Swarajya Mag - Religious Crusades of CIA
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The CIA has constantly attempted to interfere in foreign policy decisions of third world countries with the aid of religious groups. CIA not only receives inputs from religious gurus but also from ââ¬Åacademiciansââ¬Â, who work in third world countries.
Among the murkier chapters in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the attempt to destabilise societies around the world using religion warrants attention. Allen Dulles, who headed the CIA in its early years, was responsible for using religious groups as cover for intelligence activities. He had used them for spying even when he was part of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIAââ¬â¢s predecessor.
After the creation of the CIA, Christian missionaries played a very important role in destabilising various countries and in carrying out espionage activities on behalf of the CIA. The most recent high profile example of the US using religious missionaries as Trojan horses to cause disturbances in India was in the case of the agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant.
This agitation came after a cable to the CIA from the US Consulate in Mumbai informed the agency that ââ¬Åwe feel that the USG must move forward to enable our companies to compete in the next stage of Indiaââ¬â¢s nuclear future. Otherwise we may have to watch bitterly as third countries become the first to benefit commercially from the environment that our diplomacy has created.ââ¬Â
The CIA-Church connection had been one of the topics of an investigation conducted by the US Senate in 1975. Headed by Frank Church, it came to be known as the Church Committee, and according to the report of this Committee, the CIA had informed them of at least ââ¬Åa total of 14 covert arrangements, which involved direct operational use of 21 individualsââ¬Â who were American clergy or missionaries. The report went on to state that a few of them ââ¬Åwere current in August 1975, and according to the CIA, they were used only for intelligence collection, or, in one case, for a minor role in preserving the cover of another asset.ââ¬Â
The following excerpt from the Church Committee report speaks for itself and highlights the dangers of allowing foreign missionaries into India.
ââ¬Å[T]he CIA paid salaries, bonuses, or expenses to the religious personnel, or helped to fund projects run by them. Most of the individuals were used for covert action purposes. Several were involved in large covert action projects of the mid-sixties, which were directed at ââ¬Åcompetingââ¬Â with communism in the Third World.
ââ¬Â¦
Of the recent relationships, the most damaging would appear to be that of a U.S. priest serving the CIA as an informant on student and religious dissidence.
Of the earlier cases, one exemplifies the extent to which the CIA used confidential pastoral relationships. The CIA used the pastor of a church in a Third World country as a ââ¬Åprincipal agentââ¬Â to carry out covert action projects, and as a spotter, assessor, asset developer, and recruiter. He collected information on political developments and on personalities. He passed CIA propaganda to the local press.
According to the CIAââ¬â¢s description of the case, the pastorââ¬â¢s analyses were based on his long-term friendships with the personalities, and the agents under him were ââ¬Åwell known to him in his professional life.ââ¬Â At first the CIA provided only occasional gifts to the pastor in return for his services; later, for over ten years, the CIA paid him a salary that reached $11,414 annually.ââ¬Â
The figure of $11,414 in this excerpt gives us a clue that the country in question is most likely India as this amount translates to a nice round figure of one lakh rupees using the currency exchange rate of the day.
The CIA used opposition to communism in the Third World as the excuse to fund churches in Kerala and this interference in Indian politics came to light in 1978 when the former ambassador to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published the information his book ââ¬â A Dangerous Place.
Apart from interfering in Kerala, American churches have provided extensive support to the terrorists in Nagaland whose stated aim is ââ¬ÅNagalim for Christ.ââ¬Â These terrorists receive overt help from the American establishment in the form of so-called human rights reports and public statements of support from high profile politicians such as Jimmy Carter.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the US establishment keenly pushed Western values as the standard for the entire world. Apart from religion, feminism and sex were also used as weapons against countries where the bond of family was strong and stood as a line of defense against the actions of those who wanted to create instability in society.
In a speech before the Fund for Peace Conference in 1974, CIA head William E. Colby admitted that the CIA had funded several groups around the world to propagate their point of view and named the famous feminist Gloria Steinem as a recipient of such funds.
According to Colby, ââ¬ÅThe record is clear that the assistance given to these institutions by the CIA was to enable them to participate in foreign activities; there was no attempt to interfere in internal American domestic activities. CIA aid helped such groups as the National Students Association to articulate the views of American students abroad and meet the Communist-subsidised effort to develop a panoply of international front organisations. I might quote Ms. Gloria Steinem, one of those assisted, who commented that the CIA ââ¬Åwanted to do what we wanted to do ââ¬â present a healthy, diverse view of the United Statesââ¬Â ââ¬â I never felt I was being dictated to at all.ââ¬Â
Another womenââ¬â¢s group named Redstockings had uncovered Gloria Steinemââ¬â¢s CIA connections and included the information in their book Feminist Revolution but the publishing firm Random House removed the chapter before publication and called it an ââ¬Åabridged editionââ¬Â as they faced immense pressure to suppress this information from several quarters including the president of Ford Foundation. The news about this suppression became public when it was published in Village Voice in May 1979.
In 1957, Gloria Steinem visited Kerala and worked with an American Protestant missionary and helped his group reach out to women. While in India, she gathered information about plantations in Kerala, and a few Wikileaks cables show that the American establishment was eager to present her in later years as a thought leader, who had to be emulated and included meetings with her as part of programs organised for visiting foreign dignitaries.
Gloria Steinemââ¬â¢s visit to India had been funded by what was called the Chester Bowles scholarship which was named after the ambassador to India. But this scholarship, which had been created in the year of Gloria Steinemââ¬â¢s visit to India, was curiously discontinued immediately after she and another student were funded for their trips to India.
One religious organisation that has received money from USAID and has been outed as a front for the CIA is the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) which was set up to translate the bible into various languages and distribute them around the world. Together with its sister organisation, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and its subsidiary, the Jungle Aviation and Radio Services (JAARS) which operates several aircraft and radio stations, SIL became a very powerful and destructive force in the world.
In the 1970s, several Latin American countries including Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Peru held SIL responsible for advancing the interests of the American intelligence agencies and Brazil expelled SILââ¬â¢s missionaries from the country for acting as cover for geologists searching for mineral deposits in the Amazon basin. SILââ¬â¢s clout in the American establishment was such that they were able to bypass the diplomats and directly seek helicopters from the military to carry out their mission in Papua New Guinea.
SIL has been accused of drug trafficking, smuggling emeralds and uranium, and even waging germ warfare that destroyed many native tribes. In their book ââ¬â THY WILL BE DONE, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, the authors Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett document the extensive connections of Wycliffe Bible Translators with Nelson and John D. Rockefeller and their takeover of the resources in the Amazon basin countries. SILââ¬â¢s partner in India is the Indian Institute of Cross Cultural Communication based in Nashik.
Things take a bizarre turn in the context of SIL and its connection to drugs. When LSD was first synthesised by the Swiss drug firm Sandoz, it was clear that there was no medicinal use for it, but the CIA was interested in it as part of its mind control program and its aim of controlling of societies in general. The CIA even set up a project named MKULTRA to research ââ¬Åbehavioral modification.ââ¬Â According to a Senate hearing in 1977, CIA used many unwitting persons for experimentation as part of this project.
Over the years, they infiltrated many groups and distributed narcotic and psychedelic drugs with the twin aims of observing their effects and weakening the groups they were targeting. Among the Hindu groups that were suspected of being infiltrated by CIA agents were Rajneeshââ¬â¢s ashram, ISKCON and the Ananda Marg.
Unlike Christian churches, Hindu outfits did not centralise power and were not conducive to being taken over, and hence the only option available to their opponents was to destroy such groups. Rajneeshââ¬â¢s followers had also gone one step further and built up a self-sustaining commune that did not depend on the government.
This was sure to attract the hostility of the American establishment which has repeatedly demonstrated intolerance for independent communities and individuals regardless of their race or religion. In contrast, the centralised nature of Christianity was helpful to the American government. According to Colby and Dennet, the Summer Institute of Linguistics not only converted the local people in Latin America from their indigenous faiths to Christianity, but also ââ¬Ëused the Bible to teach indigenous people to ââ¬Åobey the government, for all authority comes from God.ââ¬Â The idea that all authority comes from God is part of the biblical verse Romans 13:1.
It is in CIAââ¬â¢s use of drugs to control others that R. Gordon Wasson and SIL come into the picture. Wasson was the author of an article titled Seeking the Magic Mushroom in Life magazine in 1957 and the article is considered a path breaking one in the ââ¬Ëpsychedelic movement.ââ¬â¢ He was close to CIAââ¬â¢s Director Allen Dulles and had gone on an expedition to Mexico in search of the ââ¬ÅMagic Mushroomââ¬Â with funds from the CIA.
Wasson has acknowledged at the end of his article that he collaborated with missionaries belonging to the Summer School of Linguistics. Wassonââ¬â¢s involvement with the CIA is presented in detail in the book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate by former State Department official John Marks.
Sometime in 1962, Gordon Wasson recruited a young lady named Wendy Gudwin to dig out information about the source of soma from Sanskrit texts. Wendy Gudwin was the daughter of Lester Doniger, a wealthy scam artist who deceived ordinary people into parting with money by threatening them that their credit rating would be affected if they did not pay him money.
Among the many false representations Lester Doniger made to his victims, he created and used the fictitious name of Mail Order Credit Reporting Association along with a letterhead for this fake organisation on which he sent out his threats (see p. 785 of Federal Trade Commission rulings for April-June 1964).
Lester Doniger was also a fervent believer in converting people to Christianity and actively helped evangelical churches achieve this goal. Together with his brother Simon Doniger, he published two journals ââ¬â Pulpit Digest and Pastoral Psychology ââ¬â in order to help the Christian churches become more powerful and efficient in their operations.
The New York Times dated 26 February 1949 reported that Pulpit Digest honored an evangelist radio series and that Lester Doniger, before presenting the award, pointed out that ââ¬Åthe program had 6 million listeners weekly and there were approximately 70 million without church affiliations toward whom the program was directed.ââ¬Â
Lester Doniger was also involved with the activities of the American establishment on other fronts. Closely tied to the feminist movement was the issue of sex education, and in 1964, the US got UNESCO to focus on disseminating information related to sex around the world. A new organisation named Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) was soon set up and Lester Doniger became the president of SIECUS within a few years.
Under his stewardship, SIECUS was funded by Steven Rockefeller and James Warburg of the influential banking family, two key people who have helped shape the US foreign policy and bankrolled several overt and covert American government programs. The US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara also supported SIECUS and another source of funds for the organisation was the Ford Foundation.
The ââ¬Åresearchââ¬Â of Mrs. Wendy Gudwin nee Doniger who is now a professor at the University of Chicago must be viewed in the light of this background combined with her work with Gordon Wasson. None of her so-called research is original, and as a pliant assistant, she has merely propagated the views of those whom she has worked for. Even the idea of mixing up sex and religion did not originate with her.
Her uncle Simon Doniger had published a book titled Sex and Religion Today. After helping Gordon Wasson buttress his claims on soma, Wendy Doniger continued where Simon Doniger had left off and her work was aligned with the message of Christian missionaries and SIECUS packaged in academic verbiage and style.
Christian missionaries routinely attack Hindu beliefs by attacking Krishna and this behavior is accurately depicted in RK Narayanââ¬â¢s novel Swami and Friends in which the teacher of the scripture class attempts to foist Christianity on the students by preaching,ââ¬ÂOh, wretched idiots! ââ¬Â¦Did our Jesus go gadding about with dancing girls like your Krishna? Did our Jesus go about stealing butter like that arch-scoundrel Krishna? Did our Jesus practise dark tricks on those around him?ââ¬Â
In the works of Lester Donigerââ¬â¢s daughter and other American professors, the same kind of attack on Hindus can be found in a more sophisticated form complete with footnotes and citations in order to appear pedantic. After working for Gordon Wasson, Lester Donigerââ¬â¢s daughter was placed at Harvard University where her guide, Daniel Ingalls, was a known intelligence agent, who had spied against Indian freedom fighters.
She then spent time in Oxford, and strangely, her adviser RC Zaehner too was an intelligence agent. Zaehner, who was also a racist, had headed the failed British attempt in 1951 to overthrow the Mossadegh government in Iran and put the Iranian oilfields in the control of the British.
Earlier, in 1963-64, Wendy Doniger had also been sent to India for a year on a $6000 fellowship (this was thirty percent more than the median annual income in the US) to the American Institute of Indian Studies which would eventually come to be known as a CIA front. The US had set up many front organisations in the academia as part of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and AIIS was one such institution.
The links of AIIS to the intelligence community was very strong during the days of Wendy Donigerââ¬â¢s association with the organisation. Its Director in 1964 was Richard D. Lambert, who had been stationed in India as part of the counterintelligence department during the second world war.
He was succeeded by Thomas Simons who was also part of the intelligence community, who had headed the South Asian branch of the Office of Intelligence Research in the US Department of State. A key member of the founding group of AIIS was Richard Park who went on to become the India scholar at AIIS. Park was also part of the infamous Asia Foundation.
Despite earlier denials, it was revealed in 1967 that the Asia Foundation had received funds from the CIA and it had in turn funnelled money to Indian groups in the guise of funding cultural and educational programs. This revelation led to an outcry in the Indian parliament on the role of AIIS and other groups. Indira Gandhiââ¬â¢s government asked Asia Foundation to cease its operations and leave India.
Even the journal Seminar which was published by the brother of the Marxist professor, Romila Thapar devoted an entire issue to the topic of ââ¬ÅAcademic Colonialism,ââ¬Â but that was before Romila Thapar received money and titles from the American establishment and started supporting them.
By 1972, the situation had become so severe that Indira Gandhi had to keep out foreign scholars from India. The New York Times dated 5 August 1972 carried an editorial headlined ââ¬ËIndia Closes its Doorsââ¬â¢ in which it stated, ââ¬ÅIndia no doubt has been victimised by some sloppy and even malicious scholarship. On that basis alone New Delhi has some justification for seeking a measure of control over the hordes of scholars and would-be scholars who descend on the subcontinent annually, attracted by Indiaââ¬â¢s rich cultural diversity and historic fascination.ââ¬Â
Even before the National Defence Education Act, the first program that focused on India had been set up at the University of Pennsylvania to serve the military during the second world war. In the following years, similar centers were set up at other universities with the faculty members carefully chosen so that they believed in the superiority of Western Christianity.
The fact that most American programs related to studying India grew out of the intelligence and military departments which sought to shape public opinion in other countries through the media and academia explains the strange phenomenon of American faculty members hating their own area of research and expressing hostility towards the culture they claim to study. This behavior is at complete odds with that of of real researchers, who pursue an academic field, not out of hate, but out of love for the chosen subject.
India has been the main target of Americans ever since they started their evangelical activities. The first evangelical missionaries from USA went to India and it was to India that one of Americaââ¬â¢s earliest missionaries Adoniram Judson led a group of evangelists in 1812.
When Jimmy Carter wanted to open his charity group Habitat for Humanity in India, his intentions were clearly to proselytise Hindus. That is why Rajiv Gandhi forced him to sign an agreement not to indulge in religious conversions. That kind of vigilance is required at all levels of government and society. After all, in the words of the Church Committee, ââ¬ÅAgency-funded foundations serve as conduits of funds for a variety of purposes, including clandestine activities and contributions to scholars conducting research which supports United States foreign policy positions.ââ¬Â
Another angle covered by the Church Committee was the use of journalists and media organisations by the CIA. According to their report, ââ¬Åapproximately 50 U.S. journalistsââ¬Â and ââ¬Åmore than a dozen United States news organisations and commercial publishing housesââ¬Â worked for the CIA.
In one case, according to the report, the New York Times carried a book review written by a CIA writer for a book brought out by the CIA. With the debate on religious conversions in India picking up steam, certain journalists and media outlets are now outing themselves as messengers of the American establishment.
In a display of truly bizarre behavior indicating that their ideas were not original but had been handed down to them, at least three Western media outlets had nothing to say on the topic of religious conversions for three weeks after several Muslims embraced Hinduism at Agra in early December, but they have now suddenly made the same point at the same time. They have demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi not remain silent on the issue of religious conversions even though the topic is under the jurisdiction of the state governments.
While Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times made the demand in his editorial, an identical demand appeared in an article written by a reporter for Bloomberg. A similar criticism of Modi also appeared in a piece by Amy Kazmin of the Financial Times whose former Washington bureau chief worked for a senior Clinton administration official.
The crudest of the three demands was by Amy Kazmin, who has described conversions by Christians as ââ¬Åfreedom of conscienceââ¬Â and conversions by Hindus as ââ¬Åugly.ââ¬Â Her position is consistent with the long standing tradition of many American journalists who have supported fellow white Americans like Billy Graham who have been actively proselytising in India.
It should also be noted that some of the language used in the American press against India constitutes verbatim repetition of language used by the US State Department. For example, the dishonest phrase ââ¬Å1,000 people, mostly Muslimsââ¬Â that is used to describe the victims of the riots in Gujarat in 2002 was coined and first used by the US State Department in their Human Rights report of 1998 to describe the victims of riots that occurred after the events at Ayodhya in 1992.
It is extremely important that the American media, academia, think-tanks and foundations be viewed in the light of the Church Committee report. Instead of giving them a free run and permitting American agitprop to be created with Indian money and support, India should curb their activities.
Whether Narendra Modi is capable of the strong action taken by Indira Gandhi remains to be seen, but what is clear is that any attempt by foreign forces to either shape public opinion in India or change the demographics of the country must be resisted. If India follows the example of South America where the Summer Institute of Linguistics was successful in its efforts, India too will become a Christian nation with the people taught to obey a government that is permanently subservient to foreign powers.
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