Cherne's IRC was clearly a conduit for neo-BukhaCold War, and it was also reputedly a CIA front organization. CIArinite operations between east and west in the funding for the IRC came
through the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a known CIA conduit, and also through the Norman Foundation,
according to Frank A. Cappell's Review of the News (March 17, 1976). IRC operations in
Bangladesh included the conduiting of CIA money to groups of intellectuals. Capell noted that
Cherne had "close ties to the leftist element in the CIA." Cherne was also on good tPercy Craddock, the British intelligence coordinator, and Sir Leonard Hooper. erms with Sir
Cherne was a raving hawk during the Vietnam war, when he was associated with the as yet
unreconstructed Kissinger clone Morton Halperin in the American Friends of Vietnam. Along with
John Connamember of Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute, a school for Kissingerian Strangeloves, and haslly, Cherne was a co-chair of Democrats for Nixon in 1972. He had been a founding
always been a leader of New York's Freedom House. Cherne was also big on Robert O. Anderson's
National Commission on Coping with Interdependence and on Nelson Rockefeller's Third Century
Corporation.
Cherne was a close friend of William Casey, who was working in the Nixon Administration as
Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs in mid-1973. That was when Cherne was named to
the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) by Nixon. On March 15, 1976,
Cherne became the chairman of this body, which specializes in conduiting the demands of financier
and related interests into the intelligence community. Cherne, as we will see, would be along withBush a leading beneficiary of Ford's spring, 1976 intelligence re-organization.
To top it all off, Cherne has always been something of a megalomaniac. His self-serving RIA
biographical sketch culminates: "Political scientist, economist, sculptor, lawyer, foreign affairs
specialist-- any one and all of these descriptions fit Leo Cherne. A Renaissance man born i20th century, he is equally at home in fields of fine arts, public affairs, industry, economics, orn the
foreign policy."
Bush's correspondence with Cherne leaves no doubt that theirs was a very special relationship.
Cherne represented for Busoptions for backchanneling into the Soviet block. So on New Year's Eve Bush's thoughts, perhapsh a strengthening of his links to the Zionist-neoconservative milieu, with
stimulated by his awareness of what help the Zionist lobby could give to his still embattled
nomination, went out to Leo Cherne in one of his celebrated handwritten notes: "I read your
testimony with keen interest and appreciation. I am really looking forward to meeting you and
working with you in connection with your PFIAB chores. Have a wonderful 1976," Bush wrote.
January 1976 was not auspicious for Bush. He had to wait until almost the end of the month for his
confirmation vote, hanging there, slowly twisting in the wind. In the meantime, the Pike Committee
report was approaching completion, after months of probing and haggling, and was sent to the
Government Printing Office on January 23, deand from the GOP that the committee could not reveal confidential and secret material provided byspite continuing arguments from the White House (^)
the executive branch. On Sunday January 25, a copy of the report was leaked to Daniel Schorr of
CBS News, and was exhibited on television that evening. The following morning, the New York
Times published an extensive summary of the entire Pike Committee report, which this newspaper
had also received.
Despite all this exposure, the House voted on January 29 that the Pike Committee report could not
be released. A few days later it was published in full in the Village Voice, and CBS corrspondent
Daniel Schorr was held responsible for its appearance. The Pike Committee report attacked Henry
Kissinger "whose comments," it said "are at variance with the facts." In the midst of his imperial