"I occupy a curious relation to him, of a confidential nature. It must suffice to say he is interested in my professional development..."
My dad referring to DeWitt Wallace, in my dad's letter to the Dean of NYU Law School, dated June 30, 1958
From the beginning the National Committee for a Free Europe
depended upon the voluntary silence of powerful media personalities
in the United States to cloak its true operations in secrecy.
"Representatives of some of the nation's most influential
media giants were involved early on as members of the corporation
[NCFE]," Mickelson notes in a relatively frank history of
its activities. This board included "magazine publishers
Henry Luce [of Time-Life] and DeWitt Wallace [of Reader's Digest],"
he writes, "but not a word of the government involvement
appeared in print or on the air."
https://thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/BareFists_B_CS.html
My Dad, in 1958, wrote to the dean of the NYU Law School that someone who had funded his alma mater college, half a million dollars in the previous year, could be persuaded to fund NYU if invited to speak or attend a seminar or something. Dad said that he had a "relationship of a confidential nature" with this person who "took a keen interest in the progress of" his career.
So my dad wrote this letter to the NYU Law School specifically to increase his own school funding for his studies in Europe. My dad ended up traveling into the Soviet Union and then my dad wrote a paper on "administrative law in the Soviet Union."
Their work was, as National Committee for a Free Europe
President Dewitt Poole noted in one 1950 directive, "to take
up the individual Bolshevik rulers and their quislings and tear
them apart, exposing their motivations, laying bare their private
lives, pointing at their meannesses, pillorying their evil deeds,
holding them up to ridicule and contumely."
DeWitt Clinton Poole was an American intelligence officer. He served as U.S. Consul General in Moscow, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1949v05/d176
Members of the Committee, as of June 1, 1949 were: Frank Altschul
(Treasurer), Hamilton Fish Armstrong, A. A. Berle, Francis Biddle,
Robert Woods Bliss, Hugh A. Drum, Allen W. Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Mark Ethridge, James A. Farley, William Green, Joseph C. Grew
(Chairman), Charles R. Hook, Arthur Bliss Lane, Henry R. Luce, Arthur W.
Page, DeWitt C. Poole (Executive Secretary), Charles M. Spofford,
Charles P. Taft, DeWitt Wallace, Mathew Woll.....
In fact, however, the "Document" was a forgery,
whose origins can be traced to the wartime Nazi intelligence service.
The true source of the "Document" was, according to
American psychological warfare expert Paul Blackstock, "one
of the Nazi secret police or related terrorist organizations such
as the Sicherheitsdienst or one of the notorious SD or SS 'action
groups' "
wow!!!
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01676R004100040001-4.pdf
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01314R000100490006-6.pdf
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-00915R000700130006-4.pdf
Wow so the study of "administrative law in the Soviet Union" was known to be a front group for soviet propaganda! That is precisely what my dad wrote a paper on... that is not in any of his files....
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-00915R001300070003-7.pdf
So my dad was also corresponding with Columbia University law professor Harry W. Jones about my dad's Ph.D. in law thesis....https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/664
That is the source of my Dad's Hayek book then...
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01731R001300130012-5.pdf
So Allen Dulles requested a meeting with Reader's Digest in lieu of their great success abroad.... wow.
1952...
conquest by Terror by Leland Stowe
that's the archive version - it was published by Reader's Digest after first having the CIA approve....
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP74-00115R000300020033-5.pdf
wow.....
Birth of Psychological Warfare 2023
book
The Kaplan Fund is what funds the Nation Magazine...
following revelations in 1964 when some of these CIA fronts were
first accidentally exposed by Congressman Wright Patman during
congressional hearings searching for communist infiltrations of American
foundations. In these hearings Patman questioned an IRS employee about
irregularities in several foundations, and his sworn public testimony
was that the Kaplan Fund was being used by the CIA to fund projects and
individuals of interest to the Agency. Patman learned from the CIA the
names of eight nonprofits that funded the Kaplan Fund: The Gotham
Foundation, Michigan Fund, Andrew Hamilton Fund, Borden Trust, The Price
Fund, The Edsel Fund, The Beacon Fund, The Kentfield Fund. Though there
was some brief news coverage of these disclosures, there was no real
effort to trace what happened to the CIA funds passing through these CIA
fronts and pass-throughs until Stern’s Ramparts exposé.
It was
during Ramparts 1967 revelatory aftermath that the world first learned
that the CIA covertly funded the publication of books, when a February
1967 New York Times story revealed that Praeger Press had published an
unidentified number of books “at the CIA’s suggestion.” News reports
soon revealed the CIA had secretly published other books with other
presses.
With most of these publications the CIA sought to strengthen the
moderate left, bolstering liberal ideology as a way of keeping thinking
people from pursuing socialism or communism.
Chaneles used the example of Random House’s 1951 publication of Reader’s
Digest author, Leland Stowe’s book, The Story of Satellite Europe:
Conquest by Terror to show how the CIA bypassed the usual market forces
governing books publications to guarantee sales and distribution of a
book that likely would not have found a market to support its survival.
He argued that “many thousands of copies of the book were purchased by
CIA coordinated agencies for low cost and free distribution in the US
and in those areas of the English-speaking world subject to the
conspiracies in violation of the Sherman Act.”
..................
As Sharp (2001) has shown, the American journal Reader’s Digest was an
important medium for narrating the Cold War to American audiences, but the
OWI’s use of the digest format presaged its Cold War use, including the digest
Choix (Choice) in France and Il Mese (The month) in Italy. The digests in particular
were part of a larger Anglo-American project – the International Review Digest
(Koutsopanagou 2017) – which originated with a British editorial unit working
with the OWI’s Publications Division. The digests were edited jointly by Americans,
British, and in most cases representatives of the targeted nation. In the OWI’s own
estimation, the value of these publications was in ‘impressing their readers with the
global nature of the war, stressing the harmony of the United Nations toward victory,
and acquainting the European peoples to the customs, culture and basic democratic
principles of the United States’ (OWI 1944, 16). The promotional language was a pre-
view of US public diplomacy during the Cold War, including what it omitted, namely
issues surrounding race and class conflict in the United States.
Sharp, J. (2001). Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s Digest and American identity.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
First, and most obviously, the unitary communist threat of
world domination was delivered a significant blow with the breakdown
in Sino-Soviet relations. As tensions mounted along the Chinese-Soviet
border, the specter of communism clearly fractured and visibly weak-
ened. Second, and more subtly, the Digest faced a more insidious threat
to its binary scripting of international political praxis: the threat of
détente. The “weakening” of American opposition to communism—
backing down from the threat of “total war” to accept the possibility of
peaceful coexistence—represented a movement of great significance to
the magazine. The dis-order that communism had inflicted on interna-
tional society was not to be eliminated, but to be allowed to exist, albeit
in a contained state. The triumphalism of American Manifest Destiny
overcoming the Soviet threat to the onward march of freedom and
democracy was seen to weaken into an acknowledgment of communism,
contained within the sphere of influence of the Soviet state. Both of these
themes are central to the narrative of international politics during the
period of détente from the mid-1960s to 1979.
Birth of Psychological warfare
, the Crusade was launched in a national radio address by presi-
dential hopeful Dwight Eisenhower, then-president of Columbia University. The
context of Labor Day was significant, as Eisenhower again stressed that under
Communism ‘one third of the human race works in virtual bondage’ (New York
Times, 5 September 1950a). On its surface, the Crusade for Freedom’s debut there-
fore appeared as a campaign to publicise the NCFE and its effort to fund and
operate Radio Free Europe in Eastern Europe.
Within the framework of funding Radio Free Europe, however, the NCFE
advanced a geopolitical imaginary in which ordinary Americans could partici-
pate in a kind of ‘spiritual warfare’ against the Soviet Union, what the New York
Times supportively called a ‘world-wide battle for men’s minds’ (New York Times,
4 July 1950). The Times barely altered NCFE press releases in framing the Crusade
as filling ‘the need for a large-scale democratic truth offensive … in the most
important battle of all, the battle of ideas’ (New York Times, 28 July 1950).
I started digging through my dad's NYU law school file (from 1956-1960)
- as my dad got a Ford Foundation grant to study in Sweden as the 2nd
half of a Ph.D. in Law. My dad wrote a letter to the Dean of NYU Law
saying my dad had a "confidential occupational relationship" with DeWitt
Wallace (on the board of the Committee for a Free Europe and founder of
Reader's Digest)... see the above link for the precise quote...
In
1956, the Ford Foundation awarded a grant of $375,000 to New York
University (NYU) Law School for a program in international legal studies
....A US Congressional investigation
in 1976 revealed that nearly 50% of the 700 grants in the field of
international activities by the principal foundations were funded by the
CIA (Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders, Granta Books, 1999, pp. 134-135).”
The CIA considers foundations such as Ford “The best and most plausible kind of funding cover” (Ibid, p. 135).... by the late 1950s the Ford Foundation possessed over $3 billion
in assets. The leaders of the Foundation were in total agreement with
Washington’s post-WWII projection of world power. A noted scholar of the
period writes: “At times it seemed as if the Ford Foundation was simply
an extension of government in the area of international cultural
propaganda. The foundation had a record of close involvement in covert
actions in Europe, working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials
on specific projects” (Ibid, p.139). This is graphically illustrated by
the naming of Richard Bissell as President of the Foundation in 1952. In his two years in office Bissell met often with the head of the CIA, Allen Dulles,
and other CIA officials in a “mutual search” for new ideas. In 1954
Bissell left Ford to become a special assistant to Allen Dulles in
January 1954 (Ibid, p. 139). Under Bissell, the Ford Foundation was the
“vanguard of Cold War thinking”...
In 1954 the new president of the Ford Foundation was John McCloy.
He epitomized imperial power. Prior to becoming president of the Ford
Foundation he had been Assistant Secretary of War, president of the
World Bank, High Commissioner of occupied Germany, chairman of
Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank, Wall Street attorney for the big
seven oil companies and director of numerous corporations. As High
Commissioner in Germany, McCloy had provided cover for scores of CIA
agents (Ibid, p. 141).
McCloy integrated the Ford
Foundation with CIA operations. He created an administrative unit within
the Ford Foundation specifically to deal with the CIA. McCloy headed a
three person consultation committee with the CIA to facilitate the use
of the Ford Foundation for a cover and conduit of funds.
https://bharatabharati.in/2015/04/26/ford-foundation-and-its-cia-connections-d-p-satish/
and
DeWitt Wallace (founder/owner of Reader's Digest) was "interested in"
my dad's career. My dad had graduated from Macalester College as a
leader in the Republican cause and DeWitt Wallace was a big Macalester
College funder...
So I know from Prof. Christopher Simpson
that any international Ford Foundation grant was screened through the
CIA Russia Institute at Columbia University. My dad corresponded with a
Columbia University law professor who was promoting Hayek (freedom from
serfdom, etc.) to be my dad's Ph.D. advisor. My dad did the course work
but he never wrote his thesis since his mother-in-law came over to
Sweden and then got her daughter to divorce my dad back in the U.S.
(that was his first wife).
So then my dad traveled into the
Soviet Union to study "administrative law" and then I found a CIA
document listing the Soviet Union sponsoring "administrative law"
conferences in English as Communist front groups... Also my dad
corresponded heavily with NYU law professor Edmond Cahn who was listed
by the McCarthy UnAmerican committee as a "member" or "sponsor" of the
USA Communist Party....
My dad, as a lawyer in
the MN Bar, also administered trusts back in Minnesota where DeWitt
Wallace had recently given $500,000 to Macalester College (in 1957
dollars). So my dad was recommending the Dean of NYU invite DeWitt
Wallace to entice Wallace to fund NYU Law so that my dad could
supplement his Ford Foundation grant monies. My dad did end up taking a
summer course at UC-London and also he studied in Paris privately - on
law....
My dad was an alumni of Macalester but also was the
chairman of their alumni association - working closely with their
"director of development." So then around 1967 the Macalester College
"director of development" (who obviously was close to DeWitt Wallace
since he continued to fund Macalester College) had my dad host a
"discussion on the Vietnam War" at my house. I was not born yet but my
mom told me the event was held at our house to ensure the students would
not get riled up and take action - like occupy a building, etc. That
same "director of development" at Macalester also did "interior design"
work on our house - doing our kitchen, breakfast room, basement, etc. So
I'm pretty sure there was some Quid Pro Quo going on... via DeWitt
Wallace.
