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Religious Crusades of CIAThe CIA has constantly attempted to interfere in foreign policy decisions of third

world countries with the aid of religious groups. CIA not only receives inputs from

religious gurus but also from academicians, who work in third world countries.

Among the murkier chapters in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the attempt

to destabilise societies around the world using religion warrants attention. Allen Dulles, who

headed the CIA in its early years, was responsible for using religious groups as cover for

intelligence activities. He had used them for spying even when he was part of the Office of

Strategic Services, the CIAs predecessor.

After the creation of the CIA, Christian missionaries played a very important role in destabilising

various countries and in carrying out espionage activities on behalf of the CIA. The most recent

high profile example of the US using religious missionaries as Trojan horses to cause

disturbances in India was in the case of the agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power

plant.

This agitation came after a cable to the CIA from the US Consulate in Mumbai informed the

agency that we feel that the USG must move forward to enable our companies to compete in

the next stage of Indias nuclear future. Otherwise we may have to watch bitterly as third

countries become the first to benefit commercially from the environment that our diplomacy has

created.

The CIA-Church connection had been one of the topics of an investigation conducted by the US

Senate in 1975. Headed by Frank Church, it came to be known as the Church Committee, and

according to the report of this Committee, the CIA had informed them of at least a total of 14

covert arrangements, which involved direct operational use of 21 individuals who were American

clergy or missionaries. The report went on to state that a few of them were current in August

1975, and according to the CIA, they were used only for intelligence collection, or, in one case,

for a minor role in preserving the cover of another asset.

The following excerpt from the Church Committee report speaks for itself and highlights the

dangers of allowing foreign missionaries into India.

Religious Crusades of CIA | Swarajya Blogs http://blogs.swarajyamag.com/2015/01/10/religious-crusades-of-cia/

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[T]he CIA paid salaries, bonuses, or expenses to the religious personnel, or

helped to fund projects run by them. Most of the individuals were used for covert

action purposes. Several were involved in large covert action projects of the

mid-sixties, which were directed at competing with communism in the Third

World.

Of the recent relationships, the most damaging would appear to be that of a U.S.

priest serving the CIA as an informant on student and religious dissidence.

Of the earlier cases, one exemplifies the extent to which the CIA used

confidential pastoral relationships. The CIA used the pastor of a church in a Third

World country as a principal agent to carry out covert action projects, and as a

spotter, assessor, asset developer, and recruiter. He collected information on

political developments and on personalities. He passed CIA propaganda to the

local press.

According to the CIAs description of the case, the pastors analyses were based

on his long-term friendships with the personalities, and the agents under him

were well known to him in his professional life. At first the CIA provided only

occasional gifts to the pastor in return for his services; later, for over ten years,

the CIA paid him a salary that reached $11,414 annually.

The figure of $11,414 in this excerpt gives us a clue that the country in question is most likely

India as this amount translates to a nice round figure of one lakh rupees using the currency

exchange rate of the day.

The CIA used opposition to communism in the Third World as the excuse to fund churches in

Kerala and this interference in Indian politics came to light in 1978 when the former ambassador

to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published the information his book A Dangerous Place.

Apart from interfering in Kerala, American churches have provided extensive support to the

terrorists in Nagaland whose stated aim is Nagalim for Christ. These terrorists receive overt

help from the American establishment in the form of so-called human rights reports and public

statements of support from high profile politicians such as Jimmy Carter.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the US establishment keenly pushed Western values as the standard for

the entire world. Apart from religion, feminism and sex were also used as weapons against

countries where the bond of family was strong and stood as a line of defense against the actions


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of those who wanted to create instability in society.

In a speech before the Fund for Peace Conference in 1974, CIA head William E. Colby admitted

that the CIA had funded several groups around the world to propagate their point of view and

named the famous feminist Gloria Steinem as a recipient of such funds.

According to Colby, The record is clear that the assistance given to these institutions by the CIA

was to enable them to participate in foreign activities; there was no attempt to interfere in

internal American domestic activities. CIA aid helped such groups as the National Students

Association to articulate the views of American students abroad and meet the Communist-

subsidised effort to develop a panoply of international front organisations. I might quote Ms.

Gloria Steinem, one of those assisted, who commented that the CIA wanted to do what we

wanted to do present a healthy, diverse view of the United States I never felt I was being

dictated to at all.

William E Colby


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Another womens group named Redstockings had uncovered Gloria Steinems CIA connections

and included the information in their book Feminist Revolution but the publishing firm Random

House removed the chapter before publication and called it an abridged edition as they faced

immense pressure to suppress this information from several quarters including the president of

Ford Foundation. The news about this suppression became public when it was published in

Village Voice in May 1979.

In 1957, Gloria Steinem visited Kerala and worked with an American Protestant missionary and

helped his group reach out to women. While in India, she gathered information about plantations

in Kerala, and a few Wikileaks cables show that the American establishment was eager to present

her in later years as a thought leader, who had to be emulated and included meetings with her

as part of programs organised for visiting foreign dignitaries.

Gloria Steinems visit to India had been funded by what was called the Chester Bowles

scholarship which was named after the ambassador to India. But this scholarship, which had

been created in the year of Gloria Steinems visit to India, was curiously discontinued

immediately after she and another student were funded for their trips to India.

One religious organisation that has received money from USAID and has been outed as a front

for the CIA is the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) which was set up to

translate the bible into various languages and distribute them around the world. Together with its

sister organisation, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and its subsidiary, the Jungle Aviation and

Radio Services (JAARS) which operates several aircraft and radio stations, SIL became a very

powerful and destructive force in the world.

In the 1970s, several Latin American countries including Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Peru

Gloria Steinem


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held SIL responsible for advancing the interests of the American intelligence agencies and Brazil

expelled SILs missionaries from the country for acting as cover for geologists searching for

mineral deposits in the Amazon basin. SILs clout in the American establishment was such that

they were able to bypass the diplomats and directly seek helicopters from the military to carry

out their mission in Papua New Guinea.

SIL has been accused of drug trafficking, smuggling emeralds and uranium, and even waging

germ warfare that destroyed many native tribes. In their book THY WILL BE DONE, The

Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, the authors

Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett document the extensive connections of Wycliffe Bible

Translators with Nelson and John D. Rockefeller and their takeover of the resources in the

Amazon basin countries. SILs partner in India is the Indian Institute of Cross Cultural

Communication based in Nashik.

Things take a bizarre turn in the context of SIL and its connection to drugs. When LSD was first

synthesised by the Swiss drug firm Sandoz, it was clear that there was no medicinal use for it,

but the CIA was interested in it as part of its mind control program and its aim of controlling of

societies in general. The CIA even set up a project named MKULTRA to research behavioral

modification. According to a Senate hearing in 1977, CIA used many unwitting persons for

experimentation as part of this project.

Over the years, they infiltrated many groups and distributed narcotic and psychedelic drugs with

the twin aims of observing their effects and weakening the groups they were targeting. Among

the Hindu groups that were suspected of being infiltrated by CIA agents were Rajneeshs ashram,

ISKCON and the Ananda Marg.


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Unlike Christian churches, Hindu outfits did not centralise power and were not conducive to being

taken over, and hence the only option available to their opponents was to destroy such groups.

Rajneeshs followers had also gone one step further and built up a self-sustaining commune that

did not depend on the government.

This was sure to attract the hostility of the American establishment which has repeatedly

demonstrated intolerance for independent communities and individuals regardless of their race or

religion. In contrast, the centralised nature of Christianity was helpful to the American

government. According to Colby and Dennet, the Summer Institute of Linguistics not only

converted the local people in Latin America from their indigenous faiths to Christianity, but also

used the Bible to teach indigenous people to obey the government, for all authority comes from

God. The idea that all authority comes from God is part of the biblical verse Romans 13:1.

It is in CIAs use of drugs to control others that R. Gordon Wasson and SIL come into the picture.

Wasson was the author of an article titled Seeking the Magic Mushroom in Life magazine in 1957

and the article is considered a path breaking one in the psychedelic movement. He was close to

CIAs Director Allen Dulles and had gone on an expedition to Mexico in search of the Magic

Mushroom with funds from the CIA.

Rajneesh with followers


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Wasson has acknowledged at the end of his article that he collaborated with missionaries

belonging to the Summer School of Linguistics. Wassons involvement with the CIA is presented

in detail in the book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate by former State Department

official John Marks.

Sometime in 1962, Gordon Wasson recruited a young lady named Wendy Gudwin to dig out

information about the source of soma from Sanskrit texts. Wendy Gudwin was the daughter of

Lester Doniger, a wealthy scam artist who deceived ordinary people into parting with money by

threatening them that their credit rating would be affected if they did not pay him money.

Among the many false representations Lester Doniger made to his victims, he created and used

the fictitious name of Mail Order Credit Reporting Association along with a letterhead for this fake

organisation on which he sent out his threats (see p. 785 of Federal Trade Commission rulings

for April-June 1964).

Lester Doniger was also a fervent believer in converting people to Christianity and actively helped

evangelical churches achieve this goal. Together with his brother Simon Doniger, he published

two journals Pulpit Digest and Pastoral Psychology in order to help the Christian churches

become more powerful and efficient in their operations.

The New York Times dated 26 February 1949 reported that Pulpit Digest honored an evangelist

R. Gordon Wasson


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radio series and that Lester Doniger, before presenting the award, pointed out that the program

had 6 million listeners weekly and there were approximately 70 million without church affiliations

toward whom the program was directed.

Lester Doniger was also involved with the activities of the American establishment on other

fronts. Closely tied to the feminist movement was the issue of sex education, and in 1964, the US

got UNESCO to focus on disseminating information related to sex around the world. A new

organisation named Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) was

soon set up and Lester Doniger became the president of SIECUS within a few years.

Under his stewardship, SIECUS was funded by Steven Rockefeller and James Warburg of the

influential banking family, two key people who have helped shape the US foreign policy and

bankrolled several overt and covert American government programs. The US Defence Secretary

Robert McNamara also supported SIECUS and another source of funds for the organisation was

the Ford Foundation.

The research of Mrs. Wendy Gudwin nee Doniger who is now a professor at the University of

Chicago must be viewed in the light of this background combined with her work with Gordon

Wasson. None of her so-called research is original, and as a pliant assistant, she has merely

propagated the views of those whom she has worked for. Even the idea of mixing up sex and

religion did not originate with her.

Her uncle Simon Doniger had published a book titled Sex and Religion Today. After helping

Gordon Wasson buttress his claims on soma, Wendy Doniger continued where Simon Doniger had

left off and her work was aligned with the message of Christian missionaries and SIECUS

packaged in academic verbiage and style.

Christian missionaries routinely attack Hindu beliefs by attacking Krishna and this behavior is

accurately depicted in RK Narayans novel Swami and Friends in which the teacher of the

scripture class attempts to foist Christianity on the students by preaching,Oh, wretched idiots!

Did our Jesus go gadding about with dancing girls like your Krishna? Did our Jesus go about

stealing butter like that arch-scoundrel Krishna? Did our Jesus practise dark tricks on those

around him?

In the works of Lester Donigers daughter and other American professors, the same kind of

attack on Hindus can be found in a more sophisticated form complete with footnotes and

citations in order to appear pedantic. After working for Gordon Wasson, Lester Donigers

daughter was placed at Harvard University where her guide, Daniel Ingalls, was a known

intelligence agent, who had spied against Indian freedom fighters.

She then spent time in Oxford, and strangely, her adviser RC Zaehner too was an intelligence


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agent. Zaehner, who was also a racist, had headed the failed British attempt in 1951 to

overthrow the Mossadegh government in Iran and put the Iranian oilfields in the control of the

British.

Earlier, in 1963-64, Wendy Doniger had also been sent to India for a year on a $6000 fellowship

(this was thirty percent more than the median annual income in the US) to the American Institute

of Indian Studies which would eventually come to be known as a CIA front. The US had set up

many front organisations in the academia as part of the National Defense Education Act of 1958

and AIIS was one such institution.

The links of AIIS to the intelligence community was very strong during the days of Wendy

Donigers association with the organisation. Its Director in 1964 was Richard D. Lambert, who

had been stationed in India as part of the counterintelligence department during the second

world war.

He was succeeded by Thomas Simons who was also part of the intelligence community, who had

headed the South Asian branch of the Office of Intelligence Research in the US Department of

State. A key member of the founding group of AIIS was Richard Park who went on to become

the India scholar at AIIS. Park was also part of the infamous Asia Foundation.

Despite earlier denials, it was revealed in 1967 that the Asia Foundation had received funds from

the CIA and it had in turn funnelled money to Indian groups in the guise of funding cultural and

educational programs. This revelation led to an outcry in the Indian parliament on the role of

AIIS and other groups. Indira Gandhis government asked Asia Foundation to cease its operations

and leave India.

Even the journal Seminar which was published by the brother of the Marxist professor, Romila

Thapar devoted an entire issue to the topic of Academic Colonialism, but that was before

Romila Thapar received money and titles from the American establishment and started

supporting them.

By 1972, the situation had become so severe that Indira Gandhi had to keep out foreign scholars

from India. The New York Times dated 5 August 1972 carried an editorial headlined India Closes

its Doors in which it stated, India no doubt has been victimised by some sloppy and even

malicious scholarship. On that basis alone New Delhi has some justification for seeking a measure

of control over the hordes of scholars and would-be scholars who descend on the subcontinent

annually, attracted by Indias rich cultural diversity and historic fascination.

Even before the National Defence Education Act, the first program that focused on India had

been set up at the University of Pennsylvania to serve the military during the second world war.

In the following years, similar centers were set up at other universities with the faculty members


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carefully chosen so that they believed in the superiority of Western Christianity.

The fact that most American programs related to studying India grew out of the intelligence and

military departments which sought to shape public opinion in other countries through the media

and academia explains the strange phenomenon of American faculty members hating their own

area of research and expressing hostility towards the culture they claim to study. This behavior is

at complete odds with that of of real researchers, who pursue an academic field, not out of hate,

but out of love for the chosen subject.

India has been the main target of Americans ever since they started their evangelical activities.

The first evangelical missionaries from USA went to India and it was to India that one of

Americas earliest missionaries Adoniram Judson led a group of evangelists in 1812.

When Jimmy Carter wanted to open his charity group Habitat for Humanity in India, his

intentions were clearly to proselytise Hindus. That is why Rajiv Gandhi forced him to sign an

agreement not to indulge in religious conversions. That kind of vigilance is required at all levels

of government and society. After all, in the words of the Church Committee, Agency-funded

foundations serve as conduits of funds for a variety of purposes, including clandestine activities

and contributions to scholars conducting research which supports United States foreign policy

positions.

Another angle covered by the Church Committee was the use of journalists and media

organisations by the CIA. According to their report, approximately 50 U.S. journalists and

more than a dozen United States news organisations and commercial publishing houses worked

for the CIA.

In one case, according to the report, the New York Times carried a book review written by a CIA

Adoniram Judson


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writer for a book brought out by the CIA. With the debate on religious conversions in India

picking up steam, certain journalists and media outlets are now outing themselves as messengers

of the American establishment.

In a display of truly bizarre behavior indicating that their ideas were not original but had been

handed down to them, at least three Western media outlets had nothing to say on the topic of

religious conversions for three weeks after several Muslims embraced Hinduism at Agra in early

December, but they have now suddenly made the same point at the same time. They have

demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi not remain silent on the issue of religious

conversions even though the topic is under the jurisdiction of the state governments.

While Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times made the demand in his editorial, an identical

demand appeared in an article written by a reporter for Bloomberg. A similar criticism of Modi

also appeared in a piece by Amy Kazmin of the Financial Times whose former Washington bureau

chief worked for a senior Clinton administration official.

The crudest of the three demands was by Amy Kazmin, who has described conversions by

Christians as freedom of conscience and conversions by Hindus as ugly. Her position is

consistent with the long standing tradition of many American journalists who have supported

fellow white Americans like Billy Graham who have been actively proselytising in India.

Billy Graham


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It should also be noted that some of the language used in the American press against India

constitutes verbatim repetition of language used by the US State Department. For example, the

dishonest phrase 1,000 people, mostly Muslims that is used to describe the victims of the riots

in Gujarat in 2002 was coined and first used by the US State Department in their Human Rights

report of 1998 to describe the victims of riots that occurred after the events at Ayodhya in 1992.

It is extremely important that the American media, academia, think-tanks and foundations be

viewed in the light of the Church Committee report. Instead of giving them a free run and

permitting American agitprop to be created with Indian money and support, India should curb

their activities.

Whether Narendra Modi is capable of the strong action taken by Indira Gandhi remains to be

seen, but what is clear is that any attempt by foreign forces to either shape public opinion in

India or change the demographics of the country must be resisted. If India follows the example

of South America where the Summer Institute of Linguistics was successful in its efforts, India

too will become a Christian nation with the people taught to obey a government that is

permanently subservient to foreign powers.


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