How it Works

In a nutshell - where conflicts of interest present a problem, institutionalize those confllicts so you have control over them, thus making them appear to be non-conflicting.

I think a good case in point is the 1982 interview with Norman Dodd, staff director of the 1953 Congressional Special Committee to Investigate Tax-exempt Foundations, sometimes referred to as the "Reece Committee", given to G. Edward Griffin, author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island". In that interview, Mr. Dodd stated: Rowan Gaither was, at that time, president of the Ford Foundation. Mr. Gaither had sent for me when I found it convenient to be in New York, asked me to call upon him at his office, which I did. Upon arrival, after a few amenities, Mr. Gaither said: "Mr. Dodd, we've asked you to come up here today because we thought that possibly, off the record, you would tell us why the Congress is interested in the activities of foundations such as ourselves?" Before I could think of how I would reply to that statement, Mr. Gaither then went on voluntarily and said:
"Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in the making of policies here have had experience either with the OSS during the war or the European Economic Administration after the war. We've had experience operating under directives, and these directives emanate and did emanate from the White House. Now, we still operate under just such directives. Would you like to know what the substance of these directives is?" I said, "Mr. Gaither, I'd like very much to know," whereupon he made this statement to me: "Mr. Dodd, we are here to operate in response to similar directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."

Norman Dodd then went on to explain how he sent a member of his staff, a Washington attorney unsympathetic to the investigation, to pour over the minute books of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Permission to explore the minutes was granted by a recent endowment president who obviously had never read those minutes himself.

According to Mr. Dodd, this is some of what the attorney, Katherine Casey, brought back on dictaphone tapes:
We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. In that year, the trustees, meeting for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year in a very learned fashion. The question is: "Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people?" And they conclude that no more effective means than war to that end is known to humanity.

So then, in 1909, they raised the second question and discussed it, namely: "How do we involve the United States in a war?"

Well, I doubt at that time if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. Then, finally, they answered that question as follows: "We must control the State Department." That very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? And they answer it by saying: "We must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country." And, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective.

Then time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatched to President Wilson a telegram, cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly.

Finally, of course, the war is over. At that time their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914 when World War I broke out. At that point they came to the conclusion that, to prevent a reversion, "we must control education in the United States." They realize that that's a pretty big task. It is too big for them alone, so they approach the Rockefeller Foundation with the suggestion that that portion of education which could be considered domestic be handled by the Rockefeller Foundation and that portion which is international should be handled by the Endowment. They then decide that the key to success of these two operations lay in the alteration of the teaching of American history.

So they approach four of the then-most prominent teachers of American history in the country - people like Charles and Mary Byrd - and their suggestion to them is: will they alter the manner in which they present their subject? And they got turned down flat. So they then decide that it is necessary for them to do as they say, "build our own stable of historians."

Then they approach the Guggenheim Foundation, which specializes in fellowships, and say: "When we find young men in the process of studying for doctorates in the field of American history and we feel that they are the right caliber, will you grant them fellowships on our say-so?" And the answer is yes. So, under that condition, eventually they assembled assemble twenty, and they take this twenty potential teachers of American history to London, and there they're briefed on what is expected of them when, as, and if they secure appointments in keeping with the doctorates they will have earned. That group of twenty historians ultimately becomes the nucleus of the American Historical Association.

Toward the end of the 1920's, the Endowment grants to the American Historical Association $400,000 for a study of our history in a manner which points to what can this country look forward to in the future. That culminates in a seven-volume study, the last volume of which is, of course, in essence a summary of the contents of the other six. The essence of the last volume is: The future of this country belongs to collectivism administered with characteristic American efficiency. That's the story that ultimately grew out of and, of course, was what could have been presented by the members of this Congressional committee to the congress as a whole for just exactly what it said. They never got to that point.

The investigation was basicalled ignored by Congress, and Reece was accused by congressional members of pushing his own agenda for political purposes. Of the dictaphone tapes, Dodd says he does not know what became of them, but believes, if they are still in existance, they would be somewhere in the Archives under the control of the Congress. He also says he believes no one in Congress bothered to listen to the contents of those tapes.

Said Dodd, "Both the Republican National Committee and the White House were resorted to, to stop me from continuing this investigation in the directions Carol Reece had personally asked me to do, which was to utilize this investigation to uncover the fact that this country had been the victim of a conspiracy. That was Mr. Reece's conviction."

When asked by Ed Griffin "Why do the foundations generously support Communist causes in the United States?", Mr. Dodd replied "Well, because to them, Communism represents a means of developing what we call a monopoly, that is, an organization of, say, a large-scale industry into an administerable unit."

If this explanation seems rather vague to you, I can only suggest that you contemplate it further. You must digest it for yourself. Perhaps this, from the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, will help: "The development of contemporary systems of interest representation undoubtedly is linked with the increase of the number of functions performed by the state and its intervention in public life, leading to an institutionalization of the representation of interests and of conflicts of interests."

The idea, generally, is that, if something is a problem, turn it into an institution, where you can contain and control it administratively. When applied to the difficulties of maintaining the diversity of a free and open society, this presents far-reaching and dangerous implications.