No less than twelve graduates of the exclusive Carleton College In Northfield, Minnesota, were 'plugged into' the revisionist Socialist Workers Party and found their way into the top party positions.
The “Carleton Twelve” are: SWP national secretary Jack Barnes; Militant editor Cindy Jaquith; Intercontinental Press editor Mary-Alice Waters; National Committee members Larry Seigle, John Benson, Elizabeth Stone, and Doug Jenness; and leading members Caroline Lund, Barbara Matson, Paul Eidsvik and Peggy Brundy. Another Carleton graduate, Dan Styron, was a leading member until he committed suicide last year.
The International Committee of the Fourth International, which is now in the sixth year of its investigation into “Security and Fourth International,” has examined the social and political background of these self-styled “Trotskyists.”
This has revealed that every single one of them comes from conservative, upright, all-American families.
In itself this does not disqualify any of them from rejecting the mores of American imperialism and becoming socialists.
But their “conversion” — if we are to believe their story— took place at Carleton, an affluent college of religious and ultraconservative traditions set in the rural tranquility of the Midwest.
It was far removed from the influence of student radicalism, the organized labor movement and the class struggle.
Richard C. Gilman, the dean of Carleton during the 1960s, answered this question in the interview published in the previous article: they were 'plugged into' the SWP.
In tracing how this was achieved, the International Committee has examined the careers of ten of the Carleton brigade. What emerges is an astonishing degree of conformity in their background, upbringing, social and religious activities.
More than half of them belonged to Glee Clubs; all but two were in the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides; seven of them had fathers who were either doctors or dentists; all but Seigle came from devout Protestant homes; five belonged to the YMCA or YWCA; 80 percent had been on summer camps and “leadership training courses” as teenagers.
When they entered college, their burning ambition was professional careers — lawyers, scientists, teachers— the main fodder ground out by Carleton since 1866.
Psychological tests showed that they were all emotionally well-balanced and good leaders. They had well above average intelligence and displayed a “Stars and Stripes” loyalty to American values (i.e. capitalism).
There was also a high incidence of intermarriage among them: Barnes married Stone, Seigle married Matson and Styron married Waters. All three marriages broke up during the 1970s while they were filling the positions of national leadership in the SWP.
In spite of this, none of them left. Their mission was more important than the marital crises that it produced.
There is a striking parallel with this in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In his recently-published book, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, Thomas Powers explained the closed world of people connected with “The Company.”
According to Powers, they “not only talk to each other, they marry each other, live close to each other, arrange for their children to play with each other, have affairs with each other, divorce and remarry each other.”
This has special bearing on the extramural career of Barnes, who, on leaving Betsy Stone, moved in with Waters.
Each of the “Carleton Twelve” who received a diploma, received a college seal adopted in 1870.
In the circle of this emblem there are two designs: a lower one pictures five open books, designated as “the beautiful and the good” strewn on a table; the upper design pictures the Holy Scriptures with rays of light streaming from it and suffusing the books below.
Embossed on it are the words from the 119th Psalm which say: “The opening the spiritual opening of Thy word illuminates.”
The diplomas that the “Carleton Twelve” received illuminated nothing. They were to conceal the real profession for which this group were destined — as a network of trained agents for the US government.