the Sixties who allegedly are excluded from the commercial stations because they have “no commercial appeal?”
Seeger: I don’t know that I’m excluded. When I do sing on television and radio I seem to get a lot of appreciation. There’s a lot of us out there, you know. There’s a lot of people vying for these spots. I’ve been on “Prairie Home Companion.” I’ve been on “Mountain Stage.”

I was out of the country for so long. And also my name was tied to someone else’s, as part of a duo. And people get used to saying “Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.” And when Ewan MacColl dies—I actually met people who said they didn’t know I was still alive. You know, I’m only 61 [in 1996].

So, it’s a very fickle audience. But there are a lot of people who have followed the stuff that I have done over the last 30 years. And I get quite a lot of nice pats on the back when I go to festivals and concerts. And I’m very happy getting concerts, as I have been doing. I’m getting a reasonable amount of work. And I’m learning also that I can teach. Which is something that I wasn’t aware of until Ewan MacColl died. Since then I’ve been teaching songwriting and been talking about the position of women in Anglo-American folksongs. And been giving seminars on ballad-singing and on what makes folks songs so powerful, and all these kinds of things.

Is that why you’re living in North Carolina [in 1996]?
Seeger: Oh, I just picked that out of a hat. Because I wanted a place that was in the South, that was in the mountains, that had good music and warm weather. And that wasn’t too near the rest of my family. Because I just wanted to see what would happen if I landed in a place by myself, without any connections.

If people want to get your cassettes or CDs, where would they go about getting them?
Seeger: My web page is open now—you might find it of interest: http://www.pegseeger.com/ The best place…just go into a record store.

One of my records I like best is really hard to get. And you can really, I suppose, only get that from me. Which is one called Almost Commercially Viable. I made that with my friend Irene, when we were “No Spring Chickens.” Made it in England and never managed to get it sold to anybody over here yet. Mind you, I haven’t pushed hard. That’s one that I really like. Probably Internet, Worldwide Web.

In terms of the future. What’s your sense? What’s going to be happening in the United States and in England?
Seeger: England I can’t say very much about. Because I haven’t really been in contact with what’s been happening in England since ’89. I took a couple of years out to write a couple of books and I hardly sang at all in England.

What books?
Seeger: I finished a book of my own songs—140 of them. And a book of Ewan MacColl’s songs—200 of those.

Some readers might not have heard much of Ewan MacColl for some of the reasons you indicated, like blacklisting. From an artistic point of view, what is going to be his place in history?
Seeger: Well, in England he is regarded as one of the architects of the British Folk Revival. There was Alan Lomax, Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: who were largely responsible for starting the English revival as we know it. And he was one of the main singers and theorists, teachers, and critics in that. He was a superb unaccompanied singer. And he was a person who opened up the English and Scottish repertoire of songs. I would say he probably has recorded about 100 albums. And many of them were songs that he just literally revived out of books. Because if they died, nobody knew them anymore.

He was a theorist of the revival, in that he worked out ways by which singers who were, say, brought up in different musical traditions, could approach singing of folk songs without ruining them. He also kind of kept the British Revival’s nose to the grindstone, as far as understanding the relationship between folk song and the working-class.

So he was like a Woody Guthrie, right, for Britain?
Seeger: Kind of.

But what are the differences?
Seeger: He came from the same kind of background as Woody Guthrie did: a working-class man. He was also uneducated, like Woody Guthrie. I would say he was probably a more skilled songwriter than Woody Guthrie. Ewan didn’t write—now this is my personal opinion: I don’t think he wrote any bad songs. And I think Woody Guthrie did. And I think Woody Guthrie wrote some absolutely superb ones. But he also wrote some stinkers. And if Ewan wrote stinkers, he kept them quiet. He was lucky enough to keep them quiet.

Ewan was also in theatre, which Woody wasn’t. He was responsible with his first wife, Joan Littlewood, for forming Britain’s best recognized revolutionary theatre: Theatre Workshop—which in the late 1940s and right through the Fifties was regarded as a pacesetter for activist theatre. He left that to stir-up the folk revival, which he did. And made a lot of enemies.

If you were in England and were in the folk revival and spoke of Ewan MacColl, anybody would have heard of him. He also is known for writing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” And for writing a number of songs which many people in the folk revival over here think are folk songs. Like “Dirty Old Town.”

Is there an autobiography or biography of him [as of 1996]?
Seeger: There’s an autobiography of him. But it was published in England and then taken out of publication. I’m trying to get it done again. It was never released here. And I’m trying to get it released over here. I will get it done. It’s called Journeyman. And I think it’s a wonderful book. An excellent book.

He wrote plays. And then the two books that I’ve done are kind of historical surveys, telling what was happening at the time when the song was written, making comments about the songs. With discographies and prefaces. Oh, you know, the whole thing. They’re huge books.

Getting back to your own performances. What do you hope to achieve when you perform before a live audience?
Seeger: Oh, I want to entertain them and make them think. I firmly believe that I have a great deal to learn from any audience that I sing for. And the folk revival generally gets an awful lot of really thinking people to it. I would like to, if possible, move them on from where they are and to draw on their experience to move me on. I’m very much invigorated by most of the people that I meet at the concerts that I give.

I suppose you might say I probably appeal more to their thinking faculties then I do to their emotional ones. But I try to make a good combination.

Technically, you’re considered quite skillful compared to most musicians. How did you get so good?
Seeger: Well, I’m not as good as I used to be. Because I have arthritis in my left wrist, which is hampering me rather a lot.
(end of interview)

Next: Nader’s 2007 Critique of Hillary Clinton’s Political Record

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 2

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger (http://www.pegseeger.com/) has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 2 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

Your artistic work seems to have reflected movements and cultural trends more than the stuff we hear on the radio more frequently. In what ways do you think your artistic work has been influenced by the movements of the last 30 years and the cultural trends—your songwriting, presentations, concerns?
Peggy Seeger: I think folk music has always reflected a very large spectrum of human activity. Chiefly, because the folk songs themselves are about so many different things. Popular songs have generally been about love and love lost, for the most part. I mean the really popular songs. The high-selling stuff. I’m not talking about music hall and background popular songs. I mean the stuff that really gets the main attention. It’s usually been sad love songs or things like that.

But folk music, right throughout its history—because it has come not as a commodity music, but as a music which has been produced purely and simply because people felt that they just had to make it—has been about so many different things that it has reflected what has been happening in the so-called “lower-strata” of society. And that is the industrial struggles and many of the subjects which aren’t mentioned at all in popular music: like violence against women, like child-beating. And like orphans and nagging wives, violent husbands. And happy love songs, too, I suppose. Folk music is very versatile in what it chooses to reflect. And I think many of the songwriters now, because they’re writing about things that are happening now, they choose an idiom which is already there—which is folk music. And there are some wonderful songs being written on the folk circuit.

You mentioned your drift away from old left kind of labor stuff, more turning towards a feminist orientation, green concerns. When did that start and to what degree has that reflected shifts in the world or your own personal shifts?
Seeger: Well, it definitely reflects shifts in the world. I began to get interested in it in the mid-Eighties. I began writing feminist songs—well, my first one was 1970, when I wrote “Gonna Be An Engineer.” And I wrote that for a stage play that we were doing. And it just rolled-out of me, although I’ve had a relatively easy life as far as gender-discrimination was concerned. I just literally produced that in an evening, which surprised me. Then I found that because of it I was being asked to sing at women’s functions. When I went along to sing at these functions I found that I didn’t have any songs that dealt with the issues that they were talking about: like abortion, like rape, like strife between mothers and daughters, women’s position in unions, contraception. Things like that.

So I started to write songs consciously about these issues. And that was in the mid-to-late Seventies.

So I guess that would answer the question why you started writing your own songs?
Seeger: Yeah. Now I ran this side-by-side with the left-wing politics at the time. Because I was a socialist-feminist. I’m moving over quite quickly to radical feminist and to feeling that the way politics are organized, what we recognize as politics, is something that is determined by the patriarchal structure that we have. And that many of the politics are really meant to bolster up the System that we have, which is a patriarchal one: heavily centralized, heavily industrialized, highly competitive and aggressive. And many of these are principles that feminists feel are not part of what women want to be part of or what women want to be like.

This patriarchy, and the industrial complex that goes with it, is what is responsible for the rape of the Earth. And so that is why I’m moving around to a different kind of politics and to a different activist sphere. It seems that many women and many men are also moving around to this.

A kind of drift towards eco-feminism?
Seeger: Yes.

Next: Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 3

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 1

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger (http://www.pegseeger.com/) has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 1 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

I was in the bookstore looking at the magazine section, and I noticed a lot of glossy magazines featuring people who were singing folk music in the 1960s and 1950s. You know, an article like “Generation X and Joan Baez.” Also books. Like When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. What’s your explanation?
Peggy Seeger: Who was that by?

Robert Cartwell. So it seems like every decade there’s a revival of interest in the folksingers of the 1950s and 1960s and in folk music in general. How do you explain the cross-generational appeal?
Seeger: When you say “cross-generational appeal,” do you mean “why is it appealing now to younger people?”

Yeah.
Seeger: Are you sure that it is?

That’s what these articles are saying. In the early Nineties—no. But now, in the last few years—yes.
Seeger: Well, then the young people now are getting romantic about the Sixties. They’re not listening particularly to folk music now. You go to the festivals now and there aren’t all that many. Probably at festivals there are younger people. But at the concerts there are more older people, generally speaking. Although I went to a Joan Baez concert down in Asheville and there were a terrific number of women there—young and older women.

So maybe that’s where it’s centered? Among women.
Seeger: I think we’re hungering for a more innocent period, to be quite honest. I think many people feel that folk music has an innocence about it. That the music that we’re being presented with now, as pop music, doesn’t. It’s interesting that there wasn’t a folk music revival back in the Thirties and the Twenties when there was a lot of really innocent, quite joyful, music.

So many movements seem to run almost in pendulum-like form. Look at the way the working-class movement and the union movement spurs up every now and then. And look at the way feminism is spurred up every now and then. The ecological movement as well. Although I hope the pendulum is going to stay where it is and move even further over.

But I think, certainly, as far as the Fifties and the Sixties are concerned, it was a kind of glowing period. People kind of look on it as—even though it included things like the Vietnam War—if we still had a kind of innocence about us then.

You lived in both the United States and in Britain during the Fifties and Sixties?
Seeger: I lived in England for most of that. I was abroad for most of that time. From 1955 onward I was abroad.

You’ve been back in the States in the Nineties. Is it much of a culture shock?
Seeger: Yes. Although I had been back several times before then. I was blacklisted in early days, even though I hadn’t done very much. Or at least, if not blacklisted, it was very difficult to get in. You had to hire a civil liberties lawyer to kind of plead your case. And you had to get work permits and special visas and all those kind of things

But coming back now, despite the fact that I have come back about eight or ten times between 1960 and 1990, yes—quite a culture shock. But not as much as if I had been a foreigner. I’m quite comfortable with American people. Always have been. Not all. The ones that are the kind of people that I meet I’m quite comfortable with.

Why would you be blacklisted as a musician? I thought that was only political people. I thought artists weren’t blacklisted?
Seeger: No. No, no, no. My brother, Pete [Seeger], wasn’t allowed to leave the country for a long time in the Fifties. Or early Sixties. And to be a folk musician, was to be regarded as quite “left-wing” and “red,” in the Fifties and Sixties. Definitely.

In the 1990s, what have you been up to artistically?
Seeger: I performed by myself up to 1958 or ’59. And then I joined with Ewan MacColl and sang with him for over 30 years. And when he died in 1989, I swung immediately to singing with my old comrade, Irene Scott. We formed a duo called “No Spring Chickens.” And we sang together for 4 years. And then she decided she didn’t like touring life. And I decided to come back over here.

And so I have been learning to sing by myself again. And it was extremely interesting. Because working with Ewan MacColl it was very, very serious. And fairly static onstage. Working with Irene, she wanted to bring humor onto the stage. So I started using a reasonable amount of humor and being lighter onstage, in terms of presentation. Although not necessarily in terms of the kinds of songs being sung. And, of course, the big difference now is that I’m swinging over to ecological and feminism politics, rather than the old left-wing politics of the jobs and the unions.

This is not to say that I don’t find them important. Because they are. But I believe that the major push, the most important push now, is ecology. And feminism goes hand-in-hand with that, because so many of the feminist principles are ones that mesh in perfectly with ecological action.

Next: Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview—Part 2

Nader vs. The Clintons Revisited

In an August 19, 1996 speech before the 1996 Green Party Convention, long-time U.S. consumer advocate Ralph Nader (www.nader.org) indicated why he ran against 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s husband in 1996:

“Next time someone says to you, `Why are you building a third party? Don’t you know that a progressive third party will take votes away from the Democratic Party. Why are you being a spoiler?’ Well, the easy answer is you can’t spoil a system spoiled to the core.

“And another answer is that we are sick and tired and weary of being told every four years we have to choose between the bad and the worse, because every four years they both get worse. Because we don’t look kindly on two parties who…sign into law an increased child poverty legislation, where they literally throw out the baby with the bathwater, so-called welfare reform: no child care, no job opportunities, restricted food stamps, 350,000 disabled children off public assistance, and on and on. What’s the difference between these two?...The corporations are pulling both parties to the right, reactionary wing of American politics…

“Look at the basic problems. Energy: solar energy, energy efficiency—those are the solutions…Housing: There are pilot housing projects showing the way to go, so we don’t have this disgraceful, inadequate, decrepit, decayed housing stock, not to mention the homeless…Health care: we have the solution to health care…Universal health care, the single-payer Canadian system…Modern public transit:…Look at the work done in Northwestern University…on the subject and ask yourself why don’t we have…modern public transit that’s fast, reliable, that’s very close to zero pollution…Agriculture: Instead of highly chemical-intensive agriculture…organic agriculture…How about the unemployment problem?...The jobs aren’t there because billions of dollars of pension funds are being used for mergers and acquisitions and empire building instead of productive activity…”

In a September 1996 article, Luis Martin also characterized the White House record of Hillary Clinton’s husband in the following way:

"While posing as the defender of the poor and children, Clinton has led the charge against social programs, with cuts larger than anything proposed by Reagan or Bush [I]. Since becoming president, he has quietly signed cuts amounting to half the budget of the federal government. The cuts go far beyond anything implemented in Europe and Japan…Now Clinton has obtained even deeper cuts by signing the `welfare reform’ law…Clinton proposes cutting $192 billion from Medicare alone…”

Yet as Martin also noted in his article, “if the richest one percent could content themselves with 7.3 percent of the national income—instead of the current 12.1 percent—then the deficit could be eliminated.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/30/96)

Next: Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview—Part 1

'Ms.' Magazine's `Restricted' Archives--Part 2

After women anti-war activists who had been involved with Movement groups like SNCC and SDS collectively developed an updated radical feminist critique of patriarchal U.S. society, Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem then decided to write about the new wave of feminism for Clay Felker’s New York magazine. She attended a November 1968 meeting in New York City of the Redstockings radical feminist group to gather material for her magazine column.

But, as previously indicated, in 1975 members of Redstockings held a press conference to disclose to other U.S. feminists Steinem’s previous involvement with the CIA. Redstockings noted at this time that “It has been widely recognized that one major CIA strategy is to create or support parallel organizations which provide alternatives to radicalism and yet appear progressive enough to appease dissatisfied elements of the society.”

Because the “material regarding Redstockings events” in the Ms. magazine archives was pulled by Smith College librarians at Steinem’s apparent request, neither feminist scholars nor progressive journalists will be able to let their readers fully know how Ms. magazine reacted to the 1975 Redstockings disclosure about Steinem’s past CIA links. But there is some evidence that a Random House book on the feminist revolution which was to have contained a chapter on Steinem’s past CIA links also had “restricted” material pulled at Steinem’s request. As Current Biography Yearbook 1988 noted, "a Village Voice columnist, writing in the May 21, 1979 issue, darkly hinted that she [Steinem] might have prevailed upon Random House to delete a chapter entitled `Gloria Steinem and the CIA’ from The Feminist Revolution, a collection of essays by writers affiliated with the Redstockings.” And as Nancy Borman observed in the July 1979 issue of the Lower East Side-based Overthrow Magazine:

“Publication of Feminist Revolution was delayed nearly three years…and when the book was finally released…the chapter on Gloria Steinem and the CIA had been deleted in its entirety…Six weeks after Feminist Revolution was finally published five members of the Redstockings held a press conference to argue that their book would be better described as `censored.’…The near-total blackout on the Steinem/Random House censorship story is reminiscent of the level of enthusiasm Redstockings encountered when they first tried to get coverage for the story of Steinem and the CIA.”

Other politically radical women anti-war activists have attempted in the past to alert a new generation of feminists to the Ms. magazine founder’s past CIA links. Australian anti-war writer-activist Joan Coxsedge’s 1982 book, Rooted In Secrecy: The Clandestine Element In Australian Politics, for instance, contained a section titled “Sisterhood and the CIA,” in which she made the following observation:

“It goes without saying that because of the growing participation and influence of women in the political arena, certain radical sections of the women’s movement are under scrutiny by secret agencies, including the CIA…The CIA attacks in a variety of ways. One method is to defuse the movement by infiltration and diverting its aim into safe reformist channels. Another method is to set up rival conservative organizations…The CIA involved itself in the international women’s movement as early as 1962. At that time, it contributed thousands of dollars a year to the Committee of Correspondence, a New York-based group consisting of 18 American women and 12 associates…The Committee was in contact with at least 5,500 women in 120 countries…The Committee made a big point in its literature that it was `non-government and independent.’ It held conferences in conjunction with the United Nations and was in a prime position to locate and collect information on women leaders around the world…An example of the watering-down of radical demands was provided by the 1975 disclosure of Gloria Steinem’s role in the Women’s Liberation Movement…Feminists have accused Ms. of substituting itself for the genuine movement, blocking knowledge of authentic activists and ideas.”

And in her 1983 book, The Future Of Women, former University of Chicago Professor of Sociology Marlene Dixon wrote:

“Bourgeois feminism…fights only to gain…equality with men under the rule of capital…Bourgeois women can become controllers of bank and finance capital, petty bourgeois women can become their vice presidential lieutenants. For 10 years this has been the obsession of the bourgeois feminist movement, under the hegemony of such CIA types as Gloria Steinem…And yet during those same years…the conditions of life of all women have been under increasing attack.”

According to Ms.’s editor in the late 1990s, Marcia Ann Gillespie, the magazine’s then-current management played no role in formulating the Smith College library’s policy of restricting the access of journalists in the 1990s to some of the Ms. archives material from the period when Pat Carbine and Gloria Steinem managed the magazine, prior to its subsequent re-organization.

Ms. was purchased in 1996 by Jay MacDonald’s MacDonald Communications, in partnership with Bud Paxson’s Paxson Communications media conglomerate. In its May 15, 1998 issue, the New York Times described Paxson Communications as “the nation’s largest owner and operator of television station” in 1998; and noted that Paxson’s vice-chairman at that time, William Simon Jr., was the son and business partner of former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, Sr.—the then-president of the right-wing John M. Olin Foundation.

Later in 1998, Ms. founder Steinem and other investors created Liberty Media and repurchased the magazine from MacDonald Communications and Paxson Communications. But by 2001, Steinem’s Liberty Media was facing bankruptcy and Ms. magazine was sold to the tax-exempt Democratic Party-oriented Feminist Majority Foundation, which then turned it into a quarterly publication. But Steinem is still listed on the Ms. magazine masthead as a “Consulting Editor,” according to the magazine’s web site at www.msmagazine.com .

Despite its policy of restricting the public’s access to some of the Ms. archives material during the late 1990s, the Sophia Smith Collection reported in its February 1998 newsletter that it received a $107,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities “to process eight collections documenting women’s activism.”
(end of article)

Next: Nader vs. The Clintons Revisited

`Ms.' Magazine's `Restricted' Archives--Part 1

Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], Ms. magazine has generally claimed to be in favor of freedom of information. Yet when a woman anti-war activist and I drove out to Northampton, Massachusetts in the late 1990s to examine the contents of the 250 boxes of Ms. archives donated by the magazine to the Smith College library’s Sophia Smith Collection, guess what happened? The librarian wouldn’t let us look at any of the material until she and other members of the library staff first got a chance to remove “the restricted material.”

Feeling that the notion of maintaining a “restricted” magazine archives seemed similar in spirit to the notion of maintaining restricted country clubs, I telephoned the collection’s reference archivist, Susan Boone, the next morning to ask her to clarify the library’s policy on providing journalists with access to Ms. magazine’s archives.

“Ms. records are available. And the Steinem material has been separated. But there’s a possibility that there is other restricted material in the records,” said Boone. “And that means that we can and we will go through the boxes and pull any restricted material.”

Some of the separated “Steinem material” was briefly described in the typed index of the Ms. records which the woman anti-war activist and I were allowed to look at. The restricted “Steinem material” contained in box 115 of the Ms. archives includes Gloria Steinem’s 1971-1977 correspondence, material on the Ms. Foundation, Women’s Action Alliance annual meeting reports for the years 1980 to 1982 and “Gloria Steinem—correspondence clippings, 1971-1982.” The restricted material in Box 62 is described as “Gloria Steinem speaking request—fee correspondence” for the years 1973 to 1976. And the restricted material in Box 132 includes material on Gloria Steinem’s 1970 to 1981 appearances, more material on the Ms. Foundation and more Steinem correspondence.

In the course of examining this typed index, the woman anti-war activist who was with me noticed the following hand-written note on one page: “Material re: Redstockings events & Elizabeth Harrris restricted.” The phrase “Redstockings events” likely refers to the events surrounding that radical anti-war feminist group’s 1975 revelation that Ms. magazine founder Steinem’s political activity had been funded by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950s and 1960s.

A February 1967 article in the now-defunct U.S. left magazine Ramparts had revealed that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Independent Research Service organization—which Gloria Steinem apparently had set-up in 1958—received at least $180,000 in CIA funds between 1961 and 1965. The CIA funds were funneled to the Independent Research Service organization through a CIA foundation conduit: the Independence Foundation.

In her 1997 book Inside Ms.: 25 Years Of The Magazine And The Feminist Movement, former Ms. editorial staff member Mary Thom claimed that the Independent Research Service entity “had been founded by former National Student Association [NSA] officials”—not by Steinem; and that “Steinem learned of the CIA financing from NSA people.” Yet in a February 21, 1967 New York Times article which confirmed the Ramparts magazine disclosure, Steinem had told the Times that: (1) the CIA had been “a major source of funds” for the Independent Research Service since its formation in 1958; (2) “she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Association, who told her CIA money might be available;” (3) she “was a full-time employee of the service” until 1962; and (4) “The CIA’s big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast enough.”

Under Steinem’s leadership, the CIA-funded Independent Research Service had, according to Ramparts magazine, “actively recruited a delegation of hundreds of young Americans to attend” world youth festivals in Vienna in 1959 and in Helsinki in 1962 “in order to actively oppose the communists;” and important officers and ex-officers of the CIA-funded National Student Association “were very active in the Independent Research Service activities in Vienna and Helsinki.” At the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival, the Independent Research Service distributed a daily newspaper, The Helsinki News, which was printed in five languages. The Helsinki News was apparently edited by Clay Felker—the New York magazine editor who would later fund and distribute Ms. magazine’s initial December 1971 sample issue as an insert in his patriarchal New York magazine.

Also attending the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival with Steinem under CIA sponsorship was Barney Frank, who subsequently became an aide to Democratic Boston Mayor Kevin White and then a long-time Massachusetts Democratic representative in Congress. As The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream by Richard Cummings would note in 1985:

“Barney Frank at Harvard had been with the Independent Research Service delegation to Helsinki, an operation which, by Frank’s own admission, he clearly understood was CIA-backed. Frank joked about the role of fellow delegate Gloria Steinem, whom he described as running around at nightclubs set up by the CIA in Helsinki, helping to win over Africans.”

Steinem was “on the agency’s payroll” for 4 years, according to America’s Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty by Sig Mickelson. And in late February 1967, the then-32-year-old Steinem had told Newsweek magazine:

“In the CIA, I finally found a group of people who understood how important it was to represent the diversity of our government’s ideas at the Communist festivals. If I had the choice, I would do it again.”
(end of part 1)

Next: Ms. Magazine’s “Restricted” Archives—Part 2