Marcuse's CIA background was first publicly exposed over thirty years ago by the Progressive Labor Party in its newspaper, "Challenge." The attempted to use this revelation to "CIA-bait" the New Left generally, against whom they were waging a bitter struggle to for control of SDS.
Jim Farmelant
On Fri, 12 Mar 1999 09:25:22 +0000 Jim heartfield
<jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> writes:
>In message <v04011744b30e508e36a5@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
><dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>>In a talk at the Brecht Forum in NYC a year or two ago, Joel Kovel
>said
>>that the CIA funded the re-establishment of the Frankfurt Institute
>after
>>WW II and kept it going. He didn't say what his source was, but I've
>heard
>>others say this too. Any cites?
>
>Istvan Meszaros, The Power of Ideology, Harvester Wheatsheaf,
>London/NY,
>1989, p118 on
>
>The OSS was a branch of the FBI that became an independent service,
>the
>CIA. Marcuse started working for the OSS and was later employed by the
>CIA. All this is described in the first volume of Marcuse's papers
>(Technology, War and Fascism, ed Douglas Kellner).
>
>I'm not convinced that talking down Marcuse's contribution to the
>American war effort as analysing German documents quite captures what
>it
>meant. Marcuse was advising the US government on the pacification of
>the
>German population under allied occupation. The content of the
>documents
>is largely along the lines of Lord Vansittart's 'collective guilt'
>thesis, adopted as US and later official German history after the war.
>
>Given that the second world war was the period that saw the greatest
>expansion of US imperialism, I'm not sure that it is entirely
>excusable
>to work as a CIA agent.
>
>But more than that Marcuse went on to analyse SOVIET society on behalf
>of the CIA. Taught Russian by the OSS he was invaluable in the
>analysis
>of Soviet documents and intelligence reports. At one point in the
>correspondence he complains that he is under pressure to identify the
>Soviet Union with Fascism (a pressure some would say he conceded to).
>
>The reports and analyses that Marcuse prepared of Russian society were
>the basis of his later work, One Dimensional Man.
>--
>Jim heartfield
>
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