Andrew McLellan

Andrew McLellan was the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) Brazil representative during the critical 1962-1964 period when AIFLD organized anticommunist parallel unions against the government of President Joao Goulart, and later the AFL-CIO's Inter-American representative. He had previously served as the ORIT (Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers) representative in Central America during the 1950s, where he worked to dismantle left-labor unions in Guatemala following the 1954 coup against Jacobo Arbenz, and assisted Ambassador Thomas Mann in controlling El Salvador's labor movement. His publicly acknowledged role in organizing Brazilian labor operatives before and during the 1964 coup, and his subsequent travel to Brazil after the coup to help restructure labor regulations under the new military government, made him one of the most documented examples of AFL-CIO/CIA coordination in Latin American labor politics. The New Republic reported in June 1966 that McLellan had risen "to his present important position despite a limited trade union background," with AFL-CIO colleagues attributing his advancement to ties with government agencies rather than labor credentials.¹

CIA Identification

McLellan appears in the East German intelligence publication "Who's Who in the CIA," which lists him at page 351 with the notation "from 1951 work for CIA."² He was also identified as a CIA asset by Philip Agee in Agee's 1975 memoir Inside the Company: CIA Diary, which documented AIFLD's function as a CIA instrument in Latin America.³ According to Gerald J. Poulsan of the International Association of Food and Allied Workers, eight CIA agents took operational orders from McLellan through AIFLD's network.⁴ McLellan's positioning within the AFL-CIO's international operations was shaped by his long-standing membership in the Jay Lovestone anti-communist faction of the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Department, which maintained close working relationships with the CIA from the late 1940s onward.⁵

AIFLD Brazil Operations

McLellan, operating in Brazil from the early 1960s under AIFLD's institutional cover, cultivated relationships with Brazilian labor leaders willing to organize against Goulart's proposed structural reforms, including land redistribution, limits on profit remittances, and nationalization of oil refineries. Beginning in 1963, AIFLD organized and trained a special all-Brazilian class of thirty-three participants at its Front Royal, Virginia facility. After the training concluded, the group traveled to Western Europe and Israel before returning to Brazil, where some organizers went to the countryside to conduct seminars and others deployed to Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and various industrial centers.⁶

Several of these AIFLD-trained Brazilian labor leaders were present in the streets on the nights of March 31 and April 1, 1964, when the military moved against Goulart. AIFLD's Director of Social Projects William Doherty Jr. subsequently explained the organization's prior knowledge at an AFL-CIO Labor News Conference in July 1964: "What happened in Brazil... did not just happen. It was planned, and planned months in advance. Many of the trade union leaders, some of whom were actually trained in our institute, were involved in the revolution, and in the overthrow of the Goulart regime." Doherty further acknowledged that trainees "were very active in organizing workers... some of them were so active that they became intimately involved in some of the clandestine operations of the revolution before it took place on April 1."⁷

McLellan himself acknowledged, in statements to the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and in the context of congressional inquiries, that AIFLD had been active in Brazil's labor politics during the coup period, though he disputed characterizations of AIFLD as a CIA instrument.

Post-Coup Labor Restructuring

After the coup succeeded and the Humberto Castelo Branco military government took power, McLellan traveled to Brazil to offer, through US Military Attaché Vernon Walters, revised labor regulations for the junta's purge of union leadership. The proposal covered the replacement of Goulart-era labor leaders with AIFLD-aligned figures and the restructuring of union governance to exclude communist and nationalist elements. This direct participation in post-coup labor institution-building illustrated the operational continuity between AIFLD's pre-coup destabilization work and its post-coup reconstruction role.⁸

McLellan publicly defended the Castelo Branco government's practice of intervening directly in union governance as "necessary to give continuity in legal advice and social assistance services" provided to union members, framing the military's seizure of union structures as an administrative measure rather than political repression.⁹

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony

The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on the American Institute for Free Labor Development on August 1, 1969, during the 91st Congress, 1st Session (Senate Hearing CHRG-91shrg33948). The hearing examined AIFLD's allegedly ineffective programs to promote trade unionism in Latin America and scrutinized the relationship between AFL-CIO support for US Vietnam War policy and the USAID financing of AIFLD's operations. The hearing's primary witness was AFL-CIO president George Meany. The hearing took place against a backdrop of growing public criticism of AIFLD's role in the 1964 Brazilian coup and its broader function as a CIA-adjacent instrument in hemispheric labor politics.¹⁰

1969 Rockefeller Mission

McLellan was included as an adviser on Nelson Rockefeller's 1969 Mission to the Americas, traveling as part of Rockefeller's staff through four separate trips to nineteen Latin American countries between May and July 1969. The mission was commissioned by President Richard Nixon to assess conditions in Latin America and produce policy recommendations. NACLA's contemporary analysis of the mission's composition described McLellan as a long-time member of the Lovestone wing of the AFL-CIO's international section, "which has been close to Rockefeller interests," and noted that he was also a director of AIFLD. Rockefeller delivered his final report to the White House at the end of August 1969. McLellan's inclusion placed AIFLD's labor operations explicitly within the Rockefeller network's diplomatic framework, confirming the organizational alignment that critics of AIFLD had argued since its founding.¹¹

Dominican Republic Operations

In the early 1960s, following the end of Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship, McLellan and AFL-CIO colleague Fred Sommerford established themselves as "advisers" to the newly formed FOUPSA (United Workers for Free Unions) in the Dominican Republic. When FOUPSA leader Miguel Soto considered calling a general strike, McLellan reportedly offered him $30,000 to call it off. After Soto refused and was subsequently labeled a communist by AFL-CIO representatives, McLellan used funds to split the union movement and establish the rival CONATRAL federation to fight what he characterized as the communist-dominated labor majority.¹²