dinesha wrote:Pakistan hires spies for 'Project Varsha'; India's naval base to house nuclear submarines
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... ttarget=no
Do they need to when they have Indian media?
dinesha wrote:Pakistan hires spies for 'Project Varsha'; India's naval base to house nuclear submarines
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... ttarget=no
RajD wrote:Posting in full.: http://idrw.org/dont-give-info-cover-wi ... more-61399
Don’t give info, cover will be blown, former head of Army covert unit writes to Parrikar
The disbanded Technical Support Division (TSD), a covert operations unit set up during the tenure of former Army Chief General V K Singh, is back in the news with its former Commanding Officer, Colonel Hunny Bakshi, writing a letter to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar asking for a clampdown on all information on its operations in the “nation’s interests.”
The letter, dated March 1, comes against the backdrop of the ongoing General Court Martial (GCM) against Shyam Das D, the only clerk employed in the TSD who is alleged to have sold “highly sensitive operational data” and was arrested in Kochi in May 2012.
The Indian Express (June 2, 2012) had first reported the arrest of the TSD staffer and later (September 20, 2013) reported on the controversial findings of the Board of Officers inquiry headed by Lt General Vinod Bhatia.
Officials said that the GCM being held in the Delhi Cantt should conclude its hearings within a few weeks — 14 prosecution witnesses have been examined — has sent a “scare” among the 36 other staff who were working in that sensitive unit.
Bakshi, now posted in Karu in Ladakh, begins his letter by stating that the TSD was set up and based on “deniability, that is covert operations…deniability is deemed to be denied in any situation or circumstances…TSD as a unit was formally never set up because of the clause of deniability.”
Coming to the case against Das, Bakshi adds: “The Army in its exuberance will punish him but the individual will definitely move superior courts, where the evidence, that is the CDs will again be brought in for inspection of the courts and civilian lawyers.”
These CDs are the ones recovered from Das when he was intercepted by a team of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in Kochi and later handed over to military authorities (see box). First, a Court of Inquiry was held by the Army and later the ongoing Court Martial was ordered.
Bakshi has said that the CDs were treated as material evidence by the court martial based on a covering letter received from the MI-9 DGMI (director general military intelligence) after Das’s arrest. “The (court martial) will go away, but once the case is in superior courts, they will ask to confirm or deny the material in the CDs…also once the material is taken as evidence it will not be easy to deny the same of operations particularly in neighbouring countries and the same will affect the international and bilateral relations. My duty is to inform you of the likely harms upon the nations interests, which I foresee in the present state.”
To buttress his case, he has argued that all information on TSD has been denied on the floor of Parliament as
well as via the Right to Information Act in the past. “The accused will go to a superior court, wherein, the production of the evidence then cannot be refused, which if it comes to public knowledge like the secret Board of Officers report, it will become prejudicial to national security, interests and foreign affairs.”
Significantly, he also writes to the Defence Minister that, “the nation is trying to get a place in the Security Council and has an open stated policy, wherein the concept of TSD is in direct conflict on the stated position of the nation, internationally. In fact, in a citation for an award of an officer, we were asked to remove the word ‘covert’ as it is not the stated position of the country and the copy of a citation has to be given if asked through RTI.”
Bakshi has also informed the Minister that under provisions of the Indian Evidence Act (section 162) he will not answer any questions posed to him either by the prosecution or defence side in the GCM but this should not be construed as the act of an indisciplined soldier. Sources, however said, that Bakshi deposed before the GCM last week.
What the CDs have:
The over 400-page proceedings of the Court of Inquiry held against Shyam Das contain snapshots of files in the incriminating CDs recovered from him and a list of the files in the CDs. Some of the listed files are:
* The proposed command and control of TSD; organisation
* Summary of monthly payment of MI funds (2010-2011)
* Details of claims and temporatry duty of TSD officials including Col Bakshi
* Details of visits abroad; usage of post-paid mobile connections
* Details of vehicle stickers, bank statements of expenses
he Indian Ministry of Home Affairs has frozen seven bank accounts belonging to Greenpeace environmental organisation, Hindu newspaper reported on Thursday.
The move follows a report published by the Indian intelligence service, which accuseed Greenpeace and a number of other non-governmental organisations of affecting the country's development, Hindu said.
The newspaper said that the Greenpeace Indian office would not be able to get financing from overseas, which totaled $1.7 million last year.
The Greenpeace office in New Delhi told TASS that the government had not yet officially informed them about the accounts' freezing.
The Indian government has earlier repeatedly banned local Greenpeace activists from leaving the country and refused to issue visas to its foreign representatives.
On March 4, the Indian government banned 69 NGOs financed from overseas, as, according to intelligence reports, in 2014 they received more than $1.6 billion used to destablise the situation in India.
Sorry Sir, Have you bothered looking at the environmental health of the country? Whats the point of Infrastructure when your Children are going to be born deformed because of the Air you currently breath Today.are you serious ? GP has been at the forefront of throttling any infrastructure development activity in the country.
Two recently declassified Intelligence Bureau (IB) files have revealed that the Jawaharlal Nehru government spied on the kin of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for nearly two decades.
The files, which have since been moved to the National Archives, show unprecedented surveillance on Bose's family members between 1948 and 1968. Nehru was the prime minister for 16 of the 20 years and the IB reported directly to him. The files show the IB resumed British-era surveillance on the two Bose family homes in Calcutta: 1 Woodburn Park and 38/2 Elgin Road. Apart from intercepting and copying letters written by Bose's family members, agency sleuths shadowed them on their domestic and foreign travels. The agency seemed especially keen to know who all the Bose kin met and what they discussed. A series of hand-written messages shows the agents phoned in 'Security Control', as the IB headquarters was called, to report on the family's movements.
For reasons still not entirely clear, the agency focused on Netaji's nephew siblings Sisir Kumar Bose and Amiya Nath Bose. These sons of Sarat Chandra Bose were the closest to Netaji in his two decades as a Congress activist. They also wrote several letters to their aunt Emily Schenkl, Netaji's wife, in Austria. The revelations have shocked the Bose family. "Surveillance is conducted on those who have committed a crime or have terror links. Subhas babu and his family fought for India's freedom; why should be they placed under surveillance?" asks his grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose, a Kolkata-based businessman.
A classic case of red herring combined with hasty generalization.rkhanna wrote:Sorry Sir, Have you bothered looking at the environmental health of the country? ...are you serious ? GP has been at the forefront of throttling any infrastructure development activity in the country.
I dont need to. the facts remain correct in this case.rkhanna wrote:Sir, suggest you research Mr. Moore and his views and political stance..and the funding of Ecosense.
China’s government is probably behind an anonymous group that has been cyber-spying on Indian companies and officials for close to decade now, American security experts say.
The group, dubbed “APT30″ in a report published by cyber security firm FireEye on April 13, primarily targets businesses, governments and military operations in India and other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries. Other targets include South Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia—all countries China has territorial disputes with in the South China Sea.
“The malware revealed a decade-long operation focused on targets—government and commercial—who hold key political, economic, and military information about the region,” FireEye said in its report. “Such a sustained, planned development effort, coupled with the group’s regional targets and mission, lead us to believe that this activity is state sponsored—most likely by the Chinese government.” The group has been particularly active around ASEAN summits, FireEye said, and also targets journalists who cover the region.
The report comes just weeks before India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit China in May. Much of the cyber-spying done by the Chinese in India has been related to defence and military materials, FireEye said. APT30 managed to plant its malware in an Indian aerospace company as well as an Indian telecommunications firm, the report said.
“In particular, a number of spear phishing subjects have related to Indian aircraft carrier and oceanographic monitoring processes, which probably indicates a specific interest in naval and maritime themes around Indian military activity and disputes in the South China Sea,” the report said.
Spear phishing is defined by cyber security firm Kaspersky as:
An email scam with the sole purpose of obtaining unauthorised access to sensitive data. Unlike phishing scams, which cast broad, scatter-shot attacks, spear phishing hones in on a specific group or organisation. The intent is to steal intellectual property, financial data, trade or military secrets and other confidential data.
Modus operandi
Using malware nicknamed Backspace and Neteagle by FireEye, and related tools the security firm dubbed Shipshape, Spaceship and Flashflood, APT30 gains access to files across political, military, and economic affairs of various countries.
“We have observed APT30 target national governments, regionally based companies in ten industries, and members of the media who report on regional affairs and Chinese government issues,” FireEye said.
Beijing’s cyber spying activities have come under increasing scrutiny from internet security firms and foreign governments.
In 2011, cyber security firm McAfee said that a campaign called Shady Rat, which originated from China, had attacked Asian governments and institutions, among other targets. In November 2014, the US charged five Chinese military officers with cyber-spying on American companies to steal trade secrets.
In other news, water is wet.
From: namrata goswami <namygoswami@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 4:40 AM
Subject: Visit to India-China border
To: Peter Garretson
Dear Peter,
As part of my project on "International Security Audit: Great/Major
Power Cooperation or Competition in Asia" at the Institute for Defence
Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, which included a specific focus on the
Chinese territorial claim on the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and
the border dispute there, I undertook an intensive month long field
study in the claimed state as well as the India-China border areas last
month (March 2011).
I specifically focused on the state of infrastructure and military
preparedness on both sides of the India-China border; local perceptions
of the Chinese claim, the issue of Tibet and the implications of my
research findings for major power relations in Asia (read India and
China)...
I was wondering if there are possibilities of making a presentation in
Washington DC based on my findings from the field trip on "Major Power
Relations in Asia: A Case Study of India-China"; also, if there is the
possibility of a short term project on this very critical issue in a
reputed think tank in Washington DC.
I will appreciate your advice.
best
Namrata
--
Namrata Goswami
MDJC-SIJC, M'Phil-Ph.D.
Research Fellow
Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
Development Enclave-1
Delhi Cantonment (Near USI)
New Delhi---110010
India
cell--09811440306,
email-- <mailto:email--ngoswami@idsa.in> ngoswami@idsa.in
<mailto:ngoswami@idsa.in> ,namygoswami@gmail.com
website- <http://website--www.idsa.in/>
--http://www.idsa.in/profile/ngoswami
Dr. Goswami was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Washington. D.C from October 2012 to June 2013; Visiting Fellow at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (November–December 2010); the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), August 2006 to July 2010; and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Dialogue, La Trobe University, Melbourne from April to August 2009. She is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship, 2012-2013.
From: "Garretson, Peter A Lt Col MIL USAF HAF/CK"
<PeterA.Garretson@pentagon.af.mil>
Date: April 5, 2011 6:04:27 PM CDT
To: Reva Bhalla <reva.bhalla@stratfor.com>
Subject: Visit to India-China border
Something for you to stick in your quiver. Not too many people get to
make such site visits and interviews.
Frankly, you'll find analyses of this sort all the time in publicly available journals like IDSA. In reality, actual secrets pertaining to deployment & planning are.. well... secret (and not accessible to civilian analysts and PhDs from JNU). A trained intelligence operative might still garner some valuable information in guise of a private tour but the lady in question doesn't appear to have any particular skills in that respect aside from what you'd expect of any decent journalist.sivab wrote:IDSA researcher selling Arunachal border troop deployment secrets for few $$ ...
https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/39/3 ... rder-.html
Peter Garretson, Lt. Col of USAF disagrees with you. See his comments above your post.Viv S wrote:
Frankly, you'll find analyses of this sort all the time in publicly available journals like IDSA.
A Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar and a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellowship holder from the United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C.
Well the fact that Peter Garretson, Lt. Col of USAF is forwarding it to Reva Bhalla of Stratfor rather than <name redacted> of the CIA also says something of the intelligence value of the information.sivab wrote:Peter Garretson, Lt. Col of USAF disagrees with you. See his comments above your post.Viv S wrote:
Frankly, you'll find analyses of this sort all the time in publicly available journals like IDSA.
No one will publish secret details in journals, nor will journals allow someone to.
New Delhi: The Henderson Brooks Report on the 1962 India-China war will be declassified "soon" by the government, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy said after meeting Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar here.
During Swamy's meeting with the minister, the Indian strategic perspective and the necessary weapons acquisition to meet national security threats were also discussed, said a statement here.
"Parrikar told Swamy that the Henderson Brooks report on the 1962 Indo-China conflict will, with a little editing, be declassified soon," it said.
The government had last year ruled out the release of the report, saying its disclosure would not be in national interest.
"(The Henderson Brooks report) is a top secret document and has not been declassified so far. Further, release of this report, fully or partially, or disclosure of any information to this report would not be in national interest," the then Defence Minister Arun Jaitley had said in July in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.
The report, authored by the then Lt General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier PS Bhagat, was commissioned by the Indian Army following its humiliating defeat at the hands of China.
During campaigning for Lok Sabha elections, BJP had seized upon the report to slam the ruling Congress and demanded its release.
Excerpts of the military investigation that were leaked in March by an Australian journalist, who wrote a book on the war, said the government's policy of forward deployment in the high mountains had increased the chances of conflict.
BJP had then justified the demand for release of the report on the grounds that the country would know how the government pushed the military into a war it could only lose.
Parrikar also assured Swamy that the 'One Rank, One Pension' scheme to fulfil BJP's 2014 poll campaign promise would be announced during the current session of Parliament, the statement further added.
Swamy's meeting with Parrikar comes days after he raised concerns over the Rafale deal with France. He had publicly asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to ink the Rafale deal, saying there were shortcomings in the fighter aircraft.
We also have a 60000MT underground (one of the deepest in the world) LPG storage facility in Vizag since 2008.Thakur_B wrote:Not exactly intelligence related but damn, those are some impressive caverns in Vizag which we have modified for strategic oil reserves.
http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/i ... rves-80032
Link:http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/for ... as-saviourFord Foundation looks at Rajan as saviour
he Ford Foundation is lobbying to use US economic leverage over India to get the Narendra Modi government to roll back the action taken against the organisation, high-level sources in Washington and New York say.They claim that financial entities with considerable influence in India, such as Goldman Sachs (which is known to have privileged access to North Block) and Citibank (which enjoys similar privileges with the Reserve Bank of India) have been contacted by senior Foundation officials to intercede with, among others, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Arvind Subramanian, to "persuade the Modi government to drop the measures" enforced against the prestigious body, including the transfer of responsibility for clearing of foreign donations from the Ministry of Finance (which to date has yet to look askance at a request from the well-connected US funder) to the less sympathetic Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). This was done through bringing the Ford Foundation into the "Prior Reference Category" (PRC), which in fact has been the only substantive action that has been taken in the case of the Foundation. However, this limited action has been sufficient to lead to US Secretary of State John Kerry (who according to sources in Washington had a meeting with Ford Foundation president Darren Walker hours after the Indian decision was announced) instructing his spokesperson to issue a strongly-worded statement against the decision by the Government of India. Soon after the rebuke from the State Department, the head of another major US-based foundation was sent back from Delhi airport after being refused permission to enter this country, in a message that Team Modi would not buckle to pressure the way the Manmohan Singh government was frequently accused of doing.
Sources in New York claim that the Ford-friendly US envoy to the United Nations, Samantha Power, has been lobbying hectically on behalf of Ford to get the UN Secretary-General to join the State Department in condemning India, although thus far, criticism from this quarter has been absent. However, six Senators are known to have interceded on behalf of the Foundation with the Obama administration, leading to open pressure from US envoy Richard Verma. Sources in Delhi say that the shift of the Ford Foundation to the Prior Reference Category is hardly a punishment. It must be added that the Ford Foundation has over the decades assisted several socially worthwhile projects, including several schemes under the Green Revolution of the 1960s, although in recent years it has focused less on such nation-building projects than on others which are societally interventionist on the model followed in Venezuela, Egypt and elsewhere.
Those close to Ford are in full battle cry, accusing the BJP government of "harassment of civil society" through a "crackdown" on NGOs. Lack of a structured communications strategy by Team Modi has thus far obscured the fact that only 16 of more than 35,000 FCRA (Foreign Contributions Regulation Act)-registered NGOs having around 3,000 foreign donors are in the Prior Reference Category (PRC). The impression sought to be created is that instead of acting in the matter of just 0.5% of the 3,000 foreign NGOs operating in India, the PRC condition has been imposed on an overwhelming number of such entities. Greenpeace is another agency that had escaped serious governmental scrutiny during the Manmohan Singh decade, but which has now been held to account for seeking to fund activities designed to block production of essential minerals in India in order to promote their import from Canada and Australia. These countries, whose nationals are active in the higher reaches of Greenpeace, are earning billions of dollars each year from exporting minerals such as iron ore, coal and now uranium to India, minerals that are in plentiful supply in this country, but which NGOs and their UPA allies had thus far prevented from getting extracted, and who are on track to earn much more in a context where China is cutting back on its purchases.
A prominent donee of the Ford Foundation has been Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who got a monthly scholarship of Rs 30,000 during 2004-7 from the US-based Ashoka Foundation, and who was given the Magsaysay Award, which is directly funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Kejriwal had also received $400,000 in 2006 and again in 2009, while references to a third grant of $200,000 in 2011 seem to have been removed from the Foundation's website, perhaps owing to the possibility that it may have gotten linked to the street protests organised during that period on the lines of those in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries (which too received substantial funding from US-based entities that had close links with then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton). Interestingly, several politicians in India drawn from across the political spectrum have ties to such organisations, which is why it would be inaccurate to single out Arvind Kejriwal in this context.
Interestingly, the Ford Foundation now appears to have tasked a former employee, Amitabh Behar, to create a network of NGOs across India under the "Wada Na Todo" (Don't Break Promises) slogan. Behar has taken over the well-regarded National Foundation of India (NFI), and according to sources in Delhi, has received over $7 million from Ford, besides significant amounts from the MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations for expanding his activities into directions that appear to veer into the political, exactly as they did in the case of some other donees of the Ford Foundation, especially in Gujarat, a state which seems to have been on the radar of several organisations during 2002-2013. Such a network would have the capability to launch within weeks "independent and spontaneous" agitations on the lines desired by donor agencies, and can therefore get used whenever there is a disconnect between the wishes of the governments backing such foreign NGOs and the Government of India. Extensive networking in media and even within government has added to the power of these agencies to channel public opinion in ways seen by their principals as beneficial to their interests.
Over the past decade, assisted by friends in politics and in the administration, identity issues have been the predominant concern of such foundations, which have collectively lavished funds on projects designed to separate into mutually exclusive compartments, religious and social groups in India. They have focused on projects involving race issues, religion and the alleged discriminatory treatment of particular sections, encouraging its donees to separate different segments of society from each other and to create a sense of victimhood in them. Had David Cameron been the Prime Minister of India, he would have received a rebuke from the Department of State (not to mention the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, that is USCIRF) for saying that his country was "Christian", or Barack Obama for the frequency with which he turns to the Bible in public, a freedom regarded as regressive in the case of Narendra Modi talking about the Bhagavad Gita, despite the fact that the Gita is, in the view of many, a classic of ancient India even as it is regarded by many as a religious text.
Given the small number of funding organisations affected by the PRC, and the fact that the Modi government is in no mood to back down in the face of pressure from within the country and outside, it would appear that Ford and other foundations may need to tread more carefully in domestic politics than has been the case thus far. "A small group of interested individuals ought not to hold India-US relations to ransom by demanding immunity", a senior official said, adding that "there needs to be mutual respect for policy autonomy in each country and this is missing when even routine bureaucratic decisions get impugned in such a sharp way". He ended by pointing out that "India will have a lot to say in future about such (US administration) inanities and insanities as the slapping of Super 301 or the USCIRF report under the pressure of big donors to political campaigns".
Could you clarify why this is 'transparently obvious'? It is not, to me, and would like to know what I am missing. In fact, I am thinking that this is the most detailed MSM article about these people's shenanigans.The Ford Foundation is lobbying to use US economic leverage over India to get the Narendra Modi government to roll back the action taken against the organisation, high-level sources in Washington and New York say.They claim that financial entities with considerable influence in India, such as Goldman Sachs (which is known to have privileged access to North Block) and Citibank (which enjoys similar privileges with the Reserve Bank of India) have been contacted by senior Foundation officials to intercede with, among others, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Arvind Subramanian, to "persuade the Modi government to drop the measures" enforced against the prestigious body, including the transfer of responsibility for clearing of foreign donations from the Ministry of Finance (which to date has yet to look askance at a request from the well-connected US funder) to the less sympathetic Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
In addition to being short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award upon publication in 2000, Frances Stonor Saunders's The Cultural Cold War was met with the kind of attention reserved for books that directly hit a cultural nerve. Impassioned reviews and features in major publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have consistently praised Saunders's detailed knowledge of the CIA's covert operations. The Cultural Cold War presents for the first time shocking evidence of cultural manipulation during the Cold War. This "impressively detailed" (Kirkus Reviews) book draws together newly declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA's astonishing campaign wherein some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom became instruments of the American government. Those involved included George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Gloria Steinem. The result is "a tale of intrigue and betrayal, with scene after scene as thrilling as any in a John Le Carré novel" (The Chronicle of Higher Education).8 pages of black-and-white photographs
It is well known that the CIA funded right-wing intellectuals after World War II; fewer know that it also courted individuals from the center and the left in an effort to turn the intelligentsia away from communism and toward an acceptance of "the American way." Frances Stonor Saunders sifts through the history of the covert Congress for Cultural Freedom in The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. The book centers on the career of Michael Josselson, the principal intellectual figure in the operation, and his eventual betrayal by people who scapegoated him. Sanders demonstrates that, in the early days, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the emergent CIA were less dominated by the far right than they later became, and that the idea of helping out progressive moderates--rather than being Machiavellian--actually appealed to the men at the top.
Many intellectuals were still drawn to Stalin's Russia. Saunders superbly traces the crisis of conscience that McCarthyism and its associated book-burning caused, and the subsequent rise of more moderate ideals. This exhaustive account, despite neglecting some important side issues, is an essential book. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
An impressively detailed, eye-opening study by film producer Saunders of the CIAs clandestine sponsorship of artists and intellectuals during the Cold War. Using interviews and archival data (taken mostly from sources outside the CIA, who routinely ignored her requests under the Freedom of Information Act), Saunders pieces together an elaborate network of CIA money-laundering schemes that funded cultural organizations opposed to communism. Starting with black accounts siphoned off from the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s, Saunders details how the CIA created or used nonprofit organizations such as the Ford Foundation to funnel millions of dollars to institutions like the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its affiliated programs. While few will be shocked that conservatives like Irving Kristol participated in CIA-backed projects, laymen will be surprised at how the Boston Symphony Orchestra and various abstract expressionist painters (via the Museum of Modern Art under Nelson Rockefeller, its president and an adviser to Eisenhower) benefitted from this largesse. At times the high volume of data and personalities muddies the story, and one would expect more cloak-and-dagger spy stories in such an exhaustive study, but thankfully Saunders does address the crucial issue her subject raisesnamely, the consequences of intellectuals accepting money (consciously or unconsciously) from political sources. She pays considerable attention to old controversies, such as (CIA-backed) Encounters refusal to publish an article by its former editor Dwight Macdonald, and Conor Cruise OBriens attack on the same journal for its disavowed but evident American boosterism. She can also make the CIA appear enlightened, as when she describes how the Ivy Leaguers of the Agency supported leftist artists over the objections of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the end, however, Saunders has little tolerance for state-sponsored thinkers. She concludes that when, in the late 1960s, the artists and writers involved in CIA projects began denying rumors of their patrons background, they were (in words taken from an interview) crummy liars. An illuminating investigation that will surprise general readers and aid scholars and students.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
. . . the center of western culture is no longer in Europe. It is in America. It is we who are the arbiters of its future and its immense responsibilities are ours.
—John Peale Bishop, 1941
Modernism itself became a weapon in what has become known as the "Cultural Cold War." In the early 1950s, the most important battlegrounds of this war were the sympathies of influential leftist Western European intellectuals, the vast majority of whom scorned what they saw as the U.S.'s shallow, business-dominated culture and its "Coca-Colonization" of the rest of the world but who were also leery of Stalinist authoritarianism and militarism. To these Europeans, American culture was Mickey Mouse and cowboy movies at best and malevolent military-imperialist power at worst. In response, the United States—primarily through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States Information Agency (USIA), and the cultural officers of the State Department—undertook an effort to "increase cultural understanding" between Europe and itself, an effort centered on the construction of an image of the U.S. with an intellectual and cultural life equal to, and in dialogue with, Europe's, an image which the U.S. then aggressively marketed to those skeptical European leftists. Nongovernmental agencies, too, joined the Cultural Cold War, sometimes with official support and funding and sometimes completely independently. The best known of the unofficial groups (largely because of the spectacular revelations of its covert CIA sponsorship) is certainly the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which brought together American and European noncommunist leftists in symposia, conferences, and several journals, most notably Encounter. But as many scholars have shown, there were dozens of other nongovernmental projects dedicated to "increasing cultural understanding" between the U.S. and Europe through such programs as academic exchanges, the distribution of books and films and artworks abroad, and tours by American musicians.