-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- >From Wash (DC) Post {{<Begin>}} MICHAEL DIRDA By Michael Dirda Sunday, April 2, 2000; Page X15 THE CULTURAL COLD WAR The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters By Frances Stonor Saunders New Press. 509 pp. $29.95 This is a particularly difficult book to review. Frances Stonor Saunders has latched onto a good topic -- the CIA's covert funding of cultural magazines and conferences, mainly during the 1950s -- and she has spoken with many of the survivors and relicts of that era. To some degree, she has tried to understand the mentality of the times, and to sympathize with the various agents and intellectuals involved in this murky business. But she makes clear, through her tone and attendant commentary, that she views with loathing the intelligence community's attempt to wage a cultural offensive against the Soviet Union. As a result, one reads her book with interest and shock, but also with nagging reservations. Saunders is hardly an unbiased historian, nor is she ethically neutral -- were such an attitude even possible. Instead she often writes with savage indignation. Which, of course, is how Jonathan Swift described the inspiration for his own polemical compositions. So perhaps one should regard The Cultural Cold War as a kind of historical diatribe, a lacerating disquisition on the imperious attitudes among the ruling classes of post-World War II America. For once again we revisit the Old Boy Network that deftly transports the bright scions of old WASP families from Groton to Yale to Harvard Law, thence to some great Wall Street firm or merchant bank, followed by an undersecretaryship in Washington, a position at the CIA or a place on the National Security Council. Mature in years, our lad ends up on the boards of various art museums, philanthropic foundations and major corporations, sometimes enthroned as a Wise Man or dean of diplomacy, sleekly suited, with neatly brushed gray hair, consulted, quoted and revered. Alas, like Louis, in "Casablanca," when he discovers gambling going on at Rick's Cafe americain, Saunders is shocked, positively shocked to learn of this intertwining of business, government, the arts and intelligence. So am I, Ms. Saunders, so am I. But welcome to the world as it really is. In America we insist on the career open to talents and merit -- it's our national myth -- but obviously an ambitious young man or woman will be substantially better off with a moneyed and well-connected family to smooth the way. Simply consider the example of George W. Bush. Or even that of John Kennedy, who most of his life seems to have simply hired those he was led to believe were the best and the brightest (or -- sometimes -- the prettiest). As it happens, in the postwar era this often self-satisfied, preppy oligarchy grew obsessed with the communist menace and thus expended considerable energy, cash and manpower in a shadowy combat, striving to demonize Russia and promulgate classic American ideals, no matter the moral cost. These men and women may have been protecting, consciously or unconsciously, their own privileges; but, like it or not, they were also ardent patriots, upholders of America as a safeguard of democracy and truth. Were they wrong in what they did? After all, when does a man of drive and patriotism and self-sacrifice wake up to discover that he has become a fanatic, a true believer? Surely one would have to be a god to know whether an Allen Dulles or George Kennan may have saved us from nuclear Armageddon or made its possibility an unending international nightmare. It is always easy, in retrospect, to point to Talleyrand's famous motto: "Surtout, pas de zele" -- Above all, no zeal. But in a really serious fight one would rather have Rambo than Montaigne by one's side. At the heart of this study lies the once-famous Congress for Cultural Freedom, the sponsor for such magazines as Encounter (Britain), Tempo Presente (Italy), Quest (India), Preuves (France), Der Monat (Germany) and many others. These "assets" were generally edited by pro-America intellectuals but were ostensibly journals of independent opinion. In fact, Irving Kristol, Stephen Spender, Melvin Lasky and Frank Kermode -- all editors of Encounter at one time or another -- denied knowing that the Congress was actually a CIA front or that its boss, Michael Josselson, was an agency operative. Saunders takes pains to insist that certainly by the later 1950s and '60s everyone on the intellectual cocktail circuit in London and Washington knew about the CIA connection. How "witting," to use the agency catchphrase, were these cultural jetsetters really? In short, what did they know? And when did they know it? Given that the people involved were mainly intellectuals or academics, one can grant them an ingrained naivete and presume that most of them probably never thought hard about who was paying for the spiffy parties, the first-class air fares, the caviar and champagne. Weren't they smart guys, after all, and deserving of the best? So off to Bellagio for another international conference! Let the symposia roll! Those who did bother to ask were told that the Congress's milch cow was the Farfield Foundation, run by Julius Fleischmann (of yeast and gin fame). Saunders reminds us, though, that "Junkie" was famously parsimonious, and would never have shelled out serious money to wild-eyed artists and culture mavens. He simply funneled the dough for the CIA. While taking a break from reading The Cultural Cold War, I happened to start cleaning out my basement and discovered a couple of issues of Encounter from 1957. I read around in one -- and was shocked. In truth, I had always remembered the magazine as a kind of successor to Cyril Connolly's highly personal and very literary Horizon (financed, in fact, by the son of a margarine millionaire -- is there a pattern here?). But Saunders is perfectly right. As with forgeries, which fool blinkered contemporaries but look painfully obvious as fakes to later generations, so is it with Encounter. The pages clearly exude a Red Menace ideology, what with coolly analytic Cold War editorials, bright articles lambasting the Soviet Union, and reviews sharply critical of Marxist politics and thought. I'll never be able to look at an issue again with my usual innocence. Of course, that's just what those associated with Encounter and the other journals felt when the New York Times exposed the connection to the CIA. Saunders suggests that their outrage was essentially disingenuous. They must have known. Be that as it may, Michael Josselson was quickly abandoned by his friends. According to his widow, Diana, a major source for this book, Josselson truly believed in the Congress's purpose -- and deeply valued the arts; he aimed to fund a cultural magazine that would be, most of the time, just that. But like the art exhibits and musical extravaganzas that the Congress also sponsored, a first-rate magazine would implicitly proclaim the superiority of the West to the benighted East: As Richard Crossman observed (in one of Saunders's many terrific chapter epigraphs), "the way to carry out good propaganda is never to appear to be carrying it out at all." In the end, says book editor Jason Epstein, Encounter actually became a kind of intellectual's equivalent to the WASP old-boy circuit -- it employed and published only a restricted subset of writers and thinkers, thus marginalizing arguably better and more original minds. This seems plausible and, though it may be wrong, is only human. We tend to promote, talk up and hire our own kind of people. Look at any magazine, including Epstein's own beloved New York Review of Books. Saunders presents a huge cast of characters, many of them old Lefties who had grown disillusioned with "the god that failed": the smooth and rather loathsome Arthur Koestler; the high-living, five-wived composer Nicholas Nabokov; the ubiquitous Arthur Schlesinger; and the possibly more ubiquitous Stephen Spender (though frequently judged a kind of mental wimp, throughout his life Spender always managed to be at the center of whatever was happening, Zeitgeist-wise); the hoity-toity journalist brothers Stewart and Joseph Alsop; numerous CIA notables from Tom Braden and Irving Brown to William Colby and orchid-loving James Jesus Angleton; and, of course, much of the Partisan Review crowd of New York -- Sidney Hook, Philip Rahv, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, William Phillips, Dwight Macdonald. Almost all these people received CIA money in one way or another, whether they knew it or not. Did it affect what they wrote, what they thought? Hard to say. But I suspect it didn't, for the most part. Writers need to think that they are independent minds, and almost instinctively bristle at any curtailment of their freedom. So far as Saunders can determine, Josselson killed only one major piece in Encounter over the course of its history (an attack by Dwight Macdonald on America as a wasteland of loutish privilege, later published in Dissent). But he chose his editors well, and perhaps didn't need to exert authority. Their thought flowed in the same channels as his. Once a dog has learned to stay in the yard, you don't need to watch it all the time. Ultimately, I think, the whole culture of mendacity especially irks Saunders, as it did the Encounter contributors. But why this astonishment? Lies and secrets and intrigue are the tools of Realpolitik. What's more, the clandestine possesses a sneaking romantic appeal: Think of novelist Charles McCarry's punning title about eros and espionage -- The Secret Lovers. As reporters and historians, we properly need to expose such subterfuge and calculation, to clear away the smoke and mirrors, even while we realize that they will be back tomorrow, in some other guise, on some other stage. Machiavelli reminded us that we live in a fallen world and to succeed we must be willing to fall ourselves. I wish this weren't so. But only the young or unduly hopeful believe otherwise. So do I like this book? Yes, in many ways: It's filled with testimony, facts and figures; makes clear the sinuous interlocking nature of American governmental, corporate and cultural life; and is consistently fascinating, albeit like the eye of the basilisk. Saunders's prose is workmanlike, no more, and she makes enough obvious mistakes -- Harlow Sharpley instead of Shapley, and Kenyon College is in Gambier, not Kenyon, Ohio -- to make one pause occasionally. She also has what seems to be at least a mild case of over- assertion: Everything, from Abstract Expressionism to "The Searchers" to PEN International, appears to have been the object of the CIA's indelicate attentions. But maybe she, like Oliver Stone, Don DeLillo or your local schizophrenic, is absolutely right: No one is safe. We are all pawns in some insidious game. Still, trapped in the wilderness of mirrors, how can we ever know? When Tom Braden revealed the secret history of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, was he making a clean breast of his own involvement in overseeing Josselson's enterprise? Or was he, in fact, taking orders and cutting off a now dispensable CIA liablity? Or was he . . . . The reflecting mirrors curve and regress into infinity. At the end of The Cultural Cold War one realizes, yet again, how gray and tawdry the world has grown. We live in the valley of ashes. Michael Dirda's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] � Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." Ernest Hemingway + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
