It's a non-interesting factoid retold as clickbait. A better way to put it is "Gloria Steinem was on the CIA payroll." At the time, EVERYBODY was on the CIA payroll. As per usual, they had a million front organizations, they had a deep budget, and they basically spent money wherever they thought it would give them a leg up. Can't recall the proper names but as I recall, one underground San Francisco weekly slagged another underground San Francisco weekly for being on the CIA payroll when in fact they both were. My favorite bit is that during the UFO heyday, three of the five directors on the board of the leading UFO organization were CIA plants. CIA affiliates are not. Yeah the magazines getting money to boost American values saw a different CIA than the one that overthrew Lumumba. But then "PR" and "Engineering" are generally very different parts of the company; how much more so are "PR" and "Ops?" "Long before ivy-tower academics rebranded it 'soft power', the CIA was a staunch practitioner of propaganda." I mean, somebody wrote that with no irony whatsoever. I think this is one of the better examples I've seen of columnist doublespeak. "I have nothing to say, but 750 words to write."CIA agents are tight-lipped
“In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Long before the formalized concept of soft power, Steinem personified and promoted abroad the vigor and progressive nature of the U.S. youth movement.
Perhaps, Steinem’s 1960s characterization of a “liberal, nonviolent and honorable” CIA was idealistic and self-serving, but there is no question that today’s Agency is still necessary and wildly different. The 6,700 page U.S. Senate torture report is a good place to start when seeking to understand how different.
I try to imagine the conference rooms where these things happened. Nine white men in suits with thin black ties, discussing ... well, utter lunacy, with serious faces. "Right, Gene. An exploding cigar. I like it. Talk more about that." ...or... "Goats, you say? So we will need a farm. Bob? Do we have a farm?" Bob: "Uh, let me check. Yes. Yes, sir. Pennsylvania." And then these guys would go home and watch George Burns and Gracie Allen on TV, while the wife wore a poodle-skirt, and their son played with Lincoln Logs. Just... bizarre.
In an alternate universe, where I became a successful screenwriter in 2007, I've already produced a movie about the CIA guys who decided the way to provide cover for the CIA/USAF high-altitude reconnaissance missions was "little green men." And I've done a period biopic about Gary Powers, son of Kentucky coal miners, an air force pilot who got invited to drop out so he could take a taxi to a red velvet hotel cafe on Hollywood and Vine to hop a puddlejumper to bumblefuck nevada to fly black gliders to the edge of space over the Soviet Union. Who then spent two years in Soviet Prisons, got called a liar by his own government, divorced his wife and married a CIA secretary, became a test pilot and then flew news copters for Channel 4. It fucking disgusts me that we can all collectively lose our shit over a mediocre show about ad agencies during the '60s but the closest we can come to talking about the very interesting things that were going on is Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.