Patriotic Betrayal : The Inside Story of the CIA's Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism

Part I. Cooperation or combat -- A fighting faith -- Apostolic catholics -- Behind the scenes -- Enter the CIA -- Allard Lowenstein and the International Student Conference -- Part II. Denial operations -- The counteroffensive -- The battle for members -- Opening the spigot -- The spirit of Bandung -- Shifting battlefields -- Part III. Competitive coexistence -- Hungary and the struggle against nonalignment -- Debating democracy in Red Square -- Courting revolutionaries -- Gloria Steinem and the Vienna operation -- Social upheavals -- Part IV. Losing control -- Showdown in Madison -- Pro-west moderate militants -- A pyrrhic victory -- The persistent questioner -- Lifting the veil -- Part V. The flap -- Philip Sherburne takes on the CIA -- The game within the game -- Hide-and-seek -- Do you want blood on your hands? -- The firestorm -- The enemy at home. The previously untold true story of the CIA's clandestine use of American students as undercover operatives during the Cold War In 1967, CIA director Richard Helms had, as he would later recall, "one of my darkest days" when President Lyndon Johnson told him that the muckraking magazine Ramparts was about to expose one of the Agency's best-kept secrets: a covert project to enroll American students in the crusade against communism. Ramparts , however, had only a small part of the story of the CIA's two-decades-long effort to suborn the National Student Association. Patriotic Betrayal tells the rest of the tale, which reads like a John le Carré novel, filled with self-serving rationalizations, layers of duplicity, and bureaucratic double-talk. In this eye-opening book, Karen M. Paget, herself a former member of the NSA, mined hundreds of archival sources and declassified documents, and interviewed more than 150 people, to uncover precisely how the CIA turned the NSA into an intelligence asset during the Cold War, with students used—sometimes wittingly but usually unwittingly—as undercover agents inside America and abroad. A rich and suspenseful account of an under-examined episode in the Cold War, Patriotic Betrayal describes the relationship from its inception in 1947, when both the NSA and CIA were established, to 1967, when public exposure forced the CIA to discontinue the arrangement while successfully engineering a cover-up of the extent of its penetration into the NSA. For the first time, Paget tells the full story revealing that what began as a straightforward project to thwart perceived Soviet influence in America and abroad grew and diversified, and that intelligence-gathering and espionage—despite subsequent CIA denials—were integral to its nature. How did a domestic liberal student organization become, effectively, a covert arm of a secret government organization charged with advancing U.S. foreign policy aims? The answer throws a sharp light on the persistent argument, heard even today, about whether America's national-security interests can be secured by skullduggery and deception. Patriotic Betrayal is an indispensable history of the dark side of Cold War good intentions and fills a significant gap in an important era of postwar twentieth-century history. In this revelatory book, Karen M. Paget shows how the CIA turned the National Student Association into an intelligence asset during the Cold War, with students used—often wittingly and sometimes unwittingly—as undercover agents inside America and abroad. In 1967, Ramparts magazine exposed the story, prompting the Agency into engineering a successful cover-up. Now Paget, drawing on archival sources, declassified documents, and more than 150 interviews, shows that the Ramparts story revealed only a small part of the plot.

A cautionary tale, throwing sharp light on the persistent argument, heard even now, about whether America’s national-security interests can be advanced by skullduggery and deception, Patriotic Betrayal, says Karl E. Meyer, a former editorial board member of the New York Times and The Washington Post, evokes “the aura of a John le Carré novel with its self-serving rationalizations, its layers of duplicity, and its bureaucratic doubletalk.” And Hugh Wilford, author of The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, calls Patriotic Betrayal “extremely valuable as a case study of relations between the CIA and one of its front groups, greatly extending and enriching our knowledge and understanding of the complex dynamics involved in such covert, state-private relationships; it offers a fascinating portrayal of post-World War II U.S. political culture in microcosm." In this revelatory book, Karen M. Paget shows how the CIA turned the National Student Association into an intelligence asset during the Cold War, with students used—often wittingly and sometimes unwittingly—as undercover agents inside America and abroad. In 1967, Ramparts magazine exposed the story, prompting the Agency into engineering a successful cover-up. Now Paget, drawing on archival sources, declassified documents, and more than 150 interviews, shows that the Ramparts story revealed only a small part of the plot. A cautionary tale, throwing sharp light on the persistent argument, heard even now, about whether America's national-security interests can be advanced by skullduggery and deception, Patriotic Betrayal, says Karl E. Meyer, a former editorial board member of the New York Times and The Washington Post, evokes “the aura of a John le Carré novel with its self-serving rationalizations, its layers of duplicity, and its bureaucratic doubletalk.” And Hugh Wilford, author of The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, calls Patriotic Betrayal “extremely valuable as a case study of relations between the CIA and one of its front groups, greatly extending and enriching our knowledge and understanding of the complex dynamics involved in such covert, state-private relationships; it offers a fascinating portrayal of post-World War II U.S. political culture in microcosm.' Overview: In this revelatory book, Karen M. Paget shows how the CIA turned the National Student Association into an intelligence asset during the Cold War, with students used-often wittingly and sometimes unwittingly-as undercover agents inside America and abroad. In 1967, Ramparts magazine exposed the story, prompting the Agency into engineering a successful cover-up. Now Paget, drawing on archival sources, declassified documents, and more than 150 interviews, shows that the Ramparts story revealed only a small part of the plot. Shows how the CIA turned the National Student Association into an intelligence asset during the Cold War, with students used - often wittingly and sometimes unwittingly - as undercover agents inside America and abroad.