"Williams was born in Colón, Panama, to parents Akin Jules Williams and Sharon Williams, who were both Panamanian. He graduated in 1972 from Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, New York where he became clerk of the student body, editor of the student paper and was captain of the baseball, cross-country and championship basketball team. He attended Haverford College, from which he graduated with a baccalaureate in philosophy in 1976." wiki
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I am curious as to how JW (Foxnews' most prominent token Lefty) got from Colon in the Republic of Panama where he was a son of the generally oppressed and typically impoverished class of West Indian people settled in the Republic of Panama to the Oakwood Friends School and then graduated from Haverford College. Both of these are private Quaker schools and not cheap. I do not know the answer to my question.
I was stationed in the Canal Zone 1965 and 1966 as a member of the "8th Special Forces Group" at Ft. Gulick. I was in the intelligence staff section of the Group Headquarters. Because of that I spent a lot of time with the operatives of Army Intelligence and the CIA, both of whom were engaged among other things in Force Protection activities designed to make safe the Canal Zone and US forces stationed therein.
The Partido del Pueblo was the Cuban and Soviet aligned Communist Party. The national government of Panama treated it as a deadly enemy and a conduit for Cuban subversion. The Panamanian government encouraged the US to keep the Partido del Pueblo as weak as possible. This party led street riots, bank robberies and looting of stores in Colon in 1964 and 1965. Half a dozen US solders were killed by snipers in these fandangos, shot in the Canal Zone from across the border.
To get a grip on this situation the CIA and Army Intelligence and probably the FBI clandestinely recruited as assets most of the senior members of the party and the politburo of the Partido del Pueblo. We had so many that if USI told the politburo to not attend a meeting and stay home, they lacked a quorum. To achieve these recruitments, the standard lures were; US money, assistance for relatives to move to the States and scholarships (full ride) for their children at good US private schools and colleges whose benevolent leaders could be persuaded to help (fully funded) 3rd world kids.
Is there a connection? I have no idea. pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_of_Panama
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Williams
Thanks for asking again, Colonel, for since you revealed these "lures," I've often wondered if they help explain Williams's career of fake-"Liberal" hackery.
Posted by: Pollychrome | 15 February 2020 at 08:02 AM
Dear Colonel,
No need to post my earlier reply: just wanted you to know I'm still grateful for this question + all your wisdom. And part of what I admire is how concise your work is. THANKS.
Posted by: S | 15 February 2020 at 09:00 AM
Yes it apparently happens all the time.
Frank Marshall Davis, Obama's biological father, is from Arkansas City, Kansas and attended Friends University in Wichita Kansas where I was raised.
"Quakers, also called Friends, are a historically Christian group whose formal name is the Religious Society of Friends or Friends Church."
Davis received lots of timely "breaks" in his lifetime just as his son did.
So, yes there does seem to be a pattern.
Posted by: GEORGE CHAMBERLAIN | 15 February 2020 at 09:16 AM
polychrome
I am just plain interested in how he gor where he is. IMO his strident leftist stance is largely an act designed to fulfill Foxnews' expectations of his role.
Posted by: turcopolier | 15 February 2020 at 09:58 AM
I know nothing about Juan Williams. I know a little about Quaker Schools, just from having gone to college with some of their alumni, so perhaps it is relevant. Remember Jack Templeton? Remember Julian Bond? They went to George School together. Julian's parents were educators, his father eventually the president of a university, so perhaps Julian did not need a scholarship to George School. But if Julian or any other student needed a scholarship, Jack Templeton's father would have gladly paid their tuition.
Posted by: oldman22 | 15 February 2020 at 03:48 PM
Seems plausible somebody pulled some strings to get Mr. and Mrs. William's kid into find schools but the critically acclaimed books and an Emmy-winning documentary seem things he won on all his own.
My guess is from there this talented but naive kid followed a common path of his ilk, that of the pundit. Burned by the left, and genuinely appalled by the way in which he was victimized after he only halfheartedly defended Clarence Thomas, he nevertheless did not abandon that path. Instead he found a new home within it. At FOX Juan is expected to be a dissenting voice.
Posted by: Mark Logan | 15 February 2020 at 03:58 PM
I was similarly admitted to a prestigious school in 1956 on the basis of a quiet word to the Headmaster from my Godfather who was part of the intelligence establishment - my father had been an agent in Japan before WWII.
Posted by: Walrus | 15 February 2020 at 04:53 PM
walrus
Did your godfather pay your expenses? We used to pay the expenses of the children of our Panamanian "friends."
Posted by: turcopolier | 16 February 2020 at 07:50 AM
Lot of strange stuff happening in panama these days.Extraordinary types of banking services,huge sums of a bitches.If you ever get bored read up on the saga of "tintin and the Panama papers"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
Posted by: anon | 16 February 2020 at 07:50 AM
Colonel,
I graduated from Haverford College in 1975 (began with Class of 1974, but near fatal health episode set me back a year). No real direct knowledge of Juan Williams, although I vaguely recall him. Haverford was an excellent school - what a relief to find myself amongst such a select group of scholars - and very diverse in the educational opportunities it afforded. Strong in liberal arts of course, but also in the sciences, as well as in my personal favorite of the arts, in my case the musical arts. Additionally, I took advantage of the cross registrations available to pursue coursework at both Bryn Mawr, as well as at the University of Pennsylvania. Could never fit study at Swarthmore in, too, sadly.
JW majored in philosophy, and the department was particularly strong at that time (I availed myself of several courses while matriculated), and being exposed to such profound scholars may certainly have instilled in him the value of being able to think in a straight line.
As regards JW, I think that he is way too smart to have committed himself fully to labor as a sharecropper on the plantation of his nominal Massah, the Democrat party. His remarks on his two sons being Republicans (on Wiki if I recall correctly) seem apposite to this conclusion.
The life arc of his parents, and later his own access to sophisticated educational opportunities lend weight to your speculations that they got a boost from Uncle Sam via one of his avatars. Mayhap that originated from the intelligence community. The CIA in particular has never been shy in wielding influence in raising up/sponsoring intellectuals, media figures, or even artistic currents should they think their efforts to be advantageous to advancing their agendas. Doesn't really need to be anything terribly sinister this activity; spot and encourage those likely to be influential in a way that makes sense to them. Well, besides from their working inside the USA in so doing, of course. But given their rather exalted opinion of their probity, such mere legalities would scarcely restrain their hand (vide their actions of recent years in seditious activities against the Constitution as a demonstration of this).
Thank you.
Posted by: JerseyJeffersonian | 16 February 2020 at 06:52 PM
My parents paid the fees. Getting into the school was the difficult bit. As far as I know, I was the only child of immigrants to be enrolled that year. The rest were “old money” or scholarship boys.
Posted by: walrus | 16 February 2020 at 09:14 PM
walrus
I will be yet more blunt. IMO JW had the best scholarship of all.
Posted by: turcopolier | 17 February 2020 at 12:26 AM
JJ
"Raising up?" Nah! It was probably just a pay-off a kind of signing bonus.
Posted by: turcopolier | 17 February 2020 at 12:42 AM
There's a connection between the financing of the Panama Canal and the Dreyfus Affair. The fine details are in a deeper recess of memory; gross concept = a member of the Jewish-French banking family Reinach got in trouble floating loans for the canal, at the same time that the Dreyfuss affair was at fever pitch.
According to Ruth Harris, a book she published and lectures she delivered at Mosse School at University of Wisconsin - Madison, a Protestant French bureaucrat tried fervently and in good fait to resolve the conflict through in-house negotiations, and was certain. he could succeed. His contact with the Jewish power structure was Joseph Reinach, a member of the embarrassed banker's family. Reinach toyed with the French bureaucrat, ultimately leading to the latter's demise from the pressure; Reinach's goal was to undermine as thoroughly as possible the power of Catholic Church and especially the Jesuits in France. In this, he was successful.
The reality is, Jewish interests held Dreyfus hostage to a larger agenda.
Harris's book: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312572983
video: The Intimate Politics of the Dreyfus Affair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWxzwMqEsU0
It has been claimed that the sight of Dreyfus being humiliated in Paris was one of the prime motivators for Theodor Herzl's energetic quest to create a Jewish state, although Herzl, a journalist, never spoke or wrote against the treatment of Alfred Dreyfus. Herzl was forthright in his belief that arousing "antisemitism" worked in favor of the zionist project.
Posted by: Artemesia | 17 February 2020 at 01:42 PM
Ruth Hyde Paine is another interesting Quaker character. RHP was able to get Lee Harvey Oswald a job at the Texas School Book Depository. She was lonely and took a fancy to learning Russian and became a part of the White Russian emigre community in Dallas where she met the spooky Texas oilman George de Mohrenschildt a friend of her husband. De Mohrenschildt apparently committed suicide shortly before he was to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Amazingly, he had a telephone number of George H. W. Bush in his Rolodex. There's a lot of spooky connections in both family histories, which goes to show that being a Quaker can be a pretty exciting career choice.
Posted by: LJ | 17 February 2020 at 11:59 PM
Partido del Pueblo sounds just like our modern Democrat party
Posted by: phodges | 11 February 2021 at 06:47 PM
Apparently there is an answer to how Williams gained entry to the Oakwood Friends School, if it can be believed. The following is from footnote 5 of the Wikipedia article on Williams:
Television personality and news journalist Juan Williams was born to Rogelio and Alma Geraldine Williams on April 10, 1954 in Colon, Panama. At the age of four, Williams and his family moved to Brooklyn, New York. In 1969, Williams won a scholarship to attend the Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, New York, a Quaker school. Williams then attended Haverford College, where he graduated with a B.A. degree in philosophy in 1976.
If this is true, then Williams came to the US with his mother at the age of four and entered the Oakwood Friends School at the age of 15 on a scholarship.
The following, in Williams own words, is contained in the article from The Hill (footnote 7) cited in the Wikipedia article:
My mother left Panama in 1958 after it became clear to her and my dad that the rule of dictator Arnulfo Arias had narrowed the doors of education and economic opportunity for my sister, my brother and for me.
My mom was nearly 50 when she left behind everything she knew to give her kids a chance at a better life. She did not want us growing up amid the gut-wrenching poverty, anti-black bigotry and the violence that was festering in our hometown of Colon.
My dad stayed behind as she took the children — then aged 4, 11 and 14 — to America as added cargo on a banana boat bound for New York. Yes, a banana boat.
This would confirm that he was four when he left Colon with his mother and his two siblings. Apparently his father remained in Panama.
Posted by: Chuck Light | 11 February 2021 at 06:49 PM
I see JW on the FIVE a few days per week where he puts up a brave front & opinion though he is used more like a piñata. His views are highly progressive which would fall in line with the Partido del Pueblos after WW2 through the sixties and seventies when it died out. According to JW he emigrated from Panama in a banana boat at the age of four thus he is not responsible for the views of his parents. Arriving from Central America in the late fifties in a banana boat was a step up in life versus other travel options.
Went on a trip to San Lorenzo a few years back and while passing the old Fort Sherman officers homes on the waterfront showed duty there must of been quite nice. Homes were in ruins on some of the priciest waterfront property in the area once the government lets it loose. Now with the six lane bridge across the canal on the Atlantic side that area is getting heavily developed.
We are very familiar with a family from Chiriqui that went the other way. The father went to Moscow for medical school, residency and fellowship with tours in Cuba and their medical corp. He returned to Panama starting his ENT practice where his children also have become MD’s with one daughter becoming a renowned surgeon in that area. Their political views are as expected but they spend their lives toiling in the public hospitals living their views. Quite admirable. Oh, I’m tolerated in a decent manner.
Posted by: Bobo | 11 February 2021 at 07:24 PM
Bobo
We lived at Ft. Gulick in housing very similar to that at Ft. Sherman. It was quite nice to live in close proximity to the jungle since Gulick was built on a series of ridge fingers with the selva all around. Yes, JW bears the stigmata of the P del P. They probably eventually died out as a group because we (USI) told them to desist once we fully controlled them with handouts. The banana boat thing is laughable.
Posted by: turcopolier | 12 February 2021 at 09:15 AM
I had a friend in grade school from Guatemala. He said his father used to "run the railroads" there and he now taught Spanish at Harvard. I thought that an odd career path when I was 10. He said they left there during a coup but didn't specify the year, but if it were 1954, he would be two and have no real recollection. On their way to the airport they had to pull the car over because the president was getting out first. This is what he told us.
About fifteen years later I showed him a magazine article from New Times, a short-lived magazine of the 1970's. It claimed that the CIA had many officers in the Department of Railroads in Guatemala because the nation was dependent on the railroads and it was a critical infrastructure. I asked him if his father had worked for the CIA. He said, "You know, many of my friends often asked me if my father worked for the American intelligence services but you are the first one who had any proof." He asked for the magazine and said he was going to show it to his father when he saw him. I suspect he didn't know himself and was going to try and find out.
It seems that our government has often recruited assets in foreign countries who would 'turn' and spy for us. The lure of extra income and potential citizenship in the United States is probably a big draw for the recruitment of them. I have never understood why betraying your native country for a foreign one could in any way make a person a desirable candidate for citizenship here. I am sure that aspect is never even considered by the agency.
Posted by: Martin Oline | 12 February 2021 at 09:20 AM
Chuck Light
There is a whole apparat in the US IC for paying off non-monetary debts and holding money in escrow, sometimes for a long time. There are people in the bidness whose sole job is staying in touch. if you don't do that, word gets around that you can't be trusted.
Posted by: turcopolier | 12 February 2021 at 09:23 AM
Martin Oline
Us spooks are just not as judgmental as you are. But it is true that some people you have to use as assets are strongly encouraged to not live in the US.
Posted by: turcopolier | 12 February 2021 at 09:27 AM
Poor multimillionaire Juan. I wonder when he's going to get around to commenting on the fact America wasn't "systemically racist" when his parents came here, unlike what his intellectual fellows on the left are saying now.
Posted by: Fred | 12 February 2021 at 10:23 AM
phodges
In 1964-65 the P del P were not yet under complete US intelligence control and they twice incited and inspired Black street mobs to rob banks and loot stores in Colon. In 1963 a number of US infantry (4/10) were killed by snipers while standing by to safeguard Cristobal in the Canal Zone. The two towns were side by side with only a street between them. The US command changed its command and control setup and the 8th Special Forces Group under Colonel Arthur Simons was given responsibility for border defense in any future street situation. In '65 there was such an incident and the rioters, bank robbers and looters learned to their sorrow that the Greenies were not to be trifled with. They never tried it out again and US intelligence went on with its work of taking over the P del P.
Posted by: turcopolier | 12 February 2021 at 10:49 AM
It doesn't look like Williams' family was as impoverished as most West Indians in Panama. His father was an accountant and his mother worked as a secretary. I think that would have been enough for the mother and children to move to Brooklyn. That doesn't rule out his father's possibly working for the CIA, but it offers a reasonable, alternate explanation.
I don't know what kind of grammar school student he attended, but judging by his high school activities, he doesn't appear to be a slacker. A Friends School scholarship on his merits is not too much of a stretch. And i bet being a black immigrant didn't hurt. Although the tuition is as much as a college now, it was probably only a few hundred back then. My prep school was $450 a year back then. Now it's on the same level as the Friends School. Far more than I can afford for a high school education.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 12 February 2021 at 03:51 PM