It has been a week since the announcement of the death of feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem, thus allowing plenty of time for reactions to pour in. Liberals have predictably gushed over the woman, while conservatives have taken their shots. I’ll resist sharing my strong disapproval of her views on abortion and the unborn. (READ: Scott McKay, “You Must Not Question Gloria Steinem. But I Do Have Questions.”)
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Amid all the remembrances, however, I was surprised to see reports on something I’ve personally known about for decades, uniquely confirmed to me by an eyewitness, and which I couldn’t report while that person was alive, and kept to myself while Gloria Steinem likewise was alive. It was brought to my attention immediately after her death, courtesy of a snippet from her Wikipedia page that seemed to go viral.
“Did you know this about Steinem?” I was asked.
Yes, was my response. I knew that and more.
Steinem’s hagiographic Wikipedia page is one of the most worshipful I’ve come across, filled with predictable progressive pabulum. But there was this surprising section:
CIA ties and leader of Independent Research Service
In 1967, Steinem revealed in an interview with The New York Times that she had worked full time from 1958 until 1962 at the Independent Research Service, which was largely financed by the CIA. As director of the Independent Research Service, Steinem had helped to organize groups of young people to attend World Youth Festivals in Vienna in 1959 and Helsinki in 1962.
In May 1975, Redstockings, a radical feminist group, published a report put together for the Independent Research Service by Steinem and others on the Vienna Youth Festival and its attendees. Redstockings raised the question of whether Steinem had continuing ties with the CIA, which Steinem denied.
Steinem defended her relationship with the CIA, saying: “In my experience the agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Steinem also stated that she considered the CIA to be allies in promoting U.S. government policy against communism during the early Cold War.
I can confirm for the record — with added undisclosed details — that these facts are accurate. My main source was Charles Wiley, a dear friend and colorful Cold War journalist and adventurer whose final columns were written for us at The American Spectator before his death at age 95 in March 2022. I eulogized Charlie as “The Most Interesting Man in the World.”
Charlie met Gloria Steinem at one of the infamous World Youth Festivals at the height of the Cold War, where both he and Steinem — a conservative and a liberal — confronted the Marxist maniacs who hijacked the festivals as forums to promote communist propaganda and dupe young progressives. The USSR poured hundreds of millions of dollars (that it couldn’t afford) into these festivals. Charlie and Steinem attended one of the more intense festivals, the Vienna spectacle that ran from July 26 to August 4, 1959.
At this and other World Youth festivals, Charlie and certain colleagues, such as the late Herb Romerstein, fought these Marxist factions and later testified to Congress on their efforts. Both Charlie and Herb handed me material that I retain to this day, including the coveted lists of registrants at the festival that they snatched on their way out the door. In these communist-dominated forums, Charlie and Herb engaged some disturbed individuals, including American Marxist organizers like Jake Rosen and Paul Robeson Jr. These festivals were quite the cast of characters, for better or worse, good and bad. The bad included some very bad dudes. (READ: Remembering Herb Romerstein)
And among the good ones was Gloria Steinem. In fact, Charlie referred to Steinem as “one of the good guys.” He always vividly remembered the first time that he laid eyes on her, as well as her first words to him.
The Battlelines and Factions
Wiley recalled the details of the Vienna World Youth Festival like it was yesterday. He grouped the various attendees of the American delegation into several categories:
In one category, and most tenacious, were the “hardcore” — the stalwart, unrepentant, young American Bolsheviks. These included the likes of “Paulie” Robeson Jr. and Jake Rosen. (On Robeson, READ: Death of a Communist.)
In the second category, said Wiley, were the “sort of semi-communists,” not totally in the Marxist camp, but sympathetic. This included the typical “fellow travelers” and even some Maoists.
In the third category, by Wiley’s description, were the “kind of fellow-traveler-trainees, the starry-eyed, the ones who didn’t realize that they were there to be used by the first category; these were the dupes.” These youngsters were moderate to left-leaning. Communists aimed to win over these too-easily manipulated liberals.
Then there were three categories in the American delegation that Wiley classified as “the good guys.”
Wiley referred to one cadre of good guys as “the anathema” group. They were deemed anathema by the hardcore Marxists. They were devout anti-communists who had earlier infiltrated the meetings of the American Marxists. They came to Vienna (with private funding) to monitor, expose, and disrupt the “bad guys.” The anathema included Wiley and Romerstein and a handful of others (nine, to be exact). They were despised by the American Bolsheviks — denounced as “bourgeoisie,” “fascists,” and not to be communicated with. They were also subject to physical violence by the Marxist thugs.
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Lastly, another key group, quite mysterious, was something called “IRS” — the Independent Research Service — which Wiley described as an “anti-Soviet front group” for the CIA, unbeknownst to most youngsters in the American delegation. It was this organization that Gloria Steinem worked for. These Independent Research Service agents were gathering information, constructing profiles on people and places from the communist world — material that would be valuable to the CIA.
The challenge for every American at the festival (good and bad alike) was figuring out who was with who. Suspicions ran wild. That was a big part of the game, especially when a World Youth Festival entourage traveled by train through the Communist Bloc to countries like Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Ukraine. The stops behind the Iron Curtain were carefully orchestrated Potemkin village tours staged by communist officials.
In the end, Charlie insisted, the anathemas won the battle for the hearts and minds of the wishy-washy middle; that is, for the starry-eyed innocents abroad in jeopardy of being duped by the forces of Nikita Khrushchev. Naïve as the young liberals were, the contrast in what they saw on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain was undeniable. Charlie told me: “We ended up with more than half of the delegation on our side by the end of the trip. Why? Because they had a chance to see communism in action in those countries, and even then not that much, but enough. It didn’t take much. We didn’t need to say a thing. It spoke for itself.”
Though the stops in cities like Prague, Warsaw, and Kyiv were only brief, the youngsters saw enough to quickly learn they wanted no part of the communist world. They suddenly realized that what the hardcore Marxists had been telling them about the alleged workers’ paradise was, as Wiley put it, “a bunch of damned bullshit.”
As for Wiley and allies like Herb Romerstein, it was an invaluable lesson in how the light of truth and experience could win the day every time, lessons they took with them into careers in journalism and public speaking (Wiley) and government and research (Romerstein). And the two young men wasted no time getting started: within six months, specifically Feb. 2-3, 1960, they were testifying before Congress on their experiences.
The Lady in the Red Dress
Charlie first shared this information with me in the early 2000s. He didn’t give me permission to write about it because it involved classified work. I felt I shouldn’t write about it until both he and Gloria Steinem passed.
Someone who has written about it is Charlie’s widow, Alice. Alice just this past year self-published a short book documenting some of Charlie’s crazy run-ins with history. She shared the Steinem story with intriguing added details on the 1959 World Youth Festival. Alice’s exclusive account doesn’t appear online. She begins with Steinem’s words to Charlie:
“Mr. Wiley, I understand that you have something you wish to give to the Independent Research Service,” Steinem had said to Wiley in a phone call to his hotel room in Vienna in August 1959.
“I sure do,” said Wiley.
What Wiley had was a valuable stack of 150 delegate cards that he nabbed from the communist leadership. Charlie knew he should get the cards to someone from the Independent Research Service, though he wasn’t sure who the proper person was (again, the suspicions). He went to the U.S. embassy in Vienna and asked for the “political officer” on duty. The officer played it cool, sending Charlie back to his hotel room with the cards, but, of course, getting his room number. When Charlie got back and started opening the door, the phone was already ringing. He answered.
“I’m with the Independent Research Service,” the young woman clarified. “Can you meet me at the Sacher Hotel bar at 2 p.m.?”
Charlie enthusiastically said yes.
“I’ll be wearing a red dress and dark glasses.”
Charlie got to the bar shortly before 2:00 pm, sat down at a table, and ordered a drink. Shortly thereafter, the mysterious woman walked in. And with Charlie being, well, Charlie, he wasn’t thinking about grubby commies at that moment.
“She had a figure that just didn’t stop,” marveled Charlie in recalling the incident. “I mean, gorgeous, in a flaming red dress and dark glasses.”
“Mr. Wiley?” she asked.
“Yes,” Charlie replied.
“I’m Gloria Steinem from Independent Research Service.”
Charlie shared the material with Steinem, with the Independent Research Service, and thus with the CIA. And the two fellow patriots who loved America became friends.
* * *
Like me, and most readers of The American Spectator, Charlie Wiley was conservative and didn’t have many good things to say about feminism, nor about Gloria Steinem’s work for that cause. But for the cause of anti-communism, he had much praise for the feminist.
Every individual is capable of good and bad. What Gloria Steinem did to advance abortion and the attendant loss of unborn life in America is something that a stalwart pro-lifer like me can only condemn. But the work that Gloria Steinem did for the American Cold War cause is something I can applaud and that I’ve long known about. I think it’s time that others knew, too.
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