The CIA and the Students
Howe, Irving
I write these lines as a hasty last-minute response to the news that the CIA has been secretly subsidizing certain activities abroad of the National Student Association (NSA) and other student...
...But since there seems no possibility of such a happy event in the immediate future, we urge that everyone devoted to democratic values should join in a struggle to keep the CIA and all its works, fronts, agencies, and "foundations" out of domestic political life...
...Some of them were probably victims of an atmosphere in which norms of political independence had disintegrated and the lure of "big-shot politics" (expense accounts, international conferences, hush-hush arrangements) was too enticing...
...That it has been possible for these revelations to be made in safety and with enormous publicity, nevertheless speaks well for democracy...
...The ostensible purpose of the CIA does not, at the moment, interest us...
...The methods the CIA has employed are those we associate with fascist and Communist dictatorships...
...It has helped in the fight against poverty...
...That it should intervene in the affairs of students is, if anything, worse...
...It has fought for civil rights...
...No longer should the CIA or any government agency be exempt from regular legislative inspection and public check...
...let all the facts come out...
...It has by no means taken the kind of political stands that can be identified with the CIA...
...But we hope that NSA itself will weather this crisis...
...By the time this issue of DISSENT reaches our readers there may well be further news concerning CIA intervention in the affairs of other organizations...
...That a secret government agency presumably devoted to espionage and counterespionage should intervene in domestic political life is intolerable...
...Meanwhile, we hope the NSA will review its recent past, so as to make sure that no further scandals are possible in which one or two officers secretly commit—and contaminate—the organization...
...But we would warn against any effort to create an atmosphere in which democratic institutions of this country, whatever their faults or even sins, can be assaulted wholesale...
...All powers, of whatever kind or ideology, have such agencies...
...The only cure we of DISSENT can see for the failures of democracy is— more and better democracy...
...And entirely out...
...What has been revealed is a deformation of democracy...
...I write these lines as a hasty last-minute response to the news that the CIA has been secretly subsidizing certain activities abroad of the National Student Association (NSA) and other student groups...
...It has campaigned for student freedoms...
...foreign policy, as for example in the Dominican and Vietnam situations...
...Toward this end we hope that the investigation announced by Senator Eugene McCarthy will not languish, but will actively dig into the facts, regardless of which politicians the facts may hurt—Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, or Robert Kennedy...
...and while the actions of the implicated NSA officials cannot escape judgment, neither should these young people become the victims of a dubious righteousness...
...For our part, we have no liking for either the CIA or any of its international equivalents...
...Such confusions are part of the heritage of the last twenty years...
...they have no place in a democratic society...
...none of these is palatable...
...The whole business is appalling...
...Good...
...For our part, while unambiguously convinced that all student, cultural, and trade union organizations ought to be entirely autonomous, we are prepared to defend them against ideological or demagogic attack...
...but what presumably distinguishes such an agency in a democratic country is that its functions are strictly limited to projects abroad...
...Let us try to make sure that such things cannot happen again, which means to work for a fundamental renovation of society so that it will be genuinely imbued with democratic principles...
...At the opposite pole, among certain segments of the Left or pseudoLeft, there may be launched a campaign against various democratic and liberal institutions on the ground that they are all subservient to the power elite...
...No doubt, further changes in NSA policy and personnel will be desirable...
...As for those young people who were themselves responsible for the NSA connection with the CIA, we hope they will not become the object of brutal or indiscriminate attacks...
...The same holds true for all other organizations that may, knowingly or unknowingly, have been recipients of CIA funds...
...For the truth is that, no matter how painful the revelations are, the NSA has played a constructive role in 130 recent American life...
...Others may honestly have been trapped by the difficulties, some years back, of having to struggle at international student congresses against subsidized and subservient "youth" representatives of totalitarian governments—and to have then seen as a sudden lifesaver financial aid from a seemingly innocuous "foundation...
...Still others may not have been very clear in their minds as to the reasons why many people make a sharp distinction between accepting open aid from a public agency of the government and taking funds from an underground outfit like the CIA—or why still other people are skeptical about student or other movements accepting aid from any governmental agency...
...On the contrary, it has served for the most part as a progressive force on the campus...
...we would as soon see all of them collapse through lack of sustenance...
...There is every reason to want to save what is after all the major student organization in the country...
...There will apparently be further and more widespread revelations...
...It has been critical of U.S...
...Fulton Lewis has already attacked the CIA for helping a "liberal" group like the NSA, and no doubt the Far Right will seize the opportunity to show how Washington has been taken over by "pinkos...
Vol. 14 • March 1967 • No. 2
