Talk:National Student Association

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In his August 7, 2005 interview on CSPAN2's BookTV, Hendrik Hertzberg called the National Student Association a CIA front. I have yet to find anything that backs this up. Anybody? --Vees 00:57, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

From sometime in the 1950s until 1967 the National Student Association had an international desk that was manipulated by the CIA. This is well documented in a Ramparts magazine article and a large amount of mainstream press articles from 1967. After 1967, this relationship was severed. Sometimes a library card trumps the Internet. :-)--Cberlet 01:29, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the lead. I'll put some legwork into it and try to add something here re that connection. And you're right, unless said Internet has EBSCO access. --Vees 05:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's the link; an article by Phillip Agee http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa2.html

"...during the fifties and sixties, the NSA [National Student Association] appeared to the public and its own membership to be receiving its funding from private foundations such as the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and government sources including the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and the State Department. Labeled by E.W. Kenworthy in the New York Times of February 19, 1967 as "not much more than a mail-drop," the front foundations included the Price Fund of New York, the Edsel Fund of San Francisco, the Borden Trust of Philadelphia, and the Beacon Fund of Boston.

An article from http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/310075.shtml

"In 1967, Ramparts exposed the intricate laundering and funneling process by which the Independent Research Service obtained money from the CIA. The funds passed through five different foundations: the Borden Trust, the Price Fund, the Beacon Fund, the Edsel Fund, and the Kentfield Fund, on its way to the Independent Research Service as well as to the National Students Association and other groups. The final channeling was accomplished through the well-known Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr (sp?). This same law firm produced Joseph Welch as attorney for the Army and in its confrontations with Joseph McCarthy and, more recently, James St. Claire as Nixon's chief counsel during the Watergate scandals.

"...The first revelations of Gloria Steinem's relationship to the CIA appeared in the New York Times in 1967, in an article that stated that Steinem had a part in launching a CIA front group which was called the "Independent Research Service." Just prior to this exposure, Ramparts magazine had disclosed that the organization was CIA-funded.

"The purpose of the Independent Research Service seems to have been to subvert communist-minded youths on an international basis..."

See also PublicEye.org - PRA Staff and Boards. Hope this helps. OC5 18:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

What does the link to PublicEye.org - PRA Staff and Boards have to do with this discussion? Another round of agent-baiting? And note that on the Portland Indymedia page it is important to sift out the reliable information from the conspiracist and sexist hysteria of the text by Henry Makow.--Cberlet 22:41, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

PRA - Unmasking the Political Right, A Ten Year Report 1981-1991," p. 17, shows the Beacon Fund as a source of Political Research Associates non-profit funding. In the interests of full disclosure, this probably should be cited prior to responding to User:Vees good faith question. OC5 01:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Not the same Beacon Fund, as has been explained by PRA repeatedly to incompetent conspiracy theory researchers.--Cberlet 04:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. As the link from the main page suggests, Reading List on Intelligence Agencies and Political Repression, "Public Eye" Another spawn of the first "Counterspy." Not currently publishing (in 1991). Last issue Spring 1989, about the sametime Cuba and the CPUSA lost thier Soviet funding also. So yes, the evidence suggests it is more likely PRA is a former KGB front rather than CIA funded. Of coarse, it would be interesting to look at those old financial statments from 15 and 20 years ago. OC5 04:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The final line of this entry, "A 1960s conservative organization by the same name was later revealed to have been a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency front organization." cites no source and is confusing and misleading by claiming that there was another organization by the same name. The United States Student Assocation's website gives some details of the CIA's relationship with the National Student Association, see http://www.usstudents.org/who-we-are/history. I'm deleting the line. Damn Sexy (talk) 11:19, 9 December 2008 (UTC)Damn_Sexy.

I was an NSA officer in 1968, and the NSA was indeed used as a front organization by the CIA before I got there, using students to gather intelligence through international travel. I called the CIA to pick up the filing cabinets that had locks on them, and it did. Where they are now is anyone's guess.James Hercules Sutton 08:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)