Heritage Foundation, extract from The "Terrorism" Industry

The Heritage Foundation is important because of its size and influence, and also because it is a far-right enterprise that has nonetheless achieved respectability and power. It was organized in 1973 by Joseph Coors and New Right activist Paul Weyrich, with substantial funding help from Richard Mellon Scaife. ^[1] Edwin J. Feulner, longtime head of Heritage, was reportedly chosen by the Scaife group. ^[2] Funded subsequently by a wide variety of corporations and foundations as well as wealthy individuals, the Heritage budget reached $14 million in 1987.

Heritage has served as an umbrella organization for a variety of institutions of the extreme right and for outright terrorist groups. It has had ties to the Christian right, the Moon system, Taiwan, and South Korea, ^[3] and the RENAMO lobby ^[4] has been headquartered in the Heritage building. With its more respectable face, Heritage has supported right-wing intellectuals, and it has pioneered in developing a resource bank "to help bring this non-Washington expertise into the policy-making process." ^[5] It has strongly emphasized programs designed to influence policy through a continuous flow of position papers, publicity, and conferences, and by exploiting its relationships with decision makers. Heritage had close connections with the Reagan administration, and former Reagan-era officials Edwin Meese, Caspar Weinberger, Kenneth Adelman, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and numerous others regularly attended Heritage conferences and meetings. Heritage supplied a large number of intellectuals and administrators to the Reagan administration, as well as position papers on a wide variety of issues. ^[6] The twenty-volume, three thousand-page 'Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration', prepared and published by Heritage, served as the official transition blueprint for the Reagan team in 1980. It stressed the importance of the threat of "international terrorism" and called for the reinstitution of House panels on internal security and "subversion." ^[7]

Heritage also has close links to the hard-line right in the military-industrial complex and elsewhere. Edwin Feulner serves on the strategy board of the ASC, a powerful lobbying and propaganda organ of the defense industry. A former chairman of the Heritage board of trustees, Ben Blackburn, is a Southern Republican noted for his long and unremitting struggle against civil rights. Robert Moss, a right-wing Australian-born British journalist and conduit of intelligence disinformation, was a founder of the Heritage journal, 'Policy Review'; and Roger Pearson, a well-known anti-Semite, neo-Nazi, and proponent of the racist pseudo-science of eugenics, ^[8] was an early member of the editorial board of this journal. Heritage officials reciprocated by joining Pearson's 'Journal of Social and Economic Studies'. Feulner edited a volume, 'China � the Turning Point', which was published by Pearson's Council on American Affairs in 1967. ^[9]

Heritage has had a strongly diversified interest in policy, both domestic and foreign. If it has any specialization, it has been UN bashing and the cultivation of unilateralist and militaristic positions. It has not focused heavily on terrorism, but its numerous right-wing connections and ideology have tied it closely to the world's primary regimes of terror and terrorists (Israel, South Africa, the contras, the Guatemalan and Salvadoran states). Its experts and conference participants have regularly conveyed a simpleminded view of world terrorism as a product of Soviet conspiracy and have urged forcible responses to the terrorists. Over the years Heritage has provided a base and vehicle for writings on terrorism by Robert Moss, Brian Crozier, and Samuel T. Francis.

Francis, Heritage's most prolific writer on terrorism, is a one-time staff member of the Denton Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism and a former aide to the late right-wing Senator John East. ^[10] In his book The Soviet Strategy of Terror, Francis positioned himself somewhat to the right of Claire Sterling on the Soviet conspiracy to terrorize the West. His citations, in order of importance, are Robert Moss (18), Brian Crozier (16), other CIA-affiliated sources (15), and John Rees's 'Information Digest'. ^[11] Moss and Crozier have both been on the CIA's payroll, so that CIA-based sourcing overwhelmed all others in Francis's book. Rees, the next leading source, was a member of the John Birch Society and a professional infiltrator and informer. His 'Information Digest' has long been recognized as a compendium of fact, rumor, and planted disinformation very close in rigor and mode of compilation to traditional police Red Squad and FBI political files. ^[12] Francis, however, informed the publication 'Human Events' that Rees was an "authoritative" source on the subject of internal subversion." ^[13] Francis follows Rees in calling for a close monitoring of subversion, generously defined. ^[14] In an article published in Roger Pearson's journal, Francis also finds that the ANC and "its convicted leader Nelson Mandela" are communist-controlled representatives of the forces of violence, in no way comparable to true freedom fighters like UNITA and the contras. ^[15]

Through monographs, lectures, and policy briefs called "Backgrounders," Heritage has been a strong proponent of counterinsurgency/national security doctrines, particularly with regard to Central America. The institute provided a set of foreign policy recommendations for Reagan's second term that encouraged full support for paramilitary forces (death squads) in those countries where U.S. interests were "threatened." Among the relevant follow-up publications are: Alvin Bernstein and Col. John D. Waghelstein, 'How to Win in El Salvador' (1984); Virginia Polk, 'The New Guatemala Deserves U.S. Support' (1985); Timothy Ashby, Nicaragua's 'Terrorist Connection' (1986); William Pascoe III, 'Angola Tests the Reagan Doctrine' (1985); Jonas Savimbi, 'The War Against Soviet Colonialism' (1986); Jaime Pinto and John Huber,' The White House's Confusing Signals on Mozambique' (1985); and Adam Wolfson,' Heart of Darkness: What Governments Do to Blacks in the Rest of Africa' (1985).

Heritage's writings are notable for a combination of assertiveness, negligible interest in authenticated fact, and extremely reactionary opinion. As an illustration, in an October 1986 Backgrounder "Update" (no. 27), Senior Policy Analyst James A. Phillips argued that Tripoli's involvement was "suspected" in "a foiled plan to attack the U.S. embassy in Togo in July, an August mortar attack on a British airbase in Cyprus, and the September 5 hijacking of an American airliner in Karachi, Pakistan." Phillips provided no evidence or citations to support these allegations, and argued that the next time Qaddafi was "caught red-handed sponsoring terrorist attacks against Americans," the U .S, military should undertake an air-to-ground strike designed to cripple Libya's oil industry. Likewise, Heritage Lecture No. 89, "Narco-Terrorism: The Kremlin Connection;' delivered at the foundation in December of 1986 by Rachel Ehrenfeld, takes the line that truth seekers like Elliott Abrams simply cannot be heard over the din of Soviet disinformation and the public's unwillingness to believe the truth about Soviet intentions. Her evidence for a Kremlin connection to both drug trafficking and terrorism consists of generalized assertions by carefully selected Western officials, along with the claims of Cuban and Nicaraguan expatriates that undermining the West via drugs is an important part of Red strategy. She quotes a Nicaraguan expatriate's testimony at one of the Denton subcommittee's hearings of 1984, who claims that two high Nicaraguan officials told him that "the drug trade produced a good economic benefit when we needed [it] . . . we wanted to provide food for our people with the suffering and death of youth in the United States. . . ." Ehrenfeld cites this as authentic evidence. '^[16]

Heritage's influence extends into the areas of overseas information and "public diplomacy." Two members of the Heritage board of trustees, foundation president Feulner and Richard Mellon Scaife, serve on the U.S. Advisory Committee on Public Diplomacy, which serves in a consultative capacity to the United States Information Agency (USIA). In hearings held before the House Subcommittee on International Operations in 1986, Feulner lamented the fact that the USIA had not fully succeeded in informing the rest of the world about the threat posed by terrorists. Feulner had previously recommended that USIA develop and implement a formal policy on terrorism.

Heritage has important overseas ties, particularly to the British right. Feulner has served as chair of Britain's Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, which counted former National Security Advisor Richard Allen (a "Heritage Fellow") among the members of its "Council of Management." ^[17] According to IRS figures, Heritage gave IEDSS $151, 273 in 1985 (their total income for 1985 was $185,611). IEDSS is well known for manufacturing disinformation about the European peace movement and for staging anti-CND campaigns in Parliament and the media, as well as for providing information on international terrorism. ^[18] Heritage has also given $140,000 to Brian Crozier's International Freedom Fund Establishment.

Notes

• ^ 1. Saloma, Ominous Politics, p. 14; see also Karen Rothmyer, "Citizen Scaife," Columbia Journalism Review, July-Aug. 1981, on Scaife's centrality in funding the conservative labyrinth, summarized in Saloma, Ominous Politic, pp. 27-29.

• ^ 2. Saloma, Ominous Politics, p. 15.

• ^ 3. Joseph Coors, a founder and trustee of Heritage, is a member of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International and is also a member of CBN University's board of regents. Two of Heritage's trustees, Lewis Lehrman and William Simon, are members of the Knights of Malta, and a former chairman of the Heritage board of trustees, Frank Shakespeare, is also a Knight of Malta. The Christian Voice, a far-right California-based organization most noted for its service to Reagan's political ambitions and its hate literature, is housed in the Heritage building. Its leaders, Robert Grant and Garry Jarmin, have close ties to the WACL and the Moonies. See Larry Kikham, "Holy Spirit or Holy Spook?" and "The Theology of Nuclear War," in CovertAction Information Bulletin, no. 27 (Spring 1987); Diamond, Spiritual Warfare, pp. 61-63. Heritage has had an Asian Studies Center headed by Richard V. Allen, a paid lobbyist of the Taiwan government, who was also for a time a member of Reagan's NSC. The South Korean connection was described earlier in this chapter.

• ^ 4. On the ativities of RENAMO, a creation of the apartheid regime of Rhodesia in 1976, taken over as a proxy by South Africa in 1980, Roy Stacey, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, described the killings in Mozambique as "one of the most brutal holocausts against ordinary human beings since World War II." Quoted in Johnson and Martin, Fronlline Southern Africa, p. 476.

• ^ 5. Heritage Annual Report, 1984, p. 17.

• ^ 6. Blumenthal, Rise of the Counter-Establishment, pp. 45-51.

• ^ 7. Saloma, Ominous Politics, pp. 15-17.

• ^ 8. On Roger Pearson's background, Ciaran 0 Maolain's, The Radical Right: A World Directory (London: Longman's 1987), has the following:

Under Council on American Affairs (Pearson, president) � "lt hosted the 11th annual WACL conference in Washington in 1978 with the help of the anti-semitic Liberty Lobby. Pearson chaired the conference; one of his assistants and an employee of the Council was Earl Thomas, a former member of National Socialist White People's Party."

Under Mankind Quarterly (Pearson, editor-publisher; Lt.-Col. Rohert Gayne, founder) - "This journal presents as academic essays the views of racists and eugenists from around the world. Its editor has long been a leading figure on the racist right in the United States. . . . The founder, a close associate of Pearson. . . has been active in this field since 1939, when he visited the nazi race theorist Hans Gunther in Berlin before writing Teuton and Slav on the Polish Frontier. After the war he became a professor in an Indian university and was involved with the Candour League and the Racial Preservation Society. . . . In one article in the magazine, a Mr. Kiamran Halil referred to an 'adage' that 'the brain of a negro is contained in one single pip of the fig,' and gave details of how to detect an individual's black ancestry of up to one-sixteenth degree."

Under National Forum - "The Forum promotes belief in a Jewish conspiracy and in white supremacy. . . . In the early 1960s [the leader of the Forum, Ivor Benson, a South African and press censor under the Smith regime in Rhodesia] was a contributing editor of Western Destiny, the journal of racist anthropologist Roger Pearson."

• ^ 9. Bellant, Old Nazis, pp. 43-46; Tom Barry, Deb Preusch, and Beth Sims, The New Right Humanitarians (Albuquerque, N.M.: Resource Center, 1986), pp. 38, 61.

• ^ 10. Francis was responsible for the sections on terrorism that appear in Heritage's Mandate for Leadership.

• ^ 11. Philip Paull, "'International Terrorism': The Propaganda War," master's thesis, San Francisco State University, 1982, p. 79.

• ^ 12. Chip Berlet points out that "Rees uses guilt by association as his primary research thesis. To prove the nuclear freeze [movement] is a Soviet plot, Rees in Information Digest notes that public remarks on disarmament by a member of the Soviet Central Committee of the Communist Party bears a 'striking similarity' to material produced by the Mobilization for Survival, [etc., and] that several of the organizations involved in the nuclear freeze campaign were identified by wimesses during the McCarthy era as communist fronts." The Hunt for Red Menace (Cambridge, Mass.: Political Research Associates, 1988), p. 20. For more on Rees's operations and tactics, see Donner, Age of Surveillance. According to a New York State Assembly memorandum, dated February 20, 1976, which deals with Rees as a source of State Police information, "Information Digest appears to have formed an underground link between willing and gullible police departments throughout the nation, including the New York State Police. . . . Information Digest's raw, unevaluated, editorialized and frequently derogatory information was used to develop dossiers on thousands of patriotic and decent Americans who had committed no crime and were not suspected of committing a crime." The report suggested that the State Police should purge its files of Rees-related data and sever all ties to his operation. "Memorandum to Speaker Stanley Steingut and Assemblyman Mark Siegel, from William F. Haddad and Thomas M. Burton; re: Sources of State Police Information; date: February 20, 1976," The Assembly, State of New York, Albany.

• ^ 13. Chip Berlet, "Anticommunism in the U.S.: The Hunt for Red Menace," CovertAction Information Bulletin, no. 31 (Winter 1989), p. 7.

• ^ 14. See Frank Donner, "Rounding Up the Usual Suspects," The Nation, August 7-14, 1982; and the exchange of letters between Donner and Francis, September 25 and Octoher 2, 1982.

• ^ 15. Samuel T. Francis, "Communism, Terrorism, and the African National Congress," Journal of Sociol, Political and Economic Studies, Spring 1986, pp. 55-71.

• ^ 16. While the American right has often made unsupported claims about left connections to "narcoterrorism," they ignore the fact that narcotics has been the standard funding mechanism of U.S.-backed surrogate and proxy forces. The so-called Afghan resistance, for example, has been trafficking in heroin and hashish for several years (see William Vornherger, "Afghan Rebels and Drugs," CovertAction Information Bulletin, no. 28 [Summer 1987], pp. 11-12), while the contras have been helping to fund their attacks on Nicaragua with cocaine money (see Vince Bielski and Dennis Bernstein, "The Cocaine Connection," ibid., pp. 13-16; Jonathan Kwinty, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987]; Cockburn, Out of Control. Likewise, in 1984, partisans of ousted Honduran strongman General Gustavo Alvarez Mamnez - a staunch supporter of the contras â€â€? attempted to return their leader to power in an aborted coup attempt. The FBI disclosed that the plot to assassinate President Suazo Cordova was financed using cocaine money (Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, p. 232; Jon Anderson, "Loose Cannons: On the Trail of Israel's Gunrunners in Central America," New Outlook, Feb. 1989, p. 29). John Singlaub and the U.S. Council for World Freedom have been working closely with Major General Vang Pao and the now U.S.-based United Lao National Liberation Front, or Neo Hom, in their ongoing war against the current Laotian government (Ruth Hammond, "The Great Refugee Shakedown: The Hmong Are Paying to Free Laos â€â€? But What's Happening to the Money?" Washington Post, April 16, 1989, p. BI). Vang Pao was heavily involved in the Laotian heroin trade during the Vietnam War, and operated a major processing lab in Long Tien (Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southest Asia [New York: Harper & Row, 1973], pp. 264fT.). There is a long and sordid history of CIA links to the drug trade in Southeast Asia (see ibid.; also David Truong, "Running Drugs and Secret Wars;' CovertAction Information Bulletin, no. 28 [Summer 1987], pp. 3-5).

• ^ 17. Richard Allen is chairman of the Credit International Bank, which opened in Washington, D.C., in early 1989 and is designed to serve "high net worth individuals." Also on the board of the new bank are Edwin Feulner of Heritage and Charles T. Manatt, a Washington attorney and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Stephen Wyman, "Banking with a Personal Touch;' Washingtan Post, Feb. 27, 1989.

• ^ 18. "The Heritage Foundation Goes Abroad;' Nation, June 6,1987, p. 763.