`Mole' Reveals Harvard Secrets

During the takeover of University Hall in April 1969, protesters disturbed more than just the peace.

Taking full advantage of their position of power, students surreptitiously rifled through administrators' file cabinets and stole confidential documents.

These documents were then leaked to The Old Mole, a bi-weekly, radical, underground newspaper run primarily by recent Harvard graduates.

In a "Special Bust Supplement." Old Mole printed many of these "liberated" documents, which linked the University to the CIA and to the war in Vietnam.

A column explaining the controversial papers was titled, "Reading the Mail of the Ruling Class." It portrayed Harvard as anything but the academic institution the University claimed to be.

"[These documents] provide proof that Harvard is...a plaything of the interlocking government-Pentagon-foundation world which makes American foreign policy," the paper's editors wrote.

Included in the supplement was a letter of appreciation from the U.S. State Department to Dean of the Faculty Franklin L. Ford.

"The United States Government deeply appreciates Harvard's making Professor Kissinger available for his extremely successful mission to South Vietnam," the letter read. Henry L. Kissinger '50 served as a foreign policy consultant to the government in 1969, and later he became President Richard M. Nixon's secretary of state.

Also printed in The Old Mole's April issues was a statement regarding a new Center for International Studies at MIT. Harvard administrators and the CIA were both involved in the project.

The Administration Had Lied'

In today's world, where Harvard's role in international affairs is taken for granted, such criticisms may seem trivial. But in recent interviews, editors of The Old Mole Today say 1969 was a very different time.

Michael S. Ansara '68, a writer for Old Mole , says the documents gleaned from University Hall were astonishing because they showed how Harvard had lied repeatedly about its role.

"The administration had said 'We don't take any CIA money,' and then there were these files which indicated that the CIA was subsidizing several research projects," Ansara says.

"What became very clear by the release of the documents was that the administration had lied about a number of issues," he says.

Most disturbing to students was a "Dear Nate" letter found in University Hall. It was printed in the April 22 edition of The Old Mole, which focused entirely on Harvard.

The letter, from Ford to President Nathan M. Pusey' 28, suggested ways that Pusey and the Harvard Corporation might be able to subvert the Faculty's recommendations for the future of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). The Faculty had voted in February 1969 to stop giving credit for ROTC courses and to reduce ROTC to an extracurricular activity.

Ford advised Pusey to return that vote to the Faculty Council for revision until any recommendations could become "usable as a basis for further action."

Ford added that such action--through it might elicit "loud squeals" from the Faculty--was the best course.

To this day, no one knows who "liberated" the confidential documents from University Hall and gave them to The Old Mole.

"That was always the mystery," says Marvin A. Hightower '69, a senior staff writer for the Harvard Gazette. "No one knew how they were getting what they were getting."

'Distinctively Political'

Even after University Hall had been cleared by police, The Old Mole's small but dedicated staff continued to cover events at Harvard for the next few weeks.

The Old Mole was a "distinctively political." magazine, according to Tom Gallagher, a former Boston College student who wrote for The Old Mole during the summer of 1969. In this way, it was unlike the majority of underground publications in the area, which often focused on culture.

Gallagher says writers on the paper were responsible for circulation. Gallagher says he would go out on the street and sell as many papers as he could; he kept the money he made as his salary.

Most of the publication's writers had been active in the Harvard chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Old Mole staff members say.

"If there was one organization whose point of view [The Old Mole] embodied, SDS would have been it," Gallagher says.

Some Harvard alums returned to Cambridge years after their graduation to work on The Old Mole. Jean C. Tepperman '66, who helped to found Harvard's SDS chapter in the fall of 1964, says the writers were united by their opposition to the University.

"It was definitely a Harvard-oriented ambience," Tepperman says. "That was the glue of it."

Expansion of The Gazette

But Old Mole's damaging releases changed more than what students thought of the University. As a result of the embarrassing revelations, Harvard reevaluated the way it disseminated information on campus.

In the fall of 1969, the University expanded the format of the weekly Gazette to include Harvard-sanctioned press releases. Before Old Mole, the Gazette had been nothing more than a calendar of University and community events.

"We intend the Gazette to serve as a regular factual source of information on the people of the University, its schools and departments, and their accomplishments and activities," reads a note from the first expanded issue of the newspaper, which was published on September 26,1969.

Hightower says the new Gazette was a response to antagonistic press coverage like that found in The Old Mole.

"The University had decided to try to get its point across," he says.

Twenty-five years later, The Gazette's coverage continues to portray the administration in a light less harsh than that of independent publications.

Consider, for example, the Gazette's recent treatment of the news that Provost Jerry R. Green would leave his job and take a new inter-Faculty position.

"Green Out as University's Provost," read a headline over a Crimson article. The Student newspaper later reported on "disarray in Massachusetts Hall" resulting from the provost's departure.

The Gazette, on the other hand, portrayed the events in a more favorable light.

"Provost Green to Take New Post," the Gazette headline said.