Full Black - Brad Thor [21]
“And Jeremy?”
“Jeremy was Chip’s protégé. The two of them were looking to broaden their platform beyond the blogs. They saw a potential niche for certain types of documentary films they thought could really do well. Between them, they must have had a hundred different ideas, many of which were very topical and actually quite interesting. To get started, though, they had to narrow it down to just one.
“Some whistleblower had approached Chip with a story for one of his blogs a while back. She worked for the Ford Foundation and had uncovered some unusual activity that she felt should be brought to light.”
“What kind of unusual activity?” asked Ralston.
“Financial; who the money was being funneled to, how it was being funneled, that kind of thing. But before he could go to press with the story, the woman disappeared. Chip received a note, allegedly from her, saying that she had made it all up.”
“Why would she do that?”
Salomon shook his head. “Nobody knew. They figured somebody had gotten to her.”
“So what happened?”
“Chip and Jeremy kept after the story. The more they looked into it, the more they uncovered. They started thinking it was too big for the blogs. That’s where the idea for the documentary came in. They pieced together a short rough cut, and were screening it for different people who they thought might be interested in helping to get it made. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Yet you didn’t want any of your Hollywood pals to know you were working on it. That’s why you were doing it out of your house?” mused Ralston.
The producer nodded and took a bite of his bacon before replying. “With technology these days, especially for a documentary that doesn’t require any special effects, we didn’t need to be at the studio; we could do it all from home.”
“You said you were worried the production was going to ruffle a few feathers. I can see ticking off some foundations by exposing what they might have been up to, but I can’t picture them getting together and putting out a hit on you,” said Ralston. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Not until you understand how much money is involved and what’s at stake,” Salomon replied. “One hundred years ago, there were only eighteen American tax-exempt private foundations. Today, there are more than sixteen thousand.
“The U.S. not-for-profit sector is the world’s seventh-largest economy. The foundations sit on over five hundred billion untaxed and largely unregulated dollars. Some of the biggest foundations give away more in a year than some nations’ GDPs. The power of a few of these foundations rival that of our own federal government, as well as the power of countries like Russia, France, and Great Britain. That was the crux of our film—how, where, and why that money and power is being spent.
“We were looking at the foundation world in general, but more specifically at a disturbing ideological agenda shared by many of them. We wanted to know how many of these large foundations, started by successful pro-business Americans, had turned so anti-business and in some cases downright anti-American. Why were environmental organizations lobbying Washington on issues that had nothing to do with the environment? Why were labor organizations lobbying on issues that had nothing to do with workers? Why were foundations funding pro-socialist and pro-communist textbooks and lessons in schools? Why were others supporting the eugenics movement and the works of Josef Mengele from Auschwitz, masquerading under the banner of human genetics? The list went on and on. The key in each instance was in following the money, and the more we followed it, the further down the rabbit hole we went.
“What we discovered was that beginning in the 1940s, radical elements inside the United States had recognized that