A Piece from My Take on Communism; from The White Fence

[ From my book The White Fence]

"Aside from an occasional mention of the time that the FBI came to visit Dad in his studio to ask him if he knew any Communist sympathizers, and the occasional references to certain people possibly being (not in a bad way) “Commies” or “Red,” I didn’t give much thought to the possibility of leftists in our local art and intellectual scene being involved in any international intrigue. My only real concern was that I, personally, and my parents, not be labeled anything too threatening or dangerous by the local populace. 

"I didn’t know, for instance (and neither did any American who wasn’t an insider), that the CIA had originally intended to set Clement Greenberg up with a Paris literary journal, but decided to back Peter Matthiessen and The Paris Review instead. I didn’t know that while Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, son of Aga Khan III, was thought to be publisher of The Paris Review, that the money really was funneled through Saddrudin from the CIA.

"In 1967 The Saturday Evening Post, as well as the magazine Ramparts, reported on the CIA’s funding of “a number” of anti-Stalinist cultural organizations aimed at winning the support of Soviet sympathizing liberals world-wide. These were articles written by people within the intelligence system itself. 

" “A number” doesn’t quite cover it. The Congress for Cultural Freedom subsequently re-named The International Association for Cultural Freedom had its genesis in the minds of the heads of the CIA, going back as far as the Frankfort School, originally spawned to promote an American conceived de-Nazification agenda. The Congress was founded in 1950 at a conference in Berlin. Though it was an anti-Communist advocacy group, virtually all of its members were politically left wing. Its reach went well beyond anything the “man in the street” could ever have been led to believe, with branch offices and sister organizations all over the world. Many members, including its top guys, were Marxists or somewhat reformed Marxists. Malcolm Muggeridge was a member, as were George Orwell, Max Eastman, Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy. So were at least several of the Abstract Expressionist scene, including Pollock. So were many of the stars of the poetry scene. The CCF’s stable of magazines included Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, Poetry, The Journal of the History of Ideas, Partisan Review, The Paris Review and Daedalus. The Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation were two of many instruments through which CIA money was laundered and funneled to the CCF. 

"Eventually, The Congress had offices in 35 countries where it functioned both as a cultural arm for the U.S. and as a back-channel to the CIA. The Congress’s British sister, the British Society for Cultural Freedom, whose founding members included Isaiah Berlin and T.S. Eliot, also received help in its forming and funding from the CIA. "