Abstract
In 1950, the United States Central Intelligence Agency created the Congress for Cultural Freedom,
with its main offices in Paris. The CCF was designed as a cultural front in the Cold War in
response to the Soviet Cominform, and founded and fiinded a worldwide network of literary
journals (as well as conferences, concerts, art exhibits and other cultural events). From 1962 until
its scandalous collapse over the course of 1966 and the early months of 1967, Tawfiq Säyigh
edited the CCF’s Arabic outpost Hiwdr from Beirut, joining a growing web of CCP journals,
including London’s Eneounter, Kampala’s Transition, Bombay’s Quest, and the Latin American,
Paris-based Mundo Nuevo. Hiwdr, a journal fiinded by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and
thus covertly by the CIA, sought to co-opt the Arab avant-garde, offering authors both material
compensation for their writing, as well as the much lauded cultural freedom. By 1966, Hiwdr’%
promise to writers of both bread and freedom collapsed in the pages of the Arabic press under
the weight of paradox and a worldwide scandal on the eve of the 1967 Arab defeat.