Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities

Readers unfamiliar with American and foreign intelligence agencies' (mostly) covert exploitation of America's universities doubtless will find Pulitzer Prize winner Golden's (The Price of Admission) journalistic exposé shocking. Even worse is the apparent complicity of administrative policymakers and more than a few presidents of academia, some with intimate ties to foreign espionage. Students on the low-income, high-IQ side of the sociological divide reportedly are at higher risk of encountering slick recruiters from the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other intelligence agencies, and are courted with promises of employment and even cash payouts. The CIA, claims Golden, has gone as far as staging academic conferences in order to coax Iranian nuclear scientists to defect; an isolated liberal arts college in southeast Ohio exchanged faculty with an infamous Chinese spy school. These revelations sound absurd but are public record. Such aggressive infiltration of academia wasn't tolerated during the Cold War. Academic specialists feared losing credibility, and putting their students in danger. Foreign governments providing valuable research loathed the CIA and understandably had zero interest in cultivating American spies—attitudes and official postures which crumbled after 9/11.