At Play in the Fields of the CIA

In the middle of this somewhat interesting article about a now-forgotten literary figure who founded the Paris Review with Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton, the Times drops in the amazing revelation that Matthiessen (novelist, author of a bunch of really terrific books that chronicle the destruction of wildlife, resident of eastern Long Island) was a CIA "recruit" in Europe in the 1950s. Matthiessen is far greater and more important than the guy the story is about, and even of Plimpton, in my opinion, and yet the Times tells us nothing more.