The Shadow Party is a term originally devised by journalists to describe “527” political committees promoting Democratic Party agendas. Here, the term is used more specifically to refer to the network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources — money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising and policy iniatives — to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left. The Shadow Party in this sense was conceived and organized principally by Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Harold Ickes. Its efforts are amplified by, and coordinated with, key government unions and the activist groups associated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The key organizers of these groups are veterans of the Sixties left. (For a list of some of the Shadow Party’s major players, click here.) No one knows who first coined the term “Shadow Party.” In the November 5, 2002 Washington Post, writer Thomas B. Edsall wrote of “shadow organizations” springing up to circumvent McCain-Feingold’s soft-money ban. Journalist Lorraine Woellert first called the Democrat network a “shadow party” in a September 15, 2003 Business Week article titled “The Evolution of Campaign Finance?” Other journalists quickly followed suit. Some journalists refer to the Shadow Party as “the 527s” or “the 527 groups.” These terms derive from the fact that most of the non-profit groups within the Shadow Party are registered under Section 527 of the U.S. tax code. Section 527 groups face weaker regulation and looser disclosure requirements than other types of non-profit groups. Thus they are better suited for operating in the shadows, in areas of dubious legality. Section 527 groups are used for raising “soft money.” For a thorough explanation of Section 527 groups and soft money, click here. Wall Street billionaire George Soros is the Shadow Party’s principal founder and mastermind. Clear hints of Soros’ intentions began to appear as early as the 2000 election. It was then that Soros (shouldering about one-third of the cost) sponsored the so-called “Shadow Conventions.” Organized by author, columnist, and socialite Arianna Huffington, the Shadow Conventions were media events designed to lure news crews from the real party conventions of that year. Huffington held her “Shadow Conventions” at the same time and in the same cities as the Republican and Democratic Conventions, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles respectively, and featured leftwing critics of mainstream politics. The Shadow Conventions promoted Huffington’s view that neither Democrats nor Republicans served the interests of the American people any longer. In Huffingtons view, U.S. politics needed a third force to break the deadlock. Among the issues highlighted at the Shadow Conventions were racism, class inequality, marijuana legalization, and campaign finance reform. Most speakers and delegates pushed a hard-left line, accompanied by “Free Mumia” chants from the crowd and an incendiary tirade by Jesse Jackson. A former conservative, Huffington told reporters: “I have become radicalized.” The Shadow Conventions were purely symbolic affairs. They fielded no candidates for office. However, many of Soros’ activities during the 2000 campaign went beyond symbolism. It was during the 2000 election that Soros first experimented with raising campaign funds through Section 527 groups. In preparation for the 2000 election, Soros assembled a team of wealthy Democrat donors to help him push two of his pet issues — gun control and marijuana legalization. Their donations greatly exceeded the limits on political contributions stipulated by campaign finance laws. Soros therefore laundered their contributions through Section 527 groups — dubbed “stealth PACs,” by the media of that time. One of Soros’ stealth PACs was an anti-gun group called The Campaign for a Progressive Future (CPF). This group sought to neutralize the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) by targeting for defeat any political candidate, at any level, whom the NRA endorsed. Soros personally seeded CPF with $500,000. During the 2000 election, CPF funded political ads and direct-mail campaigns in support of state initiatives favoring background checks at gun shows. Soros used other 527s to agitate in favor of pro-marijuana initiatives which appeared on the ballot in various states that year. Donors to Soros’ stealth PACs during the 2000 election cycle included insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis and InfoSeek founder Steven Kirsch, both of whom would turn up as major contributors to Soros’ Shadow Party during the 2004 election season. During the 1990s, Soros had grown close to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. Their ascension to power gave him easy entre to Washington elites of a sort he had long coveted but never enjoyed. Soros became the Clintons’ unofficial envoy to Russia and to other former Communist states. The assignment proved lucrative for him. Soros made a fortune in the so-called “Russiagate” phenomenon — the orgy of backroom “privatization” deals and Russian junk bond issues which Clinton officials such as Strobe Talbot, Al Gore, and Lawrence Summers helped foster in the former USSR. More importantly, Soros discovered in Hillary Clinton an ideological soulmate. Mrs. Clinton shared his aversion to U.S. “hegemony.” Like Soros, she sought to subordinate U.S. interests to global interests; U.S. sovereignty to global government; U.S. law to global courts; U.S. wealth to global taxation; and U.S. productivity to a scheme for global income redistribution. She also shared Soros’ hostility to Israel. Soros and Mrs. Clinton formed a friendship based upon their mutual beliefs. When the Clintons left office, Soros dedicated himself to restoring Hillary to the White House. Soros has a wealth of experience in effecting “regime change.” He helped fund the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” that brought Vaclav Havel to power in the Czech Republic. By his own admission, he has helped engineer coups in Slovakia, Croatia, Georgia, and Yugoslavia. When Soros targets a country for “regime change,” he begins by creating a shadow government — a fully formed government-in-exile, ready to assume power when the opportunity arises. The Shadow Party Soros has built in America greatly resembles those he has created in other countries, prior to instigating a coup. At the heart of the American Shadow Party is the Center for American Progress (CAP). It was launched on July 7, 2003 as the American Majority Institute. The name was changed to Center for American Progress on September 1, 2003. The official purpose of the Center was to provide the left with a new think tank of its own. Regarding the new think tank proposed by Soros and Halperin, Hillary Clinton told Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine on October 12, 2003, “We need some new intellectual capital. There has to be some thought given as to how we build the 21st-century policies that reflect the Democrat Party’s values.” Expanding on this theme, Mrs. Clinton later told The Nation‘s Robert Dreyfuss, “We’ve had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate political discourse. The Center is a welcome effort to fill that void.” Hillary Clinton tried to minimize the depth of her involvement with the Center for American Progress. But persistent press leaks confirm that she — and not its official president, John Podesta — had ultimate authority at CAP.”It’s the official Hillary Clinton think tank,” an inside source confided to Christian Bourge of United Press International. As Robert Dreyfuss noted in The Nation, “In looking at Podesta’s center, there’s no escaping the imprint of the Clintons. It’s not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government, a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile — or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton.” Dreyfuss noted the abundance of Clintonites on the Center’s staff, among them Clinton’s national security speechwriter Robert Boorstin; Democratic Leadership Council staffer and former head of Clinton’s National Economic Council Gene Sperling; former senior advisor to Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget Matt Miller; and more. Dreyfuss wrote: “[T]he Center’s kickoff conference on national security in October [2003], co-organized with The American Prospect and the Century Foundation, looked like a Clinton reunion, featuring Robert Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary;  William Perry, his Defense Secretary;  Sandy Berger, his National Security Adviser; Richard Holbrooke and Susan Rice, both Clinton-era Assistant Secretaries of State; Rodney Slater, his Transportation Secretary; and Carol Browner, his EPA administrator, who serves on the Center’s board of directors.” Hillary Clinton also attended the event, Dreyfuss reported. To develop the Shadow Party as a cohesive entity, Harold Ickes undertook the task of building a 21st-century version of the Left’s traditional alliance of the “oppressed,” the disgruntled, and the “disenfranchised.” He formed a coalition of pro-abortion activists, leftwing minority groups, and leftwing labor unions. By the time Ickes was done, he had created or helped to create six new groups, and had co-opted a seventh called MoveOn.org. Together, they constituted the administrative core of the Shadow Party. They were: America Coming Together; America Votes; the Center for American Progress; Joint Victory Campaign 2004; The Media Fund; MoveOn.org; and the Thunder Road Group. In addition to its seven core members, the Shadow Party also came to include at least another 30 well-established leftwing activist groups and labor unions that participated in the America Votes coalition. Among the better-known of these were ACORN; the AFL-CIO; the AFSCME; the American Federation of Teachers; the Association of Trial Lawyers of America; the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund; EMILY’s List; the Human Rights Campaign; the League of Conservation Voters; the NAACP; NARAL Pro-Choice America; the National Education Association; People for the American Way; Planned Parenthood; the Service Employees International Union; and the Sierra Club. In a November 11, 2003 interview with Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post, George Soros described how he had jump-started the Shadow Party in the summer of 2003. The Wall Street billionaire told how he had summoned a team of political strategists, activists and Democrat donors to his Southampton beach house in Long Island, New York. According to The Washington Post, attendees included: Morton H. Halperin (Director of Soros’ Open Society Institute); John Podesta (Democrat strategist and former Clinton chief of staff); Jeremy Rosner (Democrat strategist and pollster, ex-foreign policy speechwriter for Bill Clinton, and former special advisor to Secretary of State Madeline Albright on NATO; Robert Boorstin (Democrat strategist and pollster, ex-national security speechwriter for Clinton, and former advisor to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin); Carl Pope (ACT co-founder, Democrat strategist, environmentalist, and Sierra Club Executive Director); Steve Rosenthal (Labor leader, CEO of America Coming Together, former chief advisor on union matters to Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, former Deputy Political Director under DNC chairman Ron Brown, and AFL-CIO Political Director from 1996 – 2002); Peter Lewis(major Democrat donor and insurance entrepreneur, and founder and chairman of Progressive Corporation); Rob Glaser (major Democrat donor and Silicon Valley pioneer); Ellen Malcolm (co-founder and president of ACT and founder of Emily’s List); Rob McKay (major Democrat donor, Taco Bell heir, and McKay Family Foundation President; and Lewis and Dorothy Cullman (major Democrat donors, and founders of the Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Foundation in New York). At the meeting, Soros laid out his plan to defeat President Bush. He began implementing his plan before the meeting had adjourned. Blumenfeld writes: “Standing on the back deck, the evening sun angling into their eyes, Soros took aside Steve Rosenthal, CEO of the liberal activist group America Coming Together (ACT), and Ellen Malcolm, its president. They were proposing to mobilize voters in 17 battleground states. Soros told them he would give ACT $10 million. … Before coffee the next morning, his friend Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corp., had pledged $10 million to ACT. Rob Glaser, founder and CEO of RealNetworks, promised $2 million. Rob McKay, President of the McKay Family Foundation, gave $1 million, and benefactors Lewis and Dorothy Cullman committed $500,000. Soros also promised up to $3 million to Podesta’s new think tank, the Center for American Progress.” The Shadow Party had been born, and by late 2003 Soros issued an open call for “regime change” in the United States. “America under Bush is a danger to the world,” Soros told Blumenfeld in that same November 11, 2003 interview. Toppling Bush, said Soros, “is the central focus of my life… a matter of life and death. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.” New groups are constantly being formed in the Shadow Party, while others vanish. To determine how many groups exist in the Shadow Party at any given time is difficult. It is even more difficult to determine the purpose of each group. In some cases, groups seem to have no function other than to transfer funds from one 527 to another, perhaps in order to obscure the money trail. On December 10, 2003, for instance, a 527 group called the Sustainable World Corporation suddenly sprang into existence in Houston, Texas. Within days of its birth, it gave $3.1 million to the Joint Victory Campaign 2004, which in turn disbursed half of the payment to Harold Ickes’ Media Fund. As of 2004, an alphabetical list of Shadow Party groups included the following: Air America Radio; America Coming Together; America Votes; American Constitution Society; American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; American Federation of Teachers; Anshell Media; Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now; Association of Trial Lawyers of America; Band of Progressives; Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence; Campaign for a Progressive Future; Campaign for America’s Future; Center for American Progress; Clean Water Action; Communication Workers of America; The Constitution Project; DASH PAC; Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund; Democracy for America; Democratic Governors Associations; Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee; Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; Dog Eat Dog Films; EMILY’s List; Environment 2004; Gore/Lieberman Recount Committee; Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union; the Human Rights Campaign; INdTV; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Joint Victory Campaign 2004; Laborers International Union of North American; League of Conservation Voters; New Democrat Network; The Media Fund; Media Matters for America; Million Mom March; Moving America Forward; MoveOn.org; Music for America; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; NARAL Pro-Choice America; National Education Association; National Grassroots Alliance; National Jewish Democratic Council; National Treasury Employees Union; New American Optimists; New Democrat Network; Partnership for America’s Families; People for the American Way; Phoenix Group; Planned Parenthood; Pro-Choice Vote; Service Employees International Union; Sheet Metal Workers International Association; Sierra Club; The Thunder Road Group; United Food & Commercial Workers Union; United Progressive Alliance; USAction; Vagina Votes; Voices for Working Families; Vote for Change; Young Voter Alliance; and 21st Century Democrats.

PROFILES OF SHADOW PARTY MEMBERS Major Introductory Resources: The Shadow Party (pamphlet) By David Horowitz and Richard Poe 2004 The Shadow Party By Jamie Glazov August 29, 2006 The Shadow Party: Part I By David Horowitz and Richard Poe October 6, 2004 The Shadow Party: Part II By David Horowitz and Richard Poe October 7, 2004 The Shadow Party: Part III By David Horowitz and Richard Poe October 11, 2004 The Shadow Party: History, Goals, and Activities By Richard Poe 2004 Soros Shadow Party Stalks DeLay By Richard Poe April 12, 2005 Horowitz Illuminates the Shadow Party By Bill Steigerwald August 2, 2006 Blueprint for Democrats: Deceive and Conquer By Bernard Chapin August 11, 2006 The Cult of Soros By David Horowitz and Richard Poe August 25, 2006 Books: The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party By David Horowitz and Richard Poe Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996 By Ron Radosh Additional Resources: The Manchurian Candidate By David Horowitz September 11, 2009 How Obama Revolution Came to America By Robert Chandler April 6, 2009 Speaker Of The House Hires A George Soros Activist By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon February 13, 2007 Media Matters Attack on The Shadow Party By Richard Poe October 30, 2006 Soros, Foley and the FBI By Richard Poe October 11, 2006 The Cult of Soros By David Horowitz and Richard Poe August 25, 2006 Blueprint for Democrats: Deceive and Conquer By Bernard Chapin August 11, 2006 The Shadow Party Defeats Lieberman By Ben Johnson August 9, 2006 Soros Team Steps up to the Plate By David Horowitz August 4, 2006 Horowitz Illuminates the Shadow Party By Bill Steigerwald August 2, 2006 Shadow Party Raises $80 Million By Richard Poe August 8, 2005 The Shadow Party’s “Gang of Five” By Richard Poe May 7, 2005 Soros Shadow Party Stalks DeLay By Richard Poe April 12, 2005 What Are “527” Groups? By Richard Poe 2004

Next Up : Part  8 In the series,  Politics, A Disgustingly Dirty Game Filled With Unbelievably Vile Things

James H. Hansen

RADICAL

ROAD MAPS

Uncovering the Web of Connections Among Far-Left Groups In America

James H. Hansen

RADICAL

ROAD MAPS

Uncovering the Web of Connections Among Far-Left Groups In America

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AAADC Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee

AAUP American Association of University Professors

ABM anti-ballistic missile

ACDA Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

ACLU American Civil Liberties Union

ACT America Coming Together

ACW advanced conventional weapons

ADA Americans for Democratic Action

AFC America First Committee

AFSC American Friends Service Committee

AFSCME American Federation of State, County, and Municipal

Employees

AFT American Federation of Teachers

ALF Animal Liberation Front

ANC African National Congress

ANSWER Act Now to Stop War and End Racism

ATLA Association of Trial Lawyers of America

AV America Votes

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BW biological warfare

CAF Campaign for America’s Future

CAIR Council on American-Islamic Relations

CAP Center for American Progress

CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

CBC Congressional Black Caucus

CC&D camouflage, concealment, and deception

CBRN chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear

CBS Columbia Broadcasting System

CC Central Committee (of CPSU)

CCNY City College of New York

CCR Center for Constitutional Rights

CEP Council on Economic Priorities

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CIP Center for International Policy

CLRA Civil Liberties Restoration Act

CLW Civil Liberties Watch

CNN Cable News Network

CNSS Center for National Security Studies

CP CodePink

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union

CPUSA Communist Party USA

CW chemical warfare

D&D denial and deception

DCI Director of Central Intelligence

DGI General Directorate of Intelligence (Cuba)

DNC Democratic National Committee

DNI director of national intelligence

DSA Democratic Socialists of America

DSEA Domestic Security Enhancement Act

ELF Earth Liberation Front

EU European Union

FAIR Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation

FFP Fund for Peace

FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

FISC Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

FOIA Freedom of Information Act

FOR Fellowship of Reconciliation

14

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

GE Global Exchange

GLCM ground-launched cruise missile

GPS Global Positioning System

HUD Department of Housing and Urban Development

IAC International Action Center

IADL International Association of Democratic Lawyers

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

ID International Department (of CPSU Central Committee)

IFCO Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization

IID International Information Department (of CPSU Central

Committee)

IIG Iraqi interim government

IIS Iraqi Intelligence Service

IMF International Monetary Fund

INS Immigration and Naturalization Service

IOW Iraq Occupation Watch

IOWC International Occupation Watch Center

IPA Institute for Public Accuracy

IPS Institute for Policy Studies

IRS Internal Revenue Service

ISO International Socialist Organization

IWCT International War Crimes Tribunal

IWW Industrial Workers of the World

KGB Committee for State Security (Soviet Union)

LAGPAC Lesbian and Gay Political Action Committee

LCCR Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

LCV League of Conservation Voters

LGBT lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender

MCPL Members of Congress for Peace Through Law

MEK Mujahideen al-Khalq

MFS Mobilization for Survival

MMA Media Matters for America

MPLA Popular Liberation Movement of Angola

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

MRBM medium-range ballistic missile

MRE meal ready to eat

NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People

NACCA National Association of Claimant’s Compensation

Attorneys

NACLA North American Congress on Latin America

NAFTA North American Free Trade Association

NARAL National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NBC National Broadcasting Corporation

NCC National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA

NCLB National Civil Liberties Bureau

NEA National Education Association

NECLC National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee

NGLTF National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

NION Not in Our Name

NLF National Liberation Front (Vietcong)

NLG National Lawyers Guild

NOW National Organization of Women

NPR National Public Radio

NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

NRDC Natural Resources Defense Council

NSC National Security Council

OSI Open Society Institute

PA Peace Action

PCPJ People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice

PD Propaganda Department (of CPSU Central Committee)

PDN Progressive Donor Network

PFAW People for the American Way

PFP Pastors for Peace

PLO Palestine Liberation Organization

PWA Public Works Administration

R&D research and development

R&R Refuse and Resist!

RAN Rain Forest Action Network

RCP USA Revolutionary Communist Party USA

RIM Revolutionary Internationalism Movement

RU Revolutionary Union

RYM II Revolutionary Youth Movement II

SANE Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy

SAT Scholastic Aptitude Test

SCDP Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace

SDI Strategic Defense Initiative

SDS Students for a Democratic Society

SEIU Service Employees International Union

SLA Symbionese Liberation Army

SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Center

SRBM short-range ballistic missile

SVR Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia)

SWP Socialist Workers Party

TNF theater nuclear forces

UFPJ United for Peace and Justice

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

USA PATRIOT Act Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act

USPC U.S. Peace Council

VMC Vietnam Moratorium Committee

VVAW Vietnam Veterans Against the War

WFDY World Federation of Democratic Youth

WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions

WIDF Women’s International Democratic Federation

WILPF Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

WMD weapons of mass destruction

WPC World Peace Council

WRL War Resisters League

WSI Winter Soldier Investigation

WSP Womens Strike for Peace

WTO World Trade Organization

WUO Weather Underground Organization

WWP Workers World Party

 

WHAT’S AT STAKE NOW

NO MATTER WHAT YOUR political persuasion, we clearly live in interesting,emotional, and highly charged times! Our political process is

moving faster, further, and in more directions than ever before. An exciting time but the United States seems to be at war with itself. If the

German philosopher George Hegel were alive today, he might cast the issues into his framework of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

THESIS: The United States is attempting to secure itself through a position of strength and is trying to spread freedom throughout the world.

On February 2, 2005, President George W. Bush stood before a joint session of Congress to spell out his vision of extending freedom beyond

American borders and ensuring a stronger America based on the freedom that other nations pursue and attain. It was a State of the Union

address of memorable proportions.1 The war in Iraq was a prime topic. The president stated: The new political situation in Iraq opens a new phase of our working in that

country. We will increasingly focus our efforts on helping prepare more capable Iraqi security forces forces with skilled officers, and an

effective command structure. We are standing for the freedom of our Iraqi friends, and freedom in Iraq will make America safer for generations

to come.

The campaign against international terrorism was also high on his agenda that night. He noted: In the next four years, my administration

will continue to build the coalitions that will defeat the dangers of our time. In the long term, the peace we seek will only be achieved by eliminating

the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies of murder. . . .The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror,

and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom. He noted the necessity of pursuing our enemies as vital to the war on terror and

further noted, We must continue to support our military and give them the tools for victory.

At the same time, he noted that the U.S. aim is to preserve and build a community of free and independent nations, with governments

that answer to their citizens and reflect their own cultures. And because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance

of freedom will lead to peace. In this phrase, President Bush tied together the advance of freedom on a global scale with enhanced security

for Americans and American interests. In short, this marked a fusion of Wilsonian idealism with Reaganesque muscularity.

There was recognition in this speech that the spread of freedom would not be primarily a matter of arms. The United States has many

nonmilitary tools of soft power as well as a first-class military establishment.

Our vast array of tools includes diplomacy (making our case quietly), public diplomacy (making our case publicly), economic

power, and covert action (political influence operations), not to mention a host of cultural influences as well (Hollywood, MTV, and English

as the dominant language of the World Wide Web).

Even before President Bush delivered his State of the Union speech that night, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had put several foreign

governments on notice that their human rights records were lacking. The governments of Myanmar (Burma), Zimbabwe, Belarus, North

Korea, Cuba, and Iran were singled out by name. Some of these countries had not appeared on this list with such a high profile, although

North Korea, Cuba, and Iran had long been cited for giving varying degrees of support to terrorism.

Within only two weeks of that address, events abroad coalesced as if to underscore what a dangerous world President Bush had inherited

in 2001.

President Bush singled out Iran by name in his speech: Today Iran remains the worlds primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear

weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve.

To the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.” Shortly thereafter, the Iranian regime

hardened its already-defiant stance on its nuclear goals. At that juncture it appeared that the combined efforts of the EU Three (the United

Kingdom, France, and Germanywith whom Iran had been negotiating) had no discernible effect on Tehrans nuclear goals.

He also singled out Syria, which was cited for allowing its territory and even parts of Lebanon to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy

every chance of peace in the region. Within two weeks, Syria stood accused of involvement in the massive bomb explosion in downtown

Beirut that killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, and the United States withdrew its ambassador home for consultations, a sign

that relations between the two countries were spiraling downward.

At this same time, North Korea announced that it had indeed attained a nuclear capability. The regime of Kim Jong-il had long been suspected

of developing nuclear weapons and had already tested long-range missile delivery systems. This marked the first public announcement

from the secretive, reclusive regime in Pyongyang. All that would remain would be some kind of nuclear test in the future, an event that would

surely evoke an array of nervous reactions throughout Asia and beyond.

Indeed, the events of early 2005 only began to illustrate the many hurdles lying in the path of U.S. aspirations to spread peace and freedom

on a global scale. These were times that would certainly challenge to the utmost those keystone officials of the second Bush administration:

Secretary of State Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Stephen Hadley, Attorney General Alberto

Gonzales, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Porter Goss, and National Intelligence Director

John Negroponte.

ANTITHESIS: Determined and influential forces are mightily opposing these initiatives.

Before, during, and after the contentious election of 2004, there was a swirl of raucous, strident, and militant voices that spoke out forcefully

against the Bush administration and its objectives and policies. Many of those in this crowd expressed a venomous hatred for Bush in shrill

tones. Some called this the affliction (Sputtering and Spewing Syndrome), and a few of those so afflicted were booking one-way tickets

to Canada by early 2005.

This level of hatred has been seen on only several occasions throughout American history. The names given to some of our most notable

presidents remind you that American politics is a rough (sometimes bare-knuckle) enterprise. Thomas Jefferson of 1800 was an

atheist, an infidel, Jacobin, and by 1804 had attained the vaunted status of anti-Christ. In 1868 Ulysses S. Grant was known as

the drunkard, the butcher, and by 1872 had graduated to Useless Grant, the swindler and ignoramus.

George Bush could take some solace from the fact that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt were also targets of ridicule. In

1860 Lincoln was called the big baboon By 1864 he was the Illinois Ape, the tyrant, and the prince of jesters. Many had spoken out

against Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1932 FDR was called a demagogue, Bolshevist,Little Lord Fauntleroy, and an amiable boy scout as

well as a traitor to his class. By 1940 he was known to some as King Franklin,Dr. Jekyll of Hyde Park, a dictator, a warmonger, and

an appeaser (quite the opposite of a warmonger, but why bother with trivialities?).

The names called George Bush are one thing, but it is more significant that determined forces have been marshaling, organizing, raising

money, and calibrating their efforts to oppose nearly every initiative the United States puts forward. The overall level of organization and cohesion

of these groups is not well known, nor is the extent of their connections to one another. Their levels and sources of funding are

certainly not known to a great extent. For anyone who bothers to look, the level of their vitriol is most evident, but their organizational nuances

are not. This book will try to fill in those blank spots in our common understanding of these organizations, focusing on what they

believe in, how they work together, and what it means to us.

The actions of these Far-Left groups have brought about a reaction from many elements of mainstream America. As such, the country is divided to the point of polarization. Just as there was a proverbial wallthat existed during the days of Vietnam, separating those who served there and those who did not, there is such a wall today as well. If anything, the wall is just as high and just as thick as it was some forty years ago. If it has been the deliberate intention of these groups to cause alienation and polarization in American society, they have succeeded remarkably.

SYNTHESIS: The outcome of this great political collision will hinge greatly on the common persons understanding of these oppositional

forces and the degree of support that they garner. Average citizens should try to find out a few things about those

groups that have taken such an adversarial approach to U.S. policies.  The key questions include these:

What do these groups really believe? This includes their perceptions of reality, their understanding of their own capabilities, and

whether they truly believe what they are telling themselves and their audiences.

Do these groups mean well? Do they have the best interests of democracy in mind?

Who is behind the Far-Left groups today?

How well are they succeeding in forming and sustaining their groupings? This includes their abilities to fund, organize, and

control their movements.

How are Far-Left viewpoints getting injected into the mainstream of liberal thought, and how much are these Far-Left viewpoints

becoming dominant themes of liberal thought?

Can the non-Far-Left elements of the liberal movement reassert control?

This book will examine these questions in subsequent chapters, but for now it is useful to sketch out the essence of what many of these

groups truly believe if we are to take their own slogans and terminology at face value.

 The United States has used the war against Iraq as a first step toward world domination and empire.

The United States is a hegemonic, imperialistic nation eager to impose its version of democracy on all other nations.

 President Bush is a moron, a bully, a liar, a murderer, and a warmonger.

The terror inflicted upon the United States on September 11, 2001, was well deserved, justifiably brought on by our own aggressive policies.

 The terrorist threat is greatly overstated.

 The campaigns against al-Qaeda and Iraq are some of the greatest crimes in modern history.

 Nothing can possibly justify the Bush administrations criminal wars on foreign soil or its widespread violation of human rights.

Most Americans are truly ashamed of their governments arrogance.

The United States is using homeland security as a tool to stifle dissent as well as harass those who oppose its policies.

 The United States is well on the way to jailing people for their political opinions or otherwise taking extreme measures that violate

the Bill of Rights.

The opposition forces rely greatly on their abilities to mobilize large numbers of people to support their causes. It does not matter whether

such people show up on the streets in demonstrations or appear in the print or broadcast media. These forces know that there is strength in

numbers.

The force of numbers has been decisive on several occasions in modern history. On one occasion President Lyndon B. Johnson finally

gave in to the forces that were rising against his policies in Vietnam in March 1968, when he announced on national television, I will not

seek, nor shall I accept, the nomination of my party for President of the United States.Much more recently, voters in Spain turned out the

government of U.S. ally Jose Maria Aznar in March 2004, just two days after a series of deadly terrorist bombings of the Madrid commuter rail

network. The new Spanish government under Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero set about immediately to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

WHATS AT STAKE: WHETHER HUGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE SUCCUMB TO PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT AND OPINION MANIPULATION

In order to mobilize a large number of people, clever organizers often rely on the manipulation of perceptions through advanced media techniques.

These techniques might be called opinion making, opinion shaping and opinion policing. Opinion making refers to generating formative

themes that many can rally behind. No war for oil remains a favorite even now. Opinion shaping refers to channeling or bending existing issues

in a way that is favorable to a groups point of view. One example would be trying to prove that systematic torture of Iraqi and other foreign

detainees is standard U.S. policy. Opinion policing refers to defining what topics are within the bounds of acceptable discourse and what are

out of bounds. The topic of hate speech and decisions on what topics are tolerable for debate on college campuses comes to mind here.

The aim of clever organizers is to influence peoples opinions and their resulting behavior rather than merely communicate facts. Many of

the individuals cited here have sought to change how people understand an issue or a situation for the purpose of changing their actions in

ways that favor their groups. Many of them are skilled artists of the spoken and written word”adept at influencing opinions through persuasion

or else through deception and confusion. In recent years there has been a substantial increase in deceptive and confusing tactics that have

targeted U.S. society and its perceptions of U.S. policies.

The most clever organizers and opinion makers are well versed in all propaganda techniques. These include appeals to fear, appeals to authority,

the bandwagon effect, demonization, glittering generalities, oversimplification, stereotyping, scapegoating, and sloganeering. Given

the many ways in which opinions can be shaped and altered, average people have to have some way to assess and ultimately accept or reject

these various claims and statements. Rest assured that no hard-Left radical demonstration organizer wants average people to have the tools of

awareness and filtering” to see through the organizers array of tools of persuasion. Likewise, the radical professor who uses his classroom to

propagandize students does not want them to use their own tools of awareness and filtering.

WHATS AT STAKE: AN ENDURING IMAGE OF AMERICA ABROAD

The sloganeering and hyperbole of Far-Left groups have been given wings abroad, especially in Europe and the Middle East. Many political

activist groups in Europe have readily adopted the jargon and the tactics practiced by American Far-Left groups. Many disillusioned youths who

inhabit the Arab street parrot those slogans in front of cameramen from Aljazeera. Given that many Far-Left groups in the United States

wish to project their message worldwide using every tool of the twenty-first-century communications revolution it is inevitable that

this message is replayed and amplified on a global scale. The allies of the Far-Left groups who inhabit the newspapers and major U.S. television

networks greatly assist in this process, as they can trim out various embarrassing details about the affiliation of such groups while

transmitting the most captivating sound bites instantaneously.

What’s At Stake: ALIENATION OF THE VOTING PUBLIC

Even though the election of 2004 resulted in a large voter turnout, there is no doubt that a huge number of Americans have become thoroughly

alienated from politics. The appropriate term, to borrow from the German, is politikverdrossenheit, meaning fed up with politics.

There are many reasons for this alienation, but the techniques and tactics employed by radical elements likely account for a significant measure

of it.

WHATS AT STAKE: OUR OWN STANDARDS OF CIVILITY

In recent years everyone has witnessed a stupefying number of attack ads, use of the Big Lie, caricature and stereotyping, demonizing the opposition,

extreme metaphor, mudslinging, the politics of personal destruction, ritual defamation, and smears. The years 2003 and 2004

witnessed a veritable flood of books from Far-Left authors (published gladly by liberal publishing houses) that amounted to unlimited character

assassination. All of this has eroded our own standards of civility.

Only forty years ago, those on opposite sides of the aisle in the Senate and House of Representatives saw one another as opponents, not as enemies,

as is often the case today. Policy makers of opposing parties could mingle at Capitol Hill watering holes at days end. Likewise, most

average citizens on both sides of the Democratic-Republican divide were far more civil to one another when they had to mix.

Concentrates on those organizations that have demonstrated continuity from their early founding period and remain active up to the present. There is special emphasis on those that emerged over the past ten years and continue to play a major role today.

This is not intended to document the various stages of development and decline of the New Left. That history is best left to others,

and any effort to get into all the twists, turns, splits, mergers, and other permutations that the New Left has experienced would either require a

new book on that topic or would significantly derail the discussion from what is intended here.

Any author who tries to show the linkages that exist between groups is tempted to assume that these various associations act with a

greater level of coherence and cohesion than may exist in real life. It is well to remember that these groups while coordinating their activities

may not always work as a smoothly functioning united front. Just to take the examples of the European Union (EU), or NATO, or the UN

for that matter, different members can bring differing perceptions and expectations to the table factors that can get in the way of a higher degree

of group cohesion. Any author examining this topic must use some degree of caution and not allow conspiracy theories to get out of hand.

Likewise, it is necessary to determine whether these groups pose a dagger to the heart, an irritating pinprick, or something else. Not all of

them pose the same degree of threat to our republic.

Finally, it is wise not to overestimate the ultimate leverage and influence such groups may have on actual events. Many of these Far-Left

groups denigrated Iraqi efforts to hold its first election on January 30, 2005, or else tried to explain it away as insignificant. Yet their combined

efforts could not prevent or dismiss the groundswell of democratic movement occurring in the Middle East in early 2005 alone: the purple

finger Iraqi election; an election within the Palestinian Authority in the post-Arafat era; the emergence of people power in Lebanon and a

popular upwelling of rage against the continued Syrian occupation; and Egyptian president Mubarak announced plans to hold some form of

multiparty election in September 2005. It is a fair question whether the hard-line stridency and logical contortions of these radical organizations

will doom them to utter irrelevance.

KEY FINDINGS

1: THESE ORGANIZATIONS EMPLOY RECURRING PATTERNS OF OPERATIONS AND TACTICS.

To cite the example of the anti-intelligence lobby of 1974, there were interlocking directorates and advisory boards among the chief groups.

The leading figures moved relatively freely between the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Center for National Security Studies (CNSS), National

Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (NECLC), Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the American Civil Liberties Union

(ACLU). These groups had the ultimate goal of dismantling U.S. intelligence and security agencies, or at the very least rendering them toothless.

According to S. Steven Powell, They sat on one another advisory boards, participated in one anothers conferences, and wrote for one anothers

journals. The different arguments being made by apparently separate groups which reinforced one another were at the core basically

of a single argument being repeated over and over again. To cite the best example today, there is a close interactive relationship

between todays organizations, now consisting of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), Global Exchange, CodePink, and the Iraq Occupation

Watch (IOW). There is the same interlocking leadership among these groups, and they all tend to reinforce one another in a variety of

demonstrations, forums, conferences, and publications. At the same time, the groups formed in the 1960s and 1970s have not gone away, as

the anti-intelligence lobby groups of the 1970s are continuing and operating in concert just as they always have.

2: THEY ARE PURSUING NEW WAYS TO UNDERMINE THE ABILITY OF THE UNITED STATES TO DEFEND ITSELF AT HOME AND ABROAD.

During the 1960s and 1970s, these groups campaigned hard against the U.S. intelligence agencies as well as any new improvements in the U.S.

military arsenal. Had they gotten their way on all these issues, the United States would have been defenseless, isolated, and saddled with

some kind of socialist government. Some prominent individuals in these groups opposed any measures taken against foreign terrorists over

concerns about the terrorist privacy or civil rights.

By the same token these groups are working hard now against any efforts to police or defend our borders even in the face of an overwhelming

surge of illegal aliens. They are also working hard against the  USA PATRIOT Act, passed by a substantial vote of Congress in October

2001, as well as any further enhancements in our homeland security posture. By the same token some of these groups today are obstructing

efforts to identify and strike back against foreign terrorist groups.

3:UNITED FRONT” ALLIANCES HAVE EMERGED BETWEEN RADICAL ISLAMIC ELEMENTS AND THOSE WITH A TRADITIONAL PROCOMMUNIST

BACKGROUND, AS WELL AS A NUMBER OF APOLOGISTS, ALLIES, AND PROTECTORS OF BOTH OF THESE GROUPS.

The confluence of interests began in the 1970s. Both the USSR and some radical Islamic groups were opposed to U.S. imperialism and

found a common enemy: the United States. There is no question today about the support to a host of terrorist groups offered then by the USSR,

Cuba, East Germany, and other Communist countries.

An examination of todays umbrella groups shows that such alliances have continued. The united front is as active as always. To cite

the example of UFPJ, its member groups include the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (AAADC), Communist groups such as

the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO), and radical lawyer groups such as the CCR, NLG, as

well as traditional radical groups such as the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and IPS. Many of these groups have taken up the

charges of torture against detainees from terrorist groups or they have worked hard to change the laws governing our policies vis -vis terrorist

groups.

Other linkages emerge as the evidence is examined. There are now working partnerships between Far-Left groups and the Council on

American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Arab-American Institute.

There is ample evidence of some Americans offering assistance to Saddams regime (solidarity trips) as well as the recent deliveries of material

aid to the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, Iraq, in the postwar period.

4: THE LAWS THAT SUCH ORGANIZATIONS SPONSOR REALLY MATTER BECAUSE THE UNITED STATES IS GOVERNED BY THE RULE OF LAW.

Much as we would like to, we cannot ignore the efforts of the ACLU,  CCR, NLG, and their allied organizations to change existing laws. Their

campaigns have been fought on the floors of Congress and in the back corridors and lobbies as well usually out of sight of the U.S. public.

There has been a concerted effort to influence members of Congress and their staffs as well. Lobbyists for such groups also work their wiles

on members of the Executive Branch as well as the Judicial Branch. The laws that come out of all these efforts govern what we can or cannot do

vis- -vis foreign terrorists, illegal aliens, and others who seek to harm U.S. interests.

5: THE INFLUENCE OF SOME OF THESE ORGANIZATIONS HAS BEEN UNDERCUT FOR NOW BY THE MIDDLE EAST SPRING.

Starting with the elections in the Palestinian movement and in Iraq in early 2005, and proceeding through the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon

and the announced plans of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to hold elections in September 2005, a number of dramatic events have combined

to suggest that perhaps President Bush was correct in staying the course with the Iraqi election and in promoting freedom in other Middle

Eastern nations. It is interesting to note that on the second anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, on March 19, 2005, the number of

demonstrators was reported to be in the ”hundreds in large U.S. cities not thousands or tens of thousands. At the same time a widespread

opposition movement centered on these groups could reemerge quickly should the United States undertake another military venture

against another foreign dictatorship posing a threat with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

6: THE NOTORIOUS RADICAL GROUPS GIVE AID AND COMFORT TO U.S. ENEMIES WHILE AT THE SAME TIME LIBERAL GROUPS GIVE AID AND

COMFORT TO THESE RADICAL GROUPS.

For more than four decades, officials of the IPS have collaborated with opinion makers and policy makers (U.S. and foreign) against U.S. interests.

The radical IPS people have been assisted by a number of liberals in the media and in the U.S. Congress. The spin-off groups of IPS, such as

the CNSS, enjoyed great support from a host of influential liberals. Many have ignored the various interactions that such radical groups had with

foreign officials and ignored the material aid and moral support that they gave to countries such as the USSR, North Vietnam, and Cuba.

Today, radical groups such as the troika of the Workers World Party, International Action Center, and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism

(WWP-IAC-ANSWER) have sponsored and organized the largest demonstrations against the U.S. war in Iraq. The radical troika is helped

by a host of liberal groups that participate in these demonstrations, that ignore any warnings of the troiks true character, or that otherwise give

radicals a stage or a media outlet. To this day, liberals in the print and broadcast media have obscured the nature of radical groups while liberal

members of the U.S. Congress have gone out of their way to accommodate and support various radical groups.

7: THE MONEY FLOW REALLY MATTERS BUT IS LITTLE UNDERSTOOD.

Research into these organizations reveals that staggering sums of money are flowing in the system. Yet we know relatively little and can view

these money flows only as snapshots for a given period of time. By on policy decision and a few strokes of a pen, someone such as George

Soros can redirect the flow from one group to another. Moreover, there is very little known about his vast holdings, such as his accounts in Curacao,

which can go to radical causes. Other than Soros, the names of other influential money movers are barely known, which is unfortunate

because they also direct and redirect the flow of untold millions of dollars toward radical causes.

8: THERE IS A GREATER NEED TO CHECK ONES SOURCES OF INFORMATION THAN EVER BEFORE.

It has long been the case that the most radical groups have resorted to lying, distortion, hyperbole, half truths, and exaggeration. But in recent

years groups that have become prominent have done the same thing, especially when regarding the elections of 2000 and 2004. Groups that

took every opportunity to twist and distort issues and reporting about events spent great sums of money to do so especially in 2004. Large membership

groups such as MoveOn.org have raised issues that serve to undercut the legitimacy of the 2004 presidential election and have

thrown together a number of scare tactics statements with regard to any proposed reforms in the Social Security system.

9: THERE IS PROBABLY MORE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE RADICAL AND LIBERAL U.S. GROUPS AND FOREIGN OFFICIALS THAN IS COMMONLY

KNOWN OR REPORTED.

There is never a shortage of conferences, seminars, workshops, demonstrations, or other kinds of gatherings where there are unlimited opportunities

to criticize the United States and its policies. There are some within the U.S. organizations who have acted as de facto agents of influence

in the past even though the U.S. government had not labeled them as such”and these persons remain active today. By the same

token there are foreign officials who would have sought to influence U.S. politics through interaction with our opinion makers and public

officials. In view of the communications revolution and unlimited opportunities to connect with foreign officials, it is highly likely that there

is sustained, ongoing interaction between the groups discussed in this book and some foreign officials who wish us ill.

10: THE BEST WAY TO COUNTERACT THE INFLUENCE OF RADICAL AND HARD-LINE LIBERAL GROUPS IS TO USE THE TOOLS OF EXPOSURE AND

AWARENESS.

We need to throw light on the various statements made by the officials of these groups. It pays to take them at their word and to assume that

they mean exactly what they say. The more light is shed on these sentiments, the better understanding we will all have of their true intentions.

A general level of awareness is useful for everyone who is concerned about the direction that these groups are trying to steer the United

States and the way they are going about it.

At the same time it does not hurt to return to our own democratic principles to ask these questions:

 Who elected George Soros to public office?

Who elected Eli Pariser to public office?

 Who elected Ramsey Clark to public office?

Who elected Leslie Cagan to public office?

Who elected Ed Asner to public office?

Who elected Michael Moore to public office?

Some of the radical groups discussed here practice those same techniques

and tactics or variations of them adapted to the present day.

This chapter will review some of the most significant aspects of the

war of manipulation. These include the broad concepts of active measures

and denial and deception (D&D). Other concepts relevant to

today are: agents of influence, disinformation, the big lie, the principle

of leading masses from hard-core elements, the long march through

the institutions, and the resort to intimidation and physical violence.

ACTIVE MEASURES

The Soviets used the term active measures (aktivnyye meropriyatiya)

primarily to refer to covert influence operations intended to provoke a

policy effect. They long considered active measures as an unconventional

adjunct to traditional diplomacy. Specifically, active measures

were designed to influence the policies of foreign governments, to disrupt

relations between other nations, to undermine confidence in foreign

leaders and institutions, and to discredit opponents. One

interagency intelligence study of 1982 notes that active measures consisted

of a wide range of activities, both overt and covert, that included

(among others) manipulation or control of the media, written or oral

disinformation, use of foreign Communist parties and front organizations,

and manipulation of mass organizations.1

Active measures emanate from a rich tradition in Soviet history,

going back to right after the Russian Revolution and the 1920s. One of

the best known was a massive deception operation known as the Trust,

which was planned and executed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the

Cheka secret police. This operation lasted from 1921 until 1927 and

convinced many Western European intelligence services to support and

fund a notional anti-Bolshevik resistance movement inside the USSR.

During the cold war days, the Soviets saw active measures as a way

to weaken opponents of the USSR and to create a favorable environment

for advancing Moscows view and international objectives worldwide.

The United States was often the main target for these active

measures, and that situation had not changed even in the era of East-

West tente. Those U.S. experts in this area recognized that the Soviets

had institutional memories as well as recurring patterns of operations.

PRINCIPAL TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET ACTIVE MEASURES

Covert Media Manipulation

Placement and reply of articles

Purchase of media outlets

TV offensive

Agents of Influence

Recruited and controlled agents

Special contacts (nonrecruited)

Trusted contacts (nonrecruited)

Disinformation

Written

 Oral

Use of Foreign Communist Movements

 Nonruling Communist parties

 Other leftist parties

Use of Front Organizations

Traditional fronts

Soviet mass organizations

 Friendship societies

Professional groups

People-to-People Contact Operations

 Individuals

Groups

 Delegations

Forgeries

Public forgeries

Silent forgeries (victim unaware)

Defamation Operations

False rumors

 Blackmail

Street Activities

Demonstrations

 Strikes

 Intimidation operations

Active measures usually involved a complex blend of overt and covert activities, and occasionally Moscow would coordinate several different

types of tactics, in what was called a combination (kombinatsiya).

They would use a combination in what they believed were critical campaigns, such as their effort to prevent the deployment of NATOs long range

missiles in Europe or to derail the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

In trying to sway or bend opinion, the Soviets would often use naturally occurring sentiments and then distort them in a pro-Soviet or

anti-Western direction. They would often allude to peace, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and human rights.2 And they would seek

to play on mankind’s genuine concerns over peace, security, and social justice. Often Moscow would take advantage of the U.S. propensity for

mirror imaging, wishful thinking, preconceived notions, and misunderstanding of the Soviet system.

The two most prominent players in Soviet active measures were the International Department (ID) of the Central Committee of the CPSU

and Service A of the First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence) of the KGB.4 The ID had an overarching role in Soviet indirect warfare and

would set the tone and coordinate affairs from Moscow. The ID would sponsor trips for leaders of foreign Communist parties to the USSR, and

the ID would also place some of its representatives in selected embassies abroad. The KGBs Service A would plan and coordinate active

measures and oversee their implementation in the field. Both the ID and Service A were relatively small organizations in terms of staffing,

with about two hundred to three hundred persons apiece, although both played a major role in the cold war. The International Information

Department (IID) and the Propaganda Department (PD) of the Central Committee played supporting roles as well.

Moscow took active measures seriously. It was estimated that the USSR spent some three billion to four billion dollars each year in its active

measures campaigns.5 Just as significantly, the ID and KGB realized that Washington DC was an ideal arena for their active measures. No

place else in the world is there a free press with greater access to high government officials. Accordingly, the Soviets spared little effort to play

to the Washington press corps in efforts to swing U.S. opinion.

During the early1980s Moscow was involved in a number of influence operations intended to thwart the implementation of NATOs decision

to enhance its theater nuclear forces (TNF). The United States and NATO had intended to deploy Pershing II ballistic missiles and the

ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) as counters to the muchfeared Soviet SS-20 missile that had previously been deployed in the

western USSR and targeted on Europe.

The plan to modernize NATOs missile force led to the largest and best-coordinated protests in decades. The nuclear freeze movement demanded

that the West unilaterally halt nuclear weapons development, testing, and deployment. The freeze movement in the United States was

organized by Terry Provance and Randall Forsberg, who used popular entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen to draw audiences to nuclear

freeze rallies.6 Moreover, a host of books, authored by pro-freeze intellectuals, lambasted President Reagan and his confrontational approach

that could lead to a nuclear war. Before the advent of George W.

Bushs presidency, Reagan was a favorite target for the Left to bash as a simple-minded warmonger.

The active measures planners in the ID and KGB used journalists, political figures, and academicians to try to influence the decision making

process in several West European countries. They brought out a number of front groups and offshoots of these front groups to sponsor

or exploit various conferences, symposiums, and demonstrations opposed to NATOs new missiles. Ultimately this campaign was not successful,

as the new missiles (108 Pershing IIs and 464 cruise missiles) were deployed in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy.7

At the same time, the Soviets used active measures to promote the leftist insurgency in El Salvador. In late 1981 President Reagan had

authorized the CIA to furnish arms and training to the contra rebels fighting the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and then-DCI William

Casey had persuaded the president to funnel support to anti-Marxist elements in the Salvadoran government. Moscows plan also was motivated

by a variety of objectives: to establish another Communist (or at least a pro-Soviet leftist) government on the U.S. doorstep, to divert attention

from Soviet action in Afghanistan, and to damage the U.S. image abroad by distorting U.S. policy on El Salvador and linking the

United States with objectionable aspects of the Salvadoran government through a coordinated disinformation and propaganda campaign. This

combination included such classic techniques as forgeries, front groups, covert press placements, disinformation, and the manipulation

of mass organizations. Some Salvadoran leftists created a number of solidarity committees abroad evidently with Soviet and Cuban encouragement

and backing to serve as propaganda tools, conduits for material aid, and organizers of meetings and demonstrations. Soviet active measures tended to retain certain long-range strategic objectives:

To influence both world and American public opinion against U.S. military, economic, and political programs perceived to be

threatening to Soviet objectives.

To demonstrate that the United States was an aggressive, colonialist, and imperialist power.

To isolate the United States from its allies and friends and discredit those that cooperate with it.

 To demonstrate that the policies and goals of the United States were incompatible with the ambitions of the underdeveloped

world.

To discredit and weaken U.S. intelligence efforts particularly those of the CIA and expose U.S. intelligence personnel.

 To create a favorable environment for the execution of Soviet foreign policy.

To undermine the political resolve of the United States and other Western states to protect their interests against Soviet

encroachments.

It is now interesting to see some of these themes recycled as recently as 2006. True, the Central Committee and its ID have departed

the scene, but new radical U.S. groups have emerged since the hammerand-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin, and some new groups

have adopted the various objectives that the Soviet groups developed earlier.

Some of the Far Lefts propaganda techniques are even identical to those used by the ID and KGB forty to fifty years ago. These include the

systematic denigration of the United States, its culture, political system, and belief structures; imputing false motives to U.S. policy; and debasing the meaning of words especially when applied to the United States or its policies.

DENIAL AND DECEPTION

Denial and deception (D&D) refers to a range of measures that one takes to conceal his hand and to mislead his opponent. In the military

context, D&D had earlier been called CC&D (camouflage, concealment, and deception). The essence of D&D is to strike at the mind of

the enemy commander by leading him astray.

The first D of denial simply means measures to present the other side from gaining information. This could include masking or hiding

ones capabilities. The second D of deception is the more active side, referring to a concerted program to mislead or confuse the adversary.

The U.S. experience with Iraq confirms that the Iraqis were masters at D&D. They repeatedly hid their weapons of mass destruction (WMD)

and often resorted to playing an elaborate shell game with weapons inspectors.

Moreover, they transmitted false and misleading messages about their capabilities and intentions, either through controlled sources

(plaiting false information on agents of foreign intelligence services) or else broadcasting this information to the world in public forums.

TWO EXAMPLES OF D&D TODAY

One good example of D&D occurred in a 1988 book by Bill Moyers entitled The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, a work that

emerged in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal.10 In this case, Moyers practiced both denial and deception in one short book.

Moyers brought in denial when he refused to mention the powerful role played by President Lyndon B. Johnson in ordering the involvement

of the CIA in Operation CHAOS in 1967, a role that ran against the agencys charter for overseas operations. As a former aide to LBJ,

Moyers would have no interest in revealing this significant fact. Further denial was evident as Moyers masked or obscured the ideological bent

of some who had contributed significantly to this book (and to the television program that this work was taken from). These persons included

the notorious radical Morton Halperin, black activist and IPS senior fellow Roger Wilkins, liberal columnist Richard Strout, and rogue former

CIA employee-turned-radical Ralph McGehee.

Moyers brought in deception when he implied that there was a “constitutional crisis” in the first place. Reagan’s aides had made serious

miscalculations and missteps, and they and Reagan paid a high political price, pure and simple. But it was no constitutional crisis. Moyers further

added deception when he referred to the Center of Defense Information under retired Adm. Gene LaRocque as a “public interest group,”

with no further discussion of its actual radical orientation. Finally, deception came in the form of linguistic exaggeration and hyperbole, as

Moyers compared William Casey’s “Enterprise” working out of the National Security Council with the murderous Cheka secret police established

by Dzerzhinsky in the USSR after the Bolshevik Revolution.

An excellent example of D&D emerged in early 2003. Denial occurred during a large antiwar demonstration on January 18, 2003, in

Washington DC. In covering this event, the combined resources of the major news networks never once indicated the involvement of organizers

from the Workers World Party (WWP). Neither C-SPAN nor Lisa Sylvester of ABC nor Dan Lothian of NBC nor Joie Chen of CBS found

it possible to mention the pedigree of the principal figures who had organized and led this demonstration. Instead, the networks touted the

diversity of the people and groups that comprised the demonstration, portraying them all as a cross section of America.

Deception occurred a few weeks later. On this occasion, Amy Goldman, the radical host of a radio program called Democracy Now! just

happened to have several guests drop by her New York City studio.

These guests were Ramsey Clark, Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, and Harry Belafonte.12 These, of course, are four of the most vociferous and

hard-core individuals adamantly opposed to any Bush administration effort and to George Bush himself. What resulted was a stereo broadcast

of a hate-America, hate-Bush message, quite typical on Democracy Now!

AGENTS OF INFLUENCE

This term refers to people whom the Soviets used to advance their plans and goals, influential individuals usually close to the levers of

policy and power in their own countries. Agents of influence were

DENIAL AND DECEPTION

Denial in General

An effort to hide or block information, which can be used by an opponent to learn the truth

Methods to conceal secrets, especially from foreign intelligence collection

 Examples of methods:

Signals security

Countermeasures to satellite/aerial reconnaissance

”Camouflage

Underground or covert facilities

Deception in General

An effort to convey false information, causing an opponent to believe something that is not true

The manipulation of information and perceptions designed to change an opponent’s course of action

Examples of methods:

Disinformation

Cover stories

Staged activities

False installations

DENIAL:

Critical role of LBJ in ordering CIA to act in Operation CHAOS

Radical/liberal orientation of Halperin, Wilkins, Strout, and McGehee

DECEPTION:

There really is a constitutional crisis

Portrayal of CDI as “public interest group”

Linguistic hyperbole and exaggeration (“Enterprise” = Cheka)

D&D in Case of 2003 Demonstrations

DENIAL:

No mention by networks of WWP affiliations of organizers

DECEPTION:

Messages of guests who drop in to Democracy Now! radio program (Clark, Glover, Sarandon, Belafonte)

sometimes recruited by Soviet intelligence and sometimes not, although they were under some form of control. They were sometimes

paid for their services and sometimes not. And they were sometimes fully aware of their Soviet sponsors and sometimes not, and not all

agents of influence knew that they were being used in this way.

There were several different categories of people whom the Soviets tried to use for influence operations. Agents of influence were under the

control of either the KGB or the ID. Using Soviet intelligence terminology, a special contact was someone who was under less control, and

someone in a trusted relationship was under even less control.

The Soviets relied on developing strong personal relationships with political, economic, academic, and media figures abroad who could be

used to further Moscows agenda. The Soviets usually entrusted this task to the KGB, which tried to secure the active collaboration of these

persons on matters of mutual interest while the individuals retained their integrity on other issues. In return for collaboration, the KGB

would offer intangible rewards tailored to meet the specific requirements or vulnerabilities of the persons involved. Such rewards included

publicity for the collaborators accomplishments and promises of special communications channels to the Kremlin.

PIERRE-CHARLES PATHE

One example is the remarkable case of French journalist Pierre-Charles Pathe. In 1980 Pathe was convicted for acting as a Soviet agent of influence

since 1959. During his career as a Soviet agent, Pathe was handle by KGB officers who worked under the cover of either the Soviet delegation

to UNESCO or the Soviet Embassy in Paris. Early contacts between Pathe and his handlers were overt, taking place at receptions or

restaurants. After 1962 all these meetings were clandestine. His articles, sometimes written under the pseudonym Charles Morand, were published

in a variety of French newspapers and journals, including France-Observateur, Liberation, and Realities. All of the articles subtly

pushed the Soviet line on a wide range of international issues. The Soviets reviewed Pathes articles and provided information that formed the

basis of others. Pathe also published a private newsletter, Syntheses, with funds provided by the Soviets.

Pathe did not receive a regular agent salary from the Soviets, but he was paid for individual analysis of French and international political developments

he provided to them. His established reputation among journalists and political figures, many of whom took his information

and views at face value, made Pathe a valuable asset. He was well integrated into the political establishment.

ARNE HERLOV PETERSEN

Another example concerns the case of Arne Herlov Petersen of Denmark.

In early 1981 the Danish government expelled a Soviet diplomat for activities inconsistent with his diplomatic status. It also reported that

a Danish citizen, Arne Herlov Petersen, had been arrested and charged for his activities as the Soviet officials agent. This interesting case

showed the different ways in which an agent of influence can be used.

For several years Petersen was in clandestine contact with a succession of KGB officers. Under their direction, he functioned as a propagandist,

an activist, and a clandestine conduit of funds to support Soviet-induced “peace movement” activities. Petersen was also a source

of information on progressive Danish journalists and other Danes of interest to the KGB, as well as purveyor of forgeries. Below is a sample

of some of his activities:

In 1979 Petersen published a pamphlet entitled Cold Warriors.

The pamphlet, based on a KGB-supplied draft, contained brief but scathing attacks on major Western political figures: Prime

Minister Margaret Thatcher, Senator Henry Scoop Jackson (DWA), Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), and major European

political figures. The pamphlet was published in Dutch and English.

In 1980 Petersen published True Blues: The Thatcher that Couldnt Mend Her Own Roof. This pamphlet attacked the foreign and domestic

politics of the British government, and the text was supplied by one of Petersens KGB contacts.

 The May 30-31, 1981, issue of the newspaper Information carried an appeal bearing the signatures of 150 Danish artists endorsing

Soviet proposals for a nuclear-free zone in northern Europe. The assy is known to have promised Petersen that it would

finance at least part of the expenses for such newspaper appeals.

Those who signed the appeals, a number of which were published,  were apparently unaware of who paid for their publication.

 Petersen, who was actively involved in the Denmark“North Korea Friendship Society, was used by the Soviets to pass a forged

report dealing with alleged negotiations between the United States and China that were intended to discourage negotiations

between the two Koreas. The Soviets apparently believed that if the North Koreans believed the Chinese were negotiating with

the United States over Korean issues, Pyongyang would feel threatened and seek closer ties with Moscow. Petersen was chosen

to pass the report to the North Koreans, without revealing the Soviet role, because of his role in the friendship society.

WILFRED BURCHETT

The third example of a prominent agent of influence concerns Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett. In late 1974 Burchett lost a libel suit

challenging allegations that he had been engaged in espionage activities for the USSR. During his long and controversial career as a foreign correspondent,

Burchett was known as a confidant of former Vietnamese premier Ho Chi Minh as well as former Chinese premier Chou en-Lai.

Burchett also wrote for a wide variety of newspapers and news agencies throughout the Western and Communist world.16 He conducted a

guided tour of North Vietnam for reporter Harrison Salisbury in 1966 to support Salisburys book Behind the Lines Hanoi. Burchett was a

prominent participant in the International War Crimes Tribunal that took place in Sweden and Denmark in 1967 and made his influence

known in other ways while covering the Vietnam War.

ORLANDO LETELIER

The fourth example of an agent of influence connected to the Far Left was the case of Orlando Letelier. During the rule of socialist Salvador

Allende, Letelier had been named Chiles ambassador to the United States; he later served as Chilean foreign minister, head of the national

police, and defense minister. After the 1973 coup that toppled Allende, Letelier worked tirelessly to restore socialism to Chile. To this end, he

organized exiled Chilean Marxists and cultivated ties not only with terrorist groups and Communist governments but also with liberal American

congressmen.

Saul Landau introduced Letelier to the Institute for Policy Studies, and by 1975 Letelier had come to Washington to take a position there.

In September 1976 he was assassinated in Washington DC. The FBI recovered his briefcase from his bombed-out car and found evidence that

Letelier was acting as an agent of influence for the Cuban intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI), and the Chilean

Socialist Party apparatus exiled in East Germany.

Letelier was receiving financial support from Cuba for his political activities in the United States, and he had extensive contacts with the

Communist world. Listed in his address book were eleven Cuban officials, thirteen East German addresses (including Politburo and Central

Committee members), and many other contacts in the East. Among his American friends and associates, those in the media composed the

largest group. He was in contact with twenty-seven journalists, reporters, and editors seven of whom worked for the Washington Post.

According to S. Steven Powell, this case showed conclusively how the IPS used fashionable issues to manipulate liberals into supporting a

radical agenda. The case further showed the “proclivity of the IPS to join hands with parties behind the Iron Curtain, parties that, when not

denying individual human rights in general, wonder at the incorrigible naivete of American liberals.

DISINFORMATION

Disinformation, or dezinformatsiya in Russian, is false, misleading, or incomplete information that is passed, fed, or confirmed to a targeted

individual, group, or country. Disinformation is carefully crafted with regard to the nature of the message, the intended recipient, and the expected

result. Propaganda may be used as a support element of disinformation, but propaganda lacks the precision and bite of disinformation.

As practiced by the Soviets, disinformation became more widely used in the 1960s, and the Soviet KGB and their allied intelligence services

grew better at it as time went by.

During the mid-1960s Soviet disinformation had three principal aims:

 Destroy the confidence of the Congress and the American public in U.S. personnel and agencies engaged in anti-Communist and

cold war activity.

 Undermine American prestige and democratic institutions and denigrate American leadership with NATO governments and

other non-Communist countries, thereby contributing directly to the breakup of the NATO alliance.

Sow distrust and create grounds for subversion and revolt against the United States in the Western Hemisphere and among the new

nations of Africa and Asia.18

In recent years, the term disinformation has been used widely and inaccurately. It differs from “misinformation” in that the latter

refers simply to erroneous information (Oh, I was just misinformed about that). Disinformation is not nearly as innocent a term, and it

refers to something that is created as a falsehood from the start, something that is intended to generate a response. Sometimes the disinformation

message can be packaged within a larger message of true information with the intention that the recipient will believe the disinformation

as well as the true facts.

THE BIG LIE

Nazism died with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, yet one of Adolf  Hitler’s principal tools has lived on: the big lie. Hitler said it best when

he concluded, “The broad mass of a nation . . . will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”

There is no limit to the size of the big lie. Dictators will use any number of techniques to support it. The biggest examples of the big-lie

technique often involve the nature of the regime itself.

To cite one example, according to John Lenczowski, a Soviet expert on the Reagan National Security Council (NSC), the Soviets tried to

perpetuate the big lie that the “Soviet Union is not Communist.” 

Moscow calculated that if it could convince Western policy makers and opinion shapers that this was the case, it would go a long way to erase

the “image of the enemy.” The one U.S. policy maker who bought this idea was Ambassador Joseph Davies (see chapter 3), who demonstrated

a breathtaking degree of gullibility, but other high-level U.S. officials also accepted this lie in varying degrees up through the 1980s.

In this regard, the Soviets perpetuated some sub themes to support the big lie. One was that the Soviets did not believe in their ideology

anymore. You could not accept seriously what they said in their propaganda outlets.

Another supporting subtheme was that there was competition between factions of the leadership (“hawks and doves”). U.S. policy makers

should therefore be careful not to antagonize the hawks in the Soviet leadership and should try to work with the doves in the Politburo and

the Central Committee. During the late 1940s some U.S. policy makers even went so far as to urge presidents to get along with Joseph Stalin,

for there were allegedly even more menacing Bolshevik leaders than Stalin whom we might have to deal with. Arnaud de Borchgrave, speaking

in Washington in 1985, noted that Averill Harriman conveyed this message in 1947: “Help Stalin; if you don’t there are more sinister forces

waiting in the wings.”

The Soviets tried to convey the idea that some of their leaders were liberals beneath their Leninist exterior. The most spectacular case involved

the packaging of Yuri Andropov as a “closet” liberal. This effort involved a large stretch of credulity, for Andropov was one of the most

orthodox and doctrinaire of all seven heads of the USSR since the revolution and had headed the KGB for fifteen years before his elevation to

general secretary of the CPSU. During his tenure at the KGB, Soviet policies became ever more repressive.

To perpetuate the idea that the Soviets were not Communist anymore, some Soviet propagandists made use of the structural deceptions

built into the Soviet system. These included a constitution, a parliament (the Supreme Soviet), elections, churches, trade unions, freedoms of the

press and speech, and the right of republics to secede from the USSR.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s there were variations of this theme. It was preferable to portray some pro-Communist groups that

were vying for power in the Third World as “Robin Hood reformers” rather than as threatening Communists. The Sandinista regime in

Nicaragua—when it was contending for power—was often given a free pass by many in the American media. Instead of hard-core Communists,

the Sandinistas were portrayed by some as “agrarian reformers.”

Returning misty-eyed from a 1985 trip to Nicaragua, Senators Tom Harkin and John Kerry described Daniel Ortega as a “misunderstood

democrat rather than a Marxist autocrat” in 1985.

By the same token, apologists have defended Saddam Hussein’s regime in some innovative ways. Few could argue with a straight face

that it was not a police state, but many did advance the idea that Saddam had done nothing wrong.

The big lie is relevant here because some U.S. organizations of the Far Left disguise their own radical orientation or origins. At first glance

(at their Web sites usually), it is often impossible to find this information altogether; it is not spelled out. One can easily get the erroneous

idea that these organizations were formed as a kind of spontaneous gathering of “concerned” citizens.

LEADING MASSES FROM HARD-CORE ELEMENTS

This is a principle that has been a fact of life in left-wing politics for decades. It was apparent in Central America in the 1980s, when some

hard-core Communists became the leading and directing body of the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua. It has been evident more recently as

some peace movements have effectively been taken over by a small group of organizers with Communist sympathies.

The foundation of this technique was set in place as early as the 1930s. Against the backdrop of a worldwide depression and financial

chaos, extremist movements of the Far Right and the Far Left flourished.

Not only was fascism in vogue in countries in Central and Eastern Europe, but pro-Communist groups were burgeoning in some of

the leading capitalist countries of the West.

Circumstances called for the Communists to ally themselves with anti-fascist groups. Accordingly, the Comintern (Communist International)

could draw on three masters of the game who emerged during the 1930s: Dmitri Manuilsky, Willi Muenzenberg, and Georgi Dimitrov.

Manuilsky was a noted Comintern official for many years. After World War II he was the USSR’s first ambassador to the United Nations.

Manuilsky is well known for his statement in the early 1930s, when he spoke to a group at the elite Lenin School in Moscow:

War to the hilt between communism and capitalism is inevitable. Today, of course, we are not strong enough to attack. Our time will come. . . . To

win, we shall need the element of surprise. The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep, so we shall begin by launching the most spectacular

peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard-of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent,

will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall

smash them with our clenched fist.

Less outspoken and more diplomatic was another Comintern official, a German named Willi Muenzenberg. He was a brilliant and tireless

propagandist and organizer. In August 1933 Muenzenberg organized a meeting in Amsterdam to bring about a united front against fascism, a

gathering that took place under the sponsorship of French writers Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse. Rolland announced the meeting with

a radical call to arms against fascism: “The Fatherland is in danger! Our  international Fatherland . . . the USSR is threatened!” This meeting was

endorsed by luminaries such as Albert Einstein, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Theodore Dreiser.

Earlier, in June 1933, Muenzenberg had organized another anti-fascist gathering of intellectuals at the Salle Playel in Paris, and ten days later the

Salle Playel and the Amsterdam groups merged to form the Committee of Struggle Against War and Fascism. Muenzenberg’s mobilization of intellectuals

came to the United States when the American League Against War and Fascism held its first meeting in September 1933, largely attended

by Communists and front organizations.

Georgi Dimitrov was chief of the Comintern during the mid-1930s and remained in that post until the group was dissolved in 1943. He

later ruled Bulgaria after World War II, leading a regime installed by the Red Army. Dimitrov articulated the principle of using hard-core elements

to penetrate and manipulate mass movements. In 1935 a change in the party line put Communists in position to work effectively with

non-Communist groups. The real objective of the Communists was to discredit their new partners and take over these groups. In July 1935

the leadership of the Comintern ordered Communists everywhere to cooperate with all groups that opposed fascism. In a phrase that would

become part of anti-Communist lore, Dimitrov told the delegates that they should use mass organizations as Trojan horses to “penetrate the

very heart of the enemy’s camp.”

THE LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS

This term refers to the long-term plan of Communists, radicals, and their supporters to work their way into vital establishments that shape

opinions. Once again we turn to the work of another foreign Communist, an Italian Marxist named Antonio Gramsci, who was active during

the 1930s. He pondered the historic inability of Communist parties to mobilize workers to seize the means of production and overthrow the

capitalist ruling class, which Lenin had envisioned. Gramsci’s new idea was to focus the attention of radicals on the means of intellectual production

as a new lever of social change. He urged radicals to acquire “cultural hegemony,” meaning to capture the institutions that produced

society’s governing ideas. This, he believed, would be the key to controlling and transforming society itself.

In this respect, the radicals have succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, for the administrations of American universities have fallen

into the hands of individuals who generally profess liberal and radical ideas. Liberals and radicals have captured academia to a far greater extent

than any of the other institutions. This control exceeds even that of their influence over the print and broadcast media.

Some former members of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO, or Weathermen) now occupy positions of authority on major

campuses. Former domestic terrorists such as Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University) or Bill Ayers (University of Illinois at Chicago) come

to mind. Besides them, there are thousands of other former activists, radicals, and far leftists who have risen to prominent positions within academia.

The stakes are higher and the atmosphere is more politicized at the most prestigious universities.

The “march” began long before many people think, and the leftwing takeover of American universities is not a new story. As early as

the 1930s Irving Kristol recalled that City College of New York (CCNY) was so radical that “if there were any Republicans at City—and there

must have been some—I never met them, or even heard of their existence.”

27 Moreover, many campuses were already radicalized by the mid-1960s. Among those most in the news were Berkeley, Columbia,

Wisconsin, and Michigan. Today, campus leftism is not merely prevalent, but is “radical, aggressive, and deeply intolerant,” according to Jeff

Jacoby.28 Not only are most college professors fashionably liberal, but most faculties have a strong contingent of hard leftists whose views are

extreme and whose concentrated numbers make it possible for them to dominate (and even define) entire academic fields, according to David

Horowitz.

Some academics freely admit that when they were in control of university faculties in the 1960s, they opened the doors to the hiring of

radicals in the name of diversity. However, the leftists tenured after the 1960s first transformed the colleges and universities into political

battlegrounds and then redefined them as “agencies of social change.”

In the process, according to Horowitz, “they first defeated and then excluded peers whom they perceived as obstacles to their politicized academic

agendas.”

Of all the various institutions the leftists could target, they have done the most by far in academia. Richard Rorty has summarized this

achievement: “The power base of the left in America is now in the universities, since the trade unions have largely been killed off. The universities

have done a lot of good work by setting up, for example, African-American Studies programs, Women’s Studies programs, and

Gay and Lesbian Studies programs. They have created power bases for these movements.”31 Rorty is a professor of philosophy at the University

of Virginia and a powerful voice who celebrated the conversion of colleges into political “power bases.” This attitude is typical of many other

academics as well.

David Horowitz points out that there is an organic connection between the political bias of the university and that of the press. “It was

not until journalists became routinely trained in university schools of journalism that mainstream media began to mirror the perspectives of

the adversary culture.”32 Seen in this way, there has been a steady process of graduates of distinguished J-schools such as Columbia University

or the University of Missouri into the mainstream media, a process that has deepened the leftist tendencies in mainstream media.

Bernard Goldberg noted that only two out of two hundred students at Columbia’s J-school admitted to being “right of center.”

The bias in universities shows up in the following ways:

• Professors frequently commenting on politics in class, even though the political topic has nothing to do with the course.

• One-sided presentations on political issues.

• Using the classroom to present their personal political views.

• Perhaps most important, a self-perpetuating, entrenched group

of radicals and liberals who—sitting on tenure and search committees— are ready to blackball any candidates with a conservative

bent.

The result has been smugness, complacency, ideological blindness, and a condition of group think. Conservative viewpoints and values are

grossly underrepresented in the curriculum, and conservatives themselves are relegated to second-class citizenship. As such, many students

are likely to graduate without ever having a class taught by a professor with a conservative viewpoint. The result is that some students are conditioned

to accept leftist viewpoints as “mainstream.”

The unbalanced and biased selection process in the hiring of college faculty has been proved in research by the Center for the Study of

Popular Culture. This research examined more than 150 departments and upper-level administrations at 32 elite colleges and universities.

The key findings: The overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans at the 32 schools was more than 10 to 1, or a total of 1,397 Democrats to 134

Republicans.34 And not a single department at any of the 32 schools managed to achieve a reasonable parity between the two parties, even

though, in the United States as a whole, registered Democrats and Republicans are roughly equal in number. The closest to parity was at

Northwestern University, where registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans by a 4-to-1 ratio. Brown scored a 30-to-1 ratio;

Bowdoin and Wellesley showed ratios of 23 to 1; while Columbia and Yale demonstrated ratios of 14 to 1. At Columbia University, the researchers

could not find a single Republican in the history, political science, or sociology departments. At Cornell University the departments

of English and history had no Republicans.

INTIMIDATION AND PHYSICAL VIOLENCE

If all else fails, according to the hard-line radical mind-set, there is always the resort to physical violence and intimidation. This was displayed

in spectacular fashion in the streets of Washington DC in 1971 during operations that the Far Left called Dewey Canyon III and May

Day (that actually lasted for several days). Cora Weiss once called for storming the gates of the White House and issued a “call for chaos” to

bring new enthusiasm to the antiwar movement. Her colleagues Tom Hayden and David Dellinger had once planned “tactics of prolonged direct

action” to end the Vietnam War.

Consider also Gael Murphy of CodePink, a strident supporter of Saddam’s Iraq. After giving aid and comfort to Saddam’s regime, she returned

to south Florida to attend a demonstration against a Broward County military recruiting office. She was described by a conservative

Web site: “A seasoned protester, Gael employed many classic leftist tactics, such as shouting out that we were violating her right to free speech

by exercising our own right to free speech. It did not take long before Gael resorted to the leftist tactic of physical intimidation.”

In recent years we have witnessed violent displays in campaigns against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank.

The campaign in Seattle in 1999 was one of the most violent in recent memory.

The most common displays of force have been the everyday attempts of the Far Left to control the dialogue. Those on campuses have

encountered “speech codes” that are most often targeted against any kind of “offensive” speech (which often happens to be conservative in

nature). Usually this takes the form of ridicule, with conservative message-bearers being labeled as “lunatics,” “racists,” or “hatemongers.”

Some conservative speakers on campuses—if they are invited at all—have been shouted down, heckled, or physically prevented from

reaching the lectern.

IT HAS ALL HAPPENED BEFORE

CHEERLEADERS FOR HITLER

During the 1930s there was ample hysteria throughout radical rightwing circles in the United States. Much of it was directed against

Franklin D. Roosevelt, his supposed “Jewish” heritage, and his alleged willingness to advance the cause of world Jewry and Communism. This

led to some influential figures on the Far Right becoming enamored with Adolf Hitler and his goals in Germany. Some Americans copied

Hitlerian tactics to achieve power.

THE BUND

Fritz Kuhn became the unquestioned leader of a group known as the Bund. In the early 1930s it was known as the League (Bund) of the

Friends of the New Germany, and it changed its name in 1936 to the German American People’s League.1 One of its main goals was to convert

people to the idea that Nazi Germany was a friendly power. This group had some sixty-five hundred activists as well as fifteen thousand to

twenty thousand sympathizers in 1938. Most of the members were firstor second-generation Americans. Some two-thirds were male, and most

lived in large cities in the East and Midwest. The Bund also featured a youth organization and girls’ league. It operated some summer camps,

which included Camp Sutter in Los Angeles, Camp Nordland in New Jersey, and Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, Long Island.2

Hitler had many admirers among Bund members. One unidentified follower stated, “Hitler is showing us a way to take care of people who

get in our way, and we can do the same thing here.”3 In an infamous moment at Madison Square Garden in 1939, the Bundists and their

friends pledged allegiance to the United States while giving the Hitler salute. One of the group’s newspaper headlines claimed GERMAN BLOOD

OUR PRIDE—A BETTER AMERICA OUR GOAL!

Upon returning from a meeting with Hitler in late 1936, Kuhn vowed to defeat Roosevelt’s bid for reelection. The Bund’s violenceladen

rhetoric led to demonstrations and clashes with those who opposed them. The Bund promoted two themes, Americanism and

anti-Communism, both of which contained much anti-Semitism. The Bund taught that Americanism and Nazism were compatible. Three individuals

who received respectful attention in the Bund’s camps and training halls were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Horst

Wessel (a Nazi “martyr” who was murdered in 1930). Yet the Bund worked on behalf of an anti-American foreign power.4 Finally, convicted

of grand larceny and forgery, Fritz Kuhn, the American bundesfuehrer, headed off to Sing Sing Prison.

SILVER SHIRTS

William Dudley Pelley headed an organization known as the Silver Shirts. He turned himself into a radical Anglo-Saxon protector of threatened

American values and found ample opportunity to rave against the Jews. Pelley believed that Hitler’s success in Germany demonstrated

that anti-Semitic propaganda could lead to power and fame. Evidently with an eye toward becoming the American Hitler, Pelley stated, “I intend

to lead to fight to rid our country of the Red Jewish menace.” Pelley charged that the Jews in America were taking their orders from

Moscow, while FDR (a “Dutch Jew” whose real name was “Franklin D. Rosenfelt”) was working in cahoots with Leon Trotsky.6 Through

marches, leaflets, and the acquisition of guns and munitions, the Silver Shirts worked toward the ultimate slaughter of the Jews and their allies.

At their peak, the Silver Legion had between ten thousand and fifteen thousand active members, although some estimates placed the number

as high as twenty-five thousand card-carrying members and seventy five thousand fellow travelers.

FATHER CHARLES E. COUGHLIN

Father Charles E. Coughlin, the priest at the Church of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan, was also known as the “radio priest” and was

influential throughout the 1930s. He spoke regularly over the radio and had a large, faithful audience (believed to be about thirteen million) that

listened to him every Sunday evening and contributed millions of dollars to his cause. Coughlin also appeared at large rallies, where he would

work himself into a frenzy. Some of those who answered his call for righteous violence joined a group called the Christian Front, many of

whom anticipated the day when a Christian “Aryan” army would take over the United States.8 Coughlin was known for anti-Semitic diatribes

and was much admired in Berlin.

He was drawn to Hitler at least in part because Hitler liquidated the largest Communist party in the West and had destroyed the rest of the

German Left as well. He believed that some type of Hitler-like “new order” in the United States could destroy “Jew-Bolshevism” as well. He

could envision a “corporate-Christian America which would suppress Jews and radicals of every stripe, along with atheists, Masons, international

bankers and plutocrats, and all others against who he had been inveighing for the past 12 years.”

By the late 1930s Father Coughlin drew even closer to the fascist powers, whose achievements thrilled him. He wholeheartedly endorsed

the Nazi conquest of Czechoslovakia, Francisco Franco’s occupation of Madrid, Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Albania, and even Japan’s seizure

of further Chinese territory. In April 1939 he reminded his audience, “It should never be forgotten that the Rome-Berlin axis is serving western

Christendom is a peculiarly important manner.”

By 1940 he became an unfailing apologist for Hitler. “He welcomed the fall of France and the advent of the puppet Vichy regime. He condoned

the Luftwaffe’s attempt to bomb England into submission. He applauded the new dispensation that the Axis powers were bringing to

Europe and Asia.” However, these views—along with his well-known hyperbole—were more than most of his radio audience could stomach,

and radio stations began dropping his program. By the end of 1940 his radio voice was stilled.

FATHER GERALD B. WINROD

Reverend Gerald B. Winrod of Kansas found himself attracted to Hitler and his aims. Head of the Defenders of the Christian Faith, he noted,

“Germany stands alone in her attempt to break Jewish control.” Winrod was another die-hard FDR-hater and traced his “radicalism” to the

president’s supposed Jewish genes. According to Winrod, FDR was descended from the “Rosenvelt” line. Publishing a fake genealogy, Winrod

ascribed FDR’s allegedly pro-Soviet, pro-international banker stance to his advocacy of “Jewry’s world program.”

CELEBRITIES

Famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was an outspoken isolationist and had some troubling relationships with the Nazis as well. He had

visited Germany during the interwar period, toured German aircraft plants, and returned with glowing descriptions of German industry

and the Luftwaffe. He had accepted a military medal from Hermann Goering, which made him vulnerable to accusations of being a Nazi

sympathizer. The collapse of the Allied effort in France and Belgium was—according to him—the concern of the British, not the Americans.

As the most prominent spokesman of the America First Committee, he believed that the United States should refrain from meddling in

purely European conflicts. In July 1941 Interior Secretary Harold Ickes called Lindbergh a “Nazi mouthpiece.” In September 1941 Lindbergh

accused “the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt administration of pushing the nation into war.”

Lindbergh was not alone in being won over by the German dictator.

A well-known favorite of the silver screen in the 1930s, Mary Pickford, was a guest in Germany. She commented, “Hitler seems to

be a great fellow for the Germans. Things certainly are marvelous now in Germany.”14 Well-known radio commentator Doug Brinkley also

swooned over him. Hitler, he stated, was “a simple man for the common man and a great idealist.” Brinkley noted, “Hitler treated Jews

well; and concentration camps were pleasant places, as ‘one influential Jew told me.’” In his time Hitler cast his spell over a wide range of influential figures.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were photographed with him and may have been in line to return to power in a Nazified Great

Britain. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, was at least initially sympathetic to Hitler as well. Kennedy and

his friend Viscountess Astor saw Hitler as a “welcome solution to [the] world problems” of Communism and Judaism in Europe. Kennedy told

his Nazi counterpart in London that Roosevelt was “the victim of Jewish influence,” and the German ambassador reported to Berlin that

Kennedy was “Germany’s best friend in London.”

Hitler’s ally Mussolini also had a following in the United States. Angelo Rossi, the mayor of San Francisco, was an admirer, and the San

Francisco police department had many supporters of the Duce. Governor Philip F. LaFollette of Wisconsin was another admirer. Henry Morgenthau,

the secretary of the treasury, respected the way in which Mussolini restored the economic health of Italy. In addition, another

Mussolini admirer was a certain “Colonel” Art J. Smith, who commanded a small legion of some thirty to one hundred “Khaki Shirts.”

ASSESSMENT: SO WHY DID THEY DO IT?

The 1930s brought about an astonishing array of radical right-wing groups. There were the Silver Shirts, the White Shirts, the Black Shirts

(mostly Italian Americans), and the Bund, or the equivalent of the Brown Shirts (mostly German Americans), not to mention a large number

of sects. All of them modeled themselves on the paramilitary outfits that Hitler and Mussolini used in their countries.

Many of these people admired Hitler and Mussolini in the belief that fascism represented an acceptable alternative to democracy. Many

were dismayed at the huge and growing number of people left jobless and, in some cases, homeless by the Depression. In desperate economic

times, people often look for desperate political solutions to the problems.

Those individuals on the Far Right were convinced that they had a fighting chance that the American people would turn to them, everything

else having failed, “just as the German and Italian people turned to Mussolini and Hitler out of desperation, each of them having also

been scoffed at and ridiculed when they began their astonishing crusades.”

Even today, a look at advanced industrial countries in Europe indicates that economic hard times often bring authoritarian movements to

the forefront. The best-known cases are those European countries where productivity and industrial growth are stagnant that have growing rightwing

movements.

Many of these individuals were looking for scapegoats, and the Jews emerged as ideal scapegoats. The individuals in Far-Right movements

saw Jewish plots where none existed and Jewish control over the key levers of power in the United States.

Some likely were overjoyed to read a book such as Mein Kampf, which offered a rationale for persecution of the Jews. As of 2006 some

Muslim immigrants to European countries and to the United States have been singled out as scapegoats as well. In some cases, there are reasons

for this, and in some cases not.

Some who fell under the fascist spell were simpletons while others were well-educated people who knew how to pull the levers of power

and use their skills at verbal persuasion and manipulation. Few people, if any, could accuse Father Coughlin of stupidity, although some of his

followers probably were.

CHEERLEADERS FOR STALIN

In the 1920s some Americans visited the newly formed USSR and returned gushing about what they had seen. Journalist Lincoln Stevens

set the pace in 1919, then he came back to state, “I have been over into the future, and it works!” Jane Addams called the Russian Revolution

“the greatest social experiment in history.”19 A number of other influential people saw the Soviet Union as a paradise under construction:

George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Theodore Dreiser, Paul Robeson, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Harold Laski, and Louis Fischer.20 In some

articles for the New Republic in 1928, famous educator John Dewey offered some misty-eyed enthusiasm for the USSR: “I have never seen

anywhere in the world such a large proportion of intelligent, happy, and intelligently occupied children.”

The various trip reports by American intellectuals likely helped to shape the ideology behind President Roosevelt’s New Deal. All of this—

combined with the views of his close advisers—likely convinced him to adopt the approach to the Soviet Union that he did: diplomatic recognition

in 1933 and constant accommodation until his death in 1945.

JOSEPH DAVIES

And then there was Joseph Davies. He served as U.S. ambassador to the USSR for seventeen months in 1937 and 1938. During this time he was

repeatedly deceived by Soviet representatives, and he took a number of positions that reflected Moscow’s viewpoint and that put the Soviets in

the best possible light.

Davies was a corporation lawyer and a diplomat later in his life. He had been a supporter of FDR since 1920. In 1935 he married Marjorie

Merriweather Post, the General Foods heiress. It was said that his wedding present to his bride would be to make her an ambassador’s wife.

Davies could well afford this, as proved by his contribution of $17,500 to FDR’s reelection campaign. Apparently nobody thought it significant

that Davies knew nothing about Russian history and politics and did not speak the language.22 Davies’s major task from FDR could be summed up

in the simple sentence: Get along with the Russians. According to William Corson and Robert Crowley, “He was prepared to swallow any

improbability as long as it emanated from an elevated Soviet source.”

Davies soon began to report back what he thought the president wanted to hear. Kenneth Davis states, “He continued to do so, with great emphasis,

in utter disregard of his own embassy staff. . . . and of many signs that his reported ‘facts’ and conclusions were probably untrue.”24

Davies attended the purge trials of 1937 and 1938, perhaps the only envoy in Moscow to do so every day. He did so, however, in a state of

bewilderment and concluded that the defendants were guilty. His book Mission to Moscow contains many passages in which he quotes other

diplomats and correspondents who concluded that the accused were actually guilty of anti-state activities; some of these diplomats and correspondents

are mentioned by name, but others are not. Davies threw himself enthusiastically into justifying the most improbable distortions

as evidence in the purge trials, and never once did he call into question the nature of the evidence presented in court. Mission to Moscow is a

sustained apologia for all of Stalin’s excesses, and all criticism of the Soviets is stifled in the book.

When Davies left Moscow in June 1938, his friend Maxim Litvinov, a foreign commissar, gave him a farewell dinner and asked him to pass

on the “unbiased judgments” of his studies of Soviet life. President Mikhail Kalinin told Davies that he and his associates “much regretted”

that Davies was leaving his post.26 The last statement is arguably one of the most truthful things that Soviet officials told him during his sorry

tenure in Moscow.

Mission to Moscow is a very useful tool to assess Davies’s mind-set, perceptions, and vulnerabilities. The book is a record of his dispatches

to the State Department, official and personal correspondence, diary and journal entries, with notes and comments up to 1943. A detailed

content analysis of this book reveals—to be most diplomatic—an exotic interpretation of Soviet realities of the late 1930s. To judge from the

statements therein, Davies lived in a world of sublime unreality during his tour there. His book reveals an abysmal and even stupefying degree

of ignorance about Stalin, the Soviet political system, and the nature of the purge trials under way at the time.

There is no critical, reflective analysis of what the Soviets told Davis. He was told by the Soviets and by others that the defendants in

the show trials were guilty, but nowhere did his legal-trained mind probe for evidence. He was told that the Soviet government “had gone

out of its way to extend particular consideration” to the U.S. government, but did he once stop to consider why?27 He echoed the Soviet line

on the provisions of the 1936 Constitution, the purge trials, and other aspects of Soviet life. Is it any wonder that the Soviets were genuinely

sorry to see him leave Moscow?

Davies had influence with President Roosevelt, who repeatedly sought his opinions. Davies’s access was such that he lunched twice

with him in April 1937, and FDR asked to meet with him again in December 1937.28 In June 1938 Roosevelt told Davies he had “always

heard” that the Soviets “had lived up to their agreements and were particularly scrupulous as to their given word.”

 

Davies’s influence with the White House may well explain a calamitous reorganization within the State Department shortly after his appointment

as ambassador. Under unidentified pressures from the White House, the Russian division within the department was abolished, and

its unique collection of material on the USSR was ordered to be dismantled and destroyed. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Interior

Secretary Harold Ickes actively thwarted State Department officials who took a hard line toward Moscow, and they may have been involved in the

breakup of the Russian division. No reason was ever given for this bizarre action, but it seems that the division chief, Robert F. Kelley,

“tended to recommend firmer attitudes in the face of Soviet truculence than seemed wise to certain people.”30 This episode smelled of some pro-

Soviet influence in the highest reaches of the U.S. government.

Davies also was close to others high up in the foreign policy establishment.

He had a close friendship with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Harry Hopkins, and Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy among others.

Clearly Hull relied on Davies substantially for viewpoints on the Soviet Union. Hull also attempted to accommodate the Soviets, and there is

evidence that when they got a chance to negotiate with him, they fed his illusions.

One American authority, Dennis Dunn, has examined the role of the first five U.S. ambassadors to the USSR, and his work has generated

a most revealing analysis of Davies’s behavior. According to Dunn, “Davies thought that the Soviets were essentially Russian-speaking

Americans who were quickly developing into democratic capitalists.

This was his view when he arrived in Moscow, and it was still his opinion when he departed in June 1938.”

Davies ignored the advice of experts such as William Bullitt, Loy Henderson, George Kennan, and Charles “Chip” Bohlen. The experts

did not respect the ambassador, and he had no use for their anti-Stalin disposition, despite their knowledge. Davies’s main companions—besides

military attaché Col. Philip Faymonville (called the “Red Colonel” and known for delusional pro-Stalin views)—were newsmen. This circle

included Walter Duranty and Harold Denny of the New York Times (“who were notoriously pro-Stalin”), Joseph Barnes and Joseph Phillips

of the New York Herald-Tribune, Charles Nutter and Richard Massock of the Associated Press, Normal Deuel and Henry Shapiro of the United

Press, James Brown of the International News, and Spencer Williams of the Manchester Guardian.32 Some of these Western journalists supported

Davies’s idyllic view and deliberately portrayed a false image of Stalin’s Russia in the United States.

The communications channel went from Davies to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In a telegram to Hull on April 1, 1938, Davies reiterated his

point: “Many fine things are being done under the present regime. Many noble enterprises have been projected which arouse sympathy and inspire

intense admiration.”34 There is no evidence that Hull took issue with these conclusions. Also, such views were warmly received at the

White House, for adviser Harry Hopkins had also shown no interest in wanting to curb Stalin’s “insatiable appetite for power and control.”

Of the first five U.S. envoys to Moscow, Davies was the least successful and most destructive representative from the viewpoint of

America’s interests. According to Dennis Dunn, Davies greatly exaggerated Russia’s industrial development; totally misrepresented the purge

trials, Communism, and Stalinism; fabricated facts and offered fanciful and preposterous interpretations of Stalin’s crimes; and dismissed terror

in Soviet society as a necessary consequence of rapid modernization. According to Robert Williams, Davies and his wife did not comprehend

“that they were, in part, pawns in a deadly game, a game in which Stalin was eager to manipulate Western opinion while destroying real and

imagined enemies at home.”

The consequences of FDR’s error in appeasing Stalin were costly and tragic. On one level it led to the Soviets’ making life more difficult

for other U.S. representatives in Moscow. At a higher level, this approach also enabled Stalin to separate Roosevelt and Winston Churchill

and to adopt a demanding tone toward Roosevelt. Moreover, FDR’s policy also contributed to the spread of Soviet rule abroad and strengthened

Stalinism in the Soviet Union. Specifically FDR overlooked Stalin’s expansionist moves in parts of Europe (moves against the Polish

government in exile and plans to annex the three Baltic states as well as parts of Romania, Finland, and Poland).

This case also shows political manipulation as well as a mismatch of the personalities of Davies and Stalin: the mind-set of an altar boy

matched up with that of a crime boss. Not once did Davies ascribe to Stalin or his lieutenants the possibility of their playing an elaborate

game of deception. Davies’s mind screened out the possibility of deception because of his tendency to “mirror-image,” or ascribe to the Soviets

those values and goals that Americans possessed. He remarked that it was the purpose of the Soviet leaders “to promote the brotherhood of

man and to improve the lot of the common people.” He was not the only American official who has mirror-imaged in this way, but he was

one of the most influential persons to have done so for so long and with so profound an effect.

There is no evidence to suggest that Davies was recruited by Soviet intelligence. In fact, the Soviets were content to allow him to function

in this way without approaching him to become a complicit agent of influence.

Moscow was much more concerned with results than with the distinction between a witting and unwitting participant in its plans.

WALTER DURANTY

Davies was especially close to Walter Duranty of the New York Times, a longtime correspondent in the USSR. The Davies-Duranty association

may have begun as early as January 1937, when the correspondent sailed with Davies on board the ship Europa to take up his post in

Moscow. Content analysis of the Davies book reveals that Duranty’s name is several times mentioned first among all others when Davies

refers to the Moscow correspondents, those “unofficial colleagues” of “inestimable value” to him. Davies calls them a “brilliant group” and

states that he came to rely upon them. Most tellingly, Davies states, “I shall always feel under a special obligation to Walter Duranty who told

the truth as he saw it and has the eyes of genius.”

Others have taken a different view of him. According to William Corson and Robert Crowley, Duranty achieved his preeminence as

Stalin’s favorite foreign correspondent “by his willingness to report Bolshevik blather with scrupulous attention to detail.”41 Duranty attained

an infamous reputation by steadfastly refusing to report on a famine in the southern USSR, a tragedy of immense proportions that Stalin fostered

and exacerbated. Stalin praised Duranty’s reporting and stated to the journalist, “You have done a good job in your reporting” about the

USSR because “you tried to tell the truth about our country and explain it to your readers.”

Not surprisingly, Duranty had praise for Mission to Moscow, which he called a “good and true story” written with “exceptional vision and

courage.” Duranty also played the critical role of gatekeeper to Soviet officials, as he entertained the Moscow press corps and ensured

that the more deserving of them received cordial receptions from Soviet officials and the less deserving did not. After Duranty received a

Pulitzer Prize, he became—according to the conventional wisdom of the day—the West’s foremost “Soviet expert.” Thus he was prepared

to advise FDR directly and did so at length shortly after Roosevelt was elected.

Walter Duranty was desperate to maintain his access to Stalin and consistently portrayed his regime in sympathetic tones. Unfortunately,

Duranty’s influence was as pervasive on Davies as it was on his newspaper readership. Duranty’s help to Stalin came at a critical time, when

the Soviets first tried to collectivize agriculture in the late 1920s during the first Five-Year Plan. There was considerable resistance from the

peasantry, and it was in Ukraine—forcibly brought into the USSR—that collectivization met its greatest resistance. To break this resistance, and

to campaign against Ukrainian national culture as well, Stalin issued unreasonable delivery quotas for grain that could not be met without

the peasants themselves dying of starvation—a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon. Stalin later authorized seizures of the peasants’ grain

to meet the targets.

In November 1932 Duranty claimed, “There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be.” In June 1933 he reported, “The

‘famine’ is mostly bunk,” at the very time when it was pervasive and deadly throughout Ukraine. He later wrote in August 1933, “Any report

of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, who tried to report the truth about the famine in Ukraine, called Duranty “the greatest liar of any journalist I

have met in fifty years of journalism.”46 Duranty was not ignorant of events and knew exactly what was happening; this much is known from

his private comments to others. He actually guessed correctly at the number of deaths from the forced collectivization of agriculture and the

famine—about 9.5 million in all (according to sources from now opened Soviet archives). At least 5 million perished in Ukraine alone, a

number that does not include casualties in other Soviet republics from the forced collectivization.

Duranty won not only a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 but also praise from the Nation. That magazine—far left even then—praised him for his

work in “the most enlightening, dispassionate and readable dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in

the world.”

Robert Conquest, who has chronicled Stalin’s terror campaigns masterfully, cited one Communist as saying that the USSR could hope

to attract support around the world for its Marxist system only if the human costs of its policies were kept from the public eye.48 Duranty

obediently played his part in denial and deception masterfully, as the New York Times readers never gained an inkling of the great human

tragedy unfolding in the early 1930s.

MICHAEL PARENTI

There are modern-day disciples of Davies and Duranty. Take, for example, the works of Michael Parenti, a modern-day apologist or tacit supporter

of Stalin and Stalinism. In his book The Anticommunist Impulse (1969), the jacket statement is significant: “An expression of how our

obsession with anticommunism ‘has warped our national commitments to freedom and prosperity, immobilized us in our efforts to remedy

national ills, and caused the pursuit of a foreign policy that has led to the death and maiming of hundreds of thousands of young Americans.’”

Parenti states that anti-Communism “is an outgrowth of our loftiest messianic visions and our crudest materialistic drives and as

such it tells us more about ourselves than about the world we inhabit.”

Individuals such as Parenti have gone so far in their crusade against anti-Communism that they claim, since anti-Communists live in a

delusional world all their own, anything they might say about Communism should be dismissed out of hand.

Some of Parenti’s assertions can only be called “howlers. ” As pointed out by Richard Gid Powers:

Had anticommunists charged Stalin with murdering millions? Laughable.

“That Stalin could have maintained such popular devotion among the masses while so decimating their ranks is, to say the least, highly

questionable.” The Gulag was another fiction: “When the camps were abolished after Stalin’s death, there was no sign of twenty million halfstarved

victims pouring back into Soviet life. Labor camp inmates numbered in the thousands.” The idea that Russians could not change their

jobs, or move about freely in their own country, Parenti derived as another anticommunist myth.

The sad fact is that these claims occurred many years after former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev himself revealed the scope of Stalin’s

crimes in 1956, and heroic figures such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were persecuted for telling the truth about Soviet mass

murders and labor camps.

Parenti continues on the loose, spewing his toxic waste to the present day. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University

and has taught in a number of colleges and universities. According to his Web site, he is the author of 18 books and 250 articles and appears

of radio and television talk shows. He lectures on college campuses before a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad, and “his

books are enjoyed by both lay readers and scholars.” His Web site claims that his works have been translated into 17 languages, including

Chinese, Greek, Korean, Persian, Serbian, and Turkish. Among the topics he treats are “imperialism and U.S. interventionism,” “political bias

in the U.S. news media,” and “fascism: past and present.”

ASSESSMENT: SO WHY DID THEY DO IT?

The available evidence suggests that ego-weakness, not stupidity, accounts for the actions of people such as Davies, Duranty, or Parenti.

Davies had advanced academic and judicial degrees, and one cannot say that stupidity led to his perceptions and behavior. But he was described

as “ignorant, conceited, and arrogant,” traits that affected his judgment.

The evidence also suggests Davies had a propensity for wishful thinking, an intolerance of opposing points of view, and an inability to weigh

evidence and draw impartial conclusions.

By the same token, Duranty accomplished much and could not have remained in his position in Moscow had he been stupid. He was

well aware of how to play the system, to include his role as gatekeeper for other journalists in Moscow. There is little doubt that he was selfimportant

and felt a need to influence others (including a sitting president) by his actions.

In addition, Parenti clearly does not suffer from stupidity. Anyone who can attain a doctorate from Yale, teach in various universities, and

publish as he has cannot be called stupid. His more recent behavior is in some respects more puzzling than those figures from the 1930s, given

the overwhelming evidence of the vast scale of human suffering and misery involved in the building of a socialist society in the Soviet

Union. All of his actions suggest a willingness and choice to screen out any information that would conflict with his half-baked opinions.

CHEERLEADERS FOR HO CHI MIN

During the 1960s and 1970s there was no shortage of American supporters of Ho Chi Minh, his regime, and his cause. Many chanted Ho’s

name in the streets and on campuses and marched under North Vietnamese or Vietcong flags. There is no doubt that the U.S. antiwar movement

was large and diverse. The majority of all who participated simply wanted the war to end. A minority within that group, however, clearly

was rooting for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong to win the war. The latter group would do whatever it could to offer aid and comfort to the

North Vietnamese regime and the Vietcong—usually in the form of active collaboration or delivery of material aid.

TRAVELERS

Until Hanoi opens its archives and records from the Vietnam War, we will have an incomplete picture of the full extent of this collaboration

between selected Americans and the North Vietnamese regime. For the present time, one way to determine who was the most active—and useful

to the enemy—is to see who traveled abroad to meet North Vietnamese or Vietcong representatives. But the complete list of Americans

who did so is not yet available in any public forum. Still, there is ample evidence about the most prominent Americans who traveled abroad to

meet with the North Vietnamese or Vietcong. A substantial number of officials of the antiwar or “social justice” movements went to North Vietnam,

and some met with enemy officials in various countries abroad.

There was never a shortage of misty-eyed effusion after these trips. Many of the pilgrims returned raving about the heroic “resistance fighters”

battling the American “imperialists” against heavy odds.

• After meeting with North Vietnamese and Vietcong officials in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1967, Tom Hayden was reported to

gush, “Now we’re all Vietcong.”

FROM HANOI TO HAVANA . . .

SELECTED TRAVELERS TO ENEMY TERRITORY

North Vietnam

• Herbert Aptheker (1965) • Peter Weiss (1970)

• Staughton Lynd (1965) • Cora Weiss

• Tom Hayden (1965, 1966, 1967) • Sidney Peck

• Harrison Salisbury (1966) • Marcus Raskin

• Wilfred Burchett (1966) • Richard Barnet

• David Dellinger (1966, 1967, 1968) • Arthur Waskow

• Doug Dowd (1967, 1970) • Richard Fernandez (1970, 1971)

• Donna Allen (1967) • Joe Urgo (1971)

• Rennie Davis (1967) • Noam Chomsky (1970, 1971)

• Dagmar Wilson (1967) • Jane Fonda (1972)

• Stokely Carmichael (1967) • Howard Zinn (1968)

• Daniel Berrigan (1968) • Barry Romo

• Richard Falk (1969) • Ramsey Clark (1972)

• Father Robert Drinan (1969)

Cuba

• Stokely Carmichael (1967) • Rep. George Crockett (D-MI)

• David Palmer • Danny Glover

(met with VC reps during • Woody Harrelson

Vietnam War) • Oliver Stone

• Eleanor Raskin • Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) (1998)

(met with VC reps during • Leslie Cagan

Vietnam War) • Medea Benjamin

• Ed Asner • Victor Rabinowitz

• Upon returning from a 1967 trip to North Vietnam, Donna Allen stated, “When you come back, you’ve dedicated your life.”53

• On the heels of a trip to North Vietnam in 1971, Joe Urgo stated that his trip “had an enormous impact on me in convincing that I

was on the side of the Vietnamese now.”

These trips evidently led to the suspicion that the peace movement was directed from abroad. A CIA study of the U.S. antiwar movement as

part of the infamous Operation CHAOS (ordered by President Lyndon

• Leonard Boudin • Kathy Boudin

• Leonard Weinglass • Rev. Lucius Walker Jr. (2003)

Nicaragua

• Robert L. Borosage (1983, 1984, 1985)• Sen. John Kerry (D-MA, 1985)

• Saul Landau (1983, 1984, 1985) • Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA, 1985)

• Richard Barnet (1983, 1984, 1985) • Mike Farrell (1985)

• Peter Kornbluth (1983, 1984, 1985) • Leonard Weinglass

• Cora Weiss (1983, 1984, 1985)

Iraq

• Phyllis Bennis (1999) • Rep. David Bonior (D-MI)

• Brian Becker (2002) • Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA)

• Ramsey Clark (2002) • Jodie Evans (2003)

• Sean Penn (2002, 2003) • Medea Benjamin (2004)

• Rep. James McDermott (D-WA) • Gael Murphy (2004)

Other

• Czechoslovakia (meeting in Bratislava with North Vietnamese and Vietcong officials

in 1967): David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Nick Egleston, Christopher Jencks, Andrew Kopkind, Dick Flacks

• Grenada (revolutionary regime): Barbara Lee (1983)

• North Korea: Brian Becker (2000)

• Afghanistan (Taliban regime): Medea Benjamin (2001)

Note: Does not include all U.S. travelers but mostly high-profile individuals or officials within well-known

peace or “social justice” movements. Dates of travel are shown when known. Other trips are possible but may not have been reported.

B. Johnson) concluded that there was no significant evidence of Communist control or direction of the U.S. peace movement or its leaders,

an assertion that LBJ and other administration officials did not believe or wish to believe. Yet the study also noted that the only extensive

government contacts maintained by peace activists were with Hanoi.

FONDA AND CLARK

Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark made two of the most publicized trips to North Vietnam in 1972. Jane Fonda toured the country July 8–22. She

was photographed on a North Vietnamese antiaircraft artillery gun mount—a picture that no liberal or radical group wants you to see these

days—and toured bomb-damaged parts of the country. After talking with American POWs, she made a special report over the radio in

which she testified to the good treatment of the prisoners and called on the U.S. airmen to halt the bombing. Her broadcast provoked unmitigated

furor in the United States, and the State Department, veterans organizations, and conservative politicians condemned her, and some

members of Congress charged her with treason.56 Fonda’s efforts on behalf of the North Vietnamese earned her the nickname “Hanoi Jane.”

The storm centered on her one well-publicized trip to North Vietnam, and it is not commonly known that her husband, Tom Hayden, made

three such trips.

Ramsey Clark was well known by 1972, having served as President Johnson’s attorney general from 1967 to 1969. He and other Far-Left

leaders had previously formed the Citizens Committee for the Amendment to End the War, designed to mobilize grassroots support for withdrawal

by a fixed date.57 Clark surveyed bomb damage in the countryside from July 29 to August 12 as part of an international commission

to assess the war damage in North Vietnam. Clark’s hand wringing statements clearly indicate that he was distressed by what he

saw. He said afterward that he had seen “more apartments, villages, dikes and sluices destroyed than I ever want to see again.” The country

“has now been bombed back into the 17th century,” he stated, and seeing the survivors of the bombed villages was “almost unbearable.” John

Mitchell, Clark’s successor as attorney general, said that Clark had been “unwittingly duped into playing Hanoi’s wretched game of using POWs

as bargaining chips.” Mitchell also called Clark a “megaphone for Communist

propaganda.”

INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

The year 1967 also featured a bizarre episode that benefited Ho Chi Minh’s cause: the infamous International War Crimes Tribunal (IWCT)

sponsored by ninety-four-year-old British philosopher Bertrand Russell.

The IWCT began meeting in Sweden and later met in Denmark. Its major sessions took place in May and November 1967. The United

States was accused of “aggression, civilian bombardment, the use of experimental weapons, the torture and mutilation of prisoners and genocide

involving forced labor, mass burial, concentration camps and saturation bombing of unparalleled intensity.” Naturally, the United

INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

Principal Figures

• Jean-Paul Sartre (France)

• Noam Chomsky (MIT)

• Stokely Carmichael (SNCC, Black Panthers)

• Carl Oglesby (SDS)

• Peter Weiss (NLG, IPS)

• Wilfred Burchett (Australia, KGB agent of influence)

Found United States “Guilty” Of:

• Aggression

• Bombardment of Civilians

• Use of Experimental Weapons

• Torture and Mutilation of Prisoners

• Genocide Involving Forced Labor

• Mass Burial

• Concentration Camps

• Saturation Bombing of “Unparalleled Intensity”

Related Information:

• Held in Sweden and Denmark in 1967

• Used Data Supplied by North Vietnam

States was found guilty on all counts. The tribunal made widespread use of gut-wrenching testimony and data supplied by the North Vietnamese.

The tribunal was so skewed and one-sided that even CBS News and the New York Times recognized it as a farce and a propaganda ploy.

One of the few Americans to take part was Carl Oglesby, a veteran SDS operative and convert to radical causes. He claimed that the evidence

at the tribunal “got to you.”60 Oglesby had worked closely with Sidney Blumenthal in the 1960s, and Blumenthal later went on to the

Clinton White House.61 The IWCT was supported by the leading Marxist intellectuals in Europe and the United States, notably French philosopher

Jean-Paul Sartre, who had worked with the Soviet-backed World Peace Council, and Noam Chomsky. Chomsky went to North Vietnam

where—among other things—he “negotiated” POW releases as a propaganda ploy to show the “benefits” of cooperating with the North Vietnamese.

Also on the tribunal were Stokely Carmichael, Peter Weiss, and Wilfred Burchett, an Australian journalist and notorious KGB agent of

influence working for the pro-Vietnamese Dispatch News Service. (The Dispatch News Service provided Seymour Hersh’s story of U.S. war

crimes at My Lai to the New York Times in November 1969.)

Nor was there ever any doubt that the North Vietnamese and Vietcong valued such help. As early as 1965, the Hanoi regime placed great

importance on the U.S. antiwar movement, and Norman Morrison (who burned himself fatally in front of the Pentagon) was then already

a national hero in North Vietnam.

COMMUNIST VIETNAM SAYS “THANK YOU”

We would like to thank the communist parties and working class of the countries of the world, national liberation movements, nationalist countries, peace-loving countries, international democratic organizations, and progressive human beings, for their wholehearted support, and strong encouragement to our people’s patriotic resistance against the U.S. for national salvation.

Wall plaque inside the War Remnants Museum (originally the War Crimes Museum) established in 1975 in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). The quote is from an excerpt from a report of the Vietnamese Communist Party Central Executive Committee, December 1976. Source: John E. O’Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004).

ASSESSMENT: SO WHY DID THEY DO IT?

It is difficult to fathom all the reasons for this type of collaboration. The reasons were likely as complex and numerous as the various strands of

the American antiwar movement itself. Some who met with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong probably were well meaning, wishing to bring

the war to a rapid conclusion. Others were more inclined to cheer for the other side and even wish for an American defeat. These were the

ones who delivered whatever assistance they could to the cause of Ho Chi Minh. Some who went to meet with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong

probably had a combination of motives to do what they did.

None of the individuals seemed to suffer from a lack of self importance, and all believed that—for whatever reasons—they had an inside track to the appropriate corridors of powers or communications channels. To cite one example, Cora Weiss was described as having “tremendous dedication and almost as tremendous self-importance.”

They would sometimes say, “They’d never lie to me,” or “I’ve been there and really understand them and their situation.” The sense of selfimportance

comes through in their statements, and with that sentiment often come self-righteousness and self-delusion. Probably none who went believed that they could be deceived or led around by their noses—although this is precisely what occurred time after time.

GET THE RIGHT TOOLS

WEB SITES

Given the fluid and dynamic nature of American politics, it is essential to use the many Web sites out there. This includes conservative, liberalradical,

and impartial Web sites as well. Several dozen Web sites proved especially useful in this work.  I cannot refer to all of these Web sites as “recommended” (especially those of

some of the targeted groups here). However, they clearly are “related” for they point out how these groups see themselves, the issues, and those who stand in their way.

The Internet is arguably the most promising of the various alternative media used by conservatives today. On the most-visited Web sites,

some twenty-four are on the Right and eleven are on the Left. The Internet news audience is growing steadily as well. In 1999 only 6 percent

of people got their news via the Internet, but this figure had jumped to 19 percent in 2003. Most of these are young people.

By the account of Viguerie and Franke (America’s Right Turn), the big breakthrough for the Internet occurred in January 1998. At that

time, Matt Grudge had outed Monica Lewinsky as President Bill Clinton’s sex partner. Only ten days later First Lady Hillary Clinton used the

term “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” to Matt Lauer of NBC. Her staffers then assembled a stunning 331-page “enemies list,” in which those who

plied their trade on the Internet were big culprits.

Some conservative Web sites have proved especially valuable:

• Accuracy in Media (www.aim.org)

• Discoverthenetwork.org: A Guide to the Political Left (www.discoverthenetwork. org)) ) )

• Front Page (www.frontpagemagazine.com)))

• National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com))

• World Net Daily (www.worldnetdaily.com))

Moreover, there are quite a few Web sites that take no particular position but are sources of ample data to back any robust research project.

Those Web sites frequently can answer questions about the sources and flow of political money. Many of them were especially useful during the

presidential election of 2004 and remain useful to the present day.

Link analysis  goes back to at least the 1920s, when it was a useful device to examine the connections among organized-crime figures. Link analysis can be used to connect individuals with one another or individuals to a certain movement or event.

Example Task: Examine some of the relationships that accounted for the influence of Mark Lane, a radical lawyer and conspiracy theorist

who emerged during the 1960s.

Solution: Draw the connections between Lane and three individuals:

Jane Fonda, philosopher Bertrand Russell, and Soviet official Genrikh Borovik. Then factor in other influential figures who interacted with

those three individuals.

First-order analysis: (A) Fonda had turned against the Vietnam War while she was living in Paris between 1965 and 1969. Shortly thereafter

Lane brought her into contact with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Lane also worked with Fonda on the Winter Soldier Investigation

(WSI), a kangaroo court “war crimes” tribunal. (B) British philosopher Bertrand Russell, ninety-four years old when he sponsored

the effort to investigate U.S. “war crimes” in Vietnam, supported Lane’s publishing efforts and arranged funding for him as well. (C) Lane had

regular contact with Genrikh Borovik, a Soviet media figure, KGB official, and head of the Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace

(SCDP)—one of Moscow’s most influential fronts of the 1960s and 1970s.

Second-order analysis: (A) Fonda was married to Tom Hayden, the founder of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and one who

has devoted his adult life to campaigning against the United States and its policies. (B) Bertrand Russell’s wife, Dora, was also instrumental in

the effort to “try” the United States for “war crimes” and added much to her husband’s effort. (C) Genrikh Borovik was well connected to the

upper echelons of the Soviet leadership as well as to media circles, as he was a journalist, novelist, playwright, and television presenter who had

worked in the United States. The Soviets believed that Lane’s conspiracy theory (that the CIA had killed President John F. Kennedy) worked to

their advantage. Therefore, second-order analysis adds greatly to our understanding of the primary linkages.

CONTENT ANALYSIS

Content analysis is often a useful tool when trying to ascertain the meaning of a written work. Simply put, content analysts seek to assess the nature

of a given work (an article or book) by examining the terminology or the frequency with which certain themes are raised or terms are used.

Content analysis is used to a certain extent here, specifically in examining the nature of various Web sites of certain groups. This is one

way to throw light on these groups by revealing what they say about LINK ANALYSIS OF LANE, FONDA, RUSSELL, AND BOROVIK

First-Order Analysis

Mark Lane

Jane Fonda

Bertrand Russell

Genrikh Borovik

Second-Order Analysis

Mark Lane

Jane Fonda Tom Hayden

UPSHOT: Extends influence of Far Left

Bertrand Russell Dora Russell

UPSHOT: Adds to anti-U.S. campaign

Genrikh Borovik High-level Soviet officials

UPSHOT: Anti-U.S. “active measures” have approval at highest level themselves, the issues they are tackling, why they believe these issues

matter, and the various obstacles that stand in their way.

Example Task: Examine specific evidence that some U.S. clergymen willingly provide material aid as well as significant moral and psychological

assistance to the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Solution: Look closely at the actions of the group called IFCO–Pastors for Peace as well as the speeches of its founder, the Reverend Lucius

Walker Jr. The content of the IFCO/PFP Web sites clearly states that the group has delivered material aid to Cuba on many occasions.

By mid-2005 this group had delivered fourteen caravans of material aid to Cuba and had dispatched many delegations and work brigades. The

first Friendshipment Caravan carried fifteen tons of milk, medicines, Bibles, bicycles, and school supplies to Cuba in November 1992. The

fourteenth Friendshipment of July 2003 involved “caravanistas” to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.

Meanwhile, Lucius Walker Jr.—the head of IFCO/PFP—addressed a throng in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution on May 1, 2003. The content

analysis of his speech revealed his willingness to join Cuba in its struggle against “U.S. terrorism.” It revealed his plea for the United States to

stop its “hypocritical lies and distortions about Cuba’s human rights record.” And he urged the Cubans, “Hold on to your revolution.” This

was only several weeks after some dissidents were given draconian sentences of up to twenty-eight years in prison, so perhaps he advocated an

even tougher crackdown on domestic opposition to Castro. In short the content analysis of his actions revealed treachery of the lowest order,

and made it abundantly clear what his organization stood for.

MATRIX ANALYSIS

Matrix analysis attempts to see what features certain individuals or groups may have in common. The data is presented on a grid, with the

individual or groups usually listed on the vertical axis and the measuring or assessment data presented on the horizontal axis. Matrix analysis

can be either very simple or extraordinarily involved.

Example Task: Assess and evaluate the interlocking relationships between the heads of some of the most prominent radical groups in the

United States. These groups include United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), Global Exchange, CodePink, and Iraq Occupation Watch (IOW).

Solution: Matrix analysis of the heads of these organizations clearly reveals the close connections at the upper leadership levels. Specifically,

several of these women belong to two or more of these groups.

Medea Benjamin is a high-ranking member of all four. Leslie Cagan heads UFPJ and is on the board of IOW. Andrea Buffa is on the Steering

Committee of UFPJ and is also a member of Global Exchange and CodePink.

Gael Murphy occupies leadership positions at UFPJ, CodePink, and IOW. In this case, matrix analysis displays this relationship better than

any other tool.

TIME/EVENT CHARTING

This is a straightforward way to present data in a historical or chronological context. Often this kind of analysis is used to present “what occurred

when.” Time/event charting is frequently used in the news media in efforts to simplify some series of events, and often involves the

presentation of time lines.

Example Task: Depict the order of formation of the various radical/ liberal groups over the twentieth century and early twenty-first century.

INTERLOCKING LEADERSHIP OF SEVERAL GROUPS

(UFPJ, GLOBAL EXCHANGE,

CODEPINK, IOW) UFPJ GE CP IOW

Medea Benjamin X/f X/h X/f X/b

Leslie Cagan X/fs X/b

Jodie Evans X/f

Andrea Buffa X/s X X

Gael Murphy X/s X/e X/b

Key: f = founder; h = head; s = steering committee; e = executive committee; b = board

Pre-1960

1917 AFSC (American Friends Service Committee)

1920 ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

1923 WRL (War Resisters League)

1936 NLG (National Lawyers Guild)

1958 WWP (Workers World Party)

1960–99

1963 IPS (Institute for Policy Studies)

1966 CCR (Center for Constitutional Rights)

1966 NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America)

1969 CEP (Council on Economic Priorities)

1974 CNSS (Center for National Security Studies)

1975 RCP USA (Revolutionary Communist Party, USA)

1977 Mobilization for Survival

1981 PFAW (People for the American Way)

1983 DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) *

1986 FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

1987 Refuse and Resist

1987 SANE/FREEZE **

1988 IFCO/PFP (Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors

for Peace)

1988 Global Exchanges

1992 IAC (International Action Center)

1993 Peace Action

1998 MoveOn.Org

2000–2005

2001 International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)

2002 NION (Not in Our Name)

Progressive Donor Network

UFPJ (United for Peace and Justice)

CodePink

IOW (Iraq Occupation Watch)

2003 MMA (Media Matters for America) web site

*Formed from the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement

**Formed from the merger of the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. In 1993 SANE/FREEZE was renamed as Peace/Action.

Some conflicting data on formative years for some groups Solution: Construct a time line that begins with World War I and extends

to the present. Find the year that each of the groups was formed, and chart it on this time line. Because this covers such an extended

length of time, divide the time line into three distinct periods. This time line shows which groups were formed at a very early stage (pre-1960)

and which have developed in more recent years. This particular time line is the basic conceptual tool used in chapters 5, 6, and 7.

ANALYSIS OF COMPETING HYPOTHESES

The analysis of competing hypotheses is a relatively advanced analytical tool, sometimes used to seek explanations for things that are otherwise

perplexing or bewildering. The technique here involves establishing a series of hypotheses on the vertical axis, and setting out possible explanations

on the horizontal axis.

Example Task: Try to make sense out of this statement by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the co-chairman of the New York Times, who spoke

at the Poynter Institute in Tampa in February 2005. He was asked a question about his newspaper’s liberal bias and replied, “I hear more

complaints that the newspaper is in the pocket of the Bush administration than that it is too liberal.”

Solution: Construct a matrix that can show the various hypotheses for this perplexing statement. Set out the hypotheses along the left side

of the matrix, on the vertical axis—possible explanations why he made such a statement. Along the top edge of the matrix on the horizontal

axis, put in things that would support each of those hypotheses (items of evidence, for example).

There are at least six hypotheses why Sulzberger would make this statement: (a) he hears things very selectively; (b) he is parroting the

big lie about “right-wing media bias”; (c) he is surrounded by leftists who tell him this kind of thing on a regular basis; (d) he is out of touch

with reality; (e) he is in denial, or (f) he believes his audience is stupid and gullible. On the horizontal axis are possible explanations that

might support some of these hypotheses: (a) his own leftist background causes him to say this; (b) his current job causes him to say this; or (c)

his statement actually reflects the actual situation, that the New York Times is in the Bush administration’s pocket.

There are no easily identified solutions to this issue, but the preliminary evidence suggests that it is either Sulzberger’s own left-wing background

or his current job that leads him to make this statement. His statement in no way reflects the actual situation, as the New York Times

has not endorsed a Republican for president since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s day. The paper has taken repeated stands against the initiatives

of the Bush administration, as well as conservative U.S. presidents before George Bush. And—tellingly—the paper continues to employ a

host of Far-Left ideologues such as Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and their ilk.

SHADES-OF-GRAY ANALYSIS

This type of analysis attempts to discern various levels of commitment or involvement of selected individuals or groups. It is one answer to the

problem of lumping individuals or groups into a single, homogeneous category—an approach that often oversimplifies the issues. This tool is

useful in differentiating hard-core true believers from casual participants.

It seeks to determine the differences between the dangerous radical and the moderate liberal, and even seeks to find some middle

ground between them.

Example Task: Make some kind of distinction between die-hard, committed radicals and more casual liberals.

Solution: Set out some criteria for separating the groups into two distinct camps.

ANALYSIS OF COMPETING HYPOTHESES AND SULZBERGER STATEMENT

Hypotheses: background job actual situation

Selective hearing X

Big lie: “right-wing bias” X

Surrounded by leftists X

Out of touch X

In complete denial X

Thinks audience stupid X? X?

As a start, ask whether this person did or did not: (a) travel at any time to North Vietnam, Cuba, or Saddam’s Iraq; (b) devote twenty-five

years or more of his/her life to the radical cause; or (c) give material aid or moral/psychological support to a foreign terrorist or foreign terrorist

group. If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then it’s safe to place that person in the column of a die-hard committed radical. This

guideline is used in this book as well. (See pages 74–75 for this graphic.)

David Horowitz has done pioneering work by using this approach in his own work. In order to avoid typecasting all leftists into one large

group, he employs five distinct categories: totalitarian radicals, anti-American radicals, leftists, moderate leftists, and affective leftists.

These run the gamut to hard-core, totally committed radicals such as Brian Becker to the casual leftists such as entertainers Katie Couric or

Robin Williams.

GEMINI ANALYSIS

This is a little-known analytical approach that is quite simple. Rather than look at just one individual or group, it is sometimes useful to examine

a pair of individuals or groups as to assess the interaction between them. It matters that liberal policy makers Clark Clifford and

Paul Warnke once were law partners in Washington DC. It matters that Cora Weiss and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin Jr. worked closely

together at the Riverside Church in New York City. And it certainly matters that George Soros and Morton Halperin work together to channel

money to various causes. This approach often leads to more sophisticated assessments than examining just one individual or group.

Example Task: Examine how President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy or national-defense decisions may have been affected by the orientation of

his two national security advisers, Anthony Lake and Samuel “Sandy” Berger.

Solution: Build a graphic that lays out the apparent political orientation of both these individuals and also depicts their relationship with

one another. This type of graphic would show the relevant background items in each person’s life before the White House job, that person’s apparent

orientation while on the job as national security adviser, or relevant events afterward.

LINKAGES OF ANTHONY LAKE AND SANDY BERGER

Anthony Lake

• Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, 1993–96

• International Voluntary Services, pacifist group (Lake was director)

• Dovish foreign service officer, served in Vietnam

• Center for International Policy (Lake knew Orlando Letelier)

• Senator Frank Church (Lake was his legislative aide)

• Cyrus Vance (brought Lake to State Dept. in Carter Transition Team)

• Morton Halperin (Lake and Halperin partners at CNSS function, 1974)

Samuel “Sandy” Berger

• Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, 1996–2000

• Deputy to Anthony Lake on NSC staff, 1993–1996

• Antiwar activist in college (Cornell, Harvard)

• Worked for McCarthy and Kennedy (1968)

• Speechwriter for McGovern (1972)

• Trade lawyer for Hogan and Hartson (point man for China trade office)

• In White House, worked the “China connection” with Harold Ickes and Mark Middleton

• Very close to Clinton, with daily access to him in White House

• Pled guilty in April 2005 to removing classified documents from National Archives

GROUPS, LEADERS,

AND THEIR LINKAGES

BEFORE 1960

IN THE EARLY PART of the twentieth century, there was only a small handful of social justice or antiwar groups. As such, there was nothing like

the network of linkages that is apparent today. However, those groups that did form then have shown remarkable staying power and resiliency.

THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE (1917) Founded in 1917 for the ostensible purpose of assisting European

refugees and those affected by World War I, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) provided a home for conscientious objectors.

Although the AFSC repeatedly denied it, the group had close associations with the Communist Party USA and various socialist revolutionary

groups.

The AFSC gave assistance to the Soviet Union in order to allow a degree of “relaxed domestic control” as well as to “achieve greater benefits

through peaceful co-existence” than it could through war. In the 1930s the AFSC refused to criticize the USSR because the establishment

and development of personal ties seemed to be the only way to diffuse hostilities. The AFSC later claimed that the real threat to world stability

was the United States.

Year after year, the AFSC has attempted to sell itself as the logical extension of traditional Quakerism and the concept of social justice while

simultaneously offering tangible support and material assistance to some of the most brutal, repressive, and corrupt regimes in world history. It

has perpetually criticized the United States while turning a blind eye to the excesses and brutality of the Vietnamese Communists, the Palestine

Liberation Organization (PLO), and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot. In the 1970s the AFSC claimed that the massacres of Pol Pot were

the product of “American misinformation” and also noted that the North Vietnamese victors were carrying out the task of reconstructing Vietnam

with “extraordinary humaneness” (ignoring the summary executions and confinement to labor camps of South Vietnamese officials).

The AFSC’s primary goal is to agitate for the unilateral disarmament of the United States, compelling the United States to withdraw economically

and militarily from foreign posts around the globe. Moreover, the AFSC has taken a strong stance against laws that would apprehend and

punish illegal immigrants to the United States, as it recognizes no justification for the United States to guard its borders more diligently.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (1920)

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was formed in 1920 and was first known as the Civil Liberties Bureau. It took the side of aliens

threatened with deportation by Attorney General Alexander Palmer for their radical views. The ACLU also opposed attacks on the Industrial

Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the Wobblies) and other labor unions to organize and meet.

In 1925 the ACLU persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee’s anti-evolution law to provoke a court test. Clarence Darrow, a member

of the ACLU’s National Committee, headed the Scopes legal team. The ACLU lost the case, and Scopes was fined $100. Subsequently, the Tennessee

Supreme Court reversed the case but not the conviction. In 1942, a few months after Pearl Harbor, ACLU affiliates on the West

Coast sharply criticized the U.S. government’s policies regarding enemy aliens and U.S. citizens descended from enemy ancestry. This included

the relocation of Japanese-Americans, internment of aliens, and prejudicial curfews.

Early in its history, the ACLU was singled out for criticism for its apparent pro-Communist stance. In 1931, for example, the Special House

Committee to Investigate Communist Activities noted that the ACLU is “closely affiliated with the Communist movement” in the United States

and that “fully 90% of its efforts are on behalf of Communists who have come into conflict with the law.” The House committee noted that while

the ACLU claimed to stand for the freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, it is “quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is an attempt

to protect the Communists.” Moreover, the committee stated, “Since its beginnings, the ACLU has waged war against Christianity.”

During the long history of the ACLU, many critics have claimed that it has sought to advance a liberal agenda, going far beyond its

stated goal of defending constitutional rights. Some have pointed to its opposition to the death penalty and further note that the ACLU has not

been consistent in protecting all civil liberties. It has not protected the right to bear arms, as provided for in the Second Amendment. On the

religious front, the ACLU has been accused of attempting to remove all references to religion from American government—pushing the concept

of separation of church and state far beyond its original meaning.

This issue appears each Christmas season, as one or another ACLU chapter inveighs against the display of religious symbols in public

places. The ACLU has also been accused of promoting a radical form of Islam called Wahhabism (most recently through its association with the

Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR).

The ACLU has also taken stands on other issues. Today it supports reproductive rights, including the right to choose an abortion. It supports

full civil rights for homosexuals, including government benefits for homosexual couples. It supports affirmative action (governmentsanctioned

reverse discrimination). In addition, it opposes the criminal prohibition of drugs and supports the legalization of drugs such as

heroin, cocaine, and marijuana.

THE WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE (1923)

The War Resisters League (WRL) was formed in 1923 by those who had opposed World War I. Many of its founders had been jailed during

the war for refusing military service. This group was formed from the  Fellowship of Reconciliation when many Jews, suffragettes, socialists,

and anarchists combined to form the more secular WRL.8 The WRL continued its activities in subsequent decades. During

World War II many of its members were imprisoned. In the 1950s the WRL was active in the U.S. civil rights movement and also organized

protests against nuclear weapons testing and civil defense.

In the 1960s the WRL was the first pacifist organization to call for an end to the Vietnam War. In the 1970s and 1980s the group’s opposition

to nuclear weapons was expanded to include opposition to nuclear power. The group has also been active in feminist and anti-racist causes.

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD (1936)

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) was founded in 1936 by members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and liberal fellow travelers. This

organization of radical lawyers adopted a benevolent pose as a professional organization that functions as an effective social force in the service

of the common people. In fact, it has consistently embraced its Communist heritage.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s the NLG represented the Hollywood Ten, spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and thousands of

what it calls “victims of anti-Communist hysteria.” The NLG claims that it was unjustly labeled as subversive by the U.S. government.10

The NLG remains an outpost of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), which itself was one of a complex of thirteen

interlocking front groups of the Soviet Communist Party. The IADL had its headquarters in Brussels and was formed in 1946 to support

Soviet propaganda, to issue legal statements and appeals for Soviet political priorities, and to condemn non-Communist causes. For a

time the NLG had some twenty-five thousand members in eighty countries.

All of these groups reported to the International Department (ID) of the CPSU’s Central Committee. The purposes of the ID’s front groups

were to appeal to a broad range of opinion, to support Soviet propaganda themes, to conceal connections between the USSR and the Soviet

Communist Party, to attack the West, and to never criticize the USSR.

Some of the most active front groups during the cold war were the World Peace Council (WPC), the World Federation of Trade Unions

(WFTU), the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), and the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY).

Some of the front groups also created “fronts of fronts,” groups to address particular issues and to put further distance between them and

Moscow. One example was Generals for Peace, a front of the World Peace Council. The U.S. affiliate of the World Peace Council is the U.S.

Peace Council, which played a prominent role in the cold war.

In recent years the NLG has sought to legally represent persons and groups that have attacked the United States. The NLG was been at the

forefront of various efforts to weaken U.S. intelligence and security agencies. It has opposed the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement

Act (DSEA), also known as Patriot Act II, and has endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act (CLRA), designed to roll back security policies

that were adopted after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Moreover, the NLG advocates open borders and mass immigration. The group is the

spearhead of the Open Borders Lobby, and its National Immigration Project consists of a network of lawyers and legal workers.13

THE WORKERS WORLD PARTY (1959)

The Workers World Party (WWP) is a Communist-socialist party in the United States founded by Sam Marcy. The WWP claims to embrace

Marxism-Leninism, but others characterize it as being Stalinist. Ideologically the group is made up of different streams of Communist thought.

In origin it is a Trotskyite group, but describes itself as Marxist-Leninist (a term rarely used by Trotsky followers). Yet the WWP continues to sell

the writings of Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao Zedong. In practical terms, it supports the remaining Communist nations of Cuba, North Korea, and

China. It also supports countries that it sees as victims of “American imperialism,” such as Libya and Iraq.14

The WWP was formed as a splinter group from the Socialist Workers Party in 1958 over some long-standing differences. Some of these differences

included Marcy’s support for the Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong as well as his support for the brutal Soviet armed intervention in

Hungary in 1956—an event that alienated many Communists worldwide.

The WWP also supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979—other events that put the

USSR and the WWP on the wrong side of the “self-determination” issue.

At first the WWP was confined to the Buffalo, New York, area, but it expanded in the 1960s. The party’s youth movement, called Youth

Against War and Fascism, attracted support for its campaigns against the war in Vietnam.

The WWP has been active in U.S. presidential elections since 1980.

Its candidate of 1984 and 1988, Larry Holmes, remains a powerful force within the WWP to this day. The WWP has opposed both Persian Gulf

wars and has sometimes been an important ally of Third World solidarity movements in the United States. The group also supported China’s

brutal crackdown in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Moreover, the group has defended Saddam Hussein as well as Serbian dictator Slobodan

Milosevic.

The WWP split in 2004, and a new group—the Party for Socialism and Liberation—was formed by several WWP members.15 The longterm

effects of this split remain unclear.

More significantly, the WWP has been a guiding and leading force in two movements: the International Action Center (IAC), a WWP

front formed in 1992, and International ANSWER (ANSWER for short), formed in 2001.16 The most prominent members of the WWP

today are Brian Becker and Larry Holmes (both members of the party’s secretariat) as well as Teresa Gutierrez, Sarah Sloan, and Sara Flounders.

All of these persons appeared at a rally sponsored by ANSWER in 2003, although they were not identified as WWP members.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Many of the foundations of today’s Far-Left movement were set in place during the 1930s. Against the backdrop of a worldwide depression and

financial chaos, extremist movements of the Far Right and the Far Left flourished. Not only was fascism on the rise in countries in Central and

Eastern Europe, but pro-Communist groups were also growing in some of the leading capitalist countries of the West.

In some cases the parents of today’s figures in “progressive” movements were quite active during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It is logical

to assume that the formative experiences of public people during that time have carried over into attitudes of their offspring through the

process known as political socialization.

The family issue is now increasingly important because the second generation is inheriting their parents’ causes. The second generation includes

progressive names that have become prominent in recent years:

Cockburn, Rubin-Weiss, Boudin, Ickes, Thomas, Soros, Moyers, and Richards.

COCKBURN CONNECTION

One example is that of Claud Cockburn (1904–81). The son of a diplomat, Cockburn (pronounced ko-burn) was born in China. He was a socialist

author and journalist as well as a sympathizer of Joseph Stalin.

He wrote for the Daily Worker under the pseudonym of Frank Pitcairn from 1935 to 1946 and served as a war correspondent for that Communist

paper in Spain in the 1930s, acting on assignment from the head of the British Communist Party. He later wrote under the name of James

Helvick when he authored the novel Beat the Devil in 1951. Educated at Oxford as well as universities in Budapest and Berlin, Cockburn received

his start as an unofficial correspondent in Berlin in the 1920s. He later wrote for the Times of London as a correspondent from New York

and Washington DC from 1929 to 1932—during which he filed reports that were total fabrications. His stint at the Times overlapped that of

Graham Greene (the darling of Havana and Moscow), who was a subeditor there, and he was also a close friend of Malcolm Muggeridge.

Cockburn also contributed to the New Statesman, the Daily Telegraph, Private Eye, the Saturday Evening Post, and the British humor magazine

Punch. Cockburn’s most ambitious effort was his newsletter, called The Week, a recurring tip sheet of politics that he published between 1933

and 1946. Cockburn broke with the Communist Party after World War II and moved with his family to Ireland in 1948, but he continued to

contribute to various newspapers and journals.17 During the time he was most active, Cockburn maintained close

contact with Mikhail Koltsov of the Soviet Embassy in London. Koltsov was both an editor of Pravda as well as a Stalinist agent in Spain.

Cockburn has had three sons—Alexander, Andrew, and Patrick—all of whom remain active journalists to the present day.

Alexander Cockburn is the proud heir of the family tradition and was the closest to his father before Claud died in 1981. He was born

in Scotland in 1941 and grew up in Ireland. Another Oxford graduate, he has lived in self-described exile in the United States since 1972,

where he has worked as a syndicated or contributing columnist. Since that time he has managed to defend the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

as well as the regime of Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi in Libya.

He has spoken strongly against the United States and its policies of “terror” during the civil war in Nicaragua. He has been a regular contributor

to the Nation, although his work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, House and Garden, and the Los

Angeles Times.

In 1987 he wrote a book entitled Corruptions of Empire: Life Studies and the Reagan Era. One reviewer noted the “same disrespect of his father

for the truth was also evident in this book which defended every anti-American tyrant and regime in the Third World.”18 More recently,

Alexander has been a strident opponent of U.S. ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. He now teams with Jeffrey St. Clair to co-edit the journal

Counterpunch.

Andrew Cockburn was born in Scotland in 1947, grew up in Ireland, and also lives in the United States. Another Oxford man and author,

he has specialized in defense issues and international relations

COCKBURN FAMILY

Claud Cockburn (1904–81)

Alexander Cockburn —Counterpunch, Nation, other publications

+ Jeffrey St. Clair (current partner at Counterpunch)

Andrew Cockburn —defense writer

+ Leslie Cockburn (wife, journalist, and film producer)

Patrick Cockburn —foreign correspondent

over the past three decades. He produced a special on the Red Army for PBS and wrote a book called The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine

in 1983. The book was an effort to debunk the “big threat” picture of the Soviet armed forces and made a case for moral equivalency in

stating that both the U.S. and Soviet military systems were large, inefficient, wasteful bureaucracies, each inflating the threat posed by the

other for its own selfish purposes.20 He has been a contributing editor of Defense Week and contributes regularly to Counterpunch.

Andrew is married to Leslie Cockburn, a journalist and CBS news producer.22 In 1987 she wrote a book entitled Out of Control: The Story

of the Reagan Administration’s Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection. Leslie recognized the help of

her husband in compiling her book.

Patrick Cockburn also was born in Scotland and grew up in Ireland. He had earlier worked as a correspondent for the Financial Times in

Moscow. Patrick later worked in Baghdad during the first Persian Gulf War and has also served in Jerusalem for the Independent. Filing from

Iraq, three of Patrick’s articles appeared in Alexander’s Counterpunch in late 2003, each with a distinctly anti-U.S. title. Patrick’s most recent

book is Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, which he wrote with his brother Andrew.23 (Perhaps a second resurrection is in

order now.)

RUBIN-WEISS CONNECTION

Samuel Rubin (1901–78) is responsible primarily for the initial surge of funding to major left-wing organizations. His parents brought him from

Russia to America as a child. He was a registered Communist Party member, although he had business talent and decided to operate like a

good capitalist. Rubin was also a friend and business associate of Armand Hammer, a longtime supporter of Lenin. In 1930 Rubin founded

the Spanish Trading Corporation, but he closed it when Francisco Franco took power in Spain. In 1937 Rubin founded Faberge Perfumes

and built it from a small specialty shop into a major cosmetics firm. In 1959 he established the Samuel Rubin Foundation from his personal

wealth. In 1963 Rubin sold Faberge for $25 million and gave a portion to his foundation. This foundation has funded legions of left-wing

causes since then; the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is among the leading recipients.

Cora Weiss, née Rubin, is the daughter of Samuel Rubin and has been the director of the Samuel Rubin Foundation from its founding.

She was also instrumental in the funding decision to create the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Her husband, Peter Weiss, was the first chairman

of the IPS board of directors. The couple selected Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet as co-directors of the IPS. Cora gained notoriety as a

leader of the Vietnam War–era coalitions who traveled to Paris and Hanoi for repeated meetings with Communist leaders.25 She has been

active in a variety of radical causes for at least four decades.

Peter Weiss, born in 1925 in Vienna, Austria, is the senior partner of the law firm Weiss, David, Fross, Zelnick, and Lehrman in New York

City. His firm specializes in trademark, copyright, and international law.

Weiss is a prominent member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and has served many other Far-Left causes. He was chairman of the IPS

board of directors until the 1990s.

BOUDIN CONNECTION

Leonard Boudin was a prominent radical lawyer. He was especially active in the 1960s and 1970s and died in 1989. He was the brother-in-law of

FLOW OF MONEY AMONG RUBIN, WEISS, AND TIDES

Samuel Rubin (Faberge)

Samuel Rubin Foundation

George Soros

Teresa Heinz Kerry

Stern Family Fund

Tides Foundation

Many leftist groups

Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and related groups

the radical journalist and Soviet agent I. F. Stone. Stone had a newsletter called I. F. Stone’s Weekly, which was comparable to the Cockburn

newsletter in the United Kingdom in the 1930s and 1940s. Stone considered himself “American to the core and radical to the end.” (Only the

first part of that phrase is somewhat questionable.) Boudin was the law partner of Victor Rabinowitz, who once defended Fidel Castro, Benjamin

Spock, and Daniel Ellsberg. Moreover, Boudin hired Leonard Weinglass, a leader of the NLG, who himself defended the Symbionese Liberation

Army (SLA) as well as cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. In addition, Weinglass has defended Boudin’s daughter, Cathy Boudin.

Cathy Boudin became even better known thanks to her involvement with the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), or “Weathermen,”

and its violent activities. In 1984 she and Bernardine Dohrn were sent to prison for participating in a bank robbery in which a policeman was

killed. Cathy Boudin has a host of connections and links to other radical families

BOUDIN FAMILY LINKS

Leonard Boudin I. F. Stone (Leonard’s brother-in-law)

Victor Rabinowitz (Leonard’s law partner)

Benjamin Spock (defended)

Daniel Ellsberg (defended)

Fidel Castro (defended)

Leonard Weinglass (Leonard hired Weinglass)

Mumia Abu Jamal (defended)

Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) (defended)

Cathy Boudin Bernardine Dohrn (close friends with Cathy)

Bill Ayers (married to Bernardine)

Michael Meeropol (Cathy dated son of Rosenbergs)

Lynne Stewart (on Cathy’s legal team)

Stanley Cohen (on Cathy’s legal team)

William Kunstler (influence on Cohen)

figures. She became acquainted with Bernardine Dohrn in the late 1960s, and the two remained close for years after that. Dohrn worked for the

NLG in Manhattan where she was involved in draft-resistance counseling.

Dohrn married Bill Ayers, a veteran organizer of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). She received money from actor Jon Voight,

and for a time she and Ayers lived on Voight’s houseboat in California.

Boudin had also dated Michael Meeropol, the son of executed spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In addition, Boudin had a strong connection

to radical lawyers Lynne Stewart and Stanley Cohen; they both joined her legal team in the early 1980s. Stewart has a connection with Dohrn

through the NLG and is involved with several other radical organizations herself. Cohen is a protégé of radical lawyer William Kunstler, who

founded the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

ICKES CONNECTION

Harold Le Claire Ickes (1874–1952) served as Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior between 1933 and 1945. Ickes held leftist political

views, and in 1932 he played an important role in persuading “progressive”Republicans to support FDR in the election. He claimed that the

“business administrations” of three Republican presidents “had ruined virtually everybody in the country.”

In 1933 FDR picked him as his secretary of the interior. This job involved running the Public Works Administration (PWA), which spent

some $6 billion on large-scale projects over the next six years. Ickes worked closely with the National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People (NAACP) to establish quotas for black workers in PWA projects. In a profile of Ickes in 1934, the New York Times noted that he

“knows all the rackets that infest the construction industry.”

Ickes controlled a private investigative group, unbeknownst to the general public. One effort of this group was dedicated to exposing Nazi

propaganda efforts in the United States, and it uncovered startling information about German connections with the Silver Shirts, Father

Charles Coughlin, and groups such as the Christian Mobilizers. Ickes turned this material over to the attorney general, and “during the next

year very bad things happened to the subjects of the investigations.” FDR remained aware of what Ickes was up to, at least in general. Ickes

assembled an able committee of “helpers” to combat subversive fascist propaganda. His circle included Dorothy Thompson, pollster George

Gallup, Henry Luce, and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.31 Ickes grew adept at leaking information when it suited his and FDR’s purposes.

Ickes was a member of a Stalinist front called the League for Peace and Democracy.32 Moreover, he took an active role against anti-Soviet

officials in the State Department. According to Dennis Dunn, President Roosevelt, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, and Interior Secretary

Harold Ickes told Soviet ambassador Constantine Oumansky emphatically that anti-Soviet officials in the State Department would be

thwarted.33 Ickes’s involvement was peculiar, for it was far outside the bounds of his job as secretary of the interior.

Ickes did not get along with Harry Truman and resigned from the government in 1946. In his final years Ickes wrote a syndicated newspaper

column and contributed regularly to the New Republic. He wrote several books, including his memoirs, The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon

(1943). Ickes died in Washington in 1952.

His son, Harold M. Ickes, was deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House between 1994 and 1996. As a student at Stanford, Ickes

fell under the influence of Professor Allard Lowenstein, who seduced many idealistic young students into the New Left. Ickes later traveled to

the Dominican Republic in 1965, evidently to assist a socialist president who was deposed, but his role in this event remains obscure to this day.

Ickes met Bill Clinton while both were working on Operation Pursestrings, a grassroots lobbying effort aimed at pushing through the

Hatfield-McGovern amendment to cut aid to South Vietnam.

As a labor lawyer, Ickes represented many corrupt unions controlled by organized-crime families. He worked on behalf of labor racketeers

and gangsters, which brought him perilously close to prosecution. Bill and Hillary Clinton later found many uses for Ickes’s peculiar talents.

Hillary Clinton placed Ickes in charge of a special unit within the White House Counsel’s office, dedicated to suppressing Clinton scandals. Because

so many of his jobs involved damage control at that time, Ickes referred to his role as “Director of Sanitation.” Former Clinton adviser

Dick Morris noted that whenever there was something that Bill Clinton thought required ruthlessness or vengeance or skullduggery, “he would

give it to Harold.”

By 1996 federal investigators began zeroing in on Ickes’s involvement in numerous Clinton scandals. These included the illegal commandeering

of more than one thousand secret FBI files on potential Clinton foes as well as the spilling of military and technological secrets

to China in exchange for campaign contributions. Ickes became a liability and was fired by President Clinton shortly after his reelection in

1996.

Ickes ran the successful Senate campaign of Hillary Clinton in 1999–2000 and has remained an influential force in Democratic circles.

After passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in March 2002, Ickes helped George Soros put together—with various activists and left-wing Democrats—

an effort to circumvent the soft-money ban instituted by the McCain-Feingold Act.37 He personally helped to launch groups such as

America Coming Together (ACT), America Votes, the Center for American Progress (CAP), Joint Victory Campaign 2004, the Thunder Road

Group, and the Media Fund.

One of Ickes’s major accomplishments was creating the Media Fund. It received more than $28 million from left-wing labor organizations:

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The

Media Fund was extremely active in creating and airing attack ads against George W. Bush during the 2004 presidential campaign.

As of late 2004, various sources indicate that Ickes is with his old law firm, Meyer, Suozzi, English, and Klein, as well as with the Ickes

and Enright Group. To this day, Ickes remains one of the most important persons in the Democratic Party.

THOMAS CONNECTION

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) was the son of a Presbyterian minister and studied political science under Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University,

from which he was graduated in 1905. Influenced by the writings of the Christian Socialist movement in the United Kingdom,

Thomas became a committed socialist. He was ordained in 1911 and became pastor of the East Harlem Presbyterian Church in New York

City. A pacifist, Thomas believed that World War I was an “immoral, senseless struggle among rival imperialisms.”

Thomas joined with several others to form the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a group from which a faction later split off in 1923

to become the War Resisters League (WRL). Moreover, in 1917 Thomas joined with Crystal Eastman and Roger Baldwin to establish

the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB). In 1920 Thomas joined with Jane Addams, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Upton Sinclair to establish

the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). As such, Thomas was intimately involved with two organizations that continue to the

present. Thomas served as associate editor of the Nation in 1921–22 and was codirector of the League of Industrial Democracy from 1922

to 1937.

After the death of Eugene V. Debs, Thomas because the Socialist Party’s candidate for president in 1928, 1932, and 1936. Although he

was easily beaten each time, Thomas had the satisfaction of seeing FDR introduce several measures that he had advocated.

Thomas helped to form the America First Committee (AFC) in 1940, with one of its goals being to keep America out of the war. This

committee was dissolved four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thomas was the Socialist Party candidate in 1940, 1944, and 1948, thus running a total of six times. He denounced rearmament and the development

of the cold war. He also campaigned against poverty, racism, and the Vietnam War.

The grandson of Norman Thomas, Evan Thomas has long been the assistant managing editor of Newsweek magazine. The magazine has

maintained a consistent liberal (though not radical) slant throughout its existence.

SOROS CONNECTION

George Soros is a Hungarian-born American businessman. Born in 1930, he is famous as an investor, currency speculator, and philanthropist.

He is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute (OSI). Soros is known primarily for donating huge sums of

money to organizations that sought to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004.

Soros learned his craft at a young age, trading currencies on the black market in Hungary during World War II. He left Hungary for the

United Kingdom in 1947 and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. In 1956 Soros moved to the United States. He

stated that he intended to earn enough on Wall Street to support himself as an author and philosopher. At one time, Soros’s net worth

reached an estimated $11 billion, but it is now believed to be closer to a paltry $7 billion.

In 1970 he founded the Quantum Fund with Jim Rogers. This fund returned more than 4,000 percent over the next ten years and created

the bulk of Soros’s fortune. Soros plays the currency markets through this fund, which is registered in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles—

a tax haven cited as one of the most important centers for money laundering. By using Curacao, Soros not only avoids paying

taxes but also hides the nature of his investors and what he does with their money.

Soros had earlier stated that removing George W. Bush from office was the “central focus of my life” as well as “a matter of life and death”

for which he would willingly sacrifice his entire fortune. Soros gave some $3 million to the Center for American Progress (CAP), $5 million

to MoveOn.org, and $10 million to America Coming Together (ACT). According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2004 Soros

FLOW OF SOROS’S MONEY

Open Society Institute (OSI)

ACT (America Coming Together)

CAP (Center for American Progress)

ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

NLG (National Lawyers Guild)

CCR (Center for Constitutional Rights)

Major Donors to Liberal Causes, 2004 Election:

George Soros (New York City) $23,450,000

Peter B. Lewis (Cleveland) $22,997,220

Herb and Marion Sandler (Oakland) $13,008,459

donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush.41

Soros also donates to other causes that he deems worthy. For example, in 2002, he contributed $20,000 to the defense committee of radical

lawyer Lynne Stewart.

This information surfaced from records filed with the IRS and was reported in February 2005. This was about the same time that a New York

jury found Stewart guilty of helping her terrorist client, “blind sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahmanm, communicate with his Islamist followers from

prison. Stewart was found guilty of all counts against her, including conspiring to provide and providing material support to terrorists.

Soros blames many of the world’s problems on the failures inherent in market fundamentalism. In 1997 he predicted the imminent collapse

of the global capitalist system. His writings also include a healthy dose of blame-America-first. This is illustrated by a look at his book The

Bubble of American Supremacy (2004): “The reckless pursuit of American supremacy has put us and the rest of the world in danger.” So he

claims that the only way we can “extricate ourselves” is by rejecting President Bush. “How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists

have set for us?” he asks. “Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war.” We must, he notes, “correct the

grievances on which terrorism feeds.” He claims that the war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush administration cannot be won “because it

is based on false premises.”

A personal dislike for George Bush comes through loud and clear. For example, he asserts, “Being a reformed substance abuser and bornagain

Christian, he had personal acquaintances with the devil.” Soros is much better at lobbing verbal grenades at George Bush than in predicting

the future, as he stated in 2003, “I am confident that he will be rejected in 2004.”

Now in his midseventies, Soros is likely contemplating the building of a dynasty. He has five children, three by his first wife, Annaliese, and

two by his second wife, Susan. He has recently placed his two oldest sons—Robert and Jonathan—in charge of his empire and the day-today

investment decisions. Forty-two-year-old Robert currently serves as chief investment officer, and thirty-five-year-old Jonathan is acting as

deputy chairman.

Robert is focusing on state-level politics at present. He and his wife gave some $100,000 to the New York State Democratic Campaign Committee

in 2004.45 Jonathan is an activist with MoveOn.org. He also financially sponsors other groups. Occasionally commentators refer to

this network of independent, nonprofit issue groups controlled by the Soros, Ickes, and other families as the Shadow Party. David Horowitz

and Richard Poe have concluded that this Shadow Party is here to stay and will continue to grow. Already, they note, “Shadow Party control of

Democrat fund raising has given Soros and his minions influence over the party’s platform, strategy and candidate.”

MOYERS CONNECTION

Bill Moyers, born in 1931, is a journalist, advocate, and financier for liberal causes. He is influential in several different spheres and has been

adept at portraying himself as a “moderate” to U.S. audiences. Moyers was deputy director of the Peace Corps during the Kennedy administration,

as well as special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1963 to 1967. His association with LBJ goes back to 1954, when he first

worked for him as a summer intern. Others who worked in the Johnson administration include Ramsey Clark and Morton Halperin.

JOHNSON INSIDERS, THEN AND NOW

Ramsey Clark

THEN: Attorney General, 1967–69

NOW: International Action Center (IAC), Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), and many other liberal causes

Bill Moyers

THEN: Special Assistant to President Johnson, 1963–67  NOW: Believed retired after serving many liberal causes

Morton Halperin

THEN: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning and Arms Control, 1967–69

NOW: Head of Washington DC office of Open Society Institute (OSI) the “daisy girl” commercial that purported to show that Barry Goldwater

was a dangerous influence who could lead the nation into nuclear war. He ordered from the Madison Avenue firm of Doyle Dane Bernbach

an unforgettable ad that had a little girl plucking petals from a daisy while an off-camera voice counted down to a final image of a nuclear

blast and mushroom cloud. It closed with the words, “These are the stakes: To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to

go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die. Vote for President Johnson on November third. The stakes are too high for

you to stay home.”47 This ad is still remembered as one of the most negative ads ever shown on national television.

Moyers has been in broadcast journalism sine 1971. He was once executive editor of the public television series Bill Moyers Journal. He

was then a CBS News correspondent and senior news analyst for that network. In 1986 he formed his own independent production company,

Public Affairs Television, Inc., based at WNET in New York.

Moreover, Moyers was a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation for twelve years and more recently served as president of the Florence and

John Schumann Foundation. He has been prominently featured on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which he has often used as a platform

for liberal pronouncements.

Moyers has been known to pay advocates to come up with an anticorporate, anti-capitalist message, and then report the totally biased

outcome on PBS television. In March 2001 PBS stations nationwide aired a ninety-minute report on the chemical industry titled Trade Secrets:

A Moyers Report. The report portrayed the chemical industry in a cold, calculated cover-up of deadly health effects, and implied that the

chemical industry was guilty of premeditated murder of its own employees.

In the thirty-minute panel discussion that followed, Moyers hosted two activists who had advance knowledge of the show’s subject

matter. One anti-industry panelist had previously received $325,000 in grants from the Schumann Foundation. The chemical industry was

represented by two men who had no advance knowledge of the show’s content.

Moyers’s philosophy is summed up in his own words. He told the Environmental Grantmakers Association on October 16, 2001, “True

believers in the god of the market would leave us to the ruthless cruelty  unfettered monopolistic capital where even the law of the jungle

breaks down.”

Moyers’s son John is the executive director of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, known for its support of National Public Radio

(NPR), PBS’s Frontline, and the Columbia Journalism Review. John Moyers is also as executive director of the Florence Fund, a nonprofit corporation

based in Washington DC. TomPaine.com is a Web site project of the Florence Fund.

RICHARDS CONNECTION

Ann Richards was born in 1933 and attended the University of Texas at Austin. At that time she became politically active, working for “critical

social causes,” according to one favorable biographic sketch. She was a former Texas state treasurer, a county commissioner, a teacher, and “activist.”

Richards came upon the national scene with a keynote address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. She entered the 1990 gubernatorial

campaign and was elected the forty-fifth governor of Texas.

One favorable review of her service noted her as a “longtime advocate of civil rights and economic justice” who created “the most representative

and inclusive administration in Texas history.”

George W. Bush defeated her decisively in the 1994 race for governor, which effectively ended her career as a candidate for elected office.

As such, both Richards and her daughter, Cecile, have pursued a personal vendetta against Bush ever since. In 1998 Richards was a senior

adviser with the Washington DC–based law firm of Verner, Lippfert, Bernhard, McPherson, and Hand. During the 2004 campaign she made

appearances in many states to attack George Bush’s reelection effort.

Cecile Richards is the president of America Votes and also serves on the board of America Coming Together (ACT). America Votes was

launched to help coordinate the activities of a growing number of nonprofit groups within the Shadow Party. In July 2003 a number of Democratic

Party heavyweights launched America Votes and appointed Cecile as its first president. She is hard set against the so-called Christian

Right. After her mother’s 1994 defeat, Cecile founded the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization aimed at countering the

influence of conservative Christians, especially on local school boards.

Next up: Part 9 In the series,  Politics, A Disgustingly Dirty Game Filled With Unbelievably Vile Things

Radical leaders and their Groups Then and now…. Continued 2000 To Present