Gloria Steinem, who spent the better part of her life fighting for women's rights, has died. She was ninety-two years old. Her passing was confirmed Thursday via her official Instagram page, with a statement noting she died peacefully at her New York home, surrounded by people close to her."Gloria's near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end," the post read. Her death has since brought renewed attention to a lesser-known part of her story. As per a report shared by CPD Blog, Steinem worked with a CIA-funded front organization, the Independent Research Service, during the late 1950s and early 1960s. A magazine had exposed the connection, and Steinem addressed it head on.She was open about it, and didn't apologize for it either. Steinem defended the relationship, saying that"In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable."Her work with the CIA wasn't what most people picture when they hear those three letters. Rather than covert operations, Steinem attended international youth festivals organized largely by countries hostile to the United States, serving as a young American voice promoting freedom and democratic values abroad. View this post on Instagram Instagram PostHow the CIA recruited Gloria Steinem to take on communist youth festivals across Europe:Gloria Steinem at the 51st Annual Gracie Awards Luncheon - Source: GettyBack in November 2014, The Nation shared a detailed report touching on the CIA's student-activism efforts during the Cold War era, which also drew attention to Patriotic Betrayal, a book authored by Karen M. Paget and published by Yale University Press. According to the book, it was the CIA's Harry Lunn who first encouraged Steinem to step into a very public role. As per Patriotic Betrayal, Lunn pushed her to become the face of the Independent Service for Information, an anti-communist delegation that was controlled and funded by the CIA, centered around the Vienna Youth Festival. By early 1959, the organization had been quietly renamed the Independent Research Service.Paget's account doesn't leave much room for ambiguity about Steinem's awareness of who was pulling the strings. She described Gloria Steinem as "one of the few women in the NSA-CIA club," and noted that "Steinem, who knowingly cooperated with the CIA, is sensitive today about her work with the Agency." Her work, it turned out, was far from passive. For the 1959 Vienna Youth Festival, Steinem recruited close to one hundred Americans to form a delegation tasked with confronting the seventeen thousand youth gathered there under the banners of Marxism and national liberation.The tactics her bloc used weren't exactly subtle. They distributed anti-communist propaganda to fill a shortage of toilet paper, and sent members into discussion groups to directly challenge communist dogma. The CIA took note. Pleased with what Gloria Steinem had delivered in Vienna, the agency sent her to lead a similar delegation to Helsinki in 1962. That trip had its own flavor entirely, with the CIA courting African students through American jazz. As per Patriotic Betrayal, the Helsinki chapter left behind one particularly vivid image, with Paget writing of Steinem "parting the beaded curtains to enter the nightclub as if she was Mata Hari."How Gloria Steinem used her platform to fight for Black people, women and the working class:Gloria Steinem And Leymah Gbowee In Conversation With Amy Richards: "Rise, Girl, Rise" - Source: GettyAs per a report shared by The Guardian, Steinem brought a feminist perspective into the mainstream not through a single moment, but through decades of journalism, public speaking and relentless activism. The author of nine books, she took on causes that ranged from domestic violence and female genital mutilation to the pornography industry and the Vietnam and Gulf wars. She also threw her weight behind Black Lives Matter, female reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, the Time's Up movement and the reunification of Korea. In 1984, that activism landed her in handcuffs, after she was arrested while protesting apartheid outside the South African embassy in Washington DC.Her journalism career had kicked off more than two decades earlier. In 1962, Esquire editor Clay Felker handed Gloria Steinem her first assignment. The resulting feature, "The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed," tackled the impossible position women found themselves in, forced to choose between building a career and starting a family. It was the kind of work that set the tone for everything that followed. Terrified of public speaking and conflict by her own admission, Gloria Steinem was nonetheless media savvy enough to turn the platform she had into something much bigger than herself.She was deliberate about who she used that platform for. As a white, educated woman, she consistently directed attention toward those society had historically ignored, including Black people, ethnic minorities and the working class. Sex and race, she argued as far back as 1971, were always intertwined. By 2017, that argument hadn't softened any. Gloria Steinem shared her perspective plainly, saying that"It doesn't surprise me that the most virulent anti-abortion measures are coming from Alabama and other southern states because racism and sexism are always intertwined. You can't perpetuate racism without controlling women and reproduction."