EnemiesList.info

Nixon Enemies List entry for
Charles Dyson:

List and position:First/Top 20, #5 with Charles Colson's blue checkmark
Name as originally listed:Charles Dyson
Vitals:8/2/1909 - 3/14/1997
Comment on original list:Dyson-Kissner Corporation, New York
Lists with duplicates of this person:1
Gleanings:

- Founder of Dyson Corporation, a private mergers-and-acquisitions firm.

- Listed both in the Top 20 and under "businessmen."

- generally known as a financier and philanthropist.

- received Distinguished Service Medal for his accounting work during and after World War II for the Lend-Lease Program and for shaping world monetary policy.

- is generally credited with inventing the leveraged buy-out in 1954.

- The comment on the Top 20 list notes that he was involved with the Businessmen's Educational Fund (also on the list), the public relations arm of Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace (BEM), an organization that ended along with the Vietnam War.

- As a philanthropist, he helped many charities including some that annoyed Nixon like Common Cause and the Center for Defense Information.

- son of an English carpenter and Irish mother and not closely related to more-famous American Dysons (like physicist Freeman Dyson).

- Schools, college buildings and atria named "Dyson" are named after him, notably at Pace and Cornell.

- His NY Times obituary's second paragraph notes, "Mr. Dyson gained added prominence in 1973 when he was the fifth entry on President Richard M. Nixon's 'enemies list' of political opponents."

- Third paragraph: "Mr. Dyson, who had been hawkish on the Vietnam War until the mid-1960's, when he began opposing it, said he never knew why he had been deemed worthy of Presidential enmity. But he said at the time, "I think it was an endorsement for good standards to be on the enemies list.'"

- John Gardner (quoted in the obituary) notes that Dyson was "immensely valuable" to the Common Cause board because he was "steady, sane, and wise" while activists tended to be "articulate and impulsive."

Comments

Name/Date:SusanMay 19, 2018 3:35pm
Comment:I was graduated from the Dyson College of Arts & Sciences at Pace University -- we had to fight the school, hard, to keep Nixon from giving our commencement address. It's a Barnum & Bailey world, ain't it? (They chose Alan Greenspan instead. I stayed home.)

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