KU professor's CIA training plan draws criticism in online chat / LJWorld.com

Archive for Thursday, March 24, 2005

March 24, 2005

Felix Moos said he'd expected a barrage of questions Wednesday from colleagues and others critical of his plan to train intelligence analysts on college campuses.

He was right.

Moos, a Kansas University professor of anthropology, participated in an hourlong online chat with the Chronicle of Higher Education on Wednesday. Many of the 17 questions he answered focused on how training agents would affect the safety and reputation of anthropologists, as well as whether it would open the door to the CIA running covert operations on university campuses.

"I'm not surprised at many of the questions, because they reflect what I find at KU -- people are oblivious to the fact we're at war, and we're going to be at war for a long time," Moos said after the chat. "Shouldn't we engage the best and brightest to help us extract ourselves from these difficulties?"

Moos helped inspire the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, which currently has 110 participants employed by the 15 federal intelligence agencies. Participants receive $25,000 annually for language and culture study for up to two years in exchange for 18 months of service to their respective agencies.

The chat, part of the Chronicle's Colloquy Live series, drew participants from both coasts -- from Yale University to UCLA -- as well as people from Scotland and Canada, based on self-reported affiliations from questioners.

Many said they had concerns about the program.

One woman said the perception that anthropologists could be employed by the CIA could harm those not involved with the Pat Roberts program.

Felix Moos, a Kansas University professor of anthropology, types during a Chronicle of Higher Education online chat Wednesday afternoon.

"Your program is endangering all academics who work abroad," she said. "What will you say when my son is arrested or murdered while falsely accused of being a PRISP CIA operative while conducting his ethnographic fieldwork in Central America?"

Moos responded that people in some areas of the world won't welcome Americans, no matter their possible government affiliation. And he said -- as he noted several times during the chat -- the fact the United States is at war makes programs such as PRISP necessary.

"The U.S. is at war, and that presumably includes U.S. institutions of higher learning," Moos wrote. "Surely you must be in favor of more, rather than fewer, American students knowing a great deal more about the world in which we now live; and yes, unfortunately we are at war and will be for some time to come."