by NANCY HANOVER
Gloria Steinam, 1987
This is the second in a two-part review of the 2008 book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, by Hugh Wilford. Part one is published here.
Students
Deeply fearful of the attraction of young people to socialism, the CIA established its presence on campuses from the start. In 1947, the Agency organized the United States National Student Association (NSA), followed by an International Student Information Service to link the NSA with groups abroad. Wilford details the mechanisms used by the CIA to closely groom and vet all NSA officers. Quite a few of these individuals would go on to careers with the Agency.
The NSA hosted annual foreign relations seminars for Americans, while providing scholarships for those from the “developing world” and extensive travel abroad for staff members. By 1967 it had organizations on 400 US campuses.
The CIA and NSA also sponsored international youth festivals to “rescue Third World youth from the clutches of communist propagandists.” A leader in this operation was feminist icon Gloria Steinem. She accepted a paid position as director of the Independent Service for Information, “a CIA operation from beginning to end,” stated Wilford, and was made “witting.” Among her compatriots in this group was Zbigniew Brzezinski, at the time a Harvard graduate student, whom she described as “a star member of the Independent Service.”
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