Michael Josselson

Michael Josselson (March 2, 1908, Tartu, Estonia, to January 7, 1978, Geneva) was an Estonian-born former department store buyer who served as a cultural officer in the American occupation of Berlin and then became the administrative secretary of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an association of writers, scholars and artists that the Central Intelligence Agency financed through covert channels from 1950 until 1966. He ran the congress from Paris for sixteen years, left the post in 1967 after the funding was exposed, and spent his last years in Switzerland writing a biography of the Russian general Barclay de Tolly.¹

Tartu, Berlin and Gimbels, 1908 to 1937

Josselson was born in Tartu on March 2, 1908, the son of a Jewish timber merchant.¹ The family moved to Berlin during the Russian Revolution, and he attended secondary school there from 1920 to 1927.¹ He spent one year each at the University of Berlin and the University of Freiburg from 1927 to 1928 and then left school to work as a buyer in the Berlin office of the Gimbel-May department stores.¹ The CIA history spells the firm "Gimbels-Saks" and says the company made him its chief European buyer.²³ He was fluent in German, Russian, French and English.¹

By 1935 he had been promoted to manager of the Paris office of Gimbel Brothers. The CIA history gives the transfer to Paris as part of his rise to chief European buyer and places his move to New York City "before the war."³ The finding aid for his papers gives 1937 as the year he immigrated to the United States with his French wife to become managing director of the Gimbels European offices in New York.¹ The war closed the European markets, and in 1941 he returned to buying, this time for the American market, from Pittsburgh.¹ He was naturalized in 1942.¹

Army service and the Berlin occupation, 1943 to 1950

Josselson was drafted in 1943.¹ The finding aid says he was assigned to a communications unit in Europe as an interpreter and discharged as a first lieutenant in 1946, remaining in the reserves as a military intelligence officer until 1950.¹ The CIA history says he "made sergeant" and served as an interrogator in the Psychological Warfare Division of the United States Army.²³ The account of Frances Stonor Saunders places him in the division's intelligence section, on a seven-man team called Kampfgruppe Rosenberg after its leader, Captain Albert G. Rosenberg, which interrogated German prisoners in order to separate Nazis from non-Nazis.⁴ A 2018 biography from the German Historical Institute also places him in the division's intelligence section from 1945 and names the same team.⁵

The division became the Information Control Division of the military government, which the same biography places under Robert A. McClure.⁵ The finding aid describes Josselson from 1946 to 1949 as a cultural affairs officer for the Office of Military Government for Germany in Berlin, responsible for the denazification of leading German intellectuals and for editing and distributing anti-Communist propaganda.¹ The CIA history says that in that period he was chief of intelligence for the military government's Information Control Branch, and that in late September 1946 he was ordered to set up a new Berlin daily ahead of the October 20 elections. According to the history, he took less than two weeks to hire the staff and set the format and political line, and the paper reached a circulation of 100,000. An American official recommended Josselson for an award in January 1947.³

In Berlin he worked with the composer Nicolas Nabokov, who later joined the Information Control Division and was assigned to its music section.⁴⁵ Saunders quotes Nabokov writing that the two "did a good deal of successful Nazi-hunting and put on ice a few famous conductors, pianists, singers and a number of orchestral musicians."⁴ The CIA history names the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and the theater director Jürgen Fehling among the Germans Josselson helped "rehabilitate," and a note in his papers, quoted by Saunders, says that he spared Furtwängler the denazification procedure.³⁴⁵

Recruitment by the CIA

The finding aid says that Josselson "purportedly became connected" with the CIA during his time with the State Department's office in Germany in 1949 and 1950.¹ The CIA history gives a more specific account. Josselson was a contact of the agency's Berlin Operations Base and applied to join the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) in April 1949 while briefly in the United States.⁶ The history places him at the beginnings of the anti-Communist counteroffensive at the Waldorf-Astoria and in Paris in the spring of 1949, on leave from his duties as a cultural officer in Germany, and says he told Nabokov that Berlin needed something similar (it cites Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy, pp. 5-6).³ The 2018 biography gives a different date for his entry into the agency, placing it in 1948 in the covert action department of the Berlin office, and names Lawrence de Neufville as the recruiter.⁵

The CIA history places the origin of the Berlin congress in Josselson's proposal. Ruth Fischer had put a Berlin conference idea to OPC officers in 1949, and it sat unused until January 1950, when Josselson "stepped forward" to promote it.³ The excerpt of the same study published in Studies in Intelligence places his promotion of the proposal "late in 1949."² The history says Josselson talked with Melvin Lasky about the proposed conference and that his proposal reached OPC headquarters on or about January 25, 1950.⁶ On February 6, 1950, OPC officers met and gave Josselson the green light to proceed.⁶ On April 7, 1950, Frank Wisner approved a project outline with a budget of 50,000 dollars that essentially repeated Josselson's December proposal.²⁶ Wisner asked that Lasky and James Burnham be kept out of sight in Berlin.⁶ When the request reached him, Josselson defended Lasky, cabling that "no other person here, certainly no German, could have achieved such success."⁶

Saunders quotes Josselson describing his new work in 1950 as "a continuation of psychological warfare, only this time directed against the Soviets."⁵ The German Historical Institute biography, citing Saunders, gives the page as 42.⁵

The Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1950 to 1966

The congress opened in West Berlin on June 26, 1950, in the Titania Palace.² Josselson kept out of sight during the conference and kept track of everything that transpired, according to the CIA history.⁶ In November 1950 the steering committee made the organization permanent. Josselson resigned his job with the occupation government to become its administrative secretary, a position the Studies in Intelligence excerpt says he held for sixteen years.² The CIA history, in its chapter on the congress, says he kept many of the participants working together "for 17 years."⁷

The CIA history says that OPC's Western Europe Division initially handled the congress and that in 1951 Josselson solved a management problem by creating a parallel station that worked with international organizations.⁸ It says that in August 1951 OPC's Special Projects Division was renamed the International Organizations Branch, under Tom Braden, and that the congress project, carried under the cryptonym QKOPERA, found a permanent home in the agency's International Organizations Division, where Cord Meyer served as its guardian until its liquidation in 1967.⁷⁸ Braden's division took over management of QKOPERA on July 1, 1952. Soon afterward, once CIA security had cleared the philosopher Sidney Hook, Meyer and Josselson traveled to New York to brief him on the agency's interest and to discuss the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, the congress's New York affiliate.⁹ The two agreed in June 1954 that the American Committee had become too controversial, and the history describes the committee's de-funding afterward.¹⁰ Arnold Beichman recalled of Josselson: "I had no objection to what Josselson was doing, but he wasn't going to do it in my name."¹⁰

The finding aid says that Josselson arranged financing from various sources, including organizations that operated as fronts for CIA money, and that he worked behind the scenes through the 1950s and early 1960s as the congress organized conferences, produced publications and created regional offices.¹ The CIA history cites a letter of October 22, 1953 from the poet Stephen Spender to Josselson, from the Boston University collection of the magazine Encounter, for the awareness in England in late 1953 of American sponsorship of the congress and of Encounter.¹¹ Of the funding vehicle that was publicly named as the congress's sponsor, the Farfield Foundation, the history quotes the Encounter co-editor Irving Kristol, writing in 1967, that Julius Fleischmann "was very much in evidence, yacht and all," and that Encounter's annual deficit was in the vicinity of 40,000 dollars. It adds that Hook, Beichman and William Phillips wrote to Fleischmann to ask about rumors of government money and that Fleischmann told them nothing.¹²¹³

The history assigns Josselson's temperament a place in the congress's course. It says the congress balanced anti-Communism against its credibility with the non-Communist left "through the talent of one man," that Josselson "was the key to the Congress's operations and to CIA control of the organization," and that one case officer called him an "expert impresario with the literary and academic prima donnas so essential to the CCF."¹⁴ It records that he endorsed the effort led by the sociologist Edward Shils to find "a new idiom" for the congress in the early 1960s, privately denounced William F. Buckley's magazine National Review, later doubted the wisdom of American involvement in Vietnam, and commended Senator George McGovern's criticism of the Johnson administration's policy there.¹⁴ When the congress cabled President Dwight D. Eisenhower in April 1953 asking clemency for Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, the history says, Josselson regarded such statements as costing nothing and as enhancing the congress's reputation for integrity with its target audience. The American Committee castigated him for tolerating them, and in a reply to Hook he wrote: "The American Committee seems to recognize only one weapon in the fight against Communism: denunciation. Our methods are different."¹⁵

The history states that from the early 1950s Headquarters "trusted Josselson and followed his lead" in balancing the project's anti-Communist mission against the need for credibility among foreign intellectuals, and that "Without him there would have been no Congress for Cultural Freedom."¹⁶ Its introduction names agency and overt-organization "brokers" and says "CCF had Michael Josselson."¹⁷ It also records that he "showed no compunction about putting unwitting American intellectuals on Congressional platforms."¹⁴ John C. Hunt worked beside him in the Paris secretariat, and a photograph caption in the history reads that the two "made an effective team."¹⁴ The University of Chicago holds Josselson correspondence files for 1952 through 1967 in boxes 201 to 205 of the records of the International Association for Cultural Freedom.¹⁸

Disclosure and resignation, 1966 to 1967

The New York Times published a series of five articles on the CIA from April 25 to 29, 1966. The third, datelined April 26, said that the agency had supported "anti-Communist but liberal organizations of intellectuals such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom," and it described Encounter as one of the indirect beneficiaries of CIA funds.¹⁹

According to the CIA history, Josselson asked McGeorge Bundy and Shepard Stone at the Ford Foundation in early 1966 to consider taking over the entire congress program. The agency cut its ties to the congress that September, and Josselson and Hunt stayed on in their posts.²⁰ The New York Times reported in September 1967 that the congress had been totally financed by a Ford Foundation grant since October 1966, with, according to Josselson, a guarantee of appropriations until 1972.²¹

The February 1967 exposure of the National Student Association came through Ramparts. The magazine ran an advertisement announcing the article in the New York Times of February 14, 1967, and released the account on February 15, ahead of its March 1967 issue.²²²³ The article by Sol Stern (pages 29 to 39) mentioned the congress only in passing, naming the "Fairfield Foundation" as a frequent contributor to it and recording that the Fairfield Foundation had received 15,000 dollars from the Rabb Foundation, and did not name Josselson.²⁰²⁴

Josselson told the congress's General Assembly on May 13, 1967 that the CIA had supported the congress from 1950 to the summer of 1966.²⁵ The New York Times reported that the assembly expressed regret that intelligence funds had financed the congress and that Josselson had accepted them without his colleagues' knowledge. The assembly refused to accept his resignation and asked him to stay, and he agreed.²⁵ In an interview published that week he said that he had regretted accepting the money "because the ends do not justify the means."²⁵ The CIA history says that Josselson and Hunt offered their resignations to the General Assembly, admitting their CIA connections, and that the assembly "merely 'noted'" them.²⁶

A clipping in the CIA reading room, whose newspaper is not identified, reports that Josselson revealed on a Sunday that about 40 per cent of the money the congress spent each year went to four cultural journals, among them Preuves in France, Der Monat in Germany and Encounter in Britain.²⁷

A New York Times dispatch from Paris dated September 25, 1967 reported that the congress had selected Stone, then director of international affairs for the Ford Foundation, as its executive director, to replace Josselson, who had "assumed sole responsibility" for the use of CIA funds from 1950 to the summer of 1966, and that Josselson, a friend of Stone, would remain with the organization as a consultant. The same dispatch quotes Josselson that under the practice then existing he would inform the CIA of the congress's budgetary needs and the agency would then provide him with the name of a foundation likely to favor a request for a grant, and reports that he had offered his resignation earlier in the year and that it had not been accepted at the time.²¹ The CIA history says that in September 1967 the General Assembly approved reforms, named Stone president and chief executive, and renamed the organization the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF), and that Josselson and Hunt "resigned for good" at that point.²⁶ A dispatch of October 2, published October 3, reported that Stone had been named president and that Pierre Emmanuel, a French poet who had been literary director and deputy secretary general, would replace Josselson, the former executive director of the 17-year-old group and one of its founders, who had resigned.²⁸

The International Association for Cultural Freedom

The finding aid says Josselson continued to advise informally the former associates who created the IACF.¹ Richard Krygier, secretary of the Australian affiliate, said in 1969 that the affiliate had enjoyed more freedom under Stone than before, when "Mike [Josselson] & Company" had been concerned with the political outlook of affiliates.²⁹

The University of Chicago finding aid for the association's records lists a correspondence file for Josselson for 1968 to 1975, a file for his "Geneva office" for 1959 to 1961, and an administration file for Josselson for 1963.¹⁸

Death in Geneva, 1961 to 1978

Josselson moved to Switzerland in 1961 to seek treatment for circulatory problems and had already undergone several surgeries.¹ According to the CIA history, he watched the association from Geneva. A few former colleagues called on him, and agency officers visited from time to time to ask about people and programs he had worked with over his career.³⁰ He spent much of his last years on a biography of Barclay de Tolly, the general who commanded the Russian armies retreating before Napoleon in 1812. The CIA history, citing Peter Coleman, says that Josselson saw parallels between his own campaign and Barclay's, although a quick vindication was not one of them.³⁰

Josselson died in Geneva on January 7, 1978, following heart surgery.¹ His manuscript was finished except for the bibliography and index. Diana Josselson completed the book, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1980 as The Commander: A Life of Barclay de Tolly.¹ The CIA history says that only a handful of mourners attended his funeral, among them a CIA official who brought his Distinguished Service Medal, and that his widow refused it. The history suggests she was reacting to the strain of the double life he had led at the congress, citing Coleman's account; its endnote states that the account of the refusal is touching but that it found no corroboration for it in CIA files.³⁰ The history is dedicated "To the Memory of Michael Josselson."³¹