The Mail 'SEVERAL POINTS'

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Robert Bowie and Gustave Papanek have written two letters to the CRIMSON about the CFIA. Unfortunately, these letters contain numerous distortions. We intend to deal with these in an upcoming pamphlet, but several points deserve immediate attention.

1. Bowie and Papanek both claim that the Center is a free and open institution. The truth is clear from their refusal to release the Interim Reports of the Development Advisory Service (striking arm of the CFIA). This is not an isolated incident. When one member of SDS went to a Fellows' Seminar this fall, Benjamin Brown, Director of the Fellows' Program, told him the Center would be happy to have him attend, along with a few other students, as long as they promised not to tell any other students what was said at the meeting. Furthermore, until 1966 the annual reports of the DAS were confidential.

2. Bowie claims that "the Center has never received any CIA support." In fact, all contracts of DAS personnel are co-signed by the Institute of International Education (HE). The HE is funded by such CIA conduits as the William Benton, the Dearborn, the Asian, and the Rubicon Foundations, as well as by GM, the Bank of America, and Standard Oil. In addition, the CFIA has held joint seminars with the Center for International Studies, an M.I.T. Social Science Research center, which is funded by the OIA on a permanent basis. Further insight into the nature of government for the Center is given in a 1967 letter, liberated from University Hall, from Benjamin Brown to Dean Franklin Ford. Speaking of a proposed series of meetings on international security, Brown noted, "We have informally discussed the project with officers of the State Department and Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, who agree as to its importance. There is every indication that ACDA would be prepared to make a substantial contribution to the budget, but for reasons you will understand we are of the opinion that private financing would be preferable."

3. Bowie says, "The Center has not concentrated on Southeast Asia." Thirty-two per cent of the DAS budget (15 per cent of the total CFIA budget) goes to projects in Southeast Asia.

4. Bowie claims that only two of the Center's 99 publications deal with Vietnam, Southeast Asia or counter-insurgency. Last year's titles include: 1) "Conflict Regulation in Deeply Divided Societies" (about Lebanon and Malaysia); 2) "Comparative Study of the Successful Military Coup d'Etat in Modern Polities"; 3) "Social Science Research for National Unity" (about Malaysia); 4) "Administration and Management of Communal Conflict" (about Malaysia); 5) "The Myth of the Guerrilla"; 6) "New Directions for the Banking System" (about Indonesia). These titles are from the DAS alone.

5. Bowie says, "The DAS provides its services only on invitation from a host country." Lyndon Johnson used to say, "We are in Vietnam at the invitation of the South Vietnamese government." In other words, an invitation from a host country does not mean much. The government that does the inviting does not necessarily represent the people. Indonesia's military dictatorship is a case in point. As Bowie says, "If you try to gauge the polities of the government, you'd never work for anyone. There are very few democratic governments around."

6. Papanek says that the host government in Indonesia is not unduly influenced by its advisors, and that the government does not act in the best interests of its people. Yet the DAS claims it "played a major role in an attempt to alter the direction the economy was going." And the new direction clearly is not in the interests of the Indonesian people. As Newsweek reports, "So far, foreign investment has focused primarily on the extraction of raw materials-such as oil, timber, and aluminum-and will do little to help the general economy. In fact, few of these investments will have much immediate impact at all" (June 23, 1969). In the long run, they will leave Indonesia stripped of its natural resources. These governments do, however, act in the interest of foreign investors. Business Week explains, "With backing from Suharto, a team of government economists and technocrats has put out the welcome mat for foreign capital."

7. Papanek says the present regime did not come to power by an anti-communist coup. This is absurd. Suharto did stage a coup in 1965, and it was directed against the Indonesian Communist Party, 500,000 of whose members and supporters were killed.

8. Bowie says, "Those who run the Center are Faculty members," implying by this that they are politically neutral. There are ten members of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the DAS. We have been able to get information about six of them. Robert Bowie was director of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, 1953-55, and AssistantSecretary of State for policy planning, 1955-57. He was a counselor to the Department of State, 1966-68. Hollis B. Chenery was Assistant Administrator of AID, 1962-65. He still works with AID, and since 1968 he has also been associated with the World Bank. Further, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Director of Southern Natural Gas Company. Milton Katz was Chairman of the Defense Finance and Economics Commission of NATO, 1950-51. From 1951-54, he was Associate Director of the Ford Foundation; he is still a consultant. He was Chairman of the Committee on Manpower of Lyndon Johnson's White House Conference for International Cooperation, 1965. Edward Mason was Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of State for Economics Affairs, 1945, and an economic consultant to the State Department, 1946-47. More recently, he is Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Economic Development of AID, and a consultant to the World Bank. Don Price was Deputy Chairman of the Research and Development Board of the Defense Department, 1952-53, Associate Director of the Ford Foundation, 1953-54, and Vice President of the Ford Foundation, 1954-59. He is a trustee of the Twentieth Century Fund (a suspected CIA conduit), the Rand Corporation, and the Rhodes Trust. Raymond Vernon was Assistant Chief of the International Resources Division of the State Department, 1946-48, the Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Defense and Trade Policy, 1951, and Acting Director, 1954. He is a member of the joint Presidential Congressional Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, a Director of Equity Growth Fund of America, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. These biographies reveal a clear pattern of association with the major institutions of American imperialism, which belies any claim of political neutrality.

Most of the above information comes from published documents. We suspect the activities of the Center will be even more clearly exposed when we can all see the Interim Reports. We call on the DAS to release these reports now. And we call on all students, Faculty and employees of the University to join in a campaign to shut the Center down.