The Mighty Wurlitzer The Mighty Wurlitzer HOW THE CIA PLAYED AMERICA Hugh Wilford HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Copyright © 2008 by Hugh Wilford All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2009. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilford, Hugh, 1965– The mighty wurlitzer : how the CIA played America / Hugh Wilford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-02681-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-674-03256-9 (pbk.) 1. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. 2. Intelligence service—United States. 3. Cold War. 4. Political culture—United States—History—20th century. 5. Public-private sector cooperation—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Politics and government—1945–1989. I. Title. JK468.I6W45 2008 327.1273009Ј045—dc22 2007021587 For Patty Contents List of Illustrations ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Innocents’ Clubs: The Origins of the CIA Front 11 2 Secret Army: Émigrés 29 3 AFL-CIA: Labor 51 4 A Deep Sickness in New York: Intellectuals 70 5 The Cultural Cold War: Writers, Artists, Musicians, Filmmakers 99 6 The CIA on Campus: Students 123 7 The Truth Shall Make You Free: Women 149 8 Saving the World: Catholics 167 9 Into Africa: African Americans 197 10 Things Fall Apart: Journalists 225 Conclusion 249 Notes 257 Acknowledgments 319 Index 321 Illustrations Illustrations follow page 148. Allen Dulles Frank Wisner, 1934 A propaganda balloon release by the National Committee for a Free Europe George Meany and Jay Lovestone Sidney Hook, 1960 Arthur Koestler, Irving Brown, and James Burnham, 1950 Still from film adaptation of Orwell’s Animal Farm Henry Kissinger, 1957 U.S. National Student Association delegates at the Third International Student Conference, Copenhagen, 1953 Gloria Steinem, 1967 Cord Meyer Dorothy Bauman Women of the Committee of Correspondence and Third World guests on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Tom Dooley x ILLUSTRATIONS Edward Lansdale, late 1940s Bing Crosby and rosary priest Patrick Peyton, 1956 J. Peter Grace Richard Wright John Davis at the Second Annual Conference of the American Society of African Culture, New York City, 1959 Nina Simone and other African American jazz musicians in Lagos, Nigeria, 1961 James Farmer and James Baker in Africa, 1965 Joseph and Stewart Alsop Warren Hinckle, Robert Scheer, and Sol Stern, 1967 Richard Helms and other members of the Katzenbach Commission with LBJ, 1967 Tom Braden, 1967 Abbreviations ACCF American Committee for Cultural Freedom ACEN Assembly of Captive European Nations ACUE American Committee on United Europe ADA Americans for Democratic Action AFFJ American Fund for Free Jurists AFL American Federation of Labor AFME American Friends of the Middle East AFSCME American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees AFV American Friends of Vietnam AID Agency for International Development AIF Americans for Intellectual Freedom AIFLD American Institute of Free Labor Development AMCOMLIB American Committee for Liberation AMSAC American Society of African Culture ANG American Newspaper Guild ANLCA American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa ARCI Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, Inc. BSO Boston Symphony Orchestra CAA Council on African Affairs CCF Congress for Cultural Freedom CCNY City College of New York CIA Central Intelligence Agency xii ABBREVIATIONS CIG Central Intelligence Group CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations COI Coordinator of Information CORAC Council on Race and Caste in World Affairs, Inc. CORE Congress of Racial Equality COSEC Coordinating Secretariat of the International Student Conference CPUSA American Communist Party DCI Director of Central Intelligence DD/P Deputy Director/Plans EAG Europe-America Groups ECA Economic Cooperation Administration ERP European Recovery Program FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation FO Force Ouvrière FTUC Free Trade Union Committee FYSA Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs HIACOM Harvard University International Affairs Committee IAFWNO Inter-American Federation of Working Newspapermen’s Organizations ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions ICJ International Commission of Jurists ILG International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union IOD International Organizations Division IRC International Rescue Committee ISC International Student Conference ISI Independent Service for Information on the Vienna Youth Festival (later Independent Research Service) IUS International Union of Students KGB Committee for State Security KIM Young Communist International MEDICO Medical International Cooperation MI6 Secret Intelligence Service (United Kingdom) MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology MO Morale Operations MoMA Museum of Modern Art ABBREVIATIONS xiii MSU Michigan State University NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NCFE National Committee for a Free Europe (also Free Europe Committee) NCL Non-communist left NKVD People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (forerunner of KGB) NL New Leader NSA United States National Student Association NSC National Security Council NTS Narodno-Trudovoy Soyuz NYU New York University OCB Operations Coordinating Board ONI Office of Naval Intelligence OPC Office of Policy Coordination OSO Office of Special Operations OSS Office of Strategic Services PPS Policy Planning Staff PSB Psychological Strategy Board PSI Public Service International RFE Radio Free Europe RL Radio Liberation (after 1964, Radio Liberty) SAC Société Africaine de Culture SAK Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions SDS Students for a Democratic Society SLU St. Louis University SMAP Student Mutual Assistance Program SMM Saigon Military Mission SO Special Operations SOBSI All-Indonesian Central Labor Organization SWP Socialist Workers Party UAW United Automobile Workers UNC University of North Carolina USIA United States Information Agency WAY World Assembly of Youth xiv ABBREVIATIONS WFDY World Federation of Democratic Youth WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions WIDF Women’s International Democratic Federation YAF Young Americans for Freedom YPSL Young People’s Socialist League The Mighty Wurlitzer Introduction W. Eugene Groves was, all who knew him agreed, a young man of tremen- dous promise. Class valedictorian at his Indiana high school, he con- tinued to shine as a member of the track team at the University of Chi- cago, where he studied physics and served as president of the student association. After graduating in 1965, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford and then, a year later, returned home to run for the presidency of the United States National Student Association (NSA), a post that had served several previous holders as a stepping-stone to high public office. By the age of twenty-three, the student politician had already come a long way from his hometown of Columbia City (population 5,500), where his father worked as a carpenter and his mother presided over the local Can- cer Society.1 It was just as he was preparing to launch his NSA presidential cam- paign that Groves learned a secret about the organization that would change his life forever. Despite its appearance as a free and voluntary cen- ter for American student groups, the association was, its current president, Philip Sherburne, informed him, secretly funded by the Central Intelli- gence Agency. This arrangement, Groves learned, dated back to the first years of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union had launched a concerted effort to win the ideological allegiance of young people in western Europe by appealing to such idealistic causes as world peace and progress. Rather than making this appeal directly, communist propagandists did so co- vertly, through so-called “front” organizations—groups of private citizens 2 INTRODUCTION outwardly serving some independent purpose who were in fact financed and controlled by Moscow. Confronted by this challenge, senior U.S. government officials decided to respond in kind. The CIA, vested with broad, unspecified powers of covert operation by its legislative charter, the National Security Act of 1947, began making secret subsidies to the National Student Association (founded, incidentally, in the same year), first through wealthy individu- als posing as private donors, then, more systematically, via fake charita- ble foundations created specially to act as funding “pass-throughs.” Stu- dents in the NSA’s international affairs division, who had been “groomed” by undercover intelligence officers attending NSA summer seminars and who were sworn to official secrecy, then helped channel the money abroad, where friendly foreign student organizations spent it on various activities intended to combat the influence of communist fronts. By the time that Eugene Groves was let in on the secret in 1966, the NSA’s inter- national program had expanded beyond western Europe to include new areas of Cold War strategic significance, among them South America, Af- rica, and Southeast Asia. The revelation left Groves in an agonizing quandary. Described by friends as “warm and open,” he was instinctively repelled by the elements of secrecy and deception involved in the relationship between the CIA and the NSA, not least of which was the requirement that those students who had sworn the secrecy oath—or, to use the Agency’s own operational terminology, been made “witting”—conceal the truth about the NSA’s funding from those who were “unwitting.”2 An earnest believer in the principles of citizen action and voluntarism, Groves was