david barkin wrote:
> I am not surprised about the report about the use of
> US anthropologists in the NY Times, but rather by the
> extraordinary lapses of memory by the profession,
> wreaked by an intense debate involving their members
> in the infamous Project Camelot.
[usual apologies for long delay in my response]
1) David B. raises an important story for academia. As David points out
there was Project Camelot (Chile in the mid '60s plus some of the rest of
LatAmer, no?), but IMO the full scope of anthropologists' turmoil also
includes a massive professional involvement in counter-insurgency in
Southeast Asia, and to some degree against Cuba (e.g. in Operation Mongoose).
To their credit, in reaction, the American Anthropologist Association then
formed the powerful Committee on Ethics (in the early 70s?) whose
prohibitions, inter aelia, against mixing academic and classified work
limited many abuses (it is these rules that are now changing). To this
day, the economics profession does not have the vaguest professional
guidelines. Not even disclosure/conflict of interest rules. Not even for
the AEA's own conferences or publications.
2) The anthropologists involvement really took off with Colonel Edward
Lansdale (often claimed to be the role model for The Quiet American) who
claimed to play a principle role in defeating of the Huq rebellion in the
Philippines. Lansdale was a former advertising executive and promoted his
role shamelessly and with a lurid appeal to U.S. prejudices. His deputy was
an anthropologist and together they spun a story of defeating communists
through a knowledge of "native" cultural weaknesses and psychological
warfare (vampires, etc). The U.S. public lapped it up (Edward Said should
have written about it).
So droves of anthropologists were sent off to Vietnam, some were full time,
some were on academic leave, and some worked as consultants from their
academic posts. The biggest funding was probably the USAID Rural Affairs
program but other funders of the Strategic Hamlets Initiative were involved
in large ways. Anthropologists even figured in the joint command structure
through a then-novel integrated provincial command called CORDS that
brought together USAID, the military, and the CIA. So anthropologists were
found helping to fine tune the infamous Phoenix village level assassination
program.
(btw, Richard Holbrook was an example of a junior CORDS/USAID official in
the Mekong Delta working under a protegee of Lansdale; New School President
Bob Kerry's SEAL assassination team was carrying out a CORDS "instructions")
Similar work was going on throughout S.E. Asia. In Thailand accidental
exposure lead to a professional scandal since the operation used academic
cover. Some of the most visible work done by anthropologists in this
period was done in this period through government funding, such as Rand
anthropologist Gerald Hickey (who later was also at Yale) and his book
Village in Vietnam. Rand had a whole section of anthropologists (and
political scientists).
3) In Vietnam, as in Iraq, different political factions within the U.S.
government aligned themselves with different strategic approaches to
"winning". Lansdale and the anthropologists were a small group but had
strong support from Kennedy and his entourage as the "thinking man's"
alternative. (They remind me a bit of today's Biden/Peter Galbraith, one
of the sons of JKG). They should not be confused with the overlapping
Green Beret crowd whom Kennedy also supported.
As the war progressed, factions favored by LBJ and then by Nixon pushed
the anthropologists and the Lansdale crowd out of in-country
operations. They then became a vocal voice in saying the war was lost
because it had been fought the "wrong" way. As the political winds
shifted Rand disassociated itself from this approach, fired the
anthropologists, and switched to more aggressive and military
studies. (Was Daniel Elsberg also caught in this shift?). Along with the
disappearance of the big funding alternative voices were permitted to
emerge in anthropology. Francis Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake" being the
most prominent example (her father, btw, was a very top CIA official for
decades and a close associate of Lansdale).
P.S. At that time economists were not deemed worth much for in-country
strategy. Mostly low level monetary types "advising" on money supply
sterilization. Today the World Bank/IMF types would be strutting back and
forth. Vietnam...those were the days?
Paul
