You were listening to the Back Radio Network to Network. Welcome back fact hunters
and truth seekers from around the world. It's time for another edition of our
classic audio series Today. It comes from nineteen eighty two and it is G.
Edward Griffin, author of the book The Creature from Jekyll Island, interviews
the one and only Norman Dodd, who was a banker financial advisor, but
he also served as chief investigator way back in nineteen fifty three for the Special
Committee on Tax Exempt Foundations, which is commonly referred to today as the Reese
Committee, and it was chaired by US Congressman Carol Reese and Dodd was primarily
known for his controversial investigation into said tax exempt foundations, which is something that
we bring up so often on this podcast. And one of the biggest researchers
of Dodd and G. Edward Griffin was Peter Conti Brown. Of all places,
the Wharton School, and we have talked about the Wharton Business School at
nauseum as well. That's where Trump went to, That's where Elon Musk went
to. So this piece will I mean not necessarily in the audio, but
it really does bring a lot of the dots together connects a lot of dots.
You're really going to enjoy this again. This is from you know,
forty one years ago. This is g. Edward Griffin interviewing Norman Dodd again
from nineteen eighty two about tax exempt foundations and their hidden agenda for this new
world order. And here is the audio. The story you were about to
hear represents a missing piece in the puzzle of modern history. Without this knowledge,
many contemporary events are simply beyond understanding. You are about to hear a
man tell you that the major tax exempt foundations of this land since at least
nineteen forty five, have been operating to promote a hidden agenda, and that
agenda has nothing to do with the surface appearance of charity, good works,
or philanthropy. This man will tell you that the real objectives include the creation
of a worldwide collective estate, including the Soviet Union, which is to be
ruled from behind the scenes by those same interests which now control the tax exempt
foundations. The man who tells this story is none other than mister Norman Dodd,
who in nineteen fifty four was the staff director of the Congressional Special Committee
to Investigate tax Exempt Foundations. Sometimes referred to as the Rees Committee in recognition
of its chairman, Congressman Carol Reese. The interview you are about to see
was conducted by me in nineteen eighty two. I had no immediate use for
the material at that time, but I realized that mister Dodd's story was of
extreme importance, and since he was advanced in age and not in good health,
I simply wanted to capture his recollections on videotape while he was still with
us. It was a wise decision because mister Dodd did pass away just a
short time afterward. In recent months there has been a resurgence of interest in
the substance of mister Dodd's story, and we have decided to make it available
to the general public. And so what now follows is the full unedited interview,
broken occasionally only for a tape change or to omit the sound of a
passing aeroplane. It stands on its own as an important piece in the puzzle
of modern history. Mister Dodd, Let's begin this interview by a brief statement
for the record, telling us who you are, what your background is,
in your qualifications to speak on the subject. Well, mister Griffin as for
who I am, I am just as the name implies, an individual born
in New Jersey and educated in private schools, eventually in a school called Andover,
Massachusetts, and then Yale University, and running through my whole period of
being brought up. Growing up, I have been an indefatigable reader, and
I have had one major interest, and that was this country as I was
led to believe it was originally founded. And I entered the world of business
knowing absolutely nothing about how that world operated, and realized that the only way
to find out what that world was consisted of would be to become part of
it. And I then acquired some experience in the manufacturing world, and then
in the world of international communication, and finally chose banking as the field I
wished to devote my life to. And I was fortunate enough to secure a
position in one of the important banks in New York and lived there. I
lived through the conditions which led up to what is known as the Crash of
nineteen twenty nine, and I witnessed what has to a collapse of the structure
of the United States as a whole, and much to my surprise, I
was confronted by my superiors with a in the middle of the panic in which
they were immersed, I was confronted with a question, Norm, what do
we do now? I was thirty at the time, and I had no
more right to have an answer to that question than the man in the moon.
However, I did manage to say to my superiors, gentlemen, you
take this experience as proof is something that you do not know about banking,
and you better go find out what that something is an actor. Accordingly,
four days later I was confronted by the same superiors with a statement to the
effect that, Norm, you go find out. And I really was fool
enough to accept that assignment, because it meant that you were going out to
search for something and nobody could tell you what you were looking for. But
I felt so strongly on the subject that I consented to I was relieved of
all normal duties inside the bank, and two and a half years later,
I felt that it was possible to report back to those who had given me
this assignment, and so I rendered such a report. And as a result
of the report I rendered, I was told the following, Norm, what
you're saying is we should return to sound banking, And I said yes,
in essence, that's exactly what I am saying. Whereupon I got my first
shock, which was a statement from them to this effect, we will never
see sound banking in the United States again, and they cited chapter and verse
to support that statement, and what they cited was as follows. Since the
end of World War One, we have been responsible for what they call the
institutionalizing of conflicting interests, and they are so prevalent inside this country that they
can never be envolved. This came to me as an extraordinary shock because the
men who made the statement were men who were deemed as the most prominent bankers
in the country. The bank of which I was a part was spoken of
as a Morgan bank, and coming from men of that caliber, a statement
of that kind made a tremendous impression on me. And the type of impression
that had made on me was I wondered if I, as an individual in
it's what they call a junior officer of the bank, could with the same
enthusiasm forster the progress and the policies of the bank. I spent about a
year trying to think this out, and came to the conclusion that I would
have to resign I did resign, and as a consequence of that, had
this experience. When my letter of resignation reached the desk of the president of
the bank, he sent for me, and then he and I came to
visit with him, and he stated to me, norm I have your letter,
but I don't believe you understand what's happened in the last ten days.
I said, no, mister Carchrane, I have no idea what's happened.
Well, he said, the directors have never been able to get your report
to them out of their mind, and as a result, they have decided
that you, as an individual, must begin at once, and you must
reorganize this bank in keeping with your own ideas. And he then said,
now can I tear up your letter? And inasmuch as what had been said
to me was offering me, at the age of by then thirty three about
his fine an opportunity for service to the country, as I could imagine,
I said yes. And they said they wished me to begin at once,
and I did, and suddenly, in the span of about six weeks,
I was not permitted to do another piece of work. And every time I
brought the subject up, I was kind of patted on the back and said
and told stop worrying about it, nor I'm pretty soon you'll be a vice
president and then you'll haven't quite a handsome salary and ultimately be able to retire
on a very worthwhile pension, and the meantime you can play golf and tennis
the arts content on weekends. Well, mister Griffin, I found I couldn't
do it. I spent a year with my figure that leaven my feet on
the desk, doing nothing, and I just couldn't adjust to it. So
I did resign, and this time that my resignation stuck. And then I
got my second shock, which was the discovery that the doors of every bank
in the United States were closed to me and I never could get a job
as it were in the bank. So I found myself for the first time
since I graduated from college, out of a job. And from there on
I followed various branches of the financial world, ranging from investment counsel to membership
of the Socket Change, and finally ended up as as an advisor to a
few individuals who had capital funds to look after. In the meantime, my
major interests became very specific, which was to endeavor by some means of getting
the educational world to actually, you might say, teach the subject of economics
really pistically and move it away from the support of various speculative activities that characterize
our country. And I have had that interest. And you know how as
you generate a specific interest, you find yourself gravitating toward persons with similar interests.
And ultimately I found myself kind to the center of the world of dissatisfaction
with the direction that this country was headed. And that's on one direction,
and it's same way I've found myself in contact with many individuals who on their
own had done a vast amount of studying and research in areas which were part
of the problem. And if I may interrupt her for a second, what
point in your career did you become connected with the Rees Committee nineteen hundred and
fifty three, nineteen fifty three and what was that capacity, sir? That
was the capacity of what they call director of research for the Rees Committee.
Can you tell us what the Rees Committee was attempting to do? Yes,
I can tell you it was operating and carrying out instructions embodied in a resolution
passed by the House of representatives, which was to investigate the activities of Foundations
as to whether or not these activities could justifiably be labeled an American without I
might defining what they meant by an Americans. But that was the resolution.
And the committee had then the task of selecting a council, and the council
in turn at the task of selecting a staff, and he had to have
somebody who would direct the work of that staff. And that was what they
meant by the director of research. What were some of the details, the
specifics that you told the committee at that time, Well, mister Griffin,
in that report, I specifically number one defined what was to us what was
meant by the phrase an American, and we defined that in our way as
being a determination to effect change in the country by unconstitutional means. We have
plenty of constitutional procedures, assuming that we wish to effect a change in the
form of government of that sort of thing, and therefore any effort in that
direction which did not avail itself of the procedures which were authorized by the Constitution
could be justifiably called an American. That was the start of educating them up
to that particular point. The next thing was to educate them as to the
effect on the country as a whole of the activities of a large endowed foundations
over the then past forty years. What was that effect? That effect was
to orient our educational system over away from support of the principles embodied in the
Declaration of Independence and implemented in the Constitution, and educated them over to the
idea that the task now was as a result of the orientation of education tom
away from these brief principle briefly stated principles and self evident truths. And that's
what had been the effect of the wealth which was which constituted the endowments of
those foundations that had been in existence over the largest portion of the span of
fifty years, and holding them responsible for this change. And what we were
able to bring forward was that the that what he had uncovered was the determination
of these large endowed foundations, through their trustees, to actually get control over
the content of American education. There's quite a bit of publicity given to your
conversation with Rowan Gaither. Would you please tell us who he was and what
was that conversation you had with round Gaither was at that time president of the
Ford Foundation, and mister Gaither had sent for me when I found it convenient
to be in New York, asked me to call upon him at his office,
which I did, and on arrival, after a few amenities, mister
Gaither said, mister Dodd, we've asked you to come up here today because
we thought that possibly, off the record, you would tell us why the
Congress is interested in the activities of foundations such as ourselves. And before I
could think of how I would reply to that statement, mister Gayther then went
on voluntarily and stated, said, mister Dodd, all of us to have
a hand in the making of policies here have had experience, either with the
OSS during the war or European Economic administration after the war. We've had experience
operating under directives, and these directives emanate and did emanate from the White House.
Now we still operate under just such directives. Would you like to know
what the substance of these directives is? I said, yes, but together
I like very much to know. Whereupon he made this statement to me,
namely, mister Dodd, we are here operate on similar in response to similar
directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant making power
so to older life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with
the Soviet Union. Well, parenthetically, mister Griffin, I've nearly fell off
the chair. Of course it didn't. But my response to mister Geyser then
was, or, mister Geyser, I can now answer your first question.
You forced the Congress of the United States to spend one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars to find out what you've just told me, So why don't you I
said, of course, legally you're entitled to make grants for this purpose,
but I don't think you're entitled to withhold that information from the people of the
country, to whom you're indebted for your tax exemption. So why don't you
tell the people of the country with what you've told me? And his answer
was, we would not think of doing any such thing. So then I
said, well, mister Gais, obviously you forced the Congress to spend this
money in order to find out what you've just told me. Mister I've spoken
before about some interesting things that were discovered by Catherine Casey at the Carnegie Endowment.
Can you tell us that storically, yes, I'm glad to mister Griffin.
This experience that you have just referred to came about in response to a
letter which I had written to the Carnegie Endowment for International piece asking certain questions
and gathering certain information. And on the arrival of that letter, doctor Johnson,
who was then president of the Carnegie Endowment, telephoned me and said,
did I ever come up to New York? And I said yes, I
did more or less each weekend. And he said, well, when you're
next year, will you drop in and see us? Which I did,
And again on arrival at the office of the Endowment, I found myself in
the presence of doctor Joseph Johnson, the president who was a successor to Algier,
his two vice presidents, and their own counsel, a partner in the
firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. And doctor Johnson said, after again, amenities,
mister Dodd. We have your letter, We can answer all those questions.
Be a great deal of trouble, and we have a counter suggestion.
And our counter suggestion is that if you can spare a member of your staff
for two weeks and send that member up to New York, we will give
to that member a room in the library and the minute books of this Foundation
since its inception, and we think that whatever you want to find out,
or the Congress wants to find now, will be obvious from those minutes.
Well, my first reaction was they lost their mind. I had a pretty
good idea of what those minutes would contain. But I realized that doctor Johnson
had only been in office two years, and the other the vice presidents were
relatively young men, and counsel seemed to be also a young man, and
I guessed that probably they'd never read the minutes themselves. And so I said,
I had somebody I would take it. I would accept their offer.
And I went back to Washington, and I selected the member of my staff
who was on my staff, having been a practicing attorney in Washington, but
she was on my staff to precede to it that I didn't break any Congressional
procedures or rules. In addition to which she was unsympathetic to the purpose of
the investigation. Oh, she was levelheaded and a very reasonably brilliant, capable
lady, and her attitude of towards the investigation was what could possibly be wrong
with Foundations? They do so much good well in the face of that sincere
conviction of Catherine's I went out of my way not to prejudice her in any
way, but I did explain to her that she couldn't possibly cover fifty years
of handwritten minutes in two weeks, so she would have to do what we
call spot reading, and I blocked out certain periods of time to concentrate on
nor if she went to New York. She came back at the end of
two weeks with the following in the way of on dictaphone belts. We are
now at the year nineteen hundred and eight, which was the year that the
Carnegie began operations. And in that year the trustees, meeting for the first
time, raise a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the
year in a very learned fashion. And the question is is there any means
known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an
entire people? And they conclude that no, no more effective means than war
to that end is known to humanity. So then in nine they raised the
second question and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States
in a war? Well, I doubt at that time if there was any
subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country than
its involvement in the war. There were intermittent shows in the Balkans, but
I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans was. Then
finally they answer that question as followed, we must control the State Department.
And then that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that,
and they answer it by saying, we must take over it and control the
diplomatic machinery of this country. And finally they resolve to aim at that as
an objective. Then time passes and we are eventually in a war which would
have been World War One. And at that time they record on their minutes
a shocking report on which they dispatched to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to
see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course,
we are the war is over. At that time their interest shifts over
to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what
it was prior to nineteen hundred and fourteen when World War One broke out,
and they arrive at that point, they come to the conclusion that to prevent
a reversion, we must control education in the United States, and they realize
that that's a pretty big task, so it's to them it is too big
for them alone. So they approach the Rockefeller Foundation with a suggestion that that
portion of education which is could be considered domestic be handled by the Rockefeller Foundation,
and that portion which is international, should be handled by the Endowment.
And they then decide that the key to the success of these two operations lay
in an olation of the teaching of American history. So they approach four of
the then most prominent teachers of American history in the country, people like Charles
and Mary Bird, and their suggestion to them is will they alter the manner
which they present the subject? And they get turned down flat. So they
then decide that it is necessary for them to do as they say, build
our own stable of historians. And then they approach the Guggenheim Foundation, which
specializes in fellowships, and say, when we find young men in the process
of studying for doctorates in the field of American history, and we feel that
they are the right caliber, will you grant them fellowships on our say so?
And the answer is yes. So under that condition, eventually they assemble
twenty and they take this twenty potential teachers of American history to London and they're
they're briefed into what is expected of them when as and if they secure appointments
in keeping with the doctorates they will have earned. And that that group of
twenty historians ultimately becomes a nucleus of the American Historical Association. And then towards
the end of the nineteen twenties, the Endowment grants to the American Historical Association
four hundred thousand dollars for a study of our history in a manner which points
to what can this country be can it look forward to in the future,
And that culminates in a seven volume study book study, the last volume of
which is of course an essence at summary of the contents of the other six
And the essence of the last volume is the future of this country belongs to
collectivism administered with characteristic American efficiency. That's the story that ultimately grew out of
and of course was what could have been presented by the members of this Congressional
Committee to the Congress as a whole for just exactly what it said. They
never got to that point. This is the story that emerged from the minutes
of the of the Carnegie Fund. That's kind of getting down with that's right,
and so it was official to that extent. I see, and Catherine
Casey brought all of these back in the form of dictated notes or verbatim readings
of the of the minutes undicta phone belts. Are those in existence today?
I don't know if they are. They they're somewhere in the archives under the
under the control of the Congress House of Representatives. How many people actually heard
those or were they typed up transcripts made? How many people have actually heard
those recordings? Oh? Sure you maybe myself, my top assistance and Catherine,
yeah, I might tell you that experienced. As far as its impact
on catherin cases concern what she never was able to return to her law practice.
If it hadn't been for Carol Reach's ability to tuck her away in a
job of the Federal Trade Commission, I don't know what would have happened to
Catherine, but ultimately she lost her mind as a result of it. Terrible
shocked. It's a very rough experience to encounter proof of these kinds mister Dodd,
what kind Well can you summarize the opposition to the committee, the race
Committee, and particularly the efforts to sabotage the committee. Well, they began
right at the start of of the work of an operating staff, mister Griffin,
and it began on the day in which the committee met for the purpose
of consenting to or confirming my appointment to the position of Director of Research.
Thanks to the abstention of the minority members of the committee, that is,
the two Democratic members from voting. Why technically I was unanimously appointed and it
wasn't the White House involved in opposition, not at this particular points or mister
Rees ordered counsel and myself to visit Wayne Hayes. Wayne Hayes was the ranking
minority member of the committee as a Democrat, So we counsel and I had
to go down to mister Hay's office, which we did. Mister Hayes greeted
us with the flat statement directed primarily to me, which is that I am
opposed to this investigation. I regard it as nothing but an effort on the
part of Carol Reese to gain a little prominence, and so I'll do everything
I can to see that it fails. Well, I am kind of a
strange personality in the sense that the challenge of that nature interests me. Our
counsel withdrew. He went over and sat in the couch and mister Reese's office
and powdered. But I've sort of took up a statement of Hayes as a
challenge and set myself the goal of winning him over to our point of view.
And I started by noticing on his desk that was a book, and
the book was the type that there are many these days that would be complaining
about the spread of communism in Hungary that type of book. And this meant
to me that at least he has read a book. And so I brought
up the subject of the spread of the influence of the Soviet world, and
for two hours discussed this with Haze and finally ended up with his rising from
his desk and saying, Norm, if you can, if you will carry
this investigation towards the goal as you've outlined it to me, I'll be your
biggest supporter, I said, Missays, I can assure you that you I
will not double cross you. Subsequently, mister Hayes sent word to me that
he was in the Bethesda Hospital with an attack of ulsters, but it would
I come and see him, which I did. He then said, Norm,
the only reason I've asked you to come out here is I just want
to hear you say again you will not double cross me. I gave him
that assurance, and that was the basis of our relationship. Meantime, Counsel
took the attitude expressed in these words, Norm, if you want to waste
your time with this guy, as he called him, you can go ahead
and do it, but don't ever ask me to say anything to him under
any condition on any subject. So, in a sense, that clear decks
for me to operate in relationships on my own. And as time passed,
Hayes offered friendship, which I've hesitated to accept because of his vulgarity and I
didn't want to get mixed up with him socially under any condition. Well,
it was our atmosphere, our relationship for about three months, and then eventually
I had occasion to add to my staff, and as a result of adding
to my staff a top flight intelligence officer, both the Republican National Committee and
the White House were resorted to to stop me from continue this investigation in the
direction of Carol Reese had personally asked me to do, which was to utilize
this investigation mister Griffin to uncover the fact that this country had been the victim
of a conspiracy that was mister Reese's conviction. I eventually agreed to carry it
out. I explained to mister Reesk that his own counsel wouldn't go in that
direction. He gave me permission to disregard our own counsel, and I had
then to set up an aspect of the investigation outside of our office, more
or less secret. And the Republican National Committee got wind of what I was
doing, and they did everything they could to stop me. They appealed to
counsel to stop me, and finally they resorted to the White House. Was
there objection because of what you were doing or because of the fact that you
were doing it outside of the official auspices of the committee? Know? Their
objection was, as they put it, my devotion to what they called anti
Semitism. That was a cooked up idea, But in other ways it wasn't
true at all. But anyway, that's the way expressed it. And excuse
me why they made it stick. Why did they do that? How could
they say that? Well, they could say, they could say it,
mister Griffin, but they had to have something in a way of rationalization of
their decision to do everything. They could just stop, stop the completion of
this investigation in the direction that it was moving, which would have been an
exposure of this Carnegie Endowment story in the Forward Foundation and a Googgenheim and a
Rockefeller Foundation all working in harmony toward the control of education in the United States.
Well in any event, to secure the help of the White House in
the picture, they assigned that they got the White House to cause the liaison
personality between the White House and the Hill A Major Persons to go up to
Hayes and try to get him to as it were actively opposed what investigation was
engaged in. And Hayes very kindly then would listen to this visit from Major
Person. Then he would call me and say, norm come up to my
office. I have a good deal to tell you. I would go up.
He told me I've just had a visit from Major Person and he wants
me to break up this investigation. So I then say it will wage.
What did you do? What did you say to him. He said,
I just told him to get the hell out, and he did that three
times, and I got pretty proud of him in the sense that he was,
as it were, backing me up. And we finally embarked upon hearings
at Hayes's request because he wanted to get him out of the way before he
went abroad at the summer. And but why were the hearings finally terminated?
What happened to the committee? What happened to the committee or the hair of
the hearings the hearings or the hearings were terminated. Carol Reees was up against
such a few are as through the activity of our council. Hayes became convinced
that he was being double crossed, and he put on a show in a
public hearing room, mister Griffin that was an absolute disgrace, and he called
Carol Reese publicly every name in the book, and mister Reese took this as
proof that he couldn't couldn't continue the hearings. He actually invited me to accompany
him when he went down to Hayes' office, and in my presence, with
the tears rolling down his face, Hayes apologized to Carol Reese for every done
and his conduct and apologize to me. And I thought that would be enough
in Carolwood resume, but he never did. The charge of anti Semitism is
kind of intriguing to me. What what was the basis of that charge?
Oh? The basis of the Republican National Committee used was at the intelligence officer
I had taken on my staff when I when I oriented this investigation to the
exposure of and proof of a conspiracy, was known to have a book and
the book was deemed to be anti submitting this was childish, but this was
the second in command of the Republican National Committee and each d of of me
and I'd have to I would have to dismiss this person from my staff.
Who was that person? Who was that person? The person? Yes,
a Colonel Lee Lorraine le Loraine. Yeah, And what was his book?
Do you recall the time? He did? But the book they referred to
was called Waters Flowing Eastward, which was a very castigation of the Jewish influence
in the world. What were some of the other charges made by mister Hayes
against mister Reese. Oh, just just that mister Reese was utilizing this investigation
for his own prominence inside the House of Representatives. That was the only charge
they Hayes could think of. How would you describe them? The motivation of
the people who created the foundations, the big foundations in the very beginning,
What is or what was their motivation? Their motivation? Well, let's take
let's state mister Karnegie is as an example. His publicly declared and steadfast interests
was to counteract the departure of this of the colonies from Great Britain. He
was devoted to just putting the pieces back together again. Would that have required
the collectivism that they were dedicated? These policies other or the foundation's allegiance to
to these Unamerican concepts all traceable to the type to the transfer of the funds
over into the hands of trustees. Mister Griffin, um not the men who
had a hand in the creation of the wealth that led to the endowment of
or a use of that well for what we would call public purposes. It
was a subversion of the original intent. Then, oh yeah, completely,
and that we got into the world traditionally of bankers and lawyers. How do
you see that the purpose and direction of the major foundations has changed over the
years to the present. What is it today? Whole on behind meeting the
cost of education such as such as it is presented through the schools and colleges
of the United States. On the subject of our history has proven, are
our original ideas to be no longer practical? The future belongs to collectivistic concept
and there there's no disagreement on it. Why do the Foundations generously support communist
causes in the United States, Well because to them, what communism represents a
means of developing what we call a monopoly, as the organization will say,
of large scale industry into an administerble unit. Do they think that they will
be one day? They will be, They will be the beneficiaries of it.
Yes, you're listening to the Fact Radio network. Just the Fact Man.