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paign to establish pro-Communist popular fronts among Western intel–
lectuals, including the World Peace Movement, the Wroclaw Conference
of intellectuals, and similar initiatives. The moving spirit during this early
stage was Melvin Lasky, subsequently editor of
Der Monat
and
Encounter.
Others who took prominent parts were Arthur Koestler, the leading
German Social Democrat Carlo Schmid, Ignazio Silone, and Sidney
Hook. None of them were organizers by vocation, nor had they any am–
bitions in this direction. By default leadership passed to Michael Josselson
and his makeshift offices in Paris, retrospectively a debatable good choice
of location.
From recently published CIA documents, it emerges that there was a
strong body of opinion which preferred Berlin to Paris, since Paris
seemed too "ethereal, evanescent and neutralist in the struggle between
liberty and tyranny." (Michael Warner, "Origins of the Congress for
Cultural Freedom
1949/50,"
in
Studies in Intelligence,
Summer 1995, p. 89
et seq.). Two other important facts emerge: According to received wis–
dom, the initiative to establish the Congress came from the Office of
Policy Coordination (OPC), the covert action arm of the CIA, headed by
Frank Wisner. But in fact the impetus had come from a small group of
European intellectuals, and at the time the OPC was doubtful and reluc–
tant.
Again, it has been widely held that the central figure in these initia–
tives was Melvin
J.
Lasky, then the editor of
Der Monat
and later
Encounter.
It
was believed that he was an agent of American intelligence.
The documents show that Lasky was anything but
persona grata
in Wash–
ington. In fact, Wisner issued an ultimatum - unless Lasky was removed
from the Congress, the CIA would not support it. At the same time,
Lasky came under attack by the Papal Nuntius in Germany, an American
citizen whose word carried great weight among the occupation authori–
ties in Bonn. According to the Nuntius, Lasky was a dangerous radical.
Thus it was decided to terminate
Der Monat,
which was financed by the
military authorities. If the journal survived nevertheless, it was owing to
the support ofJohn McCloy and some others who had known Lasky in
Berlin during the postwar years. It did not become known until many
years after that the KGB thought
Der Monat
of sufficient importance to
infiltrate an agent. This was Eric Nohara, a seemingly inoffensive young
man, the son of an official in the Japanese embassy in Berlin.To the best
of my knowledge, there was no agent in
Encounter,
but it could be the
scenario for a fictional thriller of quality.
A substantial number of intellectual prima donnas were attracted to
the Congress; politically it was a coalition among Social Democrats, ex–
Communists, liberals, conservatives, apolitical philosophers such as Karl
