During the Cold War the CIA had some 800 news and propaganda assets. One of the biggest was Forum Service (later Forum World Service), an ostensibly independent news feature and commentary syndicate that operated from 1957 to 1975. This paper uses heretofore untapped archives to explore how the service recruited writers and found willing clients among hundreds of editors in Asia and Africa. Forum’s free service got the western point of view to publications that could have never afforded a commercial service, pre-empted Soviet propaganda, but skewed the news market and choked off opportunities for indigenous writers and commentators.

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The Newberry Library Seminar on Technology, Politics, and Culture Co-sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Roosevelt University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Northwestern University's School of Communications.