C.I.A. AID

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31366, 11 May 1967, Page 13

C.I.A. AID

Admission Made (N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, May 10. The head of the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom admitted yesterday that his organisation had unknowingly received funds from the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Mr Minoo Masani, the Indian president of the general assembly of the antiCommunist group, said the congress had stopped receiving C.I.A. funds in January, 1966. “I do not know what the full facts are. I shall be presented with the full picture by the secretariat,” he said. Mr Masani, leader of the Swatantra Party, India’s largest opposition party, left for Paris after a press conference in London.

The congress sponsors seminars and publications in several world capitals and gave financial backing to the British-American magazine, “Encounter,” until 1963, when it was taken over by Britain’s giant International Publishing Corporation. Two of the magazine’s editors, Frank Kermode and Stephen Spender have resigned because the publication indirectly received funds from the C.I.A.