The CIA's funding of the anti-Soviet left (i.e., the Trots, broadly speaking) marks the formal beginning of neoconservatism. One of the most important front groups was the Congress of Cultural Freedom, which published Encounter, whose editor was the late Melvin Lasky. Around this same time in the US, Bill Buckley, fresh from the CIA, founded National Review to demonize and purge all anti-war, anti-imperial thinking from the American right. (Thanks to Arts&Letters Daily for the link.)
