AFME AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73-00475R000100740017-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 4, 2014
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: February 21, 1967
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/06/04: CIA-RDP73-00475R000100740017-8
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Two New York Congressmen, Demo-
crats Benjamin S. Rosenthal and Wil-
liam F. Ryan, last week charged that
the CIA "undermines the Administra-
tion policy of friendship toward Israel
by secretly funding AFME ... an anti-
Israel organization."
They cited last Friday's New York
Times disclosure that the American
Friends of the Middle East (AFME)
has received CIA funds through foun-
dation coni-:aits.
The ,C7,....,;:essmen urged the Admin-?
istrat:oz. ":erminate the CIA's fund-
ing af c:zraestic organizations" and
to o.?,:ablisr. "a watchdog committee
cora:,:oseci of seven members of the Sen-
seven members of the House"
,versee CIA operations.
z?.:;-,:or.c:.-.g to the Times, AFME re-
grants in 1964?one for
other for $15,000?from
J. Frederick Brown Foundation.
Today, the paper revealed that
AFME had also received funds from
the Hobby Foundation of Houston?
an admitted CIA conduit. Hobby's tax
returns list the following grants to
AFME: $50,000 in 1963; $75,000 in
'1964; $50,000 in 1965.
"There is only one well-financed anti-
Israel organization in the United
States and so last Friday, the Near East
Report put the question directly to an
AFME" official who frankly confirmed
that AFME had been receiving some
U.S. funds for its student counselling,
screening and placement programs.
How much he could not say."
? The Report revealed that AFME's..
expenditures in the 12-month period
ending Sept. 30, 1962 were $1,189,-
678?more than double the amount the
organization had spent in 1958 and five
or six times its expenditures in the early
1950s.
This is not the first time that AFME-
been named as a recipient of CIA
...Inds. In the summer of 1963, Bush-
rod Howard, a registered agent for the
Yemeni royalists, told the Senate For-
ea Committee that the
.S. Government had put $4 million
:nto an "anti-Israel organization."
Howard reportedly elaborated on his
charges at a closed session of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee on July .11.
The Department of State, in a memo-...
'ralls::um to the Senate Commitree,'
\,:ste: "There is no factual basis
1.--Joward's charge that U.S. officials^..::
an anti-Israel organization."
I_ July 16, 1963 issue, the Near
:Report quoted Howard and said:
On May 9, 1966, Robert G. Sherrill
wrote in the Nation that Group Re-
search, Inc., a private Washington
organization, ? had uncovered some
$100,000 channeled into AFME by the
CIA. Sherrill wrote that while the
amounts "are minuscule when compared
to the $4 million rumor . . . at least
they help fill out the history of the
fund channeling and put the State De-
partment's demurrer in a questionable
light."
Sherrill also cited the Near East Re-
port, which in its special supplement on
Arab propaganda, in October 1964,
named the Dearborn Foundation of
Chicago and the San Jacinto Founda-
tion of Houston as AFME's principal
supporters. Founded in 1952, Dearborn
reportedly gave AFME some $1 million
between 1952 and 1956. After 1956,
AFME annual reports no longer refer
to Dearborn. The Near East Report
noted that Bushrod Howard, then in
the employ of Socony Mobil, had dis-
closed that ARAMCO officials were
told that Dearborn was a CIA front.
And San Jacinto was one of the foun-
dations named by the press last week
as a CIA conduit.
Congressmen Rosenthal and Ryan
stated that "AFME's anti-Israel record
is clear." They pointed to the state-
ment by AFME's former Middle East
director Elmo Hutchison calling Israel
"fascist, intolerant, aggressive, defiant,
expansionist" and to the fact that
AFME helped create and still advises
the Organization of Arab Students
which, they said, "actively campaigns
on over 100 U.S. campuses against
American support for Israel." .
Now?Aid Program
Last week the White House submit-
ted the smallest foreign aid request
since the program began: $3.1 billion
for each of the next two fiscal years.
This is $260 million less than the Presi-
dent asked for last year but almost
$200 million more than Congress then
approved.
The new figure does not include $242
million in military items which were
transferred to the Defense budget.
Neither does it include a $1.7 billion
request for Food-for-Peace.
Anticipating Congressional eagerness
to slash the aid figure, Johnson warned
that his recommendations "represent
the minimum contribution to mutual
security and international development
which we can safely make."
He observed that some Americans
"have grown weary of the long hard
struggle to bring the majority of the
world's population out of the shadows
. of poverty and ignorance."
But, he said, "nothing could be more
shortsighted and self-defeating. This
country?the wealthiest in human his-
tory?can well afford to devote less
than seven-tenths of one percent of its
national income to reduce the chances
of future Viet Nams."
The President's recluest continues to
emphasize economic assistance. It is al-
located as follows: $195 million for
Africa; $246 million for Latin Ameri-
ca; $758 million for the Near East and
South Asia (of which 91 percent will
go to India, Pakistan and Turkey);
$812 million for East Asia.
? The Near East and South Asia,
Johnson said, "provides the harshest
test of free institutions. . . .
"Nowhere else in the free world are
there so many people: as many as the
combined populations of North and
South America and Western Europe.
"Nowhere else do so many people
live in such dire poverty: per capita
income for nine out of every ten per-
Sons is under $100 per year.
"Nowhere else are there divisive
forces so poised to take advantage of
any misstep."
The President listed three major
? principles to guide the program: self-
' help, multilateralism and regionalism.
? No country failing to mobilize its
own resources as efficiently as possible
will receive our aid. And he proposed
a national advisory committee to ascer-
tain whether recipients are "extending
their best efforts."
At least 85 percent of development
loans will be in a regional or multi-
lateral framework.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/06/04: CIA-RDP73-00475R000100740017-8