|
How the Central Intelligence Agency Played Dirty
Tricks With Our Culture
By Laurence Zuckerman
03/18/02 "New
York Times" -- -- Many people remember reading George
Orwell's "Animal Farm" in high school or college, with its chilling
finale in which the farm animals looked back and forth at the
tyrannical pigs and the exploitative human farmers but found it
"impossible to say which was which."
That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed
the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of
Hollywood butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the
film's secret producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.
The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too
influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the
capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950,
agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of
Watergate fame) to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his
widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.
Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often
absurd lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book,
"The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and
Letters" (The New Press) by Frances Stonor Saunders, a British
journalist. Published in Britain last summer, the book will appear
here next month.
Much of what Ms. Stonor Saunders writes about, including the
C.I.A.'s covert sponsorship of the Paris-based Congress for Cultural
Freedom and the British opinion magazine Encounter, was exposed in
the late 1960's, generating a wave of indignation. But by combing
through archives and unpublished manuscripts and interviewing
several of the principal actors, Ms. Stonor Saunders has uncovered
many new details and gives the most comprehensive account yet of the
agency's activities between 1947 and 1967.
This picture of the C.I.A.'s secret war of ideas has cameo
appearances by scores of intellectual celebrities like the critics
Dwight Macdonald and Lionel Trilling, the poets Ted Hughes and Derek
Walcott and the novelists James Michener and Mary McCarthy, all of
whom directly or indirectly benefited from the C.I.A.'s largesse.
There are also bundles of cash that were funneled through C.I.A.
fronts and several hilarious schemes that resemble a "Spy vs. Spy"
cartoon more than a serious defense against Communism.
Traveling first class all the way, the C.I.A. and its counterparts
in other Western European nations sponsored art exhibitions,
intellectual conferences, concerts and magazines to press their
larger anti-Soviet agenda. Ms. Stonor Saunders provides ample
evidence, for example, that the editors at Encounter and other
agency-sponsored magazines were ordered not to publish articles
directly critical of Washington's foreign policy. She also shows how
the C.I.A. bankrolled some of the earliest exhibitions of Abstract
Expressionist painting outside of the United States to counter the
Socialist Realism being advanced by Moscow.
In one memorable episode, the British Foreign Office subsidized the
distribution of 50,000 copies of "Darkness at Noon," Arthur
Koestler's anti-Communist classic. But at the same time, the French
Communist Party ordered its operatives to buy up every copy of the
book. Koestler received a windfall in royalties courtesy of his
Communist adversaries.
As it turns out, "Animal Farm" was not the only instance of the
C.I.A.'s dabbling in Hollywood. Ms. Stonor Saunders reports that one
operative who was a producer and talent agent slipped
affluent-looking African-Americans into several films as extras to
try to counter Soviet criticism of the American race problem.
The agency also changed the ending of the movie version of "1984,"
disregarding Orwell's specific instructions that the story not be
altered. In the book, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is entirely
defeated by the nightmarish totalitarian regime. In the very last
line, Orwell writes of Winston, "He loved Big Brother." In the
movie, Winston and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston
defiantly shouts: "Down with Big Brother!"
Such changes came from the agency's obsession with snuffing out a
notion then popular among many European intellectuals: that East and
West were morally equivalent. But instead of illustrating the
differences between the two competing systems by taking the high
road, the agency justified its covert activities by referring to the
unethical tactics of the Soviets.
"If the other side can use ideas that are camouflaged as being local
rather than Soviet-supported or -stimulated, then we ought to be
able to use ideas camouflaged as local ideas," Tom Braden, who ran
the C.I.A.'s covert cultural division in the early 1950's, explained
years later. (In one of the book's many amusing codas, Mr. Braden
goes on in the 1980's to become the leftist foil to Patrick Buchanan
on the CNN program "Crossfire.")
The cultural cold war began in postwar Europe, with the fraying of
the wartime alliance between Washington and Moscow. Officials in the
West believed they had to counter Soviet propaganda and undermine
the wide sympathy for Communism in France and Italy.
An odd alliance was struck between the C.I.A. leaders, most of them
wealthy Ivy League veterans of the wartime Office of Strategic
Services and a corps of largely Jewish ex-Communists who had broken
with Moscow to become virulently anti-Communist. Acting as
intermediaries between the agency and the intellectual community
were three colorful agents who included Vladimir Nabokov's much less
talented cousin, Nicholas, a composer.
The C.I.A. recognized from the beginning that it could not openly
sponsor artists and intellectuals in Europe because there was so
much anti-American feeling there. Instead, it decided to woo
intellectuals out of the Soviet orbit by secretly promoting a
non-Communist left of democratic socialists disillusioned with
Moscow.
Ms. Stonor Saunders describes how the C.I.A. cleverly skimmed
hundreds of millions of dollars from the Marshall Plan to finance
its activities, funneling the money through fake philanthropies it
created or real ones like the Ford Foundation.
"We couldn't spend it all," Gilbert Greenway, a former C.I.A. agent,
recalled. "There were no limits, and nobody had to account for it.
It was amazing."
When some of the C.I.A.'s activities were exposed in the late
1960's, many artists and intellectuals claimed ignorance. But Ms.
Stonor Saunders makes a strong case that several people, including
the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the poet Stephen Spender, who was
co-editor of Encounter, knew about the C.I.A.'s role.
"She has made it very difficult now to deny that some of these
things happened," said Norman Birnbaum, a professor at the
Georgetown University Law School who was a university professor in
Europe in the 1950's and early 1960's. "And she has placed a lot of
people living and dead in embarrassing situations."
Still unresolved is what impact the campaign had and whether it was
worth it. Some of the participants, like Arthur M.
Schlesinger Jr., who was in the O.S.S. and knew about some of the
C.I.A.'s cultural activities, argue that the agency's role was
benign, even necessary. Compared with the coups the C.I.A. sponsored
in Guatemala, Iran and elsewhere, he said, its support of the arts
was some of its best work. "It enabled people to publish what they
already believed," he added. "It didn't change anyone's course of
action or thought."
But Diana Josselson, whose husband, Michael, ran the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, told Ms. Stonor Saunders that there were real
human costs among those around the world who innocently cooperated
with the agency's front organizations only to be tarred with a C.I.A.
affiliation when the truth came out. The author and other critics
argue that by using government money covertly to promote such
American ideals as democracy and freedom of expression, the agency
ultimately stepped on its own message.
"Obviously it was an error, and a rather serious error, to allow
intellectuals to be subsidized by the government," said Alan
Brinkley, a history professor at Columbia University. "And when it
was revealed, it did undermine their credibility seriously."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
Click below to read or post comment's on this article
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
