Norman Dodd: Well, Mr. 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 that it was originally founded.

I entered the world of business knowing absolutely nothing about how that world operated. And I realized that the only way to find out what that world was, and consisted of, would be to become part of it. And I then acquired some experience in the manufacturing world, and in the world of international communications, and finally chose banking as the field I wished to devote my life to.

I was fortunate enough to secure a position in one of the important banks in New York. I lived there. I lived through the conditions which led up to what is known as the crash of 1929. I witnessed what is tantamount to a collapse of the structure of the United States as a whole.

Much to my surprise, my superiors, in the middle of the panic in which they were immersed, confronted me. I was confronted with the 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 of something that you do not know about banking." And you better go find out what that something is, and act accordingly.

Four days later, I was confronted by these 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. I felt so strongly on the subject that I consented to it.

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. So, I rendered such a report and, as a result of the report I rendered, I was told the following: "Norm, what you are saying is, we should return to sound banking." And I said, "Yes, in essence, that's exactly what it is that 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.

What they cited was as follows: Since the end of World War I, 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 resolved.

This came to me as an extraordinary shock because the men who made this 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, a Morgan bank. Coming from men of that caliber, a statement of that kind made a tremendous impression on me.

The type of impression that it made on me was this: I wondered if I, as an individual, as what they call a junior officer of the bank, could with the same enthusiasm foster 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. As a consequence of that, I had this experience. When my letter of resignation reached the desk of the president of the bank, he sent for me. I came to visit with him and he stated to me, "Norm, I have your letter, but I do not believe you understand what has happened in the last ten days." I said, "No, Mr. Cochran, I have no idea what's happened."

"Well," he says, "the directors have never been able to get your report to them out of their minds and, as a result, they have decided that you, as an individual, must begin at once, and you must re-organize this bank in keeping with your own ideas." He then said, "Now, can I tear up your letter?"

And inasmuch as what had been said to me, what he was offering me, at the age of (by then) thirty-three, was about as 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.

Suddenly, in a 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 told, "Stop worrying about it, Norm. Pretty soon you will be a vice president and you will have quite a handsome salary, and ultimately be able to retire on a very worthwhile pension and, in the meantime, you can play golf and tennis to your heart's content on weekends."

Well, Mr. Griffin, I found I could not do it. I spent a year, figuratively, with my feet on the desk, doing nothing. I just couldn't adjust to it. So I did resign. This time my resignation stuck.

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 a bank. So, I found myself, for the first time since I graduated from college, out of a job.

From then on, I followed various branches of the financial world, ranging from investment counsel to membership in the stock exchange. I finally ended up as an advisor to a few individuals who had capital funds to look after.

In the meantime, my major interest became very specific, which was to endeavor, by some means, to get the educational world to actually, you might say, teach the subject of economics realistically, and move it away from the support of various speculative activities that characterized our country.

I have had that interest and you know how it is, if you generate a specific interest, you find yourself gravitating toward persons with similar interests. Ultimately, I found myself kind of at the center of the world of dissatisfaction with the direction in which this country was headed. And I 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.

Griffin: What point in your career did you become connected with the Reece Committee?

Dodd: Nineteen hundred and fifty-three (1953).

Griffin: 1953. And what was that capacity, Sir?

Dodd: That was in the capacity of what they called "Director of Research."

Griffin: Can you tell us what the Reece Committee was attempting to do?

Dodd: 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 "un-American"—without, I might add, defining what they meant by "un-American." That was the Resolution, and the committee had, then, the task of selecting a counsel, and the counsel, in turn, had 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."

Griffin: What were some of the details, the specifics, of what you told the committee at that time?

Dodd: Well, Mr. Griffin, in that report I specifically—number one—defined what was, to us, meant by the phrase "un-American." And we defined that, in our way, as being a determination to effect changes in the country by un-Constitutional means.

We have plenty of Constitutional procedures, assuming that we wished to effect a change in the form of government, and that sort of thing. And therefore, any effort in that direction which did not avail itself of the procedures authorized by the Constitution could be justifiably called "un-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 large endowed foundations over the then past forty years.

Griffin: What was that effect, Sir?

Dodd: That effect was to orient our educational system away from support of the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and implemented in the Constitution, and to educate them over to the idea that the task now was to effect an orientation of education away from these briefly stated principles and self-evident truths.

And, that's what had been the effect of the wealth which constituted the endowments of those foundations—foundations that had been in existence over the largest portion of the span of fifty years—and holding them responsible for this change. What we were able to bring forward was—what we had uncovered was—the determination of these large endowed foundations, through their trustees, actually to get control over the content of American education.

Griffin: There is quite a bit of publicity given to your conversation with Rowan Gaither. Will you please tell us who he was, and what was that conversation you had with him?

Dodd: Rowan Gaither was, at that time, President of the Ford Foundation. Mr. Gaither had sent for me when I found it convenient to be in New York. He asked me to call upon him at his office, which I did.

Upon arrival, after a few amenities, Mr. Gaither said, "Mr. Dodd, we have 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, Mr. Gaither then went on and voluntarily stated, "Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in the making of policies here have had experience either with the OSS during the war, or with European economic administration after the war. We have had experience operating under directives. The 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, Mr. Gaither, I would like very much to know." Whereupon he made this statement to me: "Mr. Dodd, we are here to operate in response to similar directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."

Griffin: Mr. Dodd, you have spoken before about some interesting things that were discovered by Kathryn Casey at the Carnegie Endowment. Would you tell us that story, please?

Dodd: Sure, glad to, Mr. Griffin. This experience you just referred to came about in response to a letter which I had written to the Carnegie Endowment, asking certain questions and gathering certain information.

On the arrival of that letter, Dr. Johnson, who was then President of the Carnegie Endowment, telephoned me and said, "[Do] you ever come up to New York?" I said, "Yes, I [do], more or less each weekend." And he said, "When you are next here, 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 Dr. Joseph Johnson, the President, who was the successor to Alger Hiss; two vice presidents; and their own counsel, a partner in the firm—a fellow by the name of Cromwell. And Dr. Johnson said (again after amenities), "Mr. Dodd, we have your letter. We can answer all those questions, but it would be a great deal of trouble. We have a counter-suggestion. 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 that the Congress wants to find out, will be obvious from those minutes."

Well, my first reaction was they had lost their minds. I had a pretty good idea of what those minutes would contain, but I realized that Dr. Johnson had only been in office two years, and the vice presidents were relatively young men, and counsel also seemed to be a young man. I guessed that, probably, they had never read the minutes themselves.

We are now at the year nineteen hundred and eight, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. And in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And the question is this: 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 more effective means to that end is known to humanity than war. So then, in 1909, they raise 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 a war. There were intermittent shows in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows: we must control the State Department.

And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? They answer it by saying we must take over 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 be World War I. At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course, 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 1914, when World War I broke out. 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 is a pretty big task. To them it is too big for them alone.

So, they approach the Rockefeller Foundation with a suggestion: that portion of education which could be considered domestic should be handled by the Rockefeller Foundation, and that portion which is international should be handled by the Endowment.

They then decide that the key to the success of these two operations lay in the alteration 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 Byrd. Their suggestion to them is this: "Will they alter the manner in which they present their subject." And they get turned down flatly.

So, they then decide that it is necessary for them to do as they say, i.e. "build our own stable of historians." 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 these twenty potential teachers of American History to London. There, they are briefed in what is expected of them—when, as, and if they secure appointments in keeping with the doctorates they will have earned.

That group of twenty historians ultimately becomes the nucleus of the American Historical Association. And then, toward the end of the 1920s, 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 this country [can] look forward to, in the future.

That culminates in a seven-volume study, the last volume of which is, of course, in essence, a summary of the contents of the other six. The essence of the last volume is this: the future of this country belongs to collectivism, administered with characteristic American efficiency.

That is the story that ultimately grew out of, and of course was what could have been presented by the members of, this congressional committee, and the Congress as a whole, for just exactly what it said. But they never got to that point!

Griffin: This is the story that emerged from the minutes at the Carnegie Foundation?

Dodd: That's right.

Griffin: And so?

Dodd: It was official to that extent.

Griffin: And Kathryn Casey brought all of these back in the form of dictated notes, or verbatim readings, of the minutes?

Dodd: On Dictaphone belts.

Griffin: Are those in existence today?

Dodd: I don't know. If they are, they're somewhere in the archives, under the control of the Congress, the House of Representatives.

Griffin: How many people actually heard those? Or were they typed up, transcripts made?

Dodd: No.

Griffin: How many people actually heard those recordings?

Dodd: Three, maybe. Myself, my top assistant, and Kathryn. Yeah, I might tell you this experience, as far as its impact on Kathryn Casey is concerned. Well, she was never able to return to her law practice. If it hadn't been for Carroll Reece's ability to tuck her away in a job with the Federal Trade Commission, I don't know what would have happened to Kathryn. Ultimately, she lost her mind as a result of it. It was a terrible shock to her. It was a very rough experience for her to encounter proof of this kind.

Griffin: Mr. Dodd, can you summarize the opposition to the Committee, the Reece Committee, and particularly the efforts to sabotage the Committee?

Dodd: Well, it began right at the start of the week of the operating staff, Mr. Griffin. It began on the day on 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 by the minority members of the Committee from voting, that is, the two Democratic members—that is why, technically, I was unanimously appointed.

Griffin: Wasn't the White House involved in opposition?

Dodd: Not at this particular point, Sir. Mr. Reece ordered Counsel and myself to visit Wayne Hayes. Wayne Hayes was the ranking minority member of the Committee, as a Democrat. So, we—Kathryn and I—had to go down to Mr. Hayes's office, which we did. Mr. Hayes greeted us with the flat statement, directed primarily to me, "I am opposed to this investigation. I regard it as nothing but an effort on the part of Carroll Reece to gain a little prominence. So I'll do everything I can to see that it fails." Well, I have a strange personality, in the sense that a challenge of that nature interests me.

Our Counsel withdrew. He went over and sat on the couch in Mr. Reece's office and pouted. I, sort of, took up this statement by Mr. Hayes as a challenge and set myself a goal of winning him over to our point of view.

I started by noticing that on his desk there was a book. The book was of the type—and there were many in those days—that would be complaining about the spread of communism, and Hungary. That type of book.

This meant to me that, at least, Hayes had read the book. So I brought up the subject of the spread of the influence of the Soviet world. For two hours, I discussed this with Hayes and, finally, he ended up by rising from his desk and saying, "Norm, if you will carry this investigation toward the goal that you have outlined to me, I will be your biggest supporter."

I said, "Mr. Hayes, I can assure you, I will not double-cross you. Subsequently, Mr. Hayes sent word to me that he was in Bethesda Naval Hospital, with an attack of ulcers. He asked if 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 that 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.

Meanwhile, Counsel took the attitude expressed in these words, "Norm, if you want to waste your time with 'this guy' (as he called him), then you can go ahead and do it, but don't ever ask me to say anything to him, under any conditions, on any subject."

So, in a sense, that created a deck for me to operate, in relation to Hayes, on my own.

As time passed, Hayes offered friendship, which I hesitated to accept because of his vulgarity. I didn't want to get mixed up with him socially, under any conditions.

Well, that was our relationship for about three months. Eventually, I had occasion to add to my staff. As a result of adding to my staff a top-flight intelligence officer, both the Republican National Committee and the White House resorted to stopping me from continuing this investigation in the direction Carroll Reece had personally asked me to go.

Mr. Griffin, that direction was to utilize this investigation to uncover the fact that this country had been the victim of a conspiracy. That was Mr. Reece's conviction. I eventually agreed to carry out that direction.

I explained to Mr. Reece that his own Counsel wouldn't go in that direction. He gave me permission to disregard our own Counsel and to set up an aspect of the investigation outside of our office—more or less secretly. 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. Finally, they resorted to the White House.

Griffin: Was their 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?

Dodd: No. The objection was, as they put it, my devotion to what they called "anti-Semitism." That was a cooked-up idea. In other words, it wasn't true at all. But anyway, that's the way they expressed it.

Griffin: Excuse me. Why?

Dodd: Then they made it stick.

Griffin: Why did they do that? How could they say that?

Dodd: Well, they could say it, Mr. Griffin. But they had to have something in the way of a rationalization of their decision to do everything they could to stop completion of this investigation, given the direction that it was moving. That direction would have been exposure of this Carnegie Endowment story, and the Ford Foundation, and the Guggenheim, and the Rockefeller Foundation—all working in harmony toward the control of education in the United States.

Well, to secure the help of the White House in the picture, they got the White House to cause the liaison between the White House and the Hill—a major person—to go up to Hayes and try to get him, as it were, actively to oppose what the investigation was engaged in.

Hayes, then, very kindly, would listen to this visit from this 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 would tell me he just had a visit from this major person, and he wants me to break up this investigation. So then I said, "Wayne, 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. I got pretty proud of him, in the sense that he was, as it were, backing me up. We finally embarked upon hearings at Hayes's request. Hayes wanted to get them out of the way before he went abroad in the summer.

Griffin: Why were the hearings finally terminated? What happened to the Committee?

Dodd: What happened to the Committee, or to the hearings?

Griffin: The hearings.

Dodd: The hearings were terminated. Carroll Reece was up against such a furor in Hayes, through the activity of our own Counsel. Hayes became convinced that he was being double-crossed, and he put on a show in the public hearing room, Mr. Griffin, that was an absolute disgrace. He called Carroll Reece publicly every name in the book.

Mr. Reece took this as proof that he couldn't continue the hearings. He actually invited me to accompany him when he went down to Hayes's office and, in my presence, with the tears rolling down his face, Hayes apologized to Carroll Reece for all he'd done, and his conduct. He apologized to me. I thought that would be enough, and Carroll would resume. He never did.

Griffin: This charge of anti-Semitism is kind of intriguing to me. What was the basis of that charge? Was there any basis for it at all?

Dodd: The basis used by the Republican National Committee was that the intelligence officer I had taken on my staff—when I oriented this investigation to the exposure of, and proof of, a conspiracy—was known to have a book, and that book was deemed to be anti-Semitic. It was childish, but it's what the second-in-command at the Republican National Committee said, and he told me I'd have to dismiss this person from my staff.

Griffin: Who was that person?

Dodd: A Colonel Lee Loraine.

Griffin: Lee Loraine. And what was his book? Do you recall?

Dodd: The book they referred to was called Waters Flowing Eastward. It was a very strong castigation of the Jewish influence in the world.

Griffin: What were some of the other charges made by Mr. Hayes against Mr. Reece?

Dodd: Just that Mr. Reece was utilizing this investigation for his own prominence inside the House of Representatives. That was the only charge Hayes could think up.

Griffin: How would you describe the motivation of the people who created the foundations—the big foundations—in the very beginning? What was their motivation?

Dodd: Their motivation was, well, let's take Mr. Carnegie, as an example. His publicly declared and steadfast interest was to counteract the departure of the colonies from Great Britain. He was devoted just to putting the pieces back together again.

Griffin: Would that have required the collectivism to which they were dedicated?

Dodd: No. No. No. These policies are the foundations' allegiance to these un-American concepts; these policies are all traceable to the transfer of the funds over into the hands of trustees, Mr. Griffin. Those trustees were not the men who had a hand in the creation of the wealth that led to the endowment, or the use of that wealth for what we would call public purposes.

Griffin: It was a subversion of the original intent, then?

Dodd: Oh, yes! Completely so. We got into the worlds, traditionally, of bankers and lawyers.

Griffin: How have the purpose and direction of the major foundations changed, over the years, up to the present? What are their purposes and directions today?

Dodd: One hundred percent behind meeting the cost of education, such as it is presented through the schools and colleges of this United States, on the subject of our history—to prove that our original ideas are no longer practical. The future belongs to collectivistic concepts. There is just no disagreement on this.

Griffin: Why do the foundations generously support communist causes in the United States?

Dodd: Well, because, to them, communism represents a means of developing what we call a monopoly—as the organization, we'll say, of large-scale industry into an administrable unit.

Griffin: Do they think that they will?