17

with other intelligence agencies. Cherne hired Bill Casey as a staff member of the Research
Institute of America in 1938. When World War II began, Casey joined the OSS under William
Donovan. After the war, Casey and Cherne maintained their friendship, and Casey joined the
International Rescue Committee's board. As Czechoslovakia attempted to break out of the Soviet
orbit in 1968, Cherne and Casey went to the Czech border in hope of repeating the Hungarian
experience. It failed and both were almost arrested by the Czech border police. President Nixon
appointed Cherne to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), and Cherne
became close to Nelson Rockefeller. It was during this time that the PFIAB began "Team B"
planning, much to the chagrin of George Bush, then the director of the CIA. President Ford
subsequently appointed Cherne Chairman of the PFIAB and also appointed him to the
Intelligence Oversight Board. President Carter eliminated the PFIAB, and Cherne publicly
disagreed with Carter on many foreign policy issues. When Ronald Reagan ran for the
presidency in 1980, Casey served as Reagan's campaign manager, and Cherne headed Democrats
for Reagan. President Reagan recreated the PFIAB and Cherne was appointed vice-chairman of
the committee while Bill Casey served as the Director of the CIA. Cherne served with distinction
on the PFIAB throughout the Reagan years. Several months before Cherne died, George Tenet,
the director of CIA, awarded Cherne the Director's Medal for his work on economic
competitiveness, third world economic stability, and threats to the global financial system.
Cherne was the third non-CIA employee ever to receive this citation.

The tenth chapter, "Rescuing the Future," focuses on the events in the last years of Cherne's life and points to the future for those topics with which he was concerned. When Kurds fled into

18

northern Iraq after the end of the Gulf War in 1991, he worked to augment the paucity of funds available to meet their needs. Relief assistance was strained almost to the breaking point when tens of thousands of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian refugees fanned out across the former country of Yugoslavia. Cherne focused on developing a reserve fund intended to finance rapid responses to refugee emergencies. Despite his death, his work continues. When refugees fled Kosovo a few months after Cherne's death, the Leo Cherne Emergency Fund helped fund IRC activities, which saved thousands of refugees.

When Cherne died in January 1999, his memorial service was attended by Henry A. Kissinger, Liv Ullmann, Henry Denker, and many other prominent Americans. As Elie Wiesel said in his tribute, Cherne "gave homes to the homeless and hopes to the hopeless." Senator Moynihan said in his remarks published in the *Congressional Record*: "I think it is safe to say Leo Cherne's life helped to redeem the 20th century."

## A Note on Sources

Unlike my earlier biographies in which I was greatly hampered by the paucity of sources, the material on Leo Cherne is voluminous. By my count Cherne wrote two major books, dozens of introductions or chapters in books, hundreds of articles and reports, and thousands of letters. His testimony in congressional hearings is extensive as is the amount of coverage of his press briefings and dozens of interviews. Cherne gave thousands of speeches, many of which have survived in hard copy and in audio and visual tapes. In addition, Cherne's name appears in

19

thousands of articles, newspaper clippings, books, and in radio and television programs. Cherne neither wanted a systematic survey of all his writings and speeches, nor did he want each event of his life properly annotated. We mutually selected the events that were the most important, and I have tried to present his story as clearly as I can. I have relied heavily on his interviews, articles and papers. This is not as easy as it sounds. For instance, Cherne offered at least a dozen different accounts of his activities in Hungary in 1956. They have wide variations. Where possible, I have tried to check with others who participated in these events or read their accounts. I have tried to reflect what happened and why it was significant. Alternately, I have incorporated little material on those aspects of Cherne's life about which he expressed little personal interest. This included his work with the Research Institute of America, for instance.

Cherne was not opposed to me exploring the more controversial parts of his life, and was willing to discuss almost anything. The one topic that I explored extensively was his relationship American intelligence agencies. After extensive discussions, interviews, and a careful examination of his papers, I uncovered no evidence that he ever worked for any intelligence organization except for those connections noted on his public record regarding his membership on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and the Intelligence Oversight Board. Neither did I located any evidence indicating that he, or any of the organizations with which he worked, knowingly sought or accepted funds from the CIA or any other intelligence organization.

While I have reviewed thousands of documents related to Cherne's life, I was simply unable to examine everything in the short period of time that I had to write this book. Hence, Cherne's life

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Henry Kissinger:

In the Jewish religion, it is said that at any one point,
God preserves the world because there exists ten just men
who, without claiming themselves that they are just, give
him a motive for leaving the world in tact. Leo Cherne was
surely one of those ten just men.

I knew him less intimately than many here. He played a very
important role in my life.

I met Leo in the 1950's, before I was Henry Kissinger. When I was still writing short books. He had read one of them and invited me to visit him at the Research [Institute] of America. He thought that what I have written about foreign policy was important and I should devote myself to it. He gave me a copy of the bust of Abraham Lincoln, and he asked, of course, nothing for himself except my best performance.

To me he was a mythic figure because he had been at the
Hungarian border the year before I met him. And having been
a refugee myself before there was an IRC, I knew how much it
meant to have individuals who looked after refugees not as
an act of charity, but as an act of God. And Leo, in those
days, now unbelievably over forty years ago, was dedicated,
above all, to the care of the down-trodden. He opposed
Communism not on the grounds of a foreign policy strategy
but as a contribution to the liberation of the human spirit.
As a necessity for the liberation of the human spirit.

And so, every once in a while he would give me a call, and
give me some assignment which he thought needed to be done
in the field of foreign policy, express some concern he
deeply felt. And he became an important part of the
furniture of my life.

It was one of these curious phenomena that I, as time went
on, became involved in so many struggles and in so many
concerns on the more shear political side that I felt I
could always come and take for granted Leo, because he would
know when I needed to hear from him. And indeed he did.

I served in government in a very tragic period of the
American spirit, when American perfectionism turned on
itself, and conceived the idea that we had to be humiliated

02/10/99

13:38

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before we could be worthy of conducting foreign affairs.
Leo never made this assumption.

believe
Leo always believed, as I believed, that America has a duty
to stand for freedom and to make sure that the weak can be
secured and the just can be free.

In the 70's, in the tragic period when the helicopters
lifted off the roofs in Vietnam and we thought, above all,
of the hundreds of thousands that were being left behind.
It was a slight solace to know that there was Leo who would
worry about them, and make sure that whatever could be saved
would be saved.

When I was Secretary of State, my friend Liv honored me at one point by saying that she had been asked to do something for the International Rescue Committee and she wanted to know whether it was a CIA agency. And of course if there was any person who could not have told her the truth, if it had been, it was I. But I knew she was going to be in the care of Leo, and he removed any doubts about what the IRC was about. And what the issues of our period were about.

I admired Leo's intensity, his passion, his faith, his unselfishness, his nobility, and the purity of his soul. To be active in the political arena, to be head of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where I had the privilege of working with him, to know the tactics but never to be submerged by them, never to raise any question about his motives, never to be engulfed in the discussions of the short term, so characteristic of our political life. And to do this for over half a century is a record that has to be told and known.

(REMOVE
BRACKETS)

At one point, Liv told me I had to call Leo, that he wasn't very well. And so I did. But he didn't want to hear from... he didn't want to hear my commencement. And he didn't want to talk about himself. And he didn't talk about himself. He talked about what moved him. The causes in which he believed. And he honored me by thinking I might play a small role in supporting them.

Surely there is one less just man in the world today, and
none of us can claim his mantle. But perhaps if all of us
try a little harder, maybe we'll have fulfilled his mission
which will continue as long as there are free people and
suffering humanity.

Commisariat

February 3, 1999

Memorial Service for Leo Cherne

Cantor Debra Stein-Davidson opened the ceremony with a
prayer.

Rabbi David J. Gelfand:

We speak the words of the 23rd Psalm as we gather for this
memorial service to think of one who in so many ways was
truly larger than life. So we speak these ancient words to
remind us of God's nearness which span the faith of so many
across the generations.

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures
He leadeth me beside the still waters
He restoreth my soul.
He guideth me in straight paths for his namesake
Yah, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the
presence of mine enemies
Thou hast anointed my head with oil
My cup runneth over
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever and ever.

Hebrew prayer.

God gave into this world one who is destined for greatness
in the most gentle and peculiar of ways. His memories that
he created are now legendary. We acknowledge with his
family and with so many other close friends - those who are
here and those who could not be here, as well as those of
blessed memory who have been taken from life before him. A
friend was given with great wisdom and he gave of himself
selflessly. Family to friends, to so many countless people
who he knew not, and to this great country of ours.

The tradition that Judaism teaches, (Hebrew phrase), you
have given. You gave into this world one who surely shall
not be forgotten. For that which was endearing to his life,
for that which was good, we gather in memorium to pay

tribute, to pay homage, to offer the deepest thanks of our
hearts.

So many have come from near and far on this day to do just
that. To share their love and admiration, their respect and
their gratitude, most especially with you Gail.

And now, after a courageous journey, he has been taken from
life itself. Blessed be the name of God now and forever,
and blessed by Leo's memory. On this day, and as he is
remembered for all that he gave to so many. To save one
life, thousands of years ago it was taught in the world of
the Rabbis, it's as though you have saved an entire world.
And so he helped - and he saved. And he is remembered today
and he shall be remembered tomorrow.

But most of all for this family there is truly a sense of
loss and of loneliness. The memories are full and aplenty.
Nonetheless, he was omnipresent in your lives. He filled
your days with courage, with wisdom and understanding. And
so we shall hear many a word spoken that speak of that which
he did for so many, but they are spoken most of all for you
to hear, Gail, for you and your family who knew him best and
loved him most. For his friendship, wisdom and love that
were shared in life and which death cannot sever, and for
his companionship which was shared with his family and with
so many others, which shall yet continue through the
tenderness of memory, and for the gifts of his mind and of
his spirit that brought wisdom and knowledge and joy and
happiness to so many. We are here on this day in gratitude
and also in celebration for a life that has meant so much to
so many. And it is in that spirit now that we shall hear
from friends and colleagues.

We call first upon Henry Denker. His lifelong friend from
high school in the Bronx and law school as well, who shared
in so much of his life and means so much to this family. We
call on Henry first.

Henry Denker:

This is a moment that I had hoped never to confront, for it
marks the end of a friendship of deep devotion which started
70 years ago. Usually friendships begin in casual ways,
accidental ways, ways unremarkable except in retrospect.
Not Leo and mine.

2

[L.C.]

It was 1928, a devastating hurricane had ripped through the Caribbean leaving Puerto Rico and its people in desperate need of food, water, health supplies. The survival of thousands was in grave doubt.

We students at Morris High School were suddenly summoned to the auditorium for an unscheduled assembly. Principal Bogart opened the proceedings, but not with the usual prayer or the reading from the Bible. They used to do that in those days. Instead he introduced a student who, it turned out, had been the instigator of this unusual assembly.

Onto that stage burst a skinny, dark complexioned student, with a shock of unruly black hair, not unlike many other students at Morris High School in those days. But one thing about him was different. His eyes. Even from the 9th row I was struck by his eyes.

The intensity in his voice matched the look in his eyes. And after he described the devastation left in the wake of that hurricane, he asked - no, he demanded - help of any kind, in any amount, whatever we students could spare. And more, he insisted, tomorrow bring food, in cans and containers. Food! That afternoon, the money began to pour in. Quarters, dimes, nickels, even pennies, our lunch money. The next morning, bags and boxes appeared in the corridors. By days end they were filled with cans of food.

I made my contribution and then assigned the matter to history. I did not know on that day that I was witnessing the beginning of a lifetime of dedication to victims of all forms of suffering, whether inflicted by nature or by man, which offtimes is the most devastated. Nature strikes and moves on, but the devastation inflicted by man persists, unless good men do something about it. I stress the word DO because by Leo's code, speeches were never enough.

If one were to judge Leo's lifetime by his speeches alone, impressive as they were, it would overlook completely his personal sacrifice and dedication to the causes for which he spoke. It would overlook the energy, the time, his readiness to act on behalf of causes he embraced, even when that meant exposing himself to physical danger in face-to-face confrontation with armed Communists, whether in Hungary or in southeast Asia.

None of this could I have known back there seventy years ago.

3

Leo and I became real friends when he was appointed editor of the Morris Piper, a quaint name for a high school for a high school newspaper, and I became the paper's columnist. Working together under the strict faculty supervision of English teacher Julius Drachman, Leo and I became colleagues in the fight for a free student press. To give you a hint of our problem, Julius Drachman was a man so cautious he never came to school, even on the sunniest day, without his umbrella. I take an oath, I do not exaggerate.

Outwitting Drachman's strict supervision eventually made Leo and me co-conspirators in more ways than one. One of the most hotly debated issues of our youth concerned two Italian immigrants, Sacco and Vanzetti, who had been sentenced to death for killing a guard in the process of robbing a payroll. Along with much of the youth of the nation, Leo and I were loud and vigorous protesters against what we viewed as a grave miscarriage of justice.

Then came the right there was a huge protest rally and fund raiser at Madison Square Garden. By virtue of our depressed financial circumstances, and again, I do not exaggerate, Leo and I could not purchase tickets. Those of you who had been teenagers with a cause know well how painful it was for us to be barred from such an historic event. What we would have given for just two tickets in the last row of the Garden - or even standing room. We were bemoaning our fate when those black eyes of Leo's came alive. Suddenly he was up, and he was on his way to his father's stationery and print shop on 138th Street. As puzzled as you are now, I was then - but I followed.

There with his elementary knowledge of typography, Leo set up and printed a very official looking letterhead - The Westchester Daily Sentinel. Then I typed a letter - To Whom It May Concern, This is to inform you that staff reporters Leo Cherne and Henry Denker had been assigned by the Sentinel to cover the Sacco-Vanzetti rally in Madison Square Garden. We insist they be treated accordingly.

Boldly we appeared at the press gate of the Garden, presented our credentials, endured the scrutiny of the uniformed guard and were finally admitted. Admitted - we were escorted to the press section in the very first row. As you can see, Leo had already begun to exhibit signs of some of the more audacious elements of his character.

4

[LC]

For those of you troubled by that letter, I confess that we
may not have told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. But later, 37 highly paid lawyers assured us
it did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.

By now, close friends and what was partners in crime, Leo
went on to study pre-law at NYU, then to the night course at
New York Law School, which in those days was housed in the
YMCA at 23rd Street, an ancient building with open caged
elevators, and five nights a week for three years we rode
those creaking elevators to the top floor to study
contracts, torts, criminal law, trial practice, and a host
of other legal subjects, always under the looming threat of
those Bar exams.

I have a few rare diversions from the tedium of night
school. Most historic was the arrival in New York of the
famous educational exhibit from the Chicago World's Fair, a
certain Sally Rand. The secret had somehow gotten around
that except for two large ostrich feather fans she
skillfully manipulated, Ms. Rand appeared in the nude. Yes!
Well, you can see why Leo and I had to cut class that night
to discover if this indeed was true. Hoping to beat the
crowd and get good seats, we raced up to the Paramount
theater. Unfortunately, it seemed a number of equally
inquisitive men had preceded us. We waited in line, made
our way slowly and impatiently into the auditorium, began a
frantic search for seats as close to the stage as possible,
to detect any flaws in Ms. Rand's technique. We were far
down in the right hand aisle, when suddenly there in the
third row Leo spied not one seat but two. So shoving,
pushing, practically battering our way, we finally reached
those precious seats. We dropped into them in a state of
great relief and anticipation. Until Leo found himself
sitting next to a man who had an umbrella held securely in
place between his thighs. None other than the scourge of
high school editors and columnists, the same Julius
Drachman. It has been said that on that night public
education in New York City started on its steep and now well
recognized decline.

Despite such disillusionment, Leo and I persevered through
Law School, from which Leo was graduated first in the class.
We studied for the bar. Four of us - three passed the first
time - Leo, Aaron Levenstein and myself.

But we did not always succeed. One of the lesser known of
our failures was the night Gail was born. We had paid our

5

respects to the beaming, exhausted mother. We were then
informed the patient needed her rest. In a word - get out.
Which we did. With the whole evening to celebrate this
blessed event - where to go and what to do. Ever reaching
for the moon, Leo had decided on the most IN place in New
York - 21. We approached those hallowed iron gates, we
smiled our way past the doorman, and we entered. In his
very expansive mood, Leo requested a table for two, close to
the bar. In my youth I had heard the phrase "A frosty
look." I didn't quite appreciate what that meant until that
night. So we wound up celebrating Gail's birth with coffee
and doughnuts in Chock Full Of Nuts on Sixth Avenue. Happy
Birthday, Gail.

That was probably the last time anyone said NO to Leo Cherne
about anything.

Out of Law School and working our way through mandatory
clerkship which took a year, we finally had time for other
things to do. We collaborated on an anti-war play titled
"Father Forgive Me." It was warmly received by the then new
Brook Theater, especially by a young director with a funny
name - Kazan. Hopes were high until we were beaten out by
another anti-war play called "Bury the Dead," written by
some guy named Irwin Shaw. Well, that's show business.

Leo left the theater to write songs and later become a very
talented sculptor. I stayed on.

As you have probably come to realize now, as I did in
preparing these remarks, when one thinks back to reconstruct
a lifetime of friendship, it's the little things that come
most strongly to mind.

I could run through the facts - I was the best man at Leo's
wedding and he was the best man at mine - Together we
experienced disenchantment with the law in the time of the
great depression - We left the law at the same time, he
going his way and me, mine.

Through all the years I attended almost every one of his
speeches and all of his famous speeches of predictions at
the Sales Executives Club. He attended every one of my
opening nights, whether in New York or Washington. He took
more pride in my work than I did, occasionally rebuking me
for not exhibiting more excitement about the publication of
my latest novel.

We laughed at the same things, were angered by the same injustices. From all the years I cannot recall a single argument of a personal nature. When we argued, it was always about politics - and some times about baseball.

Julia and Leo, Edith and I, spent many summers together at the beach, and for ten years we spent every Sunday night together. We were so close that at times Edith and I were almost like mother and father to Gail. Unable to give you a better description of our friendship, I have finally come to an odd conclusion. Enduring friendships like enduring marriages cannot be analyzed or explained. There is no need - they just are.

So I considered reciting the list of Leo's dedicated service to all the worthy causes he embraced, fostered and carried through to success. But his record is so long, and his accomplishments so many, it would take too much time and be far too long.

However, while considering that, one word kept intruding on my thoughts - Passover.

Now Leo was not a particularly religious Jew. Not in the orthodox sense - or even in the conservative sense - or, let's face it, not in the reformed sense either. But there was one holiday that he always insisted we celebrate together - Passover. Whether early on in my family's home, later in Edith and my home, or eventually in his home, we always celebrated the first seder of the Passover marking the deliverance of Jews from Egypt and slavery. I think that was what made the holiday so important to Leo.

Passover celebrates Freedom. It is, in fact, the first historical record of the celebration of the concept of freedom. I know that Leo always took special pleasure in that part of the service where it is recalled the various works by which God brought forth the Jews out of slavery, inflicting the plagues to force Pharaoh to let the Jews go free, sparing the first born of each Jewish family, parting the Red Sea, providing Manna to sustain the Jews in the desert, bringing the Jews to Mount Sinai, giving us the Ten Commandments, and finally bringing us to the Holy Land. At the Seder, for those of you who don't know, after each such reminder by the reader, all the guests around the festival table reply with a single word - Dayanu. It means if God had done only one of those things it would have been enough for us.

7

[LC]

So I thought that would be the briefest way to review Leo's
productive lifetime, which otherwise would take hours and
volumes.

If Leo had only been instrumental in helping create Freedom
House as a permanent beacon for freedom around the world -
Dayanu.

If Leo had only been active in helping found the
International Rescue Committee to free refugees from
tyrannies, of both right and left - Dayanu.

If Leo had only flown into Budapest and faced those Soviet
tanks to bring desperately needed medical supplies to
gallant young Hungarian rebels and then bring many of them
out to freedom - Dayanu.

If Leo had never ceased to work on behalf of all good causes
- Dayanu.

All this he did at the cost of energy, health, personal
financial sacrifice, and at times even at great cost to his
family. The public honors that came his way were no match
for the sacrifices he made.

One private honor touched him deeply. In his latter years
he was having difficulty walking. I urged him to see a
doctor who had been of enormous help to me. I arranged the
appointment with the doctor's secretary. When Leo entered
the doctor's examining room he started to introduce himself.
The doctor, a woman with a slight foreign accent, said, "No
need, Mr. Cherne. I know you well. You rescued me from out
of Hungary back in those terrible days."

To sum up, in this vastly over-populated world somehow there
are always too few good men. Leo Cherne was one of those.

How to honor his memory?

In our time we have come to know a small heroic group of
people of conscience who risked their freedom even their
lives to hid, protect and make possible the survival of many
Jews during the worst tyranny in human history. All this
they did freely, asking nothing in return.

And on them Jews have bestowed the title "Righteous
Gentiles". For all that he has done, his tireless efforts

8

on behalf of freedom, on behalf of refugees from tyranny,
for his sacrifices, the risks he took, asking nothing in
return, I would designate my friend Leo Cherne to be one of
the "Righteous Jews" of our generation.

Rabbi Gelfand:

You ought to encourage him to write.

Several different kinds of reminiscences and reflections.
First from Jerry Steibel for close work at the Research
Institute of America, and old friend, his family refers to
him as an affectionate crony of the family, an intellectual
colleagues.

A poem to be read by Erica, Leo's granddaughter.

Remarks by Liv Ullmann, preceded by those which she shall
read for us by John Whitehead and Jay Schulberg.

And a deep and abiding friendship to be reflected upon by
Henry Kissinger.

Jerry Steibel:

When I first came on Board at the Research Institute of
America 37 years ago this week, the first thing Leo asked me
to do was to write the warp-around squib that went with his
sculpture of Robert Frost which he had just completed. He
said to me, "Put in that he is one of the ten smartest men
in America."

Having known Leo for several years at Freedom House, I could
not resist asking him, "Leo, who are the other eight?" He
did not refute me, he grinned, and we were off to a good
start.

Frost was a good subject for Leo. Like Frost, Leo had
promises to keep and miles to go before he'd sweep. Big
promises.

And the biggest of them was, as Henry has told you, his
fight to save freedom from its enemies. He fought them
abroad, but his special aerie was reserved for those who
were nominally its adherence here, but somehow didn't seem
to recognize the enemy when they saw them.

In Freedom House, he took them on. The uncertain trumpeters, the soft voices that murmured. Let us not be beastly to the Russians, after all, their Communism of very different from Nazism. Yes! So is strychnine not arsenic. Different formulas, different specifics - they will both kill you equally dead.

And this was Leo's charge, and he took it everywhere he went, which covered many, many miles.

Leo's turf was that great nervous system of democracy which Justice Holmes called the marketplace of ideas. Any day you looked for Leo, he was out there somewhere in that marketplace, still, in Holmes' words, "...getting his truths accepted." He roused, he inspired, he mobilized cohorts, he antagonized and he infuriated. He never bored.

Leo never, also, seemed to understand when it was time to bail out ... to abandon ship with all the others. Example, the American Friends of Vietnam. Those forty-some luminaries who consorted to save this struggling new nation from the enemy which we all recognized, hopefully, to become democratic. As the war became more and more discomforting, the Friends peeled off one by one and disappeared. Until that terrible day in April when the helicopters were picking the last Americans off the roof tops in Saigon, Leo, Frank Treager and I were starring gloomily at the half-page ad we had put in the New York Times that day pleading with the government to do something for a last minute rescue.

Well, by then Leo was an old hand at telling it as he saw it.

Forty years earlier he and Carl Hovgard founded the Research Institute of America. Gave it a little push and started it on its way. The first thing that Leo did was to sit down and tell these early, precious subscribers that the Supreme Court would uphold the Wagner Labor Relations Act. It had demolished everything else, but it would uphold the Act.

They didn't want to hear this. The anathemas poured in and the cancellations. It was touch and go for quite a while. Then, inevitably, the Court did what Leo said it would do. It upheld the Act and RIA was now off and, well, walking.

So, did Leo sit back, rest on his laurels, say smugly, "I told you so." He did not.

10

[cc]

He now told them something else they didn't want to hear. Nobody wanted to hear. I didn't want to hear. That war was coming and we were going to be in it, and we better get ready.

Well, the rest, as they say, is history. When the war came and we were in it, the RIA subscribers, of course, were ahead of the curve and RIA was made.

And that became the persona for the organization for the rest of its existence. Leo's passions and his convictions became our daily menu - our marching orders. Some of them we followed unquestioningly. Some of them we fought back. Leo never said "This is how it is and this is how it will be." He argued - and you could always argue with him. But beware, you had better know what you were talking about.

So this went on and we learned that what we were in business for was Leo's favorite term. He kept repeating it over and over - intelligence. The facts - yes. The information - yes. But intelligence - what does it really mean. And week after week and year after year we looked for all those things which nobody else was getting down to the what does it really mean. And this is what we told them.

Leo said that our job was to see to it that those words jumped off the page, into the readers head, so that he would say - hey, I didn't know that.

Well, did it work. Is this some fancy of some out of control publisher and editor. The answer is in the numbers. Something over 300,000 subscribers paid week after week to read this stuff. So, he must have been doing something right.

Who is Leo Cherne, as we look back and ask about this man that we were so closely associated with. Where does he fit into history? That great march of God on earth as Haggle called it.

Well, to me, Leo was one of those essential men of this generation of Americans - as Franklin Roosevelt labeled us way back then when he was endowing us with that rendezvous with destiny. FDR, of course, didn't tell us where the destiny was, what it was, or where we would rendezvous with it. And it wouldn't have mattered if he had - because the men like Leo did not wait for destiny to come and knock at their door. They are the ones who went out and laid hands

11

changed from him they knew
Only more sure of all I thought
was true.

Liv Ullmann:

I have been asked to read two tributes. And I will then
read something from myself.

The first is from John Whitehead, Chairman of IRC. And he
is, as Leo would have liked, out on a travel for us.

"I am sorry that I cannot be there today to honor the memory
of Leo Cherne. He was truly a great man, larger than life.

"He stood for the principles that are the heart of America.
And he lived those principles every day.

"He hated oppression and bigotry and racism, and he loved
freedom and democracy and equality.

"He was a role model for many of us because he had strong
beliefs and lived his life to assure that they prevailed.

"The International Rescue Committee was his Committee, and
he was its inspirational leader through his love.

"I was honored to have served with him, as many of you have,
also, through most of that period. My role was to try to
keep things orderly. But his role was to point the way, to
lead the charge, to carry the flag, and he did it with a
passion and a flair that was unique.

"He was a great America."

Jay Schulberg, who is also on the Board of IRC, is also on a
travel that Leo would have like. He has written these
words:

"Leo, my friend, I speak to you today on behalf of the
forgotten, the starving Cambodian child dressed in rags,
begging for food. The terrified Kurdish woman, huddled with
a newborn baby under a tent in rainswept muddy field. The
Bosnian man fleeing genocide, robbed of his home, robbed of
his family, his dignity.

13

"Leo, my fried, I speak to you today for the Hungarian refugees hidden in the trunk of your car as you sneak by Soviet troops.

"Leo, I speak to you on behalf of the tens of thousands of children of men and women, all of whom you saved. Many of them never met you, but all were touched by you.

"And I speak to you on behalf of all the refugees who found better lives in the United States, all because you helped them come here.

"Leo, my friend, so many things struck me about you. Not only your intellect and your accomplishment, but personal things. Your voice, your booming voice. You filled the room - and then some. Your eyes, always sparkling, always vibrant, always filled with excitement - just like a child's. Your smile. It was always so warm, so infectious, so genuine, it always made people feel good about themselves. I always think, too, of your lack of self importance - never taking yourself too seriously.

"After you became Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, overseeing the CIA, I asked you how you kept all those secrets. 'Easy', you said, 'I forget.'

"I think of your optimism, your enthusiasm. If only you could have bottled it we would have made a fortune. And, of course, your dignity.

"I remember one of the last times we had lunch. The years were catching up. Your health wasn't what it used to be. You walked uneasily with a cane. After lunch you insisted that I drop you off a few blocks from your apartment. 'I'll walk.' You bellowed. It was 27 degrees, snowy and icy. We drove to your apartment, of course, and I watched you walk to the lobby as the doorman came rushing out. Back straight, head up, chin out, No help please, was the message. You were your own man.

"Leo, my friend, so many people pass this way in the time allotted to them on earth, doing nothing, accomplishing nothing. Worse, so many of them are characterized by a badge they wear proudly. The ME generation. Pity them. Their world will never be as rich.

14

[LC]

"Leo, my friend, the light you inspired in the world will live on, not only in your wonderful family and among your many, many friends, but just as importantly in that Cambodian child who lived to raise a family of her own. The Hungarian refugee who found a better life in this country. And in all those people who escaped genocide in Bosnia, because of you.

"Leo, my friend, sleep well."

And dearest Leo, from me.

I do not believe you are sleeping. I don't think. ink God allows people like you to sleep. You are just continuing your travels within all of us.

More than twenty years ago you asked me to travel with you to refugee camps in Thailand. That sounded so far away, and I asked you how long the travel would last. "For the rest of your life." You said.

I still see you in this travel, Leo, passing on to others the love and the compassion that defined your life. I watched you lifting people out of their misery so they would know what kind of life life can be. And while I watched you lifted me, as well.

I heard you speak against racism, egotism and bigotry, and how to never leave a person behind. And then I watched you grow older and weaker - your body, only, not your mind, not your soul. You talked about it and it hurt you. Your body's weaknesses hurt you because you are such a strong man. You accepted that a certain loneliness or isolation comes with age. And again, you never complained. I learned from that, too.

Actually, you even grew to love my dog, whose barking and behavior you never liked before. Now, when you got one of your endless coughing spells, she would leap from my lap and leap to you and very close to your feet she would sit there a look adoringly up at you.

[Here the audio tape ends ... new tape begins with ...]

"I am hurt, but I am not slain
I will lie me down and blend a while
Then I'll rise and fight again.

15

"I am not ready to die," you said, Leo. But then again, I do not think you really died. You yourself talked so often about a lifetime that those who have lamps would pass them on to others. So don't you see, Leo, how your lamp is shining even more brightly right now.

So if you felt that you were more alone, or too weak, in these last years, you must also have felt how your lamp and your light continue to give safety and knowledge to so many people.

Yes, you did leave us in a way, before you finished the book you were part of writing. While you still had new, inventive ideas for IRC. And you were weak and you sat in your chair in front of your TV which image you could no longer see, with plans in your head, I am sure, while you listened to Oprah and [hummed] to the music, and moved to the rhythm of the River Dance that you loved listening to. And then sometimes you would seem so completely happy as you yourself allowed yourself some rest.

And I did watch you, as many others did, squeezed your hand and think of this brave man who I once saw at the Cambodian borders with soldiers from within pointing guns at you, and you, Leo, shouting to the soldiers through a bullhorn, shouting to them to open up the borders and let the doctors and medicine come in. And Bayard Rustin standing not so far away singing _We Shall Overcome_, and the rest, far away, the Citizens Commission, Doctors Without Borders, in a crowd listening, learning.

Such a brave life you lived. And maybe mostly so in the last tough years of a life earlier lived, so fulfilled, and you always in the front.

That you, Leo, are not here today, it is a dream. I feel it is a dream. I wish it was a real dream which I had, and where I could be in the dream and visit you where you are right now with God and so many of your friends that went before you, and you would give me a notepad like you used to and say "Take notes", and I would dream that you were in the middle of an eager crowd again, and you were happy and never alone, and your soul were free from your ailing body. And I would fill the notepad you gave me, and you would read and smile and correct my mistakes as you always did.

And then I wish I would wake up and find this notepad in my hand.

16

You told me twenty years ago that my journey would last the rest of my life. And I tell you, Leo, that you traveled, and yours will last so much, much longer. Happy journey, Leo.

Henry Kissinger:

I met Leo in the 1950's, before I was Henry Kissinger. When I was still writing short books. He had read one of them and invited me to visit him at the Research Institute of America. He thought that what I have written about foreign policy was important and I should devote myself to it. He gave me a copy of the bust of Abraham Lincoln, and he asked, of course, nothing for himself except my best performance.

To me he was a mythic figure because he had been at the Hungarian border the year before I met him. And having been a refugee myself before there was an IRC, I knew how much it meant to have individuals who looked after refugees not as an act of charity, but as an act of inner necessity. And Leo, in those days, now unbelievably over forty years ago, was dedicated, above all, to the care of the down-trodden. He opposed Communism not on the grounds of a foreign policy strategy but as a contribution to the liberation of the human spirit. As a necessity for the liberation of the human spirit.

And so, every once in a while he would give me a call, and give me some assignment which he thought needed to be done in the field of the humane impact of foreign policy, express some concern he deeply felt. And he became an important part of the furniture of my life.

17

I served in government in a very tragic period of the
American spirit, when American perfectionism turned on
itself, and conceived the idea that we had to be humiliated
before we could be worthy of conducting foreign affairs.
Leo never made this assumption.

I admired Leo's intensity, his passion, his faith, his
unselfishness, his nobility, and the purity of his soul. To
be active in the political arena, to be head of the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where I had
the privilege of working with him, to know the tactics but
never to be submerged by them, never to raise any question
about his motives, never to be engulfed in the discussions
of the short term, so characteristic of our political life.
And to do this for over half a century is a record that has
ennobled all of us who had the privilege of knowing him.

At one point, Liv told me I had to call Leo, that he wasn't
very well. And so I did. But he didn't want to hear from ...
he didn't want to hear my commiseration. And he didn't want
to talk about himself. And he didn't talk about himself.
He talked about what moved him. The causes in which he
believed. And he honored me by thinking I might play a
small role in supporting them.

18

Surely there is one less just man in the world today, and
none of us can claim his mantle. But perhaps if all of us
try a little harder, maybe we'll help fulfill his mission
which will continue as long as there are free people and
suffering humanity.

Rabbi Gelfand:

I have been asked to share these brief remarks also shared
with the family. First, from Elie Wiesel:

As a humanist and human rights activist Leo Cherne was both
inspired and inspiring. Always ready to help the uprooted,
he knew how to galvanize officials and volunteers and move
them to compassion. His deep and overwhelming concern for
refugees and their dignity in addition to their welfare
remains unequaled.

How many men and women owe their lives to Leo? He gave
homes to the homeless and hope to the hopeless.

I shall not forget the pain reflected in his face when
meeting Cambodian refugees in Aranya Pathet. Nor shall I
forget his imaginative initiatives in trying to help them.

Tens of thousands will remember him.

And so shall we.

Elie Wiesel

And from Senator Pat Moynihan who owed so much to him and
for whom Leo was such a wonderful role model. Excerpting
his remarks from the Congressional Record, as his family has
requested:

"I met Leo in 1954 when I became director of PR for the IRC.
Leo, an enormously successful lawyer, economist, and
businessman, had become chairman of the IRC in 1951. He
took over for Reinhold Niebuhr, one of this century's
greatest theologians. Leo then served as chair person for
over forty years. He was indefatigable.

"Under his stewardship, the IRC grew into the largest refugee relief and resettlement organization in the world. His commitment to refugees and human rights was steadfast, and made a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands

19

of forsaken people over the last half century. I guess he took to heart Niebuhr's observation that 'life has no meaning except in terms of responsibility.'

"He co-founded the Research Institute and he served as Executive Director for approximately fifty years.

"At the end of the Second World War, he accompanied General MacArthur to Japan to assist with the economic recovery. In 1953, a fierce anti-Communist, he excoriated Senator Joseph McCarthy for his demagoguery and disregard for civil rights.

"In 1984 President Reagan conferred upon Leo the highest award a civilian can receive: the Medal of Freedom. President Reagan's citation stated:

'Since the 1930s, Leo Cherne has stepped forward with brilliance, energy and moral passion, and helped this nation overcome countless challenges. His lifetime devotion to aiding his country and to serving the cause of human freedom, especially through his work on behalf of refugees, reflects the strong and generous character of a man who deserves the respect and gratitude of all Americans.'

"In 1989 Elie Wiesel nominated Leo for the Nobel Peace Prize. He also received France's Legion of Honor award, Germany's Commander Cross, and the United Nations' Gold Medal of Peace."

After explaining and referring to so many of the busts he made, Senator Moynihan went on to reflect upon the many nights that the two of them shared together, and when they did the evenings at a tavern were concluded with them reciting to one another the words of Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light,
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

20

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

"Leo did not 'go gentle into that good night.' He raged
against the dying of the light. The same tenacity he showed
fighting totalitarianism as one of our very best 'Cold
Warriors.' He was a giant among men."

And finally this afternoon, great as the words have been
aplenty, with meaning and in depth and eloquence, we are
gathered here to remember a man who was a father and a
beloved father-in-law, and had an adoring and unique
relationship with his granddaughter. And so we must
remember for you, Erica, your Poppy, your very best friend,
a unique relationship which was based upon honesty and
integrity, he was not but a traditional grandfather alone,
for you traveled with him as well along the journey of his
life, and he enriched you. And now the adventures, as they
were aplenty for him yet lie before you.

And for you, Gail, all we as friends can do as you shared so
much with me as we sat in the synagogue in the Hamptons, and
you and Richard shared story after story, is to help you put
a frame around the picture we have heard today, and to
remind you that the glue that held it all together was his
generosity of spirit, his humor and his strength, the depth
and brightness of his eyes and of his persona.

Tradition teaches that when the world was created it was
done so from a vase - a piece of pottery - but it was
inadvertently shattered and off into the universe went
thirty-six sparks. We know not who those sparks are
represented in - in whose lives. But surely we know that
Leo, your Dad, Richard your father-in-law, your dear, dear
friend, your mentor, you shared so much and he brought
brightness into your lives and into the lives of countless
others, perhaps one of them, unknown though he or she may
be, will hold the vessel of his life and reach out and help
so many others.

We call such a person a saddic - it means a righteous person
who brings brightness into a dark world. As he was generous
of spirit to each of you, his family, you who knew him best

21

and loved him most, and so too Henry, and you and your
family, you were all a family together, and somehow he was
able to be totally present in your lives no matter how
exhausted or how busy he was with the needs and deeds of our
world.

Gail, he indulged you, helped you, supported you and your
desires and your interests. As you heard and saw beauty and
music on the stage, he danced across the stage of his life
and brought brightness to many. The versatility of his life
and of the persona of his talents are, as we have heard,
mythical.

Birth is a beginning and death is a destination. Life is a
journey - a going and a growing from stage to stage. And so
it has been for Leo Cherne a journey from his childhood to
maturity. One in which he brought to so many others wisdom
and brightness and knowledge and hope. And his journey has
taken him now as he meant it to be along the way, seeing
that victory laid not at some high place along the way, but
having made the journey as he wished to life everlasting.

It is in that spirit now that I ask all who are gathered
with his family, to give them support, to rise with them,
and as we pause but for a moment, to think of some precious
moment of encounter with Leo Cherne.

One who is espoused to the deeds and values of his life, the
values that we aspire to, as human beings and as people of
faith, may we remember him lovingly and be inspired by his
deeds and his works, and may we remember as well the words
of the poet who is reflected:

To the living I am gone
And to the sorrowful I
shall never return
To the faithful I shall
never have left
I cannot be seen
But I can be heard
So as you stand upon the shore
And gaze at a beautiful sea
Remember me.
And as you look in awe at a
mighty forests grand majesty,
Remember me.
Remember me in your thoughts
your hears, your memories

22

02/10/99 13:37

FAX 912125513180

IRC

002

171717

Henry Kissinger:

02/10/99

13:38

FAX 912125513180

IRC

003

181818

My friend Liv honored me at one point by saying that she had
been asked to do something for the International Rescue
Committee and she wanted to know whether it was a CIA
agency. And of course if there was any person who couldn't
have told her the truth, if it had been, it was I. But I
knew she was going to be in the care of Leo, and he removed
any doubts about what the IRC was about. And what the
issues of our period were about.

I admired Leo's intensity, his passion, his faith, his
unselfishness, his nobility, and the purity of his soul. To
be active in the political arena, to be head of the
[President's] Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where I
had the privilege of working with him, to know the tactics
but never to be submerged by them, never to raise any
question about his motives, never to be engulfed in the
discussions of the short term, so characteristic of our
political life. And to do this for over half a century is a
record that has a noble _______ who had the privilege of
knowing him.

At one point, Liv told me I had to call Leo, that he wasn't
very well. And so I did. But he didn't want to hear from ...
he didn't want to hear my commensuration. And he didn't
want to talk about himself. And he didn't talk about
himself. He talked about what moved him. The causes in
which he believed. And he honored me by thinking I might
play a small role in supporting them.

18

MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR LEO CHERNE

Wednesday, February 3, 1999

Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel
81st Street and Madison Avenue

3:30 pm

Arrive at Funeral Chapel

Rabbi Gelfand will greet you and direct you to
a seat in the front row

Rabbi Gelfand and the Cantor will conduct a brief
religious service

The Rabbi invites you to say a few words

-- the family has suggested that you first
say something about the importance of Cherne's
work through the IRC, and then a couple of
personal reminiscences.

Your remarks should not exceed 5 minutes.

You will be followed by Liv Ullmann reading a piece
by Jay Shulman; (2) Rabbi will read messages from
Elie Wiesel and Sen. Moynihan; (3) remarks by Jerry
Steibel; and (4) remarks by family friend Henry
Denker.

ca. 4:45

Should be over

THE NEW YORK TIMES **OBITUARIES** THURSDAY, JA

Leo Cherne, Leader of Agency
For Refugees, Is Dead at 86

By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN

Leo Cherne, who turned the Inter-
national Rescue Committee into the
largest agency in the world for the
relief and resettlement of refugees,
died on Tuesday at Mount Sinai Med-
ical Center. He was 86 and lived in
Manhattan.

A lawyer, economist and business-
man, Mr. Cherne became chairman
of the I.R.C. in 1951, succeeding
Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian.
The organization had grown out of
modest efforts to rescue a few thou-
sand endangered people from Nazi-
occupied France in the early days of
World War II. Under Mr. Cherne, the
New York-based committee eventu-
ally helped hundreds of thousands of
displaced, dispossessed and desper-
ate people, first in Europe and then
all over the world in places like Ban-
gladesh, Southeast Asia, Latin Amer-
ica, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan,
Rwanda and Burundi.

When Mr. Cherne was given the
United States Medal of Freedom in
1984, President Reagan cited the
"moral passion" he had shown in
"serving the cause of human free-
dom, especially through his work on
behalf of refugees."

Mr. Cherne was also an adviser to
nine presidents, a close friend of Wil-
liam Casey, the former head of the
C.I.A., and from 1973 to 1991 a mem-
ber of the President's Foreign Intel-
ligence Advisory Board, serving as
its chairman during the Bush Admin-
istration. As a member of this low-
profile but high-impact panel, Mr.
Cherne helped create the so-called
Team B, a group of experts headed
by Richard Pipes, the Harvard histo-
rian, which disputed C.I.A. assess-
ments of Soviet military capabilities
and intentions as too dodish; the
committee's more alarming esti-
mates bolstered the positions of the
strongest proponents of increased
United States military expenditures.

Lionel Olmer, a lawyer and a for-
mer Undersecretary of Commerce,
said that during his last hospital visit
to his friend of 29 years, as the two
men talked about human rights and
refugees, Mr. Cherne told him, "I
hope I'll also be remembered as a
cold warrior."

Andrew Smith, who is working on
an authorized biography of Mr.
Cherne, said he was a man of great
reticence and discretion. "He knew

that the way to get and maintain
influence in Washington was to get
things done and then to keep quiet
about them," Mr. Smith said. He
added: "It certainly worked well for
him, giving him access to every
President since Roosevelt. Here was
a poor boy from the Bronx, without
money or family or influence, who
became the consummate insider."

Mr. Cherne had been a Democrat
since his youth but in 1980 became a
figure in Democrats for Reagan be-
cause of the candidate's views on
national security.

Leo Cherne was born in New York
on Sept. 18, 1912, to Max and Dora
Cherne, immigrants from Russia.
His father had a photography store
in the Bronx. He attended public
schools, New York University and
New York Law School.

After jobs in several law firms, in
1935 he teamed up with a Bible sales-
man from Kansas named Carl Hov-

A cold warrior with
compassion for the
displaced.

gard to establish a company that
published and distributed Mr.
Cherne's advice to businessmen on
how to contend with the new Social
Security law. The book became ex-
tremely successful, and the company
grew into the Research Institute of
America, which offered Mr. Cherne's
assessments about how world and
political events would affect busi-
ness.

At war's end, General Douglas
MacArthur took him to Japan to
work on the defeated nation's eco-
nomic recovery.

The Research Institute of America was providing Mr. Cherne with a comfortable income, and his yearly economic and political forecast regularly drew a thousand listeners to the Waldorf Astoria. He joined the board of Freedom House and he became the chairman of the I.R.C., which was in financial difficulty at the time. His aggressive fund-raising staved off collapse and allowed for steady expansion.

The New York Times, 1963

Leo Cherne

In 1953, Mr. Cherne participated in a radio program, "The Town Meeting of the Air," on which he debated Senator Joseph McCarthy. Though Mr. Cherne shared Senator McCarthy's antipathy toward communism and its proponents, he strongly challenged and scorned McCarthyism's demagogic methods and contempt for truth and civil rights.

Three years later, when Soviet
tanks moved into Budapest to crush
the Hungarian uprising, Mr. Cherne
went to the Hungarian border to bear
witness. On his return, he appeared
on the Ed Sullivan television pro-
gram, poignantly describing refu-
gees trying to evade tanks as they
fled their occupied land. The appear-
ance evoked an outpouring of contri-
butions. It was the first of many such
missions and public pleas by an
essentially reticent man.

While working daily for the I.R.C.,
consulting often, if anonymously, in
Washington, and writing economic
analysis, Mr. Cherne also became an
accomplished sculptor. Many of his
busts are on prominent public dis-
play. He retired from the I.R.C. as
chairman in 1991 but remained
chairman emeritus and visited his
office regularly until his recent ill-
ness. He received many decorations,
among them the French Legion of
Honor, Germany's Commander
Cross and the United Nations Gold
Medal of Peace.

Mr. Cherne is survived by his
daughter, Gail Gambino of Baiting
Hollow, N.Y., a brother, Jack Cherne
of Santa Monica, Calif., and a grand-
daughter, Erica Gambino of Bridge-
hampton, N.Y.

David New

By KAREN W. ARENS

Dr. David Newton, who she
introduced of open admis-
sion, the City University of New-
York, was a chairman of its Task Force
on Enrollment in 1969, died on
Tuesday at his home in Brookville,
N.Y., was 76.

He had suffered from:
heart and kidney ailments, his
Laura, said.

Many education officials bl
the woodwork. But Dr. New
an outspoken champion of s
someone who arranged stud
ulty picnics and marched in
demonstrations — a bearded
istrator in solidarity with his-
ed students in the turbulent

After CUNY faculty members
formed one of the first faculty
in the nation, Dr. Newton was
intended with helping to define st
for university labor relat
though he was considered p
and invited faculty labor le
his house, he pressed for c
concessions from faculty a
unions and endured faculty si
insure that the university ser
dents the way he thought it:

In 1969, when proponents
admissions won their sudden
to open CUNY to a broader:
students who would previous
have met its admission st
the university turned to Dr.
a 47-year-old dean of student
ruch College, to lead a task
answer questions like when
15,000 new freshmen and wh
teach them.

"David was a good ad
tor," Albert H. Bowker,
chancellor at the time, said
day, noting that he got to k
after "we'd had a big fight,
vid had picketed me whe
plans to move Baruch to Br

He later named Dr. Ne
acting president of the City U
ty's troubled York College a
vice chancellor for faculty a
relations, making him CUN
bargainer with more than 15
ulty and staff members.

His biggest challenge in
1969, when the university de
open its doors to any stud
high school diploma. It was
ing task. Dr. Newton's pane
to assess what the City Ur
faced in carrying out the ne
and accommodating the sur
colleges' student bodies. It s
tionnaires to 80,000 high sc

LEO CHERNE
Chairman Emeritus
International Rescue Committee

New York, January 12, 1999—Leo Cherne, a businessman, economist and publisher who devoted his life to the cause of refugees, died today at Mount Sinai Medical Center. The cause of death was pneumonia, according to a friend of the family. He was 86.

Mr. Cherne advised U.S. Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to George Bush on refugee matters. He served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1973 to 1991 and was its chairman under President Ford.

For 40 years – 1951 to 1991 – he served as Chairman of the Board of the International Rescue Committee, which aids refugees in the U.S. and in trouble spots throughout the world. As Chairman Emeritus of the International Rescue Committee, he remained active in refugee affairs. Over the years, he engaged countless prominent Americans in the cause of refugees.

A number of nations honored Leo Cherne over the years for his humanitarian achievements on behalf of refugees and human freedom. He received both the French Legion of Honor and the Federal Republic of Germany's Commander's Cross. In 1989 Elie Wiesel nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Cherne was the first recipient of the Eisenhower Award for strengthening national security, and he was awarded the Gold Medal of Peace by the United Nations. In 1984, he received the highest award a U.S. President can confer upon a civilian: the United States Medal of Freedom. The citation by President Reagan included the following passage:

> "Since the 1930s, Leo Cherne has stepped forward and with brilliance, energy and moral passion, and helped this nation overcome countless challenges. His lifetime devotion to aiding his country and to serving the cause of human freedom, especially through his work on behalf of refugees, reflects the strong and generous character of a man who deserves the respect and gratitude of all Americans."

Cherne attended public schools in the Bronx, where his Russian immigrant parents settled, and graduated from New York University and the New York School of Law. He was awarded honorary degrees from many leading universities during his long career as an economist, businessman, publisher, attorney, political scientist, educator, lecturer, author and sculptor.

An artist by avocation, Cherne won wide recognition for his work as a sculptor of portrait busts.

His bust of Abraham Lincoln sat in the Oval Office of the White House during the tenure of five presidents. His bust of John F. Kennedy is in the square in Berlin where Kennedy made his famous "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech. His bust of Robert Frost is at the Department of the Interior, and that of Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House. His bust of Boris

Pasternak is at Pasternak's grave, and a copy is at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His bust of Albert Schweitzer is in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.

His book, "The Rest of Your Life," published by Doubleday in 1944, was widely acclaimed for its perceptive look ahead into the post-War world.

Cherne's principal career was with the Research Institute of America (RIA), which he co-founded in 1936 and where he served as Executive Director for approximately 50 years. It published works of political and economic analysis for businesses. He also served as Chairman of the Board of RIA's parent company, the Lawyer's Cooperative Publishing Company.

At the request of President Roosevelt, Mr. Cherne wrote a two-volume plan, "Adjusting your Business to War," which was used as the blueprint for the mobilization of American industry in World War II. He went to Tokyo in 1946 to serve as advisor to General Douglas MacArthur in structuring the recovery of Japan.

For 50 years, from the 40's through the 90's, he attracted upwards of a thousand people to an annual address he gave at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel outlining his political and economic forecast for the 12 months.

Leo Cherne's lifelong commitment to refugees and to the cause of worldwide human rights led him to make numerous emergency missions for the IRC. The missions, which took him to Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, had a three-fold purpose: to investigate the problems of refugees in flight; to initiate and organize IRC relief and resettlement programs for the uprooted persons, and to mobilize public and government support on their behalf.

These activities sometimes led to the establishment of independent groups, such as the Citizens Commission for Indochinese Refugees which he organized in 1977 and which, for ten years was the world's leading advocacy group serving the cause of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian refugees.

Mr. Cherne's wife, Phyllis, died in 1995. He is survived by his daughter, Gail Gambino of Baiting Hollow, N.Y.; a brother, Jack Cherne of Santa Monica, Calif., and a granddaughter, Erica Gambino of Bridgehampton, N.Y.

January 12, 1999