The CIA, the IOC, and Efforts to Establish a Refugee Olympic Team*
The CIA, the IOC, and Efforts to Establish a Refugee Olympic Team* By Toby C. Rider The Union of Free Eastern European Sportsmen (UFEES), which had its head- quarters in New York, demanded in a letter of 20th May 1952 the “participation of stateless athletes” in the Olympic Games in Helsinki. The initia- tor – with the support of the CIA – was the Hungarian Count Anthony (Antal) S zápáry (1905-1973), who in 1949 had married the great- granddaughter of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. In an address delivered to the United Nations General As far back as 1952, however, a different refugee team Assembly on 26th October 2015, the President of the was not given the same vote of approval. The Union of International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Free Eastern European Sportsmen (UFEES), a consortium Bach, explained that athletes of the highest calibre of stateless athletes that had fled from behind the ‘Iron were among the millions of refugees swept up in Curtain’ and sought to compete at the Helsinki Summer the unfolding humanitarian disaster across Europe, Games, roundly failed in its bid to receive official Africa, and the Middle East. “At present, none of these Olympic recognition. In many ways, the decision was athletes would have the chance to participate in the fully justified. After all, recent research has revealed Olympic Games even if qualified,” he said, “with their that the UFEES was connected to the Central Intelligence refugee status, they are left without a home country and Agency (CIA), the clearing house for the US government’s National Olympic Committee to represent.” early Cold War covert operations.3 These secret links, In response to this tragic set of circumstances, Bach forged as part of America’s strategy to defeat the Soviet announced that the IOC planned to allow a small number Union, gave the IOC’s Members a simple reason to deny of these men and women to participate at the 2016 Rio the Union’s application.
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