OSU PROF LINKED TO CIA WORK

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000200990015-9
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RIPPUB
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K
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3
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
January 20, 2012
Sequence Number: 
15
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Publication Date: 
January 26, 1986
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OPEN SOURCE
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-STAT Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200990015-9 lint ` eontr '4e. pursued.,* ursued Fi 6 s ll{y Patbelck g Cob To his frkgds and `George Alexander I#ly was a whftr and a gentleman. He is considered among- Ohio 3 ate Unversity's top sit psychol scholars, in this ceuy, and his theo rlea,plii_ j-choZ suc1t-legends aa, Sigmund Freud, Carl -Jung and David ume. His thinking and work are a land- mark., To his pa- pers are housed in archives named for him at the University bt Nebraska. Kelly t Those who knew him generously season their comments with glowing adjectives, calling him: honest, ethical, brilliant, patriotic, in- sightful, Renaissance man. But there is one trivia item many did not know: The proposal for Kelly's 1960- 61 sabbatical research project spon- sored by the now-defunct Human Ecolo- gy Fund ended up in the CIA's records that document Ohio State's participation. in the agency's decade-long, search for ways to control the h mind. This discovery and others, made by the Beacon Journal through .the federal Freedom of Information Act, links an Ohio State faculty member tor the first time to one of the CIA's most bizarre and controversial bits of once-secret re- search. In addition, the circumstances pro- vide a view of the CIA's secret dealings with the academic community, a vola- tile issue on campuses during the stu- dent unrest of the 1960s and an issue that has re-emerged as a source of con cern among many in the academic com- munity today. , AKRON BEACON JOURNAL 26 January 1986 Earlier this' month, Nadav Safran, a Harvard government professor, resigned as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies for failing to disclose that the CIA sponsored a coriierence the center organized on Islam and politics. That sponsorsW chew attention in Eu-, rope, Aslar and the Middle East as, well as America. And:last week, the CIA told the New`York Times it had re-estab lished ties with universities and la, receiving data from an increasing number of professors; The project done at Ohio state 25 years ago was part of a pro- gram code-named MKULTRA - pronounced M.K. Ultra. It ?was the CIA's main research program into the development of chemical and biological agents from 1953 to the mid-1960s. Approved by former CIA Director Allen Dulles, the project searched for ways to develop chemical and biological agents to be used in "clandestine operations to control hurhap be. havior," according to Congres- sional documents. In August 1977, when CIA Dl, rector Stansfield Turner released a ream of documents on MKULTRA to Congress, the pro- gram triggered worldwide out- rage. That same month,' Ohio State officials announced it was one, of 80 U.S. institutions involved, al- though the CIA would not identify the researchers. But before the public learned about MKULTRA, it was a well- kept secret even within the CIA - so sensitive it wasn't men- tioned in a secret 1968 CIA study of the Agency's relationship with the academic community. The extent of the research re- mains unknown since a CIA offi- cial ordered most MKULTRA records destroyed in January 1973. Yet some research - in- cluding ones done by Ohio State professors - had been saved. Many universities do not view CIA-funded scholarly research as taboo, but in almost all cases they require funding by intelli- gence sources to be disclosed to the university. It isn't clear whether anyone at Ohio State knew Kelly received a CIA grant. The research projects MKULTRA was an' umbrella under which 149 known subproz jests, were versi- ties, medical facilities and penal institutioM. The CIA's Informa- tion and Privacy Division said two of those projects, numbered 96 and 101, were conducted at Ohio State. The most information was re- leased on subproject 96. Called A Study of the Current Decision Matrices of. (deleted) Scholars, it was proposed by an Ohio State psychology professor July 18,. 1959. The project records, consisting of 30 pages of correspondence, a- proposal, receipts and invoices, provide a classic illustration of how the CIA secretly arranged to have scholars do research. . The proposal said the project's Purpose was to search for a new theory to explain how people reach decisions: "Traditionally psychologists have approached the problem of understanding human behavior by attempting to seek out the mo. tives or forces which seem to im- pel persons willy-nilly along par- ticular lines of action. . . But there is another approach," the proposal said. As an alternative, the research- er proposed using a new theory called psychology of personal constructs - patterns pdceived by individuals that are used to explain the realities encountered in life. The researcher sought to dis- cover how a college professor could be inclined to change his personal constructs and hence his position on an issue. The re- searcher assumed any person can be forced to change his position, so "it becomes important to find out what alternatives are availa- ble to him when he must make new choices." "The firmness of his stand may be reassuring, providing he is never dislodged from it,,, the pro- posal said. "But the question is, what direction will he jump if he can no longer stand where he is standing?" According to the records, the professor's wife accompanied him and helped collect data. According to a CIA memo dat- ed July 22, 1959, the project had two main goals: 1) to apply the Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200990015-9 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200990015-9 psychology of personal constructs to foreign cultures, and 2) to ob- tain data about research atti- tudes and personality information on other scholars through the re- searcher's access to them. CIA accounting record9.show the agency paid the profeipor $37,428 - about $3,008 more than the original proposes' Be? sides paying the professor's solo, ry while he was on leave, It cow; ered secretarial help, research equipment, gifts and travel. Littld is knswir about the sec- ond proposal, subproject 101. k CIA memo dated Sept. 23, 1959, estimated cogsulElog wo $2,000 to pay an Ohio State pros fessor to research the biophysics of the central nervous system. But CIA records show only $100 of that money was used. Kelly and subproject 96 The CIA will not say which pro- fessors did research for the two MKULTRA projects. And the Freedom of Information Act and federal court decisions allow the agency to withhold the names, However, the Beacon Journal conducted a tour-week investiga. tion of key facts about subproject 96's researcher - apparently left inadvertently in the project's records and CIA correspondence. After examining those clues and the backgrounds of the 1959-1960 Ohio State psychology faculty, Kelly's background appeared to best fit those clues. Kelly, who died in 1967, taught psychology at Ohio State from 1946-1965. He is known to his field as the father of the psycholo- gy of personal constructs - the subject of the CIA-funded re- search project. Former Ohio State psychology faculty mem- bers say there was no other schol- ar at Ohio State as prominent as Kelly in this field. "That would be right. up George's alley," said Donald Meyer, professor emeritus of psy- chology at Ohio State. "That had to be Kelly - it had to be - because personal con. structs was his baby, without question," said another Ohio State professor who asked not to be identified. Other clues link Kelly to sub- project 96. One document said the researcher formerly held the presidency of a major organiza? tion or association, but deleted the name. Kelly served as presi- dent of the American Psychologi- cal Association's clinical division from 1956-57 and was president of the consulting division of that organization in 1954-55. A CIA memo noted the re- searcher had written a major work on the psychology of person al constructs shortly before he had submitted the proposal for subproject 96 to the CIA in 1959. In 1955, Kelly published his most signficant work, A Theory of Per- sonality: The Psychology of Per- sonal Another key clue was the name deleted from the documents: The researcher's last name, as Kel- ly's, was five letters long. Kelly's sabbatical The project's intinerary and source of funding reflected a nearly identical link with Kelly's research activities. The 12-month project was to begin April 1, 1960, and docu-- ments said the researcher could arrange for a sabbatical. According to the records, the researcher had to make specific visits to various cities (deleted) 4uring 1960 and 1961 to carry out the project. Biographical information on file at Ohio State about Kelly shows he left Ohio State during the same time period, taking leave in the spring of 1960 until March 1961 to "lecture on per- sonality theory in various coun- tries." Most importantly, Ohio State records show Kelly's sponsor for his sabbatical was the Human Ecology Fund. In 1977, the CIA revealed that fund (also known as the Society for the Investiga- tion of Human Ecology) was a CIA operation set up to secretly fund psychological research. According to its own reports, the fund, established in May 1955 and disbanded 10 years later, was a non-profit corporation based in Forest Hills, N. Y., en- couraging research into "marked behaviorial change and the condi- tions under which it occurs." One annual report also said the fund sponsored studies of how people reacted to LSD at the But- ler Health Center in Providence, z R.I., a known MKULTRA rye. search project. The subproject 96 proposal said the research should contribute'to psychological knowledge and to the "understanding of ecological factors in mankind's decisions" - this was one of the principal aims of the Human Ecology Fund, the annual report said. And in 1962, a year after the CIA-funded study on decision ma- trices of scholars was to have been completed, Kelly published a paper, Europe's Matrix of Deci- sion Making, in which Kelly said his remarks were based on re- _,,search into the psychology of per- sonal constructs sponsored by the Human Ecology Fund. Did Kelly know of CIA? If Kelly was the researcher - and the documents and his back- ground suggest he - was - he could have known his research would be used by the CIA. Most researchers apparently did not know the Human Ecology Fund_ was created by the CIA. According to John Gittinger, a former CIA employee who testi- fied before Congress in 1977, most researchers did not know they were getting CIA money through the fund. Although the agency provided funding for projects In which they had an in- terest, they did not direct the re- search, he said. The correspondence on subpro- ject 96 confirms this theory. The researcher never referred to CIA or MKULTRA when he submitted the proposal. Neither did letters responding to the researcher nor did other letters. In fact, the researcher's July 18, 1959, proposal letter released by the CIA was addressed to "Executive Secretary" - the ad- dress and the organization's name were deleted. The fund's annual report instructed those in- terested in receiving information about grants to send a letter to "Executive Secretary, Society for the Investigation of Human Ecol- ogy" In Forest Hills, New York." But a CIA memo offers strong evidence the researcher knew his data was going to the CIA: ? A July 22, 1959, CIA memo on subproject 96 said the re- Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200990015-9 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200990015-9 searcher had been "a fully cleared consultant to the Agency for four years and has demon- strated unusual sensitivity and perceptivity to Agency needs," especially in assessment matters. ? Page 2 of the memo said it learned the researcher was plan- ning a study on decision matrices because of his relationship as a consultant. "However, at our re- quest, he agreed to submit this original request to (blank)" - a 40-letter deletion that could have been an organization's name such as the Society for the Investiga- tion of Human Ecology. ? The memorandum also said the agency granted the research- er access to top-secret material. An Ohio State psychology pro- fessor who knew Kelly well said Kelly probably knew a great deal about the fund's CIA ties. "My understanding was that he (Kelly) was one of the founders of the organization," said the pro- fessor, who asked not to be named. "I honesty don't know if he was getting funds from the CIA, but he knew his way well around Washington. "Many of these people were duped, and as I understand it, there were prominent people as- sociated with the Human Ecology Fund. "There were many organiza- tions the CIA funded, but the peo- ple did not know they were in- volved," he said. "The thing had a good sound to it, the society (for the investiga- tion of human ecology) sounded like it was trying to do good work," the professor said. "And the people connected with it were shocked to learn it was funded by the CIA." There is no evidence Kelly's re- search involved mind control or behavior modification. But the documents do not say how the CIA used the study about how scholars make decisions. when contacted by phone at-her Silver Spring, Md., apartment. "My husband is dead." . But many of Kelly's former col- leagues were willing to talk. One of them who knew him well was Brendan Maher, a Harvard psy- chology professor who studied un- der Kelly during the 1950s. Maher edited a book about Kel- ly published in 1969: Clinical Psychology and Personality: The Selected Papers of George Kelly. Maher said he did not think a CIA connection was consistent with Kelly's character. "He was the most straightfor- ward man I have ever met," he said in an interview at Harvard. "He was a man of considerable integrity. He was very honest, straightfoward. He told you exactly what he thought. "He was opposed to all forms of behavior modification," Maher said. "I cannot conceive what could come out of it would be secret or how it would be usefuft to the CLir-" Maher *dmitted, however, that one paragraph in the CIA-funded- project that described its focus "is consistent with many things that hppear in his books." "I'm a little surprised," 'said Appel of the University of Texas at Austin. "He was a very free and autonomous person, one who' is not likely to be involved with the establishment." A.W. Landfield, professor of psychology at the University of Nebraska who studied under Kel- ly, said he didn't know of-his for- mer professor ever engaging in classified research and noting the library there that houses archives' for Kelly's books and papers. ' "There is nothing here that would have any bearing on that. "He was a fine scholar, and he was a bit formal," Landfield said. "He had d lot of wit and humor i'n his ? writings. And I always thought he was a man of good character. He was highly talent- ed. He was kind of like a Renais- sance man." 3 berg and the CIA," he said. "And I have no personal records of this at all." "We don't have any control it he is doing something over the summer on his own time," said Thomas Sweeney, Ohio State's as- sociate vice president for re- search. "But if the university is a party to the contract, the Institu- tion would have no way of know- ing about it." "We have elaborate procedures in which if any humans are sub- jects of research, those projects must be approved by a commit- tee," Sweeney said, adding dis- closure policy then would have been the same as it is now for faculty members wishing to do research with an intelligence or- ganization. Ohioi State officials said they are not aware of any CIA-funded research currently being conduct- ed at the university. A `straightforward man' Gladys Kelly, the scholar's widow, declined to comment on her husband's past research. Mrs. Kelly went with him dur- ing his sabbatical and the CIA apparently cleared the research- er's wife to help. "I don't want to have anything to with this," Mrs Kelly said Ohio State reaction Novice Fawcett, Ohio State's president from 1956 to 1972, said he couldn't recall any research being done for the CIA. "Offhand, I 'cannot remember research ac- tivities involving faculty mem- Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200990015-9