Patriotic Betrayal

The previously untold true story of the CIA’s clandestine use of American students as undercover operatives during the Cold War

In this revelatory book, Karen M. Paget shows how the CIA turned the National Student Association into an intelligence asset during the Cold War, with students used—often wittingly and sometimes unwittingly—as undercover agents inside America and abroad. In 1967, Ramparts magazine exposed the story, prompting the Agency into engineering a successful cover-up. Now Paget, drawing on archival sources, declassified documents, and more than 150 interviews, shows that the Ramparts story revealed only a small part of the plot.

A cautionary tale, throwing sharp light on the persistent argument, heard even now, about whether America’s national-security interests can be advanced by skullduggery and deception, Patriotic Betrayal, says Karl E. Meyer, a former editorial board member of the New York Times and The Washington Post, evokes “the aura of a John le Carré novel with its self-serving rationalizations, its layers of duplicity, and its bureaucratic doubletalk.” And Hugh Wilford, author of The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, calls Patriotic Betrayal “extremely valuable as a case study of relations between the CIA and one of its front groups, greatly extending and enriching our knowledge and understanding of the complex dynamics involved in such covert, state-private relationships; it offers a fascinating portrayal of post-World War II U.S. political culture in microcosm."

Karen M. Paget, a contributing editor to The American Prospect, holds a doctorate in American politics from the University of Colorado, and is coauthor of "Running as a Woman: Gender and Power in American Politics."

“Karen Paget's Patriotic Betrayal cinematically evokes the passionate and often ruthless struggle for young hearts and minds at the height of the Cold War. Comprehensive, fair-minded, and a compulsive read, Patriotic Betrayal is destined to be a classic study of the CIA's unprecedented intervention into US student affairs and its far-reaching consequences at home and abroad.”—TIMOTHY NAFTALI

“The creation of the CIA in 1947 specifically barred it from domestic activities. We might as well believe in the tooth fairy. The extent and breadth of the CIA’s activities is filled with illegal domestic activities, fraught with duplicity, stupidity, and self-serving explanations. Never mind that it corroded innocent activities and did significant harm to the U.S.’s reputation and international standing. Patriotic Betrayal is an insightful, incredible tale; it should leave you shaking your head at the true and appalling story this essential book tells.”—STANLEY KUTLER, author of Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes and The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon


“Extraordinarily well-researched, constantly original, and extremely valuable, Patriotic Betrayal offers a fascinating portrayal of post-World War II American political culture in microcosm.”—HUGH WILFORD, author of The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America


“A dramatic insider’s account of how the CIA turned the National Student Association—unknown to most of its young, idealistic members—into a covert operational arm of the CIA, financed secretly through a web of foundation fronts. Patriotic Betrayal is an important and impressively documented contribution to the history of the Cold War.”—DAVID WISE, author of Tiger Trap: America’s Secret Spy War with China, and coauthor of The Invisible Government


“Written with a lightness of touch that belies the huge research on which it is based, Patriotic Betrayal is a compulsive read. You will be astounded, educated and entertained.”—Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, author of The CIA and American Democracy