Congress for Cultural Freedom

The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an association of writers, scholars and artists formed at a conference in West Berlin in June 1950, with administrative headquarters in Paris. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed it through covert channels from its founding until the summer of 1966. After the funding was exposed in 1966 and 1967 the organization was renamed the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF), which closed its last offices in 1978.¹

Founding in Berlin, 1950

In August 1949 Melvin Lasky, then a 29-year-old journalist and the founding editor of the German-language journal Der Monat, met the former Communists Franz Borkenau and Ruth Fischer in Frankfurt and hatched a plan for a conference of the non-Communist left in Berlin the following year. Der Monat was sponsored by the American occupation government.¹ Michael Josselson, a cultural officer for the occupation government, took up the plan in late 1949. The proposal reached Washington in January 1950. The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) drew up a project proposal with a budget of 50,000 dollars, and Frank Wisner, its head, approved the outline on April 7, 1950 and asked that Lasky and James Burnham be kept out of sight in Berlin.¹ Lasky had appointed himself the driving force behind the event, and when Wisner's wish reached Josselson he cabled that "No other person here, certainly no German, could have achieved such success."² The CIA history notes that Communist organs would accuse Lasky, on the eve of the congress, of being an agent of the US Army and "the American secret service," citing a New York Times report of June 25, 1950, "Paper in Soviet Zone Hits Culture Parley."² In the CIA history's words, "Lasky had to go, and OPC contrived to have him removed from the project and canceled his operational clearance."²

The CIA history places OPC's formal go-ahead on February 6, 1950, when officers met and gave Michael Josselson the green light to proceed.³ Josselson had applied to join the Office of Policy Coordination in April 1949, while briefly in the United States, after contact with the agency's Berlin Operations Base.³

Wisner's memorandum of August 8, 1950 to "Mr. Breckinridge" stated that he would not continue backing the operation "unless means can be found to sanitize this operation by the removal of Lasky, Burnham and other persons of known or traceable official significance from overt roles in the proposed continuing organization." He described the damage resulting from Lasky's conduct as "a major blunder."⁴ The memorandum opened by recalling that Wisner had approved the project on April 7, 1950 "subject to the condition that Lasky would not be permitted to figure publicly in this operation."⁴ The inaugural conference was funded by the CIA through Marshall Plan counterpart funds.⁵

The congress opened on June 26, 1950 in the Titania Palace in Berlin with almost 200 delegates and about 4,000 other attendees.¹ The University of Chicago finding aid dates the founding conference June 26 to 30.⁶ Peter Coleman wrote that the opening ceremony took place on Monday, June 25, and the closing rally on Thursday, June 28.⁷ The honorary chairmen were John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, Karl Jaspers and Jacques Maritain.¹ American delegates included Sidney Hook, Burnham, James T. Farrell, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Robert Montgomery and David Lilienthal.¹ Leadership of the sessions fell to the Italian socialist Ignazio Silone and to Arthur Koestler. At the closing rally on June 29, Koestler read the congress's Freedom Manifesto before a crowd the CIA study estimates at 15,000, calling out "Friends, freedom has seized the offensive!"¹ Coleman, who reprinted the text, wrote that Koestler drafted the manifesto, that it had fourteen numbered paragraphs, and that Hugh Trevor-Roper and A. J. Ayer moved amendments to paragraphs 10, 13 and 14. Trevor-Roper objected to a draft paragraph declaring that totalitarians "who deny spiritual freedom to others do not enjoy the right to citizenship in the free republic of the spirit"; Silone, Lie, Frode Jacobson (as Coleman spelled the names) and Ayer supported him, and Koestler withdrew the paragraph.⁷ The first paragraph reads: "We hold it to be self-evident that intellectual freedom is one of the inalienable rights of man." The eleventh reads: "We hold that the theory and practice of the totalitarian state are the greatest challenge which man has been called on to meet in the course of civilised history."⁷

In November 1950 the steering committee made the organization permanent. Josselson became its administrative secretary and held that post for 16 years. Lasky and Burnham had been removed from prominent roles by then.¹

CIA funding and conduits

The CIA's International Organizations Branch, which OPC's Special Projects Division had become in August 1951 under Thomas W. Braden,⁸ earmarked 200,000 dollars in 1951 for the consolidation of the congress, with affiliate committees in London, Oslo, Berlin, Frankfurt, Vienna, Rome, New Delhi, Tokyo and New York.⁵ The congress's QKOPERA project found a permanent home in the agency's International Organizations Division, where Cord Meyer acted as its guardian until its liquidation in 1967.⁹ In his account in the Saturday Evening Post of May 20, 1967, titled "I'm Glad the CIA Is 'Immoral,'" Braden wrote: "We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Another agent became an editor of Encounter."¹⁰ He also wrote that money for the magazine's publication "came from the CIA."¹⁰

In 1964 the House subcommittee on foundations, chaired by Wright Patman, named eight CIA front foundations or funds.¹¹ A Dallas newspaper report of February 1967 listed the Gotham Foundation, the Michigan Fund and the Price, Monroe and Heights funds among them, and named as other believed fronts the Knickerbocker Foundation, the Metropolitan Foundation, the Northcraft Educational Fund and the Victoria Strauss foundation.¹² A United Press International report of September 1964 said that the Internal Revenue Service had confidentially told Patman that the CIA had contributed money to the J. M. Kaplan Fund.¹³

The Farfield Foundation of New York is the best documented of the conduits. Langenkamp describes it as a front "set up to channel funds to the CIA's target organizations, mainly the CCF," and records 843,668 dollars from it to the congress in 1958.¹⁴ When Nicolas Nabokov sought support for a proposed Hamburg assembly of scientists, about 35,000 dollars of its cost was provided by Farfield, according to the same report.¹⁴ The congress's own records hold Farfield correspondence files for 1953 through 1956.⁶

The Karl Hoblitzelle Foundation of Dallas was named in February 1967 as one of several foundations through which the CIA passed funds. The Dallas report gave the foundation's contributions from 1959 to 1965 as 505,700 dollars, of which 250,000 dollars was listed as coming from anonymous donors. A foundation trustee denied knowledge of any CIA money.¹²

Publications

Encounter was a magazine of literature, arts and politics published in London from October 1953, edited by Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol and published for the congress. Catalog records list Melvin Lasky as an editor, and the Library of Congress record gives the editors as Spender and Kristol from 1956 and Lasky and Nigel Denis from 1969.¹⁵ The Bibliotheque nationale de France catalogue lists Lasky as directeur de publication from 1958 and Irving Kristol from 1953 to 1958.¹⁶ The masthead of the December 1958 issue reads "edited by Stephen Spender and Melvin J. Lasky," the issues through November 1958 name Spender and Kristol, the June 1967 masthead reads "Edited by Frank Kermode and Melvin J. Lasky," and the July 1967 issue announces Nigel Dennis as co-editor.¹⁷ Braden wrote that the CIA paid for its publication.¹⁰ Spender, Lasky and Kristol wrote to the New York Times on May 10, 1966.¹⁸ Kristol had been executive secretary of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, the congress's American affiliate. In 1955 Michael Harrington wrote in Dissent that Kristol, in that post, had supported Sidney Hook's general outlook on civil liberties.¹⁹

Der Spiegel reported in October 1954 that sponsorship of Der Monat by the American High Commission ended with the financial year, that the journal became a private enterprise on October 1, 1954, and that the Ford Foundation had given a single grant of 175,000 dollars to ease the transition.²⁰ The Ford Foundation's annual report for 1954 states that United States Government support for Der Monat ceased in 1954 and records an appropriation of 175,000 dollars covering a three-year period, with the Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Publizistik (International Publications, Inc.) as grantee.²¹ Lasky wrote in 1967 that he edited Der Monat "until 1954 for the USIA, and thereafter (after a brief losing battle with McCarthyism) under a direct Ford Foundation grant."²²

Preuves was a French-language review published in Paris under the title "Preuves : cahiers mensuels du Congrès pour la liberté de la culture," edited by François Bondy. The Bibliothèque nationale de France dates it 1951 to 1975, and the University of Chicago finding aid describes it as appearing monthly between 1951 and 1969. Its papers are in Series VII of the congress's records.²³ Der Monat, the German-language journal that Lasky founded, is held in a separate collection of the same archive.²⁴ Tempo Presente, directed by Nicola Chiaromonte and Silone, began with its number 1 of April 1956.²⁵ Quadrant, an Australian quarterly review sponsored by the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom and edited by James McAuley, began with its volume 1, number 1 for summer 1956 to 1957.²⁶ Cuadernos (Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura) was a Spanish-language review issued from Paris beginning with a March to May 1953 number.²⁷ The finding aid lists folders for Tempo Presente (1956), Quadrant (1961 to 1966), Cuadernos (budget and distribution, 1950 to 1966; a Cuadernos folder for 1963 to 1966 is cross-referenced to the correspondence of Julián Gorkin), Quest (1955 to 1968) and Mundo Nuevo (1965 to 1971).²⁴

The congress's journals also included Transition, published in Uganda, whose editor was arrested and imprisoned for months on a sedition charge in the wake of the 1966 to 1967 disclosures. Mundo Nuevo was a literary journal for Latin American readers, and the Ford Foundation gave it three years of support.²⁸

Officers and directors

Josselson ran the congress from Paris for 16 to 17 years. In May 1967 he told the General Assembly that the congress had received CIA support from 1950 to the summer of 1966 and that he had accepted it without his colleagues' knowledge. The assembly issued a statement of regret, asked him to stay on, and he agreed.²⁹ The New York Times reported in October 1967 that Pierre Emmanuel, a French poet who had been literary director and deputy secretary general, had succeeded Josselson, who had resigned.³⁰ Josselson said that no one else in the congress had been involved in the CIA arrangement.²⁹

Nabokov, a composer, was the congress's secretary general in the early 1950s.³¹ A University of Chicago finding aid lists him as president and John C. Hunt as executive director of the congress, and records that both resigned when the congress was reorganized and that Stone was named president of the IACF.³² In February 1954 Shepard Stone wrote to John J. McCloy that "you know the sources of funds that have hitherto been supplied to the Congress, but in our conversation with these gentlemen [Nabokov and Rougemont] we should not reveal what we know."³³

Denis de Rougemont, the Swiss writer, met Stone and Nabokov in 1954 on the congress's funding. He and Nabokov wrote to the New York Times on May 19, 1966.¹⁸³³

Stone, who had directed the Ford Foundation's international affairs work, became president of the IACF in October 1967.³⁰ Raymond Aron, the French sociologist, was asked by Stone to chair the new board of directors in 1966. He resigned in May 1967 when he judged that the organization was moving in the wrong direction.³⁴³⁵

The Ford Foundation, 1957 to 1967

Stone, then in charge of the foundation's international affairs program, asked the trustees to take over the congress's costs. In the fall of 1957 the foundation approved a two-year grant of 500,000 dollars toward the congress's conferences and seminars, and Stone's division then gave 250,000 dollars a year through the end of 1962.³⁴ In February 1961 the trustees barred grants to tax-exempt organizations that could not fully account for their other income, and a year later they added institutions receiving funds from undisclosed United States government sources.³⁴ Stone then proposed a guarantee of "some $2,000,000 per year for the next five years." The proposal failed. A later plan for a consortium of 15 to 20 million dollars over ten years also failed, because the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund would not join without a substantial Ford contribution.³⁴

In 1966, after Henry Heald was replaced by McGeorge Bundy as president, Bundy wrote to Julius A. Stratton, the foundation's chairman, on September 23, 1966 that the foundation would make a grant of 7,000,000 dollars to the congress over six years. "It may raise a few eyebrows among those who know or think they know the previous financial history of the Congress," Bundy wrote, "but it is the right thing to do at the right time."³⁴ The foundation's annual report for 1966 records a 1,500,000 dollar grant "in further support of the Congress for Cultural Freedom" and states that the new board of trustees was headed by Aron.³⁵

Bundy asked the foundation's Overseas Development Division for a review. Its vice president, Champion Ward, judged in favor of the congress despite reservations, and James A. Perkins called the congress "a gamble, but an important one."³⁴ In September 1967 Francis X. Sutton, vice president of the International Affairs Division, recommended five more years of support with more non-American financing. Bundy did not reverse the grant, but the last three installments were cut by nearly 1,000,000 dollars in total.³⁴

A foundation evaluation by Craufurd Goodwin dated November 3, 1977 put the foundation's total grants to the congress and the IACF at 8,400,000 dollars over two decades. Langenkamp's table of grants totals 10,934,750 dollars.³⁴

Exposure, 1966 and 1967

The New York Times published a series of five articles on the CIA by Tom Wicker, John W. Finney, Max Frankel, E. W. Kenworthy and other staff members from April 25 to 29, 1966, under the first title "C.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?" The third article, datelined April 26 and published April 27, said that the CIA had supported "anti-Communist but liberal organizations of intellectuals such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and some of their newspapers and magazines," and described Encounter as an indirect beneficiary of CIA funds.³⁴³⁶ Josselson told the General Assembly on May 13, 1967 that CIA support had run from 1950 to the summer of 1966.²⁹

According to the CIA history, Josselson asked McGeorge Bundy and Shepard Stone in early 1966 to consider taking over the entire congress program. The agency cut its ties to the congress that September, and Josselson and John C. Hunt stayed on in their posts.⁹ The same study describes the 1966 separation as an "amicable separation" that the agency arranged.³⁷

In March 1967 Ramparts reported the CIA's funding of the National Student Association. Sol Stern wrote the account (pages 29 to 39). It named a "Fairfield Foundation" as "a frequent contributor to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, previously identified in The New York Times as having received CIA funds," and recorded that the Rabb Foundation made a 15,000 dollar grant to that foundation in 1963.³⁸ Braden's article of May 20, 1967 defended the program as a counteroffensive against Communist fronts and wrote that Frank Wisner, "in my view, was an authentic American hero."¹⁰

On February 15, 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson named Nicholas Katzenbach, John Gardner and Richard Helms to a committee to review government activities that might "endanger the integrity and independence of the educational community." The committee worked for 43 days. Its recommendation, accepted on March 29, 1967, was that "no federal agency shall provide any covert financial assistance or support, direct or indirect, to any of the nation's educational or private voluntary organizations."¹¹ A May 1967 circular from the CIA's deputy director for plans, Desmond FitzGerald, stated that "covert funding overseas of foreign-based international organizations is permitted."¹¹

On May 13, 1967 the congress's General Assembly held an extraordinary session in Paris. According to the New York Times, the assembly expressed regret that CIA funds had been used to finance the congress and that the executive director had accepted them without his colleagues' knowledge. It also named a committee to examine the congress's structure and draw up a new charter.²⁹

The New York Times reported that the assembly refused to accept the resignation of Josselson, who had accepted the funds without his colleagues' knowledge, and that he agreed to stay on.²⁹ The CIA history records that Josselson and Hunt offered their resignations at the same session, admitting their CIA connections, and that the assembly "merely 'noted'" them.⁹ The two resigned for good at the September 1967 reforms, when the assembly named Stone president and chief executive.⁹

Within Encounter the disclosures produced their own dispute. In The Nation of October 2, 1967 Lasky wrote that when he became an editor of Encounter in 1958 he "had no knowledge of the CIA's involvement and was, then as now, nobody's agent," and that when he later became aware that some grants to the congress were covert governmental funds "I did everything in my power to end this. In 1964, Cecil Harmsworth King and the Daily Mirror group in London took over the financial sponsorship of Encounter."²² According to Edward McLaren, Lasky wrote to Isaiah Berlin that "IF there were an agent planted in Encounter …it could only have been Kristol or Spender"; Spender then resigned, Kristol threatened to sue Braden, and Lasky was left as the only acting editor. Frank Kermode returned after the International Publishing Corporation of London took over the magazine's financial burden from the CIA.³⁹ The magazine's trustees announced in July 1967 that Spender and Kermode had resigned, that Lasky had "agreed to remain as co-Editor," and that Nigel Dennis was appointed the other co-editor.¹⁷ McLaren also quotes Richard Wollheim, who recalled asking Lasky and Spender about the rumour of CIA funding when he was asked to join the board; Lasky answered: "Nothing easier. You can inspect the accounts, and see for yourself."³⁹ McLaren states that Lasky went on to admit that he knew of the CIA funding of the congress from long before 1963.³⁹

The International Association for Cultural Freedom, 1967 to 1978

The congress was renamed the IACF in 1967. Stone left the Ford Foundation after thirteen years to lead it.⁴⁰ Stone was its president from October 1967, and Pierre Emmanuel was its director.³⁰ Stone's fundraising in Europe and Japan did not produce a lasting replacement for Ford money.³⁴

A New York Times dispatch dated September 25, 1967 reported that the congress had selected Stone as its executive director to replace Josselson and that Josselson would remain with the organization as a consultant. In it Josselson said that under the practice then existing he would inform the CIA of the congress's budgetary needs and the agency would give him the name of a foundation likely to favor a request for a grant.⁴¹ The October 3 article described Stone as president and said Pierre Emmanuel would replace Josselson, who had resigned.³⁰

In 1972 the Ford Foundation renewed support for five years at 400,000 dollars a year, on the recommendation of its program officer David Heaps.³⁴ The same year the foundation granted 50,000 dollars to promote Encounter in the United States. Seventy-three American and English writers and editors protested the grant in a petition organized by Partisan Review, which had itself been rescued more than once by CIA money channeled through the congress.⁴² A terminal grant ran from January 1 to March 31, 1978, and the IACF was dissolved on March 31, 1978.³⁴