Michael Barker, 4 March 2008

A Critical Look at Pro Publica (Part 2 of 3)

Democracy Manipulators Running the Show

The editor-in-chief of Pro Publica is Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company (which is now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation). Steiger is a trustee of the liberal John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and serves as the chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – a group whose “propaganda service” to elite interests has been recently examined by Edward Herman. Moreover the CPJ can be linked to other key democracy manipulating organizations through their board of directors: thus Charles L. Overby is also the president of Freedom Forum, Gene Roberts was a former director of the World Press Freedom Committee, and David Laventhol is a former chair of the International Press Institute (for further details of these ‘democratic’ groups’ see here). Interesting funders of CPJ’s work includes various corporations (e.g. CNN, and Time Warner), liberal foundations (e.g. the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation), private liberal philanthropic funds (e.g. George Soros’ Open Society Institute), and various individuals (e.g. Norman Pearlstine, who is a CPJ director, an advisor to the infamous Carlyle Group, a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation, a director of the NED-funded  International Center for Journalists, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations). Finally, considering that Steinberg is a cutting edge supporter of investigative journalism (not press release journalism), it is noteworthy that his biography failed to report on his attendance at the most recent secretive annual meeting of the group known as The Seminar, a four-day event that has been described as an “annual gathering of heads of blue chip corporate PR depts. and about a dozen CEOs of major PR firms”.[1]

Next up for a background check is Richard Tofel, who is Pro Publica’s general manager. Tofel was formerly an assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and a former vice president of Dow Jones & Company, and like Steiger, Tofel maintains a number of ties to key democracy manipulators. For a start, his biography notes that “[m]ost recently, he served as vice president, general counsel & secretary of The Rockefeller Foundation”.  However, just prior to that he also served as the president and chief operating officer of the International Freedom Center (from 2004 until 2005). The now binned International Freedom Center originally described itself as a “non-partisan and non-ideological” group that was involved in proposing the development of a museum and cultural center that was intended to be an “integral part of the living memorial to September 11 at the World Trade Center site”. (Although that said, their website noted that: “With respect to the 9/11 attacks themselves… the IFC will never provide a platform for rationalizing them, or for attempting to defend the indefensible.” So it was never really ever going to contribute to a useful (historically correct) memorial to the 9/11 attack.) Amidst much controversy, however, this project was abandoned in late 2005: yet despite it being a nonstarter, it is still worth briefly examining the democracy manipulating credentials of the individuals who were involved in promoting the ideas of the International Freedom Center.

The Center’s nine-person strong board of directors was chaired by Tom A. Bernstein, who is the former president of Human Rights First, a director of the Markle Foundation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Other noteworthy members of the Center’s board included:

·         Sara J. Bloomfield – who amongst other things has worked with the NED-linked Iraq Memory Foundation

·         Stephen B. Heintz – who is the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund

·         Natan Sharansky – who is a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner who serves on the international advisory board of the NED’s Journal of Democracy

·         Anne-Marie Slaughter – who chairs the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion, is a trustee of the World Peace Foundation, director of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the New America Foundation, serves on the strategy committee of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, and is a member of the Inter-American Dialogue

·         Fareed Zakaria – who is the editor of Newsweek International, and is a director of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the New America Foundation

Given Steiger and Tofels ‘democratic’ links it is strange that the person who was chosen to act as Pro Publica’s managing editor was Stephen Engelberg. This is because since 2002 Engelberg had been the managing editor of the Portland Oregonian, but prior to that he had spent eighteen years at the New York Times, which included eight years as an investigative reporter and eleven years as an editor and leader of investigative projects.  During his years at The Times Engelberg undertook much commendable investigative reporting, and served as the newspapers “lead reporter on the Iran-Contra Affair”. However, although he was well versed in writing critical reports on the CIA’s activities (“he covered the spate of espionage cases in 1985 that became known as the ‘The Year of the Spy’”) during his entire media career Engelberg only mentioned the democracy manipulating work of the NED in one article.  This is significant because the NEDs work is very similar to that of the CIAs (see later).

Based in Czechoslovakia in 1990, Engelberg drew attention to the fact that the NED had given $400,000 to Vaclav Havel’s “Civic Forum and the Public Against Violence, the organizations that coalesced… to lead the revolution against Communist rule”. However, at no other time in his career did Engelberg mention the antidemocratic work of the NED, even though “in 1990, he became the Times bureau chief in Warsaw, Poland, reporting on the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia and the region's shaky transition to democracy”. His presence in Poland is noteworthy, because in spite of his apparently excellent investigative skills he (somehow) failed to report on the high level of support that Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement had obtained over the past decade from both the CIA and the NED. In fact, as Hernando Calvo Ospina (2007) pointed out, Poland became “[o]ne of the most historic victories” for the US-led democracy manipulators, and during “the 1989 parliamentary elections, the NED handed $2.5m to the Solidarity movement, whose leader Lech Walesa, a powerful ally of the US, was elected president in 1990”. Moreover, it is even stranger that Engelberg ignored the NED’s antidemocratic initiatives considering his intimate involvement in covering the Iran-Contra affair. This is because, as William Blum (2000) points out, the NED:

“…played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North's shadowy ‘Project Democracy’ network, which privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs and engaged in other equally charming activities. At one point in 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED ‘run Project Democracy’. This was an exaggeration; it would have been more correct to say that NED was the public arm of Project Democracy, while North ran the covert end of things.” (See the New York Times 1987 expose on this subject.)

Yet perhaps it is unfair of me to assume that Engelberg would investigate the NED, let alone mention them more than once; as his New York Times colleague, David K. Shipler, despite undertaking a critical report on the NED in 1986, only went on to downplay their influence in his subsequent work. In his initial critical report (of June 1986), Shipler outlined some of the NED’s dubious activities which included, providing “$180,845 to train teachers, conduct literacy courses for rebel [Afghan] fighters, reopen some schools and publish new textbooks with unflattering accounts of the Soviet role in Afghan history”;[2] and “helping the Solidarity labor union print underground publications in Poland, buying materials for an opposition newspaper in Nicaragua, bolstering the opposition in South Korea, aiding a party in Northern Ireland that is a member of the Socialist International and getting out the vote in Grenada and Latin American countries”. Shipler added that:

“In some respects, the program resembles the aid given by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950's, 60's and 70's to bolster pro-American political groups. But that aid was clandestine and, subsequent Congressional investigations found, often used planted newspaper articles and other forms of intentionally misleading information.

 “The current financing is largely public – despite some recipients' wish to keep some activities secret – and appears to be given with the objective of shoring up political pluralism, broader than the C.I.A.'s goals of fostering pro-Americanism. Although some grants go to unions and parties that are close to the Administration's policy line, others support groups that disagree with Washington on the danger of the Soviet threat, for instance, or on aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. The concept of a private group as a conduit for Government funds for such a program has drawn both praise and criticism from liberals and conservatives alike.”[3]

By March 1990, however, Shipler appeared far less critical of the NED, and in reference to the NED’s support for Nicaraguan opposition parties he noted that “Nicaragua's election has vindicated Washington's fledgling program of providing public, above-board funding to help democratic procedures take root in countries with authoritarian regimes”. Indeed he went so far as noting that the NED’s electoral success “has proved that open, honorable support for a democratic process is one of the most powerful foreign policy tools at Washington's disposal”. Shipler’s mellowing on his NED reporting may have something to do with his appointment – after working for the New York Times for twenty years –  as a senior associate at the democracy manipulating Carnegie Endowment for International Peacetransitions to democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe for The New Yorker and other publications”. (from 1988 to 1990), where he then wrote about the “

Although Shipler recently authored the well received book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), it is noteworthy that he serves on the national advisory council of the ‘democratically’-linked U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East (henceforth referred to as the Interreligious Committee).[4] The Interreligious Committee was formed in 1987, and sitting upon their board of directors is none other than key democracy manipulator Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh. In the early 1980s, Rev. Hesburgh played a vital role as an observer in El Salvador’s ‘demonstration elections’, is a former chair of the Rockefeller Foundation, an honorary trustee of the Institute of International Education, and he formerly served as a member of the Prodemca’s national council (now known as World Learning). (World Learning previously operated as the Delphi International Group – a group that worked closely with the NED throughout the 1980s to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.[5]) Other notably ‘democratic’ directors of the Interreligious Committee serving alongside Hesburgh include Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon (who is a member of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East Advisory Committee, and is a former director of the New Israel Fund), and Gail Pressberg (who has served as the executive director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and is now one of their trustees). However, it is the Interreligious Committee’s national advisory council that contains the highest number of democracy manipulating linked members, these being:

·         Edward P. Djerejian – who is the Director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy, and a trustee of the Eurasia Foundation

·         Abdurahman Alamoudi – who is a former director of the American Committee on Jerusalem, which is now known as the American Task Force on Palestine

·         David Cohen – who is the co-chair and co-founder of the Advocacy Center at ISC

·         Mike Farrell – who sits on both the Middle East Advisory CommitteeUS Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch and

·         Rita E. Hauser – who is a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch and the Americas Society, serves as the president of the American Ditchley Foundation, and is an advisory council member of the Nixon Center

·         Khalil Jahshan – who is a former vice president of the American Committee on Jerusalem, a member of the US consensus council roster for Search for Common Ground, serves on the advisory board of American Near East Refugee Aid, and is a trustee of the NED-funded Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy

·         Rashid Khalidi – who is the vice president of the American Task Force on Palestine, and a 1993 founding trustee of the previously (1995-2000) NED-funded Center for Palestine Research and Studies

·         Joseph V. Montville – who is the Director of Preventive Diplomacy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and serves on the board of directors of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy – interestingly this Center’s former executive director, Abdulwahab Alkebsi, went straight on to become the NED’s program director for the Middle East and North Africa

·         Richard W. Murphy – who is a director of the American Iranian Council, serves on the board of governors of the Middle East Institute – an institute whose work is currently looked upon favourably by a multitude of companies from the energy sector (e.g. Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell) and by military contractors (e.g. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon)

·         William B. Quandt – who serves on the editorial advisory committee for the Middle East Policy Council, is a trustee of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and is a member of the American Iranian Council’s advisory board,

·         James J. Zogby – who used to sit on Human Rights Watch’s Middle East Advisory Committee, and is the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, and is an advisor to Americans for Informed Democracy.

Returning to Engelberg, I suggest that Pro Publica could provide a useful service to democracy if they initiated an investigation into Engelberg’s background with regard to his reporting of the disastrous occurrences surrounding 9/11. I say this because prior to 9/11 Engleberg headed a group of investigative journalists at the New York Times, who amongst other things work on a “five-year effort… to track and understand the origins of the Islamic terrorism”. Yet despite ample financing, Engelberg and his team failed to see the obvious link between Western intelligence agencies and their creation and support of fundamentalist Islamic groups – obvious examples including the US Information Agencies support for the Mujahideen throughout the 1980s (see footnote 1). Furthermore, according to John Cooley’s (2000) Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism, during the 1980s Osma Bin Laden rose to leadership of the Mujahideen “with the full approval of the Saudi regime and the CIA” (p.99).[6] For recent examples of reports examining the historical intelligence-fundamentalist links that were overlooked by Engelberg’s investigative unit, see Robert Dreyfuss’s Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Metropolitan Books, 2005), Brendan O'Neill’s (2006) article “Today's ‘Islamic Fascists’ Were Yesterday's Friends”, and Mark Curtis’s forthcoming book Dirty Wars: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam. Finally, it is worth noting that one of the investigative reporters working below Engelberg at The Times was the now infamous Judith Miller.[7] Edward Herman (2006) observes, with regard to the Judith Miller saga, that:

 “It is now clear and has even been admitted by the editors that the Times served the Bush administration in its drive to an invasion-occupation of Iraq. What is remarkable in their doing this is that the basis of the invasion was so crude, the lies so blatant, the violation of international law so gross, that you would think a hired press agency of the government would be embarrassed to have to swallow these and push for war. But the Times pushed ahead, not just disseminating propaganda but propaganda whose central components were disinformation. Judith Miller's statement that: 'The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them; we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong', is a lie. There were a great many experts and analysts who were right, but the New York Times ignored them, misrepresented their views, and even smeared them. (See Barry Bearak, 'Scott Ritter's Iraq Complex,’ Nov. 24th, 2002).”[8]

To be continued... Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael. J. Barker [at] griffith.edu.au. He is currently coediting a forthcoming book which will be examining the influence of liberal foundations on social change, for further details see here.

Notes

[8] Edward Herman (2006) adds: “Even when alternative sources were available, time after time the paper would filter out news that was incompatible with the party line. Thus, while Miller and her colleagues swallowed a steady stream of informants supplied by Chalabi and the Bush team, whose credibility was extremely dubious, the paper never got around to reporting the fact that the defector Hussein Kamel told the CIA that Saddam Hussein had destroyed all of his chemical and biological weapons stocks and delivery missiles in 1991.”