The Billionaire Who Wasn't (48 page)

The standard letter arrived from Harvey Dale, telling her she would have to give the money back if anyone found out where it had come from. She recalled thinking, “This is Hawaii, it is a small island: There are no secrets here.” But she dutifully told the board, “I can't tell you where the gift came from.” She reckoned some guessed that it was Feeney—he was well known in Hawaii—but kept quiet.

Feeney became a regular visitor and took a close interest in the provision of new buildings and modular units to solve the accommodation shortage. Wesselkamper believes that what got Chuck's attention was the poor condition of the buildings—something that could readily be fixed—and the fact that the students were up against it, compared to those in other universities. Most were from low-income families and disadvantaged groups. Many were judged to have the potential for university study but were not quite “prepared.” Some from the Philippines, Samoa, or Guam did not have English as a first language.

“His gifts were truly transformational,” said Wesselkamper, on a walk around the campus in January 2006. “His giving is now close to $14 million.” A new library was erected with $5 million from Atlantic and $5 million from
Jenai Sullivan Wall, daughter of a friend of Chuck's from early DFS days, called Maurice (Sully) Sullivan, an Irishman who secured the McDonald's franchise in Hawaii and founded the largest grocery chain on the islands, called Foodland, and who died in 1998.

In keeping with his practice of bringing universities into conversation with each other, Feeney brought Sue Wesselkamper to Vietnam and sponsored a Vietnamese student for her university.

Hawaii, though part of the United States, was an extension of Chuck's giving to a new geographical zone. His ability to seek out and identify major worthy projects for the cash-rich foundation was the key to Atlantic Philanthropies' success. But it was difficult for Atlantic directors and staff to keep up with him. Doing serious and thoughtful philanthropy in several countries required staffing and management.

With Feeney showing no sign of slowing down, directors expressed doubts about the wisdom of “opening up any new geography.” Thomas J. Tierney, founder of the Boston-based Bridgespan management consulting company, summed up their apprehensions at a private seminar he conducted for Atlantic in 2000, by writing on a flip chart: “No Incremental Geographical Creep.” “There was kind of laughter at that and it went into some document or other as “No geographical creep,” said Harvey Dale, “and that was intended to constrain Chuck from opening up another geography.”

Chuck Feeney's moral authority in the organization was, however, so great, and the board members held him in such reverence, that they would have deferred to his wishes should he have opted to open up another territory. When asked what would happen if Feeney wanted to get involved in directing large grants to a new country, for example, Zimbabwe, Harvey Dale replied, “In my view if Chuck decided there was something important to do in Zimbabwe, that may be smart or not smart, but if he really, really wanted to do it, I say—we can deal with that. And let's help him instead of trying to stop him.”

CHAPTER 31

Geographical Creep

In 2003, Harvey Dale's reservations notwithstanding, Chuck Feeney started planning to go to a new country. It was perhaps inevitable that Cuba should attract his attention. He had become involved in Communist Vietnam and that had worked extremely well. Like Vietnam, Cuba had gotten a raw deal from the United States, he believed. Cuba and Vietnam came from the idea of righting an American wrong, said his daughter Juliette.

For most Americans, helping Vietnam was not a problem. Under the Clinton administration, America's relations with Vietnam had sharply improved. The wounds from the Vietnam War were beginning to heal. The U.S. economic embargo on Vietnam was lifted in 1994 and relations normalized in 1995.

Cuba was different. Hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles in Florida were passionately opposed to any engagement while Fidel Castro was alive. They had bipartisan support in Washington. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Helms-Burton Act, which made a punitive U.S. trade embargo permanent. There were no diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana. U.S. citizens were subject to heavy fines if they entered Cuba without Washington's permission.

The political risk of Atlantic's going into Cuba was therefore much higher than with Vietnam. “We haven't yet got to the reconciliation step with Cuba, whereas we had with Vietnam,” said Chris Oechsli. “We are allowed to rebuild Vietnam, but we are not yet allowed to rebuild Cuba.”

The Atlantic directors acquiesced in, rather than endorsed, Chuck's plan to explore giving in Cuba. “I would not personally do it, but I don't think it's the end of the world if Chuck chooses to do it,” said chairman Frank Rhodes. Many of Chuck's American admirers were taken aback, however. “I don't know where this thinking comes from,” said his old friend Fred Antil. “He is a good man with a Catholic upbringing and blue-collar Catholic background.” Lawyers for Atlantic Philanthropies advised the American directors they should not even discuss giving funds to Cuba (and they didn't). John Healy, who had become chief executive of Atlantic and moved to New York in 2001, was an Irish national but would not even talk about Cuba in interviews because he was based in New York. As an American citizen, Chuck could not direct the foundation's operation in Cuba. However, he could
inspire
it.

To enable Atlantic Philanthropies to help projects in Cuba, an organization called Atlantic Charitable Trust was registered in London with the Charity Commission of England and Wales, to which funds were allocated from Bermuda for transfer on to Havana. No U.S. board member or American employee of Atlantic Philanthropies was associated with it. Irish national Colin McCrea, head of the international branch in Dublin and senior vice president of Atlantic Philanthropies, was made its executive director. “We were very careful that the laws of the U.S. be protected, in spirit as well as in practice,” said McCrea. Its other members included director Tom Mitchell, also based in Ireland, and two English appointees. Mitchell had no qualms about his role. “I think what the United States is doing in Cuba is unconscionable,” he said. He could see the reason for it before the end of the Cold War, but since then, Cuba represented no credible threat to the United States. “The main thing is that the foundation plays it straight. If Atlantic Philanthropies is going to give a significant gift to Cuba, it gets a license to do so. It is not trying to do anything through a back door.”

Chris Oechsli made several initial trips to Cuba to identify projects that could legally be supported and to ensure that Havana knew enough to take the philanthropist seriously. Cuban officials often got inquiries from sympathetic Americans that never came to anything, mainly because of the American embargo. Oechsli detected an element of “not-unfounded paranoia” in the Cuban administration about the secretive Feeney operation. One of the directors of Atlantic Philanthropies was Fritz Schwarz, who had served as chief counsel on the Senate intelligence subcommittee investigating CIA
excesses that former Senator Frank Church chaired in 1975: Half the publication was devoted to CIA attempts to kill Fidel Castro.

In November 2004, Feeney went to Cuba, flying directly from Paris to Havana, accompanied by a group that included board member Tom Mitchell, and Roger Downer, president of the University of Limerick. It actually wasn't Feeney's first time in the country. While still single and selling cars around the world, he had flown into Havana in January 1959, a week after the revolution. “Fidel and his camp followers had taken over the Hilton,” he recalled. Feeney was able to travel uninterrupted to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, where he sold two cars and appointed a salesman for Cars International.

On the last evening of his weeklong trip in 2004, a Cuban official advised Feeney and his group to be at the Havana Conference Center in late afternoon. At 5:30 PM, two black Mercedes limousines approached along the driveway through the surrounding lawns. The first one slowed down and then zoomed off. The second one did the same. Having completed their security maneuver, the limos circled and came back.

Fidel Castro strode through the door, bearded and gaunt, dressed in military green fatigues. He greeted Feeney and led the way into a conference room. He seemed as if he had recently been asleep. The Cuban president had with him his physician, Dr. Eugenio Selman-Housein—famous for his prediction that Castro would live to be 140 years old—and his first vice minister for foreign affairs, Fernando Remírez de Estenoz Barciela, who had been the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., at the time of the repatriation from Florida of the Cuban schoolboy Elian Gonzales.

Once he started to talk, however, Castro came to life and monopolized the conversation. His monologue went on almost unbroken for over six hours, ending just before midnight. He displayed a phenomenal memory and attention to detail. “He starts very inaudible and quiet and draws you in, and hours later you realize you are at another level of discourse and energy, and you have been engaged, you have been hooked,” said Oechsli. “For me there was not one minute of dullness. It was quite engaging.” At one point, Castro engaged Tom Mitchell on a discourse about Greek philosophy, and Feeney interjected to say, “If you guys go on like this, all we will be able to discuss is baseball.” Castro replied, “No, we have much more important things to discuss,” and launched into a debate on global warming and world health. During that time the guests were served fruit and fruit drinks.
Feeney drank little, aware from the start that they were in for a long night. At last Castro said, “I really apologize, I can't help myself, I go on, and I don't stop, and I've been very rude.” Chuck was relieved in every sense—no one had dared interrupt the monologue to go to the bathroom. He agreed it was time to wrap up, saying it was so late “that my wife will think I am with another woman!” The Cuban leader made a show of being mortified. “Oh! I didn't realize your wife is here with you. I will have to give her flowers.” “If you send her flowers she will
know
I am with another woman,” replied Feeney, at which Castro laughed uproariously.

The next day, just before Chuck and Helga were to leave, Castro appeared again, this time accompanied only by his interpreter. He presented Helga with a bouquet of flowers and proffered a box of cigars to Feeney. “Do you smoke?” he asked. Feeney said, “No.” “Well, do your friends smoke?” “No.” “Better yet, give them to your enemies,” said Castro, who himself gave up smoking in 1985. This time the meeting went on for two hours in a smaller room. Castro was very solicitous of Helga. Oechsli, who was also present, found that in the more intimate setting, Castro had a real grace and was very personable. The Cuban leader also sought out Roger Downer separately for a discussion on education, saying, “Last night I lectured you, now you inform me.”

Under U.S. rules, Atlantic Philanthropies was allowed to support an important health study, known as the Isle of Youth Study, identifying risk markers for chronic kidney disease, which affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. It was also permitted to provide medical backpacks for the Latin American School of Medicine, established by Castro in Havana in 1998 to train doctors from other countries without charge. Castro explained to Feeney that this was an opportunity to build human resources in health in the region.

By 2007, Atlantic had contributed some $11 million to Cuba, mainly to medical education cooperation. However, the U.S. embargo frustrated Feeney from doing what he did best, identifying the capital needs of colleges and universities, and providing funds for new buildings and facilities to raise the national level of educational achievement.

Feeney was enthusiastic, however, about helping the Cuban health program, which was based on prevention rather than cure and which succeeded in giving Cuba a greater average life expectancy than the United States. On one visit he asked Gail Reed, an American journalist based in Cuba, why so few people knew about the achievement of Cuban physicians. When she
replied that a book was being written, he retorted, “Nobody reads anymore, make a movie.” Atlantic Charitable Trust subsequently provided $1 million for a ninety-minute documentary called
Salud,
produced by Gail Reed and Academy Award-nominee Connie Field in 2006, and pledged resources for worldwide distribution.

Feeney remained determined to do all he could within U.S. law. On another visit to Cuba in January 2007, he told Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, over dinner in the elegant Café del Oriente in Old Havana, “You haven't seen the back of me.”

In the meantime, Feeney had “discovered” the Republic of South Africa. He went there in the autumn of 2005. But it wasn't a case of geographical creep. The Atlantic Foundation had been active in South Africa since 1994, largely on the initiative of Harvey Dale, who asked John Healy to find opportunities after the end of apartheid in 1991. In the following decade, it had committed some $100 million to education, reconciliation, human rights, and health, with significant funding for the fight against AIDS, and was ranked one of the country's top five foreign donors. Healy had become, as he put it, “an absolutely unabashed enthusiast for South Africa,” but he could never get Chuck really interested. At a meeting of the Atlantic Philanthropies board in Brisbane in 2004 when Healy announced that the next board meeting would be held in South Africa, Feeney retorted, “Well, I won't be there.”

“Every time I spoke to Chuck about South Africa to try and interest him in it, he just closed his mind,” said Healy. “He didn't want to go there. He thought the problems were too great. And in recent years, perfectly understandably, his confidence waned even further because of the AIDS denialism of the president and because of the huge outflow of trained health professionals, and because of the less than smart way the South Africans are dealing with the Zimbabwe crisis. So all those things turned him off completely.”