Data compiled by Daniel Brandt in 1978-1979; introduction written in 2001.
Globalization is the concern today, while during the 1970s the problem was "half globalization." At that time the Cold War was still on, and half of the world was denied to the oligarchs that one typically finds at a private university in America, such as the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. What the USC trustees lacked in profits from denied areas was compensated for by profiteering from the defense budget.
This list was compiled when I asked for a copy of USC's investment portfolio in 1978, and discovered that not only was it secret, but that no one before me had even bothered to ask. Initially I was interested in the divestment campaign that was gaining strength on many campuses over the issue of corporations that did business in apartheid South Africa. It soon became a question of whether some USC trustees were secretly profiteering from USC at a time when tuition was skyrocketing.
The portfolio wasn't casually secret; it was Top Secret. I got my congressman, Ron Dellums, to write a letter to Yvonne Burke, who was a former congresswoman and the only African-American on the USC board. She couldn't get the portfolio either. Her reply to Dellums dated June 19, 1979 states that "I have been advised by USC that they do not release the list of their individual corporation investments and that this is based upon an opinion of counsel.... I have been a member of the Board of Trustees of USC for over three years and I have never known of anytime that that information was made available to the Trustees."
According to a national coordinator of one South African divestment campaign, he had never before heard of a secret portfolio at a major university. I asked William Sloane Coffin, who was former CIA and also in Skull and Bones, and was a famous antiwar activist and chaplain at Yale, about how they got the portfolio at that CIA-infested campus. It was easy, he said -- they just asked for it. Clearly something was amiss at USC.
( If you think that secret scams are no longer possible in our new Information Age, check out the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). They manage $11 billion in UT endowment money, and a lot of it ends up in the corporations of UTIMCO's board. Since the University of Texas is a public institution, this scam required a close relationship with governor George W. Bush and friends.)
Whether cronyism is public-sector or private-sector makes little difference. Even a private university gets massive tax breaks and other perks (such as imminent domain, student aid, etc.) from the taxpayers. The IRS also has explicit prohibitions against "self-dealing" by managers of tax-exempt organizations. But such debating points should be of interest only to pre-law majors; the only things that count in the real world are social connections and money. Today, class, it's time to learn how to spell the words, "Banana Republic."
What about USC today? I moved to the Washington, DC area in 1982 so that I could be ignored by bigger fish, and lost interest in USC. A former professor wrote me in 1986 that the new president, James Zumberge, "prides himself on having an open office, and many of the more closed-minded trustees have retired or died. The Student Senate, for example, in its recent vote to support total divestment in South Africa, had no trouble getting from the Administration a list of USC investments in companies doing business in South Africa."
Sure enough, something had changed. I pulled a 1984-85 list of trustees from a USC catalog at a local library, and almost half of the 48 names were new to me. For a self-perpetuating body, that's a substantial change over a six-year period. My guess is that the 1990s economic boom has reversed this trend by now, and that the portfolio may once again be secret. Anyone care to pick up where I left off?
Surnames of USC trustees are in bold letters.
* means member of the Finance Committee.
The list of trustees was current as of May, 1979.
Fluor, J. Robert (Chairman)
Fluor Corporation admitted having made illegal contributions of $30,000 to the Goldwater campaign in 1964. The honorary chairman of the company, John Simon Fluor, was chairman of the United Republican Finance Committee of Los Angeles County in 1964. The late Democratic Senator from Georgia, Richard B. Russell, received a $1,500 contribution from J.S. Fluor.
J. Robert Fluor heads the powerful Lincoln Club based in Newport Beach. Other Lincoln Club members include USC alumnus Herbert Kalmbach (Nixon's attorney and secretary of the Nixon Foundation) and C. Arnholt Smith (a major Nixon contributor). The Lincoln Club has claimed that their money got Nixon into office in 1968. Maurice Stans was a director of Fluor Corporation until early 1969, when he became Secretary of Commerce. Fluor's honorary vice chairman, Thomas P. Pike (Asst. Secretary of Defense under Eisenhower), was one of Stans' CREEP-West lieutenants.
Fluor is former chairman and currently a director of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, a consortium of legal foundations funded by business interests that work to oppose environmental laws and government regulatory agencies. Fluor is also a director of Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company. Other past and present directors of Pacific Mutual include Jack K. Horton, Frank L. King, John A. McCone, and John C. Wilson, Jr. Deceased USC trustees Herbert Hoover, Jr. and Asa V. Call were also Pacific Mutual directors.
Dart, Justin (Vice Chairman)
Dart Industries directors include Edward E. Carlson and Holmes Tuttle (a millionaire car dealer and associate of Henry Salvatori). In 1971 Dart Industries was a client of the law firm of Kalmbach, DeMarco, Knapp and Chillingworth, based in Newport Beach. Some of the countries in which Dart Industries have investments include Greece, Guatemala, Portugal, South Africa, and Venezuela. Their South Africa investments include Rexall Drugs and the Tupperware Company, for a total of 320 employees.
On December 13, 1974 in Los Angeles, Dart and Tuttle hosted a party for Reagan supporters. Asa V. Call, a former USC board chairman and a trustee until his death on June 17, 1978, was one of those in attendance.
Dart established the Center for the Study of Private Enterprise at USC, which arranges programs to whip up enthusiasm for political action committees. PACs are the only legal method by which corporations can make cash contributions to election campaigns. Cosponsors of Dart's center at USC include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business.
Firestone, Leonard K. (Vice Chairman)
On February 18, 1972, Maurice Stans, Herbert Kalmbach and Leonard Firestone visited Northrop's chairman Thomas V. Jones and solicited a $100,000 contribution for Nixon's campaign.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company conspired with Standard Oil of California and General Motors to replace highly-efficient urban electric transit systems with bus operations using petroleum. They formed National City Lines, which by the mid-1950s had completed the motorization of electric transit systems in sixteen states. This included the destruction of the Pacific Electric System in Southern California, which operated 3,000 trains through 56 cities and carried 80 million passengers annually. General Motors was convicted of conspiracy in 1949 and fined $5,000.
In 1973 the Justice Department accused Firestone Tire and Rubber and Goodyear of separate but similar illegal practices to eliminate competition in the replacement tire market.
A few of the countries in which Firestone has investments include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, Iran, Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In July, 1973 the president of Firestone Argentina, John R. Thompson, was kidnapped by the ERP and released upon payment of ransom. Firestone Tire and Rubber has very backward policies in South Africa and Smith College recently sold their stock in protest.
Fisher, Montgomery Rose (Vice Chairman)
Ramo, Virginia (Vice Chairman)
Watt, Raymond A. (Vice Chairman)
Marshall, Gordon S. (Secretary)
* Shumway, Forrest N. (Treasurer)
Annenberg, Wallis
Walter Annenberg has funded the Center for the Study of the American Experience at USC to the tune of $10 million. The Center advisory board includes former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, author Saul Bellow, and former HUD secretary and USC trustee Carla A. Hills. Hills served on the USC board for one year until her resignation in early 1979. Henry Kissinger will serve as an active consultant to the Center, and USC International Relations professor Charles A. McClelland will be one of the first Center scholars. McClelland has received research grants from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research arm of the Pentagon. Rusk and Bellow are members of the Committee on the Present Danger (a right-wing group) along with John A. McCone and USC International Relations professor William Van Cleave. Van Cleave is a CIA consultant and McCone is a consultant and former director of the CIA.
Arnold, Anna Bing
Boyd, Howard
Brown, Robert A., Jr.
Burke, Yvonne Brathwaite
Carlson, Edward E.
Clarke, Eugene C. -- Redondo Beach
* Cummings, Theodore E. -- Beverly Hills
* Davidson, Davre J.
Elmore, John J.
Galpin, Kennedy B.
Green, Marshall A.
* Hartnack, Carl E.
Hazeltine, Herbert S., Jr.
Herbert, Gavin S.
* Horton, Jack K.
Hough, Gordon L.
Hubbard, John R. (President)
Jenkins, George P.
* King, Frank L.
Lawrence, Richard H.
Leventhal, Kenneth
McCone, John A.
* Miller, Paul A.
Pardee, J. Douglas
* Probst, Walter F.
Rockwell, Willard F., Jr. or "Al"
Rockwell International had the B-1 bomber contract, and they operate the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver, which has been the object of protest lately. Rockwell's Autonetics Group based in Anaheim had a $200 million contract to coordinate the research and development of Ibex, a secret electronic intelligence and spy system commissioned by the Shah of Iran and partially planned by Richard Helms. Three Rockwell employees working on Ibex were assassinated by guerrillas in Iran on August 28, 1976. The Ibex contract called for the recruitment by Rockwell of former employees of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service in Fort Meade, Maryland, and the Air Force Security Service at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Some members of the Iranian Air Force were being trained secretly at Rockwell's Anaheim plant in 1975. Rockwell International has investments in Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Portugal, and other countries. They are involved in a strategic way in South Africa. A recent congressional report on multinational corporations and bribery stated that the CIA has been advising Rockwell Corporation in Indonesia.
Salvatori, Henry
Salvatori has supported Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the Anti-Communist Voters League, Americans for Constitutional Action, and the American Security Council (he sits on their National Strategy Committee). He gave at least $850,000 to establish the Research Institute on Communist Strategy and Propaganda at USC in the mid-1960s. In 1970 Salvatori contributed to Reagan's re-election campaign and to the campaigns of James Buckley and George Murphy. He gave $95,000 to the Nixon campaign in 1968 and $100,000 in 1972. His other interests include an attempt to place loyalty oaths on the books in California and the fight against obscenity.
Salvatori also received information from Jerry Ducote. Ducote was a black-bag man hired by Western Research Foundation (now Research West) to break into the offices of progressive groups and steal political information. Western Research was funded by major corporations.
* Scharffenberger, George T.
Seaver, Mrs. Frank R. or "Blanche"
Topping, Norman H. (Chancellor)
Trousdale, Paul W.
Wilson, John C., Jr., M.D.
Wood, Robert D.
Brooker, Robert E.
Hornby, Robert A.
Keith, Willard W. -- Los Angeles
Mullendore, William C.
Thornton, Charles B. or "Tex"
Thornton has been helped by close associations with Robert Lovett and Robert McNamara dating back to the 1940s. In 1968 Ash was president of Litton and Thornton was chairman. Litton gave at least $61,000 to Nixon in 1968 and $18,000 in 1972. In 1972 Ash was appointed by Nixon to direct the Office of Management and Budget. Litton Industries has also procured government contracts by picking vice-presidents such as Joseph Imirie (former undersecretary of the Air Force), John H. Rubel (Asst. Secretary of Defense under McNamara), and Franklin B. Lincoln, Jr. (Asst. Secretary of Defense under Eisenhower and member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Nixon). Thornton is also a close friend of George Mahon, former chairman of the crucial House Appropriations Committee.
Litton has been accused of "possible criminal activity" by the General Accounting Office and was found guilty of fraud and theft in evading customs duties by a federal court. Immediately following the Greek coup in 1967, Litton was awarded a major development contract there. It was cancelled in 1969 due to Litton's failure to meet the Greek junta's expectations. Litton promoted their interests with pro-junta speeches in the U.S. by LITCO president Robert M. Allan, even as reports of torture and repression leaked out of Greece. The pro-junta campaign caused the Justice Department to pressure Litton to register as a foreign agent. Litton now has investments in Brazil, Libya, Portugal, South Africa and other countries. (See also: Rockwell, Willard F., Jr.)
Wilson, Gwynn