Vetting Guests: Henry Luce, Time Inc., Rockefellers, Timothy Leary, CIA, and the Harris Family of Journos

I hadn't planned on doing this when I set out to interview Gardiner Harris, the investigative journalist which you'll hear in the episode following this one as we discuss his new exposé of Johnson + Johnson's many perfidious crimes, but I learned some things about his family background that I wasn't aware of going in to our conversation that set me off along the research path. What I discovered regarding Harris' father caused me to determine that, in keeping with PPM's self-professed mandate, I am duty bound to disclose this information to you. This episode also seconds as a brief primer on Henry Luce, Time-Life-Fortune Inc., and their many ties to intelligence, both domestic and foreign.

And so here is a solo, hour long retroactive "guest vetting", slightly reframing our interview so that I feel fully comfortable publishing it in the knowledge that I have done my due diligence and provided you with every sus interlock I know of going in. I still feel the conversation with Gardiner is worthwhile and that his text warrants a look—that hasn't changed. This is mostly an asterisk. Let it be known that I value your trust, listener, more than I do, say, future interviews from Penguin Random House authors. My peace of mind, adherence to my ideological beliefs, and retaining any and all respect that I've earned from my fellow researchers are my top priorities.

File under:

T. George Harris (our guest's father): storied Kentucky fams; rickets, polio, pneumonia, & runts; rocky KY tobacco farms; conscientious objecting; Army enlistment; WWII; most flights completed by an Army scout; cloth-winged Piper Cubs; heavy artillery reconnaissance; various commendations; T. George was the first American at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp; U of KY; Rhodes Scholar (Oxford); enrollment at Yale through the GI Bill; one of five Time reporter draftees recruited by Henry Luce out of Yale in 1949 (circa the Central Intel Agency Act of 1949); correspondent in Chicago; Dallas bureau; George C. Wallace; Dr. Billy Graham; Orval Faubus; Dave Brubeck; etc.; contributing editor...

Henry Luce (and TIme co-founder Briton Hadden): Yale alumni and Skull & Bones members; Briton's early death; avowed anticommunism; war propaganda; Luce + Hadden using Bonesmen contacts to finance the mag; Henry Pomeroy Davison; JP Morgan; Dwight Morrow; Harkness fam; Standard Oil; Mussolini-sympathizing foreign news editor Laird Goldsborough; Clare Boothe Luce (John Wilkes Booth descendant & ex-Vanity Fair editor); Luce + Laird support Franco during the Spanish Civil War; William Stephenson; Brit. Security Coordination; Council for Democracy; Allen Dulles; Joseph Alsop; Dean Acheson; Ian Fleming recommending Luce as Coordinator of Info to Wild Bill Donovan at the OSS; Luce fam as Republicans; campaigning for permanent HUAC; Eisenhower support; Clare as Amb. to Italy; Luce & the CIA sponsoring SIFAR/Italian Army Secret Service to squash the Christian Dem & SocDem Party coalition; Life magazine publisher Charles Douglas Jackson serving as Luce's emissary to the CIA; Time-Life creds as cover; Clare Boothe Luce paying for an Alpha 66 boat used in a raid on Cuba; anti-Castro sentiment; Luces helping form the Citizen's Committee to Free Cuba; campaigning against JFK; JFK assassination; Jackson buying the Zapruder film for Luce; buying the story rights to Marina Oswald; Peter Dale Scott claiming that Dulles told Jackson to assign CIA publicist Levine to ghostwrite the story, which was never published;

Back to T. George: Contending with the fact that T. George Harris was seemingly a protege of Henry Luce.

Claims from Gardiner and others that T. George was more of a progressive figure by comparison; "indefatigable civil rights reporter" per Gardiner; his coverage of various riots including Watts, Birmingham, etc; award-winning editor of Psychology Today, Careers Today, American Health, Spirituality & Health, and the Harvard Biz Review; his tenure at Psych Today bringing him into friendship with one Timothy Leary (a CIA asset who apparently T. George Harris once allowed to hide out in his family's guesthouse while Gardiner was a kid, as Gardiner mentions in the ep)—broached when I bring up use of psychs for cultural engineering & political opp domesticating purposes; T. George Harris' close relationship with auto magnate, Mitt's Dad, & Presidential candidate George Romney; authoring "Romney's Way: A Plan and an Idea"; T. George playing a huge role in establishing the precedent of presidential candidates releasing their tax returns...

T. George's first wife Sheila dies in 1977; he remarries Ann R. Roberts, the daughter of Nelson Rockefeller (yeah, this and Luce is partly what convinced me I absolutely had to cover this stuff); their families presumably merged when Gardiner was 14, meaning that it's likely that he was treated as an extended member of the Rockefeller clan while still a teen and may know some John D. Rockefeller descendants today; Ann Rockefeller Roberts & T. George ultimately split up; being cognizant of the fact that these familial and career ties of his father's may have something to do Gardiner being able to go after the world's largest health-pharma conglomerate in this fashion; Standard Oil dynasty; Ann R. Roberts' various civil rights & philanthropic efforts focused primarily on indigenous causes;

Finally as far as T. George Harris, his induction into the U of K Hall of Fame; his close friendship with Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory & pioneer of mgmt education; influences on corporate culture & mgmt ethos; coining & propagating "outsourcing" (goddammit); "Do what you do best & outsource the rest"; Drucker consulting on Psych & Careers Today (for which Harris was founding editor); "post-capitalists"?; Drucker and Harris consulting with Procter & Gamble; and lastly, T. George appearing in the CIA's vaults in a handful of clippings the agency has held onto (this is just what's public), including Ramparts & Newsweek articles/op-eds promoting his new career-geared publication; open to interpretation what this says, if anything; unsure why the Agency took an interest in Careers Today.

Reasons I was excited to interview Gardiner, in brief: his exposé is explosive; the case studies well and rigorously researched; coverage of Johnson + Johnson's exclusive relationship with the Red Cross; the carcinogenic Baby Powder and Tylenol Killings cover-ups; ties to an Edgewood Arsenal dermatologist; millions dead; material dovetailing with the UHC assassination series & the John Potash interview, etc.

My prescription for peak societal health? Contrary to believing we can reform the healthcare system with universal health care or single payer or by reigning in humungous conglomerates like J+J with stronger regulatory bodies or none-at-all (as libertarian or AnCap MAHA heads might argue) so as to render it suitable... I contend we will achieve peak societal health through class struggle, the formation of a vanguard, the inevitable revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, seizure of the means of production, the abolition of bourgeois property, the erasure of class & its class antagonisms, the revolutionizing of production, and the free development of each preconditioned upon the free development of all.