the cultural cold w ar

530 Pages·2015·1.64 MB·English

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THE
NEW
PRESS

The Cultural
Cold War
The CIA and the
World of Arts and Letters
FRANCES STONOR SAUNDERS
© 1999 by Frances Stonor Saunders
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written
permission from the publisher.
Originally published in the United Kingdom under the title Who Paid
the Piper? by Granta Publications, 1999
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2000
Distributed by W. W. Norton &c Company, Inc., New York
ISBN 1-56584-596-X (he.)
CIP data available
The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to
the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book
publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather
than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative
ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are
often deemed insufficiently profitable.
The New Press, 450 West 41st Street, 6th floor, New York, NY 10036
www.thenewpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
987654321
‘What fate or fortune led
Thee down into this place, ere thy last day?
Who is it that thy steps hath piloted?’
‘Above there in the clear world on my way,’
I answered him, ‘lost in a vale of gloom,
Before my age was full, I went astray.’
Dante’s Inferno, Canto XV
I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered every where.
William Congreve, Love for Love

Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction 1
1 Exquisite Corpse 7
2 Destiny’s Elect 32
3 Marxists at the Waldorf 45
4 Democracy’s Deminform 57
5 Crusading’s the Idea 73
6 ‘Operation Congress’ 85
7 Candy 105
8 Cette Fête Américaine 113
9 The Consortium 129
10 The Truth Campaign 146
11 The New Consensus 157
12 Magazine ‘X’ 165
13 The Holy Willies 190
14 Music and Truth, ma non troppo 213
15 Ransom’s Boys 234
vi Contents
16 Yanqui Doodles 252
17 The Guardian Furies 279
18 When Shrimps Learn to Whistle 302
19 Achilles’ Heel 314
20 Cultural NATO 327
21 Caesar of Argentina 344
22 Pen Friends 359
23 Literary Bay of Pigs 369
24 View from the Ramparts 381
25 That Sinking Feeling 391
26 A Bad Bargain 407
Epilogue 417
Notes and Sources 428
Select Bibliography 476
Index 481
Acknowledgements
Writing this book has been a prolonged act of vagrancy, as I
have dragged my unsightly luggage chain of tatty boxes and
files from place to place. For their kindness in taking me in,
together with this caravan of archival loot, and offering me the
chance to work undisturbed, I wish to thank Elizabeth
Cartwright-Hignett, Frank Dabell, Nick Hewer; Eartha Kitt,
Hermione Labron-Johnson, and Claudia and Marcello Salom.
To Ann Pasternak Slater and Craig Raine, I owe special grati­
tude for their constant support and solid faith. Through them,
I met Ben Sonnenberg in New York, and for that flourishing
and (on Ben’s part) erudite friendship, I am indebted. Ann
Pasternak Slater also helped ease my passage by writing a letter
of recommendation which, but for her own generous embel­
lishments, followed my draft with uncanny precision. Carmen
Callil’s support was acquired late into the writing of this book,
but counts as a powerful source of inspiration on account of its
sheer and unqualified confidence at a time when I had all but
lost my own. Jay Weissberg was an invaluable help: as an his­
torian of film, I have yet to meet his equal in scholarship and
breadth of knowledge. Further gratitude is extended to those
viii Acknowledgements
who became partners in a project which had its share of mis­
adventures, but who stayed for the bumpy ride without losing
their sense of humour: my editor Neil Belton, my agent Felicity
Rubinstein, everyone at Granta Books, copy editor Jane
Robertson, Jeremy Bugler, Tony Cash, Tony Carew, Lawrence
Simanowitz, André Schiffrin at The New Press, and Melvin
Wulf at Beldock, Levine & Hoffman. For their capacious
friendship and extraordinarily elastic patience, I am grateful
beyond words to Madonna Benjamin, Zoë Heller, Conrad
Roeber, Domitilla Ruffo, Roger Thornham and Michael
Wylde. But for my mother, Julia Stonor, and my brother,
Alexander Stonor Saunders, life outside of this book would
have run into a cul-de-sac. For their encouragement, loving
support, and endless propping up, I offer them shamelessly
hyperbolic thanks and the dedication of this book.
When I started researching the cultural Cold War, I had high
hopes of benefiting from America’s Freedom of Information
Act. It is certainly the case that many previously classified gov­
ernment documents have been released to researchers under
this Act, and recent studies of the FBI have been greatly
enriched as a result. But retrieving documentation from the
CIA is another matter. My initial request to them of 1992 has
yet to be answered. A subsequent application was acknowl­
edged, though I was warned that the total cost for supplying
the records I had requested would be in the region of $30,000.
However, as the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator
went on to explain that the chances of my application being
successfully processed were virtually nil, I had little to worry
about. The Freedom of Information Act is much vaunted by
British historians, who indeed face far greater challenges in
researching material relating to the defence of this realm. But
its application, at least as far as the CIA is concerned, is lam­
entable. Compensating for this is the wealth of documentation
existing in private collections. Historically, successive American
administrations have spread into the private sector. In the Cold
War period especially, American foreign policy was shared
between government departments and a kind of consortium of
freelance, quasi-governmental figures and institutions. It is this
balkanization, even of clandestine or covert operations, which