WW II and that when the OSS was replaced by the CIA, he worked for them for several years. Hence the CIA-baiting of Marcuse by the Progressive Labor Party during the 1960s.
Jim Farmelant
Above is one of those topics that will apparently raise its ugly head now again on e-lists (although I'm a surprised and disappointed to see James Farmelant, whose posts I've learned from and whose perspective on things I respect, repeating it here). Anyway, this is third time for Marcuse- CIA on lbo in less than a year. Below is reconstruction and some editing of posts I sent on previous occasions (archive can be really useful and in future instances I can just direct folks to this message). Michael Hoover
HM was being attacked in the late 1960s by Ronald Reagan and Gus Hall, PLP and American Legion, Kremlin and Vatican, Minutemen and Weathermen. In the '50s, both soc-dem Irving Howe and right-winger Eric Hoffer called Marcuse a Stalinist because he didn't unequivocally support '56 Hungarian uprising.
The PLP charge was in an unsigned, anonymous piece - 'Marcuse: Cop-out or Cop' (Feb. 1969) that said more about the self-immolation of the US New Left than anything else. The unidentified author(s) call him 'G-Man Marcuse" and claim that his period as an intelligence analyst for three agencies of the US gov't began his work as a spy that continued unabated after he left the State Dept. at the end of 1951. The piece equates the anti-fascist work of OSS and the anti-communist work of the CIA for whom Marcuse never worked.
Marcuse's post-WW2 work was in Central European Branch of Office of Intelligence Research of US State Dept. He can be criticized for thinking that he could have some impact in preventing the Cold War pull of US foreign policy and for remaining in job until 1951. He wrote about isolation and unhappiness of this period in _Revolution or Reform?_.
He indicates that his reasons for staying in Truman's administration for the time that he did had nothing to do with any loyalties that he had or a later sense that US foreign policy could be moderated, rather his wife was ill with cancer and did not want to move. Upon her death, HM quit (_Revolution or Reform?_, p. 6)
He was also unable to get a university position during this period in contrast to some of his colleagues. Upon leaving the State Dept., HM did get a Rockefeller Grant that he used to do the research for his book on Soviet Marxism (hey, here's something else to use against him!). The Brandeis job came in 1955.
HM answered those who used his US intelligence service to taint him as a CIA agent: 'If critics reproach me for that, it only shows the complete ignorance of these people, who seem to have forgotten that the war then was a war against fascism, and that, consequently, I haven't the slightest reason for being ashamed of having assisted in it.' (_Revolution or Reform?_, p. 59)
and
'My main task was to identify groups in Germany with which one could work towards reconstruction after the war; and to identify groups which were to be taken to task as nazis. There was a major de-Nazification programme at the time. Based on exact research, reports, newspaper reading and whatever, lists were made up of those Nazis who were supposed to assume responsibility for their activity. Later it was said that I was a CIA agent. Which is ridiculous, since the OSS wasn't even allowed near the CIA. They fought each other like enemies.' ("Conversation with Habermas and Others: Theory & Politics," _Telos_ 38, pp. 130-131.)
According to Henry Pachter, HM: 'bombarded Secretary of War Stimson with plans for a post-war Germany that would give democratic socialism a chance...' (_The Legacy of the German Intellectuals_, p.36)
and H. Stuart Hughes wrote of HM: 'it has seemed deliciously incongruous that at the end of the 1940s, with an official purge of real or suspected leftists in full swing, the State Deparment's leading authority on Central Europe should have been a revolutionary socialist who hated the cold war and all its works.' (_The Sea Change_, p. 175)
Marcuse told Habermas that he did not have the impression that what he did was of any consequence (which could give reason to criticize his remaining for the time that he did), saying: 'Those whom we had listed first as "economic war criminals" were very quickly back in the decisive positions of responsibility in the German economy.' (Telos interview cited previously)
His most important potential contribution during this time appears to have been a report he submitted in 1949 - *The Potentials of World Communism* - that attempted to offset the policies and politics of the Cold War, it was summarily dismissed.
The *War Report of the OSS* (declassified in 1975) includes a flow chart on page 126 of the Research & Analysis Branch with Marcuse's name under the Germany/Austria section (Franz Neuman directed the section). The 1946 *Register of the Department of State* includes HM under the German section of the Central Europe branch of the Office of Intelligence Research. The 1948 *Register* lists Marcuse as Acting Chief of the Central European branch.
None of above info is new and HM can be criticized on both subjective and objective grounds. More recently, Doug Kellner's introduction to his edited first volume of Marcuse's unpublished papers rejects charges that he was ever employed by the CIA (_Technology, Wa and Fascism_, p. 25). Kellner himself told me personally that allegations of a Marcuse-CIA connection are 'utter nonsense' (his phrase).