NOTES IN THE NEWS
Buried Truth The truth behind the U-2 spy plane affair lies buried in a pathless swamp of confusion, contradictions, and censorship. From the heavily censored testimony taken in secret by the...
...I was not a party to it...
...Let labor, the farmers, the Negro people and other minorities, the liberal and peace forces, come together in a party of our own, and let the forces of conservatism and big business, the militarists and the nationalists, the stand-patters, come together in a party of their own...
...In this instance, the actual cost of the program was only ten per cent of the total paid out...
...The new parties, in the Socialists' view, would be based on programs, one liberal, the other conservative...
...If he accepted direct responsibility for this pre-Sum-mit spy flight, he would be endangering the success of the conference by slamming the door against Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's hopeful and helpful suggestion that the Chief Executive was not personally responsible...
...Ten Per Cent Truth "Government outlays for support of farm commodities," began a recent Associated Press dispatch, "are expected to run close to a record level of seven billion dollars in the fiscal year ending June 30...
...Herter: That is a decision that I think has been a decision that has carried over the whole four-year period...
...When Norman Thomas declared after the 1948 election that he would not run again, he pointed out that every plank except one in his 1928 platform—his first Presidential race—subsequently had been endorsed not only by the Democrats but by the Republicans...
...taxpayers that, we reported in the January issue, receives annual incomes averaging about $2,000...
...At a meeting in New York City, the Vice President said, "I share the view of Chancellor Adenauer, who told me, when visiting my home a few weeks ago . . ." and a few minutes later, "Prime Minister Nehru put it very graphically to me when he said . . ." These are only a few samples of the contents of Nixon's complete kit for campaigning...
...This group doubtless corresponds to a great extent with the one-half of U.S...
...Herter: That I cannot tell you...
...Herter: I know of no conference at which the matter was discussed...
...Did you make a decision...
...Newspapers and magazines which look with dismay on farm price support payments might compare the cost with their second class postal subsidies, which for the years 1946-1956 totaled $6 billion...
...Here, in the sworn testimony of his Secretary of State, is powerful refutation of President Eisenhower's initial assumption of responsibility and his subsequent report to the nation that the question had been raised and a decision made to go ahead with the spy flights...
...Fulbright: I don't think I made myself clear...
...From the heavily censored testimony taken in secret by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee comes the story of almost unbelievable bungling and lack of coordination in the Eisenhower Administration, but the facts about who did what, why, and when remain lost in lies, evasion, and censorship...
...Here is how he does it: "While I am not an expert on U.S...
...The poorest one-third of the nation owns only one per cent of the wealth of the United States...
...What is the full extent of your knowledge of a decision that the flights would not be discontinued...
...nothing is being left to chance...
...News coverage of the farm support program would come closer to the truth if the press recorded the income of the Department of Agriculture as well as its outlays...
...So the drive to "humanize" Nixon will be redoubled...
...No one, in fact, was in charge, except perhaps the inscrutable and untouchable Central Intelligence Agency...
...Last year's federal subsidy to Henry Luce's Time-Life empire approximately equaled its handsome net profits...
...After a briefing with the Nixon team, the Journal's Otten confided to his readers that the "flexible" part of the Vice President's "flexible conservatism" will be invoked to "woo independent voters and conservative Democrats...
...Nixon will continue to appear as an ardent sports fan...
...Herter: That is right...
...In contrast, the richest 1.6 per cent of Americans own nearly one-third of all the nation's wealth...
...We had dinner in Washington the other day for a very distinguished visitor, the President of France," Nixon confided at an Auburn, N.Y., dinner, "and as we were talking, General De Gaulle gave me his philosophy of old age...
...But after 1949 the tide turned, and the trend is once more toward fewer people holding a greater share of the wealth...
...The Wall Street Journal added a significant footnote to surveys of income distribution when it reported that despite high taxes government figures indicate "more individuals have become millionaires since World War II than in any comparable earlier period...
...Without saying so explicitly, the declaration pretty much wrote off the Republican Party, but saw some hope in the Democratic Party—if it rids itself of the racists, the corrupt big-city bosses, the "die-hard cold warriors," and the enemies of labor...
...Secretary of State Herter sought to corroborate his chief when he appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee but wound up by reversing his story under sharp questioning by Senators William Fulbright and Albert Gore...
...It was not until the ninth paragraph of the story—a paragraph which few newspapers bothered to include in their news columns—that the taxpayer was told how much of these "outlays" represented the true cost of the farm price support program: "The government's loss on price support operations through April 30 [a ten months' period] totaled $708 million . . ." As usual, the total amount paid out in loans on and purchases of farm crops was given headline treatment, but the billions which flowed back into the government treasury through sales and repaid loans were either buried deep in the story or, more commonly, totally ignored...
...Then, too, "as part of the 'humanizing' effort, Mr...
...Herter: I think that is correct...
...Seven hundred million dollars is not chicken feed, but it is still only ten per cent of the seven billion dollars "spent" on the agricultural price support program...
...Presumably, the Vice President will use these private occasions to whisper words of reassurance that the "flexible" stuff isn't to be taken too heavily, but the Journal, of course, suggested no such thing...
...Eisenhower chose the former course, and in doing so handed Khrushchev the dynamite with which to blow up the conference...
...And yet something is wrong...
...Everything is planned and rehearsed, including the extemporaneous speeches...
...Afterwards, in his radio and television address to the nation, the President sought to create the impression that "the question" of the "timing" of the U-2 flight was raised in the Administration and that "the decision" was reached that "the program should not be halted...
...After a lengthy debate, the predominantly young delegates mapped out a new mission for the party, resolving to some extent a dispute that has torn the Socialists for a decade...
...When he turns up at a sports spectacle, "he comes into contact with voters who don't otherwise see him [and] his advisers think it helps break the image of a cold, calculating machine...
...The convention's action represents a victory, in part, for the Norman Thomas position, but the drive for realignment did not meet with the approval of the party's elder statesman...
...Another twenty-three per cent just above on the economic ladder owns five per cent...
...Nixon will endeavor to keep G.O.P...
...In his opening statement Herter asserted that "the decision not to suspend this program of flights, as the Summit meeting approached, was a sound decision...
...If Herter is right, no questions were raised, no conferences were held, no decisions were reached...
...But even more noteworthy was the adoption of a policy declaration which sets as the Socialist goal "nothing less than the reevaluation and realignment of all political forces in the United States...
...Was such a decision taken...
...The terrible significance of Herter's testimony is that President Eisenhower, whether because he feared criticism for neglect of duty, or for whatever reason, claimed responsibility for a decision that had not even been made, and thus made it possible for Khrushchev to torpedo the Summit conference...
...Thus, substantially more than half of the population owns only six per cent of America's material assets...
...The Socialists' New Mission The Socialist Party, which has been withering on the vine since Norman Thomas made his sixth and last Presidential race in 1948, seemed to take on new life at its recent national convention in the nation's capital...
...The Socialists declined to outline a program for the conservatives, but for the liberal party it set goals which included "peace through disarmament, civil rights, expanded federal aid to education, the wiping out of slums, national health insurance, and greatly increased foreign economic aid...
...Thomas would have preferred giving the Socialist program wide circulation, particularly in the labor movement, comparing the platforms of other parties' candidates with Socialist objectives, and acting as a bellwether for the major parties...
...Nixon Preview Despite the conventional nonsense that turns up on its editorial page, the Wall Street Journal strikes us as one of the brightest and most useful dailies in the country...
...They were allowed to go along without any decision being taken to suspend them...
...Fulbright: Therefore, the other way around is that no positive decision was taken not to suspend them, is that correct...
...The Journal has now provided the answer for us: he will run as a "flexible conservative...
...We find ourselves," the statement read, "with two political parties devoid of any principled political programs...
...One-Third of a Nation "One-third of a nation—ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed"—this was one of the many phrases with which Franklin D. Roosevelt characterized the state of the union a generation ago...
...For those whose interests range beyond sports Nixon has developed, we are informed, "a carefully worked out technique of experience-dropping and name-dropping" which "heightens the Nixon impression of broad background and experiences...
...Recent interviews by Wall Street Journal reporters have turned up a surprisingly large residue of 'I don't know why but I just don't like him' feeling...
...The question that haunts us most is this: Did President Eisenhower know about and approve the flight of the espionage mission over Russia two weeks before the Summit conference was to convene in Paris...
...The name-dropping has become a routine operation...
...Nixon happens to enjoy sports, but this is mostly incidental...
...But a recently published study of the distribution of wealth in the United States, prepared by the National Bureau of Economic Research, reveals that the nation's affluence is not so widespread as we are often told it is...
...Conditions have obviously improved greatly since those dark depression days...
...This statement seems to leave the implication that a specific decision was taken not to suspend the flights in view of the conference approaching...
...The Socialist program has a Utopian flavor, and yet there is a hopeful precedent for achieving the party's goal...
...Yet the Socialists feel that merely reforming the Democratic Party would not be enough...
...Its story was largely friendly...
...Eisenhower's memory...
...The President chose to accept responsibility, but the sworn testimony of his Secretary of State, Christian Herter, and off-the-record disclosures to Washington correspondents throw considerable doubt on the accuracy of Mr...
...if he disclaimed direct involvement, he would be exposing himself to ridicule and censure for not knowing what was going on in his own Administration...
...A large faction of the Socialists, led by Norman Thomas, has pressed for many years for a policy that would make the Socialist Party an educational force in American politics, rather than continue to expend energy and money running candidates for office...
...Fulbright: Is it fair to say that no specific decision not to suspend them was taken...
...conservatives happy through personal contacts...
...The major parties," said the declaration, "are designed to compete for power, and not to debate the issues...
...It seems that the Journal's able Washington correspondent, Allan L. Otten, has a private pipeline to the Vice President's inner office and comes away with stacks of inside stuff...
...The majority felt that new problems called for a new solution, and that it could operate most effectively as a "democratic socialist wing" of a new liberal party...
...Charging that the federal government "has not passed a single major piece of new social legislation since 1938," the declaration placed the blame on the Democratic and Republican Parties alike...
...For all the efforts to "humanize" the Vice President, he "still has a long way to go to sell himself to many crucial swing voters," Otten reported...
...Speaking to a Negro church convention in Buffalo, he recalled that he had already "worked in this cause as chairman of the President's committee on equality in government contracts...
...It was on the basis of the Journal's reports that Nixon was under great pressure from some friends to lean Left and from others to remain Right that we fell to speculating in this space last month whether the Vice President would campaign as a progressive-conservative or a conservative-progressive...
...The convention decided that in this year's election the Socialists will have no candidate for the Presidency for the first time since the party was founded in 1897, with the exception of the 1924 campaign when the Socialists supported the Progressive candidate, Robert M. LaFollette, Sr...
...The Vice President's mother contributed her bit, in an article in Good Housekeeping, when she recalled that as a boy Dick would rinse his mouth carefully each morning and then have her smell his breath to make certain it would not give offense to persons near him on the bus...
...Nothing is being overlooked...
...The President was confronted with a cruel dilemma...
...Our political system not only stymies progress, it stifles discussion of program...
...But if this doesn't set too well with the Barry Goldwater school of McKinley Republicanism, Nixon is prepared to cope with the conservatives...
...Gore: Did you participate in a conference or were you aware of a decision...
...However impressive his performance is, it still has, to many, a mechanical, almost inhuman quality...
...There will be a lot more of this sort of thing as the "humanizing" goes on...
...Nixon's greatest need, it seems, is to be "humanized" by the use of skillful stunts in public relations...
...For two decades following the 1929 stock market crash, highly concentrated ownership of wealth declined in favor of a gradual move toward a more equalized distribution...
...and Soviet educational systems," he said in a speech in Syracuse, "I have been in both countries and have perhaps studied the subject as much as most people...
...Lately we have found it especially helpful for its periodic previews of the strategy and tactics Vice President Richard M. Nixon will pursue in this quest for the Presidency...
...Thus, we are told that the Vice President and his aides have decided to conduct a great many press conferences because they "believe that such press conferences serve to 'humanize' him...
...While rejecting pressures to move up to the Right," we are told, "Mr...
...This is what followed: Fulbright: Can you tell us who made the decision and when and of the circumstances...
Vol. 24 • September 2006 • No. 7
