NOTES IN THE NEWS
The Corrupters After the jury had voted to convict Bobby Baker, one of the jurors, Lezie G. Barnes, said that he "had in his mind all the time what the case meant to the country, the long...
...If we allowed this type of thing to go on," he added, "it would destroy our government...
...disarmament policy, the Pentagon's International Logistic Negotiations (ILN) office—which more properly might be named Arms, Unlimited—is now selling weapons abroad at a multi-billion dollar rate...
...the leaders of riots, he said, are "just plain frustrated, angry, and tired of being poor...
...Two hundred civil rights leaders opposing the investigation have filed a petition with the House...
...the new constitution merely formalizes, in effect, the role the government has assumed during that time...
...Meanwhile, in the Boston area there was something of a Catholic uprising against HUAC...
...The Erosion of NATO America's official concept of the cold war is sadly out of date...
...Naylor was astonished at the conversation...
...He expressed his confidence in Naylor "who now is a high corporate officer in another American corporation...
...Given developments in the Communist camp, they feel confident they can improve relations with the Soviet world...
...This assurance apparently was given in anticipation of a sharply critical staff report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the week after McNamara's statement...
...There are a host of other contradictions in the maintenance of such huge U.S...
...He might remind our generals that one does not defend freedom of speech and freedom of association by undermining or subverting them...
...One member of the Carnegie Commission, Joseph H. McConnell, president of Reynolds Metal Company and former president of the National Broadcasting Company, suggested that the commercial networks and advertisers also be taxed to help public television...
...Watch for the next episode in this gripping farce...
...When asked what present programs on television they could do without, fifty per cent of all adults—and sixty-two per cent of the college-educated—said, "Most programs...
...We are maintaining six divisions of U.S...
...These Senators—one a hawk and the other a dove on the Vietnam war —are united in support of the Mansfield resolution...
...Naylor stated that five days later, in the office of M. R. Mitchell, ITT legal counsel and vice president, he was introduced to a "Mr...
...but] the real and lasting damage lay in the atmosphere of implied guilt, the mandated spying, the straitjacket of uniformity...
...Endorsing this request for full debate, the 124 signers of the statement urged House Speaker John McCormack "to provide for the discussion in the House of Representatives this issue merits...
...The draft case involved two Univer sity of Michigan students who were convicted of trespass in an anti-Viet nam demonstration, and subsequently "punished" by Selective Service through the cancelling of their student deferment...
...involvement in the war in Vietnam...
...It seems imperative," the report stated, "that at some point the United States take the risk that great powers must take and simply say 'No—go to the Russians or the British if you must.' " Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has made some of the same charges contained in the study...
...It also criticized the State Department's Office of Munitions Control for "having no influence over the greatest [arms] exporter of all, the Department of Defense...
...Baker" whom Naylor met...
...The study envisions an ultimate budget of $100 million annually, and expansion of the number of educational •—or public—stations from the present 104 to a total of 380...
...The staff report was most forceful in its criticism of the Defense Department's "pre-emptive selling" concept— that it must sell arms to nations seeking them because otherwise they would buy them elsewhere...
...The battle in the Senate over ratification of the consular treaty, discussed on Page Three, is one...
...Judge Harold R. Medina wrote the landmark opinion for the U.S...
...The merger has been delayed by Justice Department objections...
...The constitution allows the president unilaterally to declare a state of siege and rule by decree, to appoint the governors of Brazil's twenty-two states, and to intervene in state affairs without consulting Congress, whose powers are severely limited by the new law...
...The climate for such action has been improving, and President Johnson's expression of support for educational television in his State of the Union message this year strengthens the hope that Congress might be persuaded to adopt the Carnegie proposals to provide television programs for the public rather than solely for corporate profits...
...A Classic Example The most common method of seeking political protection is for business to contribute—through various devices —to election campaigns, often to both sides...
...tax laws and other Federal statutes...
...If these countries, thousands of miles closer to the Soviet Union than we are, are not fearful enough to maintain conscription, why should the United States continue to draft Americans for service in a peaceful Europe...
...Four of ten television sets belonging to the more affluent families are not turned on during most evenings...
...military build-up in Thailand, which The Progressive has reported in these columns in recent months, is now available...
...Toward Public Television Twenty years ago there were only a quarter of a million television sets in the country...
...Will HUAC succeed in its racist purpose of feeding the white backlash with its investigation of outbreaks in Negro ghettos...
...Today there are more than seventy million...
...The number of stations has mushroomed from twenty to almost 700...
...He quotes Marx as telling him: "Hal [Geneen, ITT's president] and the Board have a program that is very important to political protection and business development...
...The press law is also a sweepingly repressive measure...
...The Court has now changed its mind, although none of the three surviving members of the 1952 Court changed his...
...There is a growing feeling, after two decades of experimentation in programming, that the very nature of commercial network television, with its huge audiences and pressures from advertisers, militates against improvement and variety...
...West German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger recently said that his country—for years our staunchest supporter in NATO—will embark on a "great policy" of peacemaking with the Communist countries of Europe...
...In other cases, political brokers take the initiative and solicit funds from business in exchange for special favors...
...Marx replied he did not want payment at that time...
...Moreover, how does the Pentagon explain these facts: that Great Britain abandoned conscription in 1960, and that only a few of the smallest NATO countries still draft men for as long as two years...
...Victories for Freedom Two recent court decisions have restored considerable vitality to the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association...
...It imposes heavy fines and prison sentences on anyone publishing or broadcasting information that the government considers classified or injurious to itself, its security, or its financial stability...
...After all, the $100 million needed is only about four per cent of commercial television's gross annual revenues—which reveals how modest the Carnegie proposals are...
...Meanwhile, the staggering amounts spent on our forces in Europe as well as the $25 billion or more that we are expending for the Vietnam war, contribute greatly to our international balance of payments deficit and to the crippling of Great Society programs for lack of funds...
...The Truth About Thailand Official confirmation of the U.S...
...The vital ingredient in the Carnegie proposal is the concept of broad public support for this important communications medium...
...Senator Morse has disclosed that Bobby Baker was the "Mr...
...forces in Europe...
...he estimated that if the Senate rather than the House tax formula had become law it would have cost the building and loan associations $10 million more in taxes...
...Meanwhile, we regret we are obliged to report that the Committee does not appear to be in any mortal danger...
...Both the Administration and Congress should take immediate steps to curb the Pentagon's merchandising of arms—so highly profitable to the munitions industry and so dangerous in a tension-ridden world...
...Followers of this serial story will remember that there was considerable Congressional concern about last year's riotous HUAC hearing in Chicago and the revelation in the closing sessions of the Eighty-ninth Congress that the Committee had, over the years, paid a great many witnesses for their testimony...
...military sales overseas by 600 per cent since 1960...
...Judge Medina, who explained that the Appeals Court was always reluctant to bring any Selective Service operation under its scrutiny, eloquently expressed the Court's reason for taking the unusual step of accepting jurisdiction in this case...
...The State Department never seems to learn that there can be no genuine economic and social reform in a nation like Brazil if the United States, in its morbid fear of the Communist left, persists in encouraging and financing the equally repressive totalitarian right...
...You will be expected to recover the amount by covering it up in your traveling expense account...
...The Mansfield resolution is scheduled for hearings before a joint session of Senator Richard Russell's Armed Services Committee and Senator J. W. Fulbright's Foreign Relations Committee...
...Of all constitutional rights," the judge stated, "the freedoms of speech and of assembly are the most perish able, yet the most vital to the preser vation of American democracy...
...The Court's decision, of course, casts a cloud over loyalty oaths and related laws in other states across the nation...
...Other sources have revealed that we are building facilities for 100,000 men...
...Opponents of the Committee have introduced eighteen bills to abolish it...
...A classic example was recently read into the Congressional Record by Senator Wayne Morse...
...But the subsequent justifiable outcry against Baker was not matched by comparable public indignation over the role played by these financial executives in turning over huge sums to Baker, who was then secretary to the Democratic majority in the Senate...
...Although the events described took place in 1960, they indicate the possibility of a disclosure of more recent incidents that might throw new light on the Federal Communications Commission's approval in 1966 of a merger between ITT and the American Broadcasting Corporation...
...More than 17,000 cadets were scheduled to receive this clandestine warning...
...I don't want any company financing or expense jimcracks...
...Through the efforts of ILN and its staff of twenty-one professionals divided into sales teams, the Defense Department has received $11.1 billion worth of foreign military orders and commitments since 1962...
...The ITT president said, "Everybody does it and the Board wanted it this way...
...The new constitution makes it next to impossible to form an opposition political movement...
...He warned against a witch hunt in Negro slums...
...The Supreme Court case was concerned with anti-subversive laws dating back to 1917, but most of the provisions involved were what The New York Times called "remnants of the often hysterical philosophy of the Fifties"—the period so malevolently dominated by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy...
...And in the third ring in the circus we have Representative Adam Clayton Powell, whose use of Congressional funds and contempt for court decisions are under investigation by a special House committee...
...Now the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television has released a widely-acclaimed report and some revolutionary recommendations designed to provide the nation alternatives to the mediocrities of commercial television...
...foreign policy," the Senator said, "is the easing of international tensions, looking toward a time when it will be possible for nations to devote their resources not to weapons of destruction but to the works of peace and social justice...
...American Ambassador Graham Martin told the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangkok in mid-January that there were 35,285 U.S...
...What has been going on—not only in terms of Baker's activities as revealed at his trial but in other instances—is a process of mutual corruption...
...This huge burden cannot be justified as needed to counter a serious Soviet attack upon Western Europe since any such move by Russia—as our allies realize if we do not—almost certainly would signal the opening of nuclear war by both sides, in which case the presence of six U.S...
...Since October the Committee has been conducting a preliminary investigation into disturbances in Negro urban areas, allegedly to determine whether Communists were at the bottom of these disorders...
...Once the erosion of these rights is permitted to begin, it is exceedingly difficult to halt, and the intervening damage may be irreparable...
...His suspicions were well founded...
...Jim Lillis [ITT comptroller] will handle it...
...of Alabama...
...The present regime in Brazil was imposed on the nation by the military three years ago with the excuse that it was necessary to stabilize the nation and stave off the threat from the Communist left...
...Naylor stated in his affidavit that on October 13, 1960, he talked with William Marx, ITT senior vice presi dent, at the company's New York head quarters...
...West Germany, Britain, and the Low Countries are all seeking to retrench on their NATO commitments, and France, of course, no longer contributes militarily to NATO...
...Court of Appeals ruling that Selective Service officials may not reclassify draft registrants 1-A as a punishment for speaking out or demonstrating against U.S...
...Although 128 voted against the motion, the minority vote was considerably larger than opponents of HUAC had ever been able to mus ter in the past...
...In a Democratic caucus last month sixty-three House members voted in favor of abolition...
...Will the country ever become wearied enough of the HUAC brand of tragi-comedy to demand that the House stop sponsoring it...
...Thirty Democratic and eleven Republican Senators have joined with Mike Mansfield, the Senate Majority leader, in sponsoring the resolution...
...It is no wonder that the stature of Congress has been declining sharply in public polls...
...The heart of the unanimous ruling was that the draft officials' action was in violation of the First Amendment right of free speech...
...Will Speaker McCormack respect this request from his home state and support adequate time for House debate on HUAC...
...It is essential that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara require the Pentagon to put a stop to this kind of dangerous, Orwellian goings-on...
...One Negro Congressman, Augustus F. Hawkins of California, said that his prediction of last year—that after HUAC investigated the Ku Klux Klan it would turn next to the civil rights movement—had come true...
...Arms, Unlimited One of the Defense Department's units seems to have gone into business for itself...
...It consisted of a sworn statement by John T. Naylor, a former vice president of International Telephone and Telegraph Company, describing how officers of the corporation secured political contributions from ITT executives...
...ROTC Spies The idea behind a military establishment is that it is needed to protect the nation, but we are persuaded frequently that it is the nation which needs protection against the military...
...The Corrupters After the jury had voted to convict Bobby Baker, one of the jurors, Lezie G. Barnes, said that he "had in his mind all the time what the case meant to the country, the long view...
...But the margin is frequently only one vote...
...As evidence of its customary objectivity, HUAC has placed this inquiry under the direction of two segregationist Congressmen, Democrat William M. Tuck of Virginia and Republican John H. Buchanan, Jr...
...The other is a unanimous U.S...
...Moreover, our own interests require that our forces in Europe be reduced...
...You are down for $1,200...
...The struggle to modernize our approach will be waged on several fronts in the current Congress...
...Those most concerned have begun to seek answers elsewhere to the demand for quality television...
...Please make your check out in favor of the 'Texas Business and Professional Men's Committee for Johnson for Vice President.' " According to Naylor, when he protested against contributing, after Baker stepped out, Marx said: "Hal [Geneen] and the Board have set it up to butter both sides so we'll be in a good position whoever wins...
...The majority decision made it clear that a state has a right to set standards and to judge the conduct of its employes, but only on the basis of specific deeds, not beliefs or associations...
...Yet there has been no approval or even discussion in Congress or in the country of this ominous development, which frighteningly resembles the earlier stages of our military involvement in Vietnam...
...This can be financed for you by the company if necessary...
...divisions would have no military value...
...To start with, not only France but some of our other Western allies are beginning to desert NATO...
...they believe it has outlived its usefulness...
...If the pollsters were now to ask citizens if they believe that some businessmen contribute to the corruption of the legislative and executive branches of government, we might learn whether the average citizen has yet discovered that in bribery—as in dancing—"it takes two to tango...
...The Senate report objected to the freedom given ILN by the Defense Department to set foreign credit terms, conduct vigorous selling campaigns, and disregard arms control objectives...
...This unusual alliance, and the bipartisan backing the resolution commands, should make it difficult for the Administration to defeat it in the Senate, even if President Johnson should be so unwise as to remain unyielding on the issue...
...For example, there is general public satisfaction over the conviction of Baker because in 1962 he took $99,600 from executives of four California savings and loan associations...
...It said that "dynamic and aggressive" salesmanship had increased U.S...
...troops there...
...One hundred and twenty-four nuns and priests signed a "Statement of Concern" which pointed out that Father Robert F. Drinan, dean of the Boston College Law School and Father Joseph H. Fichter, professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the Harvard Divinity School, had written articles discussing the "serious charges" against the Committee and calling for a "full and open debate in the Congress about the continued existence of HUAC...
...Mitchell said: "Jack, they have put you down for $1,200...
...One is the U.S...
...To emphasize that he seeks a change in name only, he asserted that "my purpose in introducing this resolution is to preserve for the Committee the full jurisdiction and all the powers it has possessed during the almost twenty-nine years of its operation under its present mandate...
...The staff report painted a different picture from the Secretary's...
...Johnson...
...For example, it would be difficult for President Johnson to reconcile his publicly stated desire to improve relations with the Soviets with our bristling display of armed might in Europe...
...Naylor resigned from ITT in March, 1961...
...In another case Senator Thomas Dodd's handling of campaign contributions and other financial activities is under Senate inquiry...
...The Committee study proposed that the State Department's Office of Munitions Control compile quarterly reports on private and government arms exports for the Secretary of State and congress, mat tne ueiense department be required to make full accounting of its military assistance credit account, that Congress explore various aspects of our munitions sales, including credit and controls, and that the United States press for the international establishment of "free zones" in the world that would have no sophisticated weapons...
...This strikes us as a sound proposal...
...No one may comment critically on a high government official even if he can prove his charges are true...
...The device violates tax law and is an evasion of the Federal law prohibiting corporate contributions to election campaigns...
...The corruption of giver and taker is equally reprehensible, but somehow the average citizen considers the business community less culpable than politicians when the former wheels and deals for special advantage from Congress, a state legislature, or a Federal or state regulatory agency...
...The Senator contended that the affi davit must be presumed accurate until it "is answered on the public record...
...Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, dissenters in 1952, this time were on the winning team...
...Last year the Ford Foundation proposed a domestic communications satellite scheme designed to increase greatly the income of educational television stations and thus help them fill the vast void in programming...
...He said that he later protested to Geneen, saying, "I paid off my $1,200 extortion to your little friend Baker and won't recover...
...Until now, educational television has limped along on skimpy school-provided or state or local budgets, with frequent life-saving transfusions of private funds from organizations such as the Ford Foundation...
...The cost of our European operations runs $25 billion a year...
...The stench of bought legislation was all over this case," wrote Robert J. Donovan, Washington correspondent of The Los Angeles Times...
...One of the major objectives of U.S...
...University officials reported the instruction was given in absolute secrecy, with no note-taking and no out-of-class discussion permitted...
...military men in Thailand...
...the Board wants it...
...The Feinberg law was upheld by the U.S...
...Another is the coming struggle over the Mansfield resolution calling for a substantial reduction of American forces in Europe...
...Hal has given me a selected list of top executives to contribute to the election campaign...
...Supreme Court in 1952 by a six to three margin...
...The Appeals Court acted promptly enough to prevent damage in this in stance, but The New York Times, in commenting on the Supreme Court's striking-down of the Feinberg law, which was in force for almost two decades, provided evidence of how "irreparable" the damage from such bad laws can be: "Nearly 400 teachers in New York City's school and college system lost their jobs," The Times reported...
...But for all its prodigious growth, commercial television programs are still, with some honorable exceptions, mediocre or worse...
...Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recently assured Senators that arms are sold in a very responsible manner and that his department had "established all the necessary policy and administrative safeguards to insure that this will continue to be true in the future...
...Supreme Court's five-to-four rejection of a complex of New York State loyalty oath and related laws affecting teachers and other civil servants...
...Because of its anti-Communism, the United States, in myopic fashion, embraced the regime, with all its totalitarian trappings, and continues to prop it up with large-scale military and economic aid...
...Brazil Moves Further Right The State Department's affinity for Latin American dictatorships was underscored by the recent cordial reception in Washington of president-elect Artur da Costa e Silva of Brazil...
...He felt such a contribution, to be repaid to him by ITT through its tax deductible expense accounts, might violate U.S...
...Will more Congressmen than in the past come to realize— as the priests and nuns clearly implied —that HUAC threatens the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech...
...The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is conducting a wide-ranging inquiry into American foreign policy...
...The most notorious of these "remnants" in New York was the so-called Feinburg law, which required state college and university faculty to sign non-Communist loyalty oaths and provided for a blacklist of organizations deemed subversive by the Board of Regents...
...their other companies are doing this...
...These men, along with their dependents, add up to a million Americans...
...The Army refused to disclose the names of the organizations, but a spokesman said they included not only the Attorney General's list of "subversive" organizations but others that might eventually be tagged as Communist-dominated...
...This doubtless accounts for Representative Ichord's desire to find a sweeter-smelling name, and it explains why Democratic leaders recently named a Harvard-educated liberal, John C. Culver of Iowa, to sit on the Committee...
...Both the Senator and the Committee staff contend that the Defense Department's aggressive merchandising of weapons intensifies arms races in the underdeveloped world and damages our relations with European allies...
...Thailand should be high in priority for open and thorough examination, and the Administration and the Pentagon should be required to give a full account of its actions and decisions there...
...They expressed their concern about pressures "tending to stifle free expression...
...According to the date given in the indictment, Baker began getting the cash payments shortly after the Senate Finance Committee, meeting in conference with the House Ways and Means Committee, abandoned the Senate's proposed tough tax formula for savings and loan associations in favor of a much milder House version...
...How the Federal money for the proposed public system should be raised is open to debate...
...The incoming president, who takes office March 15, was given the warmest of welcomes, a White House luncheon complete with Marine Band music, and an array of gifts from President and Mrs...
...This time around the proposal not only has wider Senatorial backing, but the arguments on its behalf are more compelling than ever...
...But however the money is raised, the crucial need is to establish the principle that public television is as proper an area for government support as are public schools and public roads...
...Court of Appeals in New York, with Judges Henry J. Friendly and J. Joseph Smith concurring...
...When Costa e Silva assumes the presidency of Brazil, he will inherit a new constitution and a press law which together will make him a virtual dictator...
...Washington University President Charles E. Odegaard sharply reprimanded Lieutenant General J. L. Richardson, the Sixth Army commander responsible for the closed-door instruction, in a letter, the gist of which the president said was, "Classrooms of the university are not places for the presentation of ideas which must be kept secret and cannot be freely and openly discussed...
...It is paying off big in Washington...
...it should not be forgotten or ignored that our constitutional rights often hang by such a slender thread...
...Baker has been convicted...
...The Supreme Court has in a number of decisions in recent years chopped down many of the barriers to freedom raised in the fear-ridden McCarthy years...
...The next test will come on the House vote over appro priations for the Committee...
...Powerful business interests volunteer in some instances to provide election campaign funds or other benefits in return for past or anticipated future votes on legislation affecting their interests...
...It was revealed recently—largely through vigorous objections by University of Washington officials and faculty—that Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets in eight Western states were being given secret instruction that if they belonged to or were associated with any of a list of certain political organizations they might not receive their commissions...
...The Board of Directors wants us all to cooperate...
...The same proposal was introduced last fall by thirty-three Senators but was dropped because of Administration insistence that the "timing" for reduction of our contribution to NATO forces was wrong and that any such cut should be decreed only in exchange for a similar Soviet reduction in military strength...
...Voting to uphold the law, as he had voted in 1952, was Justice Tom C. Clark, who was joined this time by Justices John M. Harlan, Potter Stewart, and Byron R. White...
...A recent Louis Harris poll revealed that the better-educated among the populace are getting fed up...
...Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Justices Abe Fortas and William J. Brennan completed the majority...
...Morse said the affidavit was made available to the Department of Justice which could not "find any evidence" to support it...
...The Carnegie group proposes a "public television" system, which would include but be broader than educational television, operated by a non-government, independent corporation, and supported by a special earmarked excise tax on new television receivers...
...Furthermore, Washington faculty members, led by Professor Gordon Griffiths, former member of the executive board of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, charged that student cadets had received instruction on how to spy and gather information on fellow students and left-wing student organizations...
...Practically unsupervised by the State Department or Congress, and operating contrary to avowed U.S...
...On and On with HUAC For another chapter in the continuing farce of the House Un-American Activities Committee we take you to the halls of Congress where Representative Richard Ichord, a Missouri Democrat and Committee member, proposes to change the name of HUAC to the Committee on Internal Security...
...Naylor wrote a check but, according to his affidavit, suspected "willful tax fraud" and bore the cost himself...
...But it appears that the Defense Department is determined to maintain its arms sales abroad at about a $1.5 billion per year level, thus contributing to the build-up of conventional arms throughout the world...
...Naylor asked: "Are you asking for a check now...
Vol. 31 • March 1967 • No. 3
