NSIC

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Strategy_Information_Center">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Strategy_Information_Center</a>

<a href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/National_Strategy_Information_Center">http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/National_Strategy_Information_Center</a>

The National Strategy Information Center (NSIC), founded in 1962, was the first right-wing think tank to address such issues as national security strategy, low-intensity conflict, operations of intelligence agencies, political warfare, and the role of nongovernmental groups, especially labor unions, in furthering foreign and military policy goals. (1) Over the past four decades, NSIC has worked with the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies in studies of political and psychological warfare and in their collaboration with conservative labor union operations, especially in Europe and Latin America.

In addition to the support it has received directly or indirectly from the U.S. government, NSIC depends on grants from right-wing foundations. Launched with start-up funding from the Coors family, NSIC has in recent years depended on the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. (2)

Among NSIC's founding directors were such right-wing figures as Joseph Coors, Frank Barnett, William Casey, Frank Shakespeare, and Prescott Bush, Jr., brother of George H.W. Bush. Barnett, who was one of the most prominent members of the Committee on the Present Danger, became a leading advocate of political warfare, psychological operations, and low-intensity conflict strategy in the 1980s. Barnett co-edited a National Defense University report on the subject with Carnes Lord-who, like former NSIC associates Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, is a disciple of Straussian political philosophy. (3)

Lord was a member of the working group convened by NSIC in preparation for its report The Future of U.S. Intelligence, which was coauthored by Shulsky and Schmitt. Lord also served as the top national security aid in the office of Vice President Dan Quayle, where he worked alongside William Kristol, codirector of the Project for the New American Century.

NSIC president Roy Godson served as a consultant to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) during the Reagan years, when Schmitt was PFIAB's executive director. At the same time, Godson served as one of the main intermediaries between the private Nicaraguan contra support network and the National Security Council. He has long been closely connected with neocon-directed organizations, such as the Coalition for the Democratic Majority and the League for Industrial Democracy. Moreover, Godson was the longtime director of the International Labor program at Georgetown University, where NSIC's own Consortium for the Study of Intelligence is also housed.

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<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Strategy_Information_Center">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Strategy_Information_Center</a>

The National Strategy Information Center, (NSIC) "has been at the forefront of education about challenges to democratic institutions for more than forty years. Founded as a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization in 1962, NSIC provides an environment that brings together educators, government officials, individuals from civil society, and the private sector, to identify, promote, pilot, and implement innovative strategies that enhance security and the quality of life in democratic society." <a title="http://www.strategycenter.org/about.htm" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.strategycenter.org/about.htm" class="external autonumber">[1]</a>

<a title="Group Watch" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Group_Watch">Group Watch</a> identifies the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC0 as "a rightwing <a title="Think tank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Think_tank" class="mw-redirect">think tank</a> for military strategy. It has a history of working with hard-line, anti-Soviet groups promoting an aggressive U. S. foreign policy."<a title="http://www.publiceye.org/research/Group_Watch/Entries-25.htm" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.publiceye.org/research/Group_Watch/Entries-25.htm" class="external autonumber">[2]</a>

<a title="Frank R. Barnett (page does not exist)" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frank_R.Barnett&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new">Frank R. Barnett</a>, founder and president of the NSIC, founded the organization in 1962 with <a title="Morris Liebman" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Morris_Liebman" class="mw-redirect">Morris Liebman</a>. "Other founding directors and advisers of the NSIC include ultra-rightist beer baron <a title="Joseph Coors" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joseph_Coors">Joseph Coors</a>; <a title="Frank Shakespeare (page does not exist)" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frank_Shakespeare&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new">Frank Shakespeare</a>, chair of the conservative think tank, the <a title="Heritage Foundation" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heritage_Foundation">Heritage Foundation</a>; and former <a title="CIA" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=CIA" class="mw-redirect">CIA</a> director <a title="William J. Casey" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William_J.Casey">William J. Casey</a>. Barnett was also a prominent member of the <a title="Committee on the Present Danger" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Committee_on_the_Present_Danger">Committee on the Present Danger</a>. Before founding the NSIC, he served as the director of research for the ultra-rightwing <a title="Smith Richardson Foundation" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Smith_Richardson_Foundation">Smith Richardson Foundation</a>, and a program director of the <a title="Institute for American Strategy" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_American_Strategy">Institute for American Strategy</a>."<a title="http://www.publiceye.org/research/Group_Watch/Entries-25.htm" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.publiceye.org/research/Group_Watch/Entries-25.htm" class="external autonumber">[3]</a>

"NSIC's projects are directed and managed by Dr. <a title="Roy Godson" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Godson">Roy Godson</a> and <a title="Jeffrey Berman (page does not exist)" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jeffrey_Berman&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new">Jeffrey Berman</a>." <a title="http://www.strategycenter.org/staff.htm" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.strategycenter.org/staff.htm" class="external autonumber">[4]</a>

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Of singular importance is the position Dickie was given in early 1973, when he was allowed to take over ownership of Forum World Features, a joint British intelligence-CIA news media operation based in London. This is probably the most important career advancement for Dickie, for it defines the track he has pursued since: the use and the manipulation of the news media to promote favored causes, and to attack and defame adversaries. There is a direct path from Forum World Features, to the Bush secret government's'' Public Diplomacy operation created in 1983, which in turn spawned the Get LaRouche'' task force, all the way through to the anti-Clinton propaganda machine which Scaife directs and finances today.

The background of Forum World Features (FWF) is instructive. Although accounts of its creation vary, it appears that it was a division of Kern House Enterprises, created by Kermit Roosevelt in the 1960s; one account says that Kermit ``was entrusted with creating the CIA's publishing empire.'' Kern House was set up by Roosevelt with Mellon money; in turn, it set up a London subsidiary, Kern House Enterprises, Ltd. Kern House begat Forum World Features, financed with funds from the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC), based in New York. FWF's major purpose was to supply feature material to newspapers around the world, including at least 30 in the United States. It also commissioned a number of books.

One of the premier private intelligence think-tanks, NSIC was formed in 1962, primarily with Mellon family money; on the board was Prescott Bush (of the Harriman-linked Bush family, and George's brother), John Norton Moore of the University of Virginia (one of the authors of Bush's EO 12333), and various representatives of the corporate and intelligence world, as well as personnel associated directly with Scaife.

From 1966 to 1973, FWF was headed by John Hay Whitney, a raving Anglophile who had been U.S. ambassador to Britain, and who was the publisher of the New York Herald Tribune. In 1973, Dickie Scaife purchased Kern/FWF, and headed it until its demise in 1975-76, following its exposure as a ``CIA'' front. At the time of its dissolution in 1976, its three directors were Scaife, Scaife's top operative Daniel McMichael (former president of the Pittsburgh World Affairs Council), and Lewis Preston, the chairman of Morgan Guaranty Trust (and later head of the World Bank).

In 1975, a British weekly, Time Out, and the Washington Post, published a 1968 memorandum from the CIA station chief in London to then-director Richard Helms, describing FWF as an agency-sponsored operation providing a significant means to counter Communist propaganda.'' The memorandum portrayed FWF as a CIA proprietary, which was run with the knowledge and cooperation of British intelligence.'' The overseer of FWF in the United States was Cord Meyer.