World Congress of Partisans for Peace

A conference held in Paris in April 1949, preceded by the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace. Carmel Offie, working for Frank Wisner, asked the State Department what they had planned for this conference. Offie, previously a Foreign Service officer, "dealt often with Irving Brown, the European representative of the American Federation of Labor". Brown funneled Marshall Plan and other funds into covert operations. "Wisner cabled Averell Harriman of the Economic Cooperation Administration (managers of the Marshall Plan), seeking 5 million francs (approximately $16,000) to fund a counterdemonstration. Harriman, a great supporter of propaganda and psychological warfare" was happy to oblige. Now they just needed a cover. "Through Irving Brown, OPC contacted the French socialist David Rousset... and his allies at the breakaway leftist newspaper Franc-Tireur. Rousset agreed to allow Franc-Tireur to be billed as the sponsor of the CIA-inspired day of resistance."

They organized a counter-conference, the "International day of Resistance to Dictatorship and War". Supporters included "Eleanor Roosevelt; Upton Sinclair; John dos Passos... Julian Huxley; and Richard Crossman. Delegates arriving at the expense of OPC included Ignazio Silone; Carlo Levi; the ubiquitous Sidney Hook; James T. Farrell, author of Studs Lonigan; Franz Borkenau; and Fenner Brockway." This was ultimately a failure "At the evening rally a group of anarchists seized the microphone and denounced the meeting, leading Hook to conclude that the lunatics had been let out of the asylum and the proceedings had been taken over by the 'psychopathic ward on the left.'" The CIA found it too radical and anti-American, and they also stopped trusting Richard Wright after the conference. Their next project was to be the Congress for Cultural Freedom.