Fears over CIA 'university spies'
The CIA scholars attend summer training camps
A CIA scheme to sponsor trainee spies secretly through US university courses has caused anger among UK academics.
The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program pays anthropology students, whose names are not disclosed, up to $50,000 (£27,500) a year.
They are expected to use the techniques of "fieldwork" to gather political and cultural details on other countries.
Britain's Association of Social Anthropologists called the scholarships ethically "dangerous" and divisive.
'Detailed knowledge'
The ASA's president, John Gledhill, told the BBC News website the scholarships could foster suspicion within universities worldwide and cause problems in the field.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4603271.st... http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/0 ...
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
The Intelligence-University Complex: CIA Secretly Supports Scholarships
College students are also being integrated into the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Last year the Senate created a scholarship to train intelligence operatives and analysts in American universities for careers in the CIA and other agencies. We speak with the anthropologist who designed the scholarship and another anthropologist who has spoken out opposing the program. We continue to look at the issue of the militarization of civil institutions – this time in academia. The Intelligence Authorization Act is an annual bill that allocates funds for intelligence agencies. When congress passed the 2004 legislation and President Bush signed it into law, the bill drew fire from many corners because it expanded the Patriot Act and was passed with little debate.
But there was another provision in the legislation that received almost no attention. Section 318 of the bill appropriated 4 million dollars to fund a pilot program called the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, known as PRISP. The program is named after Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The scholarship was created in order to train intelligence operatives and analysts in American universities for careers in the CIA and other agencies. The students receive up to $50,000 dollars over a two-year period and are required to complete at least one summer internship at the CIA or other approved agencies. The program is veiled in secrecy - there are no public lists of the participants and there is no requirement that they disclose their affiliation to their professors. David Price in his article in CounterPunch titled, “The CIA's Campus Spies,” writes that he tried to obtain more details about the program but the CIA spokesperson was reluctant to discuss them. Price states that the agency did confirm that “PRISP now funds about 100 students who are studying at an undisclosed number of universities…. but they refused to identify which campuses are hosting these covert scholars.”
As an aside the $4m Pat Roberts scholarships were launched in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks to improve US intelligence gathering.
The CIA's website says that a "number of scholarships are awarded to highly qualified students specialising in critical subject areas".
Scholars are expected to go on to work for its directorate of intelligence.
Here's more on that:
http://www.cia-on-campus.org /