More on Cora, Peter, Samuel Rubin Foundation:
NORTH AMERICAN CONGRESS ON LATIN AMERICA (NACLA)
NACLA was formed in 1967 after the Tricontinental Congress in Havana by individuals associated with Students for a
Democratic Society(SDS). NACLA said it was recruiting "men and women, from a variety of organizations and
movements, who not only favor revolutionary change in Latin America, but also take a revolutionary position toward
their own society." SDS leaders called NACLA the "intelligence gathering arm" of the radical movement. NACLA's
published Methodology Guide recommends supplementing public source information by pretext interviews and phone
calls, and NACLA has also planted or developed covert sources in government agencies and private companies. Over
the years, NACLA materials have been used in a number of anti-U.S., Cuban publications.
Particular targets for NACLA information-gathering include companies supplying arms, anti-terrorist and police
equipment to Latin America and Mexico; U.S. government defense, counter-insurgent and anti-terrorist programs; and
oil, agribusiness, minerals and other U.S. companies with major Latin American operations.
NACLA veterans have included Michael Klare, head of IPS's Militarism and Disarmament Project and specialist on
U.S. arms sales policies, anti-terrorist and counter-insurgency programs who lectures on such subjects at the
University of Havana; and Michael Locker, head of the Corporate Data Exchange(CDE) that is funded by the Samuel
Rubin Foundation via the Weiss's Fund for Tomorrow. Locker is also on the staff of the Cuba Resource Center, Inc.,
a non-profit, Tax-Exempt pro-Castro corporation in New York City.
In the British edition of Inside the Company: CIA Diary, CIA-turncoat Philip Agee, acknowledged that agencies of the
Cuban government and representatives of the Cuban Communist Party provided "special assistance *** and ***data
available only from government documentation" and that "John Gerassi, Nicki Szulc and Michael Locker of the North
American Congress for Latin America(NACLA) obtained vital research materials in New York and Washington, DC."
Locker's name was deleted from the U.S. edition.
FUNDING AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CEP's four-year, $100,000 research project was funded by the Samuel Rubin Foundation, the Institute for World
Order(IWO), an organization with close ties to IPS, by General Motors heir and philanthropist Stewart Mott, Mr. and
Mrs. Philip Lilienthal, and the New York Community Trust.
Author Gordon Adams acknowledges in the report that the individuals involved with critiquing the draft report included
IPS fellow Philip Brenner, a Marxist instructor at the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus denied tenure and who
also was Washington editor of Cubatimes, the magazine of the Cuba Resource Center(CRC); NACLA veteran
Michael Locker, then head of a specialized NACLA spin-off, the Corporate Data Exchange(CDE) and a member of the
CRC staff and Peter Barash, staff director of the Subcommittee on Commerce once chaired by Rep. Ben
Rosenthal(D-NY) of the House Government Operations Committee.
Those who "provided the support and encouragement the author needed at critical moments" included Cora Weiss;
Tim Smith, a 1980 CEP trustee and head of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility(ICCR), another group
funded by Peter and Cora Weiss through the Rubin Foundation and Fund for Tomorrow that gathers information
mainly on U.S. companies doing business with South Africa; and Tom Asher, a former member of the CEP board and
executive committee and Washington lawyer long associated with IPS projects. Asher's wife, Marge Tabankin, was
the Carter Administration's head of the ACTION/VISTA programs. Demonstrating the in-bred CEP family connections
is the fact that while Asher served on CEP's executive committee, CEP's earliest advisors and consultants included
not only IPS's Richard Barnet, but also Sam Brown, from 1977 to 1981 Tabankin's boss as head of ACTION/VISTA.
Adams also credited Kai Bird, associate editor of The Nation, a weekly magazine whose primary writers and
contributors are veterans of IPS and NACLA, bolstered occasionally by writers such as Philip Agee and Victor Perlo
from the Communist Party, U.S.A. Central Committee.
FOCUS AND CONTENTS
According to The Iron triangle, the key ways to force greater disclosures about military research and development
programs, among the most highly classified military secrets, include the following tactics:
to focus attention on the voluntary political action committees(PACs) set up by U.S. corporations
that are principal defense contractors, raise conflict-of-interest questions against Congressmen and
Senators who have accepted those PAC contributions, and urge Congress lowering PAC
contribution limits;
to expose "corporate interests in work that Federal advisory committees consider, and board
member ties with government;"
to press for legislation to restrict NASA and DoD personnel from going to work for defense
contractors in fields related to their area of expertise in the guise of putting "greater distance
between DoD and the industry;"
to classify a far greater number of the activities of defense contractors' Washington offices as
"lobbying" and require additional restrictions and disclosures.
The CEP report targeted eight "highly significant" defense contractors - Boeing, General Dynamics,
Grumman, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop, Rockwell International and United Technologies -
and "gathered a wide range of available data *** using company disclosures and a variety of Federal and
local resources."
CEP appears unconcerned that there are legitimate national security reasons why long-term weapons
development programs and military policy meetings are kept as secret as possible. Furthermore, although
Iron Triangle was unable to document wrong-doing by the eight defense companies, their experts who
serve on military technology advisory boards or the former DoD technicians who have gone to work for
those defense contractors, CEP carped that without full disclosure, "it is difficult for the public(and, of
course, also for the Soviet GRU) to determine whether industry representatives acquire preferential
access through such committees."
The Council on Economic Priorities in effect is saying that in the absence of evidence of wrong-doing or
impropriety, one should assume that the parties concerned are guilty.
CEP ORGANIZATION
The Council on Economic Priorities was founded in 1969 by Alice R. Tepper, now Alice Tepper-Marlin,
who has been its executive-director, editor-in-chief, and president ex-officio of the board of directors. Its
budget grew from an initial $30,000 loan from Alice Tepper to a 1980 budget of $628,000 with five
administrative and clerical and fifteen professional employees.
Alice Tepper-Marlin, a political organizer for the 1968 Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign, earned a
B.A. in economics from Wellesley College and did graduate work at the New York University Graduate
School of Business Administration and the Kennedy Institute at Harvard. She worked as a financial analyst
at Thomas O'Connell Research & Management Corp., as a securities analyst and labor economist at
Burnham & Co., and has been an instructor at Rutgers University and Antioch College.
CEP's stated goals are "significant improvements in both the quality of corporate performance as it
touches the important areas of our social and natural environment, and the quality of governmental
performance as it interacts with the corporate establishment." It is a nonprofit, Tax-Exempt 501(c)(3)
foundation.
CEP credits its success to the extensive national press coverage it has obtained from its inception. In its
promotional literature, CEP has said:
"Beginning with its first study, the Council's publications have received extensive in-depth
news coverage in virtually every national publication. The New York Times has covered all
reports issued by the Council, several as front page stories. Others, such as Associated
Press, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, the Chicago Daily
News, the Los Angeles Times and numerous radio and TV programs have consistently
reported on the Council's work."
In a May 1974 letter to Ms. Tepper-Marlin, Robert W. Scrivner, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund,
wrote:
"***that the Fund was therefore 'willing to invest on the basis of its faith in a few individuals'***.
Your own imagination, vigor and dedication to the work of the Council have thus been major
forces in our decision to provide continued support for the Council."
In his book, Lobbying the Corporations, [Basic Books, 1978], David Vogel wrote that 30% of CEP's
income comes from corporations who subscribe to the full range of CEP studies[in 1981, $1,250/year].
Most of the rest of its funds come from individual and foundation contributors who have included the Djb
Foundation, Florence V. Burden Foundation, Fund for Tomorrow, Glide Foundation, Rockefeller
Family Fund, JDR III Foundation, Ottinger Foundation, Playboy Foundation, Shalan Foundation,
Stern Fund, and Samuel Rubin Foundation.
According to Newsweek, CEP offered the eight companies advance copies of The Iron Triangle - at $250
each - an offer Boeing turned down with the question, "Why pay $250 to someone who's doing a hatchet job on you?" |
