John Simkin

November 30, 2011

Richard Wright, the grandson of slaves, was born in Natchez, Mississippi, on 4th September, 1908. His father deserted the family in 1914 and when Richard was ten years old his mother had a paralytic stroke. The family were extremely poor and after a brief formal education he was forced to seek employment in order to support his mother.

He later wrote: "The bleakness of the future affected my will to study. What had I learned so far that would help me to make a living? Nothing. I could be a porter like my father before me, but what else? And the problem of living as a Negro was cold and hard. What was it that made the hate of whites for blacks so steady, seemingly so woven into the texture of things? What kind of life was possible under that hate? How had that hate come to be? Nothing about the problems of Negroes was ever taught in the classrooms at school; and whenever I would raise these questions with the boys, they would either remain silent or turn the subject into a joke."

Wright worked in a series of menial jobs in Memphis. He wanted to continue his education by using the local library but Jim Crow laws prevented this. Wright solved the problem by forging notes to pretend he was collecting the books for a white man. During this period he was particularly impressed by the work of H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis.

After passing a civil service examination Wright finds work as a post office clerk. After the Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Depression, Wright lost his job. For a period he found employment with the Negro Burial Society but that came to an end in 1931 and he was forced to go on relief. After several temporary jobs the relief office find him work with the Federal Writers' Project. This enables him to publish his short story, Superstition in the magazine, Abbott's Monthly.

In 1932 Wright began attending meetings of the literary group, the John Reed Club. He later wrote: "The revolutionary words leaped from the page and struck me with tremendous force. My attention was caught by the similarity of the experiences of workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a whole. It seemed to me that here at last, in the realm of revolutionary expression, Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role."

He met several Marxists at the club and later that year joined the American Communist Party. His poems, short-stories and essays are accepted by various left-wing journals including the New Masses, Left Front and International Literature. His poem, Between the World and Me, and a short story, Big Boy Leaves Homes, were both of based on the lynching of a black man that he had witnessed when he was a child.

In May 1937 Wright moved to New York where he became Harlem editor of the Daily Worker and a new literary quarterly, New Challenge. The following year, Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of short stories about racism in the United States, was published. In 1940, Bright and Morning Star, was published and Wright announced that all royalties would be used to help to pay the appeal costs of Earl Browder, the general secretary of the American Communist Party, who had been sentenced to four years in prison for misusing a passport.

Wright's novel, Native Son, was accepted by the publishers, Harper, in 1940. The Book of the Month Club selected the novel as its March selection, therefore ensuring large sales and publicity. Over a quarter of a million copies were sold within four weeks, making it the fastest selling Harper novel in twenty years.

Irving Howe argued: "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. No matter how much qualifying the book might later need, it made impossible a repetition of the old lies. In all its crudeness, melodrama, and claustrophobia of vision, Richard Wright's novel brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear, and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture."

Native Son is the story of Bigger Thomas, a black ghetto dweller in Chicago, who is hired by a wealthy family as their chauffeur. He is befriended by the family's liberal daughter and her Communist boyfriend. Thomas accidentally kills the daughter and later he murders his girlfriend after she refuses to help him. He is captured and defended by a Marxist lawyer who tries to get him to articulate the harshness of his life that has led to these violent acts. He is unable to do this and and the end he can only affirm that: "What I killed for, I am!" Some critics attacked the novel for what they believed was an excess of hatred and violence. Marxists also criticised the book for placing too much emphasis on individual rebellion, and not enough on class consciousness and group action.

Wright's next book, Twelve Million Black Voices (1941), was a sociological study of the black migration from the rural South to the urban North. an illustrated folk history of American blacks. Wright deliberately used the word black rather than Negro. Wright argued that the word Negro is a white man's word that artificially limits the scope of a black man's life and helps to set it apart from other Americans.

In the book Wright argues that African civilization is a culture that should inspire pride: "We had our own civilization in Africa before we were captured off to this land. You may smile when we call the way of life we lived in Africa 'civilization', but in numerous respects the culture of many of our tribes was equal to that of the lands from which the slave captors came." The book was hardly reviewed in the United States but received favourable reviews in Europe.

By 1944 Wright felt that the American Communist Party was almost as oppressive as capitalism. He left the party and published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled The God That Failed. He remained a Marxist but as he pointed out in his article, "I wanted to be a communist, but my kind of communist". He added: "I knew in my heart that I should never be able to feel and that simple sharpness about life, should never again express such passionate hope, should never again make so total a commitment of faith."

William Patterson claims that Wright left the party after a dispute with Harry Haywood: "Although he was convinced that the political philosophy of Communism was correct, he did not see a book as a political weapon. He thought that the creative genius of a writer should be freed from all restrictions and restraints, especially those of a political nature, and that the writer should write as he pleased. Unfortunately, Harry Haywood, then top organizer on the Southside, did not exhibit the slightest appreciation that he was dealing with a sensitive, immature creative genius with whom it was necessary to exercise great patience. He criticized some of Wright's earlier characters sharply and tried to force him into a mold that was not to his liking. Name-calling resulted and Haywood used his political position to get a vote of censure against Wright, who thereupon resigned from the Party."

Wright's short novel, The Man Who Lived Underground appeared in 1944. It tells the story of a black man who, after being forced by the police to sign a confession to a crime he had not committed, escapes and hides in a sewer. The book influenced his close friend, Ralph Ellison, in the writing of his novel, the Invisible Man.

Wright's powerful autobiography, Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth was published in 1945. After the Second World War, hostility towards writers with left-wing views increased and in 1947 he moved to Paris. He told a friend, that "any black man remaining in the United States after the age of thirty-five was bound to kill, be killed, or go insane." In Paris he joined a group of black writers and artists that included James Baldwin, Chester Himes and Ollie Harrington.

After a spell of inactivity, Wright published two novels, The Outsider (1953) and Savage Holiday (1954). He also travelled to Ghana and wrote an account of his experiences in the book, Black Power (1954). This was followed by a collection of essays, White Man, Listen (1957). The Psychological Reactions of Oppressed People, provided a warning of what might happen if those in power continued to deny human rights to black people. In another essay, The Literature of the Negro in the United States, Wright promoted the work of Phyllis Wheatley, William Du Bois, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.

Wright's work inspired a generation of black writers. Eldridge Cleaver wrote in Soul on Ice (1968): "Of all black American novelists, and indeed of all American novelists of any hue, Richard Wright reigns supreme for all profound political, economic, and social reference."

Wright's final novel, The Long Dream was published in 1958. Richard Wright died of a heart attack in Paris on 28th November, 1960. There had been no history of heart trouble and rumours circulated that he had been murdered. Wright was himself concerned about the possibility of being killed since being investigated by Joseph McCarthy in 1953. Just before his death Wright had received several mysterious phone calls from people with fictitious names.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAwrightR.htm

November 30, 2011

Best American Journalism of the 20th Century

The following works were chosen as the 20th century's best American journalism by a panel of experts assembled by New York University's journalism department.

81. Herbert Bayard Swope: “Klan Exposed,” The New York World, 1921

82. William Allen White: “To an Anxious Friend,” The Emporia (Kan.) Gazette,1922

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAswope.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAwhiteWA.htm

November 30, 2011

In October 1921 Herbert Bayard Swope started a 21-day crusade against the Ku Klux Klan in October 1921, which won the newspaper the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1922. It has been claimed that this was one of the most important examples of investigative journalism in American history.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAswope.htm

November 29, 2011

In 1936 Howard K. Smith found work as a reporter in New Orleans before securing a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University. He became involved in student politics and became the first American to be elected chairman of the university Labour club. He was also active in the campaign against the appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain and his Conservative government.

On the outbreak of the Second World War the United Press sent Smith to Nazi Germany to report on the conflict. In 1941 he was recruited by Edward Murrow to work for CBS Berlin Bureau. Within a few months Smith was arrested by the Gestapo for refusing to include Nazi propaganda in his scripts being broadcast. When he was released he moved to Switzerland. The following day Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States entered the war. For the next two years Smith reported on Germany and central Europe from Berne. He also published Last Train from Berlin (1942).

In 1945 Smith accompanied Allied troops when they invaded Nazi Germany. After the war he reported on the Nuremberg Trials. He was the only journalist to be selected to witness the execution of Wilhelm Frick, Hans Frank, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Walther Funk, Fritz Saukel, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Joachim von Ribbentrop on 1st October, 1946. Smith now joined the CBS London Bureau.

He was a sympathetic reporter of Clement Attlee and his Labour Government (1945-51). In 1949 Smith published The State of Europe, where he advocated a planned economy and the Welfare State for post-war Europe. Senator Joseph McCarthy denounced Smith as a communist sympathizer and in 1950 was one of those listed in Red Channels. Most of those listed found it very difficult to find work.

Smith returned to the United States in 1957 and three years later became head of the CBS Washington Bureau where he hosted programmes such as Eyewitness to History (1960-62) and Face the Nation (1960-63). In 1960 Smith was chosen to chair the presidential election debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the first of its kind on television.

In 1961 Smith went to Alabama, where he witnessed the Ku Klux Klan beating up Freedom Riders in Birmingham. Smith then went on to make a television documentary on the struggle for Civil Rights. The network's head of news objected to the ending of the documentary when Smith quoted Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." He claimed that Smith was guilty of editorialism and told him to delete the quote from Burke. Smith refused and when William Paley, the head of CBS, failed to support him, he resigned. Smith commented: "They (CBS) said it was against the rules to take sides on a controversial issue. I said, I wish you had told me that during World War II, when I took sides against Hitler."

Smith now joined ABC and became the presenter of Howard K. Smith - News and Comment. In November 1962 Richard Nixon was defeated in the election for California governor. Smith made a programme about Nixon's career entitled The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon. This included an interview with Alger Hiss, the state department official accused of espionage and jailed for perjury. Smith was severely criticised for including Hiss and the sponsor quickly ended support of the show and it was cancelled.

ABC recalled Smith to television three years later and he presented ABC Scope (1966-68) and ABC Evening News (1969-75). By this time his political views had become more conservative and he gave his full support to the Vietnam War. However he did take part in the campaign for Richard Nixon to resign over the Watergate scandal.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsmithHK.htm

November 29, 2011

Charles Edward Russell worked for "The Davenport Gazette", "The Minneapolis Journal", "The Detroit Tribune", "The New York World", "The New York Herald" and "The Chicago Examiner". In 1905 Russell wrote an article entitled The Greatest Trust in the World for "Everybody's Magazine". The article revealled how the Beef Trust had used its economic position to increase the price of beef. At the same time Russell argued that the development of technology had substantially reduced the cost of producing meat. He followed this with "The Uprising of Many" (1907) and "Lawless Wealth: The Origin of Some Great American Fortunes" (1908), a book about the American Tobacco Trust.

William Randolph Hearst, the owner of "Cosmopolitan" also employed Russell. Articles written by Russell for the magazine included two collections: At the Throat of the Republic (December, 1907 - March, 1908) and What Are You Going to Do About It? (July, 1910 - January, 1911). Other articles written by Russell for the magazine included The Growth of Caste in America (March, 1907) and Colarado - New Tricks in an Old Game (December, 1910).

Lincoln Steffens recalled in his autobiography: "I recall vividly meeting Charles Edward Russell and asking him what he had got out of it all. He was the most earnest, emotional, and gifted of the muckrakers. There was something of the martyr in him; he had given up better jobs to go forth, rake in hand, to show things up; and he wanted them to be changed. His face looked as if he had suffered from the facts he saw and reported."

In 1909 Charles Edward Russell joined with several other radicals to form the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Other members included Mary White Ovington, William English Walling, Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Sophonisba Breckinridge, John Haynes Holmes, Mary McLeod Bethune, George Henry White, William Du Bois, John Dewey, William Dean Howells, Lillian Wald, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard and Ida Wells-Barnett.

Other investigations carried out by Russell included Georgia's prison system (Everybody's Magazine, June, 1908) and how big business controlled the content of newspapers, How Business Controls News in "Pearson's Weekly" in May, 1914. Russell was proud of being a muckraking journalist: "Looking back, it seems to me clear that the muckraking magazine was the greatest single power that ever appeared in this country. The mere mention in one of these magazines of something that was wrong was usually sufficient to bring about at least an ostensible reformation."

A member of the American Socialist Party, on two occasions he was unsuccessful in his attempt to be elected as Governor of the State of New York. He explained in his book, Why I Am a Socialist (1910): "This is the offer of Socialism: the righting of the centuries of wrong the producers have suffered, the dawn of a genuine democracy, peace instead of war, sufficiency instead of suffering, life raised above the level of appetite, a chance at last for the good in people to attain their normal development."

Benjamin Flower argued in his book, Progressive Men, Women and Movements (1914), that Russell's work could be compared with that of Upton Sinclair and Jack London: "Charles Edward Russell, Upton Sinclair and Jack London are three very popular authors who have become outspoken Socialists and with the pen and voice have contributed materially to the general educational campaign along radical social lines. Russell was for many years, or until he became so uncompromisingly radical in his utterances as to arouse the enmity of the great interests, he was one of the most popular of our magazine writers."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArussellCE.htm

November 29, 2011

David Graham Phillips once wrote: "Such is the stealthy and treacherous Senate as at present constituted. And such it will continue to be until the people think, instead of shout, about politics; until they judge public men by what they do and are, not by what they say and pretend. However, the fact that the people are themselves responsible for their own betrayal does not mitigate contempt for their hypocritical and cowardly betrayers. A corrupt system explains a corrupt man; it does not excuse him. The stupidity or negligence of the householder in leaving the door unlocked does not lessen the crime of the thief." Phillips accused both main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, in Congress, of joining together to "advance the industrial and financial interests of the wealthy classes of the country". Phillips wrote this in 1906.

Phillips upset a lot of important people with his investigative journalism and he decided he would probably be safer to put his political points in novels. The Plum Tree and Light Fingered Gentry both dealt with political corruption, whereas The Second Generation (1907) looked critical at the issue of inherited wealth. Old Wives for New (1908) was a novel that considered the social and economic position of women. In other novels such as The Conflict (1911), Phillips returned to the subject of political corruption.

On 23rd January, 1911, David Graham Phillips was murdered by Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, a violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Goldsborough believed that the novel, The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, had libelously portrayed his family.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAphillipsDG.htm

November 29, 2011

Does anyone know anything about Harrison Salisbury's reporting on the assassination of JFK?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsalisburyH.htm

November 28, 2011

David Graham Phillips once wrote: "Such is the stealthy and treacherous Senate as at present constituted. And such it will continue to be until the people think, instead of shout, about politics; until they judge public men by what they do and are, not by what they say and pretend. However, the fact that the people are themselves responsible for their own betrayal does not mitigate contempt for their hypocritical and cowardly betrayers. A corrupt system explains a corrupt man; it does not excuse him. The stupidity or negligence of the householder in leaving the door unlocked does not lessen the crime of the thief."

Phillips accused both main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, in Congress, of joining together to "advance the industrial and financial interests of the wealthy classes of the country". Phillips wrote this in 1906.

Phillips upset a lot of inportant people with his investigative journalism that it would probably be safer to put his political points in novels. The Plum Tree and Light Fingered Gentry both dealt with political corruption, whereas The Second Generation (1907) looked critical at the issue of inherited wealth. Old Wives for New (1908) was a novel that considered the social and economic position of women. In other novels such as The Conflict (1911), Phillips returned to the subject of political corruption.

As it happens, this was not a safer way of writing about controversial subjects. On 23rd January, 1911, David Graham Phillips was murdered by Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, a violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Goldsborough believed that the novel, The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, had libelously portrayed his family.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAphillipsDG.htm

November 28, 2011

One of JFK's harshest critics was the journalist, Westbrook Pegler, who had a column in the Washington Post. He was totally opposed to the civil rights movement and argued against the “pernicious heresy against the ancient privilege of human beings to hate.” He also argued in favour of "the praiseworthy pastime of batting the brains out of pickets” during trade union disputes.

Pegler led the attack on Martin Luther King Jr. and after he delivered his famous I Have a Dream Speech, he wrote in a column, “It is clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry.”

In 1965 he warned that Robert F. Kennedy would be come a victim of "some white patriot of the Southern tier" who "will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."

Does anyone know if he made any predictions about the death of JFK?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApeglerW.htm

November 28, 2011

Incredible.

The NY Times does not realize why its business is falling apart. Its stuff like this that has driven millions of people to the alternative press.

"Ineffective in domestic policy, evasive on civil rights, and a serial blunderer in foreign policy."

Oh really?

Just read Bernstein's fine book Promises Kept. You will see an excellent overview of Kennedy's domestic agenda and how he very carefully planned for its success.

This whole civil rights issue is so badly mangled by Kennedy's enemies that its almost ahisitorical. No president before JFK ever took on this issue. Not Roosevelt, not Truman, not Ike. Why? Because each one knew that any civil rights program would come afoul of two things: 1.) J. Edgar Hoover and 2.) Congress.

Therefore, Kennedy developed an alternative strategy. Through is brother he would use US Marshalls instead of the FBI to protect people like the Freedom Riders, and this would slowly show up the FBI.

Second, knowing that Congress would never pass civil rights legislation unless they had to, he did what he could through executive orders in 1961 and 1962.

This right-wing columnists like Ross Douthat, forget how the far-right attacked JFK’s civil rights policies during his time in office.

For example, Westbrook Pegler, who had praised lynching in the 1930s, blamed JFK for the Freedom Riders in 1961. He was so totally opposed to the civil rights movement and argued against the “pernicious heresy against the ancient privilege of human beings to hate.” He also argued in favour of "the praiseworthy pastime of batting the brains out of pickets” during trade union disputes.

Pegler led the attack on Martin Luther King Jr. and after he delivered his famous I Have a Dream Speech, he wrote in a column, “It is clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry.”

In 1965 he warned that Robert F. Kennedy would be come a victim of "some white patriot of the Southern tier" who "will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."

As Alex Constantine wrote on 16th September, 2008:

In her convention speech a fortnight ago, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin quoted an unidentified “writer” who extolled the virtues of small-town America: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” (9/3/08) The unidentified writer was Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969), the ultraconservative newspaper columnist whose widely syndicated columns (at its peak, 200 newspapers and 12 million readers) targeted the New Deal establishment, labor leaders, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews, and poets.

Palin certainly didn't write her speech, and even her distinctly dismal assembly of words in her ABC interview with Charles Gibson were probably not hers. Apropos the wisdom about small towns, her staff also did not trust themselves to do a sentence approximating the thought. So they went to... well, not a treasury of great quotations. It is, after all, a rather banal thought, banally expressed. They went to Westbrook Pegler.

You have to be pretty old to know that Pegler would be a treasure house of right-wing populist jargon. The fact is - and I've been checking this all day - no one under 65 with whom I spoke had the slightest idea who he was. So who, then, would know to breeze through the writing of Westbrook Pegler, of all people, in search of what is, after all, just a cliche? Surely only someone knowledgeable (and sympathetic to?) native American fascism.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApeglerW.htm

November 25, 2011

On being informed of his suicide she : ...'' ... ''...''I can't believe it'' ... .''He went to the office to get some papers...'' ... ''...'' ???

The New York Times reported that his wife, Florence Maconaughy Goldsborough, said that "he had no reason whatever for taking his own life, had left his home only twenty minutes before he was killed to pick up some papers in the office, and was to have returned for dinner." She also insisted that his death had nothing to do with his relationship with Whittaker Chambers who was involved in the Alger Hiss perjury case at the time.

The police appeared convinced that Goldsborough had committed suicide: "The door of Mr. Goldsborough's office was locked on the inside when they went to investigate the case. The building superintendent, Len Herrick, was called and was unable to open it without smashing the glass panel." However, that does not rule out the possibility of Goldsborough being murdered by someone who had his keys. He seemed to have died the same way as Grant Stockdale who jumped or was pushed from the window of his locked office just after the Kennedy assassination.

November 25, 2011

Thomas John Cardell Martyn was one of the important figures in Operation Mockingbird. However, you will find very little about him on the web. Even Wikipedia does not have an entry for him.

I have just purchased access to all the New York Times archives that go back to 1851. His name does not appear on any of the documents in the archive.

November 25, 2011

So far, all I have is Goldsborough's NY Times obituary, and I'm assuming you have read it, but if not, there are a few interesting details. Whittaker Chambers took over Goldsborough's position in 1940, and there are a few quotes from Goldsborough's wife.

The demotion by Luce, described in the article I linked to in my last post is not mentioned.

Page 1 of 2

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6112/6398750475_0ac93bd41d_b.jpg

Page 2 of 2

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7014/6398752967_c33e4953c7_b.jpg

Interesting that his wife believed he had not committed suicide as he had only gone to the office to pick up some papers.

November 25, 2011

John,

I am concerned there might be too much available on the internet about Goldsborough. Leave him in obscurity, he earned his reputation.

Thank you for that but I think it is a slight exaggeration to say "there might be too much available on the internet about Goldsborough". Do you have anything on his break with Luce in 1940 and his death in 1950?

Your discovery of George Teeple Eggleston's account of Goldsborough is very useful. According to the New York Times (obituary, 9th June, 1990) he worked for Luce after he had purchased the satirical magazine called Life, which was bought by Henry Luce so that he could use its name for a new pictorial magazine. Eggleston had edited the magazine.

Eggleston's comments about Clare Boothe Luce are well made. It has been wrongly claimed that Luce left his wife for Clare because of her right-wing views. This was not true. It was Goldsborough who was the one who moved him to his pro-fascist position. As Eggleston points out, she "was violently anti-Franco and promptly contributed a thousand dollars to the pro-Communist Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was gathering volunteers in New York City to fight against Franco in Spain."

It was the death of her daughter Ann, a nineteen-year-old student at Stanford University, who was killed in a car accident on 11th January, 1944, that changed her political ideology. Devastated by the loss of her only child that she suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1946, Clare was convertion to Roman Catholicism. During this period Clare Luce developed extreme right wing views and became well known for her outspoken opposition to communism and her support for free enterprise.

November 24, 2011

There is virtually nothing on Laird Goldsborough on the web. However, he is a very interesting character who had a very strange death.

Goldsborough was educated at Yale University and after leaving university he managed to find work with Time Magazine. Eventually he was appointed Foreign News editor. Isaiah Wilner, the author of The Man Time Forgot (2006), has argued: "Short and over-weight with long dark hair that flowed over the back of his collar, Goldsborough was partly lame due to a childhood hip ailment. He limped along with the help of a cane, sweating profusely.... Goldsborough wrote like a silkworm, spinning out a story from start to finish almost without stopping. When he came up with a particularly delicious phrase, he would pause to savor it, purring like a cat, then read it aloud and crackle."

Goldsborough held extreme right-wing opinions but this was kept under control by Briton Hadden, his editor, who instructed his journalists to tell both sides of an event. The two men disagreed about the merits of Benito Mussolini. Hadden was a strong supporter of democracy and severely attacked the rule of Mussolini, who he described as a "tin-pot dictator". Goldsborough on the other hand praised Mussolini as a bold leader.

At the beginning of 1927, Hadden agreed to switch jobs with Henry Luce. Goldsborough found his new editor as much more sympathetic to his right-wing views. Isaiah Wilner has pointed out: "No sooner had Luce taken the editor's seat than he began to twist and distort the news. Time's emerging bias first grew evident in Foreign News. Laird Goldsborough quickly impressed Luce with his writing ability and knowledge of foreign events." George Seldes has argued that Luce "permitted an outright pro-fascist, Laird Goldsborough, to slant and pervert the news every week."

In 1940 Goldsborough left Time Magazine and during the Second World War he was involved in counter-espionage with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Laird Goldsborough committed suicide in 1950 when he jumped from the Time's office building wearing a bowler hat and carrying a cane.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAgoldsborough.htm

November 24, 2011

Tommy,

I think that's important, but this is the third or fourth thread started about DeMohrenschildt info among Oltman's records, and it would be easier for everyone to keep track of what you discover if you keep it under one thread.

After all is said and done, and people go back over this information, much of it will be lost if you have it spread all over the place under a half-dozen or more threads.

While there are many here who await your progress, I for one prefer you keep the archive of your records together in one place, otherwise it will be scattered and useless for future reference.

BK

Bill makes a good point. If you put the material in one thread I will give it a link from my page on DeMohrenschildt.

November 24, 2011

What did Henry Luce do in 1927 that made the American population feel very insecure?

November 24, 2011

I have been doing some research into Ernest Cuneo. Does anyone have any photographs of him?

When he was a young man he supported progressive causes. In 1932 Cuneo became law secretary to Fiorello LaGuardia, a congressman from New York City. The following year he was elected mayor of the city. In 1936 James Farley appointed Cuneo associate general counsel of the Democratic National Committee. It has also been claimed that Cuneo acted as a liaison between Franklin Roosevelt and Walter Winchell.

In July 1942 President Roosevelt established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under the leadership of General William Donovan. Roosevelt arranged for Cuneo to become Donovan's liaison officer with MI6, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of State. During this period he became friendly with William Stephenson, Roald Dahl, Noel Coward and Ian Fleming. Later, Fleming admitted that Cuneo provided him with the basic plotlines for Goldfinger (1959) and Thunderball (1961).

Cuneo was also friends with Drew Pearson. He leaked several stories to Pearson including one concerning General George S. Patton. On 3rd August 1943, Patton visited the 15th Evacuation Hospital where he encountered Private Charles H. Kuhl, who had been admitted suffering from shellshock. When Patton asked him why he had been admitted, Kuhl told him "I guess I can't take it." According to one eyewitness Patton "slapped his face with a glove, raised him to his feet by the collar of his shirt and pushed him out of the tent with a kick in the rear." Kuhl was later to claim that he thought Patton, as well as himself, was suffering from combat fatigue.

Two days after the incident he sent a memo to all commanders in the 7th Army: "It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospital on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards and bring discredit on the army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle while they, themselves, use the hospital as a means of escape. You will take measures to see that such cases are not sent to the hospital but are dealt with in their units. Those who are not willing to fight will be tried by court-martial for cowardice in the face of the enemy."

On 10th August 1943, Patton visited the 93rd Evacuation Hospital to see if there were any soldiers claiming to be suffering from combat fatigue. He found Private Paul G. Bennett, an artilleryman with the 13th Field Artillery Brigade. When asked what the problem was, Bennett replied, "It's my nerves, I can't stand the shelling anymore." Patton exploded: "Your nerves. Hell, you are just a goddamned coward, you yellow son of a bitch. Shut up that goddamned crying. I won't have these brave men here who have been shot seeing a yellow bastard sitting here crying. You're a disgrace to the Army and you're going back to the front to fight, although that's too good for you. You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. In fact, I ought to shoot you myself right now, God damn you!" With this Patton pulled his pistol from its holster and waved it in front of Bennett's face. After putting his pistol way he hit the man twice in the head with his fist. The hospital commander, Colonel Donald E. Currier, then intervened and got in between the two men.

Colonel Richard T. Arnest, the man's doctor, sent a report of the incident to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The story was also passed to the four newsmen attached to the Seventh Army. Although Patton had committed a court-martial offence by striking an enlisted man, the reporters agreed not to publish the story. Quentin Reynolds of Collier's Weekly agreed to keep quiet but argued that there were "at least 50,000 American soldiers on Sicily who would shoot Patton if they had the chance."

Eisenhower now had a meeting with the war correspondents who knew about the incident and told them that he hoped they would keep the "matter quiet in the interests of retaining a commander whose leadership he considered vital." Ernest Cuneo, who was fully aware, now decided to pass this story to Drew Pearson and in November 1943, he told the story on his weekly syndicated radio program. Some politicians demanded that George S. Patton should be sacked but General George Marshall and Henry L. Stimson supported Eisenhower in the way he had dealt with the case.

Pearson reveals in his diary (19th April, 1949) that the CIA had ordered a "painstaking investigation of me, Winchell, Cuneo." This seems to be when Cuneo was turned. Soon after this he was given CIA support to gain control of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA). On 11th April, 1950, Drew Pearson wrote in his diary: "Cuneo thinks that I am nuts to go after McCarthy, claims the tide is in the opposite direction and that the entire country is determined to clean out the Communist. I agree except I think that the Communists have been pretty well cleared out. Now it has got to a point where anyone who was sympathetic to Russia during the war is in danger of being called a Communist."

Gaeton Fonzi, the author of The Last Investigation (1993), argues that Cuneo employed pro-CIA journalists like Virginia Prewett and Priscilla Johnson. Anthony Summers argues in his book, The Kennedy Conspiracy (1980): "For many years, Prewett wrote for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), a syndication organization founded by prewett's friend Ernest Cuneo, a veteran of the CIA's forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services... In 1963 NANA was severely criticized in a Senate Committee Report, for syndicating pro-Chiang Kai-shek propaganda written by a paid American lobbyist". Cuneo sold the North American Newspaper Alliance in 1963.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcuneo.htm

November 24, 2011

One of the interesting things in this story is how even with the internet important figures can go missing.

November 24, 2011

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World reporter and whistleblower, died of natural causes, according to the coroner conducting the inquest into his death.

Hertfordshire coroner Edward Thomas said that Hoare, who suffered from alcoholic liver disease and whose body was found at his home in Watford on 18 July, used alcohol "as a crutch" to cope with the stress generated by the phone-hacking scandal. He is thought to have been dead for some time.

Thomas added that Hoare died of natural causes and said the journalist had used drink to help him cope with the pressure "generated by breaking the News International story".

A postmortem into Hoare's death in July found no evidence of third-party involvement and concluded that his death was non-suspicious.

However, at the time Hertfordshire police said they were waiting for the results of toxicology tests and were continuing to examine "health problems" identified during the autopsy.

Hoare was the first named journalist to allege that the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking carried out by his staff.

He worked for the Sun and News of the World with Coulson, before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems. He had spoken openly to a number of news organisations about the practice of phone hacking.

Hoare is understood to have lived in a first-floor flat in Watford with his wife, Joanne.

He returned to the spotlight at the height of the phone-hacking scandal in July, shortly before his death, after he told the New York Times that reporters at the NoW were able to use police technology to locate people via mobile phone signals in exchange for payments to officers. He said journalists were able to buy mobile-phone tracking data from police for £300.

Hoare had also given further details about "pinging" to Guardian journalists in July.

He repeatedly expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism "being cleaned up", and said he had decided to blow the whistle on the activities of some of his former NoW colleagues with that aim in mind.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/23/sean-hoare-news-of-the-world

November 24, 2011