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NATIONAL AFFAIRS THE PASS-THROUGH: HOW THE CIA BANKROLLED PRIVATE PROJECTS Fronts Conduits Recipients Tower Fund American Council for the M.D. Anderson Foundation International Commission of Jurists Gothem Foundation Congress for Cultural Borden Trust Freedom Beacon Fund Hoblitzelle Foundation Institute of International Labor Research, Inc. Price Fund Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Outside of Heights Fund Russia J. M. Kaplan Fund. Inc. . Williford Telford Fund African-Américan Institute C Edset Fund American Friends of the Middle East I Baird (David, Josephine. & San Miguel Fund Winfield) Foundation, Inc. American Society of A Kentfield Fund African Culture Institute of Monroe Fund International Education J. Frederick Brown Foundation Michigan Fund Institute of Public Administration Andrew Hamilton Fund Atwater research program Appalachian Fund Rabb (Sidney and Esther) in North Africa Charitable Foundation Wynnewood Fund National Student Association Charles Price Whitten Trust Marshall Foundation Operations & Policy James Carlisle Trust Research, Inc. Baedeker: A sampling of how the CIA helped fund some of its pet philanthropies during the past decade conservatives, who were irked because San Francisco-but it maintains not even said William P. Hobby Jr., president of so much of the money was going to mis- a post-office box there. The trail to the The Houston Post and trustee of the sionaries of the liberal left. The Adminis- Price Fund leads to a Manhattan law Hobby Foundation. "We were told that, tration felt compelled at once to defend office-and a tight-lipped attorney who if we cooperated, we would receive cer- the CIA as having merely followed or- will not even identify himself. A Dallas tain funds from the CIA. Then we'd re- ders dating to Harry Truman's day-and answering service takes calls for the ceive a letter, say from Organization to pass the word that at least some of the Kentfield Fund; an operator there XYZ, asking for funds. We granted the pipelines would be turned off. thought its patron was an otherwise un- funds, of course." And with no questions Dummy Fronts: The technique, in re- known philanthropist named Dana Kent- asked: "We believed that they [the CIA] trospect, seemed surprisingly simple-and field, then apologized for not checking knew what they were doing.' surprisingly vulnerable to disclosure. The further: "Some of our records were What the CIA was doing, of course, CIA's pet tactic was a three-layer "pass- rained on. They melted together." was secretly underwriting a miscellany through" operation for getting money For the "pass-through, the CIA adopt- of American organizations abroad, some- from its own coffers into the hands of cer- ed some 30 of the 15,000 authentic foun- times as cover for nelligence-gathering, tain favored philanthropies, some of them dations currently operating in the U.S. more often to mount a social-democratio knowing, some apparently not. and made them conduits to the recipient counterforce to Communist propaganda. First, the agency set up perhaps a groups. A few (the J.M. Kaplan Fund Disparate Groups: The list that began score of "primary organizations -dummy and three David G. Baird family founda- with NSA grew last week with the addi- foundations whose assets seemed to con- tions) had been under Federal scrutiny tion of such disparate groups as the re- sist mainly of nondescript names (like for mixing business with philanthropy- tail clerks union and the World Confed- Price, Gotham or Beacon). mailing ad- troubles that vanished once they took up eration of Organizations of Teachers. dresses and mysteriously elf-replenishing with the CIA. Others linked at least in- The Kaplan Fund. founded by the for. bank accounts. I ypically, these fronts directly to the network included such show up neither in standard foundation foundations as New York directories nor in the files of the Internal nulti-millionaire John Hay Whitney's Revenue Service (where one assistant Trust for Charitable Purposes. Most sim- commissioner is usually wired into the ply answered a call to patriotic duty rum operation). Nor are they easily found. "We were approached about three years The Edsel Fund's last known address was ago by a representative from the CIA. Dominican An intermediary Newsweek, March 6, 1967 31 x