2. In 1948, Yale put up a statue to Nathaniel Hale, alumni & spy during the American revolution. Statue was not an accident.pic.twitter.com/9XI8OtJlqV
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2. In 1948, Yale put up a statue to Nathaniel Hale, alumni & spy during the American revolution. Statue was not an accident.pic.twitter.com/9XI8OtJlqV
3. The CIA, created in 1947, a year before the Hale statue, was heavily staffed with Ivy League alumni, especially Yale & Harvard.
4. An emblematic figure of the Ivy League/CIA connection was James Jesus Angleton, Yale undergrad, Harvard Law (1943).
5. As an undergrad, Angleton had been steeped in the emerging High Modernist canon (Pound, Eliot, Empsonian "close reading")
6. During World War 2, Angleton & other Ivy Leaguers heavily recruited for OSS (precursor to CIA). Later they were creators of CIA.
7. The aesthetic propaganda used by the CIA very much that of mid-century elite colleges: high modernism, abstract expressionism, jazz.
8. Reason why I'm emphasizing aesthetics is that the college education Angleton & other spooks received informed their spy-craft.
9. Angleton fantasized about translating Eliot's "The Waste Land" into Russian & airdropping copies over USSR. Just to show the Ruskies.
10. Angleton eventually became head of counter-intelligence, which is when he really to use his Ivy League education.
11. From Empson and other New Critics, Angleton had been taught to be attentive to ambiguity, latent & hidden meaning.
12. Angleton interrogated defectors. He could never accept their testimony at face value but looked for ambiguity & double meaning.
13. Always fearing each defector was really a double agent, Angleton became increasingly paranoid, believing CIA infiltrated by moles.
14. In his Ahab-like quest for the big mole, Angleton held defectors prisoner indefinitely & drugged them.
15. Although later the CIA would democratize & accept recruits even from state schools, the Ivy League connection is still there.
16. All of which helps explain why Harvard caved so quickly to some very dubious spooks.
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