"I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front"
About this Quote
The intent is double-edged. On the surface, it’s autobiographical modesty: I didn’t know then, I found out later. Underneath, it’s an indictment of the era’s machinery and the way it recruited well-meaning participants without their informed consent. The footnote framing signals a deeper moral discomfort: the revelation is treated as incidental only because the system normalized such manipulation. That’s the unsettling subtext - covert influence wasn’t an aberration; it was background radiation.
Context matters: Lewis is a Canadian politician with a long career adjacent to international institutions and humanitarian politics, the exact spaces where idealism meets geopolitics. The line reads like a cautionary aside to younger activists and diplomats: institutions that trade in lofty rhetoric can be instrumental, their values performative, their "youth" a convenient branding exercise. The quote works because it compresses a whole political education into one quiet, almost throwaway sentence - and then lets the cynicism land anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lewis, Stephen. (n.d.). I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-learned-later-just-as-a-footnote-that-the-world-96391/
Chicago Style
Lewis, Stephen. "I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-learned-later-just-as-a-footnote-that-the-world-96391/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-learned-later-just-as-a-footnote-that-the-world-96391/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
