The secret wars of the CIA

[Ray]

Brzezinski was more deadly than Kissinger.

 

[bengalraider]

I've been reading "ghost wars" by Steve Coll for some days now and what I've learnt is that the CIA are hardly the supervillians/omnipotent beings some of us would make them out to be. the CIA is just as tied up with congressional briefings and paperwork as say the environmental protection agency, there is a lot of infighting for men and resources and departmental politics and the personal & professional relation shared between the DCI and POTUS often have as much impact in american policy implementation as hard intel. The CIA has suffered budget cuts and HUMINT losses, they have been taken for wild goose shases by unscruplous operators in Pakistan and elsewhere(the TRODPINT teams in Afghanistan being a case in point). True the CIA has been part and parcel of some of the most audacious and downright despicable military imperialist campaignsin the 20th and 21st centuries but then so have all of it's competitors(remember that as i say this i stress that the CIA acted relative to the strength military and economic of the united states).Yes the CIA has killed but then in the world of international espionage who hasn't? We conveniently forget that Espionage is a dirty business where it's often kill or be killed,where everything goes! nothing is unfair.

 

[amoy]

A Tangled Web: CIA, Crusade for Freedom and Radio Free Asia*

In previous articles, we have looked at two Cold War broadcasting entities Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) in Germany, which were described as two successful Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "covert operations." Below, we will look at one of the CIA's "unsuccessful covert operations": Radio Free Asia (RFA).

A 1990 Secret CIA Report gave some insight into RFA's establishment as a "private body":

'The Committee for Free Asia' in 1951, sanctioned by the National Security Council and with the knowledge of Congressional Oversight Committees, supported by covert indirect CIA funding, the Committee had been created to help find ways to contain and expand private U.S. contact and communication with people of Asia following the establishment of Communist regimes in China and North Korea. The emphasis was on a private instrumentality that would be privately governed and would have the freedom and flexibility to do things the government would like to see done but which it chose not to do or could not do directly as well.

Committee for a Free Asia and Radio Free Asia Established

On March 12, 1951 the articles of incorporation of the Committee for a Free Asia (CFA), were filed with the California Office of Secretary of State. Brayton Wilbur, an import-export executive in San Francisco, was its first chairman. In announcing the creation of the Committee for a Free Asia, Wilbur said, "The people of Asia must have more of the facts about the suffering that follows Communist aggression. They must also be shown alternative to communism."

In the forward to CFA's "Prospectus" issued in May 1951, Brayton Wilbur wrote,

The purpose of this Committee is to establish channels of direct communication between the people of Asia and the people of the free world everywhere. Through those channels an exchange of thoughts, the hopes and the inspirations of the people of Asia with the people of America and Europe can weld a union of free men which will roll back the dark forces of Soviet imperialism.

Committee for Free Asia offices were set up in San Francisco and New York. Similar to the National Committee for a Free Europe, the Committee for a Free Asia would not "engage in carrying or propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation."

On May 2, 1951, General Lucius D. Clay, National Chairman of the Crusade for Freedom, announced two goals for the second annual Crusade campaign: enrollment of 25 million Americans and public contributions of $3,500,00 to build two more "freedom" stations in Europe and begin the construction Radio Free Asia.

The Advertising Council put out a Crusade for Freedom fact sheet for the American media, in which Radio Free Asia was mentioned in some detail: "Although it is patterned generally after the National Committee for a Free Europe, there are substantial differences because of the more complex pattern of national viewpoints across the Pacific, and because of the different pattern of Red Aggression in Asia. For one thing, CFA is not only engaged in fighting Communism where it has already seized control, but is also waging a preventive battle to keep Kremlin doctrine from spreading to other Eastern nations."

Radio Free Asia Begins Broadcasting

On September 4, 1951, at 6:30 a.m. local time, Radio Free Asia began live broadcasting on a test basis from a rented studio in the commercial radio station KNBC, downtown San Francisco (it was 10:30 p.m. in China). After the sound of a bronze gong being struck three times and music from Mahler's "Song of the Earth," the first broadcast began with these words in Mandarin Chinese, "This is Radio Free Asia...the voice of free men speaking to the people of Asia."

The initial programs of news and commentary were at first 90 minutes long and divided into three segments in Mandarin, Cantonese and English languages. They programs were broadcast via a leased wire RCA short-wave to Manila, Philippines and from there to China via a directional short wave antenna.

John W. Elwood, the first director of Radio Free Asia was quoted by Time magazine on September 17, 1951, as saying "Because we have no government ties, we can say anything we damn please." Time told its readers, "Like its sister organization, Radio Free Europe, R.F.A. was founded by a group of private U.S. citizens who feel that the Voice of America, though effective in its way, is sometimes hampered because of "good & sufficient reasons of national policy."

The symbol chosen for Radio Free Asia was a replica of a wooden Asian bell with the slogan "Let Freedom Ring." Radio Free Asia broadcasts were expanded to three hours in December 1951 and a third Chinese dialect, Hakka, was added to the broadcast languages.

There was an extraordinary meeting of CIA and the U.S. State Department leadership on November 21, 1951, in the home of State Department official Edward W. Barrett, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and an early member of the National Committee for Free Europe. Representing the CIA, were Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, Lloyd, Deputy Chief, Psychological Staff Division, and Tom Braden, Chief, International Branch, Psychological Division, OPC.

One of the items on which the attendees agreed was that "Radio Free Asia would undergo no further expansion until the future course of the Committee for Free Asia had been settled in a manner satisfactory to both CIA and State." The CIA's Tom Braden said, "RFA is staying right there where it is until they are given further orders."





In March 1953, The Central Intelligence Agency reviewed Radio Free Asia's broadcasting operation and decided to stop broadcasting.

Present broadcasts are on a week (10 k.w.) signal, which cannot regularly be heard anywhere in Asia. Although the broadcasts are not heard, they have served a real purpose in that production of them has enabled RFA to build an especially efficient staff, about half of it Chinese. However, CFA has proposed for some time that it be equipped with facilities, which provide a stronger signal, and is now urging that this be done of the broadcasts be terminated. It is clear that further expenditures for programs that are not heard can no longer be justified simply in terms of training.

RFA's international broadcasts to Mainland China and the Chinese in Southeast Asia are not now reaching the target areas. Either sufficiently powerful transmitting facilities should be provided or the broadcasts should cease.

The decision was made to cancel Radio Free Asia: on April 15, Brayon Wilbur told the press that on April 30, 1953, Radio Free Asia broadcasts were to be replaced with,

Other means of communicating with Asian peoples. The committee feels that short-wave broadcasting is not longer as effective as other committee activities have been developed. The Committee planned to concentrate on assisting national radio stations in Far East Countries rather than doing the broadcasting from San Francisco.

Wilbur added, "The committee's operations in the Far East include opening anti-Communist bookstores, producing films, books and magazines, establishing youth centers and helping Oriental youths to get education."

Creation of the Asia Foundation in 1954

The Committee for Free Asia held a special meeting August 6, 1954 in San Francisco and resolved to,

Amend the articles of incorporation, and change the name from the Committee for a Free Asia, Inc., to the Asia Foundation.

Through trial and error, we began discarding same of our original concepts that did not fully satisfy American objectives in meeting the aspirations of the peoples of Asia. For example, "We found that our initial and heavy reliance on some types of' informational programs did little to foster constructive work in Asia and were unfavorably regarded by many Asians. As a specific instance, we terminated the activities of Radio Free Asia in 1953.

The amended articles of incorporation, including importantly the change of name to The Asia Foundation, should dispel some Asian suspicions that we direct primarily a propaganda or Cold War agency. Furthermore, the changes should soothe the sensibilities of' many individual Asians and some Asian governments who have been disturbed by the phrase "Free Asia" and who felt the word "committee" had the connotation of being some*thing temporary, a stop-gap organization with short-term policies that would likely fade away.

According to the CIA 1990 report, "The Foundation was funded from its inception through trusts and other foundations, which in turn were funded by the CIA. Its activities were not, however, used for covert intelligence operations." In 1967, it was revealed in Ramparts magazine in the United States that, "The Asia Foundation had been receiving the major parts of its funding from CIA." President Lyndon Johnson directed that the CIA's covert funding be terminated.

Today, the Asia Foundation is a "private, non-profit, non-governmental organization committed to the development of a peaceful, prosperous, just, and open Asia-Pacific region." With headquarters in San Francisco, there are 18 offices throughout Asia. The Foundation supports programs in Asia that, "help improve governance, law, and civil society; women's empowerment; economic reform and development; and international relations."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The original Radio Free Asia has no connection to the current U.S. government supported Radio Free Asia, which began broadcasting on September 29, 1996, into China in Mandarin. Today, funded with a grant from the U.S. Congress to conduct surrogate broadcasting, the second Radio Free Asia continues to broadcast to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma as "a private, nonprofit corporation that broadcasts news and information to listeners in Asian countries where full, accurate, and timely news reports are unavailable."

*This article is extracted from my presentation on the same theme at the 16th Annual Conference of the International Intelligence History Association (IIHA), Germany, April 23-25, 2010.


Author of Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 (2009) and Radio Free Europe's 'Crusade for Freedom': Rallying Americans Behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950-1960 (2010), Richard H Cummings has, to say the least an interesting background - for example he served as West European Director of Security and gives presentations at numerous international academic conferences such as the 2009 Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: Successful CIA Covert Operations in the Cold War CIA & US Foreign Policy Conference, UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies in Dublin, Ireland.
Read more about Richard »


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Comments

0 # Richard Cummings 2010-04-13 18:37
In late 1951, in addition to the CIA and State Department, the Advertising Council leadership was doubtful about continuing an advertising campaign for Committee for a Free Asia and Radio Free Asia:

Consideration must be given to our relationship, if any in 1952 to Committee for Free Asia. In 1951, when CFA got organized (with funds supplied by NCFE, as recited in CFA's prospectus, Crusade raised its stated goal from $3 to $3 ½ million to get Radio Free Asia started. This was done largely in deference to the attitude on the West Coast, which tends still to be oriented more towards Asia than toward Europe. This association with RFA doubtless was advantages to Crusade on the Coast, even though we could speak of RFA in only the vaguest terms (it did not begin its broadcasts until September and when it did do so the explosion was inaudible).

The advantage to the Crusade of having RFA on its team to round out the feeling of a world fight against Communism presumably remains the same.

Over against this is the possible danger of the Crusade being associated in the public mind with an organization with which it has no close association. There is no discoverable body of opinion in CFF/RFE/NCFE, which holds that RFA or it corporate parent, CFA knows what it's doing or is going about it wisely or adeptly

The problem of Communism (and combating it) in Asia is considerably different from that in Europe, strategically and philosophically (as anyone reading Charles Malik's recent LIFE article is likely to be persuaded) –let alone tactically. It solves no problem to recite this fact to our West Coast friends as a reason why "we" (RFE) don't add a transmitter aimed at China. Committee for Free Asia is an established fact. It has prestige on the Coast by reason of its membership. But so far no word of its doings has come to our attention, which spells large accomplishment.

 

[ajtr]

Modern art was CIA 'weapon'​

Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War

By Frances Stonor Saunders

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- com- munists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the "long leash" - arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.

The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.

The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up under Tom Braden. It was this office which subsidised the animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, which sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's international touring programme. Its agents were placed in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers for the celebrated Fodor guides. And, we now know, it promoted America's anarchic avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism.

Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled "Advancing American Art", with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: "I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash." The tour had to be cancelled.

The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy's hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.

The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.

Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.

"Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I'd love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!" he joked. "But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.

"In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another."

To pursue its underground interest in America's lefty avant-garde, the CIA had to be sure its patronage could not be discovered. "Matters of this sort could only have been done at two or three removes," Mr Jameson explained, "so that there wouldn't be any question of having to clear Jackson Pollock, for example, or do anything that would involve these people in the organisation. And it couldn't have been any closer, because most of them were people who had very little respect for the government, in particular, and certainly none for the CIA. If you had to use people who considered themselves one way or another to be closer to Moscow than to Washington, well, so much the better perhaps."

This was the "long leash". The centrepiece of the CIA campaign became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a vast jamboree of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists which was set up with CIA funds in 1950 and run by a CIA agent. It was the beach-head from which culture could be defended against the attacks of Moscow and its "fellow travellers" in the West. At its height, it had offices in 35 countries and published more than two dozen magazines, including Encounter.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom also gave the CIA the ideal front to promote its covert interest in Abstract Expressionism. It would be the official sponsor of touring exhibitions; its magazines would provide useful platforms for critics favourable to the new American painting; and no one, the artists included, would be any the wiser.

This organisation put together several exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950s. One of the most significant, "The New American Painting", visited every big European city in 1958-59. Other influential shows included "Modern Art in the United States" (1955) and "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (1952).

Because Abstract Expressionism was expensive to move around and exhibit, millionaires and museums were called into play. Pre-eminent among these was Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother had co-founded the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As president of what he called "Mummy's museum", Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called "free enterprise painting"). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organise and curate most of its important art shows.

The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Paley, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members' board of the museum's International Programme. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency's wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA's International Organisations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.

Now in his eighties, Mr Braden lives in Woodbridge, Virginia, in a house packed with Abstract Expressionist works and guarded by enormous Alsatians. He explained the purpose of the IOD.

"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."

He confirmed that his division had acted secretly because of the public hostility to the avant-garde: "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."

If this meant playing pope to this century's Michelangelos, well, all the better: "It takes a pope or somebody with a lot of money to recognise art and to support it," Mr Braden said. "And after many centuries people say, 'Oh look! the Sistine Chapel, the most beautiful creation on Earth!' It's a problem that civilisation has faced ever since the first artist and the first millionaire or pope who supported him. And yet if it hadn't been for the multi-millionaires or the popes, we wouldn't have had the art."

Would Abstract Expressionism have been the dominant art movement of the post-war years without this patronage? The answer is probably yes. Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that when you look at an Abstract Expressionist painting you are being duped by the CIA.

But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries. For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded.

* The full story of the CIA and modern art is told in 'Hidden Hands' on Channel 4 next Sunday at 8pm. The first programme in the series is screened tonight. Frances Stonor Saunders is writing a book on the cultural Cold War.

Covert Operation

In 1958 the touring exhibition "The New American Painting", including works by Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and others, was on show in Paris. The Tate Gallery was keen to have it next, but could not afford to bring it over. Late in the day, an American millionaire and art lover, Julius Fleischmann, stepped in with the cash and the show was brought to London.

The money that Fleischmann provided, however, was not his but the CIA's. It came through a body called the Farfield Foundation, of which Fleischmann was president, but far from being a millionaire's charitable arm, the foundation was a secret conduit for CIA funds.

So, unknown to the Tate, the public or the artists, the exhibition was transferred to London at American taxpayers' expense to serve subtle Cold War propaganda purposes. A former CIA man, Tom Braden, described how such conduits as the Farfield Foundation were set up. "We would go to somebody in New York who was a well-known rich person and we would say, 'We want to set up a foundation.' We would tell him what we were trying to do and pledge him to secrecy, and he would say, 'Of course I'll do it,' and then you would publish a letterhead and his name would be on it and there would be a foundation. It was really a pretty simple device."

Julius Fleischmann was well placed for such a role. He sat on the board of the International Programme of the Museum of Modern Art in New York - as did several powerful figures close to the CIA.