Attractive and progressive, Steinem was hired to run the I.S.I. and to recruit knowledgeable young Americans who could debate effectively with the Communist organizers of the festival, defending the United States against Communist criticism of segregation and other American failings.

Conservative student leaders certainly could have been found for this purpose, but they did not interest the C.I.A. or the I.S.I.: socialists and others on the non-Communist left had greater appeal because they would be more effective in reaching out to the European students who attended such festivals. One of those who went to Vienna was Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a Harvard graduate student; one of those who agonized over the offer of free transportation was Michael Harrington of the Young People’s Socialist League. The offer was withdrawn, according to Harrington, when he insisted that he had to be free to criticize capitalism and Communism equally.

The C.I.A.’s connections to the I.S.I. and a host of other organizations and publications was exposed in a storm of magazine and newspaper articles in 1967, and just about everything that had once been secret became public. Steinem stood up bravely: “I was happy to find some liberals in government in those days who were farsighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to the festival,” she told The New York Times. And to The Washington Post she said: “In my experience the agency was completely different from its image: it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”

Steinem was a “witting” participant

Fr “A word From Our Sponsor,” NYT, 1/20/2008, a review of Hugh Wilford’s, The Mighty Wurlitzer, How the CIA Played America, published by Harvard University Press.

Now that says more about CIA mianipulation then it does about feminism, but it makes me a bit skeptical of Gloria’s greatness.