Bringing the Americans Back In

Abstract

The fact that there was no regular source of funding from across the Atlantic at the time of Interdoc’s foundation did not prevent continuing efforts to bring the Americans in. This became primarily the concern of the Dutch, keen to play the middlemen and craft a pan-Western front out of the diverse activities occurring at the various national levels. The French had never been interested in American input and the Germans were equally unenthusiastic. It was the Dutch all along who tried to turn Interdoc into a transatlantic affair. This was for ideological reasons (the ingrained Atlanticism and anti-communism of many Dutch people) and for reasons of efficiency (the desire for a combined Western effort, the hope for US funding, and the ability to fulfil a mediating role that no other nation could). It also had to do with the fact that Allen Dulles had encouraged Einthoven and the Dutch to take on this role as coordinators of a pan-European anti-communist network alongside (but separate from) CIA activities. For the French and the Germans it was precisely the opposite: American thinking on the Cold War and relations with the East were going nowhere, and this was preventing Europe from finding solutions that could overcome its own division. Nevertheless, the Dutch-German relationship within Interdoc during the 1960s does not seem to have been undermined by the efforts from The Hague to maintain the transatlantic bridge.

But now to be truthful about CIA, I’ve told you already, I was not in the service of the CIA […] people thought that I was in the service of CIA and I was not. I had a right to tell them that I didn’t want to be involved in projects. And on the other hand they helped me several times also in financial things, if that agreed with their ideas. I had my own Institute, and if they agreed with certain things and wanted to contribute financially I never said no. [And] the Mellon Foundation! They helped me.

Cees van den Heuvel, 2002¹