Welcome Russian Spies

An editorial by Edward Cornish, Editor of THE FUTURIST magazine.

The revelation that an undercover Russian agent has been attending meetings of the World Future Society does not surprise me in the least.  Through the years, many Russians have attended our meetings and I have gone out of my way to welcome them.

Here's why:

Back in the early 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union were deadly enemies, both equipped with nuclear and thermonuclear weapons that could kill millions of people. I was certain that the Soviets had missiles ready to launch at Washington, D.C., where I lived with my family.  

What should I do? I agonized over this question for months and made plans to move my family to Australia, but my wife refused to accompany me and I couldn't abandon her and my three sons. So I could only worry but worry kept me thinking about the problem: How can we anticipate future events.

I discussed my concern with my oldest friend, John Dixon, an associate of the comprehensive designer Buckminster Fuller. Knowing my interest in the future, John gave me copies of reports issued by the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, where scientists like Herman Kahn were making serious attempts to anticipate future events. So it was that I learned not only of Kahn's work but of two other RAND scientists, Olaf Helmer and Norman Dalkey, who had developed what they called the Delphi technique, a scientific method for synthesizing the views of experts on various problems, such as the likelihood of a future events.

The fact that there were scientific methods for anticipating future events was a kind of revelation for me, and it got me thinking about publishing a magazine that would publish articles on the work of these "futurists" at RAND and elsewhere. Since I couldn't get funding to start a magazine, I started a newsletter called THE FUTURIST which enabled me to identify other people who shared my interest in the future and three of them, Charles W. Williams, Jr., David H. Goldberg, and Peter Zuckerman, joined me in forming a committee to create what we decided to call the World Future Society.

The Society was officially launched on October 18 1966, and THE FUTURIST began publishing regularly as a newsletter in February 1967.  The newsletter evolved into a magazine that the Society has continued to publish every other month.

Hugger-Mugger among the Futurists

Even before the World Future Society was officially founded, people engaged in undercover activities began attending its meetings. At one early meeting, two representatives of the National Student Association showed up; years later, the Washington Post reported that the overseas activities of the  student group were funded clandestinely by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

After the Society began holding regular meetings in Washington, a Time magazine correspondent mentioned to me that he had seen several CIA employees at our meetings. I also noticed that multiple copies of THE FUTURIST were going to mysterious post office boxes. 

In 1967, Barbara Marx Hubbard, a enthusiastic benefactor of the Society, provided us with a grant to make the Society better known internationally. We used the money primarily to advertise in scientific magazines with large circulations abroad with the result that we began getting more and more members in countries around the world.

Barbara Hubbard's support encouraged us to hold our first international conference in 1971. A few days before this conference, a Soviet official contacted me and asked if he could come to our conference. I was delighted with his interest because I wanted to do all I could to promote friendship between the his country and mine in view of the awesome fate that we might both suffer in the event of a thermonuclear "exchange."

This Soviet official whom I will call "Mikhail" participated actively in our conference and we chatted often between sessions. At one point, Mikhail said, very emphatically, "I see no sign of war." I had the impression that he was very much impressed by the peaceful character of our meeting, and we had given him the feeling that the United States had no interest in attacking the Soviet Union. I was delighted that he had come to that view. 

Later Mikhail invited me to his office which was not in the Soviet Embassy but a few blocks away. We had a friendly discussion in which he did most of the talking while I just listened.  I never knew just what he wanted from me, but I left believing he was trying to learn all he could about what was really happening in America and how it might affect the Soviet Union.

 I never saw him again but I made it a point to invite him to our later conference and he wrote back, telling me that he would send his colleagues to attend. I believe they did because we continued to have Soviet representatives at our conferences who were not under cover. Those I spoke to all knew Mikhail.

 We have had many foreign representatives at Society meetings and doubtless they have made reports to their governments on whatever they learned.  So far as I am aware, nothing but good has come out of this interchange. There has been a friendly and productive exchange of information, and whatever suspicions may have existed before a meeting were eased in the course of that meeting.

The Society and "Donald Heathfield"

 A man who identified himself as "Donald Heathfield" when he attended recent Society conferences had contacts with a number of Society members and was a presenter at several sessions. William Halal, a former Board member of the World Future Society, reports that he had business contacts with Heathfield and allowed him to use his TechCast forecasts on Heathfield's site, Future Map. 

Halal says he never suspected Heathfield was a Russian spy. Halal marvels at how well he and his Russian associates infiltrated the normal activities of Washington policy circles-meetings of Federal agencies, think tanks, and the World Future Society.

"It was truly a shock to hear of his arrest," Halal says. "I wonder what on Earth caused the Russians to think they would gain access to valuable intelligence. Everything I gave Don was published widely and readily available on the Internet!"

The Path to Peace

The World Future Society is an effective instrument of world peace because it provides a means for thoughtful people from many nations to share information and discuss issues of enormous importance.

Our meetings have provided opportunities for people from many different nations to meet each other, share ideas, and work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect. We can and will develop the foresight and wisdom required to build a peaceful and prosperous world in which people will have better things to do than spy on each other.

About the Author

Edward Cornish is the founder of the World Future Society and the Editor in Chief of THE FUTURIST magazine. The World Future Society will hold its annual convention in Boston at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel from July 8 – 10. Registration is open to the public.