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Exhibit 851

Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949-50 (Michael Warner, Studies in Intelligence 38, no. 5)

Exhibit 851 ยท Agency history

Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949-50 (Michael Warner, Studies in Intelligence 38, no. 5)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom is widely considered one of the CIA's more daring and effective Cold War covert operations.

CIA-hosted article, an excerpt from a classified draft study of CIA involvement with anti-Communist groups (redacted for release). It states that the Congress for Cultural Freedom is widely considered one of the CIA's more daring and effective Cold War covert operations, that it published journals such as Encounter, that its Administrative Secretary Michael Josselson kept it running for almost two decades until the Agency arranged a separation in 1966, and that its CIA sponsorship was exposed in 1967.

Source
Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence
Date
1995
Quoted from
Opening paragraph (web edition)
Grade
Primary record
Document
https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-38-no-5/origins-of-the-congress-for-cultural-freedom-1949-1950
Accessed
2026-11-09
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit
Note
Author's article hosted by the CIA; the page is the Agency's own publication of its history, not a leak.

Cited by

Finding POL-7.4
Primary record A 1995 article by Michael Warner, hosted by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence, states that the Congress for Cultural Freedom, publisher of Encounter, "is widely considered one of the CIA's more daring and effective Cold War covert operations," that the Agency arranged a separation in 1966, and that its CIA sponsorship was exposed in 1967. Former CIA officer Thomas Braden wrote on 20 May 1967 that CIA money paid for Encounter and that "few outside the CIA knew about it."