Anthropologist
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An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology, the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. The position is very frequently used as a cover for espionage.[1]
World Wars
On December 20, 1919, Franz Boas, the father of academic anthropology in America, charged that four American anthropologists, whom he did not name, had abused their professional research positions by conducting espionage in Central America during the First World War. Boas strongly condemned their actions, writing that they had "prostituted science by using it as a cover for their activities as spies." Anthropologists spying for their country severely betrayed their science and damaged the credibility of all anthropological research, Boas wrote; a scientist who uses his research as a cover for political spying forfeits the right to be classified as a scientist. The most significant reaction to this letter occurred ten days later at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), when the association’s governing council voted to censure Boas, effectively removing him from the council and pressuring him to resign from the national research council.[2]
During World War 2, approximately half of America's anthropologists contributed to the war effort, with dozens of prominent members of the profession working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Army and Navy intelligence and the Office of War Information.[2]
Cold War
In the early 1950s the American Anthropological Association also secretly collaborated with the CIA, where the board negotiated a secret agreement with the CIA under which agency personnel and computers were used to produce a cross-listed directory of AAA members, showing their geographical and linguistic areas of expertise along with summaries of research interests.[2]
Project Camelot
Project Camelot was the code name of a counterinsurgency study begun by the United States Army in 1964.[3]
