The Center, known by its initials AALC, is described as a "private, nonprofit organization established by the American labor movement. This image should be preserved in Africa. However, there is no objection to indicating, if queried, that financial support comes from public as well as private sources.'

In fact, the document records that $500,000 to finance AALC from May, 1966, to February, 1969, came from AID. The AFL-CIO "input" was only $100,000 or 17 per cent.

The policy paper says that AID missions abroad should pick a man to watch over the projects. "This officer will work with the AALC technician discreetly and tactfully to retain the union-to-union image. Site visits, when required, will be arranged with the AALC technician and will be as unobstrusive as possible.” Normally, AID's overseas undertakings must be approved in writing by the host government. But "if, in the judgement of the AALC, getting a written assurance would present difficulties, it will be the responsibility of the AALC to proceed on verbal assurance but make it a matter of record to AID."

Questioned, about this, Rutherford Poats, AID's deputy administrator, said he thought the policy was still in force. He said it was "the same attitude" AID takes towards other private groups it supports and was justified because "we are financing a union-to-union relationship."

Asked if he thought disclosure of AID's role would lead unions abroad to reject AFL-CIO help, he said it would "if they knew the projects was totally controlled by a foreign government." Poats suggested that this was not the case, although he acknowledged that the bulk of the money came from the Government. This seems to be the pattern with the other two AFL-CIO arms for Latin America and Asia. In the six years from 1962 through 1967, the Latin agency, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) received $16 million. The Institute received another $2 million, divided between the AFL-CIO and 70 business firms. In other words, 87 per cent of the money was from the Government.

More recent figures on the finances of the Institute and the newly started Asian operation were not immediately available. Since the prominent publication of AID's role in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Washington Post, officials of both the AFL-CIO and AID have been reluctant to discuss their affair. A list of detailed questions was submitted to the Federation for comment. None was answered. Instead, an AFL-CIO spokesman supplied the following statement:

"The AFL-CIO is proud of the work of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the African-American Labor Center and the Asian-American Free Labor Institute.

"We have made full, regular and complete public reports of these activities. The books of these organizations have been regularly audited and AID has reported to the Congress all expenditures.

"We have nothing to add except to note that AFL-CIO activities have always been and always will be based upon our unalterable devotion to freedom for all men in all places at all times."

However, various budget documents that have come to light, notably a letter from Ernest Lee, the assistant director of AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs, to Poats, indicate that the relationship resembles that used by CIA. Instead of dummy foundations to pass on CIA money to bonafide organizations, AID channels its funds to the three AFL-CIO regional arms. They, in turn, pass it on to well-established unions like the Retail Clerks, Communications Workers and the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks.

Some hint of AFL-CIO's support for AID and State Department positions turns up in the minutes of a body called the "Labor Advisory Committee on Foreign Assistance. The group, with Meany in the chair, meets about every two months and includes high officials from AID, State, the Labor Department and the AFL-CIO.

One of the most vocal participants appears to be Jay Lovestone, director of AFL-CIO's foreign affairs department.

At the meeting on Jan. 8. 1968, William Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East, "thanked Mr. Meany for the strong resolution of support for U.S. policy in Vietnam adopted at the AFL-CIO convention and mentioned that a somewhat similar resolution was passed by BATU, the Asian affiliate of the ICFTU (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions).

"Mr. Lovestone asked what labor could do to reverse the downward trend in AID's appropriations and bring greater pressure to bear on the Congress in 1968.

Mr. Gaud (William Gaud, then AID Administrator) replied that there was no easy formula for solving this problem. However, a nationwide campaign to enlist greater public understanding and acceptance of foreign aid could have the desired effect on the Congress."

At the meeting of July 17, Gaud described AID's budget troubles on Capitol Hill. "He requested the AFL-CIO's intensive support and assistance in the coming legislative battle."

James R. Fowler, AID's deputy coordinator for the Alliance for Progress "reiterated Mr. Gaud's request."

On Nov. 12, Gaud thanked the union officials for their "assistance in AID legislative battles."

There is, of course, nothing remarkable in recipients of Government funds working over Congress on behalf of the agency that provides them. But the reciprocal relationship is rarely made so nakedly plain.

It is not always clear whether the AFL-CIO expenditures abroad reflect its own conception of foreign policy or that of the agency providing it with funds. A report last May by the General Accounting Office records a complaint by an unnamed AID official. He had said that the AFL-CIO's Latin American arm displays a "tendency to disregard Embassy-U.S. AID positions on important labor issues when drawing up (its) programs."

On Vietnam, at least, there were no problems. The minutes of the March 11 meeting observe that "As a result of a request from Secretary Rusk, the AFLCIO executive council . . . voted to contribute $35,000. . . to the Vietnamese Confederation of Labor (CVT). In addition, AFL-CIO affiliates are being asked to give financial assistance to the CVT in its current relief efforts."

At a later meeting, AID officials explained the central role that the Vietnamese federation is to play in winning minds and hearts, noting that it has become the largest organization distributing the fertilizer that is vitally needed for growing the new, high yielding rice strains.

By Nov. 12, an AID man was boasting to the labor leaders that the CVT was now so close to the Saigon government that "the strike of a CVT affiliate against an American firm (Pacific Architect and Engineers) should be settled in a few days."

American unions publicly pride themselves on their independence from Government and their undiluted representation of workers' interests.

AFL-CIO involvement in Saigon politics had become deep enough for Lovestone to assert at the meeting of July 17 that he had been advising Dr. Phan Quang Dan. Dr. Dan served briefly in the Saigon cabinet last year but was dropped for urging negotiations with the National Liberation Front. Lovestone related that he had urged Dan to cut short his American visit and "clarify his remarks" about the NLF in a telegram to the South Vietnam Premier, Tran Van Huong. The "clarifying" telegram is annexed to the minutes of the meeting. In other regions, there are suggestions of differences between labor and its Government financiers.

On July 17, Lovestone complained that the Indian government had insisted that representatives from the All India Trade Union Congress, the Communist federation, be included in any delegation of Indian unionists brought to the United States. Lovestone said that AFL-CIO wouldn't have them.

On Nov. 12, Irving Brown, a long-time Lovestone associate and now chief of AFL-CIO's African agency, reported that the AID-supported drivers training school in Nigeria had arranged to train drivers for the Nigerian army. There is no explanation of how this project squares with Washington's professed refusal to help the armed forces of either Nigeria or Biafra.

How carefully the Government's money has been spent was a subject of concern in the GAO report on the Latin operations. It spoke of "serious financial management weaknesses in the AID-AIFLD contract relationship." Among other things, the GAO discovered that AIFLD, the AFL-CIO Latin agent, does not identify costs in each contract and simply bills AID "on the basis of unsupported estimates."

A note appended to the end of the GAO study says that AID later reported it had reached an agreement with AIFLD on "corrective action" over the accounts. The taxpayers, of course, have an interest in assuring that the AFL-CIO is spending Government money in a meticulous fashion. But this curious and intrincate relationship has another ramification.

George Meany for years has condemned unions in Communist countries as instruments of government. To some extent at least, American unions have acquired the same image through their relationships with the foreign policy bureaucracies of Washington.

[From the New Republic, May 3, 1969]

THE AFL-CIO AS PAID PROPAGANDIST AGENT MEANY

(by Richard Dudman)

To George Meany there are "bad" trade unions (Communist) and "good" trade unions (free, democratic) and never the twain shall meet. The former are agents of the Communist party or Communist government-dominated; the latter are independent of external control. In fact, the AFL-CIO has blurred this sharp distinction by accepting United States government funds to finance the work of three regional institutes it operates among unions in Latin America, Africa and Asia-the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the African-American Labor Center (AALC), and the Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI). The government pays 80 to 90 percent of their bills through appropriations for the Agency for International Development.

Now a turn of events has made Meany's distinction even blurrier. Not only do these three institutes accept substantial government support; they also have assumed an additional function as conduits for AID money funneled into various "CIA orphans”—the overseas programs that used to be paid for secretly by the Central Intelligence Agency. Whether it is all the same money, whether CIA still actually directs these activities, and whether the change is just a matter of bookkeeping are good questions to which we can only surmise the answers. Beneficiaries of this new form of roundabout government financing include the Retail Clerks International Association and the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers, two of the big affiliates of the AFL-CIO that received money from the CIA conduits in the old days: they performed such tasks as supporting the general strike that helped keep Cheddi Jagen from coming to power when Guyana became independent in 1966. Current enterprises include developing an oil workers' federation in Japan, financing a retail clerks' union office in Peru and buying membership buttons for a labor union in the Congo. Emphasis is on building up "free" (anti-Communist) unions.

CIA financing was exposed two years ago when a flurry of newspaper stories uncovered a labyrinth of foundations that passed untraceable funds back and forth and subsidized certain favored overseas operations. The new system of funneling aid funds into the labor organizations by way of the AFL-CIO institutes apparently grew out of President Johnson's order of March 29, 1967, prohibiting any further hidden subsidies to private voluntary organizations. He promised to give serious consideration to a proposal that the federal government develop and establish "a public-private mechanism to provide public funds openly for overseas activities of organizations which are adjudged deserving, in the national interest, of public support." A panel headed by former Secretary of State Dean Rusk recommended stopgap assistance for a few such organizations last May, but left the question of permanent financing to the new Administration. Financing of the international labor programs through the AFL-CIO outlets with AID funds is part of that stopgap plan.

This program, begun in mid-1968 with a little more than $1 million annually, was planned in meetings of AID and AFL-CIO officials held earlier that year. Ernest S. Lee, assistant director of the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs, made the formal proposal in a letter May 15, 1968, to Rutherford M. Poats, deputy administrator of AID. Lee is a son-in-law of Meany and assistant to Jay Lovestone, the onetime secretary general of the American Communist Party who later turned fiercely anti-Communist and helped labor unions spend CIA money in the cold war rivalry after World War II. As Director of International Affairs for the AFL-CIO, Lovestone heads the international activities of the federation and is said to exercise a partial veto over selection of labor attachés at US embassies.

Lee asked AID to provide $1,300,000 by expanding existing contracts with the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the African-American Labor Center (AALC) and the Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI).

AIFLD, founded in 1962, already has received $23 million from AID to support organizational and political activities, construction of workers' housing, workers' training schools and other programs throughout most of Latin America. It received $8 million last year.

AALC, founded in 1964 for similar work in Africa, and AAFLI, in 1968 for Asian projects, have been getting about $1 million apiece from AID for their regular programs.

The executive director of AALC is Irving Brown, who worked as Lovestone's agent after World War II to set up unions in Germany, France and Italy as rivals to combat Communist-dominated unions. Among Brown's many "impact projects" financed by US government funds is a visit by three African labor leaders to the United States to attend the 1967 AFL-CIO convention.

Technically, there is no secret about the new financial arrangement for the overseas union organizations. Although there has been no voluntary explanation to Congress or to the public, officials answer questions about it in the greatest detail. An AID "position paper" describing the subsidized work of Brown's AALC says that AID support "must be acknowledged, at least to the host government.” This seems to suggest that individual citizens of the host country can just as well be left in the dark.

The same document says that AALC technicians "will consult with USAID mission officers, but they should not become identified as AID contractor employees." It also gives the approved public description of AALC: "a private US labor organization, founded by the US labor movement, working with financial support from private and public funds." An official of the US Embassy or AID mission assigned to watch progress of an AALC project "will work with the AALC technician discreetly and tactfully to retain the union-to-union image. Site visits, when required, will be arranged with the AALC technician and will be as unobtrusive as possible."

Lee's plan, eventually adopted, was that AID would use the three institutes as "instruments to provide financial support to American labor organizations" in developing and strengthening free trade unions throughout the world. His proposed schedule of subcontracts called for $300,000 each to be funneled into the Retail Clerks International Association, the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers, and the Communications Workers of America, and $100,000 into the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks.

Lee proposed an additional $200,000 be routed through the three institutes directly to groups of unions overseas, without reference to any American unions. These groups were the "clothing and textile workers unions,' "entertainment workers unions," and "food, drink and plantation workers unions." These programs have been slower to develop. An additional $100,000 was requested for administrative and supervisory travel.

Meany stated the case for independent unionism in a speech March 13, 1951, before the Catholic Labor Alliance in Chicago: "We are totally independent of any government control or influence. At times we may agree and cooperate. At times we may disagree. But at no time can we serve or act as an agency or dependent of our government. It is this entirely independent role of the AF of L which has lent great potency, prestige and effectiveness to our domestic and foreign activities against the Communist scourge."

Things have changed since then, however, and Lee's letter to Poats started right off by saying, "This will confirm our recent discussions in which the Agency for International Development may utilize the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the African-American Labor Center, and the Asian-American Free Labor Institute as instruments to provide financial support to American labor organizations involved in, and capable of, developing and strengthening free trade unions throughout the world." He went on to ask for $1,300,000 in AID funds for allocation by the three "instruments."

Things have changed, also, with respect to union delegations from other countries, with the AFL-CIO as host. In the same 1951 speech, Meany boasted about the number of such visits and said: "These are not government financed delegations. They are strictly independent trade union delegations."

As the financing has developed, some of the allocations have been readjusted, and the current total through June is $1,245,000. This AID money takes the place of interim financing through the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which Meany quit when he no longer needed it.

The pattern of financing follows closely a plan proposed and actually applied for a short time to support overseas work by the American Newspaper Guild, which also had been financed by the CIA until the exposures two years ago. When the CIA's role was revealed, the Guild could get no satisfactory answers out of the foundations that had been supporting its overseas work and had been exposed as CIA conduits-the Granary Fund, the Andrew Hamilton Fund, the Chesapeake Foundation, the Broad-High Foundation and the Warden Trust. The Guild's board, declaring that this left a shadow over its international affairs program, directed its officers to sever all connection with the funds.

Hoping to keep up the program, however, the Guild obtained a temporary grant from AFL-CIO emergency funds and additional assistance from AIFLD. Meany at one point told the Guild officers that permanent financing could best be obtained from AID through AIFLD, AALC and a third regional institute soon to be created. This was AAFLI, set up since then and now being used for the pass-through financing of the other union programs overseas. But permanent arrangements for the Guild never jelled. Its officers were told that funds were being curtailed. Some of them concluded that their independence of Lovestone and of US policies made them unacceptable for government subsidy.

"The Guild just didn't fit the mold," one officer says. "It was more concerned with wages and hours and conditions of employment and less concerned with political intrigue." The Guild's overseas program, which included seminars for foreign journalists and union organizing activities, has since been dismantledbut the Guild remains in the AFL-CIO.

There were two basic policy questions when the disclosures of two years ago showed that many of the international conferences, orchestra tours, and publications were actually financed by undercover government funds. The first was whether covert financing was to be continued, considering the damage caused by past exposures and the danger of further exposures in the future. President Johnson chose to call a halt to the secret financing rather than look for new secret conduits.

The second question was whether voluntary organizations can function effectively with any government subsidy, covert or overt. Particularly in the case of labor unions, there are those who believe that both credibility and integrity suffer. They point out that AIFLD has slavishly followed US policy on such issues as intervention in the Dominican Republic, where many local unionists and even many Peace Corps volunteers were bitterly and outspokenly opposed to US policy.

The pro-subsidy argument is that adequate funds are not available elsewhere, and that if the government does not pay the bill, no one will. Whatever the theoretical argument, American officials often do rely on labor organizations that they largely finance, for help in carrying out government policies.

Last year, Philip C. Habib, of the State Department's East Asia bureau, answered complaints about the arrest of South Vietnamese labor leaders by pointing out that Irving Brown of AALC and Fernand Audie of AAFLI were in Saigon and could persuade local labor leaders to rely on President Thieu and Vice President Ky to offset General Loan, the national police chief who had made the arrests.

On another occasion, James P. Grant, then the head of AID's Vietnam bureau, reported that a strike against an American firm in South Vietnam could be settled in a few days in view of the excellent relationship between the Vietnamese labor federation and the Saigon government. The labor federation is heavily subsidized through AAFLI.

Brown has made a special point of extending AALC's operations among African unions into Madagascar and other Indian Ocean islands where American satellite tracking stations are located.

The Nixon Administration apparently has accepted the same formula for subsidizing overseas labor activities. Meany seemed apprehensive when he presided at a meeting of the Labor Advisory Committee on Foreign Assistance last Nov. 12, a week after the Republican victory. The doubt had been dispelled when the Committee met again on March 10. George P. Delaney, the State Department's internal labor affairs coordinator, reported that the new AID administrator, John A. Hannah, had a favorable attitude, and that labor would have a "friend in court" in the Nixon Administration.

Meany observed that he knew Hannah personally and would enjoy working with him again. Then Meany went on to read a letter that Nixon had written to AIFLD's board chairman, J. Peter Grace, president of W. R. Grace & Co. Nixon said he was much interested in AIFLD's work and looked forward to continued cooperation toward their common goals. Gerald P. O'Keefe, acting director of AAFLI, said jokingly that, after hearing about Mr. Nixon's interest in AIFLD and AALC, AAFLI as "number three" would have to try harder to attract the President's attention toward Asia.

A further straw in the wind was the word that Gov. Nelson Rockefeller planned to take Andrew C. McLellan, the AFL-CIO's Inter-American representative, and Joseph A. Beirne, secretary-treasurer of AIFLD, on the first of his trips to Latin America for President Nixon.