FUNNY MONEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73-00475R000102020001-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 12, 2014
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 4, 1967
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

'STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/03/12 :
CIA-RDP73-00475R000102020001-2 THE NATION
it _December 1967
Funny Money
The Nation has information that the Brown Founda-
tion. , Inc., of Houston, Tex., set up by the late Herman
Brown and his brother George R. Brown and others,
has been channeling big money into at least one Central
Intelligence Agency conduit foundation and into at least
one organization partly supported by the CIA. If it was
not inevitable, at any rate it is not surprising, to discover
that the founders of Brown & Root?the giant construc-
tion firm that for years has been the closest financial
ally of Lyndon Johnson?is 2 patron of the CIA spies.
In fiscal 1963 the Brown Foundation gave $50,000
and in fiscal 1964 it gave $150,000 to the American
Friends of the Middle East, a pro-Arab and anti-Zionist.
organization whose CIA ties were first disclosed in The
; Nation ("The Beneficent CIA" by Robert Sherrill,
' May 9, 1966).
In fiscal 1963 the Brown Fotindation also gave $150,-
000 to the Vernon Fund. The Brown Foundation's re-
turns, as filed with the Internal Revenue Service, show
.a gift of $100.000 in 1964 to the "Verda Fund," but the
IRS's Cumulative List does not record any such organi-
zation, and "Verda" is virtually certain to have been a
stenographer's blunder in writing Vernon. (No accounting
later than 1964 has been made public by the Brown
Foundation.) The Brown Foundation thus becomes by
far the largest contribtaor to the Vernon Fund, which
during the CIA-foundation exposures earlier this year
was shown to be in the CIA money pipe line.
This brings to at least seven the number of CIA-con-
duit foundations known to be operating now or in the
recent past out of Texas, the others being the San
Jacinto Foundation, the Marshall Foundation, the Ander-
son Foundation, the-Hoblitzelle Foundation, the Jones-
O'Donnell Foundation and the Hobby Foundation, op-
erated by Ovcta Culp Hobby, former Secretary of HFW
under Eisenhower, and her son William Hobby, Jr., execu-
tive editor of the' Houston Post. Both are personal anti
political friends of the President; Hobby has said he was
"proud to serve the CIA and would do it again."
From the few facts known to the public there is no
indication that Texas-based foundations are any more
susceptible to romancing by the CIA, than arc those
based in other areas. But inasmuch as Congressman
Wright Patman, the U.S. House of Representatives' most
aggressive foundations critic, is from Texas, and inas-
much as the Hobbys and the Browns and some of the
other rich foundation founders in that state are personal
friends of his, he might find it easy as well as illuminating
to turn his questions Upon them.
In the eight months that have elapsed since the CIA
was discovered to have polluted the world of the founda-
tions, neither the IRS nor Patman has shown any interest
in discovering just how deeply the spies have penetrated ,
the supposedly charitable organizations. Pannw's investi-
gations into charity, like charity itself, shoi Id begin at
home. He might even tell us what good worIs have been
supported lately by the Lyndon Johnson Foundation, )
established a few years ago by the President
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/03/12:
CIA-RDP73-00475R000102020001-2