The Victor Weingarten Page

During 1952 and 1953, Victor Weingarten was producer of the NBC radio program, The Forty Million, which was syndicated by the Health Information Foundation. (J. David Goldin GOLDINdex database, Dec. 3, 2003.)

Victor Weingarten was the public relations consultant for Montefiore Hospital in New York City, circa 1958. Union organizer Moe Foner recognized his name, and confirmed that he was the same Victor Weingarten who had worked with George Seldes and Izzy Stone. Weingarten collaborated with Foner, and one of the members of the Montefiore board, George Kirstein of Bloomingdale's, who owned The Nation, was on Foner's side as well. And, Montefiore's director, Martin Cherkasky, had helped organize interns and residents while he was a student in Philadelphia. Foner also contacted Evans Clark, who was on the editorial board of The New York Times (and also happened to be the husband of Freda Kirchwey, publisher of The Nation), for a favorable editorial. (Moe Foner Interview 2, by Robert Master, Oct. 25, 1984.Columbia University.)

In the 1960s, Victor Weingarten was Stephen Currier's public relations consultant, and he handled the business arrangements for Lawrence Halprin's consultancy in the Washington DC "Beautification" program.

Weingarten turned up as a member of the "President's Committee on Health Education," created by Nixon in 1971. (Memo from Leonard S. Zahn to WT Hoyt, Nov. 21, 1972.) R. Heath Larry, the vice chairman of U.S. Steel, was chairman of this Committee, which is credited as the first step toward health fascism by its major architect, J. Michael McGinnis.

The Children's Television Workshop

Weingarten was a member of the Advisors and Task Force of "Feeling Good," a series of 26 hour-long programs by the Children's Television Workshop, which aired on 250 Public Broadcasting Service TV stations in 1974-75. Joan Ganz Cooney, now a director of Johnson & Johnson, was president of CTW, and Ruby Hearn of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was director of content development. Other Advisors and Task Force Members included Lester Breslow; Douglass Cater of the Aspen Institute; Jacob Feldman, then at the Harvard School of Public Health (and numerous others affiliated with HSPH); former Assistant Secretary for Health Philip R. Lee; Charles LeMaistre, Chancellor of of the University of Texas System; Bayless Manning, president of the CFR; Robert Manning, editor of the Atlantic Monthly; Gerard Piel, publisher of Scientific American; future Surgeon General Julius Richmond; Steven Schroeder, former head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, then Medical Director of the George Washington University Health Plan; and Ernst Wynder of the American Health Foundation.

The National Commission on Smoking and Public Policy (NCSPP)

In 1977, Weingarten turned up as Executive Director of the American Cancer Society-funded National Commission on Smoking and Public Policy, which held a series of kangaroo court-style "public hearings" in 1977 that attracted little public interest but generated media publicity for the anti-smokers. (Catalog of Themes and Anti-Smoking Recommendations of the National Commission on Smoking and Public Policy. ? Tobacco Institute notes on the procedings.)

The directors of the NCSPP consisted of David Baltimore, PhD; Benjamin F. Byrd Jr., MD; Merlin K. Duval, MD; Charles B. Ebersol; Marshall Evans; Robert W. Holley, PhD; Alice S. Huang, PhD; Mrs. Robert W. Huff; Alan K. Jonas; George Kneeland; Philip Lee, MD; Charles A. LeMaistre, MD; Salvador E. Luria, MD; Baldwin Maull; J. Quigg Newton [Skull & Bones 1933]; Cornelius W. Owens; Mrs. Marlin Perkins; H. Marvin Pollard, MD; Robert E. Shank, MD; Scott K. Simonds, DrPH; William H. Wendel; and Kerr White, MD. (A National Dilemma: Cigarette Smoking Or the Health of Americans. Report of the National Commission on Smoking and Public Policy to Board of Directors American Cancer Society, Inc. Philip R. Lee to Joseph W. Young, Chairman of the American Cancer Society, Jan. 31, 1978.) Holley and Luria were trustees of the Salk Institute, ca. 1971.

Members, National Commission on Smoking and Public Policy [Bios of directors and meetings they attended]. Compiled by The Tobacco Institute?, 1977.

Minutes, First meeting of the National Commission on Smoking and Public Policy, Feb. 1, 1977, at the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York. Dr. Dennis Chamot, Harvey C. Russell, and Marietta Tree were additional members, and Ruth Clark, Cuyler Hammond, former Surgeon General Luther Terry, Frank Rauscher, Jesse Steinfeld, and Thomas Ulmer of the ACS board were present; also Eileen McCormack and Victor Weingarten, of the Institute for Public Affairs. Ulmer welcomed the members on behalf of the ACS, and pledged the full resources of the Society to assist it in its work. Weingarten, Steinfeld, Terry, and Clark spoke; Duval, Perkins, Huang, Simonds, Russell, Hammond, and Jonas discussed.

W.D. Hobbs of RJ Reynolds was curious as to why George Kneeland, Chairman and CEO of the St. Regis Paper Company, would be a member of the NCSPP, and he and James R. Peterson visited him. "Mr. Kneeland said that he and eight other people were on a panel at a seminar in Los Angeles. People paid $100 per person to attend the seminar and the proceeds were given to the ACS. Mr. Kneeland said after the seminar he was invited to be a member of the National Commission. He agreed to do this with the understanding that he would be a dissident. He is a smoker, has been smoking for 40 years and has no intention of quitting. He was not familiar with the ACS's five-year plan and said we had told him much more than he actually knew. He then called for his files from his secretary to familiarize himself with the scheduled meetings.... Another member of St. Regis' board is Mr. Baldwin Maull and Mr. Maull is also a member of the ACS National Commission. Mr. Kneeland will talk to Mr. Maull. (Mr. Maull is the former chairman of Marine Midland Bank.) Another very interesting thing which came out of the meeting very early was that Mr. Kneeland's son is a member of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company's Sales Force in Connecticut. This young man's next door neighbor is Mr. Charles Ebersol, former chairman of the ACS. We may try to develop a contact here." (Memorandum for Record. Subject: Mr. George Kneeland, Chairman and CEO, St. Regis Paper Company. March 17, 1977.) Bayard F. Pope, chairman of the Marine Midland Trust Company, was a director of Benson & Hedges (before it became Philip Morris) in 1953. And, Sol M. Linowitz, Vice Chairman of the Salk Institute ca. 1971, was a director of the Marine Midland Bank in 1976-77.

"Cartier, internationally famous jewelers, has held benefit sales for the American Cancer Society in New York City and Washington, D.C. within the year. ACS' New York City chapter received $88,000 from ticket sales alone to the affair, featuring society's elite, a Cartier spokesman says. The benefits coincide with a change in ACS policy. It has undertaken a million-dollar propaganda and lobbying attack on the tobacco industry." (Cartier Benefits ACS Work. The Tobacco Observer 1977 Aug;2(3):10.)

Weingarten attended the Meeting of Ad-Hoc Committee On Tobacco And Smoking Research, held at the American Cancer Society's headquarters in New York City on Nov. 10, 1977. It was chaired by former Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld, along with Frank J. Rauscher Jr., ACS Senior Vice President for Research.

Tougher anti-smoking drive urged. By Christine Russell, staff writer. Washington Star, Jan. 31, 1978.

Wickham and Associates

In 1988, Weingarten popped up again as a consultant to Wickham and Associates, attorneys, who were asked by Gene Knorr, Staff Vice President of Philip Morris, "to develop a strategy for the Company through which non-toxic substitutes for cigarettes could be identified, developed and marketed." They proposed to use bastions of the health fascist establishment such as The Howard Hughes Foundation, the Robert [Wood] Johnson Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Duke University and Scripps for the work. (Memo from Paul E. Weisberg, MD to Dale W. Wickham, Esq., of Wickham & Associates, June 28, 1988.)

Weingarten was a prominent Westchester real estate developer during the 1970s and 1980s. Before joining George Seldes in the 1940s, he had been a city hall reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle, duriung the mayorship of Fiorello LaGuardia. He died in April 2001. (Weingarten, Victor obituary. New York Journal News, April 19, 2001.)

Martin Cherkasky, director of Montefiore Hospital 1951-81

Martin Cherkasky was a member of the Committee on Smoking in Relation to Cardiovascular Disease of the American Heart Association, April 30, 1959. Other members were Louis N. Katz; Thomas E. Dawber of the National Heart Institute, and its director, James Watt; Frank Davis of Johns Hopkins Medical School; and Edgar V. Allen of the Mayo Clinic.

Philip Morris Chairman Joseph Cullman 3rd was apparently a friend of Cherkasky, and wrote a letter of introduction: "Dear Martin: I felt sure that you would be interested in being brought up to date personally on the activities of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. Dr. Clarence C. Little, Scientific Director and his assistant, Dr. Robert C. Hockett, would like the opportunity of visiting you and telling you about the Tobacco Industry Research Committee program, especially as it relates to research grants and research objectives. I have taken the liberty of suggesting to them that they contact you for an appointment, and I hope very much you will find time to see them." (Cullman to Cherkasky, Dec. 11, 1959.)

Cherkasky was a member of the Physicians Committee for Health Care for the Aged Through Social Security, which was created to lobby for Medicare and disbanded after they succeeded. Other members of the organization included Dr. Michael DeBakey, Leona Baumgartner, and Philip R. Lee. Its chairman was Caldwell B. Esselstyn, father of Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., Skull & Bones 1956. (Memo from Harry R. Hinton of the American Medical Association, to Earle Clements of the Tobacco Institute, re Physicians Committee for Health Care for the Aged Through Social Security- 1962, and their current positions; May 22, 1969.) Medicare is the government program that made cardiologists rich. It was the single largest cause of the steady increase in health care costs which began in 1965.

Martin Cherkasky was a sponsoring member of the Citizens' Committee for the Conquest of Cancer, co-founded by Mary Lasker's crony, Sidney Farber, and co-chaired by Emerson Foote of the American Cancer Society and Solomon Garb, who was a correspondent of Mary Lasker between 1969 and 1981. Other sponsoring members included William McC. Blair Jr., Mrs. William McC. Blair Jr., Elmer H. Bobst; R. Lee Clark; Mrs. Alice Fordyce, Mary Lasker's sister, and her nephew, James Fordyce; Mary's old friend, Leonard Goldenson of ABC-TV; Mrs. Paul G. Hoffman, aka Anna Rosenberg; Robert W. Holley of the Salk Institute; Mathilde Krim; Hollywood producer Norman Lear; William Regelson, founder of FIBER, on whose board Mary later served; and Bernard J. Reis, Treasurer of the Lasker Foundation. Garb sent a bullying letter to Curtis H. Judge, President of Lorillard Inc., demanding that "the tobacco industry" lobby for "higher total appropriations to NCI" and that "the Tobacco Research Institute [sic] should allocate substantial sums to finding anticancer drugs in plants." (Garb to Judge, Sep. 20, 1978.)

George Seldes, Subhuman Garbage

Victor Weingarten's crony, George Seldes, was no scourge of villains nor benefactor of humanity. He was nothing but a rotten little smear-mongering louse who spread defamations and scare-propaganda on behalf of the health fascists. Under cover of "protecting" consumers from mere personal testimonials in advertising, which carry no weight with any person of near-normal intelligence, these lice turned our health establishment into a tax-funded factory for scientific fraud. For the last six decades, his mentors have done their best to suppress research on infection, and deliberately use defective studies in order to falsely blame smoking. His pride and joy, the 1938 actuarial study by Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University, is a classic example of worthless trash that blames all lifespan differences between smokers and nonsmokers on smoking. They turned our country into a giant Tuskegee Experiment!

Seldes's first great revelation of what he mistakes for "truth" came in 1927, when Prof. Johann Plesch told him that tobacco contains "poison." This kind of drivel is impressive only to ignorant, mentally deficient pieces of crap who cannot grasp the concept that even ordinary food is full of so-called "poisons," that it is the dose that makes something a "poison," and that common sense (which they do not possess) should tell them that the fact that tens of millions of tobacco users do not suffer fatalities from "poisoning" makes the use of that term dishonest. On the contrary, this louse's mentors approved of his dishonesty, and ostententiously laud him as a paragon of truth in order to mind-f*** the people - BECAUSE THEY ARE A LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, BLOODSUCKING NEST OF VERMIN! (Sending Poison to Our Armed Forces? The Suppressed Story of Tobacco. In Fact, Dec. 14, 1942.)

Raymond Pearl, whose study was trumpeted by Seldes, was actually an old crony of Clarence Cook Little, dating from the birth control movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The Laskers were the biggest individual donors to that movement. Also, Lasker had resigned as president of Lord & Thomas, which handled advertising for the American Tobacco Company, in July 1938.

cast 07-08-06