17d05d030193283f60ac573244de53e6 полностью

Abroad, while the general reaction in Europe to the CIA’s embarrassment appears to have been one of cynical amusement or even sneaking admiration for the ingenuity of some of the operations that had been exposed—“Les Américains sont formidables,” one French diplomat told a U.S. official at a Paris reception76—the response in the Third World countries that the Agency was most anxious to influence was predictably negative. In India, the journal Seminar accused the United States of engaging in “academic colonialism,” while Indira Gandhi depicted the CIA as an international pariah.77 Just as the furore appeared to be dying down in the subcontinent, John Kenneth Galbraith “raised unshirted hell” when he wrote a piece for the Washington Post describing his experiences with the Agency while serving as U.S. ambassador in New Delhi. After a frosty phone conversation with Richard Helms, the distinguished economist

“agreed to remain silent and refrain from further public revelations.”78

Meanwhile, the front organizations themselves imploded in a welter of protests and recriminations. Within the world of journalism, the sharpest barbs were reserved for the CIA-financed international operations of the American Newspaper Guild. While representatives of the International Federation of Journalists in Brussels and the Inter-American Federation of Working Newspapermen’s Organizations in Panama rallied round, American reporters fell over themselves in their haste to denounce the ANG

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leadership.79 Guild members in local units, including 127 who worked in the New York Times newsroom, signed petitions denouncing the organization’s relationship with the Agency. “Whoever participated in this money grabbing has stained us all,” declared the staff of Look magazine.80 Despite protestations of unwittingness from ANG leaders, the attacks continued, with leading newspapers joining in the outcry. According to the Washington Post in a February 19 editorial entitled “The Eager Victim,” the ANG

had been “hungrily taking covert Government money” and, by doing so, had evinced “moral imbecility.” The most colorful denunciation came from outspoken New York columnist Jimmy Breslin, who telephoned Chuck Perlik on the morning of the Post editorial to tell him that “You made us look like a bunch of whores up here . . . and we’re f—— going to look into it.”81 Judging by his column of the following day, Breslin’s main complaint about the ANG was the lack of “verve” of its response to the revelations. “All the people who run the guild can do,” he chuntered, “is stand around with the imagination of the fat old madames who used to wring their hands and tell police, ‘I don’t know why all these men kept coming here.’”82 Stung by Breslin’s comments, the ANG leadership fought back, insisting that regardless of the ultimate source of its funds, the union’s international program had been entirely independent (a common self-defense of blown front organizations).83 The argument fell on deaf ears. By September 1967, the ANG’s international representatives had been called home and reassigned to domestic duties.84

Media attention also focused on a White House evidently caught unawares by the scandal. (The first the Johnson administration had heard of the Ramparts article about the NSA was when Eugene Groves telephoned Douglass Cater seeking an appointment the week before it was due to appear.)85 Much responsibility fell on the shoulders of the Acting Secretary of State, Nicholas B. Katzenbach, whose first instinct was to make only a

“bare bones admission,” putting the CIA’s program of secret subsidies “in the most favorable light it could be put.”86 When it became clear that this approach would not placate the press, President Johnson announced the formation of a committee of inquiry into covert government funding of U.S. voluntary organizations, to be composed of Katzenbach, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John Gardner, and DCI Helms. Although more robust than previous presidential responses to CIA “flaps,” this initiative still smacked strongly of damage control. When Senator Mike

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Mansfield, a longtime advocate of greater congressional control over the Agency (and, ironically, a former member of the Vietnam Lobby), wrote LBJ recommending a greatly expanded brief for the Katzenbach Commission, the president (in a reply drafted by Katzenbach) politely turned down the suggestion, citing the need for a quick report to help dispel the cloud of suspicion now surrounding American volunteer workers overseas.87 Other CIA critics were discomfited by the participation in the inquiry of the DCI (whose principal assistant was to be none other than Cord Meyer). “I must say . . . that it is a little strange for one to ask Mr.