Hurrah for the CIA
The Editor of this blog thanks The Editor of The Times Literary Supplement for publishing, in that paper's issue for May 8, 2020, his letter addressing topics that have him much engaged these last forty-five years . Hurrah for the CIA I have long been at one with the efforts of J.C. (NB, April 24) to rescue Encounter from its reputation among the bien-pensants as little more than a propaganda front for the CIA – the source, over its first decade, of secret funding, which came via private foundations and thence Encounter ’s publisher, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). The revelation of that funding in 1966 led to the resignation of Encounter ’s founding co-editor Stephen Spender and his successor Frank Kermode, and a decline in prestige as rival start-ups such as the N ew York Review of Books absorbed its top-rank contributors. (George Steiner proved a notable exception, sticking with Encounter through to the late 1980s; indeed he had already alienated William Ph