HARVARD EXAMINES PROFESSOR'S ROLE IN CIA PAPER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100020013-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: February 26, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100020013-4
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26 February 1986
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Harvard Examines Professor's Role in CIA Paper
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
Harvard University is involved in
its second controversy within a year
over a professor's use of funds from
the Central Intelligence Agency.
The first concerned Nadav Safran,
who resigned, effective at the end of
this semester, as director of Har-
vard's Center for Middle Eastern
Studies following an investigation
into his acceptance of two grants
from the C.I.A. He.will continue as a
professor of government.
A. Michael Spence, dean of the
university's faculty of arts and sci-
ences, is now investigating whether
any Harvard regulations were violat-
ed in Samuel P. Huntington's helping
Richard K. Betts to write a paper for
the C.I.A.
Mr. Huntington is a professor of
government. Mr. Betts is a senior fel-
low at the Brookings Institution and,
since last fall, a visiting professor of
government at Harvard.
Mr. Betts was not affiliated with
Harvard in 1984 when he accepted
the C.I.A.'s offer to do a study "on
the death of long-standing authoritar-
ian leaders and resultant political in-
stability," he said in an interview.
The agency gave him a grant, he
said. and then he paid Mr. Hunting-
ton and a research assistant who also
participated in the project.
A revised version of the paper that
Mr. Betts and Mr. Huntington wrote
for the C.I.A. appeared in the winter
1983-86 issue of the journal Interna-
tional Security, under the title "Dead
Dictators and Rioting Mobs: Does
the Demise of Authoritarian Rulers
Lead to Political Instability?" One of
the journal's editors is a member of
the Harvard faculty.
Mr. Betts said the agency had not
read the revised version before ap-
proving his request to publish it.
`It Never Crossed My Mind'
Mr. Huntington told the Boston
Globe that he had not officially noti-
fied the university about the C.I.A.
support for the project. "I didn't
think I had any obligation to report
this arrangement," he said. "It never
crossed my mind that the casual writ-
ing of a paper for an outside institu-
tion was something that was covered
by Harvard guidelines."
Mr. Betts said he had served as an
occasional consultant to the C.I.A.
since 1980. The Brookings Institu-
tion has known about his consulting
work and has not been troubled by it,
he said, because his work on C.I.A.
projects is done on his own time.
The agency had required that it not
be identified as a sponsor if Mr. Betts
and Mr. Huntington's paper were
ever published. Mr. Betts complied
with that because, he said, it is not
good for the C.I.A. to be associated
with a private consultant's views that
could arouse people in countries un-
friendly to the United States.
Moreover, he said, authors of arti-
cles often do not identify sources of
funds, whether from government
agencies, foundations, or companies.
Mr. Betts emphasized that the
C.I.A. had not required him to main-
tain complete sarecy about its spon-
sorship ofthe project. If he had main-
tained secrecy, he said, "none of this
would have come out."
He added, "1 would not have en-
tered into any agreement where we
would have had to conceal the spon-
sorship completely."
If he had wanted to write some-
thing for his own purposes on a par-
ticular topic, he said, he would not
have accepted funds from the C.I.A.
or any other group that would have
required him to sacrifice control over
the project.
Mr. Betts said he had asked Dean
Spence for Harvard's regulations re-
garding scholars' accepting grants
from outside organizations. In the fu-
ture, he said, "I would not want to
take on any project not consistent
with my responsibilities to Har-
vard." -ANGUS PAUL
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100020013-4