Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR DOMINICAN ELECTIONS I am glad you published the article by that very knowledgeable reporter, Norman Gall, entitled "The Strange Dominican Elections" (NL June 20). On the whole, I...
...Certainly, as far as our observers could see, they caused no trouble...
...We compare the Birch Society today with the Communist party of 21 or 30 years ago because, as we say in the conclusion to our book on the Society, the Birch movement today is "a radical apparatus, comparable in size and impact to the Communist apparatus at the peak of its power in the United States 20 years ago...
...I have voted to elect the President, the Senators and Congressmen...
...In addition to this, I want to stress my admiration of Juan Bosch's handling of a very tense situation after the election, and my hope that he will stay in the Dominican Republic to put to the test the new government's desire to hold the military in check and to permit political opposition without fear of death or bitter harassment...
...This is a campaign today's Radical Left cannot even remotely approach in size and reach...
...Balaguer's plurality, officially-announced as 249,000, could probably not be erased entirely even if all fraudulentlyobtained votes were subtracted...
...New York City Norman Thomas Since my article, "The Strange Dominican Election," deployed a large amount of detailed information telegraphed under very rushed circumstances, some clarifications, amplifications and corrections are in order...
...We are also well aware of the so-called "New Left," whose youthful adherents all too often naively play ball with the totalitarian Left...
...I doubt if Balaguer's rather expensive campaign was financed solely by Dominican money, of which there isn't much...
...On the same day a PRD Congressional candidate from Santiago, Jose Elias Bisono Checo, was stabbed to death by Sergeant-Major Romilio Moquete Novas of the Air Force base at Santiago...
...The taxi driver who drove me to the airport the day after the election, in a torrent of broken English, explained something like this: "We loved Juan Bosch but a lot of us were afraid that, if he was elected, there would merely be another military coup and more fighting...
...It is still to be seen, whether extrication will mean a new departure in U.S...
...Here I have a voice and vote...
...Jacob has not given thought to what Oliver Cromwell said: "I beseech ye, in the bowels of Christ, ye may be wrong...
...In the Cibao town of Bonao, where some discarded Bosch votes were reportedly found at the cemetery gate and, as in other towns, troops were on guard day and night at the cemeteries to prevent violation of graves by those seeking buried votes, the PRD Secretary-General and the party president for Bonao were taken prisoner by the Army on June 19...
...In itself, a sad commentary on the Dominican situation...
...We simply said that most of our observers saw no violence or palpable fraud during the polling process...
...We deny any "blind spot" respecting the danger on the Left...
...policy...
...While I'm interested, even concerned, at what happens in other countries, it can be but as a bystander...
...The latter, I think, does want an honest two-party system, partly as a protection against the military...
...First of all, neither I nor any of the 70 observers of the Committee on Free Elections in the Dominican Republic ever certified the absolute or nearly absolute fairness of the election...
...San Juan, P. R. Norman Gall BIRCHITES AND COMMUNISTS We share many of the views expressed by George Field of Freedom House in his article "For a Dynamic Center," which appeared in your May 23 issue...
...I sent out widely a statement in which I said the following: "There was no violence and no palpable evidence of fraud during the polling process...
...We were told the Provisional President immediately ordered more sent in...
...These are opprobrious words, not arguments...
...Field fastens on our description of the John Birch Society as "a movement and a propaganda and recruitment apparatus on the Far Right that is comparable to the Communist apparatus of the Far Left in the 1930s and 1940s...
...And I propose to raise that voice whenever my country does anything of which I disapprove...
...For that is where the voices of reason and moderation are heard...
...I doubt if the shortage of machines was an evidence of deliberate fraud...
...Bosch's that Balaguer did win a majority even with deductions for specific intimidation...
...Apparently Dr...
...Field is mistaken if he suggests that today's Birch Society, with a 1965 income of $5 million and 5,000 chapters across the country, is comparable to the Communist party of today, even including the small but noisy memberships of other assorted groups of the Radical Left...
...Nor was our "image" damaged when we withdrew our defeated men from Cuba...
...3. I would also like to correct two telegraphic errors...
...Jacob has listed...
...For what it is worth, it is my own opinion and, I gather...
...New York City George N. Caylor...
...He takes us to task for comparing the Birch Society today to the Communist movement of "the Depression era," and for allegedly ignoring the fact that the Communists today are, in his words, "alive and kicking-and continuing to probe our society for weak spots...
...I do not see how 1 am in any way responsible...
...Because we agree with Field's basic message, we were disturbed that he singled out one section of our most recent report-The John Birch Society-1966-as an example of the "blind spot" which he says characterizes some liberal thinking with respect to the Radical Left of the 1960s...
...The Society today, like the Communist party, operates front groups, a network of book stores across the country, has a cell-like organization, conducts a sizeable publishing enterprise of its own, gets its official "line" from central headquarters, and does not tolerate deviations...
...May I add-even though I may disagree with it-I believe the Radical Left knows the score, just as well, if not better than its critics...
...This analogy should have been attributed to Juan Bosch, who lived in Cuba for many years and was a Presidential secretary in one of the governments ousted by Batista...
...We expressed somewhat similar sentiments in the concluding section of Danger on the Right, our 1964 study of the American Right Wing...
...New York City Benjamin R. Epstein National Director, ADL Arnold Forster General Counsel, ADL THE RADICAL LEFT It seems to me that, without reason, Dr...
...From the beginning, I have been opposed to our becoming involved in Vietnam...
...I am concerned with what my country does here and abroad...
...the American decision-making process takes place at, or near, the vital center-some times a little to the left, some times a little to the right...
...In general the attitude of the people and their cordial welcome to our observers seem to mean a hopeful sign for the future...
...Accepting Gall's facts, I think that Juan Bosch was wise and- skillful in restraining many of his disappointed followers from violence, which would simply have produced massacre...
...I am a participant...
...Balaguer's party watchers at the polls were outnumbered in a great many districts by the watchers of the party supporting Bosch...
...on June 2, 26 hours after the polls closed, and not the following evening for publication June 4. There was a one-third increase of voters in Santo Domingo, the capital, over four years ago, not 87 percent...
...The Birch Society, in fact, has almost the same membership strength today as the CP had then-80,000, possibly a few thousand more...
...I do not belong to, nor have I authority to speak for the Radical Left...
...The election results, in the long run, are likely to disappoint both the pro-Bosch and anti-Bosch zealots...
...I am not in favor of prolonging the Vietnam war until we can leave gracefully and "save face...
...The wrong-doing lay with the military, probably not excluding some of their American backers...
...I believe we have made a great mistake...
...Neither France in leaving Vietnam, nor Russia in getting out of Cuba, damaged their "image" in the long run...
...Until my country comes into court with clean hands-there's no reason why any criticism of mine should be listened to by them...
...Whenever I think they have done things I consider detrimental to our country, I shall object...
...Because of our concern, the Anti-Defamation League has in recent years produced several publications on Communism-"A Primer on Communism," "A Short History of Communism," "The Profits of Communism" as well as a prize-winning film strip based on the latter title...
...Martinez and her remarkable Association for Human Rights, not merely as a token of our gratitude for all that she had done for us but in order that she might, if she thought best, have a small nest egg to start an official inquiry...
...The Santo Domingo newspapers of June 17 and 18 carried stories of the Electoral Board rejecting the PRD'S fraud charges but, at the same time, denying that it had possession and could make available to PRD lawyers the voting ledgers of the disputed polling places...
...We are well aware that the Communist party has not disappeared, and that new Leftist totalitarian groups, oriented toward Peking and Havana, have sprung up in recent years...
...I am partly responsible for my country's actions...
...So much has been done that it is impossible to believe that serious charges of fraud will not be strictly and impartially investigated and acted on...
...Our observers were cordially welcomed...
...Yet the electoral climate was so befouled by dirty tricks, intimidation and the killing of more than 200 Bosch supporters since September that holding the election at all could be justified only in terms of extricating the United States from the consequences of its April 1965 military intervention...
...I have the right to criticize...
...There must be no excuse for the resumption of violence on any side at this juncture...
...Before I left Santo Domingo, T gave $100 to Mrs...
...I am opposed to Communism and every other form of totalitarianism, and condone none of the Communist policies that Dr...
...they seek to change-and eventually control-American political thinking as a major step toward political influence and power...
...My main purpose in writing is to say that neither I nor, so far as I know, any of our observers ever gave an unqualified statement that the elections were free from fraud and intimidation...
...I object to his use of such terms as: "should know better a stupendous myopia toward the realities of Communist goals and methodology seems incapable of a rational sense of proportion about the facts of life in the world today...
...Our view is, we think, all the more substantiated if to the Birch apparatus are added other Radical Rightist organizations, large and small, national and local, which are spending millions of dollars in a massive propaganda assault on the American mind, much of it via broadcasts carried on hundreds of radio stations...
...That is the key point of comparison-the size, the thrust, the techniques and the scope of today's Birch Society activities, which are far more comparable to the Communist movement of 1944, when the party reached its peak strength of 80,000 members, than they are to the party of today with its 10,000 members, possibly even less...
...There are charges of fraud now from certain districts where the number of votes exceeded the population but there has been no time adequately to investigate such charges...
...The Society, moreover, is penetrating sections of American community life, such as the political party structure, just as the Communists did in the 1930s and 1940s when their influence extended into the labor movement, the liberal organizations and the intellectual community as well...
...Without these ledgers any attempt to prove or disapprove fraud would have little objective weight, in view of the PRD'S charge of widespread substitution of ballot boxes and the claims of PRD leaders that many bags of PRD ballots, still in the envelopes used for depositing them in ballot boxes, were found in isolated parts of the countryside and the seashore...
...1. Developments since the election certainly have provided additional grounds for believing that the voting occurred in an atmosphere of intimidation by the military, and for suspecting a large amount of fraud...
...He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone When it comes to criticism of our country I am in a different category...
...I have no way of even helping to change these actions...
...One minor matter: On the morning after the election, I heard the suspicions concerning the slowness of the counting of votes and, with the aid of some of my associates, we got the official explanation that it was due to the fact that the Electoral Board was using only two adding machines...
...These differences aside, we stand with Field in our concern that the American political center be preserved as a vital force because, as we wrote two years ago...
...The first preliminary national returns were issued by the Electoral Board at 8 p.m...
...Like the Communist party, the Birch target is the American mind...
...Emerson Jacob belittles the Radical Left ("Dear Editor," NL, June 20...
...I am a citizen...
...Like the Communists, the Society is, in our view, seeking to burrow into the root and fabric of American life...
...2. The article asserts that the election "'reminded one of Batista's fraudulent 1940 election victory over Ramon Grau San Martinwhich was marked by much military intimidation of voters in peasant areas, the use of phantom polling places to produce huge Batista majorities, substitution of ballot boxes after the polls closed and multiple voting through mass forgery of voters' identification cards...
...We should acknowledge it and "Get the Hell out...
...The Birchers are, like party members, a dedicated, zealous, disciplined and thoroughly indoctrinated cadre of workers and, as we pointed out in our report, Founder Robert Welch, like Lenin, believes that a dedicated minority which knows what it wants can move mountains...
...We made a little mistake in the Bay of Pigs episode and President Kennedy acknowledged it...
...On the whole, I think Gall presents a vivid picture of the Dominican situation and I should not want to challenge any of his facts, but I should like to supplement what he says by certain comments...
...Reports that I have had confirm what Gall says about conversations between Juan Bosch and Joaquin Balaguer...
Vol. 49 • July 1966 • No. 15
