The Independent Monday, June 28, 1999
MONDAY BOOK: THE INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE CIA
A grainy black-and-white photograph from the Fifties graces
the cover of Frances Stonor Saunders's new history of the CIA's
cultural cold warriors. Four men sit hunched round a table strewn
with the remains of a meal; there are wine glasses smeared with
fingerprints and the dregs of a bottle, while an afternoon sun slants
through large windows. One man throws a menacing glance over
his shoulder at the photographer.
That look, and this clutch of figures, speak volumes about the
mission of that tight network of intellectuals and espionage agents
who worked alongside the CIA to promote the ideal of a new age
of enlightenment - the pax Americana. Fearful of the Soviet Union's
cultural influence, the agency operated a sophisticated cultural front
to win over leftist artists and their audiences. This was the cold
warriors' "battle for men's minds", stockpiled with a vast arsenal of
journals, books, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, concerts and
awards.
Among the agency's most powerful operators was Michael
Josselson, a former agent in the intelligence section of the
Psychological Warfare Division. He went on to head the influential
Congress for Cultural Freedom. Stonor Saunders vividly captures
both Josselson's character, and the dynamic appeal of the pax
Americana to a young Jewish intellectual with a passionate interest
in literature and the right political bent. His network relied on his
friends, many former members of the wartime Office of Strategic
Services, and on his wife, Diana Dodge. After their wedding in
Paris in 1953, he confessed that he was not really in the import-
export business. Together, the couple formed an effective
partnership.
Diana describes an idyllic life in postwar Paris where "you felt
you were in touch with everything going on everywhere - things
were blossoming, it was vital". She also succumbed to the romantic
fantasy of the intelligence world, and was given her own code
name. An agent would hand over memos and cables from
Washington to Michael during their Martini hour at the Josselsons's
apartment. "We'd read the incoming cables, then I'd flush them
down the toilet."
But there was more to the American cultural frontline than
romance and ideological conviction. The agency's biggest weapon
was its bank account. From its inception in 1952, the Congress that
Josselson headed received millions of dollars to act as America's
unofficial Ministry of Culture. "We couldn't spend it all," recalled
former CIA agent Gilbert Greenway. "There were no limits, and
nobody had to account for it. It was amazing."
Radio Free Europe alone received a budget of $10m at its
founding in Berlin in 1950. Elsewhere, a former case officer
described piling his car high with bundles of dollar bills for
distribution into "quiet channels". By the Sixties a joke was
circulating that, if any American philanthropic or cultural
organisation carried the words "free" or "private", it must be a CIA
front.
While thousands reaped the benefits of their position, others
were victimised by the agency's relentless pursuit of Communist
"fellow travellers" in the arts. During spring 1953, when the impact
of the Rosenbergs' treason trial and execution had exposed
resentment at America's presence in Europe, the United States
Information Agency conducted a purge of "pro-Communist
writers". More than 30,000 books were banned from USIA
libraries, including works by Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes,
John Reed and Herman Melville. The number of titles shipped
abroad by USIA in 1953 plunged from 119,913 to 314.
When the CIA's involvement in American culture was finally
exposed in the Sixties, it revealed a staggering number of
household-name artists who had received its tainted funds. Through
myriad projects, from cash- heavy prizes to magazines such as
Encounter and international conferences, the beneficiaries included
WH Auden, AA Milne, Nancy Mitford, Mary MacCarthy, Stephen
Spender, Jackson Pollock, Isaiah Berlin and George Orwell. Did
they realise they were being used? Stonor Saunders argues that
most of these artists knew where their money was coming from and
"if they didn't they were... cultivatedly and culpably, ignorant".
The damage the CIA caused was irreparable and pervasive.
Behind the "unexamined nostalgia for the `Golden Days' of
American intelligence lay a more devastating truth," Stonor
Saunders writes. "The same people who read Dante and went to
Yale and were educated in civic virtue recruited Nazis, manipulated
the outcome of democratic elections, gave LSD to unwitting
subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American citizens,
overthrew governments, supported dictatorships, plotted
assassinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs disaster." "In the
name of what?" asked one critic. "Not civic virtue, but empire."
Who Paid the Piper? illuminates a dark corner of America's
cultural history, drawing on an extraordinary range of interviews
and recently opened documents. Frances Stonor Saunders is strong
on biographical sketches, and a thorough researcher. But questions
about the real impact of the cultural cold war remain to be
answered. In spite of its murky sources, did this money still produce
some of the most significant art of the 20th century?
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
