Heinz Foundation Bankrolled Group Protesting Bush 9/11 Ads

Newsmax ^ | 6 Mar 2004 | Carl Limbacher and staff

[goresalooza]

The group Peaceful Tomorrows, which bills itself as an independent group of 9/11 victim families and whose members have led the charge to force the Bush re-election campaign to yank ads citing the Twin Towers attacks, has direct financial ties to the Heinz Foundation, the charitable trust administered by the wife of likely Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

On its Web site, Peaceful Tomorrows identifies itself as "a project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization."

A December 2003 report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review detailed the financial relationship between the Tides Center and the charitable foundation controlled by Mrs. Heinz Kerry:

"Known as the Tides Center for Pennsylvania, formerly the Tides Center for Western Pennsylvania, it is a creation of the Tides Foundation and Center, headquartered in San Francisco, and two Pennsylvania-based foundations – the Vira Heinz Endowment and the Howard Heinz Endowment – chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry."

According to the Tribune-Review, Mrs. Heinz Kerry funneled millions of dollars into the parent group of Peaceful Tomorrows:

"Between 1995 and 2001, $4.3 million of that money came from the Howard Heinz Endowment. In 2002, it and the Vira Heinz Endowment blessed The Tides Center, a San Francisco spin-off of the Tides Foundation, with another $190,000 while the two endowments gave $1.6 million to the new Tides Center for Western Pennsylvania," the paper revealed.

Though the Tribune-Review report was first unearthed by researchers on FreeRepublic.com within 36 hours of the inception of the Bush ad controversy, the mainstream press has been slow to pick up on Peaceful Tomorrows' anti-Bush pedigree. The group, for instance, has long been active in opposing U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Still, PT's political portfolio escaped the notice of the Washington Post, which described the group as "nonpartisan" on Thursday.

Other mainstream outlets repeatedly quoted PT members without revealing their anti-Bush agenda.

Comments by PT's leader, Colleen Kelly, have been prominently covered by the Associated Press, the Boston Globe and in dozens of other press reports complaining about the Bush ads. None of the reports mentioned PT's money ties to Heinz Kerry.

Andrew Rice, another prominent member of PT, has been quoted in the New York Times and has appeared on MSNBC, again without a single reference to his group's Heinz Foundation funding.

Besides Peaceful Tomorrows, other Tides grant recipients include the Iraq Peace Fund, which has helped bankroll anti-war marches, and MoveOn.org, which featured a campaign ad in November comparing President Bush to Hitler.

[goresalooza]

At what point will Bush and the FBI go after the Heinz-Kerry-moveon.org-TIDES collaboration and put them behind bars? Isn't contributing millions of dollars toward your husband's prez campaign ILLEGAL?

[Steven W.]

it's not only that, it's that the group is composed of liberals, victims of 9/11 nonetheless, are adamant peacniks and believe our response to 9/11 is to try and reconcile our hurt with those we've "killed" in Afghanistan and Iraq - they are liberals & opposed to the war on terror.

[Sir Gawain]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091579/posts

[The Great RJ]

If Laura Bush's foundation were doing this there would be calls for impeachment and Congressional investigations--but Mrs. Ketchup..nothing to see here. The blatant bias of the mainstream media makes me want to puke.