-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [EMMAS] Poor Paranoid's Almanac: The CIA & American culture Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 22:46:56 -0600 (CST) From: Steve Wagner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: ? To: undisclosed-recipients:; This is from The Oakland Tribune, front page, Sat., March 18, 2000: BOOK SAYS CIA ALTERED ART TO SPREAD POSTWAR CULTURE, by Laurence Zuckerman, 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 human farmers but found it "impossible to say which was which." That ending was altered in the 1955 animated film 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 CIA, 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 CIA went, as recounted in a new book, "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA 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 in the United States next month. Much of what Saunders writes about, including the CIA's covert sponsorship of the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom and the British opinion magazine Encounter, was exposed in the late 1960s, generating a wave of indignation. But by combing through archives and unpublished manuscripts and interviewing several of the principal actors, Saunders has uncovered many new details and gives the most comprehensive account yet of the period between 1947 and 1967. This picture of the CIA's secret war of ideas has cameo appearances by scores of intellectural celebrities such as the critic 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 CIA's largess. There also are bundles of cash that were funneled through CIA fronts and several hilarious schemes that sound more like a "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon than a historical account. Traveling first class all the way, the CIA and its counterparts in other Western European nations sponsored art exhibitions, intellectual conferences, concerts and magazines to press their larger anti-Soviet agenda. Saunders provides ample evidence, for example, that the editors at Encounter and other agency-sponsored magazines were directed not to publish articles directly critical of Washington's foreign policy. She also shows how the CIA bankrolled some of the earliest exhibits 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 CIA's only dabbling in Hollywood. 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. At the end, Orwell writes, Winston realized that "He loved Big Brother." In the movie, Winston and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston defiantly shouts: "Down with Big Brother!" --------------------------------- (c) 2000, The Oakland Tribune, http://www.oaklandtribune-ang.com --------------------------------- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! 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