This article is about the U.S. Army project. For other projects, see Camelot (disambiguation).

List submitted to Congressional

Record of academics collaborating
with Project Camelot

Project Camelot was a counterinsurgency study begun by the United States Army in 1964.
The project was executed by the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) at American
University, which assembled an eclectic team of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists,
economists, and other intellectuals to analyze the society and culture of numerous target
countriesespecially in Latin America.

The goal of the project was the enhancement of the Army's ability to predict and influence
social developments in foreign countries. This motive was described by an internal memo on
December 5, 1964: "If the U.S. Army is to perform effectively its part in the U.S. mission of
counterinsurgency it must recognize that insurgency represents a breakdown of social order
and that the social processes involved must be understood."

Controversy arose around Project Camelot when professors in South America discovered its
military funding and criticized its motives as imperialistic. The Department of Defense
ostensibly canceled Project Camelot on July 8, 1965, but continued the same research in a
more discreet way.

Background
Military-funded social science

Government-funded social science projects, especially in the field of psychology, increased

dramatically during and after World War II. By 1942 the federal government was the leading
employer of psychologists, most of whom it coordinated through the Office of Scientific
Research and Development.[1] The military employed psychologists to study tactics in
psychological warfare and propaganda as well as studying the United States troops
themselves.[2] The Office of Strategic Services also cultivated a Psychology Division, directed
by Robert Tryon, to study the group behavior of humans for warfare purposes.[3] A memo
from William J. Donovan in November 1941 called for collection of information about the
personality and social relations of "potential enemies" and for the creation of an intelligence
organization "to analyze and interpret such information by applying to it not only the
experience of Army and Naval Officers, but also of specialized trained research officials in
the relative scientific fields, including technological, economic, financial, and psychological
scholars."[4] Research in psychological warfare was widespread, and according to University
of Michigan psychologist Dorwin Cartwright, "the last few months of the war saw a social
psychologist become chiefly responsible for determining the week-by-week-propaganda
policy for the United States government."[5]

In Britain, an interdisciplinary study called Mass-Observation was used by the Ministry of

Information to evaluate the effectiveness of war propaganda and other influences on public
behavior.[6] Germany maintained a special cadre of military psychologists which assisted the
Ministry of Propaganda, the Gestapo, and the Nazi party.[7]

Military social science projects increased after the war, though under a reorganized structure
under the Office of Naval Research and often contracted to private institutions.[8] Project
TROY at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologya study of "getting the truth behind the
Iron Curtain" exemplified the new model.[9] Project TROY lead to the creation of MIT's
Center for International Studies (CENIS), which received funding from the Ford Foundation
and the CIA to continue its mostly-classified research on "political warfare."[10] The armed
forces and Central Intelligence Agency pursued these projects independently of civilian
oversight, despite presidential directives such as Eisenhower's NSC-59 which called for
coordination of research under the Department of State.[11]

Counterinsurgency studies
By the late 1950s, the type of research being promoted had shifted from studies of group
dynamics and psychological operations to a model of counterinsurgency studies. A
significant instigator of this change, and progenitor of Project Camelot, was the Research
Group in Psychology and the Social Sciences, established by the Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Research and Engineering, hosted by the Smithsonian Institution, and populated
by intellectuals from the RAND Corporation, the Psychological Corporation, General Electric,
the Russell Sage Foundation, the Smithsonian itself, and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, as well as top universities including University of Michigan,
Vanderbilt, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Northwestern.[12] The new use for social science in
this model was predicting the behavior of potential enemies.[13] Therefore, as Princeton
professor Harry Eckstein wrote in a report for the Smithsonian Group:

There is practically no limit to the research that can be, and ought to
be, undertaken on the subject of internal war. In a sense, the study of
internal war is commensurate with the whole study of society, even
peaceable society, for anything that increases our knowledge of social
order can potentially increase our understanding of civil disorder.

Harry Eckstein, "Internal War: The Problem of Anticipation",

1962.[14]

The recommendations of the Smithsonian Group led to a wave of research programs, explicit
changes in the funding priorities of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, and a March
2628, 1962 symposium at the Special Operations Research Office called "The U.S. Army's
Limited-War Mission and Social Science Research".[15] This symposium, attended by 300
academics, was the first public effort to recruit social scientists for counterinsurgency
research.[16]

Geopolitical context

Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were obvious targets for the new techniques of social and
psychological warfare. Tensions were also escalating in Latin America as the United States
followed its pro-business agenda known as the Mann Doctrine.[17] The populist president of
Brazil, Joo Goulart, was forced from power in a United States-backed military coup on April
1, 1964, shortly after he promised the masses a program of land reform and industry
nationalization. In the Andes Mountains (in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia),
multinational companies interested in sugar, mining, and petroleum faced strong resistance
from indigenous people whose land they sought to expropriate.[18] This indigenous bloc
represented a formidable obstacle to corporate plans for resource extraction and thus was
targeted from various directions, including population control programs and USAID
assistance for national police and military forces. An integrated team of social scientists was
seen as useful for coordinating these different programs and enhancing their
effectiveness.[19]

Special Operations Research Office

Chart entered into Congressional

record describing the hierarchy
pertaining to Project Camelot and the
Special Operations Research Office

The Special Operations Research Office (SORO) was created at American University in 1956
by the Army's Psychological Warfare office. (In fact, it was at first called the Psychological
and Guerrilla Warfare Research Office, PSYGRO, but this name was changed three days after
American University and the Department of Defense signed a contract to create the
agency.)[20] Initially focused on creating handbooks for United States personnel overseas,
SORO soon expanded into studies of the social context for counterinsurgency.[21] Its
researchers could pore through boxes of classified military and intelligence reports
unavailable to most university researchers.[22] By the 1960s, the Army was paying SORO $2
million each year to study topics as the effectiveness of United States propaganda and
including research into the social and psychological makeup of peoples around the world.[23]
SORO was directed by Theodore Vallance. Irwin Altman directed the division of psychological
warfare research.[24]

SORO was publicly known to conduct research in other countries on the effectiveness of
United States ideological warfare. Echoing United States Information Agency director Edward
R. Murrow, Vallance testified in 1963: "Mr. Murrow, I am sure, will agree with the general tenor
of what I have to say, and you might consider my remarks as an extension of his general
assertion in early testimony before this committee, that there is indeed a need for more and
more better research to help in the guidance of our various and complex problems which
make up the U.S. ideological offensive."[25]

Vallance articulated his concept of counterinsurgency research more thoroughly with a 1964
article in American Psychologist, co-written with SORO colleague Dr. Charles Windle.
"Psychological operations," they write, "include, of course, the relatively traditional use of
mass media. In the cold war these operations are directed toward friendly and neutral as well
as enemy countries. In addition, there is growing recognition of the possibility and desirability
of using other means such as military movements, policy statements, economic
transactions, and developmental assistance for psychological impact."[26] The article also
promoted "civic action" operations: "military programs, usually by indigenous forces and
often aided by United States materiel and advice, to promote economic and social
development and civilian good will in order to achieve political stability or a more favorable
environment for the military forces."[26]

Concept and organization

The recommendations of the Smithsonian group passed to the Defense Science Board,
which advanced the plan to create a massive database of social information. The order for a
"centrally coordinated applied research effort" originated in early 1964 with Office of the
Chief of Research and Development, and passed through the Office of the Director of
Defense Research and Engineering and the Army Research and Development Office. By
summer of 1965, the army had offered the project to the Special Operations and Research
Office (SORO) at the American University of Washington DC.[27][28] The full name of the
project was Methods for Predicting and Influencing Social Change and Internal War
Potential[29] Its goal was to assess the causes of conflict between national groups, to
anticipate social breakdown and provide eventual solutions.[27]
The Army contracted with SORO to pay $46 million for 34 years of work.[30] American
University adopted a hands-off policy on the project, which it maintained throughout the
controversy.[31][32] The Director of the project was Rex Hopper, chairman of the sociology
Department at Brooklyn College.[33] The project attracted such notable intellectuals as James
Samuel Coleman from Johns Hopkins, Thomas C. Schelling from Harvard, and Charles Wolf,
Jr., of the RAND Corporation.[29][34] Vallance wrote in 1965 that he had spread word of
Camelot to "65 of the best and best-known members of the social science fraternity."[35]

Documentation of project's role

On December 4, 1965, Theodore Vallance sent out a letter to a list of academics worldwide
who were considered for involvement. The letter described the project as follows:

Project CAMELOT is a study whose objective is to determine the

feasibility of developing a general social systems model which would
make it possible to predict and influence politically significant aspects
of social change in the developing nations in the world. Somewhat
more specifically, its objectives are:

First, to devise procedures for assessing the potential for internal war
within national societies;

Second, to identify with increased degrees of confidence those actions

which a government might take to relieve conditions which are
assessed as giving rise to a potential for internal war; and

Finally, to assess the feasibility of prescribing the characteristics of a

system for obtaining and using the essential information for doing the
above two things.[36]

This letter also indicated that the project would be well-funded by the United States military
and that its first major target area would be Latin America.[37] The context for Project
Camelot, the letter said, included "much additional emphasis to the U.S. Army's role in the
over-all U.S. policy of encouraging steady growth and change in the less developed countries
in the world."[38]

Scope

An internal memo issued by the Army's Office of the Chief of Research and Development on
the next day, December 5, 1964, called for "comparative historical studies" in:

1. (Latin America) Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba,

Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru,
Venezuela.

2. (Middle East) Egypt, Iran, Turkey.

3. (Far East) Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand.

4. (Others) France, Greece, Nigeria.[33]

The same memo listed "survey research and other field studies" for Bolivia, Colombia,
Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, Iran, and Thailand.[33] Teams of researchers were to
work discreetly for a period of several months in their target countries, returning to
Washington to write reports and process the information they gathered.[39]

According to the December 5 memo,

The U.S. army counterinsurgency mission places broad

responsibilities on the Army for planning and conducting operations
involving a wide spectrum of sociopolitical problems which are
integral parts of counterinsurgency operations. [] If the U.S. Army is
to perform effectively its part in the U.S. mission of counterinsurgency
it must recognize that insurgency represents a breakdown of social
order and that the social processes involved must be understood.
Converely, the processes which produce a stable society must also be
understood.[40]


Plan to create a database

The data would provide the basis for a large computerized database containing useful
information about foreign areas. This information would be used for forecasting and social
engineering, as well as active counterinsurgency.[30] SORO planned eventually to automate
this system enough to analyze data and predict social instability on its own.[41]

Scale

According to sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz, academics saw Project Camelot as a social
science equivalent of the Manhattan Project.[42] " Social science already worked extensively
with the military, and thus to insiders Project Camelot was considered unique because of its
scale more so than its underlying ideology.[43] Still, its scale was unprecedented, for a social
science project,[44] though unspectacular for a military budget item.[42] The Department of
Defense's annual spending on psychology research had risen from $17.2 million in 1961 to
$31.1 million in 1964. Spending on other social sciences increased from $0.2 million to $5.7
million during the same period.[45]

Motives for participation

The motives of academics for joining the project, which themselves became a topic of some
discussion, varied widely. The project's director, Rex Hopper, had prophesied the possibility
of revolution, even in the United States, resulting from the "emergence of a numerically
significant, economically powerful, intellectually informed marginal group.[46] Sociologists
such as Jessie Bernard and Robert Boguslaw professed a desire to see inevitable social
change take place non-violently.[47][48] Some participants saw collaboration as an opportunity
to guide the military towards less violent ways of accomplishing its goals.[49] Still others saw
an opportunity for free, even Platonically idealist thinking, outside the constraints of
university academics.[50] Researchers were enticed by the promise of drawing new sources,
including classified materials made available by the military[22] and population data drawn
from well outside the realm of college students.[24]

Name

According to the testimony of SORO director Theodore Vallance, the name Camelot came
from the premise of a peaceful and harmonious society in Arthurian legend, as envisioned by
T.H. White.[27] (Some Spanish speakers may have been more likely to associate the name
with the word camelo, meaning joke, or camello, meaning camel.)[51]

Disclosure

Hugo Nutini, an Italian-born Chilean professor of Anthropology, was a consultant in the

conceptual stages of Project Camelot and he asked for permission from SORO to approach
Chilean social scientists with the idea of conducting a study in their country.[27][52]

Nutini wrote to Alvaro Bunster, Secretary General of the University of Chile, explaining: "The
project in question is a kind of pilot study in which will participate sociologists,
anthropologists, economists, psychologists, geographers and other specialists in the social
sciences, and which will be supported by various scientific and governmental organizations
in the United States."[53] Nutini concealed the role of the Army in sponsoring the research
but the Chilean academics were skeptical.[27]

Their fears were confirmed by professor Johan Galtungthen teaching at the Latin American
Social Sciences Institutewho had rejected an invitation to an early conference about Project
Camelot and produced the letter he received as proof.[54][55] (Galtung had responded to
project director Rex Hooper in a letter on April 22, 1965, rejecting the invitation and
condemning the project's "imperialist features".)[56]

Bunster expressed his doubts to colleagues who then confronted Nutini. When Nutini was
unable to deny that the project had US political and military finance and motivation, a letter to
the editor was sent to the Latin American Review of Sociology and the whole affair was
exposed in the media. The US Defense Department came under mounting criticism, with
critics claiming that the project was a violation of professional ethics in the scientific
world.[27] (Ironically, Nutini had not been a central member of Project Camelot, nor had Chile
had been listed as one of its first targets.[57]) The Chilean Senate condemned Project
Camelot as a form of imperialist intervention and vowed to investigate.[33][58]

The U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in April 1965 sharply exacerbated concerns
about military research by demonstrating the adoption of a more hardline doctrine towards
Latin America.[59] One Chilean newspaper suggested that the United States research
prepared the way for a possible "anti-democratic coup" in Chile.[58] The Soviet news agency
Tass opined that Project Camelot provided "a vivid illustration of the growing efforts of the
Pentagon to take into its own hands the conduct of U.S. foreign policy."[60]

Embassy recently became aware through university community of

serious anxiety middle-of-the-road scholars with this project and
specifically with the manner in which university people here were
approached by SORO personnel. I consider, particularly under current
conditions, this effort to be seriously detrimental to U.S. interests in
Chile and urgently request full explanation of Department Army
actions in this regard. Was this project approved by the Department?

U.S. Ambassador to Chile Ralph Dungan, Telegram to State

Department, June 14, 1965[61]

Official complaints from Chile prompted the State Department to deny its involvement, which
further intensified the spotlight on role of the Army in organizing the research.[62] The issue
became known to the United States public through newspaper stories beginning on June 27,
1965, and three days later Congress resolved to respond.[63]

Cancellation and continuation

Reproduction of letter from the U.S.

Army, informing Congressman Dante
B. Fascell that "Project Camelot" has
been canceled on the day hearings are
scheduled to begin

The Office of the Secretary of Defense publicly ordered the cancellation of Project Camelot
on July 8, 1965the same day Congressional investigations began.[55][64] Secretary of
Defense McNamara's press release said his office had "concluded that the project as
currently designed will not produce the desired information and the project is therefore being
terminated."[65] On August 5, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson publicly instructed the
Secretary of State to review all government sponsorship of foreign area research.[55]

Effect on social science

Among social scientists in the United States, the publicity around the project led to a
discussion about the appropriate relationship of academics to the military. Commentators
identified an apparently conservative influence of Army sponsorship on sociological
investigation, citing the central focus on "stability" as the most desired outcome.[66][67]
Anthropologists were more critical of the project than followers of other disciplines, and the
American Anthropological Association later passed a resolution against participation in
"clandestine intelligence activities"[68] along with a nonbinding ethical code for
practitioners.[69] On the whole, however, United States social scientists did not contest the
validity of working with the government to analyze and influence foreign societies.[70]

In Latin America, the backlash against Project Camelot created problems for United States
social scientists wishing to study there overtly.[71] Chile banned Hugo Nutini from returning to
the country.[72]

Continuation of research

SORO changed its name to the Center for Research on Social Systems (CRESS) and received
an annual grant it had requested for discretionary spending, along the model pioneered by
the RAND Corporation and the United States Air Force.[73] The army assigned a uniformed
representative to maintain daily presence at the research office.[74] American University
severed its relationship with the Special Operations Research Office entirely in 1969.[75]

However, policy makers indicated clearly that research of this type would continue.[76][77]
Congress reaffirmed the importance of behavioral science research for national security and
vowed to maintain funding for these projects.[78] And indeed, Congress increased the
Department of Defense budget for behavioral and social science research from $27.3 million
in 1965 to $34 million in 1966.[72] Social scientists noted hopefully, if with regret for the
circumstances, Congress's ratification of their discipline's legitimacy.[79]

An 18 August 1965 memo from Director of Defense Research and Engineering Harold Brown
called for better operational secrecy to rectify the cause of the Department's recent
embarrassment:

Sensitive aspects of work having primary interest to the US

Government (as opposed to a foreign government) must be treated in
such a way that offense to foreign governments and propaganda
advantage to the communist apparatus are avoided. This means that
task statements, contracts, working papers, reports, etc. which refer to
US assistance or potential US assistance to foreign countries in the
internal defense area; or which express US concern over internal
violence or revolution, whether communist inspired or not; or which
refer to the development or examination of US policies for the
purpose of influencing allied policies or actions; or which could imply
US interference or intervention into the internal affairs of a foreign
government, will have to be classified and marked as not for
disclosure to foreign nationals except where a specific and well-
considered exception is made.[80][81]

A directive released on July 9 explicitly called for the social science research to continue,
subdivided into smaller tasks rather than classified under one label.[82][83] Social scientists
made visits to target countries in July and August 1965, despite the protests of ambassadors
fearing continued blowback.[84] Code names for the new Camelot subdivisions included
"Project Simpatico" in Colombia and "Operation Task" in Peru.[85] Researchers for Project
Simpatico asked rural Colombians questions such as, "If a leader of the people should arise,
should he be tall, short, white, black, armed, married, over 40 years of age, or under?"[86]
Revelation of a similar project in Quebec induced Vallance to write an apology letter to
Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson.[87]

POLITICA

The "POLITICA" computer program confirmed the Chileans' fears of an "antidemocratic

coup". Project Camelot consultant Clark Abt received the Pentagon contract to create
Politica later in 1965.[88] As described in 1965, POLITICA was

designed to reproduce the role of the military and other factions in the
politics and economic dynamics of a nation by structuring the roles of
major national actors and groups, placing them in conflict or
cooperation in a game environment and identifying from the resulting
interaction the societal and human variables relevant to the study of
incipient insurgency. By sequential search of various patterns of
variables under various initial conditions, the game is designed to
highlight those variables decisive for the description, indication,
prediction, and control of internal revolutionary conflict.

Gordon, Blaxall, Del Solar, Moore, & Merrill, "COCON-

counterconspiracy (POLITICA): The development of a simulation of
internal national conflict under revolutionary conflict conditions"; Abt
Associates, Inc., November 17, 1965.[89]

Inputs to the program included a list of at least forty groups of variables, such as popular
trust in institutions, cultural values, paranoia, hostility toward outsiders, attitudes towards
change, institutional alignments, and other such analytical concepts from social science.[90]

This automated simulation based on social science data did indeed serve as justification for
the U.S.-backed coup d'tat which took place in 1973. Researchers ran a version of the
simulation "to determine if the situation in Chile would be 'stable' after a military-take over if
Allende were still alive. It was determined by analysts based on POLITICA that Allende should
not be allowed to live."[91][92]

Academic participants

Thomas Caywood

Charles Wolf Jr.

See also
 Human Terrain System

Institute for Defense Analysis

Minerva Initiative

Political Instability Task Force

References

1. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), pp. 186187. "By 1942, the federal government
was the largest single employer of psychologists in the country (Britt, 1942, p. 255). A single
government agency coordinated all scientific research done more or less openly at
universities, research institutes, corporate laboratories, and the like: although everything was
to be kept secret from the enemy, not everything operated under deep cover. The agency was
called the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), and was directed by
Vannevar Bush."

2. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), pp. 1617. "The history of government sponsorship
of, and utilization of social science research, as noted above, goes back to the 1920s and the
New Deal (and in some cases even earlier), but the relationship really took off during World
War II. Psychology in particular showed itself to be of immense importance to the U.S.
military establishment in a variety of areas including intelligence testing and effective
utilization of new enlistees (Gould, 1981; Herman, 1995); psychological warfare, propaganda,
and domestic troop morale and cohesiveness (Herman, 1995; Lerner, 1971); and man-
machine interfaces and ergonomics (Bray, 1948; Lanier, 1949). Psychologists even lent their
expertise to the design, construction, and operating of the Japanese internment camps which
would eventually house over 112,000 Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast
(Herman, 1995).

3. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 166. "[...] the trail finally led into the lap of the
Psychology Division of the Office of Strategic Services, headquarters of psychological
warfare in World War II. It was there that I found the reason for social psychology's rosy
future: the 'socio-psychological' study of population was the social scientific centerpiece of
psychological warfare strategy."

4. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 195.

5. ^ Dorwin Cartwright, "Social Psychology in the United States During the Second World War",
Human Relations 1.3, June 1948, p. 340; quoted in Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981),
p. 269.

6. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 189. "By 1940, Mass Observation had given
over its talents to the British Ministry of Information, cognate organization to the U.S.'s Office
of Coordinator of Information (Mass Observation Archive). Anthropologist Bronislaw
Malinowski (1938) analyzed Mass Observation right away as a domestic intelligence service.

7. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), pp. 198200. "Many features of the Nazi
state's organizational forms for psywar were taken as models of the U.S.'s own version--for
example, a special psychological staff under military command and the centralization of
sociological, psychological, and other cultural information into a raw materials dump for
psywar ordnance fabrication."

8. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), pp. 166167. "At the end of World War II, all the
agencies put together to administer a vast war had to be reorganized both because enabling
legislation had run out with the cease-fire and because the practical situation had changed. It
was back to the more usual, lower level of U.S. armed involvement around the planet. The
contracting-out system of research administration which had been developed during the war
simply continued, with some administrative reorganization. For social psychologists, work
became a practice definitively impregnated with the slant imparted to it by psychological
warfare, enforced by the development funding supplied to it through the velvet-gloved fist of
the Office of Naval Research."

9. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), pp. 1718.

10. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 21. CENIS was funded jointly by the Ford
Foundation and the CIA (Herman, 1995) and served, as the original TROY team had hoped, as
a model for similar programs at other universities, programs such as SORO at American
University, which would come to oversee the development of Project Camelot."

11. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 19.

12. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 294. "Soon called the Research Group in
Psychology and the Social Sciences, it was chaired by Charles Bray, who had headed the
Applied Psychology Panel of the World War II Office of Scientific Research and Development.
Working from the assumption of 'a need for the products and guidance of psychology and
the social sciences in the long-term world conflict in which the nation is engaged' (Fitts et al.
p. 1), the ad hoc group began a seven-year-long effort which culminated in the infamous
project CAMELOT of the mid-1960s. Sheltered behind the benign visage of Washington D.C.'s
Smithsonian Institutution and financed by the Office of Naval Research contract number
Smithsonian Institutution and financed by the Office of Naval Research contract number
Nonr 1354(08), the group's members worked out the systematic feed-in of social science
work to the counterinsurgency strategy then being formulated by intellectuals of the
corporate-military nexus.

13. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), pp. 301302. "Prediction, and thereby
prevention, of coming conflict within a society was the new element. Internal war was to be
controlled from the outside. Which is where social science, including social psychology,
came in.

14. ^ Published in Social Science Research and National Security [pdf], ed. Ithiel de Sola Pool
and Others, A Report Prepared by the Research Group in Psychology and the Social Sciences,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, March 5, 1963; Quoted in part by Cina, "Social
Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 302.

15. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 303304.

16. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 305.

17. ^ Colby and Dennett, Thy Will Be Done (1995), p. 474. "With Thomas Mann's appointment,
Johnson had signaled that the Alliance for Progress was to change its goals from kennedy's
rapid social and political reforms to the traditional path of political devolution based on
gradual private economic development funded by loans and investments by the largest
American banks and corporations."

18. ^ Colby and Dennett, Thy Will Be Done (1995), p. 467. "CIA analysts were convinced, not
inaccurately, that they were confronting an international guerrilla alliance. Their only mistake,
as in Vietnam, was overestimating each guerrilla group's national origins and sense of
patriotism as motives for its willingness to fight and die. But two things the CIA did not
underestimate: the danger to U.S.-backed regimes in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia
posed by unrest spreading along the Andes among 11 million Quechu Indians and the
potential of disciplined guerrillas to spark the Andean tinderbox into a continentwide
revolution."

19. ^ Colby and Dennett, Thy Will Be Done (1995), p. 479. "The social sciences were the
brains, what a computerized guidance system is to a deadly missile. In July 1964, the U.S.
Army gave the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) at American University in
Washington, D.C., the largest single grant ever awarded a social science project. The project's
targets for 'field research' in Latin America were Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela, and
Colombia. Its name was project Camelot. [] Project Camelot was to be a broad sweep for
local data collection, including everything from the language, social structure, and history of
peoples to labor strikes, peasants' seizures of haciendas, and violence. Anthropologists,
linguists, psychologists, sociologists, and economists would be joined by political scientists,
mathematicians, and the military to produce a deliberate political objective of social control."

20. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), p. 28.

21. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), pp. 2324.

22. ^ a b Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), p. 32. "Most of SORO's research projects
required them to mine classified government intelligence files and military records for
information. Their work often remained classified as a result, keeping researchers from
gaining public credit for their toil. But for many, that was a fair trade-off for access to the
most up-to-date sources on international politics in the Cold War."

23. ^ Rohde, "Gray Matters" (2009), p. 103. "The army determined its budget, which reached
$2 million a year by the mid-1960s, and the military personnel worked with SORO's staff to
determine the scope and method of its research projects. The army held SORO accountable
for producing usable scientific knowledge. Its contract required it to conduct research that
provided 'commanders and staff agencies of the Army with scientific bases for decision and
action.' / SORO was a key site in the scientific struggle for hearts and minds. It was the
brainchild of the Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare, the army section responsible
for political, psychological, and guerrilla operationsactivities that could provide a bulwark
against Communist subversion in the new nations.

24. ^ a b Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), pp. 3233. "Irwing Altman, a psychologist and
head of psychological warfare research at SORO, argued that most academic research in
psychology suffered from a major methodological shortcoming: it was typically performed on
college students in laboratory environments. As such, it was oversimplified, sanitized, and
almost irrelevant. SORO, on the other hand, offered access to real-world subjects; it brought
researchers face to face with the men and women living on the front of the global Cold War."

25. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), pp. 34.

26. ^ a b Quoted in Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 172.

27. ^ a b c d e f George E. Lowe (May 1966). "The Camelot Affair" . Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists. 22 (5).

28. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), p. 320.

29. ^ a b Rohde, "Gray Matters" (2009), p. 115.

29. ^ a b Rohde, "Gray Matters" (2009), p. 115.

30. ^ a b Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 445. "Global Counterinsurgency: What was
Project Camelot? Basically, it was a project for measuring and forecasting the causes of
revolutions and insurgency in underdeveloped areas of the world. It also aimed to find ways
of eliminating the causes, or coping with the revolutions and insurgencies. Camelot was
sponsored by the US Army on a four to six million dollar contract, spaced out over three to
four years, with the Special Operations Research Organization (SORO). This agency is
nominally under the aegis of American University in Washington, D.C., and does a variety of
research for the Army. This includes making analytical surveys of foreign areas; keeping up-
to-date information on the military, political, and social complexes of those areas; and
maintaining a 'rapid response' file for getting immediate information, upon Army request, on
any situation deemed militarily important."

31. ^ Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 451. "The difficulty with American University is that
it seems to be remarkably unlike other universities in its permissiveness. The Special
Operations Research Office received neither guidance nor support from university officials.
From the outset there seems to have been a 'gentleman's agreement' not to inquire or
interfere in Project Camelot, but simply to serve as some sort of camouflage. [] American
University maintained an official silence which preserved it from more Congressional or
executive criticism."

32. ^ Horowitz, Rise and Fall (1967), p. 25. "American University seems to have been little
more than window dressing, a fund repository raking off several hundred thousand dollars for
administrative services and having no control over the project and little contact with its
directors."

33. ^ a b c d Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 446.

34. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 188.

35. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), p. 67.

36. ^ Quoted in Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 26.

37. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 168. "The letter describes the unusually high level
of planned funding for the project, although it does not mention this funding as being
unusual: 'The project is conceived as a three to four-year effort to be funded at around one
and one-half million dollars annually. It is supported by the Army and the Department of
Defense, and will be conducted with the cooperation of other agencies of the government.'"

38. ^ Quoted in Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 169.

38. ^ Quoted in Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 169.

39. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 159.

40. ^ Quoted in Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), pp. 170172.

41. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 160. As if that plan alone were not
ambitious enough, Project Camelot also included a provision for the creation of a
computerized system based on the final social systems model. One of the most imposing
barriers to the prediction and prevention of revolution, Sorons believed, lay in information
management. Camelot would tackle this problem by developing the means to scientifically
process information rapidly enough that policymakers could actually intervene before it was
too late. One of the projects anticipated end products was an automated 'information
collection and handling system' into which social researchers could feed facts for quick
analysis.12 Essentially, the computer system would check up-to-date intelligence information
against a list of precipitants and preconditions. Revolution could be stopped before its
initiators even knew they were headed down the path to political violence.

42. ^ a b Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 452. "Then why did the military offer such a
huge support to a social science project to begin with? Because $6,000,000 is actually a
trifling sum for the Army in an age of multi-billion dollar military establishment. The amount
is significantly more important for the social sciences, where such contract awards remain
relatively scarce. Thus, there were differing perspectives of the importance of Camelot: an
Army viewe which considered the contract as one of several forms of 'software' investment;
a social science perception of Project Camelot as the equivalent of the Manhattan Project."

43. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), p. 218. "It should be understood that
Camelot represents no new departure, that the actors might well have felt no need to consult
the academic community concerning the ethics of the matter because so much similar work
has already been done, and is still being done.

44. ^ Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 448. "Most of the men viewed Camelot as a bona
fide opportunity to do fundamental research with relatively unlimited funds at their disposal.
(No social science project ever before had up to $6,000,000 available.) Under such optimal
conditions, these scholars tended not to look a gift horse in the mouth."

45. ^ Solovey, "Epistemological Revolution" (2001), p. 180.

46. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 161.

47. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 162.

48. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), pp. 5455.

49. ^ Herman, "Psychology as Politics" (1993), p. 293. "Few participants were naive enough to
defend CAMELOT for its basic scientific value, but many maintained their remarkable
optimism about the potential of behavioral science in government, regarding CAMELOT an
example of socially engaged research, even a rare opportunity for science 'to sublimate' the
military's unfortunate tendency toward violence."

50. ^ Horowitz, Rise and Fall (1967), pp. 67. "Second, a number of men affiliated with
Camelot felt that there was actually more freedom under selective sponsored conditions to
do fundamental research in a nonacademic environment than at a university or college. One
project member noted that during the fifties there was far more freedom to do fundamental
research in the RAND Corporation than in any college or university in America. Indeed, once
the protective covering of RAND was adopted, it was almost viewed as a society of Platonists
permitted to search for truth on behalf of the powerful. A neoplatonic definition of the
situation by the men on Camelot was itself a constant in all of the interviews that were
conducted."

51. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), p. 217. "In colloqual Spanish, camelo means
joke or jest; hence, Project Camelot is often spoken of as Project Camelo(t). Camelo is also
close to camello, or, "camel", a notoriously nasty beast.

52. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), p. 219. "The person who made the first
contact in Chile for Camelot was Dr. Hugo Nuttini, an ex-Chilean, now an American citizen
and an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, according to Chilean press
reports."

53. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), p. 219.

54. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), pp. 219220. "Galtung, deeply dedicated to
his task and profoundly loyal to his students, had been invited to attend a Camelot planning
session during the month of August in the Washington area. He was thus fully informed
concerning the nature of the project, which was never handled with any duplicity at all in the
United States. Nutini, confronted by Galtung with documentary evidence (the completely
open and frank letter of invitation to the conference), persisted in proclaiming his ignorance
of the Department of the Army connection."

55. ^ a b c Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 447.

56. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 27.

57. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 28. "Nuttini strongly desired to be a part of
Camelot, as no doubt did many American social scientists at the time. He pled his case to
Camelot director Rex Hopper, but was never made a formal member of the Camelot team.
However, because of his perseverance and his connections in Chilean social science circles,
he was paid a nominal fee and asked 'to report on the possibilities of gaining the cooperation
of professional personnel' (Horowitz, 1967b, p. 12) within Latin America and specifically
Chile. Hopper insisted this work not be formally aligned with Camelot. Nonetheless, as
Horowitz notes, 'Nuttini somehow managed to convey the impression of being a direct
official of Project Camelot and of having the authority to make proposals to prospective
Chilean participants' (p. 12). This is even more curious considering that at that time Chile was
not one of the countries designated as part of the Camelot study."

58. ^ a b Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 29.

59. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), p. 220. "Until this moment the affair had not
gone far beyond university circles. But then came the American intervention in the Dominican
Republic. This action was widely interpreted in Latin America as signlating the political end of
the Alliance for Progress, and a regression to support of right-wing military governments
throughout Latin America as the best insurance against Castroism. This conclusion was
reached not only by civilians, but also by many military groups, which began immediate
agitation of both an internal and external nature, leading to mobilization of at least two
armies in South America. Project Camelot then snapped into another focus; it became
intimately laced in public opinion with intervention and militarism, with the image of the
United States as a power dedicated to the throttling of any revolutionary movement of
whatever center-to-left stripe."

60. ^ Solovey, "Epistemological Revolution" (2001), p. 185.

61. ^ Ralph A. Dungan, "249. Telegram from the Embassy in Chile to the Department of State",
Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968, Volume XXXI, South and Central America;
Mexico, Document 249, ed. Edward C. Keefer, 2004.

62. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), pp. 220221. "It was the diplomatic protest
of the Chilean government against Project Camelot that precipitated the revelation of these
discrepanices among official American agencies. In answering the official protest of the
government of President Eduardo Frei, the Embassy was forced to make clear its lack of prior
knowledge, and its embarrassment at the entire situation. This event served further to
convince many Chileans that the United States' Latin American policy was really being made
in 'The Pentagon.'"

63. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), p. 71.

64. ^ Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 445. "On July 8, Project Camelot was killed by
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's office which has veto power over the military budget.
The decision had been made under the President's direction."

65. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 166.

66. ^ Solovey, "Epistemological Revolution" (2001), p. 187. In this charged national context,
American scholars wrote extensively about the politics-patronage-social science nexus,
exposing the underlying assumptions about social stability and revolutionary activities, the
conservative political values, and the managerial mind-set implicit in Project Camelot, and in
military-funded studies more globally. A close look at the languageused by scholars and
military personnel associated with counter-insurgency research helped to reveal Camelot's
negative stance toward revolution and in favour of social stability."

67. ^ Horowitz, Rise and Fall (1967), pp. 3032.

68. ^ "Herman, "Psychology as Politics" (1993), p. 299. Quoting the AAA: "Constraint,
deception, and secrecy have no place in science. . . . Academic institutions and individual
members of the academic community, including students, should scrupulously avoid both
involvement in clandestine intelligence activities and the use of the name of anthropology, or
the title of anthropologist, as a cover for intelligence activities."

69. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), p. 85

70. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), pp. 3538. "As was mentioned previously (and is
demonstrated by the passages cited above), the initial criticism of Camelot voiced both by
the academic community and by the military and government agencies connected to it had
more to do with issues of diplomacy, tact, and appearances than with any substantive
concerns about the nature of the research, the methodology, or the wider issue of military
sponsorship of social science studies."

71. ^ Silvert, "Lesson of Project Camelot" (1965), p. 215. The crisis, long recognized as latent
by sensitive observers, has now passed into an acute stage. At this moment, not a single
survey research study can be done in Chile. Throughout Latin America quantitative studies
have halted or been impeded, and all scholars, whether in teaching or research, find their
actions questioned in direct correlation with the sophistication of the persons with whom
they deal."
they deal."

72. ^ a b Herman, "Psychology as Politics" (1993), p. 301.

73. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), pp. 202203. "In the wake of the affair, the
Army finally gave in to SORO's repeated requests for 'institutional funds'an allotment for
unprogrammed studies of the researchers' own choosing. This money was intended to allow
researchers to explore 'long shot and high risk, high potential ideas.' While RAND had long
applied ten percent of its budget to such studies, the Army reluctantly gave the okay for
SORO to direct a maximum of five percent of its funds to unprogrammed work. With the
support of the Army and the Universityboth of which sought to distance SORO from the
Camelot incidentSORO finally got a new, less military name. In May 1966, the research
office was rechristend the Center for Research on Social Systems (CRESS)."

74. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), pp. 8889. "In September, Vallance welcomed a
new member to his staff. Major John Johns, an official in the army's Social Science Research
Division, was assigned as SORO's army liaison officer. Henceforth, a uniformed army man
would be an almost daily presence at the research office."

75. ^ Rohde, "Gray Matters" (2009), p. 99. "In 1969 American University's administration exiled
SORO from its campus and severed the university's ties to the military."

76. ^ Horowitz, "Life and Death" (1966), p. 448. "However, the end of Project Camelot does
not necessarily imply the end of the Special Operations Research Office, nor does it imply an
end to research designs which are similar in character to Project Camelot. In fact, the
termination of the contract does not even imply an intellectual change of heart on the part of
the originating sponsors or key figures of the project."

77. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 196. "Despite the historical claims that
have been made in its name, what is most remarkable about the Camelot episode is how
little changed in its wake. The project's cancellation in now way signaled an end to Pentagon
sponsorship, design, and management of foreign area research."

78. ^ Solovey, "Epistemological Revolution" (2001), p. 186. "The congressional Subcommittee

on International Organizations and Movements, which had already been studying the role of
ideological factors in American foreign policy, placed Camelot squarely in relationship to
American foreign policy objectives. Florida Democrat Dante B. Fascell, the head of the
subcommittee, assured the military that it could 'get all the money' for such research that it
wanted 'without much question', because this research obvioulsy strengthened 'national
security'. In the subcommittee's final report, the military's growing commitment to the
development and use of the social sciences to further US interests also received firm
development and use of the social sciences to further US interests also received firm
support. Not incidentally, this report employed military imagery in describing the social
sciences as 'one of the vital tools in the arsenal of the free societies.'"

79. ^ Solovey, "Epistemological Revolution" (2001), p. 186. "For social scientists who believed
in the value of military-sponsored research, the subcommittee's assessment was excellent
news. Sociologist Robert A. Nisbet remarked that he could 'think of nothing more edifying for
social scientists than a reading of this two-hundred page document; edifying and flattering'.
(Yet there was a touch of sarcasm in this comment since Nisbet, as noted below, was critical
of Project Camelot.)"

80. ^ Solovey, "Epistemological Revolution" (2001), p. 191

81. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 198.

82. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), pp. 196197. "The Army could hardly have
made it more clearly in the weeks following the project's cancellation that that the study of
internal warfare, social change, and counterinsurgency would go on. The day after it was
cancelled, Camelot had a new task statement, titled 'Measurement of Predisposing Factors
for Communist Inspired Insurgency.' [] Sorons' new job was to break Camelot into a series
of seemingly unconnected, small studies. In case the new task statement did not make it
clear enough, the Director of Army Research informed SORO's staff that "all SORO research
was to go on" after Camelot was cancelled."

83. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), p. 86.

84. ^ Rohde, "The Social Scientists' War" (2007), p. 177. "The project itself, however, went on.
Despite the objections of the Bogota and Caracas embassies, the State Department insisted
that they agree to an embassy-only visit by one of the studys researchers. State officials in
Washington explained to its ambassadors that, although they opposed the conduct of field
research for the project, the Department was 'reluctant to block reasonable requests' for fear
of appearing 'negative' to social research."

85. ^ Herman, "Psychology as Politics" (1993), p. 301. "Still, very little about behavioral
science funding or design changed after CAMELOT was canceled. A similar project was
uncovered in Brazil less than two weeks later and others were launched in Colombia (Project
Simpatico) and Peru (Operation Task), sponsored by SORO and funded by the DOD, exactly
as CAMELOT had been." Also see: Ellen Herman, "Project Camelot and the Career of Cold
War Psychology" in Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During
the Cold War, ed. Christopher Simpson (New Press, 1998).
86. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), p. 92.

87. ^ Rohde, Armed With Expertise (2013), pp. 93, 175.

88. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 30. "Another, perhaps even more salient,
connection between Camelot and Politica comes through the social scientist and defense
consultant Clark Abt, whose consulting firm Abt Associates received the DOD's Advanced
Research Projects Agency's (ARPA) 1965 contract to design Politica. Only several months
previously, Abt had been a consultant on Project Camelot (Herman, 1995, p. 169)."

89. ^ Quoted in Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), pp. 186.

90. ^ Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), pp. 327330.

91. ^ POLITICA researcher Daniel Del Solar, Berkeley Barb, September 1420, 1973; quoted in
Cina, "Social Science For Whom?" (1981), pp. 327

92. ^ Hunt, "Military Sponsorship" (2007), p. 30. "The last objection is quite interesting, since
one of the projects spawned from Camelot's ashes was concerned with exactly such a
question and eventually helped speed events toward the assassination of Chilean President
Salvador Allende. The project relied on a computer model of Chilean society. Dubbed
'Politica,' the computer program 'was first loaded with data about hundreds of social
psychological variables...degrees of group cohesiveness, levels of self-esteem, attitudes
toward authority, and so on... In the case of Chile... the game's results eventually gave the
green light to policy-makers who favored murdering Allende in the plan to topple Chile's
leftist government. Politica had predicted that Chile would remain stable even after a military
takeover and the president's death.' (Herman, 1995, p. 170)."

Sources
Cina, Carol. "Social Science for Whom? A Structural History of Social Psychology." Doctoral
dissertation, accepted by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1981.

Colby, Gerald and Charlotte Dennett. Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson
Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. 0-06-016764-5

Herman, Ellen. "Psychology as Politics: How Psychological Experts Transformed Public

Life in the United States 19401970." Doctoral dissertation accepted by Brandeis University,
1993.

Horowitz, Irving Louis. "The Life and Death of Project Camelot." Reprinted from Trans-
action 3, 1965, in American Psychologist 21.5, May 1966.

Horowitz, Irving Louis. The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot: Studies in the Relationship
Between Social Science and Practical Politics. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1967.

Hunt, Ryan. "Project Camelot and Military Sponsorship of Social Research: A Critical
Discourse Analysis." Doctoral dissertation, accepted by Duquesne University, November
2007.

Rohde, Joy. Armed With Expertise: The Militarization of American Social Research during the
Cold War. Cornell University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780801449673

Rohde, Joy. "Gray Matters: Social Scientists, Military Patronage, and Democracy in the Cold
War." Journal of American History, 96.1, June 2009.

Rohde, Joy. "'The Social Scientists' War': Expertise in a Cold War Nation". Doctoral
dissertation, accepted by the University of Pennsylvania, 2007.

Silvert, Kalman H. "American academic ethics and social research abroad: the lesson of
Project Camelot." Background 9.1, November 1965.

Solovey, Mark. "Project Camelot and the 1960s Epistemological Revolution: Rethinking the
Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus." Social Studies of Science 31.2, April 2001.

Further reading

George E. Lowe, The Camelot Affair , Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Tome 22, No 5, May
1966, ISSN 0096-3402

Pentagon funds cold war style science study to track political protest in America

John Markoff (October 10, 2011). "Government Aims to Build a 'Data Eye in the Sky' " .
New York Times. Retrieved 2011-10-10. They cite the Pentagons ill-fated Project Camelot in
the 1960s, which also explored the possibility that social science could predict political and
economic events, but was canceled in the face of widespread criticism by scholars.

External links

Excerpts of various related articles

The Romance of American Psychology

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