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The Cultural Cold War the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters

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The Cultural Cold War the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters The Cultural Cold War The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters FRANCES STONOR SAUNDERS by Frances Stonor Saunders Originally published in the United Kingdom under the title Who Paid the Piper? by Granta Publications, 1999 Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2000 Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press oper- ates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in in- novative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable. The New Press, 450 West 41st Street, 6th floor. New York, NY 10036 www.thenewpres.com Printed in the United States of America ‘What fate or fortune led Thee down into this place, ere thy last day? Who is it that thy steps hath piloted?’ ‘Above there in the clear world on my way,’ I answered him, ‘lost in a vale of gloom, Before my age was full, I went astray.’ Dante’s Inferno, Canto XV I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere. William Congreve, Love for Love Contents Acknowledgements .......................................................... v Introduction ....................................................................1 1 Exquisite Corpse ...........................................................5 2 Destiny’s Elect .............................................................20 3 Marxists at the Waldorf ..............................................28 4 Democracy’s Deminform ...........................................35 5 Crusading’s the Idea ...................................................45 6 ‘Operation Congress’ ..................................................52 7 Candy ............................................................................64 8 Cette Fete Americaine ................................................69 9 The Consortium ...........................................................79 10 The Truth Campaign .................................................89 11 The New Consensus ..................................................96 12 Magazine ‘X’ .............................................................101 13 The Holy Willies .......................................................116 14 Music and Truth, ma non troppo .............................130 15 Ransom’s Boys ..........................................................143 16 Yanqui Doodles ........................................................161 17 The Guardian Furies ................................................177 18 When Shrimps Learn to Whistle ............................191 19 Achilles’ Heel ............................................................198 20 Cultural NATO .........................................................206 21 Caesar of Argentina .................................................216 22 Pen Friends................................................................225 23 Literary Bay of Pigs ..................................................231 24 View from the Ramparts .........................................238 25 That Sinking Feeling ................................................244 26 A Bad Bargain ...........................................................254 27 Epilogue .....................................................................260 Notes and Sources ......................................................267 Select Bibliography ....................................................310 Index ..........................................................................314 Acknowledgements Writing this book has been a prolonged act of vagrancy, as I have dragged my unsightly luggage chain of tatty boxes and files from place to place. For their kindness in taking me in, together with this caravan of archival loot, and offering me the chance to work undisturbed, I wish to thank Elizabeth Cartwright-Hignett, Frank Dabell, Nick Hewer; Eartha Kitt, Hermione Labron-Johnson, and Claudia and Marcello Salom. To Ann Pasternak Slater and Craig Raine, I owe special gratitude for their constant support and solid faith. Through them, I met Ben Son- nenberg in New York, and for that flourishing and (on Ben’s part) erudite friendship, I am in- debted. Ann Pasternak Slater also helped ease my passage by writing a letter of recommenda- tion which, but for her own generous embellishments, followed my draft with uncanny preci- sion. Carmen Calhl’s support was acquired late into the writing of this book, but counts as a powerful source of inspiration on account of its sheer and unqualified confidence at a time when I had all but lost my own. Jay Weissberg was an invaluable help: as an historian of film, I have yet to meet his equal in scholarship and breadth of knowledge. Further gratitude is ex- tended to those who became partners in a project which had its share of misadventures, but who stayed for the bumpy ride without losing their sense of humour: my editor Neil Belton, my agent Felicity Rubinstein, everyone at Granta Books, copy editor Jane Robertson, Jeremy Bugler, Tony Cash, Tony Carew, Lawrence Simanowitz, Andre Schiffrin at The New Press, and Melvin Wulf at Beldock, Levine & Hoffman. For their capacious friendship and extraordi- narily elastic patience, I am grateful beyond words to Madonna Benjamin, Zoe Heller, Conrad Roeber, Domitilla Ruffo, Roger Thornham and Michael Wylde. But for my mother, Julia Stonor, and my brother, Alexander Stonor Saunders, life outside of this book would have run into a cul-de-sac. For their encouragement, loving support, and endless propping up, I offer them shamelessly hyperbolic thanks and the dedication of this book. When I started researching the cultural Cold War, I had high hopes of benefiting from America’s Freedom of Information Act. It is certainly the case that many previously classified government documents have been released to researchers under this Act, and recent studies of the FBI have been greatly enriched as a result. But retrieving documentation from the CIA is another matter. My initial request to them of 1992 has yet to be answered. A subsequent appli- cation was acknowledged, though I was warned that the total cost for supplying the records I had requested would be in the region of $30,000. However, as the CIA’s Information and Pri- vacy Coordinator went on to explain that the chances of my application being successfully processed were virtually nil, I had little to worry about. The Freedom of Information Act is much vaunted by British historians, who indeed face far greater challenges in researching ma- terial relating to the defence of this realm. But its application, at least as far as the CIA is con- cerned, is lamentable. Compensating for this is the wealth of documentation existing in private collections. Historically, successive American administrations have spread into the private sec- tor. In the Cold War period especially, American foreign policy was shared between govern- ment departments and a kind of consortium of freelance, quasi-governmental figures and in- stitutions. It is this balkanization, even of clandestine or covert operations, which has ensured, paradoxically, that such operations can be scrutinized. The story is there, for those willing to trawl for it, in the sea of private papers stretching across the archives of America. Any work relying heavily on this archival material is naturally indebted to those many archivists and librarians who so expertly lead the researcher in, through, and out again of the vii The Cultural Cold War complexities of their collections. These people provide the joists on which the house of history rests, though I hasten to add that responsibility for any structural or architectural blemishes rests entirely with the author. For their help and advice, my thanks go to the staff of the Tamiment Library in New York, the Joseph Regenstein Library in Chicago, the Dwight D. Ei- senhower Library in Abilene, the National Archives in Washington, the Butler Library at Co- lumbia University, the George Meany Center in Washington, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, both in Austin, Texas, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, and the Harry S Truman Library in Independence. I also wish to thank the archivists at the Public Records Office in London, and at Reading University Library, and the staff of the London Library. Many people agreed to be interviewed for this book, and suffered my repeated visits, telephone calls, faxes and letters with elegant patience. All interviewees are named in the Notes and Sources at the end. I thank them all, but in particular Diana Josselson, who was ex- tremely generous with her time, and bestowed on this book the benefit of her sterling memory, her firm (though not uncritical) support, and photographs from her personal collection. viii Introduction The way to carry out good propaganda is never to appear to be carrying it out at all. Richard Crossman During the height of the Cold War, the US government committed vast resources to a secret programme of cultural propaganda in western Europe. A central feature of this pro- gramme was to advance the claim that it did not exist. It was managed, in great secrecy, by America’s espionage arm, the Central Intelligence Agency. The centrepiece of this covert cam- paign was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, run by CIA agent Michael Josselson from 1950 till 1967.
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