Saunders,
Frances Stonor. Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.
London: Granta, 1999. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: New Press, 2000. Saunders,
Frances Stonor. Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.
London: Granta, 1999. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: New Press, 2000.
According to Harkin, The Independent, 8 Jul. 1999, beginning in the late-1940s, "[u]nder the energetic stewardship of Michael Josselson, and with the assistance of [Nicholas] Nabokov and [Melvin] Lasky, the American taxpayer took a stake in a bewildering portfolio of cultural ventures.... Who Paid the Piper? is painstakingly researched ... and jauntily written, alive to the ironies of a campaign for cultural freedom whose boundaries were circumscribed by its shady sponsors.... Stonor Saunders introduces her work as a 'secret history' but her research shows that it was not, in practice, as secret as all that."
A reviewer for Publisher's Weekly, 21 Feb. 2000, calls this "a captivating, authoritative history of the CIA's secret campaign to turn American art into anti-Soviet cultural propaganda.... The only flaw in this thoroughly documented book ... is that the story is so richly convoluted that occasionally the larger drama gets lost in its overwhelming details."
Lapham, Los Angeles Times, 9 Apr. 2000, sees The Cultural Cold War as a "troubling and perceptive book." Although "[t]he story is not an easy one to tell," the author "doesn't pretend to knowledge that she cannot reliably document or reasonably infer," "writes with a sense of humor and an appreciation of the historical circumstances," "avoids polemic[,] and fits the fragments of elusive fact into a coherent and persuasive narrative.... Among the government agencies and private organizations that served as conduits for CIA money (sometimes wittingly, sometimes not), Saunders names the Ford, Rockefeller and J.M. Kaplan Foundations, Time Inc., the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Modern Art, PEN, Harper and Row, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Modern Language Assn."
In a lengthy review that clearly exhibits a lack of understanding of the motivations of the anticommunist left, Sharlet, Chronicle of Higher Education, 31 Mar. 2000, seems too entranced by the horror of it all -- the CIA sponsored literature and art! -- to apply any context to his comments.
From the other side of the spectrum, Laqueur, The National Interest 58 (Winter 1999-2000), finds little good to say about The Cultural Cold War, beyond acknowledging the author's diligent archival research. Laqueur places Saunders among the group of post-Cold War commentators who are "evidently unwilling to forgive [the Congress for Cultural Freedom] for having been prematurely right." On matters of substance, the author "proves to be less than a reliable guide," with "only a vague idea as to the identity and the views of ... dramatis personae" other than George Kennan. Her research in the archives and her interviews are "more than offset by political bias and primitive moralizing, unencumbered by knowledge of and interest in the historico-political context of the organization."
West, IJI&C 13.1, falls on the same side of the debate as Laqueur, finding that the author "continues to peddle a grotesquely distorted perspective of the Cold War."
For Puddington, American Spectator, Jun. 2000, "Saunders has made good use of archival material unavailable until recently.... Unfortunately, The Cultural Cold War is equal parts scholarship and political bias.... Saunders adopts an arch, condescending tone toward the men who made the struggle against Communism their life's cause."
Troy, CIRA Newsletter 26.2/3 and Studies 46.1, concludes his detailed review with the following: "I do not share Frances Saunders' opinion about the 'morality' of CIA's activities and do not accept her notion that CIA undermined 'intellectual freedom' in Western Europe. I highly enjoyed and strongly recommend her book, however. Consider it to be similar to your favorite commercial TV broadcast: enjoy the program and ignore the commercials."
See W. Scott Lucas, "Revealing the Parameters of Opinion: An Interview with Frances Stonor Saunders," Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 15-40, for an interview with Saunders from January 2002.
Clark comment: It is interesting that even when she admits that she cannot document overt censorship by the CIA with regard to Encounter, Saunders can find what she calls "a kind of censorship by omission" because some authors did not get their material published. Saunders' skills as a researcher have not provided her the material findings to justify an attitude that basically says "if the CIA was involved, it had to have been bad." And references to the CIA's "grubby hands" do not advance our understanding of the subject under discussion.
Scott-Smith, Giles. "'The Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century' Festival and the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Origins and Consolidation, 1947-52." Intelligence and National Security 15, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 121-168.
Scott-Smith, Giles. The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress of Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-War American Hegemony. London: Routledge, 2001.
Coleman, I&NS 17.3, finds that the author "understands the limitations of the intellectuals who gravitated to the CCF but he is also aware of their integrity."
For Peake, Studies 48.1, "those concerned with the political-economic approach to social progress and the battle between democracy and communism" will find this "an important work, its complex theoretical narrative notwithstanding."
Scott-Smith,
Giles. "'A Radical Democratic Political Offensive': Melvin J. Lasky,
Der Monat, and the Congress of Cultural Freedom." Journal of Contemporary
History 35, no. 2 (Apr. 2000): 263-280.
The author offers an intellectual antidote to the venom often prevalent in discussing the role of the Congress of Cultural Freedom in the immediate postwar period. Essentially, he argues that "the Congress has become a much maligned institution since the disclosures of its intimate relationship with the CIA, and this has tended to overshadow the simultaneous developments in the wider cultural and political realms which help explain the institution's character."
Sheehan, Neil.
1. "Order by Johnson Reported Ending CIA Student Aid." New York Times, 15 Feb. 1967, 1.
President Johnson orders end to CIA subsidies to National Student Association and other student groups.
2. "A Student Group Concedes It Took Aid from CIA." New York Times, 14 Feb. 1967, 1.
In wake of the Ramparts article, National Student Association President Eugene Groves acknowledges that the organization had been subsidized by the CIA.
Stern, Sol. "A Short Account of International Student Politics & the Cold War with Particular Reference to the NSA, CIA, Etc." Ramparts 5, no. 9 (Mar. 1967): 29-38.
Expose of the "unnatural" relationship between the National Student Association (NSA) and the CIA.
Van Voris, Jacqueline.
The Committee of Correspondence: Women with a World Vision. Northhampton,
MA: Interchange, 1989.
Warner, Michael. "Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949- 50." Studies in Intelligence 38, no. 5 (1995): 89-98.
The author credits Michael Josselson (and covert CIA funding) with establishing and maintaining this "daring and effective" covert operation. When the Congress convened for the first time, in Berlin on 26 June 1950, the North Koreans had just invaded the South, an event which highlighted that the time had come to choose sides. When the organization was formally established in November 1950, Josselson became the Congress' Administrative Secretary, a post he would hold for the next 16 years.
Warner, Michael. "Sophisticated
Spies: CIA's Links to Liberal Anti-Communists, 1949-1967." International
Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 9, no. 4 (Winter 1996/97):
425-433.
This is a useful review of the issues surrounding the Ramparts (and subsequent) "revelations" in February 1967 about the CIA's subsidizing of the National Student Association and other private organizations. The CIA took flack from both sides of the political spectrum for its activities, as did the anti-Communist left.
Wilford, Hugh. The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Kazin, Washington Post, 27 Jan. 2008, calls this a "brisk yet thorough narrative" of the CIA's "creation and funding of front organizations.... [N]o one has written a more comprehensive or sophisticated account of the pro-American fronts from their creation in the late 1940s to the investigative report 20 years later in Ramparts magazine that first exposed the CIA's cultural offensive.... Few of the CIA fronts reliably behaved as the agency desired. Many of the subsidized individuals and groups had a moderately leftist inclination; they were determined to fight communism in their own ways and resisted direction from above."
To Goulden, Washington Times, 20 Jan. 2008, the author "shares the prevalent mindset of liberal 'scholars' that any operation carrying the CIA imprimatur was ipso bad and misguided.... Wilford vents much spleen on CIA programs to finance intellectual, labor and student groups who contested Soviet-supported fronts worldwide."
Glazer, NYT, 20 Jan. 2008, finds this to be a "remarkably detailed and researched book." The story the author tells is "fascinating, involving a surprising collection of well-known figures in American life." The reviewer notes "Wilford’s somewhat cool attitude toward what many saw, with some legitimacy, as a worldwide conflict between tyranny and freedom." Despite a few slips, "[t]here is a great deal to be learned from this book."
For Radosh, New York Sun, 6 Feb. 2008, the author "carefully shows that in almost all the cases, those funded [by the CIA] understood the high stakes of the Cold War with the Soviets. Rather than following CIA orders, most used whatever funds they received to carry on the work they had already started, and often discarded the advice of the Agency handlers." Despite harmsing his book with some "politically motivated cheap shots," Wilford has "written a scholarly, mostly readable, and first-rate book.... One can differ with his own conclusion that covert funding 'stained the reputation' of America and still find the book of immeasurable merit."
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