http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/06/319650.shtml
From Bob Feldman and alternativemediawatch
Lannan Foundation grant money that helps fund Democracy Now! was derived from surplus wealth of a major investor in ITT, J.Patrick Lannan. The Democracy Now! program may not be providing its listeners with much information about the role that Ultra-Rich Financier J.Patrick Lannan played in global history prior to his death in 1983 or about how the Lannan family obtained its surplus wealth.
One reason may be because, since 2001, Democracy Now Productions/Institute for Media Analysis has apparently been given three grants, totalling $325,000, by the Lannan family's Lannan Foundation.
In an October 18, 1995 article, The New York Daily News noted that "Lannan, who was running about $2 billion in assets in the 1960s, had assets ranging from the Oakland A's to a majority stake in International Telephone & Telegraph [ITT];" and "upon Lannan's death, his heirs squabbled over control of $100 million in assets that he left to a foundation." Since 1986, the assets controlled by the Lannan family's tax-exempt, "non-profit" Lannan Foundation has apparently increased from $100 million to $200 million.
According to the 1980 edition of Everybody's Business: An Almanac, International Telephone & Telegraph [ITT] was founded in 1920; and after German Chancellor Adolph Hitler came to power in the 1930s, "ITT companies in Germany expanded and got contracts to help in Germany's rearmament." The same book also noted that during WW II, "while German bombers made by a partially-owned ITT company were bombing American ships, ITT in the United States was making a directional finder that helped the U.S. Navy destroy German submarines."
In the Vietnam War Era, ITT also developed and produced both navigation systems for laser-guided bombs and surveillance and gunfire control for the Pentagon's automated battlefield. And during the Watergate Era, ITT was also accused of arranging a favorable settlement by the Nixon administration of an anti-trust lawsuit, by offering to contribute $400,000 to finance the 1972 Republican Party Convention.
After the Allende regime in Chile nationalized ITT's 70% interest in the Chilean Telephone Company [Chitelco], ITT proposed an 18-point covert action plan to the Nixon Administration for overthrowing the Allende regime. According to the book The CIA's Greatest Hits by Mark Zepezauer, the CIA then "sponsored demonstrations and strikes, funded by ITT and other U.S. corporations with Chilean holdings," prior to General Pinochet's September 11, 1973 military coup in Chile.
Besides owning "a majority state in International Telephone & Telegraph," J. Patrick Lannan was both a member of the Henry Holt and Company publishing firm's board of directors between 1948 and 1959 and a business associate of Texas oil multimillionaire Clint Murchison. As a December 1959 Fortune magazine article, entitled "Henry Holt and the Man From Koon Kreek," recalled:
"J. Patrick Lannan... was making a career of of easing himself into difficult corporate situations. Lannan has since become better known as an influential investor in enterprises such as International Telephone & Telegraph, Duquesne Light, and the Milwaukee Road... Lannan never invested heavily in Holt. He did join the board of directors in 1948, but he resigned a few months ago [in 1959], stating as his reason the pressure of his other interests...
"Lannan's contribution, however, was far greater than the money he put into Holt or the advice he gave on its operation. It was he who brought in Clint Murchison. When Lannan first took an interest in Holt, he suggested to his friend Don Carter, who often acts as a financial representative for Murchison, that the oilman do the same... Soon afterward, when an investment trust called International Utilities put a 13 percent block of Henry Holt common stock on the market, Carter bought it for Murchison."
Murchison soon purchased additional Henry Holt and Company stock and gained a controlling interest in the mostly textbook publishing company.
While the Lannan Foundation founder sat on the Henry Holt and Company board of directors, Henry Holt and Company also published an anti-communist book in 1958 under the byline of Murchison's close friend, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, entitled Masters of Deceit.
The book Alien Ink: The FBI's War On Freedom Of Expression by Natalie Robins noted that "according to former assistant director William Sullivan, who was one of six Bureau employees who `put together' Masters of Deceit, the book made "Hoover very rich, though most people thought he had given away his royalties to charity."
The FBI helped make the Henry Holt and Company's Masters of Deceit book "an instant hit--by exerting pressure and buying up copies," according to Alien Ink. Hoover's Masters of Deceit is estimated to have sold about 250,000 copies, including 25,000 copies which were bought by former Schenley Industries Chairman of the Board Lewis Rosentiel's "charitable foundation" for "distribution to educational institutions, an underwriting worth over $100,000," according to the book Hoover's FBI: The Men and The Myth by former FBI Agent William Turner.
Coincidentally, according to the book High Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy--What Really Happened by Robert J. Groden and Harrison Edward Livingston, "Penn Jones, Jr. claims that Hoover and Nixon" were at "Murchison's house" in Dallas, Texas " on the nightbefore the assassination " of JFK, for "a meeting."
Given the financial link between the Lannan family's foundation and Democracy Now! Productions, however, it's not likely that the Murchison-Hoover-Henry Holt & Company role in either U.S. history or a possible JFK assassination conspiracy cover-up will be discussed much on Democracy Now!. Similarly, the same Lannan Foundation-subsidized radio show also has not devoted much radio air time to discussing the possibility of a 9/11 conspiracy cover-up since September 12, 2001.
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