THE CIA WILL NO LONGER REQUIRE UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS SPONSORED BY THE AGENCY TO KEEP ITS SUPPORT SECRET, UNLESS THE WORK INVOLVES CLASSIFIED INFORMATION, A CIA OFFICIAL SAID THURSDAY.
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030027-8
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
2
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
September 2, 2010
Sequence Number:
27
Case Number:
Publication Date:
February 13, 1986
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030027-8
ASSOCIATED PRESS
13 February 1986
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) The CIA will ionger require
university researchers sponsored by the agency to keep its support
secret, unless-the work involves classified information, a CIA
official said Thursday.
However, Robert Gates, CIA deputy director for intelligence,
accused Harvard University of threatening academic freedom with its
policy dealing with faculty contacts with the intelligence
organization. '
- The university steps on precarious ground and threatens
academic freedom itself by restricting what organizations a scholar
may talk to, especially if one of the organizations is a branch of
the government,'' he said in a speech at the university's John F.
Kennedy School of Government.
Gates said the agency now will permit disclosure of CIA funding
for research unless the scholar wishes the matter to remain
confidential and unless disclosure involves classified information.
He said participants in CIA-backed conferences will be told
ahead of time about the agency connections.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., acting director of Harvard's Center for
International Affairs, told the audience he regarded Gates'
.. speech as a really major speech. You've just heard a bureaucracy
move.''
Gates said that since 1982, the CIA has sponsored 300 academic
conferecnes in the United States.
- The CIA has been an important and useful supporter of area
studies as well as language studies in the United States,'' he said.
The announcement came as questions about CIA funding at Harvard
were raised for the second time in recent months after another
professor acknowledged doing research for the spy agency without
notifying university officials when the work was commissioned.
Samuel Huntington, a professor of government and director of the
university's Center for International Affairs, said he believes he
did not violate any guidelines because he only was assisting
another scholar, who was not a Harvard employee.
He said the research on the demise of authoritarian rulers was
commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1984.
A condensed version of the report, entitled "Dead Dictators and
Rioting Mobs,'' appears in the winter edition of the journal-
International Security, which is edited and sponsored by Harvard.
Harvard Dean A. Michael Spence said in a brief written statement
Thursday that Huntington verbally notified him of the CIA,-funded
research in the fall of 1985. Spence was in Florida and could not
be reached for further comment.
Harvard officials said Thursday afternoon that they were
preparing a more detailed statement.
STAT
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Harvard does not prohibit its professors from working for the
CIA, but it does require them to notify the school in writing about
such activities.
In addition, the university strongly discourages professors from
accepting two kinds of CIA grants: those that allow the agency to
review and edit research before it is published and those that
prohibit professors from acknowledging the agency's financial"-
support in print.,
Huntington told The Harvard Crimson that he and scholar Richard
K. Betts, then a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in-
Washington and an occasional CIA consultant, had agreed to both of
the CIA conditions discouraged by Harvard.
He added that his relationship with the CIA was a private
arrangement with Betts and did not involve Harvard as an
institution. He would not disclose the amount of the CIA grant.
- I didn't inform anyone at Harvard at the time there was no
reason to," Huntington said. I do not believe there are any
university guidelines regulating this sort of activity.''
Huntington said he decided to tell Spence of the funding in
October after a controvery involving the CIA and another professor
gained national attention.
In that case, Professor Nadav Safran, director of Harvard's
Center for Middle Eastern Studies, acknowledged accepting two CIA
grants totaling $153,000. The professor used the money to write a
book about Saudi Arabia and to conduct a conference on Islamic
fundamentalism.
Safran's admission sparked a three-month university
investigation and led to Safran's resignation as director of the
center, effective in June. He will remain as a tenured professor at
Harvard.
Last month, Spence issued a report concluding that Safran was
wrong not to disclose the source of both his grants, but said
Harvard was also at fault for failing to act when Safran notified
the school about one of them in 1982.
Huntington, 58, served as coordinator of security and planning
for the National Security Council during the Carter administration.
He has written several books on democracy and international
security.
Betts is now a part-time visiting professor at Harvard.
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