9 ms·

What happened with the CIA and The Paris Review?

190 points by benbreen 11mo ago

cafard 11mo ago
Most interesting. Of Matthiessen's writing I know only the Shadow Country books. I wonder about the biographer's practical judgment, though: > I got very ill at that altitude. A doctor, when I got back, told me I had the symptoms of pulmonary edema. But it was worth it. I’d do it all again. [Edit] Frank Kermode's memoir Not Entitled includes some interesting pages about the CIA funding of Encounter becoming publicly known.
rdtsc 11mo ago
On the relationship of CIA and the media there is always the 1977 classic https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977 https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-... An interesting tidbit I found, somewhat related: > Employees of so‑called CIA “proprietaries.” During the past twenty‑five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives. One such publication was the Rome Daily American, forty percent of which was owned by the CIA until the 1970s. The Daily American went out of business this year,
- cess11 11mo ago
  The Church Committee also produced interesting documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee#External_links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee#External_link... As a consequence a lot of such activities were instead moved over to special operations forces, as detailed by Seth Harp in his recent book The Fort Bragg Cartel. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bragg-cartel-by-seth-harp/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bra...
  - toofy 11mo ago
    this is a fantastic book. immediately what i thought about the instant you mentioned the church committee.
  - maybelsyrup 11mo ago
    Seconding the recommendation of Harp's book, it's excellent.
  - webdoodle 11mo ago
    The pike committee documents provided more information about Operation Mockingbird and the CIA's influence in the new media. selected docs: https://maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1107 https://maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1107 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2017-06-02/white-house-cia-pike-committee-1975 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2017-06...
- jesuswasjew 11mo ago
  Any source on CIA's old involvement in India's press?
  - defrost 11mo ago
    They absolutely didn't have their finger on the pulse in 1998 ... https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-672.html https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-672.html They grilled some Australian bush pilots no end over that, wanting to know how they knew what the CIA didn't.
- MrBuddyCasino 11mo ago
  "Proprietaries" are also known as "cutouts", and the CIA uses those extensively in order to do things they really aren't allowed to do and to provide plausible deniability. Mike Benz [0] is a good introduction to how the CIA (and, by extension, the state department and Pentagon) work. I promise "The History of the Intelligence State" is worth your time. [0] https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber
Jun8 11mo ago
Whoa! I knew that CIA funded Abstract Expressionist Art (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...) to underline American individualism and mental superiority over Soviet Russia (some say that's why "modern art" sucks, but see this excellent writeup: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/ifnq9v/the_cia_and_modern_art/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/ifnq9v/the_cia_...). However, involvement in Paris Review boggles my mind because, I love that magazine.
- coldtea 11mo ago
  >to underline American individualism "So individual that it's manipulated by a state agency!" That really showed them those commies manipulated by their state agencies, ...oh wait!
  - lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
    The best manipulation makes you think it was your idea in the first place.
    - dredmorbius 11mo ago
      A/K/A the Art of Herding Cats.
  - chemotaxis 11mo ago
    But it did. The efforts hastened the collapse of the USSR and led to good outcomes for Central Europe. The propaganda of that era wasn't supposed to be covert because it wasn't selling something objectionable. Everyone knew who's behind Radio Free Europe, for example. It was just a way to popularize Western values, and it worked. Mind you, it's not like the Soviets were not doing the same to export their values. They were bankrolling overseas labor organizations, academics, etc.
    - bofadeez 11mo ago
      Yeah that's what did it. What kind of world would we live in without art propaganda where USSR didn't collapse? Too horrific to even imagine.
2b3a51 11mo ago
Two quotes from OA > "He had left the agency in 1953, after about two years, but he never divulged the details of his work for the organization" Seems part of the deal for these kinds of job? > "In terms of other materials, the CIA wouldn’t give me anything. I filed FOIA requests. I talked to their entertainment liaison, who works with Hollywood. But they don’t declassify personnel records." The reciprocal part of the deal. The 'old boys network' recruitment as we call it in the UK fits the pattern. I suppose that there was a desire to have eyes and ears among the new elite peer group. I imagine that the Agency was compartmentalised so a cultural adjutant in Paris would not necessarily know about activities in Iran. (The Snow Leopard remains a favourite book of mine).
fallingfrog 11mo ago
"Given that The Paris Review portrayed itself as studiously apolitical—recall William Styron’s famous anti-manifesto in the first issue, fashioning it as a home for “the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders”—Matthiessen’s CIA involvement has raised questions and eyebrows since its revelation in the seventies." This is actually a bit of a tell, because the best way to make ideology palatable is to make it seem like common sense (which is easy if that ideology is already in power). As zizek said, it is when you believe you have stepped outside ideology that you are most fully ensnared by it. A lot of people think, "I am not ideological, I just use common sense, I am apolitical." Sorry but this is a game you must play whether you want to or not- trying to avoid making a choice is still making a choice. Its like with fashion, for example- you may think that by wearing khaki shorts and sandals with socks that you are avoiding making fashion choices, but what is actually happening is that you are simply making very bad fashion choices. I rather think that one of the psychological principles beneath authoritarianism is that making choices requires effort, and so people try to avoid it, and the easiest way to do that is by copying whatever everyone else is doing. When a person in this mode sees other people doing things that are different or unusual or out of place, they are reminded that in fact they have free will, and that other choices were always possible, and that is a disturbing and uncomfortable thought.
- shermantanktop 11mo ago
  Fashion may not be the best example, given the propensity of fashion trends to drive large numbers of people to do ridiculous things. My recent favorite is the mania for women wearing a loose sweater but tucking it in to their waistband in the front. I’m sure it has a name, but I don’t know what it’s called. EDIT: it’s called the “millenial tuck.” I guess what I’m saying is that I wear shorts, I know some people think that’s bad, but their opinion is invalidate by their own ugly clothing choices. So we’re all guilty.
  - fallingfrog 11mo ago
    Sure- when I talk about trying to avoid choices when it comes to fashion, I am describing myself. I thought when I was young that people who i saw presenting themselves in a way that seemed deliberate were being artificial, and in order to be authentic i should avoid trying to present any specific image to the world. What I was actually doing was wearing whatever my relatives gave me for Christmas. So, in my attempt to avoid making any choice I just ended up dressing like a nerd- which of course, I was, but I guess the point is that trying to avoid a choice is also a choice. We are all guilty, as you say!
Zigurd 11mo ago
Now we have American Dynamism. So unsubtle that they say the quiet part out loud way before it's history: https://a16z.com/storytelling-in-american-dynamism-lessons-from-war-stories/ https://a16z.com/storytelling-in-american-dynamism-lessons-f...
qgin 11mo ago
The online troll farms of today make me nostalgic for an age when intelligence agencies were putting effort into promoting jazz and modern art for national security reasons.
- mikkupikku 11mo ago
  Trolling is to discourse what modern art is to art.
- HPsquared 11mo ago
  In 100 years, people will be looking at vintage memes in university classes and writing papers on them.
  - xhkkffbf 11mo ago
    Maybe in 100 months or 100 days. But you really should say that kids will be telling LLMs to write a paper about the memes.
ferguess_k 11mo ago
CIA had/has very deep root in Europe during the Cold War. Propaganda Due and Operation Gladio were part of the story. The whole movie Godfather III was inspired by Propaganda Due.
webdoodle 11mo ago
Operation Mockingbird was such a wide sweeping apparatus. After Carter fired 75% of the CIA, due to the revelations in the Church and Pike Committee's, those newly unemployed spooks all got jobs directly in the news media, bypassing the need for agents or that pesky Smith-Mundt Act. Every major news outlet in the English speaking world was printing or re-printing there propaganda. Operation Mockingbird 2.0 has been ongoing since at least 2005, and involves social media, smartphones, psychological profiles, and now AI handlers. It is still run by the CIA, but indirectly, instead using the Billionaires SummerCamp in Sun Valley Idaho as a yearly propaganda conference. Along with the bottomless purse that Citizen's United provided, they can now spend any amount of money on propaganda by using dark money superpacs.
- etc-hosts 11mo ago
  I can't remember the names of all of the parts of the CIA right now, there are two, but Carter ended up having 5 percent of the Clandestine Services fired. that's it.
mannanj 11mo ago
People forget the CIA is funded by and supports the rich. They hold themselves accountable, and often operate in missions contrary to the best interest of the American people. The media, thus, captured by the CIA as we all know, does not represent the interest of the people.
djaouen 11mo ago
His first wife’s name was Patsy Southgate???

190 points by benbreen 11mo ago

cafard 11mo ago

Most interesting. Of Matthiessen's writing I know only the Shadow Country books. I wonder about the biographer's practical judgment, though: > I got very ill at that altitude. A doctor, when I got back, told me I had the symptoms of pulmonary edema. But it was worth it. I’d do it all again. [Edit] Frank Kermode's memoir Not Entitled includes some interesting pages about the CIA funding of Encounter becoming publicly known.

rdtsc 11mo ago

On the relationship of CIA and the media there is always the 1977 classic https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977 https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-... An interesting tidbit I found, somewhat related: > Employees of so‑called CIA “proprietaries.” During the past twenty‑five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives. One such publication was the Rome Daily American, forty percent of which was owned by the CIA until the 1970s. The Daily American went out of business this year,

cess11 11mo ago
The Church Committee also produced interesting documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee#External_links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee#External_link... As a consequence a lot of such activities were instead moved over to special operations forces, as detailed by Seth Harp in his recent book The Fort Bragg Cartel. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bragg-cartel-by-seth-harp/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bra...
- toofy 11mo ago
  this is a fantastic book. immediately what i thought about the instant you mentioned the church committee.
- maybelsyrup 11mo ago
  Seconding the recommendation of Harp's book, it's excellent.
- webdoodle 11mo ago
  The pike committee documents provided more information about Operation Mockingbird and the CIA's influence in the new media. selected docs: https://maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1107 https://maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1107 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2017-06-02/white-house-cia-pike-committee-1975 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2017-06...
jesuswasjew 11mo ago
Any source on CIA's old involvement in India's press?
- defrost 11mo ago
  They absolutely didn't have their finger on the pulse in 1998 ... https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-672.html https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-672.html They grilled some Australian bush pilots no end over that, wanting to know how they knew what the CIA didn't.
MrBuddyCasino 11mo ago
"Proprietaries" are also known as "cutouts", and the CIA uses those extensively in order to do things they really aren't allowed to do and to provide plausible deniability. Mike Benz [0] is a good introduction to how the CIA (and, by extension, the state department and Pentagon) work. I promise "The History of the Intelligence State" is worth your time. [0] https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber

Jun8 11mo ago

Whoa! I knew that CIA funded Abstract Expressionist Art (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...) to underline American individualism and mental superiority over Soviet Russia (some say that's why "modern art" sucks, but see this excellent writeup: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/ifnq9v/the_cia_and_modern_art/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/ifnq9v/the_cia_...). However, involvement in Paris Review boggles my mind because, I love that magazine.

coldtea 11mo ago
>to underline American individualism "So individual that it's manipulated by a state agency!" That really showed them those commies manipulated by their state agencies, ...oh wait!
- lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
  The best manipulation makes you think it was your idea in the first place.
  - dredmorbius 11mo ago
    A/K/A the Art of Herding Cats.
- chemotaxis 11mo ago
  But it did. The efforts hastened the collapse of the USSR and led to good outcomes for Central Europe. The propaganda of that era wasn't supposed to be covert because it wasn't selling something objectionable. Everyone knew who's behind Radio Free Europe, for example. It was just a way to popularize Western values, and it worked. Mind you, it's not like the Soviets were not doing the same to export their values. They were bankrolling overseas labor organizations, academics, etc.
  - bofadeez 11mo ago
    Yeah that's what did it. What kind of world would we live in without art propaganda where USSR didn't collapse? Too horrific to even imagine.

2b3a51 11mo ago

Two quotes from OA > "He had left the agency in 1953, after about two years, but he never divulged the details of his work for the organization" Seems part of the deal for these kinds of job? > "In terms of other materials, the CIA wouldn’t give me anything. I filed FOIA requests. I talked to their entertainment liaison, who works with Hollywood. But they don’t declassify personnel records." The reciprocal part of the deal. The 'old boys network' recruitment as we call it in the UK fits the pattern. I suppose that there was a desire to have eyes and ears among the new elite peer group. I imagine that the Agency was compartmentalised so a cultural adjutant in Paris would not necessarily know about activities in Iran. (The Snow Leopard remains a favourite book of mine).

fallingfrog 11mo ago

"Given that The Paris Review portrayed itself as studiously apolitical—recall William Styron’s famous anti-manifesto in the first issue, fashioning it as a home for “the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders”—Matthiessen’s CIA involvement has raised questions and eyebrows since its revelation in the seventies." This is actually a bit of a tell, because the best way to make ideology palatable is to make it seem like common sense (which is easy if that ideology is already in power). As zizek said, it is when you believe you have stepped outside ideology that you are most fully ensnared by it. A lot of people think, "I am not ideological, I just use common sense, I am apolitical." Sorry but this is a game you must play whether you want to or not- trying to avoid making a choice is still making a choice. Its like with fashion, for example- you may think that by wearing khaki shorts and sandals with socks that you are avoiding making fashion choices, but what is actually happening is that you are simply making very bad fashion choices. I rather think that one of the psychological principles beneath authoritarianism is that making choices requires effort, and so people try to avoid it, and the easiest way to do that is by copying whatever everyone else is doing. When a person in this mode sees other people doing things that are different or unusual or out of place, they are reminded that in fact they have free will, and that other choices were always possible, and that is a disturbing and uncomfortable thought.

shermantanktop 11mo ago
Fashion may not be the best example, given the propensity of fashion trends to drive large numbers of people to do ridiculous things. My recent favorite is the mania for women wearing a loose sweater but tucking it in to their waistband in the front. I’m sure it has a name, but I don’t know what it’s called. EDIT: it’s called the “millenial tuck.” I guess what I’m saying is that I wear shorts, I know some people think that’s bad, but their opinion is invalidate by their own ugly clothing choices. So we’re all guilty.
- fallingfrog 11mo ago
  Sure- when I talk about trying to avoid choices when it comes to fashion, I am describing myself. I thought when I was young that people who i saw presenting themselves in a way that seemed deliberate were being artificial, and in order to be authentic i should avoid trying to present any specific image to the world. What I was actually doing was wearing whatever my relatives gave me for Christmas. So, in my attempt to avoid making any choice I just ended up dressing like a nerd- which of course, I was, but I guess the point is that trying to avoid a choice is also a choice. We are all guilty, as you say!

Zigurd 11mo ago

Now we have American Dynamism. So unsubtle that they say the quiet part out loud way before it's history: https://a16z.com/storytelling-in-american-dynamism-lessons-from-war-stories/ https://a16z.com/storytelling-in-american-dynamism-lessons-f...

qgin 11mo ago

The online troll farms of today make me nostalgic for an age when intelligence agencies were putting effort into promoting jazz and modern art for national security reasons.

mikkupikku 11mo ago
Trolling is to discourse what modern art is to art.
HPsquared 11mo ago
In 100 years, people will be looking at vintage memes in university classes and writing papers on them.
- xhkkffbf 11mo ago
  Maybe in 100 months or 100 days. But you really should say that kids will be telling LLMs to write a paper about the memes.

ferguess_k 11mo ago

CIA had/has very deep root in Europe during the Cold War. Propaganda Due and Operation Gladio were part of the story. The whole movie Godfather III was inspired by Propaganda Due.

webdoodle 11mo ago

Operation Mockingbird was such a wide sweeping apparatus. After Carter fired 75% of the CIA, due to the revelations in the Church and Pike Committee's, those newly unemployed spooks all got jobs directly in the news media, bypassing the need for agents or that pesky Smith-Mundt Act. Every major news outlet in the English speaking world was printing or re-printing there propaganda. Operation Mockingbird 2.0 has been ongoing since at least 2005, and involves social media, smartphones, psychological profiles, and now AI handlers. It is still run by the CIA, but indirectly, instead using the Billionaires SummerCamp in Sun Valley Idaho as a yearly propaganda conference. Along with the bottomless purse that Citizen's United provided, they can now spend any amount of money on propaganda by using dark money superpacs.

etc-hosts 11mo ago
I can't remember the names of all of the parts of the CIA right now, there are two, but Carter ended up having 5 percent of the Clandestine Services fired. that's it.

mannanj 11mo ago

People forget the CIA is funded by and supports the rich. They hold themselves accountable, and often operate in missions contrary to the best interest of the American people. The media, thus, captured by the CIA as we all know, does not represent the interest of the people.

djaouen 11mo ago

His first wife’s name was Patsy Southgate???