THE CIA NIGHTMARE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200770001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 1, 1999
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 3, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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Women Intellectuals
Philadelphia, a.
To the Editors: Your symposium n
"The Woman Intellectual and e
Church" (January 27) certainly rai d
many thought-provoking points. In t is
respect, I would like to make two poi s..
One suggestion concerns other sti
lating reading on this general topic.
noted biblical scholar Professor Kris r
Stendahl has recently published a boo r-
lei: The Bible and the Role of Wom n
(Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 19 ,
85?). This is a case study in hermene 1-
ties, i.e. "how one interprets the Bib,
not only as to what the text meant 'back
there then' when it was written, but alo
as to what it means 'here and now l"
which originally appeared in Sweden
during the course of a lengthy deb e
over the proposed ordination of wome .
Dr. Stendahl concludes: "The qu -
tion about the ordination of women s
not a question about offices but a qu -
tion about the right relationship betwe n
man and woman in Christ, whether t
applies to political office, civil servic ,
career, home life, the ministry, or. to te
episcopate." While Dr. Stendahl is co -
sidering the specific issue of ordination
of women, he does so within a wid r
context. Hence, I find much of h s'
thought applicable to any discussion
woman in the Church.
A second point 1 would like to rai
is with respect to the discussants' use
the word institution. I find that in seve
al places where the discussants spoke c f,
the Church as institution, the word br
reaucracy might have been more acct
rate. It is one thing to speak of th
bureaucratized Church today and quit
. ? athcr to speak of the institution
Church. A bureaucracy is a hierarchic
structure having considerable power an
low circulation while an institution i
characterized as a pattern of cultur,
traits specialized to the shaping and dis
tribution of particular values or sets o
valt;es. While this is only a seminal dis
tinction, it does point up the fact that
(Continued on page 630)
E%VS VIEWS;
C, I O S Voittlik:s.: .,a.: 611
EDITORIALS: 611
C.I.A. AND THE 5 VDENTS: Harvey K. Fled & Mary Fogarty Flad 613
PRESERVING DEIIWWCIIACY, C.I.A. STYLE: Wilson Carey McWilliams 614
RIVALS FOR TIIE VIETCONG? William P/a$ 615
'A PART11NG OF TILE WAYS': lames O'Gara 618
THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY REFLEX: Conor Cruise O'Brien 619
THE RENEWAL ]HESS: Daniel Callahan 621
THE SCREEN: Philip T. Hartung 625
BOOKS: 626
EDWARD S. SKILLIN, Editor JAMES O'CARA, Managing Editor
DANIEL CALLAHAN t Associate Editor JOHN LEO s Associate Editor
PETER STEINFELS t Assistant Editor
ANNE ROBERTSON, Editorial Assistant
WILFRID SHEED, Books PHILIP T. HARTUNG, Movie Critic JOHN FANDEL, Poetry
ROBERT BARRAT, Paris GUNNAR D. KUMLIEN, Rome J. M. CAMERON, Cr.., Britain
JOHN BRUBAKER, Advertising Manager
COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arlo.
Second-clau postage paid in Philadelphia, Pa. Printed in the USA and pubthhed weekly,
except biweekly Chrhtmas-New Year's and from mid-July to mid.September,
by Commonweal Publishing Co, 232 Madison Ace, New York, NY 10016
MUrray Hill 34042. Copyright C 1967 Commonweal Publishing Cos, inc.
US and Canada, $9 a year. Foreign $11. Single copies 300
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THE CIIA N GIITMA .E
The largest and most representative student organization in America,
the, United States National Student Association has been financed, to the
tune of $200,000 a year, by the Central Intelligence Agency. This fact
has now been advertised the length and breadth of the land. It seems to
have broken a log-jam; and, a great wash of evidence is upon us, showing
the hand of the CIA in a multitude of educational and organizational enter-,
prises previously considered private and independent. The reactions, and
perhaps the revelations, are only beginning. Two such reactions, different
in tone and viewpoint, follow in this issue.
The CIA-NSA connection has been presented as a severe indictment of
."established" American liberalism. And justly so. But the ironies are close
to the surface. It was the very fact that private monies in American society
would not support the international activities of liberal NSA which drove
the student leaders into the arms of the intelligence agency in the first place.
Furthermore, many of the projects funded through the CIA could have been
quite successfully and quite openly sponsored by the State Department-
were it not for the McCarthyite hysteria 'of certain blocs of Congressmen .
which rendered all international student activity, if not even all State De-
partment activity, suspect. In this. sense, the Congress of the United States,
as much as the requirements of international espionage, was the cause of
the secret character of the NSA financing. The implications of this fact are
both profoundly anti-democratic and profoundly symptomatic of Con-
gress' general incapacity to handle post-war foreign affairs.
At the moment, thanks to CIA omnipresence and other government ex-
travaganzas like the Defense Department's ill-fated Project Camelot, any-
one connected with things international must work in an increasingly night-
marish atmosphere. Independent scholarship abroad becomes more difficult.
Scholars feel their reputations compromised, their contacts disappearing.
Last year's meeting of anthropologists heard a denunciation of the CIA's
exploitation of that discipline either for information or "cover." Recently,
its New York, at an open meeting .of an. organization dealing with Latin
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American affairs, a speaker from the floor suggested that said: "To say the least [Father McCabe] is utterly
certain proposed activities should not be undertaken be- immature and not enlightened in his judgment. In either
cause they were of a sort easily manipulable by CIA in- case lie is irresponsible and undeserving of credit." Those
fluences which might be working in the group. Not long of our readers who recall Father McCabe's brilliant ex-
ago, such a comment would have appeared to be sheer change with Prof. Joseph Fletcher last year on the "New
paranoia. Today, it seems utterly realistic. Morality" will be able to judge for themselves.
The demoralization and disaffection among young What was the horrible thing Father McCabe had done?
people is particularly extreme. President Kennedy hailed He had written an editorial in the February issue of the
"a new generation of Americans" who will "serve the New Black friars expressing sympathy for Charles Davis.
cause of freedom as servants of pace around the world." In the editorial he said, among other things, that "The
But that generation, passionately concerned with the Church is quite plainly corrupt. . . . We have lived with
destiny of the developing nations, is being forced into this truth for so long that we have perhaps forgotten
choosing between an almost Pavlovian suspicion of every- how scandalous and horrible it is: like people who live
thing the U.S. does abroad or a morally eroding cynicism. with racial discrimination and slavery."
There is no point in complaining about a growing attach- Shocking words, no doubt, but are they accurate?
ment of the New Left to "conspiracy theories" when Father McCabe provided some evidence for his assertion:
genuine conspiracies are popping up all around. Re- "A Cardinal selects Christmas as the occasion for support-
portedly, the Peace Corps itself only fought off inroads ing the murder of Vietnamese civilians; the Pope alleges
by the CIA after a stiff battle by Sargent Shriver. But, that the Church's teaching is not in doubt about birth-
given the present revelations, who will believe,it? control; the Congregation of Rites has asserted that a
Furthermore, one of the most pressing problems facing family communion celebrated in a private home and fol-
everyone dealing with the developing nations is deciding lowed by a meal is a practice `alien to the Catholic re-
what values and institutions of a free society can reason- ligion' . . ." Father McCabe could have mentioned a
ably be demanded of a nation in the throes of drastic dozen more incidents; any Catholic even moderately in-
social and economic change. The CIA's manipulation and formed about the Church in the United States could add
corruption of independent, non-government organiza- quite easily to Father McCabe's examples. If one started
tions, whose existence is taken as a mark of a non- adding up all the incidents in the Church universal, the
totalitarian society, will certainly weaken the case of list would be--well, long.
those who would see free institutions as a sign of, rather Yet, somehow, we are meant to believe that Father
than an obstacle to, development. McCabe, because he had the candor to say what everyone
Finally, we agree with Mr. McWilliams that at base the knows about, is "irresponsible and undeserving of credit."
issue is substantive. The final objection to the manipula- Moreover, quite apart from incidents of corruption, stu-
tions of the CIA is an objection to American foreign pidity, or silliness, is it not part of the Church's teaching
policy in general, which the CIA both helps to formulate that she is made up of sinners and that no one in the.!
and carry out. That is the great gulf which separates stu- Church is free of sin? If the Church herself teaches this,
dent activists of yesteryear from those of today. The lat- how can anyone complain when a Father McCabe points
ter are not merely interested in "putting America's best out what this sin and humron weakness come to mean in
foot forward." Instead, these students consider U.S. the concrete life of the Church?
foreign policy both a threat to peace and an obstacle to A reader recently inquired why, if we can express
world economic development. They see this foreign sympathy with Charles Davis' charges against the Church
policy, in which the CIA plays a crucial role, as a great (and now, presumably, if we can agree with Father Mc-
machine of anti-Communism which has gone wildly and -'Cabe), we choose to remain Catholics? Father McCabe,
disastrously out of whack. We can only concur. in the same editorial, answered that question beautifully,
"I L 1,
'T C D .Ti .IT T CHURCH,,
Anyone who said "it can't, happen here," would be
wrong. All we can say is that, so far, it hasn't happened,
,and we hope the folly of the authorities in England will be
noted by the American hierarchy. For what is it other
,than sheer folly to remove a theologian of the stature
of Father Herbert McCabe, ?.P., from the editorship of
New Black f riars? And what is it other than a monumental
blindness for someone to say, as the Apostolic Delegate
to Great Britain, Igino_ Cardinale, was reported to have
and it is an answer we can make our own. L is ecause,
he wrote, "we believe that the hierarchical institutions of
the Roman Catholic Church, with all their decadence,
their corruption and their silliness, do in fact link us to
areas of Christian truth beyond our own particular experi-
ence and ultimately to truths beyond any experience, that
we remain, and see our'lives in terms of remaining, mem-
bers of this Church."
It takes an act of faith to make a statement like that,
an act of faith in the face of a."plainly corrupt Church."
The viability of the Church, fortunately, has never rested
on the evidence provided by lives (as are our own)
which are sinful.
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The revelation of the relationship between the Central
Intelligence Agency and the National Students Associa-
tion comes as no great shock to some. of us who have
been around the periphery of NSA over the years. It
merely fills in detail what was, already, a dimly outlined
picture built up from the mysterious ability of the Asso-
ciation to survive financial crises, the inexplicable occult-
ism of its International Commission, the whispered con-
ferences in hallways, the cryptic references of leaders
which drew attention rather than concealed. A student
association, after all, is not the ideal vehicle for espio-
nage: besides being too verbal and too amateurish, there
is a certain tendency among student leaders to feel a cer-
tain romantic glory in such a role, a glory which can be
maximized only if outsiders have a certain awareness that
they are outside. And many of us who have been "out-
side" were told quite enough to guess the nature of the
"inside" that was being "concealed."
The relationship between NSA and CIA was, in at least
two ways, harmful to the Association. Obviously, it pre-
vented a completely honest and open communication be-
tween NSA and overseas student associations. More seri-
ously, it impeded discussion between NSA leaders and
their domestic constituents and exaggerated the tendency
for the "national office" to become less of a democratic'
leadership and more of an oligarchy-a tendency which
caused resentment on campuses as well as doubt and in-
security among national leaders themselves. Moreover,
the tie.to CIA almost certainly directed more of NSA's
attention into the interrfational field than the resolute pa-
rochialism of student governments found desitable. A con-
sistent complaint at the National Congress of NSA was
that the leadership had failed to give enough attention to
.local problems, and a "back to the campus" movement
was a regular, annual "populistic" feature of NSA politics.
On the whole, however, these objections are procedural
and psychological: they refer to the style and feeling of
NSA politics, and not to the substance of NSA's programs
and policies.
n lie substantive effect of NSA's relations with CIA may
come as a surprise to the liberal mind: its ties to the
Agency almost certainly pulled NSA to the left in its po-
'itical stance. Edward Schwartz, National Affairs Vice
President of NSA, conceded that to his knowledge CIA
financing and support had never been exerted or em-
ployed for other than liberal goals. I can recall an even
more vivid and illustrative experience. In 1960, the Inter-
national Commission of NSA had recommended to the
National Congress a resolution which "supported the aims
of the Cuban Revolution," expressed some doubt about
its current practices, and called for fraternal delegations
of American students to visit Cuba. The Congress reaction
was hostile, for a large number of student delegates were
eager to proceed to'a severe indictment of "Castroite to-
talitarianism," and national,NSA leaders feared the Com-
mission's resolution might be defeated. At this point, the
"conspiracy machinery" began to grind into . painfully
public operation: national leaders held hurried "secret"
sessions; mysterious calls and visitations occurred; mis-
taking me for an "insider," a national official eagerly told
me just why the International Commission's resolution
must be passed. Those who were "witty" (privy to the
secret of the tie to CIA in the argot of the NSA leader-
ship) had assured him, he said in stage-conspirator whis-
pers, that NSA's influence overseas depended on the As-
sociation's being friendly toward the Cuban Revolution's
goals; important "contacts" felt the resolution essential.
And, in this case, the national officers of the Association
staked much of their prestige and expended a great deal
of their credit in getting the desired resolution through.
It is too much, perhaps, to ask the American liberal to
judge the effects of CIA on NSA in substantive terms,
wedded as liberals are to procedures and means-often at
the expense of goals. Conservatives, however, are not so
constrained. Donald Lukens, (R., Ohio), a freshman
Congressman with a long history of involvement in ultra-
rightist student groups, asked as soon as the story became
public why CIA had provided funds for an organization
which "consistently opposed the strategic interests of the
United States?" Lukens may have meant to imply the
rather unlikely proposition that CIA had somehow been
a "Communist dupe," for with the right all things are
possible. What is clear, however, from Lukens statement
is his horror in discovering that CIA's view of the "stra-
tegic interests of the United States" departed significantly
and decisively from that of the American right. Nor did
conservatives on the campuses miss the point during the
years of CIA's relationship with the Association: when-
ever they were able, they took their colleges and' universi-
ties out of the Association, which they regarded as a lib-
eral pressure group or a "leftist propaganda agency." (It
might be pointed out that so radical a group as SDS was
born as a result of, and incubated during, the National
Congresses of NSA, and SDS leaders like Paul Potter
were national officers of the Association. There is a charm
.in the thought of CIA, however indirectly, financing SDSI )
Former agency head Allen Dulles commented that the
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agency had received full value for the money it spent in
supporting a strong, articulate anti-Communist voice (if
a left-liberal one) in the councils of the international stu-
dent movement. So too, for twelve years NSA officials
also obviously believed that they too received "full value"
from the relationship. In the most limited sense, the finan-
cial security provided by the bond with CIA enabled the
Association to undertake somewhat venturesome domes-
tic programs: the disastrous deficit of NSA's experimental
"book cooperative," for example, appears to have been
underwritten by the Agency. This is not to assert that
NSA's officials were right in their decision, but it is to in-
dicate that the decision to receive CIA funds was a politi-
cal decision in which the disadvantages to the Associa-
tion were weighed against the gains which would accrue.
The language of current NSA leaders, partly designed to
minimize the unfavorable effects of the disclosure, misses.
the point.
In speaking in terms of the personal anguish and agony
imposed by the relationship on NSA leaders, the terms of
the decision are transferred from political ones to those
of a moral apocalypse, in which good is arrayed on one,
side and evil on the other. Political decision is often ago-
nizing and anguishing precisely because it involves a
weighing of goods, a relative assessment of the impor-
tance of values. Officials of the Association in 1965-1966
decided that the disadvantages of the tie with CIA out-
weighed the gains, and that decision is easy enough to de-
fend. The moralistic style of thought, however, trans-
ferred this assessment into a "salvation experience": it
made it seem proper, for example, for an NSA officer to
"leak" the material to another, unauthorized NSA em-
ployee who, in his turn, transformed it into sensational
magazine material. Omitted from this process was any
consideration for the good faith of previous NSA officials
who had weighed the scales differently, or of any obliga-
tion or consideration due the good faith of the Agency.
The officer responsible, who need not be named here,
acted not as a political leader of a continuing political or-
ganization, but the style of the pietistic moralist concerned
to purge his own soul of any taint of sin, whatever the
consequences for others. In this sense, the "revelation" is
as much of an indictment of the moral poverty of the "es-
tablished" student movement as was the relationship with
the Agency which preceded it-and perhaps a more seri-
ous one.
In fact, if anything emerges from the yellow journalism
of the present discussion it is this: CIA is hardly danger-
ous to American institutions, at least on its past record.
This is not necessarily because its aims and methods are
so praiseworthy and democratic, but because the Agency
is so obviously naive, so apparently defective in practicing
the "Craft of Intelligence." No reader of Ian Fleming or
John Le Carre could fall into the errors of the Agency,
which in themselves form an almost unbelievable pattern:
large amounts of money are donated to an autonomous
organization, whose leaders are students approximately
22-23 years old, and subject to annual change-each
change, of course, threatening the security and secrecy of
the relationship; the money is made available through
"cover" organizations but the student organization in
question has direct contact with the Agency so that the
relationship can in no way be denied or concealed once
the information has "leaked." In fact, NSA, despite its
rather obvious unreliability, may have been able to keep
the relationship secret so long because of the obvious im-
probability of its existence.
Whatever the indictments of the past, however, they
are independent of any assessment of the value of NSA's
program, in domestic or in foreign affairs, as a national
leadership body for American students. The record, while
spotty and inadequate in parts, is an overwhelmingly pos-
itive one. It is ironic, and as horrible a comment on the
state of American politics as the "revelations" will. dis-
close, that NSA has only gained extensive national recog-
nition, interest and publicity because of the disclosure of
a secret relation with CIA. Its programs overseas, in Civil
Rights, in educational reform cannot command the atten-
tion of a rather sordid story of the plots and dealings of
amateur spies. The maxim of Madison Avenue and of
politics alike that all publicity is in some sense favorable
may apply, and venturing the hope that it will is not
amiss: perhaps NSA can turn its new prominence to ad-
vantage in winning new public and student suppprt for its
goal of making the student "in his role as student" a full"
member of a free society. WILSON CAREY MCWILLIAMS.
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'WE WERE VSED9
I tit. i%r .1.'st t(L W 1~u' Q L11JtI:ILY~1.( C t lVJ , ED.ffoA? ST L
During the past fifteen years we and hundreds of other
students in the United States have become deeply in-
volved in the programs of the U.S. National Student
Association. We felt that we were participating in a vital
part of the democratic process, helping to stimulate the
free exchange of ideas among students. in this country
and with students abroad. We saw the responsibility of
students to become active in both domestic and inter-
national affairs. The involvement was all the more real
because we were responsible only to ourselves and to our
ability to defend our actions among our colleagues.
A natural bond grew among those so involved, among
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 both NSA national staff and campus representatives, as
well as students from abroad. Now we find that we were
deceived, and that we were unwitting perpetrators of
deception. We treasured the independence from govern-
ment domination, and now we learn that this independ-
ence was a myth. We sought the confidence and truth of
students in this country and abroad, and then we be-
trayed that confidence by bein,,known to ourselves,
a part of the U.S. government's intelligence establishment.
The National Student Association is organized through
college and university student governments, and its policy
has been formulated primarily through congresses held
each summer, where more than a thousand students in
a hectic ten-day session discuss and enact statements on a
wide variety of topics of student interest. The degree of
sophistication with which the topics are approached
varies greatly. The national staff is then left to spend the
year following up the areas of concern indicated by the
Congress, responding as creatively as possible to the
mandates presented to them.
But the knowledge that we now have that proposed
programs were financed on the basis of priorities of a
government intelligence agency whose policies were fre-
quently at variance with those indicated by the Associa-
tion's meetings, undermines many of the claims to demo-
cratic representation. It also undermines our own feeling
of integrity.
Such deception, such duplicity-with, perhaps, the
willing knowledge of some officers of the Association-
comes not only as a surprise but also as an insult to those
of us who worked believing in the essentially democratic
nature of the organization.
But the organization itself is not the only one to suffer.
We now each feel personal anguish at our own active in-
volvement, no matter how open and independent our
individual actions. We look back at what we did, knowing
that it was for us legitimate, yet in retrospect realizing
that these activities of ours served the purposes of the CIA.
Many such activities could be mentioned, for example,
our promotion of foreign student exchange programs.
We believed that we were expressing our solidarity with
these students' efforts to overthrow colonialism, but in
stead these social revolutions may have been compromised
by the very fact that the students from abroad were
financed with the help of CIA funds. We participated in
seminars designed to educate American students in inter-
national affairs, unique and stimulating experiences in
themselves; but did they not in fact-serve other functions
coincident with policy formation by the CIA who funded
the programs?
The tragedy is not ours alone. The arms of the CIA
have reached out to touch hundreds of foreign students
who came to the United States on programs sponsored
by the NSA. Many of these students are now highly
placed in,their own governments in Africa, Asia and
Latin America. All of them must share some of our bit-
terness at being used. Some, no doubt, suspected our
motives from the beginning, and they have now simply
found their suspicions justified.
The invisible government has woven its web through-
out American society., Knowingly or not, private groups
have sponsored hundreds of programs which were, in
the final analysis, financed by the CIA. Most of these
programs will now never attain their goals. Did the
agency believe the secret could be kept? Have they placed
questionable short-term goals ahead of long-term ob-
jectives (i.e., ensuring the democratic method)? We can
only be appalled at the stupidity of this simple cloak-and-
dagger stuff, even in terms of realpolitik.
The whole affair has cast a pall over the willingness
of responsible individuals to participate in organizational
activity. This may well be one of its most disastrous and
far-reaching effects. HARVEY K. FLAD
/ MARY FOGARTY FLAD
(Harvey K. Flad and Mary Fogarty Flad were on the
national staff of NSA during the early 1960's.)
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The repeated failure to get peace negotiations in Viet-
nam results, ultimately, from the fact that no one seems
yet ready to negotiate anything of substance. The belief
in victory-or at least in non-defeat-endures in Wash-
ington, Hanoi, and in the headquarters of the National
Liberation Front. Why should it be otherwise? Nothing
yet has happened to alter fundamentally the assump-
tions with which all of these first committed themselves
to war. Only the crisis in China could yet-possibly, and
only possibly-compel Hanoi to protect itself in its iso-,
lation by compromising, for the present, at least, its po-
sition in this conflict.
But within Vietnam itself, the Communists have good
reason to believe that they can eventually impose their
will. The victory may be long delayed-until, as they in-
sist will happen, the United States tires. But if the factor
of American intervention is removed, the NFL is in by
'far the Strongest position. This is a consequence not only
of the Communists' own efforts but of the lack of serious
.opposition,
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