THE MEANY-SD TRYST (2)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100490003-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 14, 2004
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 6, 1973
• Content Type: NSPR

DAILY WORLD
Approved For Releatet4 f 28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R9
BI yGFORGEMORRIS
The r any?'SD ~s~ (2)
The one thing that stood out most in the recent AFL-
CIQ convention was the effort by the George Meany leader-
.ship to revive the "good old days" of the cold war. They
look upon the Mideast war and tensions as a godsend. Their
interest in a "Jewish homeland" and in the alleged democ-
racy of Israel is of secondary concern, if at all.
The Social Democrats are es- But where does this plan really
peciplly active in efforts to revive come from? We turn to an article
old cold war patterns in the AFL- in the May 20, 1967 issue of the old
CIO's campaign to nullify the de- Saturday Evening Post, by Thom-
tente treaties, block trade agree-L 'as W. Braden, entitled "I'm'Glad
ments with Socialist countries,
and activate their contracts within
the Socialist lands to surface as
"dissidents."
An example is a project Albert
Shanker, head of the New York
Teachers, seeks to initiate. He
moved through the American Fed-
eration of Teachers' 21-member
council majority a resolution in-
troduced in the convention entitled
"The Plight of Soviet Dissidents."
It'is a long diatribe centered on
Andrei Sakharov's and Alexsandr
Solzhenitsyn's periodic press con-
ferences attacking the Soviet Un-
ion and-giving an impression there
is a mass rebellion in the USSR.
That type of stuff had, however,
been covered in several other res-
olutions of the convention. But the
resolution of the teachers calls
for "AFL-CIO sponsorship of a
world conference on international
freedom." Because of the action
required, the resolution was re-
ferred to the executive council of
the AFL-CIO.
The origin of the resolution is
really "The Committee for De-
tente with Freedom" of which
Albert Shanker and Bayard Bus-
tin, both Social Democrats, are
co-chairmen. It was initiated by
the SD and, as published in the
April 25 New America, the SD
paper, carried the. signatures of
such unreconstructed cold war-
riors as Sidney Hook, professor
emeritus of NYU; John Roche,
New America and AFL-CIO News
columnist, and. several members
of the SD's executive board and
some International Ladies Gar-
ment Workers Union officials. The
resolution is a rewrite of that
The CIA Is Immoral."
That was the article in which
Braden, who was a top official
of the Central Intelligence Agency
in its early stages, described how
in 1950 he handed the AFL's Irv-
ing Brown $15,000 for a payoff to
gangsters in Mediterranean ports
who attacked Communist-led long-
shoremen. He described how the
CIA went to the AFL and how
Lovestone was assigned to the job
of directing CIA "labor" opera-
tions in Europe with two million
dollars of CIA money annually to
spend. Then he described' how
under Lovestone's and Meany's di-
rection an organized movement
was established to smash what
they called "Communist-led"
unions in France, Italy and other
lands. Braden went on:
"Thus was the international or-
ganization division of, the CIA
born,' and thus began the first cen-
tralized effort to combat Com-
munist fronts."
Taking credit for the idea, Bra-
den boasted of the way various
cultural schemes and orchestra
tours were initiated with CIA
money:
"And there was Encounter, the
magazine published in England,
and dedicated to the proposition
that cultural achievement and
political freedom were interde-
pendent. Money for both the or-
chestra's tour and the magazine
came from the CIA, and few out-
side the CIA knew about it: We
had placed one agent in a Europe-,
based organization. called the
Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Another agent became the editor
of Encounter."
comes
tions."
"Why not 4ee if the needed
money could be obtained from
'American foundations,' " Braden
went on. "As the agents knew, the
CIA-financed foundations were
quite generous when it came to
the national interest.
"I remember with great pleas-
ure the day'an agent came in with
the news that four national stu-
dent organizations had broken
away from the Communist Inter-
national Union of Students and
joined our student outfit instead."
It was the exposure of the way
CIA money financed student
groups that exploded in 1967 into
an exposure of financing of unions
and operations in the fields of
culture through fake foundations.
Several years ago Christopher
Lash wrote a long piece in the Na-
tion magazine describing bitterly
how many intellectuals were
suckered into these CIA opera-
tions.
Lovestone, Shanker, et al, ap-
iparently believe they can find
enough new suckers for a repeat
performance.
statemetyq~?o d that those drawn
p~gre~t Fk4teFeleta~se 1 PI,PoQ,R$A14R000100490003-9,
less there is what they call "dc- know the source of the money. So mocratization" of the Soviet Un- y.
they were advised' the money