46 /
sphere of influence of the Soviet Union over Eastern
Europe and the Balkans." [42] It is unnecessary that we
go into UNRRA's replacement, in essence, by the
Marshall Plan.
What is important to note is that the Rockefeller
forces that pushed UNRRA, and later the Marshall
Pla n, had more than Harriman's simplistic notion of
su_ programs. Much'ofUNRRA aid, for instance, was
• go!ng to countries that had already been ceded to the
Soviet Union at the Summit Conferences with Stalin,
anal "influence" in the form of good will could not have
been the only goal. UNRRA's activities in the so-called
"Iron Curtain" countries were, to a large extent,
directed at gathering a psychological profile of those
countries under stress. Every bit of contextual evidence
suggests that wherever possible, UNRRA administrators
manipulated food supplies to select areas not simply for
"disciplinary" purposes, but to test stress factors as Rees
ha d prescribed,
_Rees himself only mentions in 1945, that perhaps
UNRRA units were pre-eminently suited to gather
psychiatric material on national ideologies for later use
in:b0th selection and psychological warfare[M]. But we
aware that he was in a position to do more than
suggest. By that time Rees had already sent two Tavi-
stockers on'leave to the UNRRA psychological section..
UNRR_ executive was itself advised by the Inter,
Allied Study Group which Rees set up immediately after
the war_ The IASG was headed by Dicks, the ranking
psychiatrist in British Intelligence, and Ed Shils, the top
psywar specialist for the OSS and the OSS's liason man
with the SHAEF Psychological Warfare Division. Not
coincidentally0 Dicks was responsible for training Shils
and the rest of SHAEF Psywar in Reesian methods
ddring the war. [35]
_That: UNRRA was deeply involved in testing and
irfiplementing Reesian control techniques is illustrated
readily by the case of Richard Hauser, UNRRA admini-
strator in Italy in charge of Displaced Persons.
Hauser, though nominally unconnected with Rees and
the_,Tavistock network, set up a unit in 1945 for ex-fascist
army officers modeled precisely on the selection and
resettlement camp that Rees had developed. Using
Bzon's "leaderless group" techniques, he was assigned
to convince the ex-fascists that democracy was an
inherently better system than fascism. He was so suc-
cessful that by 1945, the officers were assigned to be
"_structors in democracy" for the Italian Army and
Civil Service! [36] For the incredulous, it might be noted,
an_cdotally, that one of Hauser's more recent_pupils was
t_ Kawaida hit-man, Ron Karenga, whom he trained at
Saul Alinsky's Urban Training Center, where he is a
visiting instructor,
._With the, experiences of the immediate post-war
period, the Reesian theory of war reached its mature
loire. In addition to being able to perform psychological
profile experiments on a good part of the world
especially in the crucial Eastern Bloc, before those
countries would be closed to clinicians such as Rees
the Tavistock network was able to make large-scale tests
of selection and resettlement methods of mass persua-
sion. Rees hoped it would never end. "The resettlement
of the worm and the constant flow of social problems will
provide us with unlimited opportunities for attempting
wiser direction [emphasis added]."[37] In fact, Rees
helped the CIA continue .to select agents out of the
refugee camps until as late as 1959.[38] -
In addition, the German occupation experiments
under SHAEF and the UNRRA experience helped the
Tavistock and CIA planners add a new weapon to their
repertoire, food control. The weapon itself was not new.
As a historian of the post-war period has noted, "Food
had proven to be a critical political weapon after World
' _ War I, and during the discussions leading to the forma-
tion of UNRRA the obvious utility of its serving the same
function came up again."[39] But it would take the
Reesian psywar specialists in SHAEF and the OSS-CIA,
who actually programmed the supply of food to exacer- ,
bate psychological tensions of European workers, to put
' food control on a rigorous basis.
. ,, The post-war European experience had proven to the
Rockefeller forces and their faction within the CIA, and _'
to most of the British Military Establishment, that eco-
nomic warfare subsumed within a Reesian psywar profile
and concerted with other mass persuasion techniques
: Was likely the most effective, not to mention eco,
nomicaI, form of war. Unfortunately, for these planners,
such _[echniques could not be taken to their logical exten-
sion in Europe at the time. Attempts 'at full control
would have undoubtedly met with serious resistance
_ i from the working class, psychologically blasted as it was,
and probably from the Soviet Union. Thus, in the 1950's
most of the Tavistock field agents returned to England
.... where !hey wrote up their reports of the psychological
capacities of the Eastern l)loc for the CIA think tank, the
RAND Corporation[40], and began testing their
_methOds on the British labor movement.[41]
. Thedynamic of Reesian control techniques was in no
way blunted after the war, but the location of their area
of operations was shifted to an area more politically
suited to their implementation in fulll War, even psywar,
is incompetent if it is not aiming for complete victory
over the enemy. While such victories could not be had in
Europe immediately, the weakness of the working class
and the indecisive position of the Soviets in Southeast
Asia and Africa provided ample opportunity for real
victories over the working class. Such victories
demanded not only the destruction of the morale of the
i'