[lbo-talk] CIA and Feminism (was Alex Cockburn going the Hitchens way?)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 6/20/06, JBrown72073 at cs.com <JBrown72073 at cs.com> wrote:
> >> I forgot to mention: my successful CIA guy is -- what else? --
> >> a Democrat, and self-identified as a "liberal" and a "progressive".
>
> Doug writes:
> >That's not unusual, is it? A lot of CIA types are liberal
> >internationalists who believe in the basic goodness of the empire,
> >even if you've got to get your hands dirty now & then.
>
> Indeed.  Gloria Steinem, who worked for the CIA-funded Independent Research
> Service 1959-62 (and was on its board of directors till 1968), is quoted in the
> December 3, 1967 Washington Post saying "In my experience the agency was
> completely different from its image.  It was liberal, nonviolent, and honorable.
> I found the CIA to be my best journalistic training ground because the
> instruction one receives from them is to be accurate, whereas publications tell you
> to find an angle."  Of course, that 'journalism' included, among many other
> things, reporting on leftist youth attending the Vienna Youth Festival in 1959,
> including Americans, and publishing a dossier of their political affiliations
> and activities.
>
> Of course, I can say this because Redstockings exposed all this in 1975,
> before the law about revealing the identity of an agent was passed.  Now, we'd
> have to think twice.
>
> Jenny Brown
> Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement
> http://www.redstockings.org

Of course, Washington's point is not to get any valuable information
on foreign leftists' party affiliations that Gloria Steinem informed
on (the Redstockings' expose is at
<http://www.cia-on-campus.org/surveil/festival.html>) -- which would
have been available from published sources or its own work without her
-- but to give a bad name to feminism in general and American feminism
in particular internationally, poison international solidarity (it
becomes difficult to trust any American feminist when the face of
American feminism, which Steinem has been in mass culture, has served
as a paid informant to the CIA?), and seek to control American
feminists (by winning its leaders on its side, promoting
pro-Washington feminists' ideas through its resources, etc.).

-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>