CIA Begins Covert, Secret and Corrupt Relationship With National Student Association
On or about this day, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began its covert, secret and corrupt relationship with the National Student Association (NSA).
For the next seventeen years, until the relationship was exposed in 1967 as a consequence of the Vietnam War, the CIA secretly provided salaries, travel funds, conference expenses, printing costs and other expenses to “witting” staff members of the NSA. The NSA at the time was the leading national organization of U.S. college students involved in domestic public affairs and international affairs.
The relationship with the NSA was only one of several secret and covert relationships with U.S. organizations and individuals. These relationships included colleges and universities, their faculty as individuals; newspapers and radio and television, their executives and reporters; labor unions; religious organizations, and others. This network of activities was known within the CIA as the “mighty wurlizter,” a reference to large organs in theaters and the fact that the organizations and people with CIA relationships were being “played” by the CIA.
With the NSA the relationship was corrupt because NSA people traveled the world in the guise of independent experts when in fact they would not have been there without covert CIA funds. The secrecy of CIA financial support corrupted the individuals from other professions mentioned in the above paragraph.
It is not possible to precisely pinpoint the day the CIA-NSA relationship began (there was no handshake agreement, no written document), but it developed over a period of months from early to late 1950.
It is not true, as some people believe, that certain NSA leaders initiated the relationship with the CIA. In fact, as the book Patriotic Betrayal (see below) explains, the CIA initiated the relationship.
The relationship involved certain bizarre activities that would appear to be from a bad spy novel or B movie. Only a few NSA leaders were made “witting” of the relationship. Those not in the know were the “unwitting,” although many noticed certain strange aspects about NSA funding, activities and elections. An early “witting” leader, Frederick Delano Houghteling, later told the story of how someone drove him out in the country on the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin, where they stopped and flashed their lights. Another car flashed its lights, and a man came over and gave Houghteling a document which he signed pledging secrecy about the CIA relationship. Another early “witting” leader needed travel funds for an international event and was given a Texas phone number and told to speak to a “Mr. Smith.” He did and soon a check for $6,000 arrived in the mail.
Read the whole story of the corrupt CIA-NSA relationship: Karen M. Paget, Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism (2015)
Read about the history of the CIA: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007)
Read the biography of the CIA’s notorious spymaster, James Jesus Angleton: Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton (2017)
Learn more: Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008)