Pandora's Cashbox

With the disclosure that the U.S. National Student Association had been secretly financed by the Central Intelligence Agency for 15 years (TIME, Feb. 24), a Pandora's cashbox of CIA philanthropy sprang open to public view last week.

The convoluted pipelines of foundations used to distribute CIA dollars seemed to be almost as limitless as the curiosity of the newsmen willing to plow through public-record tax files. Recipients of CIA-suspect largesse made an encyclopedic grab bag of organizations ranging from the now defunct Institute of International Labor Research Inc. (headed by Old Socialist Norman Thomas) to the Billy Graham Spanish-American crusade, from the North American Secretariat of Pax Romana and the John Hay Whitney Trust for Charitable Purposes to the International Food and Drink Workers Federation and the Friends of India Committee.

And, despite the academic community's outcry over CIA "subversion" of students, among the organizations receiving money from apparent CIA conduits were several trusteed by distinguished educators and scholars--including the Harvard Law School Fund. Even the National Council of Churches gathered a few dollars. More than a score of dummy fronts, such as the Gotham Foundation, the Beacon Fund, the Borden Trust, the Michigan Fund, the Edsel Fund, the Andrew Hamilton Fund, fed money from CIA into legitimate foundations such as the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the M. D. Anderson Foundation, the Hoblitzelle Foundation and the David, Josephine, and Winfield Baird Foundation, which, in turn, completed a supposedly secret "triple pass" by dispensing money to various organizations deemed needy--and worthy--by CIA.

"Evil Effects." Criticism of CIA's financial involvement--however innocuous it may have been--came from every corner of the world. Dan Mclntosh, president of the Berkeley student body, cried that as a result of the N.S.A. affair, "the credibility of U.S. students abroad is greatly damaged." Robert A. Dahl, president of the American Political Science Association, said "there are bound to be evil effects" from CIA's money funnel. Even George Meany, whose A.F.L.-C.I.O. international affiliates had long been richly endowed by the espionage agency's foundations, self-right-eously proclaimed his "natural ingrained opposition to spy activities."

Talk was strong on Capitol Hill, too. Wisconsin's Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson deplored "an alarming trend in this country toward the use of police-state tactics." Minnesota's Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy introduced a resolution asking for a "select committee" to probe CIA. McCarthy's proposal drew support from Nelson and William Fulbright, but at week's end congressional leaders turned thumbs down on a probe, arguing that there was enough surveillance of CIA by Administration watchdogs and oversight committees in both houses.

"Hogwash!" The special Senate committee overseeing the agency heard testimony from CIA Director Richard Helms and learned that much of its funding to private organizations, particularly those involved in educational pursuits, would be canceled. The reason, as Committee Chairman Richard Russell of Georgia later told reporters, is that disclosures in the past week had made further aid so suspect that it was all but worthless. Snapped Russell: "All this clamor about impairing academic freedom or subverting youth is a lot of hogwash!"

Indeed, clamor on Capitol Hill seemed curiously belated as well as overheated, since CIA's modus operandi had been aired in Congress 2 1/2 years ago. In August 1964, Texas Congressman Wright Patman, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating the maze of tax-exempt U.S. foundations (upwards of 50,000), had come across a suspicious shortage of tax information on the Kaplan Fund. A committee investigation, he reported then, had shown that the Kaplan Fund had been "channeling CIA funds" and that this was the reason for its apparently cozy relationship with the Internal Revenue Service. That revelation made a small flurry of headlines, then died unnoticed until the N.S.A. furor put the agency back on Page One.

"Shame! Shame!" Last week's fulminations were by no means limited to academe or to liberal Congressmen. Vice President Hubert Humphrey cast aspersions on CIA's methods. Appearing at Stanford University, he said that he was "not at all happy about what CIA has been doing," and that the current situation amounted to "one of the saddest times in reference to public policies our Government has had. Out of this, I hope will come an agreement to keep CIA out of student affairs." Though that view reflects student-liberal opinion, Humphrey was rewarded by a post-speech protest in which angry antiwar demonstrators crowded around and all but knocked him down as they shouted, "Shame! Shame!" Other high Administration officials, notably Acting Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Health, Education and Welfare Secretary John Gardner, also expressed their doubts about the CIA-student arrangement.

It was as ironic as it was unfair for Administration men to be sounding off against the agency. As New York's Senator Robert Kennedy declared early in the controversy, CIA should not be made to take "the rap" alone, since the funding policy was a product of "all relevant Government agencies--and that includes the White House. If the policy was wrong, it was not the product of CIA but of each Administration."

The President tried at first to duck the controversy by naming an investigative committee consisting of Helms, Gardner and Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach. Last week the Johnson Administration finally placed CIA in perspective. In a letter to Johnson, Katzenbach said: "When the Central Intelligence Agency lent financial support to the work of certain American private organizations, it did not act on its own initiative but in accordance with national policies established by the National Security Council in 1952 through 1954." Thus, said Katzenbach, CIA acted only after it had the approval of the Secretaries of State and Defense, as well as Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson himself.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.