OpEdNews - Page 10 of Article: The CIA's Role in the Origin and Maintenance of America's Overclass

Despite all the facts of CIA involvement, Woodward and Bernstein made virtually no mention of the CIA in their Watergate reporting. Even during Senate hearings on Watergate, the CIA somehow managed to stay out of the spotlight. In 1974, the House would clear the CIA of any involvement in Watergate.

The CIA was not as lucky in 1974, when the Senate held hearings on James Jesus Angleton's illegal surveillance of American citizens. These disclosures resulted in his firing. But that was nothing compared to the 1975 Church Committee. This Senate investigation looked into virtually every type of CIA crime, from assassination to secret war to manipulating the domestic media. The "reforms" that resulted from these hearings were mostly cosmetic, but the details that emerged shattered the CIA's reputation forever. Tellingly, the two Senators who held these hearings -- Frank Church and Otis Pike -- were both defeated for reelection, despite a 98% reelection rate for incumbents. The Agency undoubtedly pulled some strings to assure this result.

The Perils (for the rich) of Economic Democracy

The CIA wasn't the only conservative institution that found itself embattled in the early 70s. This was a bad time for conservatives everywhere. America had lost the war in Vietnam. U.S. corporations had to cope with the rise of OPEC. The anti-poverty programs of Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society were causing a major redistribution of wealth, in the "wrong' direction. And Nixon was making things worse with his own anti-poverty and regulatory programs. Between 1960 and 1973, these efforts cut poverty in half, from 22 to 11%. Meanwhile, between 1965 and 1976, the richest 1% had gone from owning 37% of America's wealth to only 22%.¹⁶

At a 1973 Conference Board meeting of top American business leaders, executives declared, "We are fighting for our lives," "We are fighting a delaying action," and "If we don't take action now, we will see our own demise. We will evolve into another social democracy."¹⁷

CIA to the Rescue: Re-establishing Complete Dominance by the Financial Elite

In the mid-1970s, at this historic low point in American conservatism, the CIA began a major campaign to turn corporate fortunes around.

They did this in several ways. First, they helped create numerous foundations to finance their domestic operations. Even before 1973, the CIA had co-opted the most famous ones, like the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations. But after 1973, they created more. One of their most notorious recruits was billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. During World War II, Scaife's father served in the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. By his mid-twenties, both of Scaife's parents had died, and he inherited a fortune by way of four foundations: the Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation. In the early 1970s, Scaife was encouraged by CIA agent Frank Barnett to begin investing his fortune in the fight against the "Soviet menace."¹⁸ From 1973 to 1975, Scaife ran Forum World Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA propaganda around the world. Shortly afterwards he began donating millions to fund the New Right.