The Pew Charitable Trusts

The Pew Charitable Trusts were established by the heirs of the Sun Oil (Sunoco) fortune. J. Howard Pew participated in the Lasker takeover of the American Society for the Control of Cancer, and Mary Ethel Pew founded The Medical Trust. J. Howard Pew was a director of the Philadelphia National Bank, along with Wallace D. Simmons, S&B 1890, and Dr. John T. Dorrance, President of Campbell Soup, in the 1920s. (Display Ad 33. New York Times, Jan. 4, 1926), and the Philadelphia-Girard National Bank (Display Ad 37. New York Times, July 6, 1926; Display Ad 39. New York Times, Mar. 28, 1927; Display Ad 187. New York Times, Mar. 8, 1928; Display Ad 40. New York Times, Jul. 2, 1941 p. 37.)

"HAROLD W, WALLGREN*1 Philadelphia, Pa.; Delegate-Director (1963-). Vice President and Cashier, Board Secretary, The Philadelphia National Bank. ACS Chm., Research Comm.; Dir. Region II (1962-63). ACS Philadelphia Division: Treas.; Mem., Bd. and Exec. Comm. Treasurer, Pennsylvania Tuberculosis and Health Society. Faculty Member: American Institute of Banking; Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Member: University of Pennsylvania Banking Club; Optimist Club of Philadelphia. Recipient, ACS National-Divisional Award for Distinguished Service in the Control of Cancer (1959)." (1966 House of Delegates and Board of Directors. American Cancer Society Inc.)

Arthur E. Pew III, a director of the Sun Oil Company, was a director of the Research Institute of Temple University in 1947. His fellow directors included Charles Berwind, vice president of the Berwind-White Mining Company, whose family interests were represented on the board of the Guaranty Trust since 1911; Charles F. Kettering of General Motors and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and Charles P. Stokes, "farmer and trustee." (Research Institute of Temple University, sometime after Nov. 1947.) Charles P. Stokes had been admitted in 1921 as a full partner of Montgomery & Co., of Philadelphia and New York, along with J. Taylor Foster, Skull & Bones 1908, who later became a director of Benson & Hedges prior to its merger with Philip Morris. (Display Ad 215. New York Times, Jan. 2, 1921 p. XX8; Stock Exchange News. New York Times, Jan. 9, 1921.) Another partner of Montgomery & Co., James H. Perkins, left in 1921 to become president of the Farmers' Loan & Trust, which became a major stockholder of the American Tobacco Company. Another partner, William Jackson Clothier, was the son of Isaac Clothier, a co-founder of the Philadelphia department store chain of Strawbridge & Clothier with Justus C. Strawbridge, whose grandson, Robert E. Strawbridge Jr., was on the board of managers of Memorial Hospital. (William J. Clothier Is Dead at 80; Horseman, Ex-Tennis Champion. New York Times, Sep. 6, 1962.) His son, William J. Clothier II, was an F.B.I. special agent in Peru, Cuba, and Chile during World War II, and a C.I.A. officer from 1952 to 1979, "using his 1938 bachelor's degree in anthropology as a cover." (William Clothier, 86, Spy and Tennis Star. New York Times, Nov. 3, 2002.) The name partner, Robert L. Montgomery, was a native of Radnor, Penn., and a member of the Philadelphia stock exchange for forty-two years. (Col. R.L. Montgomery. New York Times, Jan. 24, 1949.) The partnership of Montgomery & Co. was dissolved and re-formed with just Stokes, Walter C. Janney, Harry E. Marlor, and J. Keating Willcox. (Display Ad 124. New York Times, Jun. 1, 1921 p. 31.) Its name was changed to Janney & Co. in 1922 (Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 3, 1922 p. 34.) Charles Pickett Stokes resigned from Janney & Co. in 1930. (Display Ad 119. New York Times, Jul. 12, 1930 p. 42.) He was a nephew of Thomas Dudley Stokes of Richmond, Virginia. (Thomas Dudley Stokes. New York Times, Aug. 13, 1929.) Walter C. Janney was a native of Philadelphia. "He was engaged in ranching in Wyoming from 1900 to1904 and entered the firm of Janney & Burrough, leather manufacturers, in 1905." His daughter married Frank Pace Jr., who was a director of the Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1960 and Time Inc. in 1967. (Walter C. Janney. New York Times, Oct. 13, 1944.) Walter Coggeshall Janney Jr. married a granddaughter of Dr. Walter Belknap James, S&B 1879, at the home of her uncle, William Sheffield Cowles, S&B 1921. (Miss Helen James Married in Capital. New York Times, Mar. 25, 1945.) Partner J. Keating Willcox, a former University of Pennsylvania athlete, retired in 1926 and later joined Daniel & Co. He died unexpectedly of heart disease in his rooms at the Penn Athletic Club at the age of 44. (John Keating Willcox. New York Times, Jan. 4, 1930.) Partner Edward P. Currier was a native of Massachusetts who graduated from Harvard in 1909. "Shortly after his graduation Mr. Currier was appointed secretary to James F. Curtis, then assistant secretary of the United States Treasury. In 1911 he came to New York to be an assistant to the late Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York. In April, 1917, he returned to Washington with the Aircraft Production Board of the Council of National Defense, and was commissioned a major in the aviation section of the Signal Corps." He joined Montgomery & Co. after the war, and then Marshall Field, Glore, Ward & Co. in 1921. He retired in 1936 but kept an office at Glore, Forgan & Co. (Edward P. Currier Investment Banker. New York Times, Jan. 21, 1946, p. 20.) When he joined Montgomery, Clothier & Tyler in 1917, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was a partner. (Display Ad. New York Times, Oct. 1, 1917.) His son, Edward P. Currier Jr., was first associated with the Guaranty Trust (Elise Duggan Wed to E.P. Currier Jr. New York Times, Dec. 11, 1938), and later a manager of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., a position equivalent to vice president. (Display Ad 100. New York Times, Jan. 7, 1965 p. D9; Display Ad 69. Chicago Tribune, Jul. 8, 1971 p. C10.) His son David Fletcher Currier was a member of Scroll & Keys, 1938. Lawrence Boardman Dunham Jr., S&B 1938, was an usher at his wedding. (Bridal Is Held For Miss Brown. New York Times, Mar. 9, 1941.) He was killed in action during World War II.

The Pew Charitable Trusts were "$100,000+ Excalibur Contributors" to the American Cancer Society in 2000.

Mary Ethel Pew and The Medical Trust

"The death of her mother from cancer in 1935 led to her determination to devote her personal life and inheritance to the support of cancer research and care. Along with her brother Howard, she identified Dr. Stanley P. Reimann, a noted oncologist, and their work together helped lead to the establishment of the Institute for Cancer Research. Her interest in health care also prompted her to volunteer at a small hospital, called Lankenau, which was directed by Lutheran sisters." She was the founder of The Medical Trusts, the seventh and last of the Pew Charitable Trusts. From 1971 to 1979 she was the only living member of the founders of the Trusts, and when she died, her place on the Committee on Grants was taken by Thomas W. Langfitt.

With the last of the founders gone and their heirs unresisting, the new managers set off in their own direction. "Under the leadership of Dr. Langfitt and Dr. Timothy Talbot of the Fox Chase Cancer Center, the consulting team made a series of recommendations. They suggested that the Trusts turn away from bricks-and-mortar grants to hospitals and from disease-specific biomedical research. They urged the committee to choose specific subject areas to study and then to solicit proposals from institutions nationwide. The first outcome of the consultants' recommendations was the development of the Health Policy program, approved by the Committee in 1981 and funded in 1982." The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences was an outgrowth of this.

"In 1998, the Trusts launched a major initiative designed to strengthen the nation's public health system. The strategy emphasizes the understanding and prevention as well as the improved treatment of chronic diseases - including environmentally-related diseases, which are known to affect children disproportionately. In spite of the soaring rates of childhood asthma and the increase in childhood leukemia and malignant brain tumors (all of which have been associated with environmental pollutants), at the turn of the century it remains a formidable challenge to prove the suspected links between environmental factors and chronic disease in the general population [sic - especially when they are searching with blinders on to ignore infection. They only care about genes and chemicals -cast]. Because of the serious inadequacy of the local, state and national infrastructure, the U.S. public health system has no means of monitoring such data, and states have limited capacity to gather them. Nor does the public seem to be cognizant of the causes and possibilities for prevention of chronic disease.

"To address these problems, the Trusts seek a coordinated national system of tracking and monitoring that can begin to report and explain the apparent increase of chronic disease. Initial studies documenting the need for a comprehensive system set the stage for a multifaceted public education campaign and other strategies to follow..."

Health and Human Services Program Overview. Maureen K. Byrnes is the Director; in 2001 it gave $31,705,000 in grants to programs including the Pew Scholars Program, the Pew Environmental Health Commission, and the Trust for America's Health.

Six of the seventeen members of the National Advisory Committee of the Pew Scholars Program are also supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which Lasker Foundation director Purnell Choppin headed until recently.

"Public Voices, Public Choices, White Paper of the Pew Charitable Trusts," June 1998. The "Policy Experts with Whom Health and Human Services Program Staff Consulted" include the major figures in the Lasker Syndicate, such as Roz Diane Lasker, Philip R. Lee, Steven A. Schroeder of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Jo Ivey Boufford, and former director of the California Department of Health Services Molly Coye.

"The Pew Environmental Health Commission officially ended on February 28, 2001. Please visit The Trust for America's Health at http://healthyamericans.org."

Stanley P. Reimann

Reimann was a pathologist in Philadelphia. In 1927, he convinced Rodman Wanamaker to donate a research laboratory on the grounds of the old Lankenau Hospital. Members of its board included Irenee du Pont, who contributed $10,000. In 1942, industrialist Philip Sharples convinced them to add the word "cancer" to its name, and Sharples became its president in 1945. (The Beginnings of Cancer Research Centers in the United States, by Harold P. Rusch. April 28, 1982.)

The Lankenau Hospital Research Institute was founded in 1925; research began in 1927. Lankenau and the ICR are now part of the Fox Chase Cancer Center.

Reimann was a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for the Control of Cancer in 1936. Clarence Cook Little was the Managing Director; and James Ewing, who accompanied Little to testify on the National Cancer Act of 1937, was Chairman. Winthrop W. Aldrich (Nelson A. Rockefeller's uncle); Haven Emerson, Professor of Public Health at Columbia University and member of the advisory board of Yale's Institute of Human Relations; Samuel Clark Harvey, Chairman of Surgery at Yale and a longtime crony of Harvey Cushing; Frederick L. Hoffman, Prudential Life Insurance statistician; Thomas Parran, who became Surgeon General from 1936 to 1948; H. Gideon Wells, an advisor to the original Lasker Foundation of 1928; and fellow TIRC member Edwin B. Wilson were also directors.

Reimann was on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Tobacco Industry Research Council from 1954 to 1968. In 1927, he became the director of the Lankenau Hospital Research Institute in Philadelphia. A later director of the Institute for Cancer Research, Alfred Knudson, also became a member of the CTR.

He was an invited contributor (Bronchial pathology in man) to the 1961 ACS/NYAM inquisition on Tobacco and Health (Charles C. Thomas, 1962), along with fellow CTR members Bing, Comroe, and Kotin.

The Trust for America's Health

Governor Lowell Weicker and former senator from Connecticut, and recipient of the Albert Lasker Service Award, is the President of the Trust for America's Health. Its Advisory Council includes former Illinois congressman John Porter, now with the Lasker lobby Research!America; Mohammad Akhter, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association; and Philip R. Lee. The group's purpose is to lobby for increased power for the Surgeon General's office, and create a nationwide birth defects data base.

Thomas W. Langfitt

"The transformation of the Trusts accelerated with the 1987 appointment of Dr. Thomas W. Langfitt as president. A former neurosurgeon and vice president of health affairs at the University of Pennsylvania, Langfitt fired 17 of 20 executives, including the executive director, three vice presidents, and 13 program officers. The only prominent executive to remain was Rebecca Rimel, a former nurse who was promoted to executive director. (She became president in 1993.) During Langfitt's tenure, two of five board members also resigned, one under pressure for 'meddling' in staff affairs and another, John G. Pew, a distant relation, in protest of the foundation's increasingly liberal leanings.

"Langfitt explains the Trusts' operating principles: 'In the past, we'd identify a problem and fund private agencies. Now we see that most of the responsibility for dealing with major social problems rests with the government. However, it lacks the money for new programs. So instead of working on a parallel track we build partnerships between government and private agencies.' Likewise, Rimel says, 'If we could infuse the spirit of the '60s into our work it might get the country out of this morass of feeling that problems are insolvable.' According to Rimel, 'The political ghosts of Pew's past are gone.'" (The Pew Charitable Trusts: Revitalizing 'the Spirit of the '60s,' by Dr. Robert Lerner and Dr. Althea K. Nagai. Alternatives in Philanthropy 1995 November.)

A former neurosurgeon, Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton University (1948) and the Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital (1953). He was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania for many decades and is a trustee of its Medical Center, and is a Charter Trustee of Princeton. He is on the boards of directors of Smith Kline Beecham Corp., the Sun Co. Inc., and the New York Life Insurance Co.; and is chairman of the committees on automotive safety of the General Motors Corp. He has been on the awards jury of the Dana Foundation, and is a director of the National Stroke Association and the Lasker Foundation's lobby, Research!America.

Langfitt was chairman of the Commission on the Future of Medical Education of the University of California, San Francisco. This was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and touted as a "Study of Physician Workforce Training, Deployment, and Performance in California," supposedly "to assure that all Americans have access to basic health care at reasonable cost."

The Pew Center for Civic Journalism

From the Wall Street Journal, 10-17-96: "It has become one of the most influential forces in American journalism, writing big checks to newspapers to change the way they cover government and politics. And major dailies that traditionally take great pride in their independence are suddenly lining up for cash from this powerful outsider." Supposedly designed "to encourage readers to participate in the political process," it really promotes only one side, as usual; the only difference is that now the media are openly paid by their Lasker Syndicate masters. This program was also created by Thomas W. Langfitt and his stooge, Rebecca Rimel, along with some "journalist" cronies: "a veteran TV newsman named Edward Fouhy;" "James K. Batten, then the chairman of Knight-Ridder Inc., whose press empire includes such powerful dailies as the Miami Herald and Pew's hometown Philadelphia Inquirer;" and "Davis 'Buzz' Merritt, editor of Knight-Ridder's Wichita Eagle."

"Civic Lessons: Report on Four Civic Journalism Projects." as inflicted on four cities, including Madison, Wisconsin. They consider it a glowing success when the citizen-suckers express empty, socially correct generalities such as "Made them think more about politics" and "Given them a better idea about problems important to people in this area." It is reminiscent of Research!America's schtick of using the obliging sheep who don't have a clue what the National Institutes of Health are, but mumble that they support increased funding for health research to please their interviewer, as a mandate to Congress. In fact, what the people get as a basis for "discussion" is whatever "facts" the media choose to shove down their throats, on issues selected and framed by the media.

The International Health Policy Program

This program was begun with an initial grant from Pew in 1986 and the Carnegie Corporation in 1987. The World Health Organization and the World Bank joined later. "The principal organizer of IHPP and the person along with the initial sponsoring agencies that created the philosophy and focus for IHPP was Davidson Gwatkin. Other individuals also played leading roles, in particular John Evans, formerly head of the World Bank's Health, Population and Nutrition Division, as it was called in the early 1980s. There were certain a number of key individuals at the Pew Memorial Trusts, notably Rebecca Rimel, and at the Carnegie Corporation, Patricia Rosenfeld and Ade Lucas." [This helps the Lasker Syndicate monitor and manipulate health policy in third world countries -cast]. (An informal assessment of the international health policy program. By Ralph Andreano, Prof. of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Senior Consultant, IHPP. Sep. 15, 2000.)

Sun Oil & Burnelli vs. the Air Trust

From aircrash, the aircraft safety and suppressed technology website: "In 1917, at the outbreak of the first World War, a number of bankers saw the potential for colossal profits in aviation and formed a cartel, a monopoly which was in the 1920s and 1930s referred to as the Air Trust... Anyone who belonged to the Air Trust would pool their patents for their mutual benefit but they went one step further, they made a deal with certain officials of the United States Government to steal patents from inventors who did not belong to the cartel. This theft was implemented by the insertion of a 'save-harmless-clause' in government procurement contracts with favored companies... The cartel still exists as does the 'save harmless clause' and the method of stealing inventions hasn't changed as is witnessed by the 1984 McDonnell Douglas letter and the 1963 Boeing letter and the 1964 Ling-Temco-Vought letter."

"In the late 1930s, after extensive examinations of flight test reports on Burnelli aircraft and extensive wind tunnel tests of military models, Maj. Gen. H.H. Arnold, Chief of United States Army Air Corps, signed a report to the Secretary of War which extolled the excellence of the Burnelli Lifting Body principle of design. The Arnold report ended with this quote: 'in my opinion it is essential, in the interest of national defense, that this procurement be authorized.' This report culminated in an invitation to Vincent J. Burnelli and associates being invited to the Oval Office in the White House for a meeting with President Roosevelt. The purpose was to celebrate the signing of a presidential directive to order large quantities of Burnelli airplanes. However, this meeting broke up without President Roosevelt signing the directive, and it has been alleged that, in the midst of the meeting, President Roosevelt learned that one of Burnelli's backers was Arthur E. Pew of the Sun Oil Company. President Roosevelt threw his pen across the room and shouted that Burnelli would never receive any orders."

"We at aircrash believe this was a pretext, a cover to destroy the Burnelli Company for the purpose of transfering the technology to the Air Trust discussed [in] the introduction of this web-site as Burnelli was not part of the establishment." Also, Sun Oil had financed Wendell Wilkie's campaign against him. [In addition, Joseph N. Pew, vice president of Sun Oil, had led the effort to overturn Roosevelt's National Recovery Act, the system of government-organized cartels that was declared unconstitutional in 1935. -cast]

cast 07-01-07