Editing Ford Foundation (section)

=== Relationship with the United States government ===
At the height of the Cold War, the Ford Foundation was involved in several covert operations. At least one of these involved the Fighting Group Against Inhumanity, a CIA-controlled group based in West Berlin that undertook various missions in the East Zone, including intelligence-gathering and sabotage. In 1950, the U.S. government sought to bolster the Fighting Group's legitimacy as a credible independent organization, so the International Rescue Committee was recruited to act as its advocate. With the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Ford Foundation was persuaded to give the Fighting Group a grant of $150,000. A press release announcing the grant pointed to the assistance given by the Fighting Group to "carefully screened" defectors to come to the West. The [[National Committee for a Free Europe]], a CIA proprietary, actually administered the grant.<ref>Chester, Covert Network, pp.&nbsp;89–94.</ref>

From 1958 to 1965, the Foundation's chairman was [[John J. McCloy]], who in 1942 had founded the [[Office of Strategic Services]], a secretive intelligence agency that would become the [[Central Intelligence Agency]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bird |first1=Kai |title=The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment |date=1992 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=0671454153 |page=130}}</ref> McCloy knowingly employed numerous US intelligence agents and, based on the premise that a relationship with the CIA was inevitable, set up a three-person committee responsible for dealing with its requests.<ref name="Saunders 1999">{{cite book| last=Saunders| first=Frances Stonor| title=The cultural cold war: the CIA and the world of arts and letters| date=1 April 2001| publisher=New Press| location=New York| isbn=978-1565846647| pages=138–139| quote=Farfield was by no means exceptional in its incestuous character. This was the nature of power in America at this time. The system of private patronage was the pre-eminent model of how small, homogenous groups came to defend America's—and, by definition, their own—interests. Serving at the top of the pile was every self-respecting WASP's ambition. The prize was a trusteeship on either the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation, both of which were conscious instruments of covert US policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence.}}</ref>{{sfn|Saunders|2001|p=141|ps=: "Addressing the concerns of some of the foundation's executives, who felt that its reputation for integrity and independence was being undermined by involvement with the CIA, McCloy argued that if they failed to cooperate, the CIA would simply penetrate the foundation quietly by recruiting or inserting staff at the lower levels. McCloy's answer to this problem was to create an administrative unit within the Ford Foundation specifically to deal with the CIA. Headed by McCloy and two foundation officers, this three-man committee had to be consulted every time the Agency wanted to use the foundation, either as a pass-through, or as cover."}} The CIA channeled funds through Ford Foundation as a part of its efforts to influence culture.<ref>Petras, James. "[http://monthlyreview.org/1999/11/01/the-cia-and-the-cultural-cold-war-revisited/ The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited]" ([https://web.archive.org/web/20150426183142/http://monthlyreview.org/1999/11/01/the-cia-and-the-cultural-cold-war-revisited/ Archive] ). ''[[Monthly Review]]''. November 1, 1999. Retrieved on April 18, 2015.</ref><ref name="Troy">{{cite journal |last=Troy |first=Thomas M. Jr. |year=2002 |title=The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters |url=https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article08.html |url-status=dead |journal=[[Studies in Intelligence]] |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=[[Central Intelligence Agency]]: [[Center for the Study of Intelligence]] |volume=46 |issue=1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070613110501/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no1/article08.html |archive-date=June 13, 2007 |access-date=May 29, 2020}}</ref><ref name="epstein">{{cite journal |last=Epstein |first=Jason |date=20 April 1967 |title=The CIA and the Intellectuals |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1967/apr/20/the-cia-and-the-intellectuals/?pagination=false |journal=[[New York Review of Books]] |volume=8 |issue=7 |access-date=2014-05-14}}</ref> 

Writer and activist [[Arundhati Roy]] has said that the foundation, along with the [[Rockefeller Foundation]], supported imperialist efforts by the U.S. government during the [[Cold War]]. For example, Roy wrote that the Ford Foundation's establishment of an economics course at the Indonesian University helped align students with the [[30 September Movement|1965 coup]] that installed [[Suharto]] as president.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Capitalism: A Ghost Story|date=2014|last=Roy|first=Arundhati|publisher=Haymarket|isbn=9781608463855| pages=27–28| quote=By the 1950s the Rockefeller and Ford Foundation, funding several NGOs and international educational institutions, began to work as quasi-extensions of the US government, which at the time was toppling democratically elected government in Latin America, Iran, and Indonesia. (That was also around the time it made its entry into India, then non-aligned but clearly tilting toward the Soviet Union.) The Ford Foundation established a US-style economics course at the Indonesian University. Elite Indonesian students, trained in counterinsurgency by US army officers, played a crucial part in the 1965 CIA-backed coup in Indonesia that brought General Suharto to power. He repaid his mentors by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of communist rebels.}}</ref>