Gloria Steinem, who passed away on September 2 at the age of 92, is widely recognized as a leading figure in the 20th-century women’s liberation movement. Before rising to prominence as a feminist icon and political activist, Steinem had an early phase of involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that shaped part of her activism.

Between 1956 and 1958, Steinem spent two years in India under a scholarship funded by Chester Bowles, a former U.S. ambassador to India. During this time, she was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the country’s early post-independence ideals. Following her return to the United States, Steinem sought to encourage young Americans to participate in World Youth Festivals, international gatherings initially organized by communist states. She viewed these events as important arenas for ideological exchange and activism.

Steinem reached out to former officers of the National Student Association (NSA), a network of university student governments that later acknowledged it had received CIA funding since 1952. Through these contacts, she secured CIA funding to support her efforts in recruiting American youth to attend the festivals. Her work included helping organize activities around the 1959 festival in Vienna, Austria, and continued through the 1962 festival in Helsinki, Finland, during which she was affiliated with the Independence Research Service, a CIA-backed organization headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Steinem maintained that her involvement did not include intelligence gathering or reporting on attendees. She later described her work as motivated by idealism and a desire to engage Americans of diverse political views in these international events, a perspective she shared publicly during the 1960s as her feminist career gained momentum.

Over the years, Steinem downplayed concerns about her CIA ties, particularly given the agency's later reputation for covert and often controversial operations. In comments made in 2016, she characterized the CIA’s involvement in her early activism as less ominous than popularly perceived, suggesting that the agency’s funds simply helped support broad outreach efforts. She expressed some disappointment that fellow feminists criticized her past connections but reiterated her belief in the value of her choices, writing in a 2015 memoir that she would make the same decisions again.

Steinem’s early intersection with Cold War-era U.S. intelligence programs reveals a complex backdrop to her lifelong work in activism, highlighting the diverse and sometimes unexpected influences that shaped key figures in the feminist movement.