From the Los Angeles Review of Books' The Philosophical Salon:
It is often presumed that intellectuals have little or no political
power. Perched in a privileged ivory tower, disconnected from the real
world, embroiled in meaningless academic debates over specialized
minutia, or floating in the abstruse clouds of high-minded theory,
intellectuals are frequently portrayed as not only cut off from
political reality but as incapable of having any meaningful impact on
it. The Central Intelligence Agency thinks otherwise.
As a matter of fact, the agency responsible for coups d’état,
targeted assassinations and the clandestine manipulation of foreign
governments not only believes in the power of theory, but it dedicated
significant resources to having a group of secret agents pore over what
some consider to be the most recondite and intricate theory ever
produced. For in an intriguing research paper
written in 1985, and recently released with minor redactions through
the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA reveals that its operatives have
been studying the complex, international trend-setting French theory
affiliated with the names of Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Roland
Barthes.
The image of American spies gathering in Parisian cafés to
assiduously study and compare notes on the high priests of the French
intelligentsia might shock those who presume this group of intellectuals
to be luminaries whose otherworldly sophistication could never be
caught in such a vulgar dragnet, or who assume them to be, on the
contrary, charlatan peddlers of incomprehensible rhetoric with little or
no impact on the real world. However, it should come as no surprise to
those familiar with the CIA’s longstanding and ongoing investment in a
global cultural war, including support for its most avant-garde forms,
which has been well documented by researchers like Frances Stonor
Saunders, Giles Scott-Smith, Hugh Wilford (and I have made my own
contribution in Radical History & the Politics of Art).
Thomas W. Braden, the former supervisor of cultural activities at the
CIA, explained the power of the Agency’s cultural assault in a frank insider’s account
published in 1967: “I remember the enormous joy I got when the Boston
Symphony Orchestra [which was supported by the CIA] won more acclaim for
the U.S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could
have bought with a hundred speeches.” This was by no means a small or
liminal operation. In fact, as Wilford has aptly argued, the Congress
for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was headquartered in Paris and later
discovered to be a CIA front organization during the cultural Cold War,
was among the most important patrons in world history, supporting an
incredible range of artistic and intellectual activities. It had offices
in 35 countries, published dozens of prestige magazines, was involved
in the book industry, organized high-profile international conferences
and art exhibits, coordinated performances and concerts, and contributed
ample funding to various cultural awards and fellowships, as well as to
front organizations like the Farfield Foundation.
The ‘Apparat’ in Paris: CIA Agent and Head of the CCF
Michael Josselson
(center) in a Working Lunch with
John Clinton Hunt and Melvin Lasky
(right)
The intelligence agency understands culture and theory to be crucial
weapons in the overall arsenal it deploys to perpetuate US interests
around the world. The recently released research paper from 1985,
entitled “France: Defection of the Leftist Intellectuals,”
examines—undoubtedly in order to manipulate—the French intelligentsia
and its fundamental role in shaping the trends that generate political
policy. Suggesting that there has been a relative ideological balance
between the left and the right in the history of the French intellectual
world, the report highlights the monopoly of the left in the immediate
postwar era—to which, we know, the Agency was rabidly opposed—due to the
Communists’ key role in resisting fascism and ultimately winning the
war against it. Although the right had been massively discredited
because of its direct contribution to the Nazi death camps, as well as
its overall xenophobic, anti-egalitarian and fascist agenda (according
to the CIA’s own description), the unnamed secret agents who drafted the
study outline with palpable delight the return of the right since
approximately the early 1970s....MUCH MORE
