Brazil as NSSM 200 "Model"

However, one of the most significant aspects of NSSM 200 was that it reflected an emerging consensus with some of America's wealthiest families, its most influential establishment.

Kissinger was, in effect, a hired hand within the Government, but not hired by a mere President ofthe United States. He was hired to act and negotiate on behalf of the most powerful family within the postwar US establishment at the time-the Rockefellers.

In 1955 Nelson Rockefeller had invited Kissinger to become a study director for the Council on Foreign Relations. One year later, Kissinger became Director of the Special Studies Project for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, where he came to know the family on a first-name basis. Kissinger later married a Rockefeller employee, Nancy Maginnes, to round the connection.

By November 1975, Richard Nixon had been forced from office in the mysterious Watergate affair, some suspected on the machinations of a politically ambitious. Nelson Rockefeller, working with Kissinger and Alexander Haig. Nixon's successor, a non-descript Gerald Ford, appointed Nelson Rockefeller to be his Vice President. Nelson was in effect, "a heartbeat away" from his dream of being President. Nelson's old friend Kissinger was Secretary of State.

On November 1975, President Ford signed off on Kissinger's NSSM 200 as official US foreign policy. Kissinger had been replaced by his assistant and later business partner, Brent Scowcroft, as NSC head. Scowcroft dutifully submitted Kissinger's NSSM 200 draft, to the new President for signature. Kissinger remained Secretary of . State and Nelson Rockefeller, Vice President. The US was going into the depopulation business big time, and food control was to playa. central role in that business.

Brazil as NSSM 200 "Model" The secret Kissinger plan was implemented immediately. The thirteen priority countries for population reduction were to undergo drastic changes in their affairs over the following thirty years. Most would not even be aware of what was happening.

Brazil was one of the most clearly documented examples of NSSM 200. Beginning in the late 1980's, almost 14 years into the

implementation of NSSM 200, the Brazilian Ministry of Health began to investigate reports of massive sterilization of Brazilian women. The government investigation was the result of a formal Congressional inquiry, sponsored by more than 165 legislators from every political party represented in the Brazilian legislature.9

The investigation had been initiated after information about the secret US National Security Council memorandum on American population control objectives in developing countries was published in the Jornal de Brasilia, Hova do Povo (Rio de Janeiro), Jornal do Brasil,and other major Brazilian newspapers in May 1991.

The Brazilian government was shocked to find that an estimated 44% of all Brazilian women aged between 14 and 55 had been permanently sterilized. Most of the older women had been sterilized when the program started in the mid-1970's. The Government found that the sterilizations had been carried out by a variety of different organizations and agencies, some Brazilian. They included the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the US Pathfinder Fund, the Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception, Family Health International-all programs under the aegis and guidance of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).1O

By 1989, the Brazilian government, which initially had been convinced to cooperate in the of economic growth and poverty alleviation, protested to USAID that the sterilization programs had become "overwhelming and unnecessary." According to some reports, under the program, as many as 90% of all Brazilian women of African descent had been sterilized, which would eliminate future generations in a nation whose Black population is second only to Nigeria's. Almost half of Brazil's 154 million people in the 1980's were believed to be of African ancestry. 11

Kissinger in NSSM 200 had noted the special role of Brazil. It was on the target list of thirteen countries because "it clearly dominates the Continent [South America] demographically," and its population would be projected to equal that of the United States by the year 2000. Such growth from Brazil, the NSSM memo warned, . implied "a growing power status for Brazil in Latin America and on . the world scene over the next 25 years." 12

Behind Kissinger, Scowcroft and the assorted Washington civil servants who carried out the new NSSM 200 policy, stood a circle of private, enormously influential persons. None were more influential at the time than the Rockefeller brothers. On population policy, no Rockefeller held more clout than John D. Rockefeller III, grandson of the Standard Oil founder.

John D. Rockefeller III was appointed by President Nixon in July 1969 to head the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. Their report prepared the ground for Kissinger's NSSM 200. In 1972, some months before Kissinger's secret project began, Rockefeller presented his report to the President. In the election year, Nixon decided to downplay the report and, as a result, it got little press attention. Its policy however, received major priority. Rockefeller proposed what were then drastic measures to stem an alleged population explosion in the United States. 13

Among his recommendations were the establishment of sex education programs in all schools, population education so that the public appreciated the supposed crisis, and the repeal of all laws that hindered contraceptive means to minors and adults. It proposed making voluntary sterilization easier and liberalizing state laws against abortion. Abortion had been regarded as a major vehicle for fertility control by the Rockefeller circles for decades, hindered by strong opposition from church and other groups.

What came next under NSSM 200 could only be understood the vantage point of the background to John D. Rockefeller Ill's obsession with population growth. Henry Kissinger's National Security Council NSSM 200 paper on population control (1974) expressed the assumptions of a decades old effort to breed human traits, known until the end of the Third Reich as Eugenics.

Notes

1. Henry Kissinger, National Security Study Memorandum 200, April 24, 1974: . Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests, Initiating Memo. Complete text is contained in Stephen Mumford, The NSSM 200 Directive and The Study Requested, 1996, http://www.populationsecurity.orgl 11-CH3.html. 2. Ibid. According to the magazine Catholic World Reporter, "The key document needed to understand U.S. policy toward world population during the past 20 years ... was declassified in 1980 but not made publicly available until June 1990. Dated December 10, 1974, it is a study by the National Security Council (NSC) entitled «NSSM 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests:' This document views population growth in less developed countries as not only a serious threat to strategic interests of the U.S. but also as the prime cause of political instability in Third World nations, threatening American overseas investments. 3. Ibid., "Adequacy of World Food Supplies", Executive Summary, paragraph 6. 4. Ibid., Executive Summary, paragraphs 9-10. 5. Ibid., Part II: Policy Recommendations, II. Action to Create Conditions for Fertility Decline §3. Mode a,:d Content of u.s. Population Assistance. 6. Ibid., Part II. Policy Recommendations: C Food for Peace Program and Population,Discussion. 7. Ibid., Part II: Policy Recommendations, I. Introduction-A U.S. Global Population Strategy, B. Key Country priorities in U.S. and Multilateral Population Assistance. (Emphasis added). 8. Ibid., Part II: Policy Recommendations,!. Introduction-A U.S. Global Population Strategy, F. Development of World- Wide Political and Popular Commitment to Population Stabilization and Its Associated Improvement of Individual Quality of Life. 9. Andre Caetano, Fertility Transition and the Transition of Female Sterilization in Northeastern Brazil: The Roles of Medicine and Politics, http://www.iussp.org/ BraziI2001/s10/S19_02_Caetona.pdf. p. 19. Details of the Brazilian Congress inquiry are in Baobab Press, Brazil Launches Inquiry into US Population Activities, Vol. 1, no. 12, Washington D.C., http://india.indymedia.orglenl2003/0s/4869.html. Alternate location in http://thepragmaticprogressive.blogspot.com/2003/0s/thisarticle-printed-in-its-entirety.html. 10. United Nations Population Fund Inventory of Population Projects in Developing .Countries Around the World, cited in Baobab Press, op. cit. 11. Baobab Press, op. cit.

12. Henry Kissinger, op. cit., "Part One: Analytical section", Chapter I-Highlight of World Demographic Trends: Latin America. 13. John D.Rockefeller III, Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, Washington, D.C. 27 March 1972.