
Did John Steinbeck Spy for the CIA? - samclemens
https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-steinbeck-did-nobel-prize-winning-novelist-spy-for-the-cia-in-paris
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033803throwaway
Gloria Steinem worked for the CIA as well.

It becomes very difficult to understand what happened during the 50s and 60s,
the more you look into it.

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77pt77
It used to be a conspiracy theory.

Now the only question is the extent to which she did that.

There is good evidence that the magazine was also paid for by the 3 letter
agency.

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jMyles
> There is good evidence that the magazine was also paid for by the 3 letter
> agency.

Do you mean New York or Ms.? I'm not familiar with this theory; can you link
to more info?

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vile_wretch
I can't imagine this helped with Hemingway's late (and justified) paranoia.

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rolltiide
I always find the posthumous vindication of Hemingway to be interesting
because people want to say justified paranoia, or ironically accurate paranoia

But shouldn’t we just change the word to describe Hemingway? Paranoia _means_
unjustified suspicion/distrust and encroaches on mental health issues. It
should say people _thought_ he was paranoid about a thing that turned out to
be true. So in reality Hemingway was _suspicious_ of shitty spies.

~~~
vile_wretch
Right, yeah I agree paranoia isn't the right word. I don't know what the right
word would be though. While he must have been aware of being monitored by his
government, I suspect it would still have come off as paranoia to the people
who knew him or knew of him, justified or not.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Right, yeah I agree paranoia isn't the right word. I don't know what the
> right word would be though.

The word for thing that is like paranoia but instead of being irrational and
pathological its entirely rational and grounded in fact?

"Justified concern"?

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kordlessagain
Both Geller and Randi worked for the CIA. Is there any way we can tell at this
point what the "truth" was?

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bitwize
Geller probably told them "Why, yes, I _can_ spy on enemy bases with my
psychic powers" whereas Randi was a consultant who advised them "That guy is
full of shit, and so is anyone else who tells you they have psychic powers. To
take them seriously is to waste taxpayer money."

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dang
Joel Whitney has done a lot of research on the CIA's remarkable involvement
with writers and artists. His book on it is [https://www.amazon.com/Finks-C-I-
Tricked-Worlds-Writers/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/Finks-C-I-Tricked-
Worlds-Writers/dp/1944869131). There are good interviews with him about it
online. It's amazing how extensive these involvements were and how major the
writers were.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10116113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10116113)
from 2015 is on this topic, but not that great a thread.

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duxup
So effectively he probabbly just provided tidbits of observations about people
he met?

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A2017U1
That's spying at its fundamentals. Don't let the movies fool you.

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mruts
Exactly, spy networks are about aggregating information from many people about
many people.

Fundamentally, spying is very good for the world. It allows for nation states
to understand each other’s thinking and reasoning. The most dangerous
situations come from misunderstanding, as we are now experiencing with North
Korea.

~~~
jhayward
> Fundamentally, spying is very good for the world.

'Spying' is not a well-defined term. I think you mean 'information gathering'
but also under the rubric of spying fall subversion, sabotage, political
interference, propaganda and disinformation, etc.

Even in the realm of information gathering the techniques used are often
unacceptable - such as deliberately putting someone in a compromising position
and then extorting them to provide access to information they posses.

I don't think the assertion that those things are good for the world would be
widely accepted.

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germinalphrase
Publicly, the CIA claims that they don’t use negative inducements.

~~~
jhayward
As part of Edward Snowden's explanation of his radicalization he relates an
anecdote of his work for the CIA in Switzerland.

From the wiki page:

 _Snowden described his CIA experience in Geneva as formative, stating that
the CIA deliberately got a Swiss banker drunk and encouraged him to drive
home. Snowden said that when the latter was arrested, a CIA operative offered
to help in exchange for the banker becoming an informant._

 _Ueli Maurer, President of the Swiss Confederation for the year 2013, in June
of that year publicly disputed Snowden 's claims. "This would mean that the
CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect,
I just can't imagine it_

Everyone should feel free to apply their own judgement about the value of this
anecdote.

Edit: I would regard kidnapping, rendition, and waterboarding as a "negative
inducement", myself.

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imglorp
Yes, documented.

(Exception to Betteridges Law of Headlines)

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Simulacra
Tangentially related, but isn’t the rule that when a headline ask a question,
the answer is generally yes?

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tombert
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

The answer is generally "no".

