The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA by George N. Schmidt The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA George Schmidt The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA was published in 1978 by Substitutes United For Better Schools (S.U.B.S.) of Chicago, IL. It was re-printed in 1990 with a new introduction from George Schmidt. Substance News is still publishing: A print edition is published at 5132 W. Berteau, Chicago, IL 60641. You can subscribe online to receive a monthly delivery. The online version can be found at http://www.substancenews.net/. You can also read more from George Schmidt. 2 The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA George Schmidt digitized & hyperlinked summer 2012 groupuscule original text remains unchanged except for: formatting, hyperlinking, & correction of a few typos. links to wikipedia are sometimes informative but please also consider them an invitation to edit— especially if you can translate to and from relevant languages: contrast Workers' United Center of Chile with Central Única de Trabajadores de Chile and you'll see why. 3 The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA George Schmidt Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 5 Thank You Again ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. 13 Chapter One: Cooperating Around the World ......................................................................................... 19 Chapter Two: Irving Brown Speaks to the Teachers ................................................................................ 21 Irving Brown: From Communist to CIA ............................................................................................................................. 21 Jay Lovestone, the Ladies Garment Workers Union, and the “Free Trade Union Committee” .......................................... 22 The Work of Irving Brown in Europe .................................................................................................................................. 24 Chapter Three: The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) ...................................... 28 Enter AIFLD ........................................................................................................................................................................ 30 AIFLD At Work ................................................................................................................................................................... 33 The Money Behind AIFLD .................................................................................................................................................. 34 AIFLD and Chile ................................................................................................................................................................. 35 Chile: Bosses Become ‘Workers’ ........................................................................................................................................ 36 The American Federation of Teachers and Chile ................................................................................................................. 38 1974: The AFT Gets Shanker and AIFL .............................................................................................................................. 39 Exit Ms. Thiry; Enter Messers Loewenthal and DiBlasi ..................................................................................................... 41 Al Loewenthal, “Educator?” ................................................................................................................................................ 41 Anthony DiBlasi: AFT–CIA Man? ...................................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter Four: The African American Labor Center (AALC) .................................................................. 47 Free Trade Unionism in Southern Africa ............................................................................................................................. 48 Teachers in Africa: Local 2 Takes the Lead ......................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter Five: “Free Trade Unionism” in Asia ......................................................................................... 53 Free Trade Unionism in the Philippines .............................................................................................................................. 54 Indonesia: Good Massacres ................................................................................................................................................. 54 Vietnam: Home for AAFLI .................................................................................................................................................. 55 The AFT and the War in Vietnam ........................................................................................................................................ 56 Chapter Six: The New York Road to Power ............................................................................................ 61 The New York Teachers Union (Local 5, AFT) ................................................................................................................... 61 The Bosses Destroy the Teachers Union with the Support of the Teachers Guild .............................................................. 64 Organizing Against Racism in the Schools ......................................................................................................................... 66 The Consolidation of the United Federation of Teachers .................................................................................................... 69 Reforming the National Union ............................................................................................................................................ 70 The Shanker Team Comes to National Power ..................................................................................................................... 72 Appendix A: “The American Labor Movement & The International Scene” by Irving Brown ............. 75 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................................... 75 Al Loewenthal ..................................................................................................................................................................... 75 Irving Brown ........................................................................................................................................................................ 76 Appendix B: The AFT International Affairs before the Shanker Presidency (A Letter from Former AFT President David Selden) ........................................................................................................................... 84 No CIA Involvement in the '60's .......................................................................................................................................... 84 AFT and the IFFTU ............................................................................................................................................................. 84 Denise Thiry and the Labor Movement ............................................................................................................................... 84 AIFLD .................................................................................................................................................................................. 85 Chile ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 85 4 The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA George Schmidt Introduction Substance is reprinting my short book “The American Federation of Teachers and the C.I.A.” in its original form (save for an increase in page size and an increase in price) after several years of renewed interest in it. I was at first pleased—but surprised—to find that intelligent and committed people were still interested in this brief study nearly a quarter century after it was researched and written. Looking back on the 26 years we have been publishing the teachers’ newspaper Substance in Chicago, however, it should not have been as surprising as it first seemed to me. There is the same connection across generations now as there was when my generation struggled to locate and learn the history of American radicalism during the Orwellian brainwash of the early 1960s. Those who grew up, as I did, in the working class towns of industrial America during the 1950s were cut off from our past, often by our own parents. We were denied access to the legacies of protest and militancy that had a long and honorable tradition in the United States of America. The unions had been built by others. Civil rights was for rich college