There is a curious paradox that characterizes the political readings of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964). On the one hand, he is often celebrated as one of the most “committed” of Arab poets. In his classic study of commitment in Arabic poetry, Al-iltizam fi-l-shi'r al-‘arabi, Ahmed Abu Haqqa names al-Sayyab as one of the foremost committed poets and uses excerpts from his poetry to showcase commitment in modern Arabic poetry. On the other hand, however, al-Sayyab spent much of his later life denouncing commitment and preaching against the politicization of literature. In 1961, for example, he wrote a scathing rebuke of commitment, entitled “Al-iltizam wa-l-la-iltizam fi al-adab al-'arabi al-hadith,” in which he denounced iltizam and doubled down attacks on communism. Al-Sayyab scholars have generally either played down the importance of these manifestos--M.M. Badawi called “Al-iltizam wa-l-la-iltizam” a “confused paper” (209) in his Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry--or ignored them altogether, which is what Abu Haqqa, for example, did. The paradox entangles even further when we consider the fact that al-Sayyab wrote his most engaging poems at the time when he penned his fiercest anti-commitment critiques. This paper attempts to resolve the paradox by reading al-Sayyab’s later writings against the archives of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), the CIA front organization from which al-Sayyab received much-needed funding and which influenced (and sometimes dictated) his views on political questions. Such reading reveals that al-Sayyab wrote those anti-commitment views not necessarily because he believed them but rather to please his CIA handlers and keep the cash flowing to pay for his medical expenses. The paper argues that in order to resolve the paradox that has accompanied the political readings of al-Sayyab, we need to read it as a curious case of imperial interference in third-world literary production which facilitated the exchange of literary views for cash. This understanding will, on the one hand, help us comprehend how al-Sayyab was waging an anti-commitment campaign at the same time he was writing “committed” poems and, on the other, allow us to provide a fresh reading of the complex intersection of aesthetics and politics in al-Sayyab’s later writings.