“a loose cannon” (to quote the second officer again) is echoed in dispatches from the American Embassy in Sweden at the time of the Stockholm meeting. “If he impressed the other delegates by his extraordinary eloquence and the quality of his ideas, he was all the same perceived as immature and, in some way, as an abrasive element in the conference,” reported Cultural Affairs Officer Robert Donhauser. “The officials at the embassy also thought him immature.”29 There are parallels here with Frank Wisner’s displeasure at the exuberance of another young American anticommunist, Melvin Lasky, at the Congress for Cultural Freedom in June 1950.
A recently declassified OPC memorandum of February 1951 confirms the claim of Lowenstein’s defenders that he was “unwitting” at the time of his presidency of the NSA, although the same document also shows that the OPC secretly supported his position within the student organization.
A summary of a conversation between Kissinger’s mentor William Elliott and the new head of covert operations, Allen Dulles, the memo begins by acknowledging that the student association, which derived its income principally from the dues of member unions, “is not receptive to accepting government subsidy, because it considers that such a course of action would run contrary to its basic principle of independent thought and action.” This attitude “means that such a relation as is maintained is an extremely delicate one, particularly with reference to . . . plans involving the passing of funds.” Complicating the picture further was the internal division in the NSA between “more idealistic, less militant” officers such as
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Eisenberg, and those like Lowenstein, who favored “a forthright stand on the part of the organization concerning Communism.” The latter viewpoint appeared to be the dominant one on the NSA’s Executive Committee. Accordingly, OPC had arranged, “covertly and through the proper channels,” for Lowenstein’s military service to be deferred, “although he is completely unaware of this fact.” (The possibility that the CIA orchestrated Lowenstein’s draft deferment, which coincided with the outbreak of war in Korea, has been raised by at least one of his detractors, but the memorandum, while proving that such was indeed the case, also exoner-ates him of complicity in the arrangement.) The document concludes with the recommendation that the OPC refrain from subsidizing the NSA on a regular basis, as had apparently been suggested by Elliott, but rather continue to sponsor “individual projects by careful use of such means as will not offend or arouse . . . suspicion . . . that the government is at all interested.”30
The question of what and when exactly Al Lowenstein knew about the CIA’s interest in the NSA, however, is something of a side issue. More important is the broader significance of his presidency, which definitively established the NSA’s characteristic combination of hard-line anticommunism in foreign affairs and dynamic liberalism on domestic issues.
Lowenstein’s success in equating engagement in the Cold War abroad with social activism at home helps explain why he played such a prominent role in the first stirrings of the U.S. youth movement during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is also the reason why his later disillusionment with U.S. policy in Vietnam was interpreted by many as signifying the breakdown of the “liberal consensus” that had to that point masked some of the contradictions of the American postwar order, such as the emergence of educated white youth as a distinct political force for change.
Given his function as a bridge figure between Cold War ideologies and generations, it is no wonder that Lowenstein has proved so controversial among historians and biographers, with radicals descended from the New Left seeing in his alleged links with the CIA further proof, if any were needed, of the fundamental rottenness of liberal anticommunism.31
Lowenstein’s wittingness or lack thereof also seems of secondary importance next to the indications contained in the February 1951 memorandum that he was in any case leading the NSA in directions favored by the CIA. Despite the negative effects of his intemperate speech, the Stock-
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holm meeting achieved two of the aims with which Lowenstein had set out to Sweden: a commitment by the national unions represented there to carry on meeting and cooperating, and approval of a proposal by the National Student Association that it launch a Student Mutual Assistance Program (SMAP) to assist young people from the “developing countries”
(Lowenstein was much exercised by communist successes in appealing to Third World student leaders). Although NSA resistance to the notion of a new western union of students persisted—the Association’s 1951