DAVID TWERSKY Mr.Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.

    The Ford Foundation is neither the first nor, I suspect, the last embattled party to effectively enter into a plea bargain based on the formula: We didn’t do anything wrong, and we certainly won’t do it again. In a retreat that may turn into a rout, the venerable institution came down from its ivory towers on East 43rd Street this week to respond to the rising chorus of critics, including members of both houses of Congress and officials throughout the executive branch.

    The critics were charging that the foundation had funded radical Palestinian groups responsible, at a minimum, for dragging the United Nations World Conference Against Racism at Durban, South Africa, over an anti-Zionist ideological cliff.

    In a November 17 letter to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the foundation president, Susan Berresford, admitted that one of its grantees was guilty of adopting an extremist stand at Durban but also said it was losing its status as a grantee because of auditing problems. The ex-grantee is the Palestinian Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, or LAW. In making this statement, the foundation letter tried to minimize the foundation’s ties to LAW.

    “LAW had over 30 donors in all,including European and Scandinavian governments, and an audit commissioned by Ford and other donors revealed that it had misused funds,”Ms.Berresford said.

    The foundation’s letter to Mr.Nadler was narrowly drawn, obviously by a combination of legal and public relations talents.The foundation limited its mea culpas to the 2001 Durban conference — all the time maintaining the pretense that it would investigate whether any grantees who attended Durban were guilty of anti-Semitism, and would, if necessary, suspend funding to such groups.

    The letter claimed that the foundation was “disgusted by the vicious anti-Semitic activity seen at Durban,” an admission that flew in the face of all the foundation’s earlier statements to the contrary.“We now recognize that we did not have a clear picture of the activities, organizations,and people involved,”Ms.Berresford said.

    Even this statement was a lame and belated attempt to claim innocence by means of ignorance. Was the foundation genuinely ignorant of the goings-on at Durban until the recent pressure against them became unbearable?

    Just before the story exploded onto the front pages last month, the organization’s communications vice president, Alex Wilde, sent a journalist, Edwin Black, who broke the story, a six-page written statement insisting, “We have seen no indication that our grantees in Durban or elsewhere engaged in anti-Semitic speech or activities. The Foundation does not support hate speech of any kind.”

    Mr. Black was told by a Hadassah delegate to the conference that “There was no way to miss the anti-Semitism. The Ford guy would have to be blind. It was the most anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist stuff you ever saw.”

    Instead, the Ford representative at Durban told the Hadassah delegate that “what the conference was doing was correct.”And before the crushing pressure, one senior Ford official told Mr. Black that “Anti-Zionism is in the eye of the beholder.”

    The letter further claimed that the foundation checks its grantees against a proscribed list issued by the State Department and that it had not discovered any “matches.” However, the charge against the foundation was that it was funding groups linked to and supportive of groups on the State Department’s terrorist list. Moreover, that list is perpetually evolving. State has been notoriously reluctant to finger factions tied to Yasser Arafat, Fatah, or the Palestinian Authority as “terrorist.”

    The foundation should have been matching grantees against a common-sense list, as well as against the mandates of its self-described mission “To strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement.”

    Opponents of Israel’s presence in the territories though they might be,were these groups really committed to those noble goals? One wonders how “promoting international cooperation” squares with the isolation, denigration, and delegitimization of Israel at Durban.

    Still, the foundation letter said that its grantees will henceforth be unable to pass funds “through one organization to another,”or to “use other independent monies to promote violence or terrorism.”

    Ms. Berresford said that the foundation will now require grantees to explicitly commit themselves to “not promote violence or terrorism.…Organizations unwilling to agree to these terms will not receive Foundation support.”

    To the above steps, the foundation letter added another — Organizations promoting the delegitimization or destruction of Israel would be ineligible for funding: “We will never support groups that promote or condone bigotry or violence, or that challenge the very existence of legitimate, sovereign states like Israel.”

    In an effort to placate the critics, the letter said that the foundation would use its “considerable international reach and standing to assist in combating global anti-Semitism.”

    Commenting on the letter, the ADL national director, Abraham Foxman, commended the foundation for using the opportunity “to deepen their understanding of anti-Semitism and look for ways to counteract and prevent it.” Mr. Foxman also told Mr. Black that he was prepared to “not only implement the new guidelines but to help them develop programs which will serve the welfare of people of goodwill who sincerely want to better the world.”

    Jewish organizations, however, would be making a mistake if they adopt a new role of “advising” the foundation on how to spread its wealth to programs combating anti-Semitism. Such a role would conflict with the responsibility these groups retain to serve as watchdogs to protect the Jewish interest. Another reason is that any group benefiting financially, even indirectly, runs the substantial risk of being perceived as having run a shakedown campaign.

    The foundation’s steps are good, as far as they go. The gates of redemption, the rabbis say, are never closed. However, redemption requires truth, and these steps do not go nearly far enough. As The New York Sun has pointed out, Ms. Berresford and the foundation staff have known for years of concerns that it was funding groups in the extremist camp. The current claims that the foundation stumbled into the problem are false. The foundation willfully went down this wicked road.

    In securing this “bargain,” the foundation is getting off cheaply, far too cheaply, I think. The Ford funding scandal is the charitable sector’s version of Enron and Global Crossing. Like those scandals, it concerns not only accounting problems, but also a fundamentally flawed view of the world.

    The corporate greed scandals have refreshed the spirits and agendas of those arguing that democratic capitalism requires some social checks and balances. For some reason, that argument falls on unfertile soil when applied to the wonderful world of foundations. Moreover, like in Enron and Global Crossing, someone should be held accountable.

HADI FARAHANI