In 1950, the United States Central Intelligence Agency created the Congress for Cultural Free- dom, with its main offices in Paris, lhe CCF was designed as a cultural front in the Cold War in response to the Soviet Cominform, and founded and funded a worldwide network of literary journals (as well as conferences, concerts, art exhibits and other cultural events). From 1 962 until its scandalous collapse over the course of 1966 and the early months of 1967, Tawfîq Sãyigh edited the CCF s Arabic outpost Hiwãr from Beirut, joining a growing web of CCF journals, including London’s Encounter , Kampala’s Transition , Bombay’s Quest , and the Latin American, Paris-based Mundo Nuevo. Hiwãr , a journal funded 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, Hiwãr s 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.