Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955

384 Pages·1992·26.06 MB·English

by  Sigmund Diamond

Compromised Campus
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Compromised Campus
THE COLLABORATION OF UNIVERSITIES WITH
THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY, 1945-1955
Sigmund Diamond
New York • Oxford • OXFORD UNIVERISTY PRESS • 1992
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
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and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1992 by Sigmund Diamond
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Diamond, Sigmund.
Compromised campus: The collaboration of universities
with the intelligence community, 1945—1955 / Sigmund Diamond.
p. cm. ISBN 0-19-505382-6
1. Political crimes and offenses—United States—Investigation—History—20th century.
2. United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
3. Higher education and state—United States-—History—20th century.
4. Academic freedom—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
HV6285.D53 1992
364.1'31—dc20 91-15668
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To My Grandchildren
Susannah and Rebecca and Sarah
Let me tell you why I had to write this history:
THOSE WHO UNDERTAKE to write histories . . . take that trouble
. . . for many reasons . . . ; some of them . . . to show their
great skill in composition . . . : but others there are, who of ne-
cessity . . . are driven to write history, because they were con-
cerned in the facts, and so cannot excuse themselves from com-
mitting them to writing, for the advantage of posterity; nay, there
are not a few who are induced to draw their historical facts out
of darkness into light, and to produce them for the benefit of the
public, on account of the great importance of the facts themselves
with which they have been concerned. Now of these several rea-
sons for writing history, I must profess the last two were my own
reasons.
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS,
Antiquities of the Jews
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Acknowledgments
ONCE WHEN I was a graduate student the room in which I took my final
examination in a course on Westward Expansion was also being used
for the final in another course. The instructor for the other course had
been, years before, a college classmate of mine. We had not seen each
other for many years; while we were talking he spotted the teacher of
my Westward Expansion course and introduced me to him. Harvard
courses were very large, and there was no guarantee that students and
teachers knew each other at all. On being introduced to me, my teacher,
Frederick Merk, who was the kindest of men, said, "Of course I know
Mr. Diamond. He and I collaborate in giving the course." My part of
the collaboration consisted, on the invitation of Mr. Merk who knew
that I needed the money and was taking the course anyway, in showing
slides, drawing the blinds, and opening the windows to reduce 8:30 a.m.
sleepiness. When, in later years, I came to know Mr. Merk better I re-
alized that he was not being kind; that was the way he looked at the
world and at work—all who helped were collaborators.
I have another memory. On the mosaic floor of an ancient synagogue
in Jericho there is a Hebrew inscription that, in translation, runs roughly
as follows: "It is not necessary to record here the names of those who
built this place. God knows who they are." Perhaps God does, but I
should like my readers to know who my collaborators have been.
Three young attorneys gave me legal advice from the very start and
did the work, at no cost to me, that was necessary to bring a suit against
the FBI in the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York. I
am forever grateful to Thomas Daugherty, Helen Hershkoff, and Ste-
viii Acknowledgments
phen M. Diamond, my son, for the advice and encouragement they gave
and for the work they did. In the years that followed Steve gave more
than legal advice; he listened to my argument and provided perspective
and information that saved me from errors and taught me things I had
not known. The legal work on my case was taken over by the distin-
guished firm of White and Case, who accepted me as a client pro bono;
I am grateful to the firm, to Ms. Dorothea Regal, and, above all, to
Halliburton Fales II, who gave the help I needed.
The research was not inexpensive; there were the costs of reproduc-
ing the documents, court costs, postage, and the like. I greatly benefited
from grants given by the following organizations and persons: the Co-
lumbia Council for Research in the Social Sciences; the Office of the
Vice-President for the Arts and Sciences, Columbia University; the Fund
for Investigative Journalism; William H. Ferry and Carole Bernstein Ferry.
Mr. and Mrs. Ferry were also generous in the moral support they gave;
I want them to know how much it was appreciated.
A number of libraries gave permission to use documents in their
custody, and so did the heirs of persons who left their papers to these
libraries. I wish to thank the staffs of the following: the Harvard Law
School Library and the Nathan M. Pusey Archives; Special Collections
and Central Files, Columbia University; the Oral History Collection,
Columbia University; the Yale University Archives and Library; Dart-
mouth College Library; the Carnegie Corporation; the University of Texas
Library; the Waterford, Connecticut, public library. I am grateful also
to the heirs of the late Grenville Clark and Merle Fainsod.
Some of the material in this book originally appeared in different
form in journals and other publications, and I record my indebtedness
to them: The American Quarterly, The History of Political Thought, La-
bor History, The Midwestern Archivist, The Nation, The New York Review
of Books, Our Right to Know (Fund for Open Information and Account-
ability), the Historical Society of Israel and the Zalman Shazar Center
for Jewish History, and Temple University Press.
A great many persons talked, listened, typed, tracked down clues,
interceded for me, and helped in countless ways:
Dora Arenas, Yehoshua Arieli, Joellyn Ausanka, the late Robert R.
Brookhart, Jonathan Cole, India Cooper, Esther Davis, the late Herbert
A. Deane, Dr. Betty Diamond, Barbara Goodwin, Harold Goodwin,
Shirley Hazzard, Haggai Hurvitz, the late Herbert H. Hyman, Marion
Jemmott, David S. Landes, Sonia Landes, Dr. Edgar Leifer, John Loh-
mann, Sheldon Meyer, the late Edith Nagel, the late Ernest Nagel, Vic-
tor Navasky, Charles O'Connell, the late Hubert O'Gorman, Servando
Ortoll, Marshall Perlin, David Sacks, Eleanor Sacks, Dr. Leon Salzman,
Clara Shapiro, Robert Silvers, Peter Temin, Athan Theoharis, Adam
Acknowledgments ix
Ulam, Dr. Bruce Volpe, Mary Wamby, Marlene Warshawsky, Zvi Yav-
etz, and Viviana Zelizer. And, of course, my students at Columbia and
Tel-Aviv Universities; they listened, and I think some heard.
My greatest debt is to Shirley. It began long before the ten years of
labor on this book; it started forty-eight years ago in Detroit. If what this
book has dealt with comes out of my life, it comes out of hers as well.
Think when man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.