How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers
by Joel Whitney
OR Books £18

JOEL WHITNEY’S book is the latest in a cottage industry of revelations and histories about the cultural cold war fought by the CIA, especially through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).
 
The CCF operated across 35 countries and spawned over 20 magazines which it directly created and oversaw, as well as sponsoring innumerable conferences and the work of artists and film-makers. The operation was covert and magazines appeared broad and non-aligned. Yet the purpose was clear: to marginalise the communist left in the post-war period and boost the image of liberal democracy, the “Free World” and the American way of life.

The CCF’s flagship magazine was the Britain-based Encounter, funded in part by the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office through the British Society for Cultural Freedom. Encounter continued publication until 1991; many others closed after the links between the CIA and the CCF were exposed in 1966. Others continue to this day such as Minerva in Britain, Jiyu (Freedom) in Japan and Quadrant in Australia.