Discussion on CIA Involvement and Activism

Well, exactly when did your own association with

the CIA start,

and in what fashion?

In-

Did they come to you, or did you go to them?

In 1958, when I came home from, from India.

I discussed with student, uh, leaders, past and present,

uh, many of them active with the National

Student Association,

uh, this kind of small foundation to encourage

Americans to go.

They thought it was a good idea, too.

I was then told by foundations and professors and friends

that it... That I should not do this, that I would get in trouble with the House

Un-American Activities Committee, the American Legion, uh, all of those,

mm, '50s people. Uh, and I became convinced that it was

impossible. It was at that point that the student leaders said to me

that they

had, in the past, received funds for international programs

from the

CIA, and that they felt that this was important and could also be partly

funded by

the CIA.

Well-

They told me that... Well, the Ford Foundation, for instance,

told me that they

thought we were, uh, too liberal and too controversial, and

that we would endanger

their cultural programs in Austria, when the first festival was being held in

Vienna. It was not encouraging at all, and the, the private

individuals to whom I went, uh, often had, uh,

particular points of view to put forward, which would have been much, much

more restricting than, than, uh, the CIA funds were, which were free.

I mean, no one was told what to say.

What do you mean they were free? You mean to say it

was easier for you to work for

the CIA than a private organization?

That's right. That's right. And, and the, the reason I think that comes as a

surprise, as it did to me at the time, I mean, I had, uh, the conventional

liberal's view of the CIA as a right-wing incendiary group.

And I was amazed to discover that this was far

from the case, that they were enlightened, liberal, nonpartisan

activists of the sort who characterized the Kennedy administration, for instance.

You have not been working now, uh, uh, for the CIA since 1962.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, you still criticize. Uh, you were down-

Oh, yes

... recently in Washington.

Yes. When the, when the story broke that I had once been, that I had

for four years been a Central Intelligence agent, I was demonstrating

outside the Pentagon underneath Mr.

McNamara's office against bombing in Vietnam, and, uh, this

didn't precisely fit with the image of a CIA-