John Simkin
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New York Times (1st September, 2012)
In 1961, when Ronald Reagan was defining himself politically, he warned that if left unchecked, government would become “a Big Brother to us all.” But previously undisclosed F.B.I. records, released to me after a long and costly legal fight under the Freedom of Information Act, present a different side of the man who has come to symbolize the conservative philosophy of less government and greater self-reliance.
When Reagan needed government help, he was happy to take it, which is particularly interesting in light of the current debate over “entitlements,” and which might give pause to members of both political parties who speak glowingly of the Reagan legacy.
The documents show that Reagan was more involved than was previously known as a government informer during his Hollywood years, and that in return he secretly received personal and political help from J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime F.B.I. director, at taxpayer expense.
Reagan’s F.B.I. connection is rooted in the turbulent years of post-World War II Hollywood, a time when, Reagan has written, his worldview was coming apart. His film career, his marriage to Jane Wyman and his faith in the political wisdom received from his father, an F.D.R. Democrat, were all faltering.
The timing was thus significant when, one night in 1946, F.B.I. agents dropped by his house overlooking Sunset Boulevard and told him that Communists were infiltrating a liberal group he was involved in. He soon had a new purpose; as he wrote, “I must confess they opened my eyes to a good many things.”
The newly released files flesh out what Reagan only hinted at. They show that he began to report secretly to the F.B.I. about people whom he suspected of Communist activity, some on the scantiest of evidence. And they reveal that during his tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the ’40s and ’50s, F.B.I. agents had access to guild records on dozens of actors. As one F.B.I. official wrote in a memo, Reagan “in every instance has been cooperative.”
Reagan went on to make his fight against Communism in Hollywood a centerpiece of his talks as spokesman for General Electric in the 1950s. Those eventually became broader warnings about what he saw as creeping socialism. The founding fathers, he declared in his 1961 speech, believed “government should only do those things the people cannot do for themselves.”
But that guidance apparently didn’t apply to Reagan himself. According to F.B.I. records, in 1960 he turned to the federal government for help with the kind of problem families usually handle themselves. That March, his close friend George Murphy reached out to an F.B.I. contact, explaining that Reagan and Ms. Wyman, now divorced, were “much concerned” about their estranged daughter, Maureen, then 19. She had moved to Washington, and, her parents had heard, was living with an older, married policeman.
According to an F.B.I. memo: “Jane Wyman wishes to come to Washington to perhaps straighten out her daughter, get her back to Los Angeles, but before doing so desires to know the following: (1) Is [the man in question] employed as an officer of the Metropolitan Police Department?; (2) Is he married?; (3) Is his wife in an institution and what are the details?; and (4) Any other information which might be discreetly developed concerning the relationship.”
At F.B.I. headquarters, supervisors reviewed a background report on Maureen Reagan that they had prepared the previous year, when she applied to work at a federal agency. It provided a glimpse of her family life and quoted an administrator at Marymount Junior College, in Arlington, Va., from which she had dropped out: “Maureen was the victim of a broken home, and because she had resided in boarding schools and been away from parental contact so much of her life she was an insecure individual ‘who could not make up her mind’ and did not achieve goals set by herself or others.”
An assistant F.B.I. director, Cartha DeLoach, recommended that the F.B.I. grant the Reagans’ request, even while noting that “there does not appear to be any F.B.I. jurisdiction here.” Hoover quickly approved the inquiry. Posing as an insurance salesman, one agent made a pretext phone call to neighbors; another contacted a police source; a third interviewed the maid at Maureen Reagan’s rooming house.
The investigation confirmed that Ms. Reagan was living with the married patrolman, and Mr. DeLoach ordered an agent to tell the Reagans via Mr. Murphy “on a highly confidential basis.”
This government assistance did not solve Maureen Reagan’s problems, however. The officer left his wife and married her, but as Ms. Reagan later wrote, he repeatedly beat her. They divorced in 1962. Nor did it bridge the gap between Reagan and his daughter. “I still haven’t spoken openly to my parents, or to anyone in my family, about the details of what I went through,” she wrote in 1989.
Hoover helped Reagan with another family concern, in early 1965, not long before he embarked on his first political campaign, for governor of California. That January, the F.B.I. was closing in on Joseph Bonanno, known as Joe Bananas, the head of one of New York City’s five Mafia families, who owned a house in Arizona.
F.B.I. agents in Phoenix made an unexpected discovery: According to records, “the son of Ronald Reagan was associating with the son of Joe Bonnano [sic].” That is, Michael Reagan, the adopted son of Reagan and Ms. Wyman, was consorting with Bonanno’s son, Joseph Jr. The teenagers had bonded over their shared love of fast cars and acting tough.
(In my legal fight for these files, the F.B.I. initially redacted Michael Reagan’s identity on the ground that this information concerned “law enforcement” activities. But Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court in San Francisco ordered the F.B.I. to disclose it.)
Joseph Jr. was not involved in organized crime, but he was spending time at his father’s home, the inner sanctum. In October 1964, he had been arrested in connection with the beating of a Scottsdale, Ariz., coffee shop manager. And in January 1965, The New York Times reported that the Manhattan federal prosecutor Robert Morgenthau had subpoenaed him to testify about his father.
Following routine procedure, F.B.I. agents in Phoenix asked agents in Los Angeles to interview Ronald Reagan for any information he might have gleaned from his son. The investigation, after all, was a top priority. But Hoover blocked them from questioning Reagan, thus sparing him potentially unfavorable publicity. Declaring it “unlikely that Ronald Reagan would have any information of significance,” Hoover instead ordered agents to warn him about his son’s worrisome friendship.
Reagan expressed his gratitude to an F.B.I. agent, William L. Byrne Jr., on Feb. 1, 1965. Reagan “was most appreciative and stated he realized that such an association and actions on the part of his son might well jeopardize any political aspirations he might have,” according to an F.B.I. report. “He stated that the Bureau’s courtesy in this matter will be kept absolutely confidential. Reagan commented that he realizes that it would be improper to express his appreciation in writing and requested that SA [special Agent] Byrne convey the great admiration he has for the Director and the Bureau and to express his thanks for the Bureau’s cooperation.”
Newspapers carried sensational stories about the F.B.I.’s Bonanno investigation, but the boys’ troublesome relationship never came up. During his campaign for governor, Reagan focused on other people’s children, making protests at the University of California, Berkeley, one of the hottest issues.
Days after he took office in January 1967, Governor Reagan called the F.B.I. and requested a briefing on the demonstrations at Berkeley. Hoover again obliged, confidentially providing information from the bureau’s domestic surveillance files.
Here was Ronald Reagan, avowed opponent of overdependence on government, again taking personal and political help from Hoover.
Perhaps now and then we all need a little help from Big Brother.
Seth Rosenfeld is the author of “Subversives: The F.B.I.’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power.”
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Another good example of Gaeton Fonzi's research is the case of Harry J. Karafin, a reporter for the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers. This case, unlike the JFK assassination, did lead to indictment and imprisonment.
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As Gaeton Fonzi died yesterday I thought it might be worth bumping this thread.
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Very sad news. Gaeton Fonzi contacted me last year and asked me to add something to his biography. It says a lot about the man that he asked me to add details of how long he had been married and the number of grandchildren he had.
I thought members might be interested in reading what he said when he received the Mary Ferrell-JFKLancer Pioneer Award on 21st November 21, 1998.
Like most other Americans, after the initial shock of President Kennedy's assassination had dimmed, we fell into the comfortable assumption that the Government was handling the matter judiciously, that the prestigious panel of respected individuals, headed by the most prestigious member of the American judicial system, would provide us with a thorough and valid appraisal of exactly what had happened when President Kennedy was killed. What led me to clip the article by Vincent Salandria is that it ran counter to that assumption.
It dealt with only one aspect of the report - the sequence of events surrounding the number and direction of the shots. But that just happened to be the area assigned to another Philadelphia lawyer, a young assistant district attorney whose quick intelligence and impressive record had landed him a staff job on the Warren Commission. His name, of course, was Arlen Specter.
I didn't initially understand some of the technical and complex points Salandria made in his article, but I did grasp the fact that what Salandria was implying was that the Warren Commission Report was wrong...
Local reporters had, of course, asked Specter about the Warren Report when it was released. He was vigorous in defense of its conclusions. He called the Commission's investigation the most exhaustive and complete in history. The single bullet theory, he insisted, was the only possible way to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald had shot President Kennedy. The reporters dutifully reported what he said.
Amazingly enough, even after all those months had gone by since the release of the Warren Report, I was the first journalist to ask Specter about specific details and about the Report's inconsistencies. I apparently caught Specter off guard.
I was shocked by his confusions, his hemming and hawing, his hesitations and evasions. This from someone who was the epitome of the always cool, collected and verbally masterful lawyer, the former star of the Yale Law debating team. I was even more shocked by his inability to provide valid explanations for some of the most blatant inconsistencies in the Report.
I believe the most crucial was the discrepancy between the levels of the so-called "exit" wound in Kennedy's throat and the holes in the back of Kennedy's jacket and shirt. Why were the holes in his back lower than the hole in Kennedy's throat? I still remember Specter hesitating, stuttering, making a few false starts in attempting to answer that question. Finally, he got up from his desk and came around to stand behind me. Well, he said, it was because the President was waving his arm, and then, trying to illustrate why the jacket would ride up, Specter pulled my arm high over my head - far higher than the Zapruder film showed Kennedy waving his hand. "Wave your arm a few times," Specter said, "wave at the crowd." And then jabbing a finger at the base of my neck - not six inches below my collar, where the holes in Kennedy's jacket and shirt were - Specter said, "Well, see, if the bullet goes in here, the jacket gets hunched up. If you take this point right here and then you strip the coat down, it comes out at a lower point."
"A lower point?" I repeated, wondering if Specter were trying to confuse me or was confused himself.
If the entrance holes were at a lower point than the exit hole, how could Oswald have shot Kennedy from the sixth floor window of the Book Depository?
In the end, Specter admitted they had what he described as - quote - "some problems with that."
My interviews also revealed that the Commission had "some problems" with other troublesome evidence, including the so-called "pristine" bullet, the angle of Governor Connally's wounds, the timing of the shots. "Some problems," indeed. I'll never forget the numbing disbelief I came away with after my interviews with Specter. Vince Salandria was right, the Warren Report was wrong, there had to have been a conspiracy.
We were young once and not so brave. We wanted to cling to the myth of a mystery. We wanted to hang onto the questions of motivation and parade the usual suspects and the illusion of a dilemma before the American people. Could the Mob have killed President Kennedy? Could the KGB have killed President Kennedy? Could Castro have killed President Kennedy? Could anti-Castro Cubans have killed President Kennedy? Could the CIA have killed President Kennedy?
I suggest to you that if it ever becomes known what specific individuals comprised the apparatus that killed Kennedy, those individuals will have some association with any or all of the above. And still the emergence of such individuals, dead or alive, will add but inconsequential detail to the truth about the assassination. Because we have known -- and have long known - who killed President Kennedy.
Could any but a totally controlling force - a power elite within the United States Government itself - call it what you will, the military-intelligence complex, the national security state, the corporate-warfare establishment - could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to first cover up the crime and then control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy a false mystery for 35 years?
Is there any doubt that the Warren Commission deliberately set out not to tell the American people the truth?
There is a brief glimpse, an illustration of the level at which that deceit was carried out, in an incident that occurred during the Warren Commission's investigation. Commission chairman Earl Warren himself, with then Representative Gerald Ford at his side, was interviewing a barman, Curtis LaVerne Crafard. Crafard had worked at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club before he was seized by FBI men as he was hightailing it out of town the day after the assassination, having told someone, "They are not going to pin this on me!"
In the interview, Warren asks Craford what he did before he was a bartender.
"I was a Master sniper in the Marine Corps," Craford answered.*
The next question that Warren immediately asked was: "What kind of entertainment did they have at the club?"
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In 1969 John Henry Faulk was on the Board of Directors of The Committee to Investigate Assassinations: http://jfk.hood.edu/...Misc-SG-095.pdf
Faulk narrated the Roger Craig documentary, The Man Who Knew Too Much: http://jfk.hood.edu/...ry/Item 137.pdf
That does not really surprise me after watching the documentary above. He reminds me of Jim Marrs, another great Texan, who I had the pleasure to meet a few years ago in Dallas.
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John Henry Faulk does not say anything about the JFK assassination but has plenty to say about American foreign policy and the way the media reports events. A very interesting figure who deserves a detailed biography on Spartacus. I have just purchased his book, The Uncensored John Henry Faulk (1985), on Amazon.
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From the Faulk Papers
box 3E202 Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran, 1978-1979 Committee to Investigate Assassins, 1969-1976, undated
Thank you for that. Unfortunately, the material is not online and you have to be in Texas to gain access to this material. There is a 50 minute television program on Faulk that I intend to watch later today.
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Does anyone know if John Henry Faulk had anything to say about the JFK assassination?
Faulk is an interesting character and one of the leading radical figures in Texas in 1963. Faulk was a leading radio broadcasters in Texas after the war. He joined WCBS for a four-hour morning talk show, the John Henry Faulk Show in the early 1950s. Page S. Foshee has argued: "Radio provided Faulk the audience he, as a storyteller, craved... The program, which featured music, political humor, and listener participation, ran for six years." Studs Terkel described him as a storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain.
Faulk was also an active member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. At the time there was a struggle for control between conservative and liberal members. Faulk was determined that the actors' union take a stand against the McCarthyite practice of blacklisting entertainers with alleged connections to the American Communist Party. Faulk and his friends eventually gained control of the organisation.This upset Vincent Hartnett, the publisher of Red Channels and the founder of Aware, which published a series of bulletins that were distributed to industry executives about the political views of potential employees.
Faulk lost his job and later discovered that Aware had labeled him a communist because of his involvement in the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union. With the encouragement and financial support of Edward R. Murrow, Faulk sued Hartnett and Johnson. Faulk engaged New York attorney Louis Nizer to take his case whereas Roy Cohn appeared for the defence. On June 28, 1962, the jury awarded Faulk the largest libel judgment in history to that date - $3.5 million. An appeals court later lowered the amount to $500,000. His case helped to break the blacklist for others but CBS refused to rehire him and he never returned to radio broadcasting.
Faulk remained an outspoken figure in Texas and I wonder if he ever took a look at the Kennedy assassination.
Phil Ochs recorded a song about Faulk.
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I know how it works alright, especially with you as adjudicator.
Double yawn.
Robert's role in this thread has been more like that of a barrister, where the required competencies include
advocacy and interpersonal skills, an analytical mind and honed critical thinking abilities.
The real adjudicators are the people that have read or followed this thread. Each one of them can make up
their own mind about whose arguments contain winning merit.
Judging from Robert's posts and Jim's replies, that shouldn't prove too difficult.
Your contributions have been very good as well. In fact, in my opinion, Michael and Robert are the best two posters on this forum.
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There are accounts of a scathing command to fire Maltz from Joseph P. Kennedy.
Interesting. Have you got a source for this?
Trumbo believed that JFK had been a victim of a conspiracy and joined forces in 1973 with Donald Freed and Mark Lane to write the political thriller, Executive Action. The film opened to a storm of controversy with the suggestion that Kennedy had been a victim of the Military-Industrial Complex and was removed totally from the movie theaters by early December 1973.
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In the early 1950s the Kennedy family was closely associated with Joe McCarthy and his anti-communist crusade. Joe Kennedy shared McCarthy's political views and encouraged his sons to join the campaign. Robert Kennedy was so impressed with McCarthy that he asked him in 1951 to be godfather to his first child, Kathleen. In 1953 McCarthy appointed Robert as one of the 15 assistant counsels to the Senate subcommittee on investigations. As a result, Robert was closely identified with the witch-hunt of liberals, socialists and communists in the 1950s.
By the time he began his campaign to become the presidential candidate in 1959, John Kennedy decided to try and distance himself from McCarthyism. However, at the same time, he was worried that he would be accused of moving too far to the left. In 1959 Frank Sinatra announced that he proposed to break the blacklist by employing Albert Maltz as the screenwriter of the proposed film, The Execution of Private Slovik.
Sinatra soon came under attack for his decision. He nearly came to blows with John Wayne, who called him a "Commie" when they met in the street. However, what really hurt Sinatra was the criticism he received in the press. This included claims that his friend, John Kennedy, also wanted an end to the blacklist. Sinatra issued a statement to the press: "I would like to comment on the attacks from certain quarters on Senator John Kennedy by connecting him with my decision on employing a screenwriter. This type of partisan politics is hitting below the belt... I make movies. I do not ask the advice of Senator Kennedy on whom I should hire. Senator Kennedy does not ask me how he should vote in the Senate."
Michael Freedland, the author of Witch-Hunt in Hollywood (2009) argues that "Kennedy didn't like the association with the name of one of the Hollywood Ten. He would soon run from President and he was worried that he could harm him." A few days later Sinatra took out another paid-for advertisement in the newspapers: "In view of the reaction of my family, friends and the American public I've instructed my lawyers to make a settlement with Albert Maltz. My conversations with Maltz indicate that he has an affirmative, pro-American approach to the story, but the American public has indicated it feels that the morality of hiring Maltz is the most crucial matter and I will accept this majority opinion."
Kirk Douglas had more courage than Sinatra and decided a few weeks later to employ another of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo, to write the screenplay for his proposed film, Spartacus. Based on the novel by another left-wing blacklisted writer, Howard Fast, it is a film that examines the spirit of revolt. Trumbo refers back to his experiences of the House of Un-American Activities Committee. At the end, when the Romans finally defeat the rebellion, the captured slaves refuse to identify Spartacus. As a result, all are crucified. This was a reference to those Hollywood figures who named other members of left-wing organizations in the 1930s in order to continue their own careers.
As Ring Landner Jr., another member of the Hollywood Ten, pointed out in his autobiography, I’d Hate Myself in the Morning (2000): “Sinatra caved in, paying off Maltz in cash and eventually scrubbing the project, perhaps partly out of fear of harming his friend John F. Kennedy, a candidate for President at the time. (Following the election that fall, however, the President-elect and his brother, Attorney-General-to-be Robert Kennedy, crossed a picket line to see Spartacus at a theater in Washington D.C., and pronounced it good.)”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmaltz.htm
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Reagan epitomized an "empty suit." He was the first President who'd been divorced, was estranged from all his children in some way, and was totally dominated by his wife. Despite this, he was associated with "family values." He seldom went to church, and worked fewer hours than any modern President, yet he was defined as a "traditionalist" and espoused the value of "hard work."
Reagan himself was relatively harmless; a puppet who knew how to obey orders. His administration was deadly to most Americans, as the deindustrialization of the country and the destruction of the unions began on his watch. The neo-cons established a foothold in his White House and have controlled our foreign policy ever since.
It's a travesty that Reagan has been granted a false legacy, whereby he is credited with ending the Cold War and cutting back "gubmint." It reflects poorly on today's conservatives (and pretty much the tne entire Republican party) that they consider Reagan their ultimate hero.
A recent poll showed that Reagan was popular with the US public because he "won" the Cold War. If that was the case, how do they explain China? Isn't it still a communist country? It could be argued that Reagan's spending on the military rather than on domestic infastructure, allowed China to pose a serious economic threat to the US.
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It's not just a museum, but will be a theater, internet cafe and research center as well, with an archive, writers in residence, a place for researchers to stay.
It's a multi-million dollar project that I hope will become a reality in our lifetime.
BK
There is definitely a need for such a project. However, if you need to raise so much money I doubt very much if it will happen. In the meantime, it will be up to historians running websites to make sure this information enters the public domain.
By the way, have you read Lary May's, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000) and Francis Stoner Saunders' The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts (2000)? Both books consider the work of our old friend, C.D. Jackson, for the CIA, in controlling the media.
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Joan LaCour was a fellow member of the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and the Professions (HICCASP), a left-wing pressure group: "I have never met a more limited man - to put it politely. He was stupid. He was an actor who made a good speaker, but talking with him before and after events, this was a man who simply was not well informed, not very knowledgeable. He was a kind of personable performer."
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In 1937 Reagan moved to California and after a screen test with Warner Brothers was given a seven-year contract. The authors of Radical Hollywood (2002) argue that Reagan held left-wing views and applied to join the American Communist Party. According to one FBI informant "Reagan was turned down... for being too dumb."
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Part II: Allen Dulles joins British Intelligence and begins attempts to control the American media.
Thomas E. Mahl, the author of Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States: 1939-44 (1998), has argued that Ernest Cuneo was the "liaison between British Security Coordination and several departments of the U.S. government". Cuneo later wrote to Charles Howard Ellis, assistant-director of the British Security Coordination: "I saw Adolf Berle at State Department, Eddie Tamm, J. Edgar Hoover and more often the Attorney General; on various other matters Dave Niles and the White House and Ed Foley at the Treasury, but as far as I know there wasn't a sentence recorded. I reported to Bill Donovan and George Bowden, but never in writing."
Winston Churchill had a serious problem. Joseph P. Kennedy was the United States Ambassador to Britain. He soon came to the conclusion that the island was a lost cause and he considered aid to Britain fruitless. Kennedy, an isolationist, consistently warned Roosevelt "against holding the bag in a war in which the Allies expect to be beaten." Neville Chamberlain wrote in his diary in July 1940: "Saw Joe Kennedy who says everyone in the USA thinks we shall be beaten before the end of the month." Averell Harriman later explained the thinking of Kennedy and other isolationists: "After World War I, there was a surge of isolationism, a feeling there was no reason for getting involved in another war... We made a mistake and there were a lot of debts owed by European countries. The country went isolationist.
William Stephenson knew that with leading officials supporting isolationism he had to overcome these barriers. His main ally in this was another friend, William Donovan, who he had met in the First World War. "The procurement of certain supplies for Britain was high on my priority list and it was the burning urgency of this requirement that made me instinctively concentrate on the single individual who could help me. I turned to Bill Donovan." Donovan arranged meetings with Henry Stimson (Secretary of War), Cordell Hull (Secretary of State) and Frank Knox (Secretary of the Navy). The main topic was Britain's lack of destroyers and the possibility of finding a formula for transfer of fifty "over-age" destroyers to the Royal Navy without a legal breach of U.S. neutrality legislation. Lord Lothian, the British ambassador in Washington, contacted the government on 28th July, 1940, and told them that Britain had entered the war with 176 destroyers and that only 70 of these were still afloat. He requested 40 to 100 destroyers and that only 70 of these were still afloat. He also requested 40 to 100 destroyers and 100 flying boats.
It was decided to send William Donovan to Britain on a fact-finding mission. He left on 14th July, 1940 with the journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer. When he heard the news, Joseph P. Kennedy complained: "Our staff, I think is getting all the information that possibility can be gathered, and to send a new man here at this time is to me the height of nonsense and a definite blow to good organization." He added that the trip would "simply result in causing confusion and misunderstanding on the part of the British". Andrew Lycett has argued: "Nothing was held back from the big American. British planners had decided to take him completely into their confidence and share their most prized military secrets in the hope that he would return home even more convinced of their resourcefulness and determination to win the war."
William Donovan arrived back in the United States in early August, 1940. In his report to President Franklin D. Roosevelt he argued: "(1) That the British would fight to the last ditch. (2) They could not hope to hold to hold the last ditch unless they got supplies at least from America. (3) That supplies were of no avail unless they were delivered to the fighting front - in short, that protecting the lines of communication was a sine qua non. (4) That Fifth Column activity was an important factor." Donovan also urged that the government should sack Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, who was predicting a German victory. Edgar Ansel Mowrer also wrote a series of articles, based on information supplied by William Stephenson, that Nazi Germany posed a serious threat to the United States.
On 22nd August, 1940, Stephenson reported to London that the destroyer deal was agreed upon. The agreement for transferring 50 aging American destroyers, in return for the rights to air and naval basis in Bermuda, Newfoundland, the Caribbean and British Guiana, was announced 3rd September, 1940. The bases were leased for 99 years and the destroyers were of great value as convey escorts. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the British Chief of Combined Operations, commented: "We were told that the man primarily responsible for the loan of the 50 American destroyers to the Royal Navy at a critical moment was Bill Stephenson; that he had managed to persuade the president that this was in the ultimate interests of America themselves and various other loans of that sort were arranged. These destroyers were very important to us...although they were only old destroyers, the main thing was to have combat ships that could actually guard against and attack U-boats."
Stephenson was very concerned with the growth of the American First Committee. by the spring of 1941, the British Security Coordination estimated that there were 700 chapters and nearly a million members of isolationist groups. Leading isolationists were monitored, targeted and harassed. When Gerald Nye spoke in Boston in September 1941, thousands of handbills were handed out attacking him as an appeaser and Nazi lover. Following a speech by Hamilton Fish, a member of a group set-up by the BSC, the Fight for Freedom, delivered him a card which said, "Der Fuhrer thanks you for your loyalty" and photographs were taken.
A BSC agent approached Donald Chase Downes and told him that he was working under the direct orders of Winston Churchill. "Our primary directive from Churchill is that American participation in the war is the most important single objective for Britain. It is the only way, he feels, to victory over Nazism." Downes agreed to work for the BSC in spying on the American First Committee. He was also instructed to find information on German consulates in Boston and Cleveland and the Italian consulate in the capital. He later recalled in his autobiography, The Scarlett Thread (1953) that he received assistance in his work from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Congress for Industrial Organisation and U.S. army counter-intelligence. Bill Macdonald, the author of The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents (2001), has pointed out: "Downes eventually discovered there was Nazi activity in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland and Boston. In some cases they traced actual transfers of money from the Nazis to the America Firsters."
Charles Howard Ellis was sent to New York City to work alongside William Stephenson as assistant-director. Together they recruited several businessmen, journalists, academics and writers into the British Security Coordination. This included Roald Dahl, H. Montgomery Hyde, Ian Fleming, Ivar Bryce, David Ogilvy, Paul Denn, Eric Maschwitz, Giles Playfair, Cedric Belfrage, Benn Levy, Noël Coward and Gilbert Highet. The CIA historian, Thomas F. Troy has argued: "BSC was not just an extension of SIS, but was in fact a service which integrated SIS, SOE, Censorship, Codes and Ciphers, Security, Communications - in fact nine secret distinct organizations. But in the Western Hemisphere Stephenson ran them all."
Grace Garner, Stephenson's secretary, claimed he recruited several journalists including Sydney Morrell from the Daily Express and Doris Sheridan, from the Daily Mirror. "This was propaganda, or at least putting forward the British case. Sheridan liaised with the Arab sections in New York, keeping in touch with foreign nationals. The English playwright Eric Maschwitz was recruited to write propaganda and scripts. University professor Bill Deaken worked for the office, as well as the philosopher A. J. Ayer." Cedric Belfrage and Gilbert Highet were also recruited by Stephenson: "Belfrage was brought in as one of the propaganda people... he was a known communist... Gilbert Highet was in propaganda with Belfrage." John D. Bernal, used to call in the office. Garner described as a "dead ringer" for Harpo Marx. "You could have walked him straight onto the set. Wild. He had a funny hat on, and this saggy, greeny old coat, bulging with documents."
Ian Fleming, Louis Mountbatten and James Roosevelt were visitors to the British Security Coordination head office. Grace Garner recalls: "Mountbatten would not come to the office frequently. Fleming came in from time to time, and of course they were both so good-looking that just like dominoes, the girls would go down - whoosh, like that.... James Roosevelt, the president's son, did a few things in the way of propaganda for Britain, and he appeared at meetings."
William Allen White, the veteran journalist, had established the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA) in May, 1940. White gave an interview to the Chicago Daily News where he argued: "Here is a life and death struggle for every principle we cherish in America: For freedom of speech, of religion, of the ballot and of every freedom that upholds the dignity of the human spirit... Here all the rights that common man has fought for during a thousand years are menaced... The time has come when we must throw into the scales the entire moral and economic weight of the United States on the side of the free peoples of Western Europe who are fighting the battle for a civilized way of life." It was not long before White's organization had 300 chapters nationwide.
Members of the CDAAA argued that by advocating American military materiel support of Britain was the best way to keep the United States out of the war in Europe. It played an important role in the passing of the Lend-Lease Act on 11th March, 1941. The legislation gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the powers to sell, transfer, exchange, lend equipment to any country to help it defend itself against the Axis powers. A sum of $50 billion was appropriated by Congress for Lend-Lease. The money went to 38 different countries with Britain receiving over $31 billion.
However, the CDAAA refused to support military intervention in the war. William Stephenson as the head of the British Security Coordination (BSC), found this frustrating and he encouraged William Donovan to recruit Americans to start a much more militant organisation. Donovan approached Allen W. Dulles and along with BSC agent, Sydney Morrell, to establish the Fight for Freedom (FFF) group in April 1941. Members included Ulric Bell, (Executive Chairman), Peter Cusick (Executive Secretary), Joseph Alsop, Henry Luce, Dean G. Acheson, James P. Warburg, Marshall Field III, Fiorello LaGuardia, Lewis William Douglas, Carter Glass, Harold K. Guinzburg, Conyers Read, Spyros Skouras and Henry P. Van Dusen. The group also contained several journalists such as Herbert Agar (Louisville Courier-Journal), Geoffrey Parsons (New York Herald Tribune), Ralph Ingersoll (Picture Magazine) and Elmer Davis (CBS). At its peak, the FFF headquarters at 1270 Sixth Avenue in New York City had an office staff of twenty-five.
Fight for Freedom group monitored the activities of the leading isolationist organization, the America First Committee. Leading isolationists were also targeted and harassed. When Gerald Nye spoke in Boston in September 1941, thousands of handbills were handed out attacking him as an appeaser and Nazi lover. Following a speech by Hamilton Stuyvesan Fish, a member of a group set-up by the BSC, the Fight for Freedom, delivered him a card which said, "Der Fuhrer thanks you for your loyalty" and photographs were taken.
In 1941 BSC agent Donald MacLaren employed Rex Stout, George Merton (another BSC agent) and Sylvia Porter of the New York Post, to write a propaganda booklet entitled Sequel to the Apocalypse: The Uncensored Story: How Your Dimes and Quarters Helped Pay for Hitler's War. It was published in 1942. Stout also hosted three weekly radio shows, and coordinated the volunteer services of American writers to help the war effort.
Another BSC agent, Sanford Griffith, established a company Market Analysts Incorporated and was initially commissioned to carry out polls for the anti-isolationist Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies and Fight for Freedom group. Griffith's assistant, Francis Adams Henson, a long time activist against the Nazi Germany government, later recalled: "My job was to use the results of our polls, taken among their constituents, to convince on-the-fence Congressmen and Senators that they should favor more aid to Britain."
As Richard W. Steele has pointed out: "public opinion polls had become a political weapon that could be used to inform the views of the doubtful, weaken the commitment of opponents, and strengthen the conviction of supporters." William Stephenson later admitted: "Great care was taken beforehand to make certain the poll results would turn out as desired. The questions were to steer opinion toward the support of Britain and the war... Public Opinion was manipulated through what seemed an objective poll."
Michael Wheeler, the author of Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America (2007): "Proving that a given poll is rigged is difficult because there are so many subtle ways to fake data... a clever pollster can just as easily favor one candidate or the other by making less conspicuous adjustments, such as allocating the undecided voters as suits his needs, throwing out certain interviews on the grounds that they were non-voters, or manipulating the sequence and context within which the questions are asked... Polls can even be rigged without the pollster knowing it.... Most major polling organizations keep their sampling lists under lock and key."
The main target of these polls concerned the political views of leading politicians opposed to Lend-Lease. This included Hamilton Stuyvesan Fish. In February 1941, a poll of Fish's constituents said that 70 percent of them favored the passage of Lend-Lease. James H. Causey, president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Social Sciences, was highly suspicious of this poll and called for a congressional investigation.
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J.Edgar Hoover was collecting information on Rex Stout from the 1930s. He was very much involved in left-wing organisations and in 1940, as an agent for British Security Coordination helped to form the Fight for Freedom organization. Hoover was also suspicious of his leadership of the Authors League of America that was a target of Joseph McCarthy.
It has been pointed out that about a third of Stout's FBI file is devoted to his 1965 novel, The Doorbell Rang. The novel concerns the publication of The FBI Nobody Knows (1964) by Fred J. Cook. In the novel, the wealthy Mrs. Rachel Bruner buys 10,000 copies of Cook's book and sends them to persons of influence, including cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and heads of corporations. Bruner believes that as a result of her actions she is being persecuted by the FBI and employs Stout's fictional detective Nero Wolfe, to investigate the organization.
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In 1934 Rex Stout published the political thriller, The President Vanishes (1934). The book concerns the mysterious disappearance of the president who was facing impeachment, over his foreign policy that might result in a war. It eventually becomes clear that the president has staged his own disappearance to counter an impending military coup. It was later argued that the novel was based on President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his problems with the political conspiracy alleged by Major General Smedley Butler in 1933. Jacques Barzun has argued: "To a reader of keener political-mindedness... this may be a sufficiently gripping tale. A peace-loving president, in a period of European anxiety about war, is kidnapped. The reason for the deed is as surprising as the perpetrator."
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The video is highly misleading. The Panorama program did not "predict" an attack, it just showed what one might be like if it did take place.
Unfortunately, there will probably be a terrorist attack in London during the Olympics. However, it is probably going to be an attack on a soft-target like the road system which will cause problems for the Olympics.
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Fascinating. Thank you for that. Are you aware of any biographies written on Gallup?
I am not aware of any mainstream biographies. Susan Ohmer wrote this book about Gallup and Hollywood: http://books.google.... gallup&f=false
I have just ordered Susan Ohmer's book, sounds very interesting. Did you know Alfred Hitchcock was a British Security Coordination agent who was sent to Hollywood to join up with producer Walter Wanger, also a BSC agent and the founder of the Anti-Nazi League in the USA. Their first film together was Foreign Correspondent (1940). This was based on BSC agent's Vincent Sheean's political memoir Personal History (1935). All this is important as it was the beginning of how the intelligence services gained control of Hollywood. In fact, McCarthyism was the main way that the CIA got back control of the industry. The "Hollywood Ten" were writers, producers and directors, who had been working on these anti-Nazi films in the 1930s and 1940s. Nine of them were Jewish. After the war, Wanger went along with this and made anti-communist films. The most important of these was the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Ironically, the title of his biography by Matthew H. Bernstein is "Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent" (2000)
I have also ordered:
Michael Wheeler, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America (2007)
George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-71 (1972)
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John, your Spartacus page on Edwin Wilson lists David Corn's book Blonde Ghost as a primary source. Corn wrote:
The next year, (Edwin) Wilson jumped to the Special Operations Division, which was in charge of covert actions. First, he served as an advance man for Hubert Humphrey's vice-presidential campaign, allowing the Agency to keep tabs on Johnson's running mate. After the election, Wilson opened a front business: Maritime Consulting Associates, an ocean freight forwarder that handled sea logistics for CIA programs. The Agency man in charge of Maritime was Tom Clines, deputy chief of the division's maritime branch.
Wilson ran Maritime Consulting as if it were a regular company. He recruited a figurehead president and worked hard: weapons to Angola, communications equipment to Morocco, materiel to Laos.He also found non-Agency business to conduct-activity that put cash in his pockets. For Langley's fronts, profits meant better cover. Wilson had a golden gig. There was little auditing of his books. No one noticed when he padded his costs. He could be both a secret agent and a wealthy man.
In their 2004 book with a lengthy title (All is Clouded by Desire; Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Organized Crime) authors Alan Block and Constance Weaver wrote that Wilson's Maritime Consulting Associates "was also a front for a polling firm established in the Philippines in collaboration with George Gallup to influence Philippine politics."
Fascinating. Thank you for that. Are you aware of any biographies written on Gallup?
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I am currently working on an article on George H. Gallup, the CIA and polling organizations, and would be grateful for any information anyone has on the subject.
Elmo Roper would certainly be a person of interest.
Sure is. Thank you for that. People with Roper's left-wing views did not find it difficult to work with the BSC and the OSS during the war. However, they tended to be marginalized during the Cold War.
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Recently I read that James Truitt was also influential in key developments of Cold War culture.
James Truitt was also one of the main sources about the death of Mary Pinchot Meyer. His wife was Mary's best friend and she knew all about her diary. Unfortunately, Mary also told her sister, Ben Bradlee's wife. The reason he broke cover was that he was sacked by Ben Bradlee, another agent of the CIA.
Questions for Peter Janney on his book Mary’s Mosaic
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Jim, you are always telling us what a great historian you are and that you are always very careful about examining the accuracy and reliability of your sources. I am therefore interested in your sources to support your amazing claim that I “allowed” Peter Janney to write his book on Mary Pinchot Meyer.
If you said that I allow you to make attacks on me on the forum I would have more understanding of what you meant.