CIA backed Eugene McCarthy in '68 v. RFK

[Michael Hogan]

Nor would I think McCarthy would watch the Redskins from the Kennedy's (JKC's?) box at RFK stadium.

I dunno Bill....

At RFK, the End of an Aerie

By Frank Ahrens

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 23, 1996

Jack Kent Cooke's legendary owner's box at RFK Stadium beat a whimpering exit into Power Washington history yesterday.

.....Cooke's box was filled with decidedly B-list celebrities yesterday. The biggest star was probably retired Gen. Colin Powell. After that, the luminosity dimmed. There was Virginia Gov. George Allen, his wife and mother. Former governor Douglas Wilder was there with his wife. So were British Ambassador John Kerr and former senator Eugene McCarthy, but they're both regulars. Not a great day for stargazing.....

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sport...rticles/box.htm

From Lights, Camera, Democracy by Lewis Lapham:

On Thursday afternoon, less than thirty-six hours after the polls had closed in California, Jack Kent Cooke, the owner of the Washington Redskins, discovered that he was acquainted with a surprisingly large number of Democrats. An invitation to sit in his box at RFK Stadium counts as one of the most visible proofs of rank within the Washington nobility, and during the fat years of the Reagan triumph and the Bush succession the sixty-four seats were comfortably stuffed with personages as grand as Edwin Meese, George Will, and Robert Mosbacher. But on that Thursday, in answer to a question from a correspondent for The New York Times, Mr. Cooke remembered that time passes and fashions change: “I’m a Republican, but strangely I have a great many Democrat friends. Dodd. Brzezinski. Greenspan–he’s of indeterminate lineage. Sam Donaldson–what’s he? Gene McCarthy and George McGovern.”

http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=193497

Edited June 22, 2007 by Michael Hogan

[Paul Rigby]

My antimosity towards RFK, even in death, has been tempered by meeting and working with his sons RFK, Jr. and the late Michael, and reading David Talbot's Brothers, which I believe is an accurate interpation of events.

Extract from David Talbot's Brothers, p.360:

"Meanwhile, McCarthy fought bitterly on. Despite his victory in Oregon – where the white suburban population responded to the former professor's cerebral charm – even McCarthy, a quirky and diffident campaigner, knew his chances of winning the nomination were remote. Instead, he seemed increasingly intent on spoiling Kennedy's chances. McCarthy never let go his resentment of Kennedy for entering the race, after he had taken the initial risk of challenging Johnson.

As the California campaign heated up, the Humphrey and McCarthy campaigns seemed to be collaborating to drive Kennedy out of the race. The ties between the two campaigns began to grow when a former CIA official named Thomas Finney, who was close to Humphrey, took over as McCarthy's campaign boss – and reports that Humphrey partisans had funneled $50,000 to McCarthy – drove some of the peace candidate's staff to resign in protest. It is possible that the CIA and the Democratic Party establishment were working to split the peace vote to hand the nomination to Humphrey. But McCarthy himself was surprisingly popular in CIA circles, where Kennedy was reviled and there was growing disaffection with the war, which some officials believed was damaging the country's national security interests. Dick Helms – who advised President Johnson in a secret 1967 memo that the CIA believed he could withdraw from Vietnam without any permanent damage to the United States – was one of the McCarthy sympathizers in the agency's upper ranks. Over the years, Helms wrote in his memoir, he and the Minnesota senator 'lunched occasionally and encountered one another at the usual Washington events, or as guests in owner Jack Kent Cooke's box at Redskin football games. McCarthy was always good company, intelligent and witty.'"

Hi Paul,

I don't doubt McCarthy's campaign was peppered with CIA and ex-CIA people, as he attracted an intellectual crowd around him.

I don't believe however, that there was collusion between McCarthy and Humphrey. Though they came from the same neck of the woods, Humphrey was a party lackey and McCarthy a free thinker and his own man.

Nor would I think McCarthy would watch the Redskins from the Kennedy's box at RFK stadium.

BK

Bill,

I'm not getting at you, merely asking you, and others like you, to revisit the 60s with fresh eyes. It wasn't just the assassinations that were not as they appeared.

Best,

Paul

[Paul Rigby]

Nor would I think McCarthy would watch the Redskins from the Kennedy's (JKC's?) box at RFK stadium.

I dunno Bill....

At RFK, the End of an Aerie

By Frank Ahrens

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 23, 1996

Jack Kent Cooke's legendary owner's box at RFK Stadium beat a whimpering exit into Power Washington history yesterday.

.....Cooke's box was filled with decidedly B-list celebrities yesterday. The biggest star was probably retired Gen. Colin Powell. After that, the luminosity dimmed. There was Virginia Gov. George Allen, his wife and mother. Former governor Douglas Wilder was there with his wife. So were British Ambassador John Kerr and former senator Eugene McCarthy, but they're both regulars. Not a great day for stargazing.....

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sport...rticles/box.htm

From Lights, Camera, Democracy by Lewis Lapham:

On Thursday afternoon, less than thirty-six hours after the polls had closed in California, Jack Kent Cooke, the owner of the Washington Redskins, discovered that he was acquainted with a surprisingly large number of Democrats. An invitation to sit in his box at RFK Stadium counts as one of the most visible proofs of rank within the Washington nobility, and during the fat years of the Reagan triumph and the Bush succession the sixty-four seats were comfortably stuffed with personages as grand as Edwin Meese, George Will, and Robert Mosbacher. But on that Thursday, in answer to a question from a correspondent for The New York Times, Mr. Cooke remembered that time passes and fashions change: “I’m a Republican, but strangely I have a great many Democrat friends. Dodd. Brzezinski. Greenspan–he’s of indeterminate lineage. Sam Donaldson–what’s he? Gene McCarthy and George McGovern.”

http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=193497

At the risk of terminating a near perfect enmity, this is very good. My apologies for noting so.

[Paul Rigby]

So Ramparts was part of the Empire too?

Marquis Childs, "Bobby, Bombing and the New Left," Washington Post, 3 March 1967, p.A18:

"The issue of Ramparts that blew the role of the CIA with various left-of-center groups, such as the National Student Association...led off with a savage attack on Kennedy. Written by Ramparts managing editor, Robert Scheer, the article...said...'Bobby is believable and for that reason much more serious.' From the viewpoint of the New Left, dangerous could be substituted for serious. The obvious objective is to destroy any middle ground between the demand for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam and the cry of the hawks for the end of all restraint and total bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.

The Ramparts article charges that Kennedy's involvement with the Vietnam war goes back to the earliest days of the Kennedy Adminsitration, beginning in 1961 when 'he did as much as any man to get us deeply involved there.' Bobby Kennedy's vision of foreign affairs, Scheer writes, 'is standard cold war mythology.'"

RFK more responsible for the US assault on Vietnam than, say, Allen Dulles?

The strategy is as old as politics; and may yet be used in 2008.

More from the same fine Childs column. First up, Ramparts and its political campaigning:

“Back of the [scheer – PR]attack is an interesting venture in the politics of the emerging left. In the California primary last year Scheer ran against Rep. Jeffery Colehan who represents the Berkeley district. On Vietnam, Colehan said he was more dove than hawk and distinctly unhappy about the bombing. Scheer made a deeply emotional appeal for ending the war with American withdrawal.

Kennedy endorsed Colehan. In spite of this, the Colehan people say, a Scheer emissary made a futile trip to Washington in the hope of getting at least a pat on the head from Robert Kennedy for the Scheer candidacy. Colehan won the primary by just under 55 per cent of the vote and was re-elected in November.

Another Ramparts figure, Edward M. Keating, publisher and principal angel, ran unsuccessfully as an anti-war candidate.The political drive and the financing of the magazine seem to have been inextricably tied together. There were allegations at the time that the publicity agent handling the Ramparts account put out much of the flood of campaign literature for Scheer, Keating and one other Ramparts candidate in California. Having lost as much as $1,500,000 in its sensational career, Keating has nevertheless been able to attract lesser angels.

The Ramparts political drive id presently concentrated on the Berkeley city elections. The goal is to make Berkeley a model city of peace which will come as a surprise to the television viewers across the Nation who seen repeated demonstrations and sit-downs in and around the university campus.”

Childs concluded the column with a prophetic meditation on the likely effect of Ramparts’ political endeavours:

“The middle ground under the two-party system is the traditional source of political strength. The effective compromises making it a workable system have been achieved here. Today there are ominous signs that the bitter, prolonged, dirty war in Vietnam is eroding this middle ground.

The New Left, typified by Ramparts although the magazine’s management disclaims any connection with that designation, hopes to gain from that erosion. It is anti-establishment – down with practically everything. But judging by American attitudes, as shown by national sampling, this is a frail hope. The latest Gallup Poll had 67 per cent supporting the bombing in North Vietnam and only 24 per cent opposed.

As a symptom the Ramparts splinter in California is currently significant. As the war goes on, however, it is more likely to appear as just a splinter. Say that there are more than a half million Americans in arms next year. Then a larger question looms.

It is whether any middle ground survives sufficiently to give not only Bobby Kennedy a place to stand but the President himself. Between the hard-nosed, bomb-everything right wing and a Republican campaign pointed as it was in 1952 toward peace the standing room will be all but obliterated.

Few today recall that Nixon’s campaign speeches in ’68 were littered with the word “peace” and variants.

[Paul Rigby]

Marquis Childs, "Bobby, Bombing and the New Left," Washington Post, 3 March 1967, p.A18:

"The issue of Ramparts that blew the role of the CIA with various left-of-center groups, such as the National Student Association...led off with a savage attack on Kennedy. Written by Ramparts managing editor, Robert Scheer, the article...said...'Bobby is believable and for that reason much more serious.' From the viewpoint of the New Left, dangerous could be substituted for serious. The obvious objective is to destroy any middle ground between the demand for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam and the cry of the hawks for the end of all restraint and total bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.

In the column by Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, “CIA Funds Aided Negro Registration,” Washington Post, 7 April 1967, p.D17, cited earlier in this thread, CIA funding for such significant elements of the Civil Rights coalition – channelled through fronts such as the New World Foundation, Aaron E. Norman Fund, the Southern Regional Council and the Georgia Council on Human Relations – was noted. In the same piece, the authors proceeded to identify beneficiaries of the Norman Fund, among them, “CORE’s scholarship program and educational fund.” Here, yet another CIA tributary would appear to run into Langley’s anti-RFK river.

In a May 1966 report on the Cohelan-Scheer contest for California Democratic primary votes due in June, the Washington Post’s Julius Duscha reported that Scheer enjoyed the backing of, among others, CORE.(1) It would also be interesting to know how much CIA money found its way into the Scheer campaign, centered as it was on the “the University of California community that makes up most of Berkeley” (2), via the National Student Association.

The Ramparts revelations concerning CIA funding of the NSA thus look timed to hide a major anti-RFK push through precisely this channel – only one now newly purified by pseudo-disclosure.

(1) Julius Duscha, “Colehan Shuns Humphrey’s Aid, Accepts RFK’s,” Washington Post, 30 May 1966, p.A4.

(2) Ibid.

[Paul Rigby]

Just what do you think was the CIA's objective in backing McCarthy?

A little remembered contribution of McCarthy’s to open government occurred in early 1967. The nearest thing the Senate boasted to an Ethics Committee - a rare treat this, an organised-hypocrisy-as-oxymoron - was on the trail of Senator Thomas Dodd, stalwart of the China Lobby, the Katanga Lobby, the LBJ lobby, and the Brown Envelope Lobby, to name but four. “Clean” Gene was a member of said ethical guardian and anxious to ensure that all hearings after the initial one should be held in closed session (1). He lost the vote 5-1, which permitted reporters to report, and thus the public to hear, among other items, confirmation of just how much it cost to buy Dodd’s support for an ambassadorial nomination: $10, 500, according to Time magazine’s account of the week-long public hearing (2).

The identity of the would-be US ambassador to France is not without interest: Abram N. Spanel, founder of the International Latex Corporation, the manufacturer of “ladies’ undergaments,” as the breakers of the story, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, so delicately put it a just under a year before (3). Born in Russia but reared in Paris until the age of ten, Spanel founded the ILC in Delaware in 1932, and was its chairman for twenty-six years (1949-1976). In that time, he earned the distinction of being Red-baited by Westbrook Pegler (4), and decorated by a Bolivian government fresh from massacring opponents in the Cocha bamba valley (5). In mitigation, there was over a decade between the two achievements. As Time magazine had it on his death, however, Spanel “was probably best known to the public for his habit of regularly buying newspaper space, at a cost of millions over four decades, to promote his beliefs, notably world unity, support for Israel and understanding for France” (6). The latter was no idle boast. In March 1954, Spanel had been presented with the Cross of Officer of the French Legion of Honour by the then French Ambassador in Washington, Henri Bonnet (7).

Support for Israel and understanding for France did not always co-exist harmoniously, though, particularly in the age of De Gaulle. As soon as he had regained power in 1958, De Gaulle had “severed some of the extraordinarily close ties in defence and atomic collaboration which had been created between Israel and successive French governments” in the two years before (8), a fact which did not prevent CIA propagandists in late 1960, in response to Arabic-language broadcasts from Moscow identifying the US as the source of Israel’s recent acquisition of atomic armaments, from redirecting blame to France (9). Israel was later to be implicated, along with Portugal and Spain, in supportive roles for the CIA-backed Challe-led putsch of April 1961 (10).

In March 1962, the NYT reported that a delegation of French deputies, representing the France-United States Friendship Committee of the National Assembly, had paid a visit to the White House – there to insist upon the need for Franco-American co-operation in “combating the spread of Communism in South America and Africa” – before being “entertained…at a private reception given by A.N. Spanel” (11). It almost goes without saying that by 1962 it was totalitarianism emanating from the West rather than the East which preoccupied De Gaulle and his circle.

One month later, the same source detailed on the same day the appearance of a) George Bidault in Switzerland, where “the twice Premier of France and nine times Foreign Minister” joined the National Council of Resistance (12), the most prestigious political front for the OAS; and a pamphlet in Oran published by the National Committee of American Friends of the French Secret Army Organisation (13). Who were these mysterious American supporters of OAS terrorism?

According to Nicholas Wahl, the doyen of American scholars of Gaullism – and a contributor to the CIA’s October 1960 symposium on the subject held at Columbia University (14) – one of those friends was none other than Abe Spanel, who served as a money conduit to the OAS (15).

In attempting to shield Dodd, “Clean Gene” was protecting the public from much more of interest. How lucky the country was to have such a considerate Senator.

(1) Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, “The Washington Merry-Go-Round: McCarthy Effort to Shield Dodd Fails,” Washington Post, 8 February 1967, p.B11.

(2) “An Oft-Blurred Line,” Time, 24 March 1967: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 836871,00.html

(3) Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, “The Washington Merry-Go-Round: Spanel Pushed by Dodd as Envoy,” The Washington Post, 1 March 1966, p.B11.

(4) “Unfair Enough,” Time, 14 November 1949: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 934315,00.html

(5) “Bolivia Gives Award,” NYT, 19 January 1961, p.33: The trinket in question was the Decoration of Grand Officials of the Condor of the Andes. It was presented in person by Vice-President Juan Lechin. The massacre in question took place in November 1960. See “100 Dead in Clash in Bolivia,” The Times, 21 November 1960, p.12.

(6) “Milestones,” Time, 15 April 1985: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171, 966196,00.html

To catch the flavour of Spanel’s crassly self-promoting ads, try the one entitled “Special Hero,” NYT, 18 December 1967, p.18, in which a Justice Department official called John Doar was eulogised for his work in the “Deep South.” The ad was of course “Presented as a public service by International Latex Corporation, 350 Fifth Avenue, NYC.”

(7) “France Honors Industrialist,” NYT, 18 March 1954, p.55.

(8) Bernard Ledwidge. De Gaulle (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), p.304.

(9) “Israel Fails to Allay US Anxiety/”Secret Building of Reactor,” The Times, 21 December 1960, p.6: “Also on December 9 the Joint Congressional Committee on atomic energy received a briefing from an official of the Central Intelligence Agency about “intelligence information” that Israel might be developing atomic weapons. A subsidiary reason why the American reaction might be more public than usual is that an Arabic broadcast from Moscow recently accused the United States of having delivered a ready-made atomic bomb to Israel. Surprised indignation about the idea of a Franco-Israel bomb seemed a more effective response than a mere denial.”

(10) “No Embarrassing Questions,” The Nation, 17 June 1961, p.511: “Nobody seemed at all curious about the roles Spain, Portugal and Israel were slated to play were the revolt successful. And, of course, nobody asked a single question about the American CIA.”

(11) “French Legislators Urge Anti-Red Plan,” NYT, 10 March 1962, p.8.

(12) Henry Giniger, “Bidault Reported Joining Anti-Gaullist Subversives,” NYT, 13 April 1962, p.1.

(13) “US Group Supports Algeria Terrorists,” NYT, 13 April 1962, p.6.

(14) New York University Archives: Guide to the Papers of Nicholas Wahl, 1944-1995:

http://dlib.nyu.edu/eadapp/transform?sourc...es/archives.xsl

(15) For Wahl’s career, see, among other sources: “Obituary: Prof Nicholas Wahl,” The Daily Telegraph, 23 September 1996, clipping unpaginated; “Professor Nicholas Wahl,” The Times, 20 September 1996, p.21. I’ve mislaid, temporarily I hope, the source of Wahl’s comment pointing the finger at Spanel, but will cite when located.

[William Kelly]

http://news.FBI watched McCarthy anti-Hoover effort

By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press WriterWed Oct 24, 7:28 PM ET

When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1968, he pledged to fire J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director who had outlasted presidents from Calvin Coolidge to John F. Kennedy.

Before long, McCarthy's calls for new FBI leadership were cataloged and commented upon by FBI officials in a nearly 500-page file, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. The file became available after McCarthy's death in December 2005.

Much of McCarthy's file focuses on law enforcement duties surrounding the 1968 campaign, when McCarthy helped galvanize opposition to the Vietnam War by challenging President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination. The Minnesota senator's strong showing in the New Hampshire primary led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.

According to McCarthy's file, FBI agents looked into death threats against the candidate, and kept records of his public travel and demonstrations. In the process, they also paid close attention to McCarthy's calls to replace Hoover, collecting several news clippings, letters and memos on the subject.

For example, the FBI's Special Agent in Charge in Indianapolis wrote to Hoover on April 22, 1968 to inform him of a speech at Indiana University in which McCarthy said the U.S. should "re-examine the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even reflect on who its director is."

"I think this man is misguided and irresponsible and in my opinion does not deserve the status of a presidential candidate," wrote the agent, James T. Neagle. "I am certainly setting the record straight as to your ability and tremendous record as director of the FBI over the years," added Neagle, who included a newspaper clipping with the memo.

Although Vietnam was the driving force behind McCarthy's campaign, the calls for Hoover's ouster fit with the campaign's general themes. (Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, a fellow Minnesotan, wound up winning the Democratic nomination, but lost the presidential election to Richard Nixon.)

Hoover had been running the FBI since 1924, and would hold the position until his death in 1972 — nearly a half-century at the helm.

McCarthy's son, Michael McCarthy, said that their father warned about the "personalization of power," seeing that in both Hoover and Johnson.

"Dad felt very strongly about the danger of having the head of the FBI so unaccountable, so permanent," recalled his daughter, Ellen McCarthy. "In the late '60s and early '70s, we had a wonderful family dog, Eric the Red. He who would go crazy at the mention of J. Edgar's name — growling and carrying on. It was one of Eric's tricks most appreciated by Dad."

The file includes several other letters from people defending Hoover from McCarthy's criticism — with copies sent to Hoover. One Hoover admirer wrote to McCarthy, calling the criticism "in very bad taste, to say the very least, and without reason, logic or merit. I am certain that there are millions of Americans who feel as I do!"

Once, Hoover took note of a memo circulated by the mayor of Jackson, Mich., which defended the FBI director from criticism by McCarthy. A newspaper story in the Jackson Citizen Patriot about the initiative is included in the file.

"I have learned of your expression of support of my administration of the FBI and want to extend my thanks," Hoover wrote to the mayor, Maurice B. Townsend, Jr. At the bottom of the letter, the FBI adds this note: "There is no record of Mayor Townsend in Bufiles (Bureau files). We have had cordial relations with the Jackson Citizen Patriot and its editor, Honorable Herbert W. Spendlove, is on the Special Correspondents' List."

That list referred to reporters the FBI had identified as friendly, said Athan Theoharis, a retired Marquette University history professor who has written several books on the FBI and Hoover. Another list had reporters who were not to be contacted, Theoharis said.

The FBI even took note of the state of McCarthy's campaign hotel bills. In August 1968, Joseph D. Purvis, Special Agent in Charge in the Washington, D.C. Field Office, wrote to Hoover to tell him about a conversation he had with "one of our good friends at the Mayflower," a famous Washington hotel. The person's name is redacted from the file.

Purvis wrote that the campaign had four rooms booked since June, and hadn't made any payments — with the hotel bill exceeding $20,000 by the end of July. He also noted that his Mayflower source was not aware of the nature of the campaign business in those rooms, "but he has observed those who use them are primarily young people, both white and colored."

"By and large, he said, 'they are a pretty crummy bunch.' They seem to enjoy room service immensely," Purvis wrote.

The FBI's interest in McCarthy's activities extended to the senator's family as well.

Once, when she was 20 years old, McCarthy's daughter Ellen took a tour of the FBI. The FBI file includes a memo from August 1968 that is almost certainly a report of that trip, although the names are redacted.

The memo, titled "SPECIAL TOUR OF BUREAU," reports that a man waiting for a special tour appointment asked if the person who had just left the room was the (redacted) of McCarthy.

When told that was the case, he said "that he thought it was quite ironic that the individual who had stated he would force Mr. Hoover to retire if elected president was now sending his (redacted) down to the FBI ..." the memo states. "All in the room appeared to be quite amused by this aside, and their laughter plainly indicated on which side their sympathies were in the J. Edgar Hoover-McCarthy matter." When shown a copy of the memo, Ellen McCarthy said she and a friend toured the FBI around that time.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_go_ot/eugene_mccarthy_fbi://http://news.FBI wa...ne_mccarthy_fbi

[William Kelly]

Joan Mellen, in the thread David Talbot : Walter Sheridan and Jim Garrison Yesterday, 06:26 AM Post #15

In 1980, William Blum notes, good old Gene, the eternal splitter of the anti-Republican vote, backed Reagan:

The Anti-Empire Report, No. 12, August 21, 2004

It's a painfully old story. Democrats can not be trusted ideologically, not even to be consistently liberal, never mind progressive or radical, no matter how much we wish we could trust them, no matter how awful the Republicans may be. In the 1968 election, Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy of Wisconsin was the darling of the left.

BK: I DIDN'T KNOW MCCARTHY WAS FROM WISCONSIN? I THOUGHT HE WAS FROM MINNESOTTA.

NOR DO I THINK THE CIA "INFILTRATED" HIS CAMPAIGN AS THEY RECOGNIZED HIM AS A VIABLE FORCE AND MADE HIM MORE SO.

[Tim Gratz]

Reagan over Carter in 1980 was pretty much of a no-brainer. Don't you remember the "Misery Index" and the fiasco in Iran?

Bill, we finally found an area of "common ground". I agree with you that McCarthy was from Minnesota not Wisconsin. He must be thinking of Joe McCarthy who came from Appleton, WI, and whose campaign manager had a daughter who is now a prominent person on the Fox News Network.

There was not much love lost between Gene and RFK to be sure but JFK was pretty big on Joe.

P.S. When I was a sophomore at the UW, the UW was pretty much a hotbed of Gene McCarthy supporters. I remember the politics and horrors of 1968 very well. I enjoyed reading of your experience working for Gene McCarthy.

Edited October 26, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

It was the youth component of the McCarthy campaign who had to clean up by the way. To the extent McCarthy was backed by any spooks, they pretty much were clean-shaven and had short haircuts to begin with.

[Paul Rigby]

The following link takes you straight to the 1986 NYRB argument between Hertzberg and Cummings following the publication of the latter’s The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream (Grove Press, 1985). Hertzberg’s attempt to preserve the façade of Lowenstein’s philanthropic sponsorship is a hoot.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5226

How to spot a CIA-er about to go public in support of an anti-war candidate – check those subscriptions!

“According to sources, Lowenstein was separated from the CIA sometime in 1967 (the sources say Lowenstein ‘was in the agency from 1962 to 1967’), a year when he neglected to pay his dues to both Spanish Refugee Aid and the American Committee on Africa,”

Richard Cummings. The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream (NY: Grove Press Inc., 1985), p.168.

Just how many CIA men, one wonders, does it take to depose a sitting President? Has any one calculated the average figure from Kennedy to Carter?

[Paul Rigby]

[url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_go_ot/eugene_mccarthy_fbi]http://news.FBI watched McCarthy anti-Hoover effort

Bill,

I'm not quite sure what your point is. Please clarify.

Paul

[William Kelly]

[url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071024/ap_on_go_ot/eugene_mccarthy_fbi]http://news.FBI watched McCarthy anti-Hoover effort

Bill,

I'm not quite sure what your point is. Please clarify.

Paul

I don't know if I have a point Paul, other than the Frederick Frommer AP report of October 24, "FBI watched McCarthy anti-Hover effort" is certainly amusing in light of the CIA official support of McCarthy.

Don't you agree?

And William Blum's opinionated piece is pretty much negated by the fact he didn't know what state McCarthy is from, hea?

I'm having some McCarthy flashbacks that may change the picture.

BK

[Paul Rigby]

I don't know if I have a point Paul, other than the Frederick Frommer AP report of October 24, "FBI watched McCarthy anti-Hover effort" is certainly amusing in light of the CIA official support of McCarthy.

Don't you agree?

If you're placing both McCarthy's calls for Hoover's replacement/dismissal, and Hoover's reciprocal interest in McCarthy, within the context of the collapse of the relationship between CIA and the FBI in the late 1960s, sure.

And William Blum's opinionated piece is pretty much negated by the fact he didn't know what state McCarthy is from, hea?

The choice:

The error is intentional and represents an attempt, by conflating the identities of two famous right-wingers with the same surname, to make a serious point with humour.

Your interpretation, a mistake, is correct - though proceeding to claim, as you seem to be, that this invalidates Blum’s point about McCarthy’s real, as opposed to ostensible, motivations, smacks a little of desperation; and is perhaps unwise. Would the discovery of a similar error in the work of, say, Bill Kelly, invalidate everything else he wrote on the relevant topic? Of course not.

I'm having some McCarthy flashbacks that may change the picture.

I look forward to reading them.

Paul

[William Kelly]

I don't know if I have a point Paul, other than the Frederick Frommer AP report of October 24, "FBI watched McCarthy anti-Hover effort" is certainly amusing in light of the CIA official support of McCarthy.

Don't you agree?

If you're placing both McCarthy's calls for Hoover's replacement/dismissal, and Hoover's reciprocal interest in McCarthy, within the context of the collapse of the relationship between CIA and the FBI in the late 1960s, sure.

And William Blum's opinionated piece is pretty much negated by the fact he didn't know what state McCarthy is from, hea?

The choice:

The error is intentional and represents an attempt, by conflating the identities of two famous right-wingers with the same surname, to make a serious point with humour.

Your interpretation, a mistake, is correct - though proceeding to claim, as you seem to be, that this invalidates Blum's point about McCarthy's real, as opposed to ostensible, motivations, smacks a little of desperation; and is perhaps unwise. Would the discovery of a similar error in the work of, say, Bill Kelly, invalidate everything else he wrote on the relevant topic? Of course not.

The error cannot be intentional, it is too basic. Of course, being dyslexic I have made many similar mistakes, but Blum's mistake makes me think he realy doesn't know what he's talking about. What's his point again?

BK

I'm having some McCarthy flashbacks that may change the picture.

I look forward to reading them.

Paul