vault backup: 2026-10-09 13:39:38

10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/James Monroe.md

@@ -8,7 +8,14 @@ tags:
 summary: "Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who succeeded Harold Wolff as director of the CIA-fronted Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology and supervised its behavioral research grant program."
 location: Washington, D.C.
 created: 2026-06-03
-updated: 2026-06-03
+updated: 2026-10-09
+relations:
+  - type: head_of
+    with: "[[Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology]]"
+    start: 1957
+    end: 1963
+    role: "executive secretary and treasurer (1957 annual report); executive director of the renamed Human Ecology Fund 1961 to 1963 (Price)"
+    fn: 2
 ---
 Lieutenant Colonel James Monroe had worked closely with the [[CIA]] as head of the Air Force's study of [[Korean War]] prisoners before the Agency hired him to run the [[Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology]] after its formal separation from [[Cornell University Medical College|Cornell]] in 1957. Monroe led a staff of four whose salaries the Agency paid, taking over the Society's dealings with the outside world and the monitoring of several hundred thousand dollars a year in research projects.[^1]
 
@@ -18,6 +25,19 @@ Monroe personally supervised dozens of grants, including [[D. Ewen Cameron]]'s b
 
 Monroe's role was to maintain the Society's legitimacy while ensuring that [[MKULTRA]] interests were served. [[Sidney Gottlieb|Sid Gottlieb]] and the [[TSS]] hierarchy in Washington made the major decisions, but Monroe managed day-to-day operations, visited grant recipients, and kept track of developments in the behavioral sciences. He let [[Carl Rogers]] know that once he agreed to serve on the Society board, he could expect a grant, and Rogers received about $30,000 over three years. Monroe's operation gave the CIA a "legitimate basis to approach anyone in the academic community anywhere in the world," as one Agency source put it.[^1]
 
+### 1957 Report, the Fund and the 1977 Statement
+
+The 1957 annual report of the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology gives James L. Monroe as executive secretary and treasurer, with the Society's address as 71-58 Austin Street, Forest Hills, Long Island, New York. The report names [[Harold Wolff]] as president and [[Lawrence Hinkle]] as vice president.[^2] It states that funds to that date came from "gifts by private individuals" and, in one instance, from the Foresight Foundation, and that "A major portion of the money has been expended in support of the Human Ecology Study Program at the Cornell University Medical College."[^2]
+
+Marks writes that in 1961 the Society changed its name to the Human Ecology Fund.[^3] The anthropologist [[David H. Price]] states that Monroe was the Fund's executive director from 1961 to 1963 and that David Rhodes held the post from 1964, and that operations shifted from New York City to Cornell University's medical school.[^4]
+
+Marks reports that Monroe told The New York Times on August 2, 1977 that "only about 25 to 30 percent" of the Society's budget came from the CIA, and states that Monroe knew this to be false "since the actual figure was well over 90 percent." Marks adds that the statement "allowed some other grantees to claim that their particular project was funded out of the non-Agency part of the Society."[^5] In his own testimony on August 3, 1977, [[John Gittinger]] estimated the Society's budget at about $150,000 a year.[^6]
+
 ### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, Chapter 9.
+[^2]: Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, 1957 Annual Report, officers and staff, "The Society," and address page. Wayback Machine capture of https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21090820/1957-annual-report-society-human-ecology.pdf
+[^3]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate* (Times Books, 1979), chapter 9, p. 149 n.
+[^4]: David H. Price, "Buying a piece of anthropology, Part 1," *Anthropology Today* 23(3), June 2007. https://archive.org/details/human_ecology_torture_suicide . Sole source for the 1961-1963 directorship and Rhodes: Price.
+[^5]: Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, note on p. 207 (chapter "Conclusions"). Sole source for the Monroe quotation: Marks.
+[^6]: *Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification*, Joint Hearing, August 3, 1977, testimony of John Gittinger.