Norman Dodd on US Tax-Exempt Foundations

G. Edward Griffin interviews Norman Dodd about his involvement on the 1954 Reece Committee, which investigated tax-exempt foundations in the United States.

The revelations on the ideology and purpose of the foundations are eye-opening, but he also shares information about his earlier career, which also illuminates how the world works.

Dodd was a straight shooter. We need more like him these days. Rest in Peace (June 29, 1899 – January 24,1987) .

Speculative Banking Destroys US Economy—Bankers Don’t Care

To warm up Dodd before getting into the primary topic of the discussion, Foundations, Griffin asks him to say a bit about his career prior to his work for the Reece Committee.

Dodd shares he was a precocious riser in the banking sector. After the crash of 1929, his banking supervisors at a Morgan bank asked him to research why he thought the crash happened, and what they could do to not suffer the same fate again. 

“I was fool enough to accept this assignment. It meant you were going out to search for something nobody could tell you what you were looking for.”

Relieved of all other banking duties, Dodd spent 2.5 focused years on putting together his report. To sum up, he discovered that they should return to sound banking. 

The response to his report shocked him, particularly after the devastation speculative banking wreaked on the economy in the Crash. 

“We will never see sound banking in the United States again.”

They said, shocking Dodd, that the die had been cast since after World War I and there was no going back. He spent a year thinking about that, and decided he had to resign. The President caught wind of this and told him that the prominent bankers, who had read his report couldn’t get over it. 

“The Directors have never been able to get your report to them out of their mind and as a result they have decided that you must redesign this bank in keeping with your own ideas. Can I tear up your letter?”

Norm thought this was a golden opportunity to be of service to the country by cleaning up the banking industry. Unfortunately, after agreeing to the deal with the president he wasn’t allowed to do the work. Whenever he brought it up, they told him not to worry about it. Put your feet on the desk, play tennis and golf to your heart’s content. Get promoted to Vice President. Make a huge salary and put away a fantastic pension. Perfect. 

This would be a dream for 99% of Americans, but Dodd was different. He couldn’t do it, so he resigned again. This time it stuck. The industry blackballed him for his idealism, and he failed to get a job at another bank.

Real World Lesson: This story demonstrates the damage to a genuine person smashing into the will of the Oligarchy. 

The financial system is corrupt to the core. US banking was tainted post World War I. Those in power either are pushing for this because they believe in the cause, one-world order, or are profiting off it without a thought to the devastating ramifications for the country. 

Any idealistic person with talent gets rejected outright or sucked in with false promises of interest in their reform ideas. Give us a report. Let us know what you find. Wink. wink. They know what he’ll find, and they won’t listen. If the person is persuasive and talented enough, they’ll try to flip him with a cushy job and great salary. A high caliber person like Dodd can be useful if converted to the right frame of mind. 

If the you rebuff an offer you can’t refuse, you’re out of a job with few prospects. The tentacles are far reaching.

The Reece Committee Revelations

Being intelligent, industrious, and ambitious Dodd was able to make a career out of various banking-related functions: investment counsel, stock exchange member, and advisor to individuals with capital funds. 

Through all this he found himself in a clique of people dissatisfied with the direction of the country, who were trying to influence educational institutes to teach realistic economics and away from speculative activities. 

With this knowledge, network, and ambition, he found himself appointed as Director of Research for the Reece Committee, tasked with determining whether the activities of major U.S. Foundations were Un-American. 

Un-American defined as “Determination to affect changes in the country by unconstitutional means.”

“We have plenty of constitutional means to affect change in government. Any effort in that direction did not avail itself of procedures offered by the constitutional could justifiably be called un-American.”

He summarized what he found: “Affect was to orient our educational system away from support of principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and implemented in the Constitution.”

Ford Foundation Shocker

Rowan Gaither, President of the Ford Foundation, summoned Dodd to New York for a chat about what he was up to with the Reece Committee. 

After pleasantries Gaither dropped a bombshell saying that the policy makers at the Ford Foundation worked with the OSS during the War, or with the European Economic Administration after the War. In both cases they were working under directives from the President of the United States. They were continuing with this work at the Foundation. Those directives?

“Use our grant making power to alter life in the United States so it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.”

Dodd’s response after nearly falling off his chair:

“Legally you’re entitled to make grants for this purpose but I don’t think you’re entitled to withhold that information from the people of the country to whom you’re indebted for your tax exemption. So why don’t you tell the people what you just told me?”

Gaither: “We would not think of doing any such thing.”

Takeaways: Roosevelt, Truman, or Eisenhower. It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House, the directive is the same … move toward collectivism. Merge with the communist Soviet Union. 

Also, your investigative committee is cute, but this information will never see the light of day, so I’ll tell you straight out what we’re doing, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

Carnegie Endowment’s Push to Control Education

Dr. Joseph Johnson, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also summoned Dodd to New York for a chat. Johnson was the successor to Alger Hiss, a suspected Soviet spy, as President of the foundation. 

Johnson said answering Dodd’s questions was going to be a great bit of trouble, and offered an alternative plan. They would give a Dodd staffer access to all the historical minutes of the Endowment for two weeks. 

Dodd accepted thinking they had lost their minds. He had a good idea of what they were going to find in the historical minutes. He figured the young executives had never read the minutes, so they didn’t know what they were exposing. 

Dodd chose Catherine Casey to go up and record the information by dictaphone. Casey was a competent attorney placed on the Committee to make sure Dodd and team weren’t breaking any Congressional procedures or rules. She was unsympathetic to the purpose of the investigation. Her attitude was … why mess with these Foundations when they do so much good in the world. 

What Casey discovered:

In 1908 the Foundation asked a basic question: “Is there any means more effective than war to alter the life of an entire people?” 

Answer: no more effective means known to humanity. 

In 1909 they asked a second question: “How do we involve the United States in a war?” There was nothing further from the minds of US citizens. 

Answer: Control the US State Department by taking over and controlling the diplomatic machinery of the country. 

This becomes their objective. 

Lo and behold, the United States entered WWI. In the minutes there’s a memo to President Wilson asking him to string along American involvement in the war to maximize culture-changing impact. 

After the war the interests of the Endowment shifted to education. They had made progress in altering the life of Americans, and didn’t want to lose that. So, they decided to control the US education system. Also a very ambitious goal. Too big for one foundation, so they teamed with the Rockefeller Foundation. 

They determined the key to success would be changing the teaching of American History. They approached prominent teachers of American History with a proposal to alter what they were teaching. They refused. Carnegie realized they would need to … “build their own stable of historians.”

So, they connected with the Guggenheim Foundation, which specializes in fellowships. They gave 20 fellowships to the brightest doctoral students in American History, who were then taken to London for indoctrination. These 20 became the nucleus of the American Historical Association (AHA). 

By the end of the 1920s the Endowment had granted $400 million to the AHA to produce a seven-volume study on the historical direction of the country. The essence of the study was … the future of the United States “belongs to collectivism administered with characteristic American efficiency.”

These findings were a terrible shock to Casey. She wasn’t able to return to her law practice, and eventually lost her mind.

Takeaway: The evil genius of the Elite Ruling Class is the subterfuge. They use the cover of philanthropic works and the language of love, peace, and understanding to assuage the public, while they accelerate their collectivist agenda. They also write down their objectives, knowing the typical citizen doesn’t have the time or attention span to read the documents. Also, they know the Cabal will use their considerable influence to halt any substantial disclosures. 

Turns out those right-wing conspiracy nuts that say public education in the US is a cultural Marxist indoctrination program are correct.

Politics Are Ugly

Dodd said the efforts to sabotage the Reece Committee started right away. Of particular interest was the actions of a high ranking Congressman from Ohio named Wayne Hays. Hays told Dodd he wouldn’t back their work. Then, after speaking with Dodd said he would. But, in the end stabbed them in the back by saying the investigation was a sham that Reece was undertaking to increase his prominence in the House of Representatives. Hays’ duplicitous nature is common on the Hill. 

They accused Dodd of anti-semitism. The go to move for anybody that disagrees with the Agenda. Dodd chuckles at the childish reasoning for this accusation, explaining that an intelligence officer on his team owned a book called Waters Flowing Eastward, which is a castigation of Jewish influence in the world.

With these feeble accusations, the Reece Committee disbanded before it could present its findings. Typical.

Two Birds One Stone

The Establishment is smart. Very smart. We’re not dealing with idiots. They research and study and test to come up with the most potent means to achieve their collectivist utopia. It seems that each move must also increase their net worth and influence. 

These are not destitute ideologues. The world moves in the direction they want, and they get rich and powerful in the meantime. A heady combination. 

Dodd shares that, yes, there was a push for collectivism with these Foundations. But, the ultimate aim was a massive wealth transfer in two ways: 

One – The bankers and lawyers took the money donated to the foundations and transferred it into the hands of trustees. The wealth was not used for public purposes. It was a subversion of the original intent. 

Two – Communism used as a means to develop a monopoly. Take control of large-scale industry under the guise of a state collective and pour profit into personal coffers. No more free market competition to deliver goods and services. The state runs everything and only the elite profit while the masses starve. This is a scheme capitalist monopolists only dream of. 

Think the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm. It starts off as an ideological revolution against “the man” and ends up with the pigs taking over the farmer’s house and instituting absurd laws that cause a serious decline in the quality of life for the rest.

This is the ultimate goal of the Cabal illustrated by Dodd’s stories. 

Foundations Provide Plausible Deniability for the Crime

These days everybody is launching a foundation because it’s the latest and greatest grift using even more sophisticated ways to profit and aggregate power.

It also inserts layers of people and bureaucracy between the crime and the perpetrator. This is like a crime boss never killing a rival with his own hand, or accepting payoffs directly from the protection rackets. It also goes through intercession layers, making it harder to pin guilt to the top.

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