Freedom House, a propaganda machine created by Roosevelt to prepare the US public opinion for war, returned to the attack to stigmatize the Soviet field during the Cold War. At that time, it used western intellectuals, including French. Today, it organizes international media campaigns for religious freedom in China and for peace in Chechnya. Freedom House is currently presided over by James Woosley, former CIA Director.
In 1941, several associations were created in the United States to combat isolation and neutrality and to lead the country to a second intervention in World War II. Among them were the Ring of Freedom, Fight for Freedom, and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding Allies. Shortly before the attack against Pearl Harbor, these organizations started to support each other and, with the discreet help of the White House, they founded a common headquarters in New York: Freedom House.
Under the direction of Mr. George Field, Freedom House participated in hundreds of radio broadcasts during the war, it published pamphlets and it also organized exhibitions to help exiles, for racial integration within the armed forces, for the recognition of a free France and for the creation of the United Nations. However, the association did not limit its activities to organizing campaigns to gain the support of public opinion for war. At the same time, it organized the industrial mobilization through a specialized agency aiming at the employers and the trade unions.
Since 1943, Freedom House set up an annual freedom award [1] that was firstly granted to Walter Lippman, founder of the country’s propaganda mechanisms twenty years before. Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly managed to convince his defeated rival in the presidential elections, Republican Wendel Wilkie, so that he would become his special envoy around the world trying to expand the Alliance. Naturally, Wendel Wilkie and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt became the spokespersons of Freedom House even when, in fact, Wilkie only participated in one session of the Administration Council before he died in 1944.
In October 1945, Freedom House facilitated the opening of a house or venue for different organizations on 40th Street, named Wilkie Memorial Building thus offering free facilities for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the B’nai B’rith Council, the World Student Service Fund, etc.
Thus, by the end of the war, Freedom House was not dissolved but it supported the new combats of the White House. The association conducted campaigns for the Marshall Plan and NATO, for the decolonization of the English and French empires and against Communism. More than any other, it developed the slogan: “United States: country of freedom”. It was in the facilities of Freedom House, in 1949, where the Congress for Freedom of Culture [2] - a large CIA operation to manipulate Western European intellectuals - began.
[3]
By the end of the 1960s, George Field [4] retired and Leonard R. Sussman assumed the direction of Freedom House. Sussman, who had the difficult task of defending the US intervention in Vietnam, was followed by R. Bruce McColm (1988-93), Adrian Karatnycky (1993-97), Jim Denton [5] and Jennifer Windsor [6].
In 1982, when President Ronald Reagan [7] created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) [8] so that it could take care in a presentable manner of some CIA secret activities, Freedom House was integrated into the new mechanism.
It was also when Paul Wolfowitz [9] and his neoconservative friends decided to include many Trotskyite militants from Social Democrats USA in their different organizations. The NED subsidizes Freedom House, which at the same time co-finances programs chosen by the NED thus erasing any traces of US intervention.
In January 1983, during the Iran-Contras scandal, Ronald Reagan reorganized the system of “public diplomacy” [10]of the United States [11], headed in the National Security Council by Walter Raymond [12]. The latter organized a supervision committee, to which he integrated Leonard R. Sussman as a representative of Freedom House, Leo Cherne, a specialist on psychological war and Otto Reich [13], who was beginning his career, was in charge of the Operations Office.
In 1986, Freedom House hired the former editorial chief of the publications of the Congress for Freedom of Culture, Melvin Lasky, who opened in London an agency for the spreading of made-to-order articles for the international press. Like the Encounter magazine, which he headed since then, the Exchange program was financed by the CIA. Thus, it included, among others, Vladimir Bukovsky, Adam Michnik, André Glucksmann and Jean-François Revel.
The articles are published in the United Kingdom by The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Times; in Jamaica, by The Daily Gleaner; and particularly in the United States, by the Wall Street Journal.
Also in 1986, Freedom House began its program about religious freedom in the world. As a result of this initiative, taken up again by Congress, the Consultative Commission for Religious Freedom was created in 1998. This institution also writes an annual report about the topic [14].
In 1988, Freedom House created a working group on Central America whose purpose was spreading information about the Sandinista Revolution. On this occasion, the trade unionists of the AFL-CIO [15] were integrated to the Administration Council of Freedom House [16], which makes use of a specialized institute created by the trade union for the CIA: the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) [17].
During the 1990s, Freedom House expanded its activities and, for that reason, it opened offices in Algeria, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Uzbekistan, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. The association wanted to open an office in a state bordering Nigeria but it provisionally renounce the idea.
Freedom House launched a program to train Eastern and Central European dissidents on human rights in collaboration with the American Bar Association which created an office specialized on interference [18] starting from th existing model for the participation of trade unions and employers in secret activities.
The association has had the support of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) of Madeleine K. Albright, the section of the Democrats within the NED/CIA. For its activities, the “Rights Consortium” mobilizes the International Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO, but also the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ), the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the International Rescue Committee (IRC) [19], and the Women, Law and Development International (WLDI).
In 1999, Freedom House created the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), headed by former National security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former secretary of State Alexander Haig and former Congressman Stephen J. Solarz.
When these personalities were active, they created the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Then, they maintained their support of Bin Laden to direct the jihad toward Bosnia-Herzegovina against the Communist power of Belgrade, and then toward Chechnya to favor the collapse of the Russian Federation and to control the hydrocarbons of the Caucasus.
In 2002, Freedom House created in Hungary, with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a web service for the ONGs of Eastern and Central Europe with which it works: ngonet.org.
More recently, it conducted a rehabilitation campaign for the ARENA extreme right party, which participated in the World Anti-Communist League [20] and took responsibility for many extrajudicial executions in El Salvador; these efforts bore fruit as Antonio Saca became president of the country [21].
Finally, President George W. Bush ordered Freedom House to present an annual report on public liberties and political rights around the world, which the United States decided to take as reference to grant or deny development assistance in the framework of the Millennium Challenge Corporation [22]. Over the last few years, Freedom House was presided over by Congress Representative (Dem - New Mexico) Bill Richardson, an affable character and a specialist on parallel diplomacy who was nominated on four occasions (in vain) for the Nobel Peace Prize.Simultaneously, he was vice-president of the NDI with Madeleine K. Albright. However, Richardson resigned after his election as governor of New Mexico and because he expected to be the partner of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign (he presided over the Democrat Convention though).
He was succeeded by James Woolsey, former CIA Director and inventor of the Iraqi National Congress.
The administration Council is a directory of the intelligence. Besides the already mentioned personalities, it includes J. Brian Atwood (former NDI president and former coordinator of US humanitarian assistance); Ambassador Thomas S. Foley (president of the Trilateral Commission, former president of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board); Malcolm Forbes (Forbes Magazine); Theodore Forstmann (president of Empower America); Samuel Huntington (the theoretician of the clash of civilizations) [23]; Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick (current ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, member of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Committee); Diana Villiers (wife of Ambassador John Negroponte) [24]; and Ambassador Mark Palmer (founder of the consortium CME, for acquiring and installing audiovisual equipment in Eastern Europe). In 2002, its budget rose to around 14 million dollars.
[1] The presentation of the award was interrupted between 1977 and 1991. Among those who received it are George C. Marshall and Lucius Clay, Winston Churchill, Paul-Henri Spaak, Willy Brandt and Jean Monnet.
[2] «Quand la CIA finançait les intellectuels européen» (When the CIA financed European intellectuals), by Denis Boneau, Voltaire, November 27, 2003.
[3] The term atlantism refers to a US imperial policy of domination using or leaning on the power of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and also in synchrony with its satellite or allied countries. Its purpose is to preserve the US hegemony in all fields (military, political, economic).
[4] It was hard for George Field to assume his retirement and he engaged in several controversies with his successor before he gave up Freedom House.
[5] In 1997, Freedom House absorbed some programs of the foundation of Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton.
[6] Sussman, Karatnycky and Windsor, convinced republicans, are also active as part of the Project for a New American Century, the electoral staff created by George W. Bush in the American Enterprise Institute.
[7] «Ronald Reagan contre l’Empire du Mal», In French, Voltaire, June 7, 2004.
[8] «The networks of democratic interference», by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire, November 21, 2004.
[9] Paul Wolfowitz himself is a Trotskyite
[10] «Public Diplomacy» is the politically correct term for propaganda».
[11] See presidential Directive 77.
[12] «George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography», by Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, Chapter 18. Book available in the Internet.
[13] «Otto Reich and counterrevolution», by Paul Labarique and Arthur Lepic, Voltaire, May 14, 2004.
[14] Freedom House currently conducts a campaign against China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, Philippines, Sudan and Vietnam.
[15] «AFL-CIO or AFL-CIA?», by Paul Labarique, Voltaire, January 2005.
[16] It is the case, for example, of Albert Shanker, William Doherty, Sol C. Chaikin and Norman Hill.
[17] «1962-1979: the AFL-CIO and trade union counterrevolution», Voltaire, January 2005.
[18] The American Bar Association’s Central and East European Initiative (ABA/CEELI).
[19] The IRC was for a long time headed by Leo Cherne, specialist on psychological war and Freedom House administrator. Rescuing the World, the life and time of Leo Cherne, by Andrew S. Smith, prologue by Henry A. Kissinger, State University of New York Press, 2002.
[20] «The World Anti-Communist League: International of Crime», by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire, January 2005.
[21] «The ultra-right governs in El Salvador», by Edgar González Ruiz, Voltaire, June 4, 2004.
[22] «Le Millenium Challenge, colonialisme liberal», in French, by Paul Labarique, Voltaire, February 19, 2004.
[23] “The war of civilizations”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire, December 7, 2004.
[24] «John Negroponte bientôt à Bagdad» (John Negroponte soon in Bagdad) In French, by Arthur Lepic, Voltaire, April 20, 2004
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