5,000 U.S. Professors on CIA Payroll in 1970s?

One reason your college professor may not be very eager to discuss in class the CIA’s role in the 1965 Indonesian coup (a few years before Barack Obama’s now-deceased mother began working at the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia) may be that your college professor is secretly working for the CIA. As CIA Off Campus: Building The Movement Against Agency Recruitment And Research by Ami Chen Mills noted:

"CIA spokesperson Sharon Foster said in 1988 that the CIA has enough professors under Agency contract `to staff a large university.’ Our universities are crawling with covert scholars-turned-agents and our independent academic foundations are being seriously undermined…”

The same book also observed:

“As of the late 1970s, approximately 5,000 professors were doing CIA work in some capacity, either `spotting’’ U.S. or foreign recruitment candidates, participating in research and grant work or carrying out more active programs like foreign police training. It is estimated that about 60 percent of these academics were aware of the nature of their employment, while another 40 percent did the CIA’s bidding in the dark—through front companies or foundations. In the 1990s, the number of academics on the CIA payroll has undoubtedly increased…”

(Downtown 4/27/94)

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