SUMMARY OF CIA SURVEY, "RESTLESS YOUTH"

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: Library of Congress
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): LOC-HAK-1-2-21-4
• Release Decision: RIFLIM
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: January 11, 2017
• Document Release Date: October 6, 2009
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: March 7, 1969
• Content Type: MEMO

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THE WHITE HOUSE
March 7, 1969
S E C R E T
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM: Henry A. Kissinger
SUBJECT: Summary of CIA Survey, "Restless Youth"
The present report is useful in examining world-wide
student unrest. ThdIshort capsules of individual foreign
country movements ax',e especially valuable.
The report is less useful in its treatment of U.S. student
unrest. It is at variance with many of the findings of the
FBI report, and based on the factual documentation in the
latter, the FBI report appears to be the more reliable on the
domestic movement.
The CIA report: (1) has a behavioral, social-psychologi-
cal emphasis, and could be characterized as an attempt to
understand "what makes Johnny riot." (2) It tends to dismiss
communist and-other outside influence as a factor, and its
analysis of that particular problem seems to raise more ques-
tions than it answers.
The Phenomenon
Student dissidence is not a recent phenomenon. It
was a periodic occurrence in Ancient Athens and Imperial
Rome. Socrates complained that students of his time had
"bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for older
people." Medieval Cambridge and Oxford experienced periods
when protesting students burned and sacked the town and
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outlying villages, with many killed of both town and gown.
Student rioters were in the forefront of the 1848 European
and 1905 Russian revolutions. In Latin America, student
riots have an almost constitutional tradition, while in
Japan they now enjoy a quasi-legal place in the legislative
process.
Student dissidence during the past 2 years has closed
down several great universities and severely altered many
more; it has fomented civil violence and transformed politi-
cal careers in more than 20 countries.
The phenomenon of contemporary student dissidence may
conveniently be examined in four elements: Milieu, Personnel,
Theory, and Tactics.
Milieu
The contemporary student was born and raised in a world
of peace and affluence. Therefore, his mode of perceiving
his environment is far different from that of the generation
raised in the inter-war years of depression and fascism.
The most salient characteristics of his perceived surroundings
are likely to include the following:
- A huge middle class bound to its material possessions and
resistant to any change.
- A government ruled by men who came to power twenty-five years
ago, invested with cronyism, laced with corruption, and con-
ducted through a ponderous, impersonal, inefficient bureaucracy.
- A technocratic, dehumanizing, computerized, competitive
economy.
His most immediate environment is, of course, his uni-
versity. University populations have more than doubled world-
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S E C R E T Page 3- CIA Summary .
wide in ten years. (France: 600,000; UK: 350,000; FRG:
370,000; USSR: 1,900,000; US: 6,300,000.) This explosion
has strained facilities far beyond capacities in most
countries. Construction of facilities and expansion of facul-
ties has not nearly kept pace. It is especially critical in
metropolitan.universities. For example, 100,000 students
attend the Sorbonne in facilities designed for far less than
half that number. The environment, then, is one of over-
crowded, over-priced living quarters; too-large classes with
far too little personal contact with faculty members. The
congestion is aggravated by a wholly inadequate administrative
machinery epitomized by the hostile depersonalization unique
to IBM cards, endless lines, and over-worked registrars. It
is not without significance that almost every major distur-
bance has occured in one of the vast "multiversities" of
Europe and the Americas. In 1800 of the 2100 colleges and
universities in the United States, there has been nothing
worse than panty-raids.
The student milieu, then, is one that can easily lead
to frustration, alienation, or what the existentialists have
called, "Angst."
Before this can be externalized into active protest,
however, a "protest role" must exist. The success of the
civil rights protests of the early sixties--demonstrating
at once the inability of the "system" to cope with disruptive
protest and the efficacy of the tactics of confrontation--
brought into existence a "protest role." At first tentatively,
then with ever growing boldness, students in varying stages
of "Angst" found solace in the "protest role."
The mass media publicized to the world the existence and
the effectiveness of the new "protest role," and by their
focus on violence, police intervention, etc., they have added
to the romantic, embattled appeal. French officials have
commented on the media grapevine effect of Berkeley, Columbia
and Berlin upon the Paris riots. Students themselves are
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highly mobile, and interpersonal communication across national
boundaries is high. (There aremore
000than
n. 9US,000nfforeign
nying
80,000
students studying in the U.S.;
abroad.)
personnel
There is a rather clear distinction to be found between
the majority of the participants in student dissidence and
the leadership.
In every country the hard-core militants are very few.
Quite often they are five or ten years beyond the undergraduate
age level and are not enrolled in full-time study. it is
upon these hard-core prganizers (with the assistance of associ-
ates who arrive from far as a crisis breaks out) that the
burden falls to sustain a budding protest by skillful crisis
management. Most often a protest will start over some modest
list of local or administrative grievances. As it takes hold,
the leadership must escalate demands and thereby widen the
appeal to hold the allegiance of growing numbers with their
widely varying gripes--from the League for Sexual Freedom to
the DuBois Club. it is they who must weave a strand of vague,
inchoate resentments into active protest. Typically, they
must count also upon administrative bumbling and paralysis.
Sociologists have called the process whereby more and
more participants are drawn into protest (not unlike a lynch
mob) "radicalization." There is no agreement as to the dyna-
mics involved and no evidence that any great number of students
remain radicalized once the initial exhilaration of combat is
past.
The great majority of participants in student dissidence
take part because it is really a lot of fun--it is where the
action is. Adolescent rebellion, existential "Angst," systemic
alienation--all may be purged through the simple act of adopting
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the now-existing "protest role."
Theory
The fifties witnessed a rebirth in Europe, and then the
United States, of an interest in Marxist social criticism.
Its adherents subscribe to varying dogmas and eclectic pro-
grams applying the old Marxist politics of the thirties to
the issues of the new day, under the name of the "New"
politics. Their heroes have come to be Mao, Castro, and
Che Guevara, and their prophets C. Wright Mills, Herbert
Marcuse, Frantz Fanon, and Regis Debray. The only thing new
is the theme that the revolution has not come because the
capitalists have doped the workers with color televisions
and Mustangs, and that the new proletarians are the students.
The actual program cif this "New" left is nihilism. There is
very little prescription and no discussion of the apocalyptic
future. The system must be destroyed; then the future will
be dealt with.
Tactics
The operational tactics of the New Left are those of
expedient escalation--the broadest possible slate of demands
to obtain the support of all possible factions. An attempt
is made to follow the precepts of Lenin by attempting to go
outside the university to make common cause with the workers.
While this found fleeting success in Paris, it has failed
entirely elsewhere in Europe. In the United States, the
Ghetto has shown little inclination to join in student actions.
Even the Black Power factions have shown a growing reluctance
to cooperate.
The current stage of tactical escalation seems to have
moved beyond mass mobilization (the Pentagon protest seems
likely to have been the last) toward smaller, more intensive,
more violent protests--on the model of Columbia.
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Outside Influence
There is no monolithic organization in the student move-
ment. The SDS, for instance, in the United States is really
only a loose conglomeration of local chapters. There are
many connections, however, with the CPUSA. it is not within
the competence of the reporting agency to examine this in
detail.
It is known that Peking, Moscow, Havana, and other sources
have provided funding to various elements of the student move-
ment, but exact information as to amounts and recipients, as
well as influence and control gained thereby, is not available
in the present report. The report does mention, without
elaboration, the activities of the International Union of
Students in Prague, and of Ulbricht's SED party as conduits
of support to Western movements. Although direct hierarchical
control, as in the Comintern years, is almost certainly not
present, the benefits of keeping the pot boiling selectively
are obvious.
There are now the beginnings of international liaison--
substantial at the individual level, and to a lesser extent
at the organizational level. The sponsorship has been by
Moscow, Peking, and Havana on the one hand, and news-hungry
media on the other.
Prognosis
There is no attempt made to predict the future course of
dissidence in the present report. On the basis of the hard
data available, it is not possible to assess whether the crest
has been reached. For future consideration, the paper points
out only that it is apparent already in Western countries that
many militants seem to choose careers in teaching and in the
communications media--professions where they are likely to
exercise an influence far out of proportion to their tiny
numbers.
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
WASHINGTON, P. G. 20505
18 February 1969
T MORANDUM FOR: The Honorable Henry A. Kissinger
The Assistant to the President
for National Security Affairs
The White House
SUBJECT: Student Unrest
1. Herewith is a survey of student dissidence world-
wide as requested by the President.
2. In an effort to round-out our discussion of this
subject, we have included a section on American students.
This is an area not within the charter of this Agency, so I
need not emphasize how extremely sensitive this makes the
paper. Should anyone learn of its existence it would prove
most embarrassing for all concerned.
3. Also per the President's request, I am prepared to
give a thirty-rdnute briefing based on this study whenever
it meets his convenience.
Richard Helms
Director
Attachment - 1
"Restless Youth", Copy No. 1
No. 0555/69. -
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