Who Paid the Piper? [Hardcover]

Frances Stonor Saunders (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 14, 1999

During the Cold War, both sides looked to govern artistic output. This is the story of the CIA's strategy to insinuate itself in every aspect of cultural life, in order to rid the "Free World" of Communist propaganda. Prominent figures such as Arthur Koestler and George Orwell became involved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Granta Books; First edition (June 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1862070296
• ISBN-13: 978-1862070295
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,905,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine study of intellectual corruption, June 2, 2008

By 

William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (Hardcover)

This splendid book examines the US Central Intelligence Agency's role waging a cultural and propaganda war against socialist ideas in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The CIA created, funded and ran the Congress for Cultural Freedom, while both bodies always claimed that the CCF was quite independent.

From the start of the US state's not-so-altruistic Marshall Plan, it gave $200 million a year to support the CIA's various activities, including assassinations, coups, strike-breaking, election-rigging, and setting up supposedly independent magazines (like Encounter), festivals and organisations.
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The CIA worked closely, as it still does today, with the Foreign Office and MI6. The Foreign Office's secret Information Research Department supported the 'left-wing' Labour journal Tribune and distributed its material internationally.

The US state backed moves towards a federal Europe and the EEC, rightly seeing the EEC as a capitalist bulwark against socialism. So the European Movement was "funded almost entirely by the CIA through a dummy front called the American Committee for a United Europe".

Saunders concludes, "the same people who read Dante and went to Yale and were educated in civic virtue recruited Nazis, manipulated the outcome of democratic elections, gave LSD to unwitting subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American citizens, overthrew governments, supported dictatorships, plotted assassinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs disaster. `In the name of what?' asked one critic. `Not civic virtue, but empire.'"

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Book !!!, June 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Who Paid the Piper? (Hardcover)

In the West, during the Cold War, the freedom of expression of writers & artists was vaunted as democracy's most cherished possession. But such freedom could carry a cost. This book documents the secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were instruments of the CIA, which infiltrated itself into every niche in the cultural sphere. CIA front org. & the Ôphilanthropic' fdns. that channeled its money ran congresses, mounted exhibitions, & organized concerts. Ambitious pub. programs & expensive translations were subsidized; & journals throughout Europe had their losses offset by generous backers who answered to the CIA. Photos.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading, November 11, 2008

By 

Brad Teare (Providence, Utah, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (Hardcover)

This well documented yet understated book chronicles how the United States veered away from freedom into a kind of benevolent despotism. The book will change the way you think about the so-called "free world".

There is no tabloid journalism here, only well researched documentary detailing how secrecy and power can derail even the most well meaning governments.

There are five massive volumes about the artist Jackson Pollack, none of which mention his involvement with the CIA. If nothing else read this book for information you won't easily find elsewhere.