CIA’s Trojan Horse enters the Heart of India
The CIA uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source. From the early 1950s to the present the CIA’s intrusion into the foundation field was and is huge. A U.S. 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. The CIA considers foundations such as Ford “The best and most plausible kind of funding cover”. The collaboration of respectable and prestigious foundations, according to one former CIA operative, allowed the Agency to fund “a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities, publishing houses and other private institutions”. The latter included “human rights” groups beginning in the 1950s to the present. One of the most important “private foundations” collaborating with the CIA over a significant span of time in major projects in the cultural Cold War is the Ford Foundation.
CIA & The Ford Foundation
By the late 1950's 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 inEurope, working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials on specific projects”. This is graphicallyillustrated by the naming of Richard Bissell as President of the Foundation in 1952. In his two years inoffice 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. Under Bissell, the Ford Foundation (FF) was the “vanguard of Cold War thinking”.
FORD FOUNDATION
One of the FF first Cold War projects was the establishment of a publishing house, Inter-cultural Publications, and the publication of a magazine Perspectives in Europe in four languages. The FF purpose according to Bissell was not “so much to defeat the leftist intellectuals in dialectical combat (sic) as to lure them away from their positions”. The board of directors of the publishing house was completely dominated by cultural Cold Warriors. Given the strong leftist culture in Europe in the post-war period, Perspectives failed to attract readers and went bankrupt.
Another journal Der Monat funded by the Confidential Fund of the U.S. military and run by Melvin Lasky was taken over by the FF, to provide it with the appearance of independence.
Than CIA’s head Allen Dulles’ best bud, John McCloy,is shown here with David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan executives after he successfully merged the Warburg’s Manhattan bank with Rockefeller’s Chase bank. A top Rockefeller leutenant, McCloy acted for decades on the family’s behalf as an adviser to presidents and dictators. He even shared a box with Hitler and Goering at the 1936 Olympics.
McCloy integrated the FF with CIA operations. He created an administrative unit within the FF specifically to deal with the CIA. McCloy headed a three person consultation committee with the CIA to facilitate the use of the FF for a cover and conduit of funds. With these structural linkages the FF was one of those organizations the CIA was able to mobilize for political warfare against the anti-imperialist and pro-communist left.
Official photo of Warren Commissioners that covered-up JFK Assassination. Allen Dulles(than head of the CIA) is seen second from left. To his right is John J. McCloy, lawyer and troubleshooter for both the Warburg and Rockefeller family. McCloy was appointed as a member of the Warren Commission, purely for the purposes of disguising Rockefeller’s crime.
McCloy (extreme left) with the rest of the gang, the other six hacks
& fraudsters, of the Warren Commission, as they present the phony
report to President Ford.
rom its very origins there was a close structural relation and interchange of personnel at the highest levels between the CIA and the FF. This structural tie was based on the common imperial interests which they shared. The result of their collaboration was the proliferation of a number of journals and access to the mass media which pro-U.S. intellectuals used to launch vituperative polemics against Marxists and other anti-imperialists. The FF funding of these anti-Marxists organizations and intellectuals provided a legal cover for their claims of being “independent” of government funding (CIA).
One prominent journalist, Andrew
Kopkind, wrote of a deep sense of moral disillusionment with the private
foundation-funded CIA cultural fronts. Kopkind wrote :
“The distance between the rhetoric of the open society and the reality of control was greater than anyone thought. Everyone who went abroad for an American organization was, in one way or another, awitness to the theory that the world was torn between communism and democracy and anything in betweenwas treason. The illusion of dissent was maintained: the CIA supported socialist cold warriors, fascist cold warriors, black and white cold warriors. The catholicity and flexibility of the CIA operations were major advantages. But it was a sham pluralism and it was utterly corrupting”.
When a U.S. journalist Dwight Macdonald
who was an editor of Encounter (a FF-CIA funded influential cultural
journal) sent an article critical of U.S. culture and politics it was
rejected by the editors, working closely with the CIA. In the field of
painting and theater the CIA worked with the FF to promote abstract
expressionism against any artistic expression with a social content,
providing funds and contacts for highly publicized exhibits in Europe
and favorable reviews by “sponsored” journalists. The interlocking
directorate between the CIA, the Ford Foundation and the New York Museum
of Modern Art lead to a lavish promotion of “individualistic” art
remote from the people — and a vicious attack on European painters,
writers and playwrights writing from a critical realist perspective.
“Abstract Expressionism” whatever its artist’s intention became a weapon
in the Cold War
.
The Ford Foundation’s history of
collaboration and interlock with the CIA in pursuit of U.S.
world hegemony is now a well-documented fact. The remaining issue is
whether that relationship continues into the new Millenium after the
exposures of the 1960s? The FF made some superficial changes. They are
more flexible in providing small grants to human rights groups and
academic researchers who occasionally dissent from U.S. policy. They are
not as likely to recruit CIA operatives to head the organization.
More significantly they are likely to
collaborate more openly with the U.S. government in its cultural and
educational projects, particularly with the Agency of International
Development.
The FF has in some ways refined their
style of collaboration with Washington’s attempt to produce
worldcultural domination, but retained the substance of that policy. For
example the FF is very selective in the funding of educational
institutions. Like the IMF, the FF imposes conditions such as the
“professionalization” of academic personnel and “raising standards.” In
effect this translates into the promotion of social scientific work
based on the assumptions, values and orientations of the U.S. empire; to
have professionals de-linked from the class struggle and connected with
pro-imperial U.S. academics and foundation functionaries supporting the
neo-liberal model.
As in the 1950s and 60s the Ford
Foundation today has developed a sophisticated strategy of funding human
rights groups (HRGs) that appeal to Washington to change its policy
while denouncing U.S. adversaries their “systematic” violations. The FF
supports HRGs which equate massive state terror by the U.S. with
individual excesses of anti-imperialist adversaries. The FF finances
HRGs which do not participate in anti-globalization and anti-neoliberal
mass actions and which defend the Ford Foundation as a legitimate and
generous “non-governmental organization”.
In the current period of a major U.S. military-political offensive, Washington has posed the issue as “terrorism or democracy,” just as during the Cold War it posed the question as “Communism or Democracy.” In both instances the Empire recruited and funded “front organizations, intellectuals and journalists to attack its anti-imperialist adversaries and neutralize its democratic critics. The Ford Foundation is well situated to replay its role as collaborator to cover for the New Cultural Cold War.
CIA’s Trojan Horse reaches India
India had been sucked into the spiral of this Cultural Cold War since a long time. However with the US economy already bust and the EU falling like dominos; it is again the East where the West would anchor it’s sinking ship of so called Exceptionalism that fuels the Western Civilization. The game on the Indian side is very well crafted and carried out through CIA’s Trojan Horse which has entered into the heart of Indian Politics – Delhi.
A new political party pledging to sweep
corruption from the Indian capital made surprising gains in state
elections, grabbing a huge share of votes from the incumbent Congress
party and leaving Delhi with no clear leader on Monday — and no party
willing to form a coalition.
The fledgling Aam Aadmi Party, or Common
Man’s Party, seized 28 of Delhi’s 70 assembly seats just nine months
after its formation. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took
first place with 31, while Congress was left with a meagre eight, a
stunning decline from its previous 43.
All three ruled out entering into a governing alliance, leaving the
capital in a leadership lurch and raising the possibility of new
elections.
CIA lays the “Foundation” of Indian Policymaking
The Ford Foundation, which completes six decades in India next year, provides a continuing flow of grants to institutions, think-tanks, civil society, and even farmer groups, to carry out research and advocacy work. The sums are not inconsequential—about $15 million (about Rs 70 crore) a year. And the recipients—320 grants, over the past four years—are the who’s who of civil society and advocacy groups in India.
Its representative, Steven Solnick, said the Foundation’s last installment to Kabir (an NGO run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia) was in 2010. “Our first grant to the NGO was of $1,72,000 in 2005 ; the second was in 2008 of $1,97,000,” he told Business Standard.
Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in AAP(Aam Aadmi Party), has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years.
Link for $197,000 – now removed by Ford. Refer screenshot of the same below.
In reply to an RTI query that questioned the funding and expenditure of Kabir, the organisation has disclosed that they have received funds from the Ford Foundation (Rs 86,61,742), PRIA (Rs 2,37,035), Manjunath Shanmugam Trust (Rs 3,70,000), Dutch Embassy (Rs 19,61,968), Association for India’s Development (Rs 15,00,000), India’s friends Association (Rs 7,86,500), United Nationals Development Programme (Rs12,52,742) while Rs 11,35,857 were collected from individual donations between 2007 to 2010.
Kejriwal Admits, His NGO Took Money From Ford Foundation 2 Years Back
Interestingly, a major part of the funding to an organisation that is prominent in the “War against corruption” has come from abroad and mainly from the United States. Apart from the UNDP, Ford Foundation and the India Friends Association are US-based organisations, while PRIA and Association for India’s Development are headquartered in Asia.
On whether the views of these intellectuals actually get reflected in subsequent policies, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia declines to comment. “I don’t really have a view on it,” he says. He does, however, concede that India’s association with the foundation “is something that has been on for a long time”.
Moreover, two of core members are also Magsaysay award winners which are endowed by the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller.
As far as the Magsaysay Award winners are concerned, this award is an American award for Asians established and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation ostensibly in memory of Ramon Magsaysay, the former President of Philippines.
According to well-placed
sources in the U. S. Intelligence community opposed to the State
Department’s policy toward the Philippines, $30 million in covert funds
was supplied to the Philippine opposition to help finance its
presidential campaign. This $30 million was laundered through Hong
Kong, where the money was converted into the Philippine peso at the
black market rate of 20 pesos to the dollar.
Philippine sources reported
that the money had, been in part funneled into the CIA-controlled
citizens election watch group, called Namfrel , the National Movement
for a Free Election, which was originally created in 1953 in order
to bring Ramon Magsaysay into power. Namfrel was central in the
State Department’s policy of intervening into the Philippines election.
In 1957, the Rockefeller Foundation established the Ramon Magsaysay
Prize for community leaders in Asia. It was named after Ramon Magsaysay,
president of the Philippines, a crucial ally in the US campaign against
Communism in Southeast Asia. In 2000, the Ford Foundation established
the Ramon Magsaysay Emergent Leadership Award. The Magsaysay Award is
considered a prestigious award among artists, activists and community
workers in India. M.S. Subbulakshmi and Satyajit Ray won it, so did
Jayaprakash Narayan and journalists, P. Sainath. In general, it has
become a gentle arbiter of what kind of activism is “acceptable” and
what is not. In reality the award is the living memory of the
dictatorial president of Philippines known for the murder of thousands
of communist guerrillas during the Huk Rebellion under US-planned
anti-communist counter-insurgency operations. It explains the silence of
the anti-corruption group against corporations and the private sector.
For more details read : CIA manipulation of 1953 elections
This perfectly fits in with a recent
shift in the US policy of association with India, which is now focusing
on building state-to-state partnerships by “engaging Indian state and local leaders” throughout the country on “topics of mutual interest”. Civil society groups and think-tanks are expected to play an important role in this. As Prof Anil Gupta of IIM-Ahmedabad observes, “Their influence is far beyond what is recognized, and not always benign.”
Should NGOs receiving grants from
international agencies like the Ford Foundation and others be barred
from participating in the shaping of public policy?
And are these civil society groups working as stooges of the West to execute an “American agenda” ?
These are the question the Aam Aadmi has to answer.
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