The Organising of Intellectual Consensus: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and Post-War US- European Relations (Part 2)

See also:

• Part 1 in Lobster 36

‘Certainly I do not think that the answer to communism is a counter-faith, equally fervent, militant, etc; to begin with, nothing is less likely to create a faith, than perpetual reiteration of the fact that we are looking for one, must find one, are lost without one, etc etc.‘(1)

The CIA, like every institution of government, has had its own dynamic, its own interests, and its own perspectives on how best to serve the wider interests of US foreign policy. How to connect the Agency’s own particular outlook and activities to the overall strategy of US foreign policy has always been a matter of contention. In terms of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), the original analyses came from New Left historians (2) who were writing within the overall critique of post-war policy, particularly from the perspective of the interests of political economy.(3) While the New Left focus on elites dominating the policy-making process was criticised by some for its limited scope or premises (4) there is no doubt that there are convincing arguments that the CCF was attempt to set intellectual norms within a social framework laid out by the dominant political and economic interests of the US at that time. Undoubtedly, in terms of trying to explain the particular importance of the Congress, it is important to recognise the limits to arguments based on political economy and to recognise where the particular dynamics of covert action have a logic of their own. Otherwise it is easy to end up with too simplistic an explanation. Likewise, it is necessary to avoid a complete reliance on the covert action argument. As one commentator has noted, it is important

‘….to treat the development and continuity of intelligence services as an element in the decision-making process in the same way that we would treat the evolution of any other institution. This does require…..that we should be able to write about the development of the intelligence services or institutions, both in their own right and as they relate to the other more overt elements in the processes by which policy decisions are made.'(5)

The point is to understand the creation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom within US foreign policy, remembering that the CIA was only one of several bureaucracies making that policy. This requires some kind of appreciation of the linkages between the economic, political, and social-cultural realms, and how these linkages were reflected in US policy aims towards post-WWII Europe. The argument put forward here is that it is a mistake to consider an institution like the CCF, both in terms of its formation and its agenda, in isolation from the overall development of policy initiatives, particularly in relation to the socioeconomic intentions of the Marshall Plan. This is because the CIA itself came together as an active organisation in these same circumstances, and without an acknowledgement of this the whole CIA-CCF story can take on a life of its own, separated from the wider influences and implications of essential political, economic, and cultural interests.(6) The result is generally a limited one-dimensional view of history.

The factors that led to the European Recovery Program (ERP – i.e. the Marshall Plan) were many, e.g.:

‘…Britain’s economic, financial, and possible military collapse; Europe’s economic distress and potential instability; the threat of further communist political successes; Germany’s economic stagnation; the conflicts which arose between the State Department on the one hand and the War Department, [Herbert] Hoover, and OMGUS [US military government in occupied Germany] on the other; the further deterioration of Soviet-American relations, a process sped by the failure at Moscow [Foreign Minister’s Conference April 1947]; Europe’s balance of payments and dollar problems; changing forecasts for the American economy, and recognition that a too favourable balance of trade could have serious long-term consequences (not all of them economic); and the perceptions of those in the White House.'(7)

The goal was European economic recovery, and it was to be a recovery within the wider context of strategic and ideological anti-communism and the greater interests of American capitalism. In this respect a key point about the Plan is that it did not involve a massive transfer of resources from the US to Europe. The growth of the post-war US economy meant that total aid and credits to Europe were never more than 2.2% of GNP from 1948-51.(8) Most of the ERP’s $13 billion went to the key economies – Britain, France, Italy, and (West) Germany. While the amounts transferred did represent larger proportions of the GNP’s of the receiving countries for certain years (between 2% for Britain to 15% for Greece), it was the deliberate attempt to extend the New Deal perspective of state involvement in the socioeconomic life of each nation that marked the ERP as a significant intervention in West European affairs. The New Deal coalition, of internationalists in Washington and ‘capital-intensive firms and their allies among labour, farm, financial, and professional groups’, sought to stabilise West European societies by pursuing a form of Keynesianism: demand management, welfare provision, high employment levels, and class compromise.(9) The ethos for this was the supposedly apolitical politics of productivity

‘[B]y enhancing productive efficiency, whether through scientific management, business planning, industrial cooperation, or corporatist groupings, society could transcend the class conflicts that arose from scarcity.'(10)

In other words, European capitalism would be reconstructed in such a way as to increase production, improve integration, and curb inflation, thereby boosting growth and providing the means for social stability and a greater contribution to defensive requirements within the context of the Atlantic alliance and NATO.

Such was American belief in this evolution that coercive measures, particularly in the form of withholding crucial funds, were used to ensure that the correct path to economic stability was followed. But coercion would not have worked alone – far more important was the active collaboration and agreement of key sections of the European corporate and political elites with US intentions. While American resistance to a possible recurrence of West European economic autarky and international political autonomy is well-known, it is important to recognise that these elites considered their best interests (and so the interests of their nations as a whole) to be best served by incorporating themselves within the newly-emerging Pax Americana.(11) With the rise of Socialist and Christian Democratic parties, sometimes in coalition with the Communists (France, Italy, Belgium), the possibility was there that purely domestic concerns would lead to protectionism, neutrality and an opting-out from the superpower confrontation. Yet as Donald Sassoon has shown, the priority with national agendas among the majority of West European Socialists prevented any distinctive Europe-wide foreign policy emerging to challenge US involvement in continental affairs. When Marshall Aid was offered to ease the burdens of reconstruction, almost universal acceptance across the European centre-left was the result.(12)

Pax Americana

The ideological struggle over possible post-war worlds was not so much a mere extension of US foreign policy goals as much as a struggle between groups within European society itself. Under the shadow of a potential Soviet threat (and it now seems clear it was only a shadow), and in response to the alien value-system of communism, American involvement in the reorganisation and stabilisation of West European socioeconomic affairs meant ‘not so much preserving liberal procedures as re-establishing the overlapping hierarchies of power, wealth, and status that can loosely be termed capitalist.'(13)

Frances Saunders (see note 6) skates over this political economy dimension with great ease. Referring to the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine as a package of economic assistance coupled with a doctrinal imperative, she quotes ERP deputy director Richard Bissell as saying that ‘it was well understood that the Marshall Plan was never meant to be a wholly altruistic affair’ – as if this alone exposes the self-serving nature of the Plan for US interests.(14) But a more interesting approach to the Plan would be to focus on the community of interests, on both sides of the Atlantic, that enabled it to happen at all. Outlining US foreign policy interests at this time by simply quoting lengthy pieces from Marshall’s Harvard speech and Truman’s and Acheson’s addresses to Congress does nothing to address the complexity of alliances, causes, intentions, and effects, both nationally and internationally, public and private, that lay behind these moves.

Agreed, the message was clear: ‘the future of Western Europe, if Western Europe was to have a future at all, must now be harnessed to a pax Americana.'(15) But where is the European voice in all this? For instance, how does this explain why Prime Ministers Ramadier of France and de Gasperi of Italy both removed the Communist Parties from their centre-left coalition governments in May 1947, before the announcement of the Marshall Plan?(16) Saunders’ book omits factors such as this completely, in order to match self-serving overt US foreign policy with the equally self-serving covert policies of the CIA. The result is a very narrow explanation for the cultural history she is outlining.

This side-stepping of the complexity of the situation is further amplified in relation to the formation of the CIA. There is no doubt that the Congress for Cultural Freedom should be seen in the context of the massive growth of American interest in and application of covert operations towards Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The development of the Congress can be placed within the overall development of cultural foreign policy, leading from the Office of War Information to the State Department’s Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs (1946) and the Smith-Mundt Act (1948), the latter providing ‘the overseas information program with its basic postwar legal foundation’ and the beginnings of an orchestrated anti-communist propaganda campaign abroad.(17) These efforts were followed by the massive expansion of the Marshall Plan information programmes (1948-51); Truman’s Campaign of Truth, (1950), which Truman himself referred to as ‘a sustained, intensified program to promote the cause of freedom against the propaganda of slavery’; the Psychological Strategy Board (1951) aimed at coordinating the different branches of the US government bureaucracy behind the propaganda effort; and the United States Information Agency (1953), the new institution that took over all overt government information programmes with the intention of persuading ‘foreign peoples that it lies in their own interest to take actions which are also consistent with the national objectives of the United States.'(18)

Interlocking overt and covert

These developments illustrate the interlocking and mutually-supporting tactics of overt and covert policy. The post-war world would be remade either along the lines of Soviet communism or American democratic capitalism, and it was necessary to present the U.S. in a proper, truthful, light to remove the many misconceptions people abroad had about American social norms and political intentions. But what is still intriguing about the CCF is the unsatisfactory nature of any explanation, pace Saunders, that has reduced it to simply being either an operation that was part of the expanding propaganda efforts mentioned above, or an operation under the complete control of the CIA. For example, most interesting in this respect is the portrayal by Saunders of Josselson as walking an unclear middle-ground, simultaneously the CIA man and the Congress man. For as she states:

‘…..by the mid-1950s, Josselson’s allegiance was primarily to the Congress, whose needs he instinctively ranked higher than those of the CIA. He felt that the Congress needed the Agency only for the money.’

But his attempts to supplant CIA with Ford Foundation money in order to secure greater operational independence ended in failure.(19) Later, by the late 1950s, the CIA did feel it was opportune to share the CCF’s financial burden with an above-board contributor, and Ford money began to come on stream in 1957.(20) An important point, but this double-life situation (which could be used to offer a more subtle perspective on the whole Congress itself) deserves more attention than it gets in her book.

But back to the formation and consolidation of the CIA itself. Some dispute whether its founders intended covert action to be authorised from the beginning, but it did not take very long for this side to its operations (as opposed to intelligence-gathering) to expand rapidly.(21) While growing Sovietophobia and anti-communism provided the overall political climate, there seems a clear link between the escalation of US intentions in Europe via the Marshall Plan and the development of covert operations to support it. It was not enough, in other words, to ensure the right results by merely spreading the truth, because the truth might fail.

The formation and organisation of the Cominform in September 1947 to coordinate Communist Party resistance (mainly in France and Italy) to Marshall Aid caused a quick response. CIA memos to Truman in that month stressed the potential dangers if Congress did not soon pass the ERP: the greatest danger to the United States is the possibility of economic collapse in western Europe and the consequent accession to power of communist elements.(22) National Security Council (NSC) directives 4 and 4A in December 1947 illustrated the overt-covert double-act: while 4 covered the organisation of the State Department’s Voice of America and America House, cultural centres, classified 4A authorised covert psychological operations ‘to counter the vicious psychological efforts of the USSR to undermine US activities abroad.’ Above all, the CIA director was to ensure that all ‘operations are consistent with US foreign policy and overt foreign information activities.’ This was to ensure coordination of overt and covert policies: Secretary of State Marshall did not want any set-up:

‘…which might compromise the State Department as he endeavoured to advance the rehabilitation of Europe by economic cooperation and open support of existing governments.’

Nevertheless he ‘was obliged to coordinate the open with the covert policy.’ In other words Marshall wanted a covert capability outside of his department but still answerable to his guidance.

In the aftermath of the Czech coup (the Czechs having been forced to decline Marshall Aid by the USSR the year before), covert operations were further coordinated with the creation of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) by NSC10/2 in June 1948.(23) 10/2’s sanctioning of covert political intervention, OPC’s plausible deniability and the establishment of unvouchered funding with the Central Intelligence Act of 1949, all pointed towards a massive escalation of covert activity. As Kevin O’Brien has said:

‘During the late 1940s and into the 1950s Europe was the CIA’s prime concern. Reconstruction was being carried out in Western Europe, but Communist influence was strong. Politically, in Italy and France, the Communists threatened to destabilise the post-war political and economic balance that the United States was attempting to establish throughout the Western world. Communist unions and organisations posed serious threats to the economic and social welfare of a rebuilding Europe. Thus, the policies of the CIA were to stabilise Western politics as much in favour of the US while simultaneously destabilising and removing any elements that could threaten economic reconstruction.'(24)

The point here is that it is essential to follow the overall policy backdrop to CIA intervention in Europe at this time. As Sallie Pisani remarks on the formation of OPC:

‘….it was formed because policy-makers believed that the existing institution for European reconstruction, the Marshall Plan, did not have the functional mechanisms to get the job done. The Economic Cooperation Administration [ECA – the Plan’s organising body] is not properly equipped to counter the subversive activities of the Communists in the form of manipulating elections, propagandising labour and student organisations and the type of post-election manoeuvring seen in the Czech incident.'(25)

Funding for OPC came from Marshall Plan counterpart funds, the European governments’ reciprocal contributions to Marshall Aid. As Saunders notes, OPC’s budget rocketed from $4.7 million in 1949 to $82 million in 1952 (and continued to rise), and in the beginning much of this was via these funds. It should be stressed that the funds were made available by ECA administrator Averell Harriman (supported by Marshall, Kennan, and others) so that OPC could act as a complement to ECA activity and goals, and not simply provide endless candy.

The key factor here is that OPC’s Wisner was able to turn this situation to his advantage; since while there was a consensus on sanctioning funds in this way there was no such consensus on the method of action. The crisis in Europe led to ‘a great deal of disagreement regarding tactics. Some favoured political and economic warfare. Those who favoured psychological warfare (including Wisner), known as the psy-warriors, were particularly adamant.'(26) But despite the unclear parameters for covert action (a policy vacuum that Wisner had no difficulty in filling), the overall goal of a non-communist Western Europe made secure by the socioeconomic foundations of the Marshall Plan was evident.(27)

AFL and CIO

The crossover between the overt-covert approaches to this goal was demonstrated by the movement of key personnel such as Richard Bissell and Frank Lindsay from the ECA to OPC. (28) Another important side to this connection was the cooperation with the US union conglomerates, firstly with the AFL (American Federation of Labor) and then also the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organisations). The crucial role that US labour played in the promotion of the economic model of the ERP within Western Europe has been well documented by Anthony Carew.(29) Carew has recently investigated in more detail the covert links between the CIA and the AFL in terms of the provision of funds and the attempted coordination of goals.(30) What has not yet been made sufficiently clear is the full role and influence of Irving Brown in the setting-up of the CCF in 1950-51.(31) Brown held a crucial position within the ERP-CIA-AFL-CCF linkage. Saunders’ treatment of Brown as a useful CIA asset does nothing to shed light on how he manipulated CIA financial and logistical support for his own interests and his own power-game. The apparent fact that ‘Wisner anchored Irving Brown to the Congress by appointing him a key member of the steering committee'(32) seems to be undermined by the way Brown was extensively sidelined from Congress management through 1951.

When he presented his original idea for a new intellectually-sophisticated journal to OMGUS in December 1947, Melvin Lasky intended it to be part of a greater effort ‘to overcome the obstructions which anti-American forces in Europe have been relentlessly preparing to block the US position in world affairs – first and foremost, on the issue of the Marshall Plan for continental reconstruction.'(33) Yet he has since stated that he was often criticised by OMGUS officials for not including articles promoting the Marshall Plan in his journal Der Monat. For Lasky, this was not the point – Der Monat was all about the Western cultural tradition that the Plan was safeguarding; it was not about the Plan itself.(34) Hence Coleman’s comment on the CCF’s goal to be ‘the cultural reconstruction, of a still weak and devastated Europe, [as] a sort of cultural counterpart to the Marshall Plan.'(35) This illustrates the most interesting aspect to the Congress – how it simultaneously embodied both the interests of the American foreign policy establishment and the interests of a significant section of the post-war intellectual community.

How to separate the two (or not) has since been a major issue when interpreting this organisation, but this an essential issue, since without an appreciation of the subtlety of the linkages the CIA-story takes over again. This needs to be emphasised despite the valid criticisms of writers such as Lasch, Jason Epstein, and Richard Elman that from the CIA’s angle the Agency-intelligentsia connection was not a unity of interests but purely a question of use-value. As Pierre Grémion has put it, referring to people such as Koestler, Spender, Silone, and Malraux:

‘All these names [stood] side by side in opposing the steamroller, of international communist propaganda, a resistance supported by American diplomacy. Each of them [was] evidently brought to make compromises with the requirements of this diplomacy. But the opposite is also true: American cultural diplomacy had to show itself as being open to compromise in order to respect the autonomy and authenticity of the intellectual community that had been created.'(36)

These compromises resulted because, if the Congress was going to hold together as an organisation, it had to find some kind of platform around which it could gather as many major figures as possible. Without a respected membership, its claim to represent Western intellectual freedom against Eastern totalitarianism would seem empty. Yet the platform had to be in line with the general goals of American foreign policy, otherwise it would be a self-defeating operation. There is no doubt that the CCF found its working identity under the leadership of Nicolas Nabokov, who, as Secretary-General, led the way with the planning for the Festival of the 20th Century, held in Paris in May 1952. Aiming to promote the CCF as the bastion of high culture, he aimed to confront those:

‘who proclaim bitterly that our culture is dead, that Western civilisation is sterile and decadent and that our culture lacks meaning in today’s world.'(37)

Essential to this ploy was the demonstration that the United States belonged to the same tradition of cultural innovation long dominated by Europeans, if not as an equal partner than at least as a worthy associate. The CCF’s Nabokov commented at the time:

‘….we have to limit the American participation in the Festival in order not to give the impression here, that we are trying to impose something which the Europeans do not want. All this is a matter of tact.'(38)

For James Burnham, the point was to offer

‘a confident contrasting display of what they [the Soviet Union] and we have to offer in the arts, music and literature, and an answer thereby to the question which side represents the future.'(39)

The Paris festival was considered by many to be a high profile expensive fiasco, turning the serious issues of the East-West confrontation into one big cocktail party.(40) But Nabokov’s intention of putting the Congress on the European cultural map was at least a success, and it was followed by the organisation of international competitions in the fields of theatre, painting, and music through 1954-55 to promote new talent in the modern arts. It also marked a shift in the personnel who had up to that point exerted a great deal of influence over the Congress’s agenda. Hard liners such as Hook, Burnham, and above all Koestler became increasingly disillusioned with the CCF’s abandonment of its original principles, especially the need to create a politically militant and activist anti-communist intellectual bloc. The festival in this respect represented the decline in influence of the CCF’s American Committee, and the consolidation of its own HQ in Paris.(41) But of special importance here is Burnham’s reference above to the question of which side represents the future. As Coleman put it:

‘with the gradual disintegration of the Soviet mythos, [the CCF] felt itself in the avant-garde, at the very centre of a redefinition of civilisation.'(42)

In the context of the Cold War, the CCF was the cultural section of the US triumvirate of goals for post-war Europe – political democracy, technocratic economic management, and cultural rejuvenation. However, the claiming of avant-garde status was the CCF’s own self-definition. As is evident from everything the Congress did, there was always a varying degree of attempted control over the ideas put forward. Saunders is excellent at stressing this side to its history. To take a step further than the CIA-story interpretation, it is impossible to conceive of the CCF in the absence of the Marshall Plan – the attempted control of ideas was prompted to support key vested interests. The determination to keep intellectual goals within certain preconceived boundaries was always present. Yet what is still lacking is a greater appreciation of the coincidence of ideas and power that the Congress represented.(43) How much were those boundaries set by strategic management, and how much by the actual outlook of intellectual concerns in the 1950s? From this point of view, nothing is more relevant than the standpoint that became a modus vivendi for the Congress from the mid-50s on: the end of ideology.

The end of ideology

For Coleman, more or less the official CCF historian, the end of ideology meant ‘rejecting the dogmas of both Communism and anti-Communism and relying on the critical resources of free traditions.'(44) The forward-looking claim of this outlook was epitomised by the Milan conference of September 1955, entitled The Future of Freedom, followed by the seminar programme that organised elite gatherings in Tokyo, Oxford, Vienna, Rhodes, Ibadan, and Rheinfelden through 1957-1959.(45) Aside from the increasing interest in reaching Third World elites to discuss development issues, (a clear sign of the widening horizons of the Cold War)(46) what is relevant for the present argument are the personalities who were the programme’s organisers and the subject matters discussed. Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and Raymond Aron are the three best-known authors (alongside Seymour Lipset) to have presented the 1950s end of ideology thesis; and only Aron developed his position separately from any immediate connection with the Congress.(47)

Bell, the labour editor with Luce’s Fortune, was the most explicit of this group in linking the CCF’s intellectual pursuits with the concerns of political economy. One of Bell’s works, The Breakup of Family Capitalism, emphasised the efficient and dynamic techniques of modern American industrial management, the implicit reference (especially as this was delivered as a paper in Milan) being that European capitalism remained largely under productive and stuck in outmoded traditions. This was identical with the previous outlook of the ERP – as Charles Maier put it:

‘American opinion generally viewed the transition to a society of abundance as a problem of engineering, not of politics.'(48)

This position was taken further in Vienna in September 1958, when the socioeconomic consensus, between capital and labour that lay at the centre of the ERP and West European social democracy was discussed by union officials, managers, journalists, and academics in the seminar ‘Workers Participation in Management’, again organised by Bell. On the basis of this it is no surprise that one of the key revisionists in the Labour Party, Anthony Crosland, was also on the seminar planning committee at this time. This was the period when Gaitskell, Healy, Crossman, and Crosland became significantly involved in CCF activities (all were in Milan) and both Gaitskell and Healy got involved in Bilderberg.(49) The Labour right linked a strongly Atlanticist position in foreign affairs with a renewed belief in the potential of capitalism. As Sassoon said of Crosland:

‘If capitalism can promote growth, then socialism can leave well alone and concentrate on its remaining priority: ensuring an equitable social division of the fruits of growth. In other words, belief in growth justified the greater significance placed by Crosland on the distribution of wealth at the expense of the struggle for the abolition of the private ownership of capital.'(50)

This of course was no small shift in leftist thinking – the emphasis was now more on socialism (in some shape or form) being built on top of capitalism and not in place of capitalism. A new role for intellectuals was the result. Under the conditions of welfare-state capitalism and the end of scarcity the classless society was (supposedly) being attained without revolution. Intellectuals, formerly the ‘articulators of ideologies’, were giving way to the scientifically-motivated ‘engineers of cooperation’.(51) The idea of radical social change had become outdated, since there was now the capacity to solve social problems one by one. The sociopolitical consensus envisaged by the Marshall Plan had found its intellectual advocates. Importantly this was not seen by its proponents as a shift towards conservatism. Bell stated:

‘The perspective I adopt is anti-ideological, but not conservative. [A] repudiation of ideology, to be meaningful, must mean not only a criticism of the utopian order but of existing society as well.'(52)

Not simply a CIA plot

Did the CCF fulfil such a critical role? This remains questionable – and here the CIA dimension takes on a greater importance. But neither was the end of ideology simply a CIA plot. With this in mind, what is perhaps more relevant is how this anti-ideological standpoint enabled the Congress to hold together a broad crosssection of the intellectual community who saw it as some kind of way forward in sociopolitical thought. As G. F. Hudson said of the Milan conference:

‘The founders of the organisation seem to have discovered a method of achieving a solidarity of the normally fragmented liberal intelligentsia without imposing articles of faith that would inevitably be unacceptable to large sections of those brought together in these conferences.'(53)

Isaiah Berlin’s advice for rejecting a militant counter-faith to Soviet communism was therefore followed. The CCF’s aim of promoting discussion within the boundaries of anti-communism and an acceptance of US involvement in European affairs could (and did) relate to the positions of many in the 1950s because these ideas were already present. That the Congress managed to act as the high-profile centre for this caucus is clear, as is the point that this was also a success for the CIA. Saunders’ irritation with this story (which is evident throughout her book) seems to come from the contention that without the CCF and the Agency’s millions there would have been a much more open debate about contemporary issues in the post-war world, with no measures being taken to sideline or discredit alternative viewpoints. But the causes for the ideological shifts going on in the European left, and the success of the Congress in attracting its clientele, cannot be simply laid at the CIA’s door. Deeper changes were going on beyond the effects of covert funding. As Gramsci pointed out, while any hegemony operates for the good of key sectional political and economic interests, it also relies on its principal ideas connecting with and satisfying the interests of a much broader cross-section of society. If, as Saunders rightly insists, the impetus for the CCF came from the US, its connection with particular interests in Europe still needs to be understood. It is on this issue that, despite her work being formidably researched and strongly argued, it fails in its obvious attempt to close down the CCF story once and for all.

Notes

The first part of this essay appeared in Lobster 36

1. Isaiah Berlin, when asked by Washington Post editor Herbert Elliston to write a credo for Cold War liberals. Quoted in Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life, Chatto & Windus, London, 1998, p.199.
2. Christopher Lasch, ‘The Cultural Cold War’, The Nation, 11 September 1967.
3. E.g. David Horowitz, Corporations and the Cold War, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1969.
4. See for instance the neo-conservative criticisms of Robert Maddox, The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1973, or the post-revisionist work of John Lewis Gaddis.
5. D. Cameron Watt, ‘Intelligence and the Historian: A Comment on John Gaddis’s ‘Intelligence, Espionage, and Cold War Origins’, Diplomatic History, Vol.14 No.2, Spring 1990, p.200.
6. This is the line of critique that will be followed here in relation to the latest study on the CIA-CCF story, Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Granta, London, 1999.
7. Scott Jackson, ‘Prologue to the Marshall Plan: The Origins of the American Commitment for a European Recovery Program’, Journal of American History, Vol. 65, 1979, p.1068.
8. John Killick, The United States and European Reconstruction 1945 – 1960, Keele University Press, Edinburgh, 1997, p.89.
9. Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe 1947-1952, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1987, p. 427; Alan Milward, ‘Was the Marshall Plan Necessary?’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 13 No. 2, Spring 1989, p.233.
10. Charles Maier, ‘The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy after World War II’, International Organisation, Vol. 31 No. 4, Autumn 1977, p 613
11. Kees van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class, Verso, London, 1984, pp.156-166.
12. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century, Fontana, London, 1997, pp.167-185.
13. Charles Maier, ‘The Two Post-War Eras and the Conditions for Stability in Twentieth Century Western Europe’, American Historical Review, Vol. 86 No. 2, April 1981, p.333.
14. Saunders op. cit. p.26
15. Ibid.
16. As a Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored study stated at the time, both leaders ‘apparently counted on improving economic conditions and American aid to pull them through’. John Campbell, The United States in World Affairs 1947-48, Harper/New York, 1948, p.57
17. Walter Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, St Martins Griffin, New York, 1998, p.11.
18. On these developments see ibid. pp.15-26; Scott Lucas, ‘Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951-1953’, International History Review, Vol. 18 No. 2, May 1996.
19. Saunders op. cit. p.244. The links, formal and informal, between the social elites in the Agency and the Foundation ensured a level of coordination between the two institutions towards Cold War strategy – particularly while major insider, John McCloy, was on the Foundation’s board during the 1950s
20. See Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment, Simon & Schuster/New York, 1992.
21. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, ‘Why Was the CIA Established in 1947?’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 12 No. 1, January 1997, pp.32-33.
22. Trevor Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War: The CIA and American Foreign Policy in Europe 1946-1956’, (Part I), Historical Journal Vol. 25 No. 3, 1982, p.407.
23. Foreign Relations of the United States 1945-1950: Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment (FRUS) C. Thomas Thorne & David Patterson (eds.), Dept. of State 1996, pp.640-642, 649-651, 713-715; Arthur Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government to 1950, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, 1990, pp. 260-261.
24. ‘Interfering with Civil Society: CIA and KGB Covert Political Action during the Cold War’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-intelligence, Vol. 8 No. 4, Winter 1995, p.434.
25. The CIA and the Marshall Plan, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1992, p.67 – an important work to which that Saunders never refers.
26. Pisani op.cit. p. 73; Barnes op. cit. pp.414-415.
27. After 1952 ‘more – and more ambitious – operations against a greater variety of targets were started. The Agency entered a new era in 1953, one that took it in a direction that would, in time, make the early days of OPC seem innocent and tame by comparison’, Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995, p.72.
28. Pisani op. cit. p.73; Thomas op. cit. p.87-88.
29. Labour under the Marshall Plan: The Politics of Productivity and the Marketing of Management Science, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1987.
30. ‘The American Labor Movement in Fizzland: the Free Trade Union Committee and the CIA’, Labor History, Vol. 31 No.1, 1998.
31. See Part I, Lobster 36, Winter 1998.
32. Saunders op. cit. p.87.
33. ‘On the Need for a New Overt Publication, Effectively American-Oriented, on the Cultural Front’, 7th December 1947, p. 4.
34. Interview with Melvin Lasky, Berlin, April 3rd 1999.
35. Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy, Free Press, New York, 1989, p. 16.
36. Pierre Grémion, Intelligence de L’Anticommunisme, Fayard, Paris, 1995, p.93.
37. Speech to the Anglo-American Press Club, February 1952, CCF Archive Series III, Box 2, Folder 6.
38. Nabokov to Executive Secretary, National Music Council, 25 February 1952, CCF Archive, Series II, Box 2.
39. Burnham to Nabokov, 16 June 1951, CCF Archive, Series II, Box 48, Folder 9.
40. On this side of the Festival see Saunders pp.113-126.
41. Saunders relates a fascinating memo from Wisner that states the ACCF’s concern over McCarthy was nothing more than an irritating and potentially dangerous disturbance for the overall CCF operation. But what should also be pointed out is that if the ACCF was created by the Agency, for purely strategic reasons, then clearly the Committee’s members did not follow the intended blueprint. What the CIA triggered, it could not always control, least of all in the realm of ideas which has its own semi-separate momentum. See Saunders op. cit. pp.200-203.
42. Coleman op.cit. p.13
43. It is worth noting that some reviews of Saunders have commented critically on the lack of appreciation for the intellectual content of the CCF story: Gijs Schreuders, ‘In the Name of the Half-Truth’, NRC Handelsblad 27 August 1999 p.33; James Harkin, ‘Operation Eliot: Four Quartets to the Rescue’, Independent on Sunday 4 September 1999 p.12; R. Ferdinandusse, ‘The Russians are Lying in Wait’, Vrij Nederland 16 October 1999 pp.46-47.
44. Saunders mentions the Milan conference only in passing and the ideas put forward there and in the following seminars not at all.
45. Irene Gendzier, Development Against Democracy: Manipulating Political Change in the Third World, Tyrone, Hampton, Conn., 1995, pp.80-108.
46. [Footnote not in original]
47. In contrast to Aron’s The Opium of the Intellectuals, which was essentially a diatribe against the French left, Bell’s The End of Ideology: On The Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, Free Press, New York, 1960. included four lectures from CCF symposiums, and the contributions by Lipset (‘The End of Ideology?’, in Political Man) and Shils (‘The End of Ideology?’, Encounter November 1955) were both reflections on the CCF Milan conference.
48. The Politics of Productivity, op.cit. p.615.
49. Considering Gaitskell’s involvement – delivering a paper in Milan and sending one to the seminar in Rhodes in 1959 – it is a loss that Philip Williams, biography, Hugh Gaitskell, Oxford University Press, 1982, does not mention the CCF at all.
50. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the 20th Century, Fontana, London 1997, p. 245.
51. Thomas Molnar, ‘Intellectuals, Experts, and the Classless Society’, (1957), in George de Huszar, The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait, Free Press/ Glencoe, 1960, pp.192-197.
52. Bell, ‘The End of Ideology’ op. cit. p.16.
53. ‘Reluctant Columbuses in Milan’, The Economist, Vol. 176, 24 September 1955.