Animal Farm, 1984, rewritten by the CIA
Gary Cruse
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/cia-propaganda.html
By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN
Many people remember reading George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in high
school or college, with its chilling finale in which the farm animals
looked back and forth at the tyrannical pigs and the exploitative
human farmers but found it "impossible to say which was which."
That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed
the humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of Hollywood
butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's secret
producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.
The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too
influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the
capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950,
agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of
Watergate fame) to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his widow
to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.
Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often
absurd lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book,
"The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters"
(The New Press) by Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist.
Published in Britain last summer, the book will appear here next
month.
Much of what Ms. Stonor Saunders writes about, including the C.I.A.'s
covert sponsorship of the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom
and the British opinion magazine Encounter, was exposed in the late
1960's, generating a wave of indignation. But by combing through
archives and unpublished manuscripts and interviewing several of the
principal actors, Ms. Stonor Saunders has uncovered many new details
and gives the most comprehensive account yet of the agency's
activities between 1947 and 1967.
This picture of the C.I.A.'s secret war of ideas has cameo appearances
by scores of intellectual celebrities like the critics Dwight
Macdonald and Lionel Trilling, the poets Ted Hughes and Derek Walcott
and the novelists James Michener and Mary McCarthy, all of whom
directly or indirectly benefited from the C.I.A.'s largesse. There are
also bundles of cash that were funneled through C.I.A. fronts and
several hilarious schemes that resemble a "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon more
than a serious defense against Communism.
Traveling first class all the way, the C.I.A. and its counterparts in
other Western European nations sponsored art exhibitions, intellectual
conferences, concerts and magazines to press their larger anti-Soviet
agenda. Ms. Stonor Saunders provides ample evidence, for example, that
the editors at Encounter and other agency-sponsored magazines were
ordered not to publish articles directly critical of Washington's
foreign policy. She also shows how the C.I.A. bankrolled some of the
earliest exhibitions of Abstract Expressionist painting outside of the
United States to counter the Socialist Realism being advanced by
Moscow.
In one memorable episode, the British Foreign Office subsidized the
distribution of 50,000 copies of "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler's
anti-Communist classic. But at the same time, the French Communist
Party ordered its operatives to buy up every copy of the book.
Koestler received a windfall in royalties courtesy of his Communist
adversaries.
As it turns out, "Animal Farm" was not the only instance of the
C.I.A.'s dabbling in Hollywood. Ms. Stonor Saunders reports that one
operative who was a producer and talent agent slipped affluent-looking
African-Americans into several films as extras to try to counter
Soviet criticism of the American race problem.
The agency also changed the ending of the movie version of "1984,"
disregarding Orwell's specific instructions that the story not be
altered. In the book, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is entirely
defeated by the nightmarish totalitarian regime. In the very last
line, Orwell writes of Winston, "He loved Big Brother." In the movie,
Winston and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston defiantly
shouts: "Down with Big Brother!"
Such changes came from the agency's obsession with snuffing out a
notion then popular among many European intellectuals: that East and
West were morally equivalent. But instead of illustrating the
differences between the two competing systems by taking the high road,
the agency justified its covert activities by referring to the
unethical tactics of the Soviets.
"If the other side can use ideas that are camouflaged as being local
rather than Soviet-supported or -stimulated, then we ought to be able
to use ideas camouflaged as local ideas," Tom Braden, who ran the
C.I.A.'s covert cultural division in the early 1950's, explained years
later. (In one of the book's many amusing codas, Mr. Braden goes on in
the 1980's to become the leftist foil to Patrick Buchanan on the CNN
program "Crossfire.")
The cultural cold war began in postwar Europe, with the fraying of the
wartime alliance between Washington and Moscow. Officials in the West
believed they had to counter Soviet propaganda and undermine the wide
sympathyfor Communism in France and Italy.
An odd alliance was struck between the C.I.A. leaders, most of them
wealthy Ivy League veterans of the wartime Office of Strategic
Services and a corps of largely Jewish ex-Communists who had broken
with Moscow to become virulently anti-Communist. Acting as
intermediaries between the agency and the intellectual community were
three colorful agents who included Vladimir Nabokov's much less
talented cousin, Nicholas, a composer.
The C.I.A. recognized from the beginning that it could not openly
sponsor artists and intellectuals in Europe because there was so much
anti-American feeling there. Instead, it decided to woo intellectuals
out of the Soviet orbit by secretly promoting a non-Communist left of
democratic socialists disillusioned with Moscow.
Ms. Stonor Saunders describes how the C.I.A. cleverly skimmed hundreds
of millions of dollars from the Marshall Plan to finance its
activities, funneling the money through fake philanthropies it created
or real ones like the Ford Foundation.
"We couldn't spend it all," Gilbert Greenway, a former C.I.A. agent,
recalled. "There were no limits, and nobody had to account for it. It
was amazing."
When some of the C.I.A.'s activities were exposed in the late 1960's,
many artists and intellectuals claimed ignorance. But Ms. Stonor
Saunders makes a strong case that several people, including the
philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the poet Stephen Spender, who was
co-editor of Encounter, knew about the C.I.A.'s role.
"She has made it very difficult now to deny that some of these things
happened," said Norman Birnbaum, a professor at the Georgetown
University Law School who was a university professor in Europe in the
1950's and early 1960's. "And she has placed a lot of people living
and dead in embarrassing situations."
Still unresolved is what impact the campaign had and whether it was
worth it. Some of the participants, like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.,
who was in the O.S.S. and knew about some of the C.I.A.'s cultural
activities, argue that the agency's role was benign, even necessary.
Compared with the coups the C.I.A. sponsored in Guatemala, Iran and
elsewhere, he said, its support of the arts was some of its best work.
"It enabled people to publish what they already believed," he added.
"It didn't change anyone's course of action or thought."
But Diana Josselson, whose husband, Michael, ran the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, told Ms. Stonor Saunders that there were real human
costs among those around the world who innocently cooperated with the
agency's front organizations only to be tarred with a C.I.A.
affiliation when the truth came out. The author and other critics
argue that by using government money covertly to promote such American
ideals as democracy and freedom of expression, the agency ultimately
stepped on its own message.
"Obviously it was an error, and a rather serious error, to allow
intellectuals to be subsidized by the government," said Alan Brinkley,
a history professor at Columbia University. "And when it was revealed,
it did undermine their credibility seriously."
--
Corporate State Alumni Association
"Feeding the homeless to the hungry."
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/6305/index.html
You can't petition the reality with prayer.
eriop
>March 18, 2000
>http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/cia-propaganda.html
>
>By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN
>
(snip)
Its not surprising. I suspect the same has happened in other films,
such as "Brazil", where the bias in the editing between the 3
different extant versions is obviously aimed at preventing
distribution ofthe germ of the idea that most "terrorist" acts are
committed with the knowledge of governments.
Likewise , when Orwell wrote of a fictionalized situation where a
gov't was rewriting history as it saw fit, he was not writing of
fiction; it was in fact being played out as WWII was ending.
More surprising , other fictional situations which were based on the
destruction of fixed ideas (farhenheit 451) are actually coming true;
the few books now produced are published on "acid paper", which
basically self destructs after 40 yrs, and the trend is obviously
toward a virtual store of ideas, where eventually a paperless storage
of digital media will be our legacy, and all history (and all ideas
which form our cultural framework) will be mutable.
The problem is not simply that of an evil gov't aimed at enslaving the
populace, although that concept can easily explain 99.9% of events
which destroy old, closely held beliefs. It is more likely that the
rate of change of physical and social forces, which cannot be denied
in planning for continuance of a society, are much faster than the
normal rate of change of human social conciousness. To avoid a major
"phase shift" ( ie , culture shock) between belief structures and the
new behaviors required to meet the new pattern of living made
neccesary by technological advances, it is neccesary to use certain
"sleights of hand" to fool the people, commonly referred to as lying
to the people, in one way or another.
Basically, nature gives us a fixed natural rate of change of social
belief structures, and that rate is approximately equal to the
longevity of one generation's power structure, or 25-40 yrs. To
completely change such belief structures in less than 40 yrs would
require artifically supported methods, such as propaganda, creating
phoney events which society apparently reacts to in the desired
manner, and other methods commonlly referred to as "psy ops".
It would be false to suggest that these benign "PSY OPS" are only
undertaken for the greater benefit of the people, blah blah, blah,
since all operations by those in power must include some factor which
bendfits those in power. But it does go a long way in providing a
rationale which could be used to justify the operations, once exposed.
>
Wilson
All's fair in love and war.
There are still many smarting from the fact that we won the Cold War. In a war
you not only have to propagandize, but (gasp!) kill women and children.
Ask Slick Willy. War is hell.
eriop
>March 18, 2000
>http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/cia-propaganda.html
>
>(snip)
Is there any way to determine what other books and movie rights are
owned by gov't agencies?