ABSTRACT
Executive Committee met in November 1950 to elect formal leadership, Burnham, Koestler, Brown, and Lasky were in charge, and their meetings produced plans that hewed closely to Burnham’s vision.16 “The natural division of CONGRESS sympathizers into two psychological and ideological groups,” i.e., “the uncompromising resisters against the East, the optimistic builders of the West,” would be reflected in an Eastern bureau in Berlin and a Western one in Paris. The Eastern bureau would obtain materials from behind the Iron Curtain and foster defections; the Western bureau would “tak[e] the offensive against the Communists’ peace and culture campaigns.”17 The Congress would unite left and right, East and West, and political and cultural projects.18 And the Congress would broaden its base by creating a “movement directed at the professional classes, trade unions, students and other youth groups” – the Amis de la Liberté.19 As summer progressed, few projects materialized, and Koestler tried to jumpstart the work himself.20 Koestler campaigned to remove Bondy, whom he considered hopeless at organizing and insufficiently dedicated to a united front.21 Koestler complained, “Everything done by the Congress has been done by me so far, and nothing will come of it; to this day not one word has gone out from the Berlin office to supporters telling them what’s happening.” He had given up on his fellow organizers. Aron was a “coward,” Lasky “goes to the Musee de l’Homme when he’s come to Paris to do some work” – and Burnham was “a dangerous lunatic.”22 After a nervous breakdown in August, Koestler resigned.23 Burnham persuaded him to reconsider. “It is true that the Congress has not got into post-Berlin action to anything like the degree that our enthusiasm and the objective needs called for.” Still, hopeful signs had emerged: “I have worked on the problem of getting a solid (however small) nucleus of support here. . . . It is now, I think, assured, provided that the European side doesn’t collapse wholly,” Burnham wrote. “Enough money can be channeled into Congress work to get things moving – and there would be more, I am sure, if the movement began to look serious.”24 Koestler withdrew his resignation for now. What Burnham neglected to tell Koestler was that he, too, was worried about Bondy and the Paris office. Thus, soon after Josselson arrived in Paris, Burnham recruited his own agent to insinuate himself into the Paris office. “I feel that you should, for the present at least, stay very much in the background,” Burnham instructed Louis Gibarti in October 1950. “Specifically, I think it desirable that you should not visit the Congress office regularly, but should communicate suggestions and proposals you have to François Bondy.”25 Gibarti – whose well-known past as Willi Münzenberg’s former right-hand man made him anything but unobtrusive – proved a spectacularly ill-advised operative. MI5 considered him “a thoroughly untrustworthy and unscrupulous, also venal, intelligence monger”26 and a likely agent of the Hungarian Military/ Political Department, concluding that his involvement in the Congress “lends the affair . . . a sinister aspect indeed.”27 He was also indiscreet. When Burnham confronted him about revealing their connection to Bondy and Brown, Gibarti
support and recognition.” This, of course, backfired; others in the Paris office simply told Gibarti, “ ‘I don’t give you the material you need because I do not believe in the methods of Burnham.’ ”28 Gibarti confirmed that Bondy had no intention of carrying out Burnham’s vision of the Congress. “[T]here is a certain factionalism in our work,” Gibarti reported. “While I am typing this letter our friend F[rançois] is making the following statement . . .: ‘We are, of course, swinging away from a political line. Broadly speaking, we are swinging away from Burnham.’ ” There was further evidence: “[T]he Berlin publication which is a kind of synopsis of the [Berlin Congress] . . . contains everybody’s contribution to the discussion and also the pictures of the leading stars,” Gibarti observed. “Conspicuously any mention of your speech is avoided and your picture does not appear. There are, of course, other indications. From the very beginning the Franc Tireur people, the Mel Lasky faction, heavily engaged in a campaign against me.”29 More troubling was a memorandum Gibarti forwarded regarding “comment from our French, German, and Italian contacts about the unilateral tendency of the American sponsorship” and complaining that the wrong kind of “American representation is the controlling force in our organization.” It was urgent for “a broader base of leaders of liberal trends and social progress, well-known defenders of civil rights, and creative artists” to represent America. “In Western Europe, particularly, only such people can attract and unite the wavering nonCommunist Left, which is so essential to our enterprise,” the memo added. “We do not need to make a strong appeal to the already well-organized, militant groups, like the Gaullists, or the political Catholics.”30 Burnham, in turn, sent Gibarti’s reports – which abruptly stopped in November – to OPC as examples of problems in the Paris office that needed fixing.31
