Patriotic Betrayal by Karen M. Paget

Author:Karen M. Paget
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

18

A PYRRHIC VICTORY

THE BENEFIT TO the United States of a CIA-funded organization that inveighed against the West seemed increasingly dubious. For years, the NSA had justified the International Student Conference as a symbol of democracy, a place where foreign student leaders could experience free and open debate. By the early 1960s, some witting staff had grown skeptical that the ISC was achieving even this limited objective.

In 1962, David Baad, who had spent several years on the COSEC staff, was finding the experience more and more dubious. “I was sort of coming to the conclusion that, first of all, most of these revolutionaries … and those groups that had been in independence movements and were coming to power really weren’t interested in democratic institutions,” which “inhibited their ability to maintain control and push for the kinds of reforms we advocated. Basically, they [militants] were in it for their own personal interest.”1 Overseas staff had perfected the art of maintaining access to individual revolutionaries. Tolerating their growing dominance within the ISC required tactical dexterity, a polite way of describing a new tangle of lies, feints, and deceits.

Typical of the dilemma was the situation in Latin America. While the NSA delegation to the 1960 ISC still supported the Cuban revolution, witting NSA staff members were working against Fidelismo, Castro-inspired militancy in Latin America. When Uruguay had offered to host a Latin American Student Seminar in 1960, in part to challenge a regional group that took its cue from Havana, militant factions within the Uruguayan student union gained enough power that it had to be postponed. Then, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Robert Kiley realized that if the seminar went forward, even friendly student unions might condemn U.S. policies. Peter Eckstein, who had succeeded Baad as editor of The Student magazine, warned that it could be a “complete disaster,” with “the interesting spectacle of a COSEC-sponsored event denouncing COSEC and all its works.”2 Topics for seminar discussion included “land reform, agrarian reform, oil problems, and the root causes of under-development.”3 Each would lead inevitably to a discussion of Yankee support for dictators or economic interests.

The upshot was that FYSA killed the funding for the seminar, but not before nonwitting COSEC staff members Sylvio Mutal of Turkey and Patricio Fernández of Chile had negotiated a new date and assured the Uruguayan leaders that funding would be available.4 The action caught all but the Americans on COSEC by surprise, and humiliated Mutal and Fernandez. Not content with killing the seminar, witting NSA staff also sought to punish the Uruguayan student union (FEUU) for its leftist turn. Manuel Aragon recommended that the NSA encourage a rival Uruguayan student union—even if one did not currently exist—because “the benefits of a rival union outweigh having to absorb criticism.”5

All these factors—an ISC that barely served Western interests, a witting international staff that schemed against pro-Castro militants, and the growth of NSA operations outside the ISC framework—made witting staff dread the ISC scheduled for the summer of 1962 in Quebec.

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