General Motors

General Motors, 1994

Anne L. Armstrong, director since 1977

Armstrong was also a director of Boise Cascade (1975-76 and 1978-2000), American Express, Glaxo Holdings, and Halliburton, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Former Honeywell CEO Edson W. Spencer was also a director of Boise Cascade until 1999.

John H. Bryan, director since 1993

Bryan was also Chairman and CEO of Sara Lee Corporation, and also a director of Amoco, First Chicago Corp. and First National Bank of Chicago, and a trustee of the University of Chicago, and Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center.

Thomas E. Everhart, director since 1989

President and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at California Institute of Technology; also a director of Hewlett-Packard.

Charles T. Fisher III, director since 1972

Retired Chairman and President of NBD Bank, Detroit, and a director of AMR and American Airlines, and Detroit Medical Center.

William E. Hoglund, director since 1992

Hoglund joined GM in 1958; also a director of Standard Federal Bank, Detroit Diesel, and Mead Corporation.

J. Willard Marriott Jr., director since 1989

Chairman, President and CEO of Marriott Corp./Marriott International since 1985; also a director of Outboard Marine and a trustee of the Mayo Foundation. Marriott spun off Caterair International Inc. to an investment group organized by The Carlyle Group and headed by President George HW Bush's crony, Frederic V. Malek, who was President of Marriott from 1981 to 1988. Malek arranged for Bush's support of the domestic airline smoking ban as a favor for putting George W. Bush on its board of directors, and was on the board of directors of the corrupt EPA contractor that handled the pass-through contracts for the EPA ETS report.

Marriott is an Emeritus Public Trustee of the Mayo Clinic Foundation, along with former Cummins directors Hanna H. Gray and J. Irwin Miller; former Assistant Secretary for Health Philip R. Lee; anti-smoker arch-conspirator Newton N. Minow; former Scientific American publisher Gerard Piel; and former Honeywell CEO Edson W. Spencer.

Ann D. McLaughlin, director since 1990

Former US Secretary of Labor, 1978-89; also a director of AMR & American Airlines, Kellogg Co., Nordstrom Inc., Union Camp Corp., Host Marriott, Potomac Electric Power, and Vulcan Materials; Vice Chairman of The Aspen Institute and a trustee of The Public Agenda Foundation.

Paul H. O'Neill, director since 1993

Paul H. O'Neill was Chairman and CEO of Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA); also a trustee of the RAND Corporation.

Edmund T. Pratt Jr., director since 1977

Pratt was CEO from 1972-91 and Chairman of the Board of Pfizer; and a director of Pfizer since 1969; also a director of Chase Manhattan Corp and Chase Manhattan Bank, International Paper Company [with which O'Niell was affiliated from 1977 to 1987], Minerals Technologies Corp., and Celgene Corp. He retired from the both the GM and Pfizer boards in 1996.

John G. Smale, director since 1982

Chairman of GM since 1992, retired Chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, Chairman of the Board of Berol Corp., and also a director of P&G, and JP Morgan and Morgan Guaranty Trust.

John F. Smith Jr., director since 1990

Smith joined GM in 1961 and was its President and CEO since 1992; also a member of the Board of Overseers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Louis W. Sullivan, director since 1993

Sullivan was US Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993; also a director of Georgia Pacific, 3M, Household International, Cigna Corp., and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Dennis Weatherstone, director since 1986

Chairman of JP Morgan and Morgan Guaranty Trust; also a director of Merck & Co., and President of the Royal College of Surgeons Foundation.

Thomas H. Wyman, director since 1985

Wyman was Chairman of SG Warburg & Co.and a former chairman of CBS; also a director of AT&T, ZENECA PLC., United Biscuits plc, and a trustee of the Ford Foundation and The Aspen Institute. Wyman's fellow directors at AT&T included his former cronies from CBS, longtime Cummins Engine Company directors Henry B. Schacht and Franklin A. Thomas.

The General Motors Cancer Research Foundation

In 1979, the Detroit News spread hysteria about supposed clustering of 40 deaths and 25 nonfatal cancer cases among an unspecified number of workers over a 12-year period, in the woodworking shops at the General Motors Technical Center and at the Chrysler Corporation. "The Michigan Cancer Foundation, in a statistical assessment of the cases cited in the newspaper reports, evaluated a group of 22 cancers among approximately 630 woodworkers and found that this incidence was 'not significantly higher' than would be expected in the general population.... Each of the Big Three automakers, G.M., Chrysler and the Ford Motor Company, have begun inquiries of their own, in addition to the investigation being conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.... Thomas A. Murphy, chairman of General Motors, said that the company considered the need to explore the 'serious.'" These cancers were a general assortment including lung, colon, testes, stomach, spleen and bone marrow, several of which are now known to be caused by infection. (Auto Woodworkers' Cancer Rate Is Subject of an Inquiry in Detroit. By Reginald Stuart.New York Times, Nov 26, 1979.) The pinheads of the United Auto Workers union bought into the charade. Douglas A. Fraser claimed that studies had shown increased cancer deaths among "workers in machining operations, foundry workers and workers in vehicle assembly plants" as well. "The chairman of the General Motors Corporation, Thomas A. Murphy, speaking at the same program, said he had no objections to the union program and said company medical officials would help." (U.A.W. to Check Data On Cancer in Factories. New York Times, Apr 23, 1980.) Fraser was subsequently elected to the board of Chrysler. (The Labor Leader As Company Director. By A.H. Raskin. New York Times, Apr 27, 1980.) However, their idea for a cancer foundation had already been conceived in 1978, so this was nothing but a charade, perpetrated with media collusion, to steamroll the shareholders into acquiescence.

Conceived in 1978 by Roger B. Smith, chairman and CEO of General Motors from 1981 to 1990 (and director of Johnson & Johnson from 1985 to 1998), and Thomas A. Murphy, who was then GM's chairman. Its first Board of Directors included Drs. Joseph G. Fortner and Jonathan Rhoads of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Laurance S. Rockefeller; Thomas A. Murphy, who helped Henry Schacht of Cummins Engine Company found the Health Effects Institute to loot the automotive industry to fund its enemies, just like the tobacco industry; William O. Baker of AT&T Bell Laboratories, who joined the HEI board; and Benno Schmidt. The foundation gives three prizes, the Kettering Prize for diagnosis or treatment; the Mott Prize, for cause or prevention; and the Sloan Prize, for basic science. GM's Kettering and Sloan established the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in 1945. The GM Cancer Research Scholars Program review panel, consisting of previous winners of these prizes, awards ten $100,000, two-year grants per year (and a free car to the sponsoring Comprehensive Cancer Center). Deborah I. Dingell, President of the General Motors Foundation, is on the Prevention Research Advisory Council of the Lasker Foundation's Research!America.

Sir Richard Doll's award from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation: "Some 'old friends' on the committee which picked Doll, by the way, include: Jonathan Rhoads, Benno Schmidt, Lauren Ackerman, LaSalle Leffall, Brian MacMahon, Lewis Thomas, and Arthur Upton." (Memo from Knopick to William Kloepfer Jr., Tobacco Institute SVP of Public Relations, May 2, 1979.)

Board of Trustees of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, 1981: Roger B. Smith, Chairman; Howard H. Kobel, Vice Chairman; Joseph G. Fortner, MD, President; William O. Baker, PhD; Jonathan E. Rhoads, MD; Laurance S. Rockefeller; Benno C. Schmidt; Charles H. Townes, PhD.

Various former members of the Council for Tobacco Research, that Lasker loot-a-thon which the media misrepresent as an attempt to "corrupt science" on behalf of the tobacco industry, are on the Advisory Committee of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, and have received its prizes, including Carlo M. Croce, Raymond L. Erikson, Alfred G. Knudson, Peter M. Howley, and Peter K. Vogt. Anti-smoking old-timers such as Sir Richard Peto and Dimitrios Trichopoulos are also advisors.

Jonathan M. Samet of The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, the anti-smokers' star perjuror in the Minnesota trial against the tobacco industry, and Barbara K. Rimer of the National Cancer Institute's hate-mongering and manipulating Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, are co-chairs of the Mott Selection Committee. The winners of the 2001 Charles S. Mott Prize were anti-smokers Frank E. Speizer and Walter C. Willett, who contrary to their accolades have contributed nothing but quackery with their "lifestyle questionnaire" studies that ignore any role for infection. Samet and Speizer happen to both be on the Research Committee of the Health Effects Institute.

Thomas A. Murphy

Thomas Aquinas Murphy graduated from the University of Illinois in 1938 with a degree in accounting and joined General Motors later that year. He was assistant treasurer since 1959, Controller since 1967, and Treasurer since 1968. (General Motors Corp. Names New Controller. New York Times, Apr 4, 1967; General Motors Elects New Vice President. New York Times, Nov 7, 1968.) He was elected a vice president of the car and truck group in 1970, and director, vice chairman of the board and member of the finance and executive committees in 1971. (Murphy to Be Vice Chairman-Cole Is Still President. By William Smith. New York Times, Dec 7, 1971.) In 1970, GM created its so-called Corporate Responsibility project, aka Campaign GM, "which this year has extended its efforts also to Ford and Chrysler." In 1972, it set a six-member committee of outside businessmen to "help" the board choose directors. Members of this committee were Eugene N. Beesley, chairman of Eli Lily & Co.; Lloyd D. Brace, former chairman of the First National Bank of Boston; John T. Connor, chairman of Allied Chemical Corp.; John A. Mayer, chairman of the Mellon National Bank and Trust Co.; Howard J. Morgens, chairman of Proctor & Gamble Co.; and Thomas L. Perkins, chairman of the trustees of the Duke Endowment. (G.M. Sets Up a Committee To Help Name Directors. By Agis Salpukas. New York Times, Apr 14, 1972.) In 1974, members were Beesley, Morgens, Stephen D. Bechtel Jr., chairman of the Bechtel Group; and former GM chairmen James M. Roche and Frederick G. Donner. (Committees With Clout. New York Times, Mar 24, 1974.) Murphy was born in Hornell, N.Y. and spent his early youth in Buffalo, but attended high school in Chicago. He married Catherine Maguire of New York. (At the Pinnacle of G.M. By Robert Irvin. New York Times, Sep 8, 1974; An Irish Heir Apparent At G.M. By Jerry M. Flint. New York Times, Dec 12, 1971.)

cast 01-19-08