When Bateson wrote his report calling for the establishment of CIA and the pursuit of “indirect methods of warfare”, the 1942 Cerebral Inhibition Meeting, OSS ‘black propaganda’ work in the South Pacific, and the Truth Drug and hypnosis exp…Bateson, “witting” or not, was surrounded by a web of agents, consultants, academics, and think-tankers directly or indirectly on CIA’s payroll — Harold Abramson, Frank Fremont-Smith, George Hunter White, James Mysbergh, James Alexander Ham…
Harold Abramson
scientist · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Harold Abramson appears in the course materials primarily as a CIA-connected figure embedded in the mid-twentieth-century networks linking military intelligence, psychology, and cybernetic research. He is cited alongside other consultants and agents on the CIA payroll who surrounded figures like Gregory Bateson, illustrating how the agency systematized relationships with academics and researchers pursuing "indirect methods" of control and influence. His presence in these readings helps map the institutional entanglement between Cold War national security apparatus and the intellectual genealogies of cybernetics and behavioral science that the course traces.
Mentioned in 1 reading
Appears alongside
People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.
Gregory Bateson 2Alexander Cockburn 1Allen Ginsberg 1Ewen Cameron 1Jef St. Clair 1Ken Kesey 1Leo Hollister 1Margaret Mead 1Milton H. Erickson 1Ana Mendieta 1André Breton 1Benjamin Breen 1Frank Fremont-Smith 1George Hunter White 1Irving Janis 1James Alexander Hamilton 1James Mysbergh 1Marcel Duchamp 1Maya Deren 1Peggy Guggenheim 1