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Chapter 3 The Man in the Grey Suit George C. Minden and his Concept of Cultural and Ideological Competition During the 1970s, new covers—the International Advisory Council, Inc., and, after 1975, the International Literary Centre, Ltd.— were used to make the book project even less visible to the “other side.” Following the resignation of Sam Walker, the Free Europe Organization and Publication (FEOP) Division was established on July 1, 1959, through the merger of Free Europe Press and Free Europe European Operations (FEEO) under the direction of Robert Minton, with George C. Minden as supervisor of the division’s book mailing project. Two years later, Minden became director of the newly created Communist Bloc Operations Department (CBOD), and thereafter managed the program without interruption until its termination in September 1991. Born George Robert Căpuţineanu Minden in 1920 in Bucharest, Romania, his citizenship was listed as Romanian and his nationality as British, through his father Robert, born in 1896 in Hull, Yorkshire. Of German descent and the owner of a shipping company in Hamburg and London, Robert served in World War I as a lieutenant in the German army and was sent to Romania, where he met and married George Minden’s mother, Maria Teohari, a niece of Mihai Căpuţineanu (1878–1948), a well-to-do oil magnate. George was three when his parents divorced, and he was brought up by his maternal grandmother and his great-uncle Mihai Căpuţineanu. He earned a civil law degree from the University of Bucharest in 1943, and, together with his brother, was legally adopted at age 18 by their great-uncle for inheritance purposes, after which he became a landowner and oilman. Following the communist takeover and the confiscation of his lands, i5 Cold War.indb 39 2013.03.04. 13:37 40 Hot Books in the Cold War Minden managed, thanks to his British passport, to leave Romania for England in 1946 with his wife Margarete and their two children. He earned a teaching degree from Cambridge University, but his marriage ended in divorce. From 1948 to 1954, he taught English in Cartagena and Madrid in Spain, where he met and married his second wife, Marilyn from Pittsburgh, USA. In 1954–1955, Minden became director of the School for Modern Languages in Mexico City. In March 1955, the family moved to the United States, arriving by ship from Guatemala to New Orleans. In August of that year, Minden joined FEC’s Romanian Desk as an analyst and research specialist, and became its Desk Chief one year later. Minden became a U.S. citizen in 1958, and was promoted to Department Head of the Free Europe Press’ Book Center, which handled the book mailing project. Because his involvement was needed for the screening and reviewing of some of the material sent in support of the mailing project, it became necessary to brief him in 1959 on FEC’s relationship with the “Executive Committee”—the euphemism used for the CIA—and to upgrade his clearance to #1.1 On May 1, 1961, FEC President John Richardson, Jr.,2 who had succeeded Archibald S. Alexander as FEC President, appointed him director of the newly created Communist 1   HIA, George Minden Collection, Box 1, Biographic File. The vetting was needed because of the departure of Ed Stillman and in order to unburden Robert Minton. An earlier candid confidential memo from Kirk to Myers dated May 26, 1958, reads: “The regularity with which our friends have used the Mailing Project for their own dark purposes has strained our ingenuity vis-à-vis George […].” After he was briefed, Minden signed “the usual [nondisclosure] agreement.” Letter from the Director of Personnel [FEC] to the Executive Committee, July 17, 1959. During World War II, Robert Minden worked for British intelligence. He passed away in 1955. All biographical information is from Marilyn Minden’s correspondence with the author (2008–2011). 2   John Richardson, Jr. (1921–), ex-paratrooper, lawyer, and banker, was offered the post of FEC president by CIA Director Allen W. Dulles (1893– 1969) and held it from 1961 to 1969. He then served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs from 1969 to 1977 (Richardson, Oral History Interview, dated February 9, 1999). Archibald S. Alexander (1906–1979), a lawyer and politician, was FEC President from 1959 to 1961. Richardson brought much-needed stability and continuity to FEC, which had had four presidents in its first ten years. i5 Cold...

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