NYU and Columbia University's IDA-Pentagon Connection--Part 4

Former Columbia U. Trustee/IDA Board Chair William A.M.Burden

Columbia University’s 1959-1968 IDA Connection

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

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

Former Columbia U. Physics Professor//IDA VP Charles Townes

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

“…The proposed position for me was Vice President and Director of Research for the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA]. The Institute was a non-profit `think-tank’ with a very important role, run by five or six prominent universities on the East Coast, Columbia University being one of them. It managed what was known as the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group. We had to pick the right people who would be responsible for analyzing how and whether a weapon worked and its effectiveness. We also advised a new organization, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, whose aim was to consider what could be done in space, and to help initiate new ideas and technologies of importance to national security…”

On Sept. 28 and Sept. 29, 1959, Townes, for example, attended an IDA meeting with then-CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell Jr., another CIA official named RW Komer and then-MIT Professor Jerome Wiesner. Among the topics discussed at this Sept. 28-29, 1959 meeting were “Project Principia” weapons research for better chemical propellant, research related to U.S. military requirements in the field of human behavior and a proposal to set up an “Institute for Naval Studies” to examine “future possibilities in naval warfare.”

The de-classified 1979 IDA study noted that less than 4 months before Columbia was officially “welcomed” to become an institutional member of IDA, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS] sent a Sept. 7, 1959 memo to the WSEG’s Director, which stated that “the JCS wanted WSEG to undertake two studies: (a) an evaluation of offensive weapons systems that might be utilized in a strategic role, particularly during the 1964-67 period; and (b) an evaluation of attack carrier striking forces and land-based tactical air forces under general and limited war situations from 1960 to 1967.”  According to the same de-classified 1979 IDA document, “both studies were undertaken as a matter of urgency and highest priority, and constituted the bulk of the WSED/IDA effort during the rest of 1959 and 1960.”

During the 1960 to late 1968 period when Columbia was an institutional member of IDA and JFK and LBJ both escalated the “limited war” in Vietnam, IDA continued to work with WSEG to produce classified weapons research reports with subject titles like the following:

1. “Evaluation of Attack Carrier Striking Forces and Land-Based Tactical Air Forces in Limited and General War, 1960-1963 (Report 48 of Aug. 15, 1960);

2.  “Evaluation of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems” (Report 50 of Dec. 27, 1960);

3. “Nuclear Weapons Study” (Report 1 of Sept. 25, 1960);

4. “Future Developments in Carrier and Land-Based Tactical Air Forces” (Report 54 of July 19, 1962);

5. “Future Light Tactical Aircraft Weapons Systems for Close Air Support and Other missions, 1966-1972 Time Period” (Report 58 of Feb. 12, 1962);

6. “Missile Penetration Study” (Report 59—Study I of Jan. 29, 1962, Report 59—Supplement to Study I of May 29, 1962, Report 59—Study II of May 1963 and Report 59—Study III of March 1964);

7. “Terminal Vulnerability of Selected Tactical Aircraft to Anti-Aircraft Weapons” (Report 60 of March 28, 1962);

8. “Potential Military Applications of Offensive Weapons Systems in Space” (Report 66 of Apr. 1963);

9. “Allocation of Resources to Anti-submarine Warfare in the Face of Uncertainty” (Report 98 of May 1966);

10. “Tactical Aircraft vs. Surface-to-Air Missiles” (Report 70 of Feb. 1964);

11. “Study of Tactical Reconnaissance and Surveillance” (Report 86 of Sept. 1965);

12. “Preliminary Analyses of Combat Air Operations in Southeast Asia” (Report 90 of Nov. 1965);

13. “Interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail” (Report 103);

14. “Operational Reliability Test, M-16 A-1 Rifle System” (Report 124 of Feb. 1968);

15. “Analysis of Combat Aircraft Losses in Southeast Asia,” (Report 190 of Feb. 1967 and Report 128 of Apr. 1968)

16. “Strategic Offensive Weapons Employment in the Presence of Defenses” (Report 132 of June 1968); and

17. “Strategic Offensive Weapons Employment in the Time Period About 1975” (Report 148 of Aug. 1968).

All of the secret weapons research project work done with the WSEG by IDA that produced these classified reports for the Pentagon were approved by the IDA Trustees Executive Committee--whose Chairman was Columbia Life Trustee William A.M. Burden. As page 89 of the Cox Commission’s Crisis At Columbia: Report of the Fact-Finding Commission Appointed to Investigate the Disturbances at Columbia University book observed in late 1968, “…the Executive Committee, of which Mr. Burden was Chairman, approved all work conducted by IDA, including classified projects directly related to the prosecution of the Vietnam War.” 

Former Columbia U. Prez/IDA Exec.Cmt. Member Grayson Kirk

Between 1960 and late 1968 Columbia’s then-president, Grayson Kirk, also represented Columbia on IDA’s board of trustees and served on the IDA Trustees Executive Committee with Columbia Trustee Burden. And as the North American Congress on Latin America [NACLA]’s 1968 pamphlet, Who Rules Columbia?, recalled:

“On March 30, 1967, IDA’s Vice-President and General Manager, Norman L. Christeller, told reporters from the Columbia Daily Spectator that `We consider Columbia to be one of the three or four primary university sponsors of the IDA. President Kirk has always been an active member of our board’…Columbia has, in fact, held contracts for IDA; in 1964, for instance, the Electrical Engineering Department received a contract from IDA worth $18,950 for a study of missile-tracking radar (the project was conducted by Herbert Dern of the ERL staff under IDA contract no. 50-13).”

According to a Dec. 11, 1948 Pentagon directive, “the purpose” of the WSEG, with which IDA staff produced its reports, was “to provide…analyses and evaluation of present and future weapons systems under probable future combat conditions” and to “make comprehensive analyses and evaluations of weapons and weapons systems under projected conditions of war at the request of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the Research and Development Board.” Yet on Nov. 21, 1966 then-Columbia University President and IDA Executive Committee Member Grayson Kirk told a group of 300 to 500 antiwar students at Columbia during the Vietnam War Era:

“Whenever the University institutionally undertakes to espouse this or that position in a partisan situation, it jeopardizes the long-run autonomy which is the heart and soul of all University life.

“This in my judgment, is something that the University, no university must do, no university can do. And the university that undertakes to do this, to become a partisan active agent with respect to this or that facet of controversial foreign policy endangers those values that make our universities in a democratic society I suppose the most important agency in that society. And, if they are that important in these days, and I think they are, they are important simply because they have been able to maintain and hold to that degree this impartiality, with respect to contending public issues, that creates respect for the quality of discussion that goes on in the university.

“Therefore for all these reasons, it seems to me that it is not desirable, it is not feasible, it is not possible for the University to attempt to make a value judgment about any division of the federal government.”

Although Kirk claimed in 1966 that his University had not “become a partisan agent with respect to this or that facet of controversial foreign policy,” in Lt. General A.J. Goodpaster’s now-declassified Memo for Record regarding an Oct. 1963 “Meeting in Dep. Secretary Gilpatrick’s Office—WSEG/IDA Relationship,” the then-Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, wrote:

“The meeting was held in the office of the Deputy Sec Def, Mr. Roswell L. Gilpatrick. Attending was the Chairman of the JCS, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the DDR & E Dr. Harold Brown, Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster, Assistant to the Chairman of the JCS; and, for the IDA trustees, Mr. William A.M. Burden, Chairman of the Board; James R. Killian, Jr. of MIT; and Grayson Kirk of Columbia University. The IDA trustees reviewed the history of the establishment of IDA and the background of some of the IDA/WSEG difficulties. The JCS Chairman emphasized the value of an effective working relationship between the WSEG [Weapons Systems Evaluation Group of the Pentagon] military element and WSED [Weapons Systems Evaluation Division of IDA]…” (end of part 4)

(part 4 of article that originally appeared on ZNet website in August 2018)

NYU and Columbia University's IDA-Pentagon Connection--Part 3

MIT Prez/IDA Chair James Killian and Ex-Columbia. Prez "Ike'

IDA’s Creation and 1956 -1959 Weapons Research Work

IDA “was formally incorporated on April 4, 1956, as the Institute for Defense Analyses,” according to John Ponturo’s July 1979 de-classified IDA study S-507, titled “Analytical Support for the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The WSEG Experience, 1948-1976,” which provided a “review of the activities of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group [WSEG] in providing operational analyses and weapons systems evaluations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS] from 1948 to 1976.” As the de-classified 1979 IDA study noted, “IDA came into being with the immediate purpose of providing technical support for WSEG.”

The same de-classified IDA study also recalled:

“…DoD authorities who examined the contractual alternatives available for WSEG turned to university sponsorship as a means of lending scientific prestige to the enterprise, facilitating access to the scholarly research community, and promoting a working climate that would appeal to civilian research analysts. They persuaded Dr. James R. Killian, Jr., President of MIT…to take the lead in bringing together a consortium of leading universities to sponsor a nonprofit corporation to provide the necessary contractual support. The organization, formally incorporated as the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), was established in...1956 by five university members: the California Institute of Technology, Case Institute, MIT, Stanford University, .and Tulane… 

“....At the initial meeting in the Pentagon on April 5, 1956, representatives of the 5 universities (including 2 of the university presidents in person) elected a 10- member board of trustees, all university officials, including 3 of the presidents, with Killian himself as Chairman….Once IDA was set up, Killian, in his capacity as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, appealed to the Ford Foundation for initial working capital, and obtained a grant of $500,000 [equal to over $4.5 million in 2018]…”

Over three years after IDA was set up, an IDA Trustees Executive Committee Meeting was held at the MIT Faculty Club between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m., on Wednesday, December. 16, 1959. Among the 11 items discussed at this unpublicized meeting was the status of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA], the status of the Pentagon’s Weapons System Evaluation Group [WSEG], the “proposed Townes’ Group Contract,” and “new university members;” and “it was agreed that certain specific universities which were named and discussed, would be welcomed as additions to the present university Members.”

One of the universities “welcomed as additions to the present university Members” was Columbia University. Prior to Columbia being “welcomed” as an institutional member and sponsor of IDA weapons research, IDA had already worked with the WSEG to produce secret weapons research reports with subject titles like the following:

1. “Relative Military Advantage of Missiles and Manned Aircraft” (Report 23 of May 6, 1957);
2. “Utilization of Indigenous Forces” (Report 29 of Aug. 7, 1958);
3. “Interim Report, On The Need for Additional Emphasis On Certain Weapons Systems” (Report 30 of March 10, 1958);
4. “Reappraisal of Biological Warfare” and “Evaluation of Offensive and Defensive Weapons Systems” (Report 31 of July 15 and Aug. 15, 1958);
5. “Interim Report, Tactical Fire Support Systems for Land Forces in Limited War 1959-1967” (Report 32 of Feb. 5, 1958);
6. “Target Acquisition, Rapid Reaction and Weapons Problems in Tactical Fire Support (Report 32, Part W of July 3, 1958);
7. “Artillery and Surface-to-Surface Missiles for Tactical Fire-Support of Land Forces in Limited War (Report 32, Part II of Apr. 6, 1959);
8.  “Recognition and Location of Tactical Fire Support Targets in Limited War 1959-1963” (Report 32, Part III of Apr. 21, 1959);
9.  “Aircraft Characteristics Suited for the Mission of Non-Nuclear Daylight Visual Close Air Support Against Fleeting Targets of Opportunity in Limited War” (Report 32, Part IV of July 15, 1959);
10. “High-Yield Air-Delivered Nuclear Weapons” (Report 34 of Dec. 12, 1958);
11. “Evaluation of Military Applications of Nuclear-Powered Aircraft” (Report 37 of May 25, 1959);
12. “Military Applications of Artificial Earth Satellites” (Report 39 of June 23, 1959);
13. “Toxic Chemical Warfare—1959” (Report 40 of Aug. 14, 1959); and
14. “Evaluation of an Advanced Air-to-Surface Missile” (Report 44 of Sept. 18, 1959). (end of part 3)

((part 3 of article that was originally posted on ZNet website in August 2018)

NYU and Columbia University's IDA-Pentagon Connection--Part 2

NYU's Center for Urban Science: IDA-Connected?

NYU’s 21st-Century IDA Connection


Fifty years after Hamilton Hall was occupied, no Columbia administrator or trustee sits on either the Executive Committee or the board of trustees of the Pentagon’s IDA weapons research think-tank. But in 2018 the Director of NYU’s New Center for Urban Science and Progress, Steven Koonin, is a member of the IDA board of trustees.


Yet according to IDA’s website, IDA’s Systems Evaluations Division [SED]’s “research helps the Department of Defense and other government organizations develop, test, buy, or use systems” and “examples of systems include offensive or defensive weapons.” In addition, the research of IDA’s Systems Evaluations Division “occurs at the nexus between government decision-makers, military warfighters, and technical experts in industry, academia, and government laboratories.” 

The Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank, whose board of trustees include NYU’s New Center for Urban Science and Progress Director Koonin, describes on its website some of IDA’s recent Systems Evaluation Division [SED] weapons research projects:

“The tactical aircraft (TACAIR) manned/unmanned mix in irregular warfare project…used data from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to examine the advantages and disadvantages of using different mixes of manned and unmanned tactical aircraft in irregular warfare campaigns.…

“The evaluation of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) system performance project…used the IDA Sensing Effectiveness Evaluator (ISEE) model to simulate the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based Multi-spectral Targeting System (MTS-B) in different operational environments…

“The development and application of land warfare modeling and simulation tools project…

“The Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) analysis tools project…

“The circular error probable (CEP) calculations for precision-guided munitions project…investigated how the use of traditional statistical methods for estimating the accuracy of unguided (ballistic) munitions can lead to an overestimation of CEP when applied to precision-guided munitions….

“The tactical communications mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) project…evaluated the MANET performance of military communications system …

“The estimating test requirements from historical data project…used data from previous testing of large aircraft systems, air-launched weapons, helicopters, and ground vehicles to summarize the basic test parameters…

“Our tactical communications test and evaluation project monitors and assesses systems in development.  The Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) is the U.S. Army’s developmental networking software that aims to provide voice, data, and video capabilities to small combat units and unmanned systems…
.
“Air Warfare Combat Assessment Methodology Development - IDA assisted the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation, the Joint Strike Fighter Operational Test Team, and the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center with our assessments of the F-35 and F-22 aircraft in their intended combat environment….

“F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Developmental Testing In support of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Developmental Test and Evaluation) - IDA assessed progress in the developmental testing of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter…”

The same website also described the military purpose of IDA’s Joint Advanced Warfighting Division [JAWD] that focused “on the needs of the joint force commander and, in particular, the future joint force commander,” in the following way:

“Linking new concepts and new technologies to a military context; Moving from concept to reality in the military environment; Exploring military options through structural analysis…JAWD researchers’ exceptional blend of technical, analytic, and operational skills provide sponsors rigorous and structured analysis to explore military uses and the links between a new concept or technology and a military context and use (i.e., force and technology combinations specific to objectives and regions)….”

In addition, one major research task of IDA’s ITSD division is “responding to evolving technology and business practices and examining their impact on weapons systems,” according to the IDA website.

Sitting on IDA’s board of trustees with NYU New Center for Urban Science and Progress Director Koonin are former Pentagon officials or former U.S. military officers like the following folks:  former U.S. Secretary of the Army Preston Geren, III; former Commander, U.S. Central Command and retired General John Abizaid; former 33rd Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps and retired General John Paxton; and former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff and retired General Norton Schwartz.

In addition, besides including NYU’s New Center for Urban Science and Progress Director, IDA’s board of trustees has included the following other U.S. university-affiliated folks in recent years: UCLA Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Ann Karagozian;  California Institute of Technology Trustee Deborah Doyle McWhinney; University of California, San Diego Department of Medicine and Associate Vice Chancellor for Computational Health Sciences Jill Mesirov; University of Texas Computer Science and Integrative Biology Professor and former Los Alamos National Laboratory Deputy Laboratory Director for Science, Technology and Programs William Press; and University of Maryland Professor and former Advanced Research Projects Agency Director Ellen Williams.

Koonin was paid $15,500 between Oct. 1, 2015 and Sept. 30, 2016 by the IDA weapons research think-tank for serving IDA as a university-affiliated trustee for two hours per week, according to the IDA’s Form 990 financial filing for 2015. (end of part 2)

(part 1 of article that was originally posted on ZNet website in August 2018)

NYU and Columbia University's IDA-Pentagon Connection--Part 1

IDA's 21st-Century NYC Connection?

 “If the Institute for Defense Analyses has produced important studies on problems in national security, much of the credit must go to the university world. Five universities gave IDA its start in 1956, and since then seven more have become Members, broadening our contact with the academic community and strengthening the direction of our corporate affairs. From these and other universities have come many of our scientists and officers, as permanent members or on leaves of absence....

"Without the efforts of these men and the cooperation of these institutions, IDA would not be what it is. We are proud to be able to grace the pages of our report with scenes of the campuses of our twelve Member Universities, as partial recognition of our debt to the entire university world."

--from a 1960s Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] annual report


“The longstanding mission of the System Evaluation Division(SED) is to provide high-quality analyses…SED, IDA’s oldest research division, was originally established to undertake scientific analyses of weapon systems and new equipment and technologies and to assess operational data derived from combat and field exercises.  These types of classic “systems analyses” have remained a chief focus for SED studies...”

--from the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] website 


On April 23, 1968, Barnard College and Columbia University antiwar students in New York City non-violently occupied Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and made six demands. Demand 3 of the antiwar students was “That the university sever all ties with the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] and that [then-Columbia University] President Kirk and [then-Columbia University] Trustee Burden resign their positions on the Executive Committee of that institution immediately.”

In the months prior to this occupation, the Columbia and Barnard chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] had distributed around campus a leaflet explaining why it was demanding that Columbia University should sever its ties to IDA, which included the following text:

"Recent IDA Projects Further Reflect The New Emphasis In Counterinsurgency. Titles Include:

"`The Worth of Target Kill Assessment Systems';
"`Airborne Night Television Reconnaissance-strikes';
"`Levels of Nocturnal Illumination';
"`Small Arms for Counterguerrilla Operations';
"`Tactical Nuclear Weapons--their Battlefield Utility';
"`Chemical Control of Vegetation in Relation to Military Needs';
"`Interdiction of Trucks from the Air at Night';
"`Night Vision for Counterinsurgents'

and so on. IDA tests and develops weapons specifically for the terrains of Vietnam, Thailand, North-east India, and Latin America (Hearings, House Comm. on Appropriations, Defense Approp. Hearings for 1965, vol 14, p. 138). It goes without saying that for those engaged in the liberation struggle throughout the world, this new emphasis on counter-insurgency will have deadly consequences.

"IDA is also engaged in developing techniques for suppressing ghetto rebellions and other domestic insurgencies. In a report to the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, IDA researchers recommended explosively spread adhesives, spray mists, droplet projectors, foam generators, `super water pistols,' and `tranquilizing darts, which have been used on wild animals' (NY Times, Nov. 12, 1967).

"IDA depends on its university affiliations to attract top talent (see Business Week, Feb. 25, 1967, "Battle for Brainpower"). Without the prestige and assistance Columbia and its eleven other affiliates give IDA, the organization would be desanctified in the eyes of the academic community it exploits: it would appear to be just what it is--an academic service-station for America's world-wide `company cops.' Columbia's disaffiliation would be a big blow to IDA's legitimacy and to the whole military-academic alliance."

(part 1 of article that was originally posted on ZNet website in August 2018)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 24

Bill Moyers and  his 1970s PBS show managing editor Charlie Rose in 2006 

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 24 

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

Although parallel left media firms like Democracy Now! do not generally directly fund their operations by selling advertising time to corporations for the broadcasting of commercials as do corporate media firms like CBS, the U.S. power elite foundations and liberal establishment foundations that fund parallel left media groups like Democracy Now! Productions obtain the grant money they distribute by obtaining, buying and selling stock of the corporations that exploit working class people and middle-class consumers around the globe and receiving dividends from the profits of these same corporations. As Aquarian Weekly observed in its Feb. 12, 1997 issue, during the 1980s Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers’ Schumann Foundation, for example, “invested in the Philip Morris tobacco company.” And in the same issue, Aquarian Weekly also noted:

“On Dec. 31, 1983, the Schumann Foundation’s portfolio contained $34 million [equal to over $86 million in 2018] in corporate stock, including $1 million [equal to over $2.5 million in 2018] in Philip Morris stock. Other companies in which the Schumann Foundation invested in 1983 were IBM ($14.6 million), GE ($1.7 million), Nabisco ($1.2 million), Standard Oil of Indiana ($1 million), Exxon ($882,000), Johnson & Johnson ($817,000), and Atlantic Richfield ($756,000). 

Democracy Now! Funder-Schumann Foundation President Moyers

And according to its Form 990 financial filings from the late 1990s, only a few years before Democracy Now! received its first grant money from Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media and Democracy/Schumann Foundation, the Schumann Foundation was still investing in environmentally destructive energy corporations like British Petroleum (2,000 shares of stock), Columbia Gas Systems (5,000 shares of stock), Conoco, Inc. (4,200 shares of stock), Pioneer Natural Resource Company (10,200 shares of stock), Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (10,000 shares of stock) and Shell Transportation and Trading Company (10,000 shares of stock), as well as in automobile corporations like Ford Motor Company (12,500 shares of stock).

Democracy Now! Funder Moyers With LBJ in White House

When Democracy Now! Productions! was given a grant of $300,000 [equal to over $350,000 in 2018] by the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy in 2009, Bill Moyers’ foundation was still obtaining its grant money by either obtaining dividends from the corporations it owned stock in or selling some of the corporate stock of corporations it had been given or purchased in previous years. For example, in 2009 the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy earned $988,640 [equal to over $1.1 million in 2018] in “dividends and interests from securities” it owned; and, during that same year, it obtained $11,401,043 [equal to over $13.3 million in 2018] from the sale of a portion of shares of stocks it had owned in corporations (like Dell, Bank America, Wells Fargo, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Sara Lee, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Time Warner, Yahoo, Delta, Borg Warner, Best Buy, Gannett and Microsoft, etc.) at the beginning of the year, according to the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2009.

The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy 2009 Form 990 financial filing also indicates that the market value of the foundation’s corporate stock investments at the beginning of the year, of $29,775,884, increased by over $2 million, to $31,928,576 by the end of the year of 2009. And, according to the same 2009 Form 990 financial filing, during the same year that the parallel left Democracy Now! Productions media firm accepted its $300,000 grant from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, this foundation continued to own:

1. 1,150 shares of Google stock--worth $712,977;

2. 11,000 shares of Pepsico stock—worth $668,800;

3. 3,700 shares of Goldman Sachs stock—worth $624,708;

4. 11,700 shares of Target stock—worth $565,929;

5. 7,200 shares of Royal Dutch Shell A stock—worth $432,792;

6. 9,628 shares of JP Morgan stock—worth $401,199;

7. 10,080 shares of Merck stock—worth $368,323;

8. 6,000 shares of Wal-Mart stock—worth $320,700;

9. 3,572 shares of Chevron stock—worth $275,008;

10. 4,400 shares of Procter and Gamble stock—worth $266,772;

11. 1,200 shares of Apple stock—worth $252,878;

12. 7,700 shares of Walt Disney-ABC stock—worth $248,325;

13. 8,400 shares of Kraft Foods stock—worth $228,312;

14. 2,500 shares of Monsanto stock—worth $204,375;

15. 2,700 shares of Johnson and Johnson stock—worth $175,907;

16. 11,650 shares of CBS stock—worth $163,683;

17. 1,900 shares of Colgate stock—worth $156,085;

18. 2,700 shares of Coca Cola stock---worth $153,900;

19. 5,300 shares of Home Depot stock—worth $153,329;

20. 1,100 shares of IBM stock—worth $143,990;

21. 4,500 shares of Microsoft stock—worth $137,160;

22. 4,350 shares of Viacom stock—worth $129,326;

23. 2,842 shares of Time Warner Cable stock—worth $117,630;

24. 2,200 shares of Hewlett-Packard stock—worth $113,322;

25. 2,600 shares of Scripps Network stock—worth $107,900;

26. 7,100 shares of General Electric [GE] stock—worth $107,423;

27. 2,900 shares of Honda Motor stock—worth $98,310;

28. 1 share of Berkshire Hathaway stock—worth $99,200;

29. 3,200 shares of United Health stock—worth $97,536;

30. 1,700 shares of United Parcel stock—worth $97,529;

31. 1,380 shares of ExxonMobil stock—worth $94,102;

32. 2,500 shares of Aetna stock—worth $79,750;

33. 1,354 shares of Royal Dutch Shell B stock—worth $78,708;

35. 1,400 shares of Boeing stock—worth $75,782;

36. 2,300 shares of AT and T stock—worth $64,469;

37. 800 shares of United Technologies stock—worth $55,528;

38. 1,700 shares of Unilever stock—worth $54,961;

39. 3,600 shares of Gannett media conglomerate stock—worth $53,460;

40. 1,200 shares of Marathon Oil stock—worth $37,464; and

41. 1,100 shares of Bank NY Mellon stock—worth $30,767.

In addition, the 2009 Form 990 financial filing of the foundation that helps fund Democracy Now! Productions also indicates that its longtime president and trustee, former Johnson White House Special Assistant and Press Secretary Bill Moyers, received a total annual compensation of $65,839 from his Schumann Center for Media and Democracy gig in 2009; and the same corporate tax-exempted and “non-profit” foundation also paid Schumann Center for Media and Democracy Vice-President-Administration Lynn Welhorsky in 2009 a total annual compensation of $186,551 [equal to over $218,000 in 2018], while only just paying $15,239 in “excise taxes.”  (end of part 24)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 23

Ex-Newsday Publisher Bill Moyers with Harry Guggenheim in 1967

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 23

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

Forty years before the Schumann Foundation/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation gave its first $25,000 [equal to over $33,000 in 2018] grant to Democracy Now! “to fund Special 2004 election coverage for Democracy Now!,”, the FBI apparently spied on civil rights Movement demonstrators at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City and then, ironically, reported back to longtime Schumann Foundation president Bill Moyers—who was then LBJ’s 30-year-old Special Assistant to the President in the White House. According, for example, to an Aug. 29, 1964 memo to FBI Assistant Director John Mohr, which appeared in From The Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover (edited by Arthur Theoharis) from FBI Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach:

“By means of informant coverage, by use of various confidential techniques,…by infiltration of key groups through use of undercover agents and through utilization of agents using appropriate cover as reporters, we were able to keep the White House fully apprised of all major developments during the Convention’s course…Through our highly confidential coverage of…Martin Luther King…together with similar coverage we established on the headquarters of CORE-SNCC, we were in a position to advise the White House in advance of all plans made by these two sources…I kept…MOYERS constantly advised by telephone of minute by minute developments…”

On Sept. 10, 1964, then-FBI Assistant Director DeLoach also wrote a personal letter to Democracy Now! funder Moyers (a copy of which is in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library) which stated:

“Thank you for your very thoughtful and generous note concerning our operation in Atlantic City. Please be assured that it was a pleasure and privilege to be able to be of assistance…I think everything worked out well, and I’m certainly glad that we were able to come through with vital tidbits from time to time which were of assistance to you…You know you have only to call on us when a similar situation arises…”

Democracy Now! Funder/Ex-LBJ Special Assistant Moyers with LBJ

And as Aquarian Weekly noted in its Oct. 30, 1996 issue, Moyers apparently also used the FBI in a politically partisan way during the 1964 U.S. presidential campaign, when the Democracy Now! funder was LBJ’s special assistant. According, for example, to Victor Laskey’s It Didn’t Start With Watergate book:

“Another piece of skullduggery in which Moyers was involved occurred two weeks before Election Day. As special assistant to the President he ordered the FBI to run a name check on numerous members of [1964 GOP presidential candidate Barry] Goldwater’s campaign and Senate staffers…What the President was looking for, Moyers told the FBI, was information about `fags’…on the Arizonan’s staff…The FBI, which had no right to do so, did conduct inquiries into the bedroom proclivities of the Goldwater staffers…”

The same book also noted that “according to a staff report of the Senate Intelligence Committee released in 1976, it was none other than Bill Moyers…who `expressly approved’ the circulation within the Executive Branch of a secret FBI report on King.”

But in late January 1967, Democracy Now! funder Moyers finally left his position as Johnson White House Press Secretary and LBJ’s Special Assistant to work as the Publisher-Manager of Guggenheim Dynasty member Harry Guggenheim’s Newsday corporate media newspaper for a few years. The son of the organizer of the `Alaska Syndicate’ that destroyed some of Alaska’s earth, Multi-Millionaire Harry Guggenheim had used a small portion of the Guggenheim Dynasty’s fortune he had inherited to purchase a suburban Long Island newspaper in 1940 for his third wife, Alicia Patterson-Guggenheim, to operate under the name of Newsday.

After his much younger wife died in 1963, however, the then-73-year-old Harry Guggenheim began to play a more active daily editorial role in running Newsday and began to search for a male heir for both his share of the Guggenheim fortune and his newspaper, in the event of his own death; and in 1967 this member of the Guggenheim dynasty decided that Democracy Now! funder Moyers should succeed him as Newsday owner and inherit much of his $50 million [equal to over $374 million in 2018] share of the Guggenheim fortune.

According to David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be book, “Bill Moyers had always, first with Lyndon Johnson, then with Harry Guggenheim, shown an ability to charm older men…” So Moyers was then brought into the Newsday editorial office as publisher to run the newspaper for Harry Guggenheim for a few years.

But Harry Guggenheim, being a Republican, eventually changed his mind about letting the former Democratic Party political operative Moyers be his heir; and, instead, Guggenheim decided in May 1970, less than a year before his death in January 1971, to sell his Newsday newspaper to the Los Angeles, California-based Times-Mirror media conglomerate, that was then owned by the Chandler Dynasty family.

Consequently, Democracy Now! funder Moyers then began working for both the CBS corporate media conglomerate’s news department and the U.S. power elite’s foundation, government and corporate-funded Public Broadcasting Service [PBS], during the 1970s and 1980s.

After leaving CBS in 1986, however, Moyers was mostly then just seen on U.S. television hosting the programs that his U.S. power elite foundation-funded Public Affairs Television Inc. media firm produced for foundation, corporate or U.S. government-funded PBS-affiliated television stations to broadcast; and after 1991 LBJ’s former Vietnam Era White House Special Assistant and  White House Press Secretary also was the president of the Schumann Foundation/Center for Media and Democracy--which some Schumann family members had established with the millions they inherited from an IBM founder and former president of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation.

Schumann Foundation Prez Moyers: Gave Democracy Now! $1.5 Million Since 2004

In an article, titled “Journalistic Foundations,” that Michael Getler posted on the internet on Jul. 20, 2009, Getler noted that, according to a Schumann Center for Media and Democracy foundation spokesperson and “Moyers deputy,” Moyers met the Schumann family members in 1986 “when the then president of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, Bill Mullins, read in the New York Times that Moyers was leaving CBS News to start his own independent production company to create programs for public broadcasting.” According to the same Moyers deputy and Schumann Center for Media and Democracy spokesperson:

“Mullins introduced him to the Schumanns who then made a large grant to help launch the operation. Over the next three years Bill made periodic reports in person to the Schumann Board. In 1991…when…Mullins suddenly was stricken with a…cancer that took his life in six months, the family asked Bill to succeed him even while continuing his journalism….It would have been inappropriate for the Foundation he was then running to support his own work on the air. Since assuming the presidency at the Foundation, no Schumann funds have ever been used for Bill's own journalism or for any PAT [Public Affairs Television] programming.”

But in 1998 Public Affairs Television CEO and Democracy Now! funder Moyers was paid a total annual compensation of over $104,000 [equal to over $158,000 in 2018] by the Schumann Foundation/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy for serving as its part-time President; and Democracy Now! funder Moyer’s son, John Moyers, also was being paid a total annual compensation exceeding $100,000 by the Schumann Foundation for being its executive director--at the same time Moyers’ son also utilized Schumann Foundation grant money to fund the TomPaine.com parallel left media website project of the Florence Fund of which he also was the executive director.

So although “no Schumann funds” may “have ever been used for” Moyers’ “own journalism” or to help directly fund his Public Affairs Television media firm since 1991, Schumann funds from longtime Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President Moyers’ foundation were used to fund the TomPaine.com media project and journalism work of Democracy Now! funder Moyers’ son, John Moyers. According, for example, to Michael Gellert’s 2009 article on journalism foundations:

“…In 2004, according to IRS filings, the Schumann Center sponsored a grant of $2 million to The Florence Fund "to support the TomPaine.com project and operating costs. Balance of $1.5 million was rescinded on May 18, 2004." TomPaine.com was founded in 1999 by John Moyers, Bill's son, and he left in 2003, before the 2004 Schumann grant. But the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, which was the Center's earlier name, also supported TomPaine.com with an earlier $2.5 million grant via The Florence Fund in 2001, according to IRS records.”

As the Moyers deputy and Schumann Center for Media and Democracy spokesperson also noted:

"John Moyers was the program officer at Schumann when it was the Florence and John Schumann Foundation. The two brothers, Ford and Robert Schumann, had a special affinity for John, having met him when he proposed an environmental series for NPR which they funded (that's how he came to work for the Foundation later.) When John Moyers then proposed to them creating a web operation based in Washington as an independent operation, they agreed. Bill…was pleased with their decision. They formed a new entity called the Florence Fund…with John as its publisher and editor. Bill… was very proud when John Moyers…received the Herblock Award for… journalism at an occasion in Washington at which Bill was asked to speak. After five years...John…resigned to return to Vermont where he is…in business. He has twice declined the Schumann brothers' invitation to take over the Schumann Center as Bill's successor because he prefers his life in Vermont.” (end of part 23)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 22

Democracy Now! Funder and Ex-LBJ Special Assistant/Press Secretary Moyers with LBJ

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 22

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers. 

In his 1969 book, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, a Princeton University Professor of History named Eric Goldman described the historical role that 21st-century Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers played within the White House in the 1960s Vietnam War Era during the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson in the following way:

“…With the confidence and affection of President Johnson…he was in a freewheeling position. He carried on some activities like…determining who was to meet with the President…He also supervised the planning of presidential trips and had a good deal to do with determining not only where President Johnson went but how he projected himself. But the Moyers role was sweeping well beyond. He was…writing a number of important speeches and heavily editing the drafts others prepared.

“Increasingly Moyers sat in on presidential conferences and talked for long hours alone with President Johnson…The President…permitted Bill Moyers to assume increasingly the role of chief of staff…This meant that Moyers delegated many of the tasks within the White House; often spoke in the name of the President to officials from the Vice-President on down and to powerful people outside the government; sometimes okayed or vetoed proposals of varying importance without consulting the Oval Office; had a hand—on occasion, a decisive hand—in making many top-level appointments; and was likely to be called by the President for long talks about developments…”

Schumann Foundation Prez Moyers: Gave Democracy Now! $1.5 Million Since 2004

But during the period when Democracy Now! funder Moyers was also the Johnson White House Press Secretary, then-New York Times columnist James Reston asserted, in a Jan. 7, 1966 New York Times article, that the Johnson “White House misleads public by not being completely truthful with newsmen,” according to the New York Times Index 1966 book. In addition, Moyers apparently attempted to manage news coverage of the Johnson White House’s actions and manipulate public opinion in the USA as LBJ’s press secretary by planting questions for some corporate media Establishment journalists to ask President Johnson during LBJ’s White House press conferences. According to page 579 of the New York Times Index 1966 book a Jan. 11, 1966 New York Times article reported the following:

“Press Secretary Moyers says press conferences are designed to serve `convenience of President, not convenience of press,’ TV interview; says they are device to let President say what is on his mind; defends `planting’ questions with newsmen beforehand; admits he plants questions…”

Although Moyers officially remained LBJ’s White House Press Secretary until late January 1967, in April 1966 Moyers moved from the White House press office to an office in the West Executive wing of the Johnson White House where (according to an entry, related to an Apr. 3, 1966 New York Times article, on page 573 of New York Times Index 1966), the Democracy Now! funder was “seen influencing Johnson more than anyone else;” and his “ability to understand Johnson and satisfy his wishes,” as LBJ escalated U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, was “noted.” The same New York Times Index 1966 entry for Apr. 3, 1966 also noted that Moyers “handles day-to-day decision-making” in the Johnson White House. 

According to the book Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Papers that David Barrett edited, for example, a file labeled "Meeting Notes File, Box 1," at the LBJ Library in Texas contains a copy of a Feb. 10, 1965 document, titled "Summary Record of NSC Meeting No. 548…Cabinet Room, 2:10 P.M. Re: Vietnam," which includes a reference to Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers and states the following:

“…Secretary McNamara said that Ambassador Taylor, the Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense recommended a retaliatory strike today at daylight. He explained to the President the targets in North Vietnam which could be hit today…The President stressed the importance of preventing any leaks to newspapers…In response to the President’s questions, Secretary McNamara said about 130 planes would be used in the strike recommended for approval…The President asked whether all those present agreed we should launch a retaliatory strike…The President received affirmative answers when he asked Director McCone, Secretary Dillon, and Director Rowan whether they agreed with the recommended strike plan. MR. MOYERS said he thought the strike should be made to meet domestic public opinion requirements…”

A file labeled "Reference File, Vietnam, Box 1" at the LBJ Library also contains a copy of an Apr. 27, 1965 memo that Bill Moyers wrote to "The President" in which the longtime president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy Foundation that funds Democracy Now! stated:

"Goodwin and I have heard reports that the State Department is going to do another White Paper on Vietnam.

“We think this one should be much better—and much more effective—than the last one. We would like to write it (as, in fact other White Papers in the past were prepared in the White House, the one on Cuba, being the most prominent example).

"This paper should not be an effort to `fool' people.  It should be honest, straightforward--strongly buttressed by facts--and designed to appeal to liberals and intellectuals, those people who have the most problem right now with our position in South Vietnam."

Another file labeled "Meeting Notes, File, Box 1" at the LBJ Library also contains a copy of a Sept. 19, 1965 "Memorandum for the record, re: Luncheon Meeting with the President, Ball, McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Raborn, MOYERS and Califano," which includes the following reference to Democracy Now! funder Bill Moyers:

“MOYERS said that we had been too defensive in our public handling of the tear gas situation, that we should remind the world that the Viet Cong slit throats and bomb children and that any human being in one of the Vietnam caves would prefer to cry from tear gas rather than be killed by hand grenades…”

Another interesting reference to Moyers is contained in a file labeled "NS File, M. Bundy Files, Memos to President, Box 2," at the LBJ Library.  In a Feb. 2, 1965 memo to "The President," re: "A Deputy or Potential Successor in my office," the now-deceased former National Security Affairs Advisor and Ford Foundation President McGeorge Bundy wrote:

“Some weeks ago you asked me who should take over if, for any reason, I was no longer on this job, and I told you I had thought some about it.

“The ideal man for this job is BILL MOYERS…”

According to a 1991 book, Film and Propaganda In America: A Documentary History, Volume IV: 1945 and After that Lawrence Suid edited, a file related to John Wayne's pro-war Sixties movie, The Green Berets, at the LBJ Library also contains an interesting April 21, 1966 letter from Bill Moyers to John Wayne, in which Democracy Now! funder Moyers wrote:

“Dear Mr. Wayne:

"…We are grateful for your continuing support of the President's policy to put an end to aggression in Vietnam.

"Best wishes,

"Sincerely,

"BILL MOYERS

"Special Assistant to the President."

And a de-classified transcript of a taped Johnson White House Oval Office conversation between LBJ and Democracy Now! funder and long-time Schumann Foundation/Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President Moyers that took place at 9:15 p.m. on M 13, 1965 reveals what Moyers said to LBJ prior to McGeorge Bundy’s appearance at a campus teach-in to argue in defense of the Johnson administration’s escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam:

“I just hate for the President’s representative to be debating with that bunch of…a lot of (them) will be kooks, a lot of them are just misguided zealots. It just sort of demeans our position. I don’t think the White House ever has to debate. I think if—you don’t make decisions by debating. You make your decisions and then history will justify them. You can’t get out and debate in favor of support for them.

“I’m certain Mac [McGeorge Bundy] will control his temper. If he were to lose it once, it would be bad…” (end of part 22)