I'm trying to scan and add a few documents to this page each month. Only a few of the first links are now up and running, but this should change in the next few weeks….this really is a work in progress at this point. Sorry. -David Oct. 14, 1996

Here are some scanned documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Some of these are a bit fuzzy and hard to read, but if you can make them out, they are worth your effort. Over the summer I plan on scanning and posting a few dozen more documents.

"The Central Intelligence Agency has long-developed clandestine relationships with the American academic community, which range from academics making introductions for intelligence purposes to intelligence collection while abroad, to academic research and writing where CIA sponsorship is hidden." ---Final Report of the Church Committee (1976 1:181).

• Online full text version of:
• Price, David H.
  • 1997 "Anthropological Research and the Freedom of Information Act" Cultural Anthropology Methods 9(1):12-15.
• Some CIA Records held on the American Anthropological Association 1, 2.
  • Not much here, but I guess that's the point. Look at the below item for documentation relating to the CIA purging its own files relating to the AAA (see Price 1995). Link #2 is the one partial page that CIA has released. This comes from a pre-1977 annual meetings of the AAA, and indicates that someone attended the meetings and kept notes for CIA. The page shown here is page 14 of a document who's entire length is unknown, all of the page has been blanked out by CIA's FOIA officers except for the paragraph shown here (see also Wakin 1992).
• A recent CIA letter documenting CIA's destruction of records relating to the American Anthropological Association.
  • I have a lot of these CIA document destruction memos, here is a sample of one. George Murdock's CIA file-as well as a number of other anthropologists' files were destroyed under similar guidelines (see Price 1995 & 1996a for HRAF/CIA arrangements).
• Some FBI records held on an unnamed Sociology Professor at the New School for Social Research (From Theoharis 1988). 1 , 2 , 3 .
  • I guess one of the lessons of history is that when given enough time, tragedy reads as comedy. Here we find Hoover's G-men evoking launching an investigation into the sociological imagination of an unnamed sociologist at the New School after he suggested that there were similarities to be found between the Boy Scouts of America ® and the Hitler Youth Movement.
• An early CIA document showing CIA's interest in the Summer Institute of Linguistics and the Wycliffe Bible Translators.
  • Despite claims by Wycliffe, SIL and others, CIA has been interested in the SIL and missionary groups since the 1950s. In a bizarre attack on Gerard Colby & Charlotte Dennett's excellent book (1995) Thy Will Be Done-The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockfeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, Rusty Wright in Christianity Today has stated that claims of a CIA/SIL connection were without any documentation. Coby and Dennett's book is well referenced and contains plenty of such substantiation, the above link also (see also Stoll 1982)
• Max Millikan and Walt Rostow's 1954 CIA position paper written for Allan Dulles on the Cold War uses of Modernization Theory and Development Projects.
  • In the essay "Subtle Means and Enticing Carrots: Cold War Funding and the Evolution of Academic Anthropology" (Price 1996) I use portions of this remarkable CIA document to show the Cold War context of anthropologists' involvement in Development work. This document show the CIA's awareness of Development primarily as a Cold War battle strategy. The "Subtle Means" paper also examines some of the relationships between Clifford Geertz's work at CENIS (where Millikan was the director after leaving his position at CIA & Rostow worked on classified research) and his Ford sponsored Modjokuto Project research in Indonesia.
• Some OSS Records relating to American anthropologist Cora DuBois

• An OSS report written by Gregory Bateson at the end of his clandestined work in Ceylon.

• A telegram sent by Margaret Mead to Melville Jacobs asking him to conduct Cold War survey research without disclosing the purpose and uses of this research.

• A few FBI memos and records relating to Clyde Kluckhohn and his relationship with the OWI, CIA, FBI and DoS.

• …..much, much more to come.
  

• Bibliography of references cited on this page

• For more information on the Cold War Anthropology Project contact David Price .
  David Price, Ph.D., St. Martin's College, Lacey, Washington 98503
  (360) 438-4295
  My Cold War Page