Committee of Correspondence (women's organization)

Last updated

The Committee of Correspondence was an American anti-communist women's organization active from 1952 to 1969. [1] A group of women active in international affairs voluntary clubs and professional fields created the committee as an counterpart to the National Council of Women. [2] The committee established itself as an independent non-profit organization shortly after it began.

Contents

Founding and mission

Oriented toward anti-communism, the organization convened its first meeting in 1952 to answer the question, "what steps should be taken to rally the women of the free world to counteract communist propaganda?" [3] Over time, the Committee evolved into a communications network that aimed to bring women's clubs around the world into closer contact. The Committee sought to make an impact on a diverse international network of clubwomen and professionals. Its efforts promoted cooperation across national borders and encouraged the development of women's non-governmental organizations affiliated with the United Nations. [4]

An advisory organization rather than a membership group, the Committee consisted of a governing board of roughly a dozen women and a small paid staff, which, at times, included field workers who carried out Committee projects in foreign countries. The Committee sought "to provide an international communications link for the exchange of ideas, information and experience among women leaders throughout the world." [1] It did so by cultivating contacts with "correspondents," representatives of women's groups from around the globe who subscribed to the organization's newsletter and participated in its conferences and educational initiatives. Ultimately, five thousand women in 140 countries participated in Committee ventures. [5]

The committee was named after the associations through which American Revolution leaders shared information and created alliances across geographical divides. Other names that the Committee of Correspondence considered in its first year included Committee on Constructive Action, Blank Committee, and, referring to its work countering Communist propaganda, the Wreckers Committee. [2]

Membership and activities

The membership of the Committee of Correspondence was largely white and elite. Well-situated women active in voluntary clubs-including Constance Forrest Anderson, a leader in the Young Women's Christian Association of the US, and Rose Parsons, an officer of the International Council of Women-were able to donate considerable time to the organization. Others - notably Eunice Carter and Dorothy Height, both officers of the National Council of Negro Women, as well as Eleanor Coit, like Height, a long-time employee of the Young Women's Christian Association — had professional leadership roles in other such groups. The Committee attracted correspondents who were elite volunteers or middle-class professionals. Such women were able to travel internationally and often receptive to the anti-communist tenor of the committee. [2]

While the organization was a product of Cold War liberalism, one its more influential lines of work pointed to an emergent model of internationalism based more on empowering the grassroots and facilitating small-scale community development rather than middle-class uplift. In the early 1960s the Committee hired field workers for short-term programs in leadership and skills training for community leaders in foreign countries. Sarale Owens, a former YWCA executive, earned considerable acclaim during her two years spent in East Africa as a Committee field worker. The committee also sent personnel to Latin America. [1]

Revelations of C.I.A. funding and dissolution

Despite the committee's successes at promoting contacts among women's organizations and hosting conferences both in and out of the United States, it could not recover from revelations published in Ramparts magazine in 1967 that it was among the international organizations covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. Supportive of the committee's commitment to liberal anti-communism, the CIA had funneled funding for the Committee through private foundation grants. [6] The degree to which the CIA had an influence on the committee's programming is disputed. Some members were in contact with CIA agents; others were not aware of such activities. Several Committee efforts were directed at countries of special interest to the CIA. These included a 1961 conference for Latin American journalists that coincided with the Bay of Pigs invasion. Another was a 1963 conference in Iran on the "Role of Women in the Community." The event garnered the participation of Ashraf Pahlavi, twin sister to Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah who had taken power after the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup. [1]

After the expose in Ramparts, which was further publicized in a series of New York Times articles, [7] President Lyndon Johnson curtailed CIA funding of private foundations. Unable to fill the breach through traditional fundraising methods, the Committee of Correspondence elected to dissolve in 1969. [1]

Related Research Articles

Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Peace Council</span> International disarmament organization

The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty, independence, peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. Founded from an initiative of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties, WPC emerged from the bureau's worldview that divided humanity into Soviet-led "peace-loving" progressive forces and US-led "warmongering" capitalist countries. Throughout the Cold War, WPC operated as a front organization as it was controlled and largely funded by the Soviet Union, and refrained from criticizing or even defended the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts. These factors led to the decline of its influence over the peace movement in non-Communist countries. Its first president was the French physicist and activist Frédéric Joliot-Curie. It was based in Helsinki, Finland from 1968 to 1999, and since in Athens, Greece.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist cultural organization founded on June 26, 1950 in West Berlin, and was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group. The congress aimed to enlist intellectuals and opinion makers in a war of ideas against communism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World League for Freedom and Democracy</span> Non-governmental organization of anti-communists

The World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD) is an international non-governmental organization of anti-communist politicians and groups. It was founded in 1952 as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) under the initiative of Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China and retired General Charles A. Willoughby that united mostly right-wing authoritarian people and organizations, and acted with the support of the right-wing authoritarian regimes of East Asia and Latin America. During the Cold War, WACL actively participated in anti-communist and anti-Soviet positions.

The National Student Association (NSA) was a confederation of college and university student governments that was in operation from 1947 to 1978.

Noel Haviland Field was an American diplomat who was accused of being a spy for the NKVD. His name was used as a prosecuting rationale during the 1949 Rajk show trial in Hungary, as well as the 1952 Slánský show trial in Czechoslovakia. Much controversy surrounds the Field story. In 2015, the historian David Talbot reignited claims that Field was set up by Allen Dulles in order to create paranoia designed to undermine the Soviet Union.

Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war, and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a global area of operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melvin J. Lasky</span> American journalist

Melvin Jonah Lasky was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He founded the German journal Der Monat in 1948 and, from 1958 to 1991, edited Encounter, one of many journals revealed to have been secretly funded by the CIA through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).

The Reporter was an American biweekly news magazine published in New York City from 1949 through 1968.

The Safari Club was a covert alliance of intelligence services formed in 1976 that ran clandestine operations around Africa at a time when the United States Congress had limited the power of the CIA after years of abuses and when Portugal was dismantling its colonial empire in Africa. Its formal members were the pre-revolution (Pahlavi) Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and France. The group maintained informal connections with the United States, South Africa, Rhodesia and Israel. The group executed a successful military intervention in Zaire in response to an invasion from Angola. It also provided arms to Somalia in its 1977–1978 conflict with Ethiopia. It organized secret diplomacy relating to anti-Communism in Africa, and has been credited with initiating the process resulting in the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden</span>

Several sources have alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ties with Osama bin Laden's faction of "Afghan Arab" fighters when it armed Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War.

At various times, under its own initiative or in accordance with directives from the President of the United States or the National Security Council staff, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has attempted to influence public opinion both in the United States and abroad.

With Europe stabilizing along the Iron Curtain, the CIA attempted to limit the spread of Soviet influence elsewhere around the world. Much of the basic model came from George Kennan's "containment" strategy from 1947, a foundation of US policy for decades.

During the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an arms race, the Soviet Union promoted its foreign policy through the World Peace Council and other front organizations. Some writers have claimed that it also influenced non-aligned peace groups in the West.

The American Friends of the Middle East (AFME) was an American international educational organization, formed in 1951. It was founded by columnist Dorothy Thompson, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., Harry Emerson Fosdick, and 24 other American educators, theologians, and writers. The predecessor organization, with many of the same founders was the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land. The AFME organization was later linked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It existed as a pro-Arabist organization often critical of U.S. support for Israel.

The Committee for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an American political organization active from 1939 to 1951 which advocated opposition to the totalitarianism of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in foreign affairs, and promoted pro-democratic reforms in public and private institutions domestically. Co-founded by influential philosopher and educator John Dewey and the anti-Soviet Marxist academic Sidney Hook, it was reorganized in January 1951 into the American Committee for Cultural Freedom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's International Democratic Federation</span> International womens rights organization

The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) is an international women's rights organization. Established in 1945, it was most active during the Cold War when, according to historian Francisca de Haan, it was "the largest and probably most influential international women's organization of the post-1945 era". Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, its headquarters were moved from Berlin to Paris. In 2002, with the election of Márcia Campos as president, the office relocated to Brasília. Subsequently, in 2007 the WIDF secretariat was located in São Paulo. Since 2016, the president has been Lorena Peña of El Salvador. The WIDF's magazine, Women of the Whole World, was published in six languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crusade for Freedom</span> US propaganda and public radio fundraising campaign

The Crusade for Freedom was an American propaganda campaign operating from 1950–1960. Its public goal was to raise funds for Radio Free Europe; it also served to conceal the CIA's funding of Radio Free Europe and to generate domestic support for American Cold War policies.

The Congress of American Women was an American women's rights organization. It was founded in New York on International Women's Day, March 8, 1946, following the 1945 founding conference of the Women's International Democratic Federation in Paris, to which it affiliated. Its primary organizer was Elinor S. Gimbel. In 1948 the organization was attacked as a communist front organization by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was forced to register as a "subversive" organization. The organization was finally dissolved in 1950.

Women United for United Nations (WUUN) was an organisation established in January 1947 that worked to increase public awareness of and interest in the relatively newly formed United Nations (U.N.).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Collection: Committee of Correspondence records | Smith College Finding Aids" . Retrieved 2020-05-21. Creative Commons by small.svg  This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 3.0 license.
  2. 1 2 3 Laville, Helen (2002). Cold War women :the international activities of American women's organisations /. Manchester, UK. hdl:2027/uva.x004624496. ISBN   9780719058561.
  3. ↑ Laville, Helen (1997). "The committee of correspondence: CIA funding of women's groups 1952–1967". Intelligence and National Security. 12 (1): 104–121. doi:10.1080/02684529708432401.
  4. ↑ Laville, Helen; Wilford, Hugh (2006-11-22). The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-134-25190-2.
  5. ↑ Smallegan, Victoria A. (2015-05-02). "Cross-gender cooperation in the Cold War : the Committee of Correspondence and the Central Intelligence Agency, 1953-1967" . Retrieved 2020-05-21.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. ↑ Lucas, W. Scott (2002). "Mobilizing Culture: The State-Private Network and the CIA in the Early Cold War". War and Cold War in American Foreign Policy 1942–62. Springer. pp. 83–107.
  7. ↑ Sheehan, Neil (1967-02-19). "AID BY C.I.A. PUT IN THE MILLIONS; GROUP TOTAL UP; A Wide Spectrum of Youth, Labor, Student and Legal Organizations Are Cited Aid by C.I.A.Is Put in the Millions as Total of Groups Grows". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-05-21.

Creative Commons by small.svg  This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 3.0 license.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.