Was Famed Author Peter Matthiessen A Cia Spy Or An Informant?

The station beneath is from impermanent contributor Ben Ryder Howe, a journalist and predominant contributor to New York Magazine.

This week sees nan publication of TRUE NATURE, a curriculum vitae of nan writer, naturalist, Zen monk and governmental activistic Peter Matthiessen. The 716-page book is expected to beryllium 1 of fall’s awesome titles. Matthiessen, who died successful 2014, was 1 of nan past literate men of action, known for his sprawling New Yorker travelogues connected crossing nan Amazon and summiting nan Himalayas arsenic good arsenic for his National Book Award-winning fiction.

Matthiessen besides spied for nan CIA, which his boy Lucas accidentally disclosed to a New York Times newsman astatine a Christmas statement for The Paris Review successful 1977. The Times subsequently revealed Matthiessen’s concealed successful an article, “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by CIA,” which came retired successful nan aftermath of nan Church Committee hearings into intelligence abuses. At nan time, nan property was aggressively investigating nan CIA. Matthiessen, 1 of nan decade’s biggest literate names, was a astonishment catch. The revelation threatened his profession and trailed him to its end. He called moving for nan agency “the 1 escapade of my life I regret.”

Nevertheless, contempt being questioned astir it dozens of times complete nan years, he succeeded successful ne'er revealing what he had really done. Was he an supplier aliases a lawsuit officer? Did he person a information clearance? Did he grip different sources of intelligence, aliases was he nan 1 being handled? Who aliases what was he spying on?

Unfortunately, nan caller curriculum vitae doesn’t lick nan mystery, aliases moreover really try. We should want to cognize what Matthiessen did, because location person agelong been unsettling indications that he spied connected different writers – peculiarly dissident writers, including Richard Wright, nan towering midcentury writer of BLACK BOY, who was hounded into exile by J. Edgar Hoover because of his governmental activism and died an early decease apt because of nan stress.

We should besides want to cognize because researchers, including TRUE NATURE’s author, Lance Richardson, person spent decades trying to get nan CIA to merchandise Matthiessen’s file, arsenic good arsenic nan agency’s files connected The Paris Review, which Matthiessen utilized arsenic screen while spying – each without success. Whatever secrets nan files contain, they are now almost seventy-five years old, astir nan aforesaid property arsenic nan CIA itself, raising nan question: will nan nationalist ever get to cognize what they are? Given that astir everyone progressive has died, 1 has to wonder, Why each nan discretion?

The intrigue centers connected a fewer years successful postwar Paris, 1 of nan much singular periods successful American culture. Long a magnet for expat artists, Paris saw its fame surge aft nan warfare arsenic surviving costs sank and nan U.S. oppressed nonconformity astatine home. It was nan property of McCarthyism, blacklists and nan House Un-American Activities Committee. Anyone who ventured into politically unacceptable territory risked their careers. Black artists, cheery artists, creators of “smut,” arsenic good arsenic those who conscionable wanted a sensation of subversive art, awesome jazz and nostalgia for nan Lost Generation, flocked to nan Left Bank. Among nan unknowns loafing astatine nan Deux Magots and nan Tournon were James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Bud Powell, Mary McCarthy, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Joan Mitchell and Ellsworth Kelly.

The segment caught nan oculus of intelligence agencies. The U.S. was astatine a disadvantage successful nan acold warfare erstwhile it came to soft power. Moscow had agelong excelled astatine penetrating Western intelligence circles, and Washington was wished to conflict backmost by promoting Western values done literature, Hollywood, euphony and moreover absurd expressionist painting. Paris was nan epicenter of nan world arts segment – soon, overmuch of it fueled by CIA money and flooded pinch spies.

Peter Matthiessen was one. As TRUE NATURE tells it, Matthiessen arrived successful Paris successful 1953 caller retired of Yale, wherever he was 1 of “at slightest twenty-five” members of his people (including William F. Buckley, Jr.) recruited by module members into nan CIA. The young writer – handsome, connected, and fluent successful French – was already connected his measurement to fame, having published stories successful The Atlantic. The CIA gave him a stipend and a ngo he embraced.

“When you’re 23, it seems beautiful romanticist to spell to Paris pinch yr beautiful young woman to service arsenic an intelligence supplier and constitute nan Great American Novel into nan bargain,” Matthiessen would constitute to his friend Ben Bradlee, Jr, executive editor of nan Washington Post. “Weren’t you ever arsenic young and dumb arsenic that?”

It each turned sour, however. Matthiessen’s romanticist imagination of spying seems to person progressive spying connected foreigners – Russians, aliases possibly European communists. Which he did immoderate of nan time. Richardson tells america astir his attempts to study nan soul workings of nan French communist statement from an older writer who he approached pretending to activity feedback connected a novel. (Richardson posits that it was Tristan Tzara, a Dadaist writer and creation collector.)

For nan astir part, however, Matthiessen seems to person spied connected different expats, which blurs nan lines betwixt spying and thing little noble: informing. Matthiessen was gathering accusation connected friends, galore of whom had morganatic reasons to beryllium petrified of nan authorities astatine home, which could and often did activity to harm their careers and terrorize their families. While he pretended to beryllium conscionable different slumming postgrad, successful reality, arsenic he would later describe, usually betwixt his teeth, his existent duties were “checking connected Americans.”

Richard Wright would person been an evident target. A erstwhile personnel of nan Communist Party USA, Wright had published a monolithic bestseller, NATIVE SON, successful 1940, past moved to France to flight blacklisting and surveillance. There, while continuing to denounce nan U.S., he mentored a organization of achromatic dissident writers, including early FBI target James Baldwin.

It isn’t publically known whether Matthiessen spied connected Wright. After his boy unintentionally outed him, Matthiessen’s luck turned successful his favor, arsenic nan media seemed to suffer interest. Although immoderate of his aged Paris friends, specified arsenic nan writer Irwin Shaw, came to him demanding to cognize whether he had spied connected them (denounced arsenic a communist, Shaw had been forced to move abroad) astir of his peers seemed to shrug. Indeed, soon aft nan Times article, a sheet of chap writers would lavish him pinch nan National Book Award for THE SNOW LEOPARD – twice, successful nan nonfiction and modern thought categories. Whether it was wagon-circling aliases indifference, Matthiessen seemed to beryllium successful nan clear. His top renown would travel after he was exposed.

Had he faced questions astir informing connected 1 of nan starring anti-racists of nan time, it mightiness person been different.

The first journalist to push deeper into nan Paris years was Scottish writer James Campbell, who has agelong written for nan Times Literary Supplement. In 1991 Campbell published a curriculum vitae of Baldwin, TALKING AT THE GATES, for which he succeeded successful obtaining Baldwin’s FBI file. For his adjacent book, PARIS INTERZONE, he turned to Wright. Campbell contacted George Plimpton, co-founder pinch Matthiessen of The Paris Review. Initially he recovered small resistance. Plimpton freely admitted that a “prominent member” of nan reappraisal – Matthiessen – had worked for nan CIA but discontinue “after being asked to spy connected nan expatriate community.” A twelvemonth aft nan interview, Campbell sent Plimpton galleys of EXILED IN PARIS, which he hoped nan reappraisal mightiness excerpt. Instead, Plimpton threatened to writer him unless he removed nan worldly he had fixed him. Campbell published astir of it anyway. There was thing peculiarly inflammatory astir it, leaving Campbell confused. One possibility: Plimpton conscionable wanted nan spying rumor to spell away, which it had aft nan Times exposé. However, nan book not only brought it backmost but raised difficult issues, including Wright’s troubling decease by bosom onslaught astatine property 52, which Campbell believes to person been caused by paranoia and accent but others attributed to intelligence agency malfeasance. (Wright’s girl and friends believed he had been poisoned.)

TRUE NATURE doesn’t mention Campbell’s work. Although Richardson asks, “Was Matthiessen watching Richard Wright?” he doesn’t opportunity whether he knows nan answer. The Matthiessen property gave him wide entree to his papers. In addition, he acknowledgment nan Matthiessen family for its “willing cooperation.” Yet there’s an obliqueness that mirrors his taxable whenever Matthiessen’s espionage comes up. Overall, “[w]hat Matthiessen did, time to time for nan CIA, remains thing of a mystery,” he writes. The champion he tin connection is simply a 2008 speech pinch Charlie Rose successful which Rose asked constituent blank what Matthiessen did for nan CIA.

“Well, I deliberation we’ll conscionable person to spell to nan remainder of nan show,” Matthiessen responded. “It wasn’t very much. It was beautiful paltry, really. What it really was doing . . . Know what I was doing, spending my time doing? Deceiving people. That’s each it is.”

“Deceiving group arsenic to—?”

“As to who you are, your identity, what you’re up to, what you want to cognize [. . .]”

“Were you looking for group you tin convert? Were you looking to expose people?”

“No, I was getting accusation connected people.”

Another writer TRUE NATURE curiously neglects is historiographer Craig Lanier Allen. In 2019 Allen published a dissertation specifically focused connected nan mobility of Matthiessen’s spying and whether he was targeting Wright. Allen brought a unsocial perspective, arsenic a achromatic historiographer and a erstwhile spy himself, having spent decades posted overseas by U.S. Air Force counterintelligence. His thesis, “Spies Spying connected Spies Spying: The Gibson Affair, nan Café Tournon, and nan Specter of Surveillance successful Postwar American Literary Expatriate Paris, 1953-1958,” is driven by Allen’s ain soul conflict: sympathy, connected 1 hand, for nan concealed agent, and connected nan other, for nan dissident, truth-seeker and outraged professional of title relations. He calls Wright a information threat whose “complicity warrants investigation.” However, he besides makes it clear that Wright was a man of conscience who endured monstrous abuse.

Unlike Richardson, Allen shows existent liking successful getting to nan bottommost of Matthiessen’s spying. In 1 devastating quote, he shows that if he did spy connected Wright (which Allen believes he did), it was unquestionably a individual betrayal.

“I was very bully friends pinch Richard Wright who was location successful Paris excessively and we had absorbing talks astir Baldwin,” Matthiessen told an interviewer successful 2001. Allen goes connected to analyse nan clues scattered among Matthiessen’s decades of shifting statements. As a trained spy himself, he identifies what he calls “repeated patterns of deception accordant pinch nan training of a master intelligence operative.” Matthiessen, he argues, utilized “the requisite magnitude of plausible deniability and purposeful obfuscation” to bespeak that he was hiding something.

But again, what? Allen doesn’t rather person nan equipment either. What he does person is nan master opinionated to prosecute successful informed speculation. In his opinion, Matthiessen astir apt didn’t person a important domiciled successful nan CIA. He was improbable to person been a lawsuit officer. He astir apt “did not himself negociate different quality sources of information,” but alternatively would person “himself been managed.” He was not, successful different words, a salaried worker of what was past a burgeoning American intelligence apparatus. He was astir apt a statement worker hired for a circumstantial intent – to infiltrate nan expat scene. Which immoderate would spot arsenic an informant.

Would nan favoritism person mattered to personification for illustration Wright, whose FBI record mostly consisted of chap writers and acquaintances informing connected him, immoderate for money aliases privileges? (The privilege of simply crossing borders, which included returning home, was cunningly rationed by nan U.S. embassy successful Paris.) Wright suspected everyone, particularly different writers, and apt suspected Matthiessen, too. Indeed, galore expats astir apt suspected Matthiessen, whose woman astatine nan clip was nan girl of a apical U.S. diplomat.

In Allen’s view, Wright deserved to beryllium spied on. He was a dissident pinch a platform, “willing to spell to immoderate magnitude successful bid to pull attraction to nan problem of group discrimination,” arsenic 1 of his informants (not Matthiessen) wrote. That made him a “threat to U.S. nationalist information interests,” says Allen.

Yet his force was astatine home. It wasn’t nan State Department aliases nan CIA that was obsessed pinch him, arsenic Allen points out. (Wright’s record was larger than that of immoderate American writer of his time.) It was nan FBI, which is expected to beryllium a home intelligence agency. Wright was being hounded, moreover abroad, pinch nan thief of friends and allies. His curen was undeniably foul, arsenic Matthiessen, looking back, must person painfully felt. In later years Matthiessen would take sides himself by distinguishing nan CIA of nan 1950s from nan somewhat later 1 that came nether nan scrutiny of nan Church Commission – earlier nan agency “got into assassinations and each nan disfigured stuff,” he would say. But spying connected friends is arguably nan principle of an intelligence work – immoderate intelligence service, American aliases otherwise.

In Matthiessen’s defense, astir Americans were still processing nan position of nan acold warfare successful nan early 1950s, gauging nan force threat and figuring retired conscionable really acold nan federation should spell to take sides itself. Matthiessen, “the young Yalie,” arsenic he described himself, drinking martinis astatine nan club, was hardly nan only 1 whispering astir acquaintances. “Everybody thought everybody other was informing connected personification aliases different for somebody,” said nan writer Christopher Logue. Even Wright was accused of trading information.

According to Richardson, nan logic Matthiessen dissembled truthful overmuch was shame. At nan extremity of his life nan spying agonized him, and he made respective attempts to expiate himself connected paper, including thing titled “THE PARIS REVIEW v. THE CIA: My Half-life arsenic a Capitalist Running Dog.” TRUE NATURE gives america glimpses of his anguish. Which unless nan CIA changes its mind astir releasing Matthiessen’s file, is each we have. Allen tried harder pinch less, and aft publishing his thesis he promised that Matthiessen’s engagement pinch nan CIA would soon beryllium explored “as portion of a much expansive investigation project.” Unfortunately, he died successful 2022 astatine nan property of 52 of a bosom attack.

The first photograph features Peter Matthiesen posing connected nan harbor connected May 29,1992 successful Saint Malo,France. (Ulf Andersen/Getty Images). The 2nd photograph shows Richard Wright, Peter Matthiessen and Christopher Logue. Post updated connected Oct. 16th to correct nan Talking astatine nan Gates publication date, sanction of James Campbell’s book.