When he gets to reviewing American images and interventions abroad, President Nixon might start with the way in which the State Department and other U.S. Government agencies overseas are sometimes upstaged by an old foe of his — American labor. For years, the AFL-CIO has pursued its own foreign policy in Latin America, boasting, among other things, of how it helped to bring down Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana (now Guyana). Now it is turning to Africa. Since the AFL-CIO activity there is fairly new, that might be a good place for President Nixon to choke it off.

In its foreign operations, American labor sometimes acts, or tries to act, as an arm of the U.S. Government. But it can be an uncontrollable arm. In January, 1968, for example, Vice President Humphrey visited Kenya with a large party that included Irving Brown, executive director of the African American Labor Center, the main agency for AFL-CIO’s activities on that continent. American Ambassador Glenn W. Ferguson thought it unwise to include Brown because he is disliked by many Kenya leaders, who believe he has shown too much favoritism to Minister for Economic Planning Tom Mboya. Ambassador Ferguson cabled to Washington a request that Brown be dropped from the trip. But the AFL-CIO can sometimes be more powerful than the State Department. Enraged AFL-CIO leaders talked to Humphrey, and the Vice President overruled the Ambassador. Brown came along.

Brown’s African American Labor Center was set up in 1965 when George Meany decided that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions had become too inept to carry out the AFL-CIO’s aims in Africa. The Center operates almost entirely on AID funds, about $2.5 million so far. But unlike other organizations that use AID money, the African American Labor Center undergoes little supervision.

The Center signs agreements with African governments for labor projects, AID not being in the picture at all, except to provide the money. In theory, it could veto a labor project and refuse to turn over the funds, but actually AID officials in Africa know little about the Labor Center projects in the countries where they are stationed. If they did protest, they would likely be ignored by their superiors in Washington.

The Center often gives office equipment and cars to African unions or creates vocational training schools; for example, a tailoring school and a printers’ school in Kenya. But the Center also tries to fulfill the traditional AFL-CIO role of helping non-Communist unions fight alleged Communist unions. Indeed, the Center spends the largest portion of its AID funds on Nigeria’s Trade Union Institute for Social and Economic Development, an arm of the union in Nigeria that is fighting the leftist Nigerian Trade Union Congress. Brown’s deputy, Lester Trachtman, explains: “Our aim is to help build the African trade unions and see that they remain independent. The Chinese and Russians see that one of the best ways to infiltrate Africa is to gain control of the labor movement.”

Sometimes American labor gets involved in activities that are less overt than those of Brown’s Center. And sometimes labor organizations other than the AFL-CIO become entangled in foreign operations. That seemed to be the case early in 1968 with Peace with Freedom, Inc. Unlike the African American Labor Center, Peace with Freedom was not an agency of the AFL-CIO but a kind of free lance. In 1967, it was identified as one of the many private organizations that had received CIA money. Its other major source of funds was reported to be individual American labor unions. One of these, ironically, was the United Auto Workers, which for years has been criticizing George Meany and the AFL-CIO for their CIA entanglements abroad.

Peace with Freedom was directed by Robert Thomas Gabor, a native of Hungary who had become an American citizen. In Africa, Gabor and Peace with Freedom joined with two German labor-supported foundations to set up various cultural organizations that soon sponsored a good deal of the new publishing being done in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. This insured that Communists were largely kept out of the vital field of communications in the three countries.

Gabor’s work aroused suspicion in Kenya, mainly because he seemed too closely associated with Mboya, the Kenya leader who received a good deal of financial support from American labor before independence. Though they had no evidence, some Africans began to suspect that Gabor’s cultural projects were a new way for American labor to pass money to Mboya. Last January, Kenya officials refused to let Gabor back into Kenya. He and another American were declared prohibited immigrants, a local newspaper hinting cautiously but pointedly that they might have been involved in CIA operations.

The incident embarrassed the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. Ambassador Ferguson, who knew that the operations were controlled more by American labor than by the CIA, told a Rotary Club meeting in Nairobi: “It is sometimes wrongly assumed that the United States Embassy in Nairobi is responsible for the activities of all 3,200 Americans in Kenya. We have no control over the activities of every individual.”

That, of course, is the nub of the problem to be faced by President Nixon. Does American labor have the right to operate freely abroad, sometimes interfering in the internal politics of a foreign country? Does it have the right to do this without any real control by the U.S. Government? Furthermore, should the U.S. Government foot most of the bill? These questions need to be answered in any U.S. review of labor operations abroad. And American labor ought to ask itself another question. Do all its machinations really help the people it wants to help? The ban on Gabor, for example, embarrassed Tom Mboya almost as much as it did the American Embassy. American labor can now probably help Mboya best by staying away from him and his country.

Mr. Meisler, Africa correspondent of the Los Angeles Times, is a frequent contributor to The Nation.