In the first battle ground of the Cold War, Germany, after rehabilitating prominent ex-Nazis, (Herbert von Karajan eg) they set up "Amerika Hauser" libraries, and published Der Monat, a magazine. One of their main operatives, Melvin Lasky, as a stunt, harangued a Cominform (Communist propaganda and cultural organization) in East Berlin. A CIA agent, Michael Josselson, the European centre of all this, set up a front organization, the "Congress For Cultural Freedom" (CFCF) to channel CIA funds into Europe.

In America, the CIA picked up former Communists, many of whom had become disillusioned by the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, or the Stalin show trials. The CIA sponsored the "Non Communist Left" (NCL), socialists and Trotskyists, as a counter weight to the Stalinists. A large Cominform event, 25th March 1949, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, was disrupted. Fake press releases, protests outside, and the staged humiliation of Shostakovich were all part of the dirty tricks employed.

An important early event in Europe was the 1949 publication of The God That Failed, with essays by former Communists; including Arthur Koestler, Andre Gide, Stephen Spender. Richard Wright, one of the least hardline anti-Communist authors in the God That Failed group, later died in mysterious circumstances. Using slush fund money, derived from Marshall Aid, the CIA sponsored many more projects as well as organizing trade union thug gangs in France (Force Ouvrier)

With the Korean War (1950) things moved up a notch. Some cultural projects overlapped with Radio Free Europe. More magazines included Preuves, France, Tempo Presente, Italy, Quadrant, Australia, Hiwar, an Arabic magazine, as well as Forum World Features, a CIA run news service. In the USA, the CIA gave money and support to the Partisan Review, house mag of the NCL, and another called New Leader. A European unification campaign run by Dennis de Rougemont was bankrolled, also a Euro-federalist Youth Movement. Links were established with IRD, a British MI6 run front. The CIA financed "Abstract Expressionism" art exhibitions, and Boston Symphony Orchestra European concert tours. Fake charitable trusts were set up to launder money. These are called "pass throughs". The main trust was called the "Farfield Foundation" and was supposedly run by a US millionaire called Julius "Junky" Fleischmann. Some genuine trusts were used too - the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller, and the Kaplan Foundation. Among the publishers used were Groset & Dunlap, Bantam Books, Harper, much of this working through old school / college or former OSS (=WW2 equivalent of the CIA) contacts of the CIA leaders. The "Chekov Publishing House" published dissident Russian authors. Propaganda, T S Eliot and bibles were also floated over Russia in helium balloons.

In 1953, a CIA magazine, Encounter, was established in London, specifically to attack and tie down in polemic the long established British left magazine, New Statesman. CIA agent Irving Kristol was editor, along with naive 1930s poet Stephen Spender, said to be chosen because he was "eminently bamboozable". Encounter became the ultimate CIA Cold War propaganda flagship, and ran between 1953-1990.

Meanwhile, the Rosenberg execution and the McCarthy witch hunts undermined the credibility of any claims the US made about free speech in the wider world. 30,000 book titles were purged from US Information Agency libraries abroad. Sartre was banned, Thomas Mann (who had also had books burned by the Nazis) Thomas Paine, John Read, H D Thoreau, Dashiel Hammet, William Carlos Williams. Anti-Communist films were sponsored in Hollywood, especially featuring John Wayne. Others less known were "I was a Communist for the FBI", "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "Red Planet Mars"; but these did not play well in Europe. Better were the cartoon version of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" by Halas and Batchelor, and a film version of "1984".

In 1956, with the Russian invasion of Hungary, part of the network began to unravel. Lasky placed refugee academics in western universities. One of the CIA organizers, Wisner drank and went into decline. $70,000 was found for the Budapest Orchestra defectors. Radio Free Europe is thought to have encouraged the Hungarian uprising, promising arms, but afterwards tapes / transcripts of the broadcasts were conveniently "lost".

Various conferences and campaigns followed. There was a row over censorship of an article critical of the US by somebody called Dwight McDonald, in Encounter, which got the magazine described as "a dollar megaphone for the CIA" Another article on China by Emily Hahn was also vetoed. In 1964, there was a co-ordinated campaign against Pablo Neruda getting the Nobel Prize for literature. (In a stroke of poetic justice, Sartre got it instead which likewise upset them) Through looking at Form 990-A tax accounts, a US Senator, Portman, identified eight fake charities, including Hoblitzelle, Borden Trust, Beacon Fund, Kaplan, who were being used to launder funds. In 1962, Encounter was lampooned as a US Cold War cultural front in the well known UK TV show "That Was The Week That Was" (=TW3) Their CIA Arabic magazine was denounced as "A Trojan Horse" and one of their fronts' Paris office was bombed.

As a result of the attention of people like Senator Portman, reports began appearing in the New York Times. Encounter maliciously slandered one of the whistleblowers, Irish journalist, Conor Cruise O'Brien. The whole policy began to turn into a "Literary Bay of Pigs" when Ramparts US magazine investigated. The CIA / FBI issued threats, blackmail, and smears but Ramparts persisted, and in April 1967, published details of the operation, effectively blowing it. On orders from CIA High Command, Tom Braden, an agent, wrote an article in the US Saturday Evening Post, pulling the rug from underneath it all. Stephen Spender resigned from Encounter. Josselson collapsed (weak heart), In Japan, a CFCF representative's house was bombed. Other members resigned, in a massive public row.

The book gives an insight into how the CIA operates in the cultural sphere. It is clear that though the targets and channels used will have changed, the basic methods will remain the same.

– Steve Booth

Green Anarchist: Front Page Current Articles First 10 Issues See: uk.indymedia.org for more on the university expansion. Frances Stonor Saunders is Arts Editor of the New Statesman.

---

| Index | Back | Next |

---