How Plugged in was Reader's Digest?

[James DiEugenio]

A letter came in for BOR which I read on the air for this week's show.

It was about Ed Epstein.  And the into for his 1992 book The Assassination Chronicles.

I don't know if I missed this, or if I forgot it.  But on page 18, it says he was being pitched to do a new book on Oswald by them.  He said, why should I if there is not anything new to present.  He said that they then offered him, among other things, access to the CIA tapes at the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico.

Question:  To my knowledge, no one had ever heard those tapes outside of Mexico except the FBI in Dallas while Oswald was in detention. After that they were made to disappear.  

If you ever needed any more convincing about how in bed Reader's Digest was with the CIA, there it is.  What a disgrace.  Operation Mockingbird reigns supreme.

[Micah Mileto]

Didn't someone from Reader's Digest commission the study that proved the area of the lead smear on the James Tague curbstone was covered with cement paste?

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/C Disk/Curbstone/Item 22.pdf

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/C Disk/Cochran Johnnie/Item 03.pdf

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

That was Henry Hurt who worked a lot with Weisberg.

Hurt worked for Epstein as a researcher on the CIA book Legend.

So they thought his Kennedy book would be similar in intent.  It was not.  Reasonable Doubt, was one of the best books on the JFK case from the end of the HSCA to the beginning of the ARRB.  So there was an internal bloodbath at Reader's Digest when it came time to excerpt it.  Needless to say, it was not excerpted and Hurt had to find another publisher.

[Ron Bulman]

I've read it before but can't remember.  Who/what other corporation owned Readers Digest at the time?   Luce's, Time?  It seems this connection implied a Mockingbird relationship.  I.E., owners friends with Cord Meyer, CIA head of Mockingbird in 63...?

[James DiEugenio]

Reader's Digest was owned by DeWitt Wallace and his wife.  They ran it for decades, then turned it over to a editor in chief.  It was not sold until the nineties and it sold for 2.8 billion.

At the time of Legend, it was the number one selling periodical in America.  Over ten million readers.

The Wallaces were quite conservative, and they backed many conservative causes which is why they were so comfortable with the CIA.

There is supposed to be a good book on them, I think its called Theirs was the Kingdom.

Edited July 27, 2017 by James DiEugenio