Iran History Revisited: Part 19

(See parts 1-18 below)

In an article, titled “Iran—Ready To Attack,” that appeared in the February 19, 2007 issue of New Statesman magazine, Dan Plesch observed that “American preparations for invading Iran are complete.” The New Statesman also reported that “what was done to Serbia and Lebanon can be done overnight to the whole of Iran,” but “we, and probably the Iranians, would not know about it until after the bombs fell.”

And on April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

To try to decrease the growing popular support for both the legal National Front and the illegal Tudeh Party among Iranian’s landless peasants in the early 1960s, the Shah of Iran’s regime finally instituted a limited land redistribution program. The Shah of Iran’s regime also finally proposed in the early 1960s that Iranian women be allowed to vote in Iranian elections.

In response to both the Shah’s land reform program and the proposal that Iranian women be allowed to vote, as well as to the dictatorial and pro-imperialist nature of the Shah’s regime, however, a widespread religious uprising against the Shah’s regime, led by the traditional Islamic opposition groups who were influenced most by Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, broke out in June 1963. After three days of rioting, this 1963 religious uprising in Iran was crushed by the Shah of Iran’s military in a brutal way, with 600 protesting Iranians killed and 2,000 Iranian demonstrators injured by the Shah’s troops.

Following this June 1963 religious uprising, Khomeini was arrested and then exiled in 1964, first to Turkey and then to Iraq. In addition, the National Front opposition group was again banned by the Shah of Iran’s regime between 1963 and 1978. At the same time, the repression of the underground Tudeh Party activists in Iran continued. As Sepehr Zabith observed in his 1986 book The Left in Contemporary Iran:

“The Pahlavi regime’s suppression of the Tudeh Party was more severe than that of the National Front. While the latter’s activists received short-term imprisonment or were forced into exile (with the exception of Hossein Fatem, who was executed), the regime showed no mercy for Tudeh Party activists or those affiliated with their organization. Forty-two of its prominent leaders—mostly officers—were shot, 14 were tortured to death, and another 200 were sentenced to life imprisonment. Moreover, SAVAK continued to bear down mercilessly on the Tudeh members even after the party ceased to be a major threat.”

Iranian dissidents in the 1970s estimated that between 25,000 and 100,000 Iranians were held as political prisoners in Iran between 1963 and 1978 during the period in which the Shah of Iran’s police-state regime ruled Iran. (end of part 19)

Obama's $1.7 Million "Bookgate Scandal" Contract Revisited

Most people in the United States don't believe it's democratic for a German media conglomerate like Bertelsmann AG to monopolize control over the U.S. book publishing industry. Yet Democratic President Barack Obama still apparently has no program for reducing foreign corporate control of the U.S. book publishing industry and other U.S. media industries.

One reason Obama might not want to propose that U.S. anti-trust laws be enforced against German media monopoly conglomerates like Bertelsmann AG is that between Election Day 2004 and his swearing in as a Senator in 2005, Obama was given a $1.7 million two-book contract by the Random House/Crown Publishers/Alfred Knopf subsidiary division of Bertelsmann AG. By signing his lucrative book contract with the German media conglomerate's U.S. subsidiary before officially taking his seat in the U.S. Senate, Obama did not fall under various requirements for disclosure and reporting that applies to members of Congress who accept money from U.S. media conglomerates.

Like many U.S. Establishment politicians and U.S. television news correspondents and talk show hosts, Obama's 2004 book deal with the Bertelsmann AG subsidiary was arranged by Robert B. Barnett of the Washington, D.C. law firm, Williams & Connolly. Besides representing the special financial interests of U.S. Establishment politicians and U.S. television correspondents, Williams & Connolly lawyer Robert B. Barnett also represents the special interests of German corporations like Deutsche Bank and has coached Democratic Party presidential candidates before presidential debates since the 1980s.

As long ago as the 1990s, the Bertelsmann media conglomerate was the world's largest book publisher and the second-largest U.S. publisher. In 1981, Bertelsmann purchased Bantam Books and, in 1986, Bertelsmann took control of Doubleday and RCA Records. Its U.S. property by the early 1990s also included eight U.S. printing plants, Doubleday Book Shops in New York City and elsewhere, Dell Publishing, Arista Records and "Parents Magazine."

During the early 1990s, the administration of New York City's first African-American Mayor, a Democrat named David Dinkins, gave a $10.8 million special tax break to Bertelsmann AG when it purchased a 44-story Manhattan skyscraper for $119 million in March 1992.

Bertelsmann AG has been owned for many years by the family of Reinhard Mohn, who was a member of the Third Reich's Afrika Korps during World War II; and the same German firm published books for the Nazi regime in Germany between 1933 and 1945. During the early 1990s, the Mohn family still owned about 69 percent of the Bertelsmann/Doubleday/Bantam Books/Dell Publishers/Random House/Crown Publishers foreign-based media monopoly.

In his 2004 book The New Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian made the following reference to the German media conglomerate whose U.S. subsidiary gave President Obama a lucrative “book contract”:

“Like the other members of the Big Five that dominate the American media world, Bertelsmann’s list of media companies is lengthy. It requires nine typed pages. Thirty percent of its holdings are in the United States, bringing from this source alone $63 billion annually.

“Most of Bertelsmann’s eighty-two book subsidiaries were once freestanding, independent publishing houses, some of them household words not so many years ago—Alfred Knopf, Pantheon, Random House, Ballantine, Bantam, Crown, Doubleday, and Modern Library…

“With all its power, Bertelsmann is haunted by a ghost…

“…German sociologist Hersch Fischler discovered that, during the war, Bertelsmann had, in fact, been the largest publisher under Hitler. Among its 19 million books, it had large contracts from the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, including anti-Semitic tracts supporting Hitler’s insistence that Germans needed to take over central and western Europe…

“…Some board members and executives have been restive over Mrs. Mohn’s increasing power in replacing three executives and her appointing two of her three sons to operating influence within the giant firm…”

But don't hold your breath waiting for the stable of U.S. politicians who are represented by the Williams & Connolly corporate law firm to finally introduce some legislation to democratize power within the foreign-controlled U.S. book publishing industry in 2009 to insure that U.S. anti-trust laws are finally enforced within the U.S. mass media industry world.

An article by a Peter Osnos that was posted on The Century Foundation’s website (http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=NC&pubid=1425 ) on October 30, 2006 characterized Democratic President Obama’s 2004 book deal in the following way:

“…Here, as an indicator of how Obama operates in a practical realm, is the way he came to terms with the book business. In the process, he displayed ambition, real talent, luck, ruthlessness, and, in my view, questionable judgment about using public service as a personal payday.

“At Harvard Law School in February, 1990, Obama was elected president of the law review, and the New York Times did a profile of him as the first black leader of the publication. The article caught the attention of a young literary agent named Jane Dystel. A book proposal by Obama about his life was submitted to publishers and a deal was reached with Poseidon, a small imprint of Simon & Schuster, for what is known in the industry as “six figures” (about $125,000, I am told). Several years passed and Obama was too busy finishing law school and embarking on his career to get the book done. Simon & Schuster canceled the contract, which probably meant that Obama had to pay back at least some of what he had received of the advance.

“Dystel approached Henry Ferris, then a senior editor of Times Book at Random House. Ferris and I, as publisher, met with Obama, found his story fascinating, and believed he would finish the book. We paid an advance of $40,000.

“In June 1995, Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was published. .. The book…sold about 10,000 copies…Times Books licensed the paperback rights to Kodansha, a Japanese publisher that was doing a series of multi-cultural books in the U.S. market. Eventually, Kodansha closed and the rights went back to Random House. When the Times Books franchise was sold to Holtzbrinck, all its inventory, including Dreams of My Father, became the property of Random House’s Crown Books Division.

“…When Obama was selected to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic Convention in Boston, Dystel, who had stayed in touch with Obama, had the idea of reclaiming rights to the book and reselling it. But an alert editor at Crown had already spotted it on the proverbial shelf and it was quickly reissued in paperback…A rough guess as to the royalties the book has earned from all its versions…is about $1 million….

“Now comes the part in which Obama showed a steely side and displayed an element of character which, while completely legal and entirely within his rights as a writer, makes me uneasy. Everyone agrees that our political system and values are being corroded by money. One subset of the cash culture is that public figures use books funded by large media companies to support a lifestyle that is possible only because their service to the country makes them salable. Generals Tommy Franks and Norman Schwarzkopf came home from their Persian Gulf stints and took about $5 million each to write about their triumphs. Bill and Hillary Clinton earned tens of millions of dollars telling the stories of their lives in the White House. As soon as Newt Gingrich led the GOP to a 1994 takeover of the House of Representatives, he signed a $4 million contract with Rupert Murdoch–owned HarperCollins. Revelation of the deal backfired on Gingrich. Eventually, he took $1 and royalties on copies sold. But the episode made Gingrich a target on ethics issues…

“Between Election Day 2004 and his swearing in as a Senator, Obama signed a two-book deal with Crown for “seven figures” (probably somewhere in the vicinity of $1.5–$2.0 million). By signing the contract before taking office, which Hillary Clinton also did on her book deal, Obama does not fall under various requirements for disclosure and reporting…”

Iran History Revisited: Part 18

(See parts 1-17 below)

In an article, titled “Iran—Ready To Attack,” that appeared in the February 19, 2007 issue of New Statesman magazine, Dan Plesch observed that “American preparations for invading Iran are complete.” The New Statesman also reported that “what was done to Serbia and Lebanon can be done overnight to the whole of Iran,” but “we, and probably the Iranians, would not know about it until after the bombs fell.”

And on April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

In the Spring of 1960, the Shah of Iran finally agreed to allow a limited amount of political freedom for certain opposition Iranian groups prior to a scheduled Summer 1960 election of a new Majlis/Iranian parliament. As a result, between 1960 and 1963 the National Front opposition group was allowed to be openly active, while the Tudeh Party was still banned from aboveground political activity in Iran.

From exile, however, the Tudeh Party’s Central Committee in August 1960 called for a broad united front to be formed to replace the pro-U.S. imperialist regime of the Shah with an anti-imperialist, nationalist democratic regime that eliminated all remnants of feudalism within Iranian society.

The Summer 1960 Iranian parliamentary election of the Shah’s regime turned out to be a fraudulent one. So by May 1961 there were public student-teacher demonstrations against the Shah’s regime in Tehran; and the first public meeting of the National Front in Iran since the CIA’s 1953 coup was held that same month which attracted a crowd of 80,000 Iranians who demanded immediate, honest, democratic elections in Iran.

In response to these demonstrations, however, the Shah of Iran’s regime began withdrawing the post-1960 political concessions it had made to the non-left, non-communist and non-Tudeh Party-affiliated groups by the summer of 1961. (end of part 18)

Iran History Revisited: Part 17

(See parts 1-16 below)

In an article, titled “Iran—Ready To Attack,” that appeared in the February 19, 2007 issue of New Statesman magazine, Dan Plesch observed that “American preparations for invading Iran are complete.” The New Statesman also reported that “what was done to Serbia and Lebanon can be done overnight to the whole of Iran,” but “we, and probably the Iranians, would not know about it until after the bombs fell.”

And on April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

A CIA employee named Robert Lessard apparently “trained the Shah’s secret police in the techniques of subversion and torture, after the CIA’s overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953,” according to the 1985 book Washington’s Secret War Against Afghanistan by Phillip Bonosky.

Four different underground political tendencies, however, still emerged in Iran to oppose the Shah of Iran’s dictatorial regime following the 1953 CIA coup: the traditional Islamic groups; the constitutionalist and liberal groups; the independent left groups; and the Tudeh Party.

The constitutionalist and liberal groups drew their support mainly from Iran’s secular middle-class and Iranian government employees. Although anti-communist, the Iranian constitutionalist and liberal groups were anti-imperialist in their politics and advocated semi-socialist economic democratization reforms and the democratic political secularization of Iranian society. Together with the independent left groups and the Tudeh Party, the constitutionalist and liberal groups formed a new underground National Front in the late 1950s.

The traditional Islamic groups that opposed the Shah of Iran’s dictatorial regime were led by Iranian politicians from the religious Iranian Bazaar merchant class and the Iranian clerical hierarchy. Although they were opposed to the Shah of Iran’s regime and advocated Islamic unity against Anglo-American imperialism in the Middle East, the Islamic religious politicians were strongly anti-communist in their politics and generally hostile to the secular Tudeh Party. In addition to establishing an Iranian government which would more effectively protect Iranian businesspeople from the economic competition of foreign corporations in Iran, the leaders of the traditional Islamic groups in Iran also wanted to create a society in Iran that was governed by the principles of the Islamic religion. (end of part 17)

A.I.G.-Linked Foundation Funds Columbia University's East Asian Library With `Bonus' Grants

Since the 1980s, Columbia University’s East Asian Library has been given millions of dollars in “bonus” grants from a foundation--The Starr Foundation--which is financed largely by stock of the U.S. government bailed-out American International Group [A.I.G] and run by A.I.G insiders and former executives. As a press release that was posted on Columbia University’s web site on May 15, 2008 noted:

“Columbia University’s C. V. Starr East Asian Library today announced a three-year gift of $300,000 from The Starr Foundation to support essential services.

“Amy V. Heinrich, director of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, said, `We are delighted to receive this grant because it provides the rarest kind of funding: money for general operations rather than for specific programs...’…

“The Library has received generous and consistent support from The Starr Foundation. The East Asian Library at Columbia was named for C. V. Starr in 1983 after a complete renovation, funded primarily by The Starr Foundation…The million-dollar donation was followed by an endowment of $3 million…The Starr Foundation awarded the Library a $1.5 million challenge grant in 2005…”

A “bonus” grant of $200,000 was also given to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism 2007 by the A.I.G.-linked Starr Foundation, according to the foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2007.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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