International Freedom Foundation
Encyclopedia
The International Freedom Foundation (IFF), was a self-described anti-communist group established in Washington, D.C.
founded in 1986 by former lobbyist Jack Abramoff
. Its purported aim was to promote individual and collective freedoms worldwide: freedom of thought; free speech; free association; free enterprise; and, the free market principle. It came into being after Democratic International
in Jamba, Angola
. The IFF campaigned against regimes and movements it described as Soviet allies. To achieve its aim the IFF, with offices in London and Johannesburg
, sponsored symposia with high-profile speakers such as Henry Kissinger
. Among its eight periodicals, the IFF published a monthly newsletter — the Freedom Bulletin — with three editions: International; UK/Europe; and, Republic of South Africa. The IFF ceased its activities in 1993.
article entitled Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think-tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power of July 16, 1995, the IFF was alleged to have been funded by apartheid South Africa
in the amount of $1.5 million per year from 1986. In return for this funding, South Africa was said to have used the IFF as an instrument to portray the African National Congress
(ANC) together with its leaders, Oliver Tambo
and the imprisoned Nelson Mandela
, as terrorists and as sympathetic to Soviet communism. Code-named Operation Babushka, the IFF succeeded in recruiting a large number of Republican politicians and conservative intellectuals to influence US policies towards the apartheid regime, and to counteract growing domestic and international pressure for the imposition of economic sanctions against South Africa.
The IFF's first chairman was Duncan Sellars. Its Washington lobbyist/film producer, Jack Abramoff
, was said by Newsday to have recruited willing – but perhaps unwitting – Republican politicians including: Senator Jesse Helms
; Rep. Dan Burton
; Rep. Philip Crane; Rep. Robert Dornan; and Alan Keyes
. None of these five politicians – and neither Sellars nor Abramoff — admitted to being aware of any South African funding. Had they known that they were effectively working to further the interests of a foreign government, they would have been required under US law to register as a foreign agent
with the Justice Department
. In apparent support of the politicians' denial, a former member of SA's Directorate of Military Intelligence, Major Craig Williamson
, told Newsday that Operation Babushka was designed so that the people it recruited would be unaware of the foreign funding — they would simply be reinforcing their own principled views on South Africa and the ANC. But, in relation to Jack Abramoff — who produced a South African-funded movie Red Scorpion
in South-West Africa (now Namibia
) in 1988 — Williamson indicated that Abramoff would undoubtedly have known about the source of the IFF's funding. Another former SA intelligence official, Colonel Vic McPherson, declared to Newsday how pleased he was with the performance of the IFF: "They were not just good in intelligence, but in political warfare." In 1992, under pressure from Nelson Mandela
, funding for the IFF was withdrawn by President F W de Klerk and it closed down the following year.
Vic McPherson and Craig Williamson spoke to Newsday before the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act became law on July 26, 1995, and therefore before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began its case hearings in April 1996. McPherson and Williamson (along with seven others) applied for and were eventually granted TRC amnesty in 1999 for participating in the bombing in March 1982 of the ANC offices in London.http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/decisions/1999/ac990292.htm
The director of the IFF's London office, at 10 Storey's Gate, Westminster, was Marc Gordon (b. 1966). On January 31, 1989 in a BBC Radio 4
interview, Gordon praised Western Goals (UK) for its activities in exposing left-wing political activities of charities, such as Oxfam
and Christian Aid
.
The IFF strenuously opposed the June 1989 visit to London of Dr. Andries Treurnicht
of the Conservative Party (South Africa)
, organised by the Western Goals Institute
. Gordon stated that the IFF was against apartheid, (The Guardian
, June 6, 1989). He was, however, accused of wearing T-shirts embossed with the legend "hang Nelson Mandela
".
Gordon was publicly disowned by the UK Conservative Party
after he claimed to have gone on a patrol with anti-communist Contra
rebels in Nicaragua
and was photographed holding an assault rifle. (London Evening Standard
, September 11, 1996, p. 5).
On August 1, 1989, during the debate about whether or not the Hong Kong
Chinese should be given British passports, Gordon stated that "as regards Hong Kong, the IFF believes human labour should not be subject to restrictions on its movement". By September 25, 1992, Gordon was railing against the Western Goals Institute, and urged the Conservative Party (UK)
to expel WGI members (Jewish Chronicle), a move doubtless assisted by his South African paymasters, (London Evening Standard, September 11, 1996, p. 5). In response, WGI's Gregory Lauder-Frost wrote to the Jewish Chronicle on 25 September 1992 stating that "the Conservative Party has always been a broad church. However, Marc Gordon's I.F.F.'s support for the importing to our overcrowded island of 3,000,000 Hong Kong Chinese would not, I believe, endear him to the vast majority of grass-roots conservatives."
Gordon later managed, in 1996, without revealing his political past, to get a post with Sir James Goldsmith
's Referendum Party
, where he was helping to choose candidates. It emerged that Gordon had been Vice-Chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students
before it was controversially banned by the then Tory Chairman, Norman Tebbit
, in 1987, for "its extremist views". (London Evening Standard, September 11, 1996, p. 5).
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
founded in 1986 by former lobbyist Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff is an American former lobbyist and businessman. Convicted in 2006 of mail fraud and conspiracy, he was at the heart of an extensive corruption investigation that led to the conviction of White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine...
. Its purported aim was to promote individual and collective freedoms worldwide: freedom of thought; free speech; free association; free enterprise; and, the free market principle. It came into being after Democratic International
Democratic International
The Democratic International, also known as the Jamboree in Jamba, was a 1985 meeting of anti-Communist militants held at the headquarters of UNITA in Jamba, Angola....
in Jamba, Angola
Jamba, Angola
Jamba is a town in Angola, located in the southeastern province of Cuando Cubango, just north of the Namibian border along the Caprivi Strip....
. The IFF campaigned against regimes and movements it described as Soviet allies. To achieve its aim the IFF, with offices in London and Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, sponsored symposia with high-profile speakers such as Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
. Among its eight periodicals, the IFF published a monthly newsletter — the Freedom Bulletin — with three editions: International; UK/Europe; and, Republic of South Africa. The IFF ceased its activities in 1993.
Funding
According to a NewsdayNewsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
article entitled Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think-tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power of July 16, 1995, the IFF was alleged to have been funded by apartheid South Africa
History of South Africa in the apartheid era
Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority 'non-white' inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained...
in the amount of $1.5 million per year from 1986. In return for this funding, South Africa was said to have used the IFF as an instrument to portray the African National Congress
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
(ANC) together with its leaders, Oliver Tambo
Oliver Tambo
Oliver Reginald Tambo was a South African anti-apartheid politician and a central figure in the African National Congress .-Biography:Oliver Tambo was born in Bizana in eastern Pondoland in what is now Eastern Cape...
and the imprisoned Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
, as terrorists and as sympathetic to Soviet communism. Code-named Operation Babushka, the IFF succeeded in recruiting a large number of Republican politicians and conservative intellectuals to influence US policies towards the apartheid regime, and to counteract growing domestic and international pressure for the imposition of economic sanctions against South Africa.
The IFF's first chairman was Duncan Sellars. Its Washington lobbyist/film producer, Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff is an American former lobbyist and businessman. Convicted in 2006 of mail fraud and conspiracy, he was at the heart of an extensive corruption investigation that led to the conviction of White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine...
, was said by Newsday to have recruited willing – but perhaps unwitting – Republican politicians including: Senator Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
; Rep. Dan Burton
Dan Burton
Danny "Dan" Lee Burton is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the , serving since 1983. He is a member of the Republican Party....
; Rep. Philip Crane; Rep. Robert Dornan; and Alan Keyes
Alan Keyes
Alan Lee Keyes is an American conservative political activist, author, former diplomat, and perennial candidate for public office. A doctoral graduate of Harvard University, Keyes began his diplomatic career in the U.S...
. None of these five politicians – and neither Sellars nor Abramoff — admitted to being aware of any South African funding. Had they known that they were effectively working to further the interests of a foreign government, they would have been required under US law to register as a foreign agent
Foreign Agents Registration Act
The Foreign Agents Registration Act is a United States law passed in 1938 requiring that agents representing the interests of foreign powers be properly identified to the American public. The act was passed in response to German propaganda in the lead-up to World War II...
with the Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
. In apparent support of the politicians' denial, a former member of SA's Directorate of Military Intelligence, Major Craig Williamson
Craig Williamson
Craig Michael Williamson , a former South African police major, was exposed as a spy in 1980, and was involved in a series of state-sponsored overseas bombings, burglaries, kidnappings, assassinations and propaganda during the apartheid era.-Infiltration:In the late 1970s, Craig Williamson had...
, told Newsday that Operation Babushka was designed so that the people it recruited would be unaware of the foreign funding — they would simply be reinforcing their own principled views on South Africa and the ANC. But, in relation to Jack Abramoff — who produced a South African-funded movie Red Scorpion
Red Scorpion
Red Scorpion is a 1989 film directed by Joseph Zito starring Dolph Lundgren.-Plot:The plot centers on Lundgren's character Nikolai, a Soviet Spetsnaz-trained KGB agent who is sent to an African country where Soviet, Czechoslovakian and Cuban forces are helping the government fight an anti-communist...
in South-West Africa (now Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...
) in 1988 — Williamson indicated that Abramoff would undoubtedly have known about the source of the IFF's funding. Another former SA intelligence official, Colonel Vic McPherson, declared to Newsday how pleased he was with the performance of the IFF: "They were not just good in intelligence, but in political warfare." In 1992, under pressure from Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
, funding for the IFF was withdrawn by President F W de Klerk and it closed down the following year.
Vic McPherson and Craig Williamson spoke to Newsday before the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act became law on July 26, 1995, and therefore before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began its case hearings in April 1996. McPherson and Williamson (along with seven others) applied for and were eventually granted TRC amnesty in 1999 for participating in the bombing in March 1982 of the ANC offices in London.http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/decisions/1999/ac990292.htm
London UK office
The IFF (UK) published an occasional Freedom Bulletin. The January 1989 edition (no.5, 8 pages) was devoted exclusively to opposing the Reagan-Gorbachev Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement, which had been signed at the Washington Summit in December 1987. They called for its abandonment and stated that from a Western angle it was appeasement.The director of the IFF's London office, at 10 Storey's Gate, Westminster, was Marc Gordon (b. 1966). On January 31, 1989 in a BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
interview, Gordon praised Western Goals (UK) for its activities in exposing left-wing political activities of charities, such as Oxfam
Oxfam
Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives...
and Christian Aid
Christian Aid
Christian Aid is the official relief and development agency of 40 British and Irish churches and works to support sustainable development, alleviate poverty, support civil society and provide disaster relief in South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and Asia...
.
The IFF strenuously opposed the June 1989 visit to London of Dr. Andries Treurnicht
Andries Treurnicht
Andries Petrus Treurnicht was a South African politician, Minister of Education during the Soweto Riots and for a short time leader of the National Party in Transvaal...
of the Conservative Party (South Africa)
Conservative Party (South Africa)
The Conservative Party of South Africa was a conservative party formed in 1982 as a breakaway from the ruling National Party...
, organised by the Western Goals Institute
Western Goals Institute
The Western Goals Institute was a conservative pressure group in Britain, re-formed in 1989 from Western Goals UK, which originated in 1985 as an offshoot of the U.S. Western Goals Foundation...
. Gordon stated that the IFF was against apartheid, (The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, June 6, 1989). He was, however, accused of wearing T-shirts embossed with the legend "hang Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
".
Gordon was publicly disowned by the UK Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
after he claimed to have gone on a patrol with anti-communist Contra
Contras
The contras is a label given to the various rebel groups opposing Nicaragua's FSLN Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government following the July 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's dictatorship...
rebels in Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
and was photographed holding an assault rifle. (London Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
, September 11, 1996, p. 5).
On August 1, 1989, during the debate about whether or not the Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
Chinese should be given British passports, Gordon stated that "as regards Hong Kong, the IFF believes human labour should not be subject to restrictions on its movement". By September 25, 1992, Gordon was railing against the Western Goals Institute, and urged the Conservative Party (UK)
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
to expel WGI members (Jewish Chronicle), a move doubtless assisted by his South African paymasters, (London Evening Standard, September 11, 1996, p. 5). In response, WGI's Gregory Lauder-Frost wrote to the Jewish Chronicle on 25 September 1992 stating that "the Conservative Party has always been a broad church. However, Marc Gordon's I.F.F.'s support for the importing to our overcrowded island of 3,000,000 Hong Kong Chinese would not, I believe, endear him to the vast majority of grass-roots conservatives."
Gordon later managed, in 1996, without revealing his political past, to get a post with Sir James Goldsmith
James Goldsmith
Sir James Michael "Jimmy" Goldsmith was an Anglo-French billionaire financier and tycoon. Towards the end of his life, he became a magazine publisher and a politician. In 1994, he was elected to represent France as a Member of the European Parliament and he subsequently founded the short-lived...
's Referendum Party
Referendum Party
The Referendum Party was a Euro-sceptic, single issue party in the United Kingdom formed by Sir James Goldsmith to fight the 1997 General Election. The party called for a referendum on aspects of the UK's relationship with the European Union.-Policy:...
, where he was helping to choose candidates. It emerged that Gordon had been Vice-Chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students
Federation of Conservative Students
The Federation of Conservative Students was the student organisation of the British Conservative Party from the late 1940s to 1986. It was created to act as a bridge between the student movement and the Conservative Party....
before it was controversially banned by the then Tory Chairman, Norman Tebbit
Norman Tebbit
Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit, CH, PC , is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1987 as Secretary of State for Employment...
, in 1987, for "its extremist views". (London Evening Standard, September 11, 1996, p. 5).