The Intelligence-University Complex: CIA Secretly Supports Scholarships

[rman]

Democracy Now
The Intelligence-University Complex: CIA Secretly Supports Scholarships
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/03/1420209

<snip>

The Intelligence Authorization Act is an annual bill that allocates funds for intelligence agencies. When congress passed the 2004 legislation and President Bush signed it into law, the bill drew fire from many corners because it expanded the Patriot Act and was passed with little debate.

But there was another provision in the legislation that received almost no attention. Section 318 of the bill appropriated 4 million dollars to fund a pilot program called the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, known as PRISP. The program is named after Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The scholarship was created in order to train intelligence operatives and analysts in American universities for careers in the CIA and other agencies. The students receive up to $50,000 dollars over a two-year period and are required to complete at least one summer internship at the CIA or other approved agencies. The program is veiled in secrecy - there are no public lists of the participants and there is no requirement that they disclose their affiliation to their professors. David Price in his article in CounterPunch titled, “The CIA's Campus Spies,” writes that he tried to obtain more details about the program but the CIA spokesperson was reluctant to discuss them. Price states that the agency did confirm that “PRISP now funds about 100 students who are studying at an undisclosed number of universities…. but they refused to identify which campuses are hosting these covert scholars.”

<snip>

[wli]

1. phenomenal fascism

Now, of course, students are targets of "sting operations" to uncover nothing more than "liberal ideology."

They're going to kill us all.

[1932]

6. The problem with the CIA isn't that they trying to recruit educated people

In Peter Kornbluh's book on Pinochet and Chili he quotes from documents that reveled there were many people in the CIA and State Department who disagreed with Kissinger and who said it was a grave mistake for the CIA to only support fascists and to always interfere with left wing governments.

Hopefully, this scholarship program will result in more people like that moving up the ranks of the CIA.

[izzie]

2. Senate Select Committee in Intelligence?

Is there really such a group?

[rman]

3. according to google there is

http://www.google.com/search?q=Select+Committee+in+Intelligence

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

4. Yeah -- it's a good thing

Setup after the Church Committee in the mid-70s to oversee & regulate the intelligence agencies. (Of course, that hasn't stopped the right-wing trying to get around it -- see Iran-Contra for eg.

[Nikki Stone 1]

5. I had heard about this before. Any updates?

And yes, it IS about crushing leftist ideology. It is the secret arm of what David Horowitz is doing publicly: going after professors with anything close to liberal or leftist views.

Sounds like excessive revenge for the student protests of the 60s.

[rman]

7. revenge? they want to prevent that from happening again

Not so much by means of punishment, but by trying to make sure such a movement can not take root again.

[thebigidea]

8. they should've saved their money and named a toilet after Roberts

he's such a fucking tool.