Former Quincy Senior Tutor Directed CIA-Supported Group from House

Copyright 1967 by the Harvard CRIMSON

A CIA-financed organization that encouraged anti-Communist American students to attend international youth conferences was directed from the room of a Quincy House Senior Tutor.

Paul Sigmund, Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Quincy House and instructor in Government from 1959 to 1962, controlled the Independent Service for Information on the Vienna Youth Festival, which he organized in 1959. He later re-named the group the Independent Research Service and recruited delegates for the Helsinki Youth Festival of 1962.

The Independent Research Service received $145,000 from a CIA front, the Independent Foundation, according to a report in Congressional Quarterly.

Sigmund Unavailable

Sigmund, now associate professor of Politics at Princeton, is on sabbatical in Chile, and could not be reached for comment.

Sigmund, was looking for people to represent the United States at Vienna and Helsinki who would counter the influence of the United States Festival Committee, a delegation of young American Communists. In some cases, he offered IRS funds to defray traveling expenses.

Sometimes, however, Sigmund attached a few strings to his offer. In 1959, he offered one Lowell House tutor a free trip to Vienna, according to an acquaintance of the tutor, if the tutor would record the names of Americans there who expressed sympathy with the Communist speakers from other countries. The tutor rejected the offer.

But most of the students who were sent to festivals by IRS were not given orders. "Nobody told me what to do," Barney Frank '62, special assistant to the director of the Institute for Politics, said yesterday. Frank attended the 1962 Helsinki festival, and "had no idea at the time" of any link with the CIA.

Picked Non-Communists

"The purpose of the organization was clear," Frank explained. "It picked a non-Communist left-wing delegation of students, including SDS and SNCC people to represent American students."

Another college graduate, Dennis Shaul, worked with Sigmund in IRS recruiting for Helsinki. The following year, Shaul was elected president of NSA at its annual summer meeting. In at least this one case, NSA democratically elected a student who apparently already knew of the CIA link.

'Indoctrination Program'

Sigmund's ties with the CIA go back at least as far as 1954. That spring, after three years as a graduate student, including one year as a teaching fellow in Government, Sigmund left Harvard for NSA.

In the summer of '54, he taught the International Student Relations Seminar (ISRS) in the Harvard Summer School. ISRS, supported by CIA money (apparently Harvard did not know this) was recently called "a sophisticated indoctrination program" by a past assistant director of the seminar.

Sigmund then became NSA's International Affairs Vice-President for 1954-55. If he did not know about the CIA before taking office, he almost certainly found out at this time. Almost every President and International Affairs Vice-President of NSA since 1952 was told of the bond with the CIA.

CIA 'Cooperator'

The following year, Sigmund worked in three European cities on his Ph.D thesis for Harvard, supported by a grant from the Catherwood Foundation. The Catherwood Foundation is listed by the Congressional Quarterly as a CIA "cooperator," which means it is not as CIA-controlled as a "dummy," but more involved with the CIA than a "conduit."

Sigmund then served three years as an Air Force Lieutenant, in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. He returned to Harvard, completed his thesis in June, 1959, and became Allston Burr Senior Tutor in September.