A Conspiracy Plays With Cambridge

CRUELTY takes many forms. Perhaps the most diabolical of our age is constituted within the deliberate socio-psychological manipulation of college age youngsters for the sake of `research.'

Our society as it is now structured does not encourage an early psychological individuation process. Society has become a womb figure for the adolescent, the maturization processes usually taking place during the college years. Thus, the average college student is psychologically vulnerable.

In years gone-by this psychological individuation process developed at an earlier age because of the physical needs and stresses of a rural and agricultural society. When the physical necessity for self-reliance disappeared with the base rural society, the individuation process became prolonged, and it might be argued that such prolonging was and is a true stagnation. The `college' experience usually frees most people from this `stagnation,' but one remember that this is a time-consuming process and not an instantaneous happening.

The average urban low-income American is caught within various and sundry stages of the psychological individuation process. Usually his awareness of matters surrounding him is limited to the surface appearance of the sense-data with which he comes in contact; thus limiting his abilities of thorough abstract analysis. In short, he is in a position whereby psychological manipulation is not difficult to perpetrate upon him.

The City of Cambridge is composed of three main sociological elements: 1. college-age students from non-agricultural or rural backgrounds, 2. average low-income urban Americans and 3. a segment of middle-income semi-aware individuals who are neither interested in manipulation nor able to be fully manipulated. They are relatively neutral.

Given a long hard look at the Left Wing of the late 1960s as it appeared in Cambridge, one cannot help but observe that there was a singular absence of positive goal-orientation. There was obvious surface manipulation of large segments of the Harvard student body, and more subtle, but still viable, methods of political manipulation of the local low-income populace. It is simply not logical for a `revolutionary' movement not to have positive viable goals.

The absence of such viable goals and/or proposed structures combined with the blatent lack of positiveness within the ideological planning of the revolutionary movement in general leads one to seriously question the spontaneity of such `revolutionary movements' and uprisings. Further substantiating this theory were the semi-active roles played by the Harvard and M.I.T. administrations and the Cambridge political power structure itself. If the `revolutionary actions' had indeed been spontaneous then the reactions of the local power structures would have been to regard this as a serious threat, but their `hohum' `wait-and-see' reactions were far too studied to be anything but carefully planned.

Given that the aforestated is accurate, one must then ask `why?' were these situations deliberately brought into being. On their surface they certainly benefited no one.

Cambridge is a beautiful city--small enough to engender a smalltown atmosphere, and yet cosmopolitan enough to be rightly labeled the `Athens of America.' Cambridge has two mammoth universities, a number of small colleges and a thoroughly heterogenous population. The universities openly engage in classified research for the United States Government. It is logical to speculate that such research might just include the study of socio-psychological stress factors within a controlled environment. If one cares to spend most of a fortnight researching Harvard and M.I.T. real estate acquisitions within the City of Cambridge from the end of World War II through the late 1960s one soon comes to the conclusion that there is indeed a pattern to such purchases. The stage was slowly and deliberately being set to pressure low-income segments of the Cambridge population; Harvard was quietly gobbling up low-income housing and creating a housing shortage affecting the poor of the city. Further, the office of community relations of Harvard under the presidency of Nathan M. Pusey deliberately ignored legitimate problems which arose between the citizenry of the City of Cambridge and the College. Gradually the bitterness grew. During the mid-1960s, Harvard deliberately accepted more students than it could reasonably house, further ballooning the city's already acute low-income housing shortage. Some of the poor lost their homes to students, and more and more undergraduates were given short shrift on their education as their classes were for the most part taught by candidates for graduate degrees and not by full professors.

The situation was deliberately set and ripe for overt trouble. The `revolutionary movement' was in part funded by Harvard College itself (which chose not to complain when college supplies were diverted to radical uses such as mimeograph paper and ink). Known communists were admitted as students to Radcliffe and Harvard, and the rest is history.

There is no question but that the students were utilized as pawns, and the the problems were artificially created. There is no question that the purpose of the uprisings of the late 1960s was imbedded in government classified contracts which sought to determine specific stress limits of a cross section of the American population. It might also be quite likely that careful observation has been made concerning artificial stagnation of the psychological-individuation process in college-age youngsters, and the extension of length of time which is possible for the artificial prolongation of such stagnation.

One also should look closely at the local political scene within the City at that time. The Office o Economic Opportunity and its various committees formed an ingenious method of measuring variations of low-income reactions and alternatives.

THE Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, meanwhile, continuously battled one another for primeval territorial jurisdiction, as the local situation in Cambridge systematically degenerated. The checks and balances, normally an integral part of New England town and city government; were rendered ineffective by local and state politicians who were more interested in the gain of wealth and power than in heeding the cries of the besieged and frightened poor.

The rigidity of J. Edgar Hoover's policy forbade the creative individuality so vital to the effective structure of an intelligence operation. Agents, overloaded with work, were instructed to relegate security intelligence procedures to the lowest possible realm of importance. Thus, since criminal procedures took obvious precedence, abysmal gaps formed within the Bureau office itself. The field picture was even more dismal. Uninformed agents, without any field intelligence training whatsoever, insisted upon ordering the informants' strategic moves, demanding absolute obedience. This resulted in a staggering attrition rate among Bureau informants. Those who succeeded in the field owed their success to outright rebellion against illogical and/or potentially compromising Bureau directives.

During the late 1960s, the Bureau doggedly insisted upon holding its amateur standing within intelligence ranks. As a result of that stance, coupled with its childish fights with its sister-service, the CIA, foreign intelligence services (always present in the Cambridge area but normally functioning within passive as proposed to active postures) began to appear on a somewhat aggressive basis on the fringes of the New Left field of activity. The CIA watched but took little if any action; the Bureau didn't even bother to do a thorough job of watching.

Given the amount of `Secret' and `Classified' material and research within the Cambridge area, one might be tempted to question the Bureau's ability to handle such a situation at all. Without field-personnel who are thoroughly trained in tradecraft, and agents who are field-experienced and trained, any such serious attempt at counter-intelligence operations by the Bureau is without question predestined to absolute failure.

It is common knowledge within the intelligence community that the military intelligence services deal only, with very rare exceptions, with situations which are directly within the military sphere of operations.

Thus, Cambridge sunk deeper and deeper into her own vulnerability. Each violent demonstration, each overt act of violence compounded not only the misery of the poor, but the threat of serious breach of national security.

This editorial has striven to open to the reader a logical and reasonable explanation for the happenings within the City of Cambridge within the late 1960s. There is room here for only an outline; it is up to the free scholars of Cambridge and Harvard to fill in the specifics of detail.

Jessie L. Gill informed on Harvard and Cambridge SDS for the FBI between 1967 and 1970.