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

category	tags	summary	location	created	updated	relations
Intelligence & Government	Person CIA MKULTRA SocietyForTheInvestigationOfHumanEcology	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.	Washington, D.C.	2026-06-03	2026-10-09	type with start end role fn head_of Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology 1957 1963 executive secretary and treasurer (1957 annual report); executive director of the renamed Human Ecology Fund 1961 to 1963 (Price) 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 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

Running the Human Ecology Society

Monroe personally supervised dozens of grants, including D. Ewen Cameron's brainwashing work in Montreal. The Society had moved from its Manhattan town house to Forest Hills, Queens, and Monroe managed the transition from a Cornell-affiliated study group to an independent foundation that could approach academics anywhere in the world. When granting money, Monroe used a standard cover story, telling recipients the funds came from rich New York doctors and Texas millionaires who gave it for tax purposes. Dr. Carolyn Sherif, who received a grant with her husband Muzafer Sherif for teenage gang research, states that Monroe lied directly to them about the source of the money.¹

Monroe's role was to maintain the Society's legitimacy while ensuring that MKULTRA interests were served. Sidney 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

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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. ↩︎