The Mighty Wurlitzer
The Mighty Wurlitzer
H O W T H E C I A P L AY E D A M E R I C A
Hugh Wilford
H A R V A R D
U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
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
327.1273009⬘045—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
I L L U S T R AT I O N S
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
A B B R E V I AT I O N S
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
A B B R E V I AT I O N S
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
A B B R E V I AT I O N S
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 tremendous promise. Class valedictorian at his Indiana high school, he continued to shine as a member of the track team at the University of Chicago, 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 Cancer Society.1
It was just as he was preparing to launch his NSA presidential campaign that Groves learned a secret about the organization that would change his life forever. Despite its appearance as a free and voluntary center for American student groups, the association was, its current president, Philip Sherburne, informed him, secretly funded by the Central Intelligence 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 covertly, through so-called “front” organizations—groups of private citizens
2
I N T R O D U C T I O N
outwardly serving some independent purpose who were in fact financed and controlled by Moscow.