Protesters force cancellation of CIA campus visit
Students complain of missed job opportunities
By Tatiana Botton
Protesters cancelled an informational meeting for the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Plaza Building Wednesday evening,
resulting in university police intervention to control the
crowd.
Police were advised earlier of the protest from a flyer
distributed to students announcing a rally against the CIA.
Most of the protesters were members of the Maoist
Internationalist Movement (MIM), who also held banners announcing
CIA operations — "Ten years of war in Nicaragua, 63 thousands dead
in El Salvador and 640 thousands dead South East Asia."
Thirty UCLA students where present for the meeting, which was
disrupted by about 20 MIM members blowing whistles and shouting,
"We don’t want the CIA recruiting on this campus."
Meeting attendants affirmed that they came to hear the CIA
spokespersons and not the protesters, at which point the crowd
became verbally aggressive.
"When we were outside talking and discussing the event, an
unidentified female said that a protester pushed her. But she
didn’t wanted to identify herself or press charges against the
protester," said university police Capt. Terry Baker.
However, most of the protesters’ objections were directed
towards the CIA, not the students present for the meeting.
Organizers tried to find peaceful solutions, but Dario Bravo, the
assistant director of the Expo Center, decided to cancel the
meeting.
Yesterday’s recruitment meetings at the Placement and Career
Planning Center were also cancelled, irritating students who had
appointments.
"I had a 9:15 interview and I crossed all the traffic under the
rain just to discover that the interview was canceled. It really
sucks," said Linda Kung, a graduate student in environmental
engineering.
"I signed up to many different interviews at the PCPC. The CIA
was looking for someone as an intelligence analyst. I would have to
analyze data from other countries, regarding their environment. It
was something that I could do," she added.
On Wednesday, the protesters stayed outside the Plaza Building
to talk to the students and explain different covert operations
where the CIA was involved.
"We want to position against the CIA. The bigger picture of
course is that U.S government has an interest in keeping America on
top and the CIA is the tool for that. We are trying here to expose
the nasty and dirty things that unnecessarily the CIA has done,"
said Steve Jesup, a junior math student not not affiliated with
MIM.
Jesup explained that he would like to create a new campus group
to be called "Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League" that will
organize events to educate and inform UCLA students.
CIA representatives come to UCLA to recruit students who want to
be economists, engineers or computer specialists, said Dave
Christian, the media spokesperson for the CIA in Washington.
"We came to UCLA because it is a very talented and diverse group
of students. We’re looking for people who want to serve the country
and do some research, analyze and collect information," he
said.
"For the future we don’t know if we will be coming back to UCLA.
But the students who were present at the meeting and had their
rights infringed can always inquire directly to the CIA offices
regarding jobs," Christian added.