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Professor Oya Ersever's article in Peace Research(f.1) advocating the humanistic philosophy of Carl Rogers as a guideline for peace should, perhaps, include a cautionary postscript in the form of an ad hominem criticism of Rogers. Readers should know that Carl Rogers was a knowing and willing accomplice in CIA funding of covert psychological research. Certainly, the CIA is not noted as an agency devoted tot he promotion of peace nor to the humane treatment of people.(f.2) Much of the research that Rogers' CIA front approved, for example, the covert LSD studies on unsuspecting patients in Montreal's Allen Memorial Institute abused the participants and was useless science in any case.(f.3)
The CIA's funding of psychological research was directed by Sidney Gottlieb.(f.4) Various funding fronts were used, for example, the Scientific Engineering Institute(f.5) and Psychological Assessment Associates.(f.6) In 1955, Harold Wolff, from Cornell University's Psychiatry Department created a CIA research front called the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. This was later shortened to the Human Ecology Fund. The plan was to promote research that would lead to techniques for getting information out of people without their co-operation and without their even knowing that was what you were doing.
In 1957, the Human Ecology Fund was legally separated from Cornell. Lt.-Col. James Monroe, former head of the Psychological Warfare Division of the U.S. Air Force, became director, and Carl Rogers joined the board of directors. Rogers is on record as saying that he was well aware that the Human Ecology Fund was a CIA front for covert funding of psychological research, and that he had no problem working for the CIA.(f.7) In fact, the CIA gave Rogers $30,000, which enabled him to leave academics and settle in sunny La Jolla, California.(f.8) There he worked for the Western Behavioural Sciences Institute, which...