I.F. STONE: RED AND DEAD
NOVAK, ROBERT D.
I.F. STONE: RED AND DEAD by Robert D. Novak THIS IS THE NINTH ANNIVERSARY of I.F. StOne's death. When he died of a heart attack in a Boston hospital on June 18, 1989, he rated a top-of-the-page...
...Stone's Bi-weekly (1969-71...
...Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB major general stationed in Washington, in a 1992 interview with the London Independent, said: "We had an agent—a well-known American journalist—with a good reputation who severed his ties with us after 1956 [Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin...
...Stone also asserted to Sergei that he earned as much as $1,500 a month through his newsletter (about $150,000 a year in 1998 money), but that "he would not be averse to having a supplementary income...
...No wonder the obituary writers appeared to know nothing of this: Hardly a word has appeared in the mainstream press about Stone's Communist connections...
...The climax came with the publication in 1952 of Stone's book The Hidden History of the Korean War, which claims that the United States and South Korea provoked the North Korean invasion in 1950...
...Stone was at first unresponsive, but Sergei learned that Stone had belonged to the party in the '30s and tried again...
...When he died of a heart attack in a Boston hospital on June 18, 1989, he rated a top-of-the-page New York Times obituary that called him "a pugnacious advocate of civil liberties, peace and truth" and asserted that his "integrity" was acknowledged even by "detractors...
...He was much admired as a symbol of incorruptibility...
...intelligence and released by the National Security Agency in 1996, show that NKVD agent Vladimir Sergei, working under cover of the Tass news agency's Washington bureau, recruited Stone in 1944...
...Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist...
...Stone expressed his "unwillingness to spoil his career," Sergei reported...
...In the 1930s, Stone—writing editorials for the New York Post— applauded Stalin's infamous show-trials...
...I myself convinced him to resume them...
...That Izzy Stone was far out on the left (a fact largely omitted from the fawning obituaries) began to take on a sinister cast four years after his death...
...Under intense fire from the mainstream media, Kalugin backed away from this identification—saying Stone was only "a fellow traveler...
...foreign policy—especially when it collided with Moscow's...
...On ABC television, Peter Jennings praised Stone's credo: "To write the truth, to defend the weak against the strong, to fight for justice...
...But in 1968, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...A eulogy by the civil libertarian Nat Hentoff described him as a "lonely pamphleteer" prying loose the truth in I.F...
...Sergei's cable dealt with "establishment of a business contact" with Stone, who was given the code name BLIN ("pancake" in Russian...
...While working for the Philadelphia Record in 1933, he wrote articles for Modern Monthly under the pseudonym "Abelard Stone" that assailed Franklin D. Roosevelt for moving toward fascism and called for a "Soviet America...
...Stone...
...Ignoring the past, however, does not expunge it...
...In 1993, Accuracy in Media obtained FBI documents under the Freedom of Information Act that showed that former Daily Worker editor John Gates, operating as an informant, identified Stone as a covert Communist party member in the 1930s...
...Kenneth J. Campbell in Moscow's Words, Western Voices, "claiming that Communism was transforming Europe's most backward nation 'into the most advanced.'" Stone's subsequent writings in the Nation and other left-wing publications expressed nearly unrelieved approval of Soviet policy and opposition to NATO and other anti-Kremlin initiatives...
...From its beginning in 1953, I.F...
...He dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania his junior year to devote full time to duties as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer...
...So, to Stone, Nikita Khrushchev, not John F. Kennedy, was the hero of the 1962 missile crisis...
...Campbell calls it "a masterpiece of innuendo, anti-American rhetoric, repetition of Soviet propaganda themes and a dearth of evidence to support his theses...
...More damaging is evidence from the Venona papers...
...Kalugin later told Soviet intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein and Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media that the agent was I.F...
...And the Nation names its annual prize for "excellence in student journalism" the I.F...
...he said he would never again take any money from us...
...Needless to say, Stone attacked the U.S...
...Stone's Weekly was the launching pad for missiles aimed at U.S...
...These intercepted documents, decoded by U.S...
...Stone Award...
...Stone's Weekly (1953-68) and I.F...
...Now, it was reported back to Moscow that Stone "was not refusing his [Sergei's] aid," while urging the Russian spy-master to "consider that he had three small children and did ~ not want to attract [the FBI's] attention...
...Stone was lyrical in his praise of the Soviet government," writes Dr...
...intervention in Vietnam early and often...
...But other information started to come out...
...From the days when I covered Congress in the late '50s and early '60s, I remember Izzy as a solitary figure prowling Capitol Hill, rumpled, loaded down with documents, and flashing a bemused smile...
...He was born Isidor Feinstein, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, in Philadelphia in 1907...
...He was more successful on the second attempt...
...In fact, looking back at Stone's lifetime work, one sees a pattern emerge...
...According to Sergei, Stone had reacted to the first approach "negatively, fearing the consequences...
...Gen...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 40
