RIP CLOAK OFF CIA'S COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100330005-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 18, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: April 22, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100330005-9
ON PAGE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
22 April 1980
By JAMES SCHACHTER
and SHERYL McCARTHY
The Central Intelligence-- Agency apparently
conducted research. projects at Columbia Universi-
ty in the 1950s and 1960s, employing the services
of university faculty and students and sometimes
using supposedly independent organizations as
fronts for. CIA funding. In most cases the faculty
and students were unaware that they were working
for the intelligence agency,.-and that a CIA
employe served as director of one of the projects.
These disclosures were culled from thousands of
pages of CIA documents that were recently obtained by
Columbia students under the Freedom of Information
Act. They appear in a current series of articles in-the
Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper, and
painta fuller picture of the extent of CIA covert and
overt activities,at the university than had previously-
been disclosed.
A Columbia spokesman described the recent disclo-
sures as "interesting," and noted that in 1978 the
University Senate adopted guidelines designed to pre-
vent such clandestine use of university resources by
outside groups. He would not comment on the specific
allegations. -
Issuance of the guidelines followed the CIA disclo-
sure in 1977 that Columbia was one of 86 institutions
where secret research in mind control techniques was
conducted between 1953 and 1964. The guidelines require
that all organizations who wish to fund programs,
recruit students, engage in consulting activities at the
university-"or use the university's name must do so
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"What I'm-saying is that we've-taken action to deal
with this kind of thing," the spokesman said. yesterday.
The documents reportedly reveal:
That from 1956 to 1969 Thad Alton, a CIA employe,
directed the National Incomes Project on Eastern
Europe in Columbia's School of. International-Affairs.
Financed by a $535,000 grant from the CIA, the project
- involved doctoral and post-doctoral students. in a study .I
of the economic development of Eastern European
countries after World War II.
In 1967, university officials publicly revealed the
CIA's sponsorship of the project; but even then universi-
ty officials may not have known that the project was
"under agency control and headed by an agency emp--
loye," as one recently acquired CIA document indicates.
In 1957 and 1958, the CIA financed research into.
trends in modern scientific breakthroughs at Teachers
College, an affiliate of Columbia: The agency gave $4,000
fellowships to each of five doctoral students, who were
told-that the grants were from- the Office of Naval
Research. But the documents show that the Teachers
College professor who solicited the grants knew they
were from the CIA. ti
A sixth student involved In the project Robert .
'We've taken action'
Scidmore, was identified in the documents as a CIA
employe. The project was part of a larger CIA investiga.
tion into Soviet scientific developments-
The documents show further that in 1952 the C[A
used the National Science Foundation, a major research
and educational organization, as a cover to channel a
$40,000 research grant to Columbia, The money was used
to fund the development of a Russian-English scientific
-dictionary. The documents show that the dictionary was
needed by the CIA to help the agency interpret Soviet
scientific developments.
The CIA also paid $3,000 to Columbia's Neuro
psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital
to finance a study on Hungarian refugees. The exact
nature of the study was not revealed, but the money was
channeled to the university through the Human Ecology
Fund;-an organization that has been revealed by a U.S.
Senate committee as being the cover agency through
which the CIA` financed mind control studies in the.
1950s and '60s. , -
The Columbia studies resulted in published books,
articles and reports, none of them classified materials,
although Scidmore's report on the Teachers College
project became classified. But the material was helpful
to the CIA in its own activities.
The articles also reveal that in 1977 a Columbia
graduate, then a CIA employe, visited the campus to
secretly recruit promising students to become foreign,
language specialists for the agency. The CIA employe
talked with two department heads and received the
names of three students from one of them. ?
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100330005-9