Agent of Influence - Organizations Functioning As Agents of Influence

Organizations Functioning As Agents of Influence

In addition to individual agents of influence, front organizations can serve the interests of a foreign power in this capacity. When individuals join such organizations in good faith but are in fact serving the interests of a foreign elite, their affiliation becomes infiltration, and cumulatively the organization serves as an agent of influence. It is important to note, however, that not all front organizations focus exclusively on influence operations, as some have more specific objectives (intelligence collection, etc). The Cold War is a recent example of increased use of not only front organizations, but of front organizations being used as agents of influence to alter the target nation's belief system and policies on the international stage.

The use of organizations as agents of influence during the Cold War is a recent example that serves to illustrate how frequently front organizations were used in an attempt to alter the perceptions and actions of a foreign nation and its public. A Communist front organization is an organization identified to be a front organization under the effective control of a Communist party, the Communist International or other Communist organizations. Lenin originated the idea in his manifesto of 1902, "What Is to Be Done?". Since the party was illegal in Russia, he proposed to reach the masses through "a large number of other organizations intended for wide membership and, which, therefore, can be as loose and as public as possible." Generally called "mass organizations" by the Communists themselves, these groups were prevalent from the 1920s through the 1950s, with their use accelerating during the Popular Front period of the 1930s.

Starting in 1939, Attorney General Biddle began compiling a list of Fascist and Communist front organizations. It was called "Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations" (AGLOSO), but was not at first made public. Political pressures from Congress forced President Harry S. Truman to act. Truman's Attorney General Tom C. Clark expanded the list, which was officially authorized by presidential Executive Order 9835 in 1947 and was administered by the new Loyalty Review Board. The Board became part of the Civil Service Commission. The list was used by federal agencies to screen appointments during the Truman Administration. The program investigated over 3 million government employees, of whom 300 were dismissed as security risks. Adverse decisions could be appealed to the Loyalty Review Board, a government agency set up by President Truman.

The Loyalty Review Board publicized the previously secret Attorney General's list in March 1948 as a "List of Communist classified organizations." The list gave the name and date founded, and (for active groups) the headquarters, and chief officers.

• World Federation
• Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians, CIO, Chairman: L.A. Berne, Deputy Chairmen: Marcel E. Scherer; 1928
• International Workers Order, 80 Fifth Avenue, New York; Chairman: W. Weiner, Attorney J. Brodsky; 1930
• International Jurist Association, 1931
• Methodist Federation for Social Service, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York; Bishop F.J. McConnell
• American League Against War and Fascism, 1933; became the American League for Peace and Democracy, 1937
• Friends of the Soviet Union
• International Labor Defense, 112 East Nineteenth Street, New York; Chairman: Vito Marcantonio, J. Brodsky
• Young Communist League, USA (YCL-USA), 464 Sixth Avenue, New York; Carl Ross, Celeste Srack, Angelo Herndon.
• American Youth Congress, 55 West Forty-second Street, New York (organized from the Young Communist League), chairmen: W. Hinckley, Joseph P. Lash; 1934
• League of American Writers, 1935
• American Labor Party, 1936
• National Negro Congress*, 35 East Twelfth Street, New York; Chairman: A.P. Randolph, J.W. Ford, A. Herndon, J.P. Davis; 1936
• National Lawyers Guild, 31 Union Square, New York; 1937
• International Coordinating Committee for Aid to Republican Spain
• North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy
• Abraham Lincoln Brigade, George Washington Battalion and other affiliates, 1937–38;
• American Congress for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom, 1939
• International Red Aid
• International Federation for Constitutional Liberties
• American Peace Mobilization, 1940; became the American People's Mobilization
• Washington Bookshop
• National Federation for Constitutional Liberties
• Washington Committee for Democratic Action
• Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee
• National Council for American-Soviet Friendship
• American Committee for Yugoslav Relief
• American Relief for Greek Democracy
• Russian War Relief
• American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, 100 Fifth Ave., New York; Chairman: Rev. Hermann F. Reissig, Charles Right, Carol White King.
• Civil Rights Congress and its affiliated organizations including: Civil Rights Congress for Texas, Veterans Against Discriminations of Civil Rights Congress of New York
• International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers
• Labor Research Association
• Labor Youth League
• International Workers Organization, its subdivisions, subsidiaries and affiliates
• Council on African Affairs;
• Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy
• California Labor School Inc., 321 Dvisadero Street, San Francisco, California
• American Peace Crusade
• National Negro Labor Council
• United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America
• Congress of American-Soviet Friendship
• Washington Committee for Aid to China
• United China Relief
• American-Russian Institute
• Communist Political Association
• Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
• League of Women Shoppers, 220 Fifth Avenue, New York; E. Preston (Mrs. R.N. Baldwin), M. Forsyth

In 1955, SSIS published a list of what it described as the 82 most active and typical sponsors of communist fronts in the United States; some of those named had literally dozens of affiliations with groups that had either been cited as Communist fronts or had been labelled "subversive" by either the subcommittee or the House Committee on Un-American Activities.