New York Times

How the C.I.A. Played Dirty Tricks With

Culture
By Laurence Zuckerman

 March 18, 2000

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Many people remember reading George Orwell's ''Animal Farm'' in

high school or college, with its chilling finale in which the farm
animals looked back and forth at the tyrannical pigs and the
exploitative human farmers but found it ''impossible to say which was
which.''

That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed
the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of
Hollywood butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's
secret producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.

The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too
influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the
capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950,
agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of
Watergate fame) to buy the film rights to ''Animal Farm'' from his
widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.

Rewriting the end of ''Animal Farm'' is just one example of the often
absurd lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book,
''The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters''
(The New Press) by Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist.
Published in Britain last summer, the book will appear here next
month.
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Much of what Ms. Stonor Saunders writes about, including the

C.I.A.'s covert sponsorship of the Paris-based Congress for Cultural
Freedom and the British opinion magazine Encounter, was exposed in
the late 1960's, generating a wave of indignation. But by combing
through archives and unpublished manuscripts and interviewing
several of the principal actors, Ms. Stonor Saunders has uncovered
many new details and gives the most comprehensive account yet of
the agency's activities between 1947 and 1967.

This picture of the C.I.A.'s secret war of ideas has cameo appearances
by scores of intellectual celebrities like the critics Dwight Macdonald
and Lionel Trilling, the poets Ted Hughes and Derek Walcott and the
novelists James Michener and Mary McCarthy, all of whom directly or
indirectly benefited from the C.I.A.'s largesse. There are also bundles
of cash that were funneled through C.I.A. fronts and several hilarious
schemes that resemble a ''Spy vs. Spy'' cartoon more than a serious
defense against Communism. Traveling first class all the way, the
C.I.A. and its counterparts in other Western European nations
sponsored art exhibitions, intellectual conferences, concerts and
magazines to press their larger anti-Soviet agenda. Ms. Stonor
Saunders provides ample evidence, for example, that the editors at
Encounter and other agency-sponsored magazines were ordered not to
publish articles directly critical of Washington's foreign policy. She
also shows how the C.I.A. bankrolled some of the earliest exhibitions
of Abstract Expressionist painting outside of the United States to
counter the Socialist Realism being advanced by Moscow.

In one memorable episode, the British Foreign Office subsidized the

distribution of 50,000 copies of ''Darkness at Noon,'' Arthur Koestler's
anti-Communist classic. But at the same time, the French Communist
Party ordered its operatives to buy up every copy of the book. Koestler
received a windfall in royalties courtesy of his Communist adversaries.

As it turns out, ''Animal Farm'' was not the only instance of the
C.I.A.'s dabbling in Hollywood. Ms. Stonor Saunders reports that one
operative who was a producer and talent agent slipped affluent-
looking African-Americans into several films as extras to try to counter
Soviet criticism of the American race problem.
The agency also changed the ending of the movie version of ''1984,''
disregarding Orwell's specific instructions that the story not be
altered. In the book, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is entirely
defeated by the nightmarish totalitarian regime. In the very last line,
Orwell writes of Winston, ''He loved Big Brother.'' In the movie,
Winston and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston defiantly
shouts: ''Down with Big Brother!''

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Such changes came from the agency's obsession with snuffing out a
notion then popular among many European intellectuals: that East
and West were morally equivalent. But instead of illustrating the
differences between the two competing systems by taking the high
road, the agency justified its covert activities by referring to the
unethical tactics of the Soviets.

''If the other side can use ideas that are camouflaged as being local
rather than Soviet-supported or -stimulated, then we ought to be able
to use ideas camouflaged as local ideas,'' Tom Braden, who ran the
C.I.A.'s covert cultural division in the early 1950's, explained years
later. (In one of the book's many amusing codas, Mr. Braden goes on
in the 1980's to become the leftist foil to Patrick Buchanan on the
CNN program ''Crossfire.'')

The cultural cold war began in postwar Europe, with the fraying of the
wartime alliance between Washington and Moscow. Officials in the
West believed they had to counter Soviet propaganda and undermine
the wide sympathy for Communism in France and Italy.

An odd alliance was struck between the C.I.A. leaders, most of them
wealthy Ivy League veterans of the wartime Office of Strategic Services
and a corps of largely Jewish ex-Communists who had broken with
Moscow to become virulently anti-Communist. Acting as
intermediaries between the agency and the intellectual community
were three colorful agents who included Vladimir Nabokov's much less
talented cousin, Nicholas, a composer.

The C.I.A. recognized from the beginning that it could not openly
sponsor artists and intellectuals in Europe because there was so
much anti-American feeling there. Instead, it decided to woo
intellectuals out of the Soviet orbit by secretly promoting a non-
Communist left of democratic socialists disillusioned with Moscow.
Ms. Stonor Saunders describes how the C.I.A. cleverly skimmed
hundreds of millions of dollars from the Marshall Plan to finance its
activities, funneling the money through fake philanthropies it created
or real ones like the Ford Foundation.

''We couldn't spend it all,'' Gilbert Greenway, a former C.I.A. agent,

recalled. ''There were no limits, and nobody had to account for it. It
was amazing.''

When some of the C.I.A.'s activities were exposed in the late 1960's,
many artists and intellectuals claimed ignorance. But Ms. Stonor
Saunders makes a strong case that several people, including the
philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the poet Stephen Spender, who was co-
editor of Encounter, knew about the C.I.A.'s role.

''She has made it very difficult now to deny that some of these things
happened,'' said Norman Birnbaum, a professor at the Georgetown
University Law School who was a university professor in Europe in the
1950's and early 1960's. ''And she has placed a lot of people living and
dead in embarrassing situations.''

Still unresolved is what impact the campaign had and whether it was
worth it. Some of the participants, like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who
was in the O.S.S. and knew about some of the C.I.A.'s cultural
activities, argue that the agency's role was benign, even necessary.
Compared with the coups the C.I.A. sponsored in Guatemala, Iran
and elsewhere, he said, its support of the arts was some of its best
work. ''It enabled people to publish what they already believed,'' he
added. ''It didn't change anyone's course of action or thought.''

But Diana Josselson, whose husband, Michael, ran the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, told Ms. Stonor Saunders that there were real
human costs among those around the world who innocently
cooperated with the agency's front organizations only to be tarred with
a C.I.A. affiliation when the truth came out. The author and other
critics argue that by using government money covertly to promote
such American ideals as democracy and freedom of expression, the
agency ultimately stepped on its own message.

''Obviously it was an error, and a rather serious error, to allow

intellectuals to be subsidized by the government,'' said Alan Brinkley,
a history professor at Columbia University. ''And when it was revealed,
it did undermine their credibility seriously.''