DD Guttenplan's American Radical: The Life and Times of IF Stone
Guttenplan described him as a journalistic "irritant to power for his uncanny ability to seize on the most inconvenient truths and for his vociferous opposition to the existing order." After becoming radicalized, he was brash, forthright, anti-fascist, pro-labor, a supporter of New Deal politics, and a passionate activist for the oppressed, disadvantaged, and social justice.
In his preface, Guttenplan described the fateful December 12, 1949 moment when Stone went from prominence to a non-person in American politics and his profession. It was during an interchange with the AMA's Dr. Morris Fishbein on Meet the Press, an ardent foe of universal single-payer health insurance he denounced as "socialistic." Quoting Stone, Guttenplan wrote:
"Dr. Fishbein, let's get nice and rough. In view of his advocacy of compulsory health insurance, do you regard Mr. Harry Truman as a card-carrying communist, or just a deluded fellow-traveler?"
After that, he slowly vanished, was never again on “Meet the Press," couldn't get his passport renewed after a year in Paris as foreign correspondent for the Compass, and when it closed in 1952 was blacklisted as a reporter. As he put it at age 40: "I feel for the moment like a ghost." And as Guttenplan wrote:
"For some time he live(d) in a kind of internal exile (sitting) in (a) Washington, DC....rented office waiting for the phone to ring (and) after three years (getting no) visitor apart from building maintenance workers and the mailman....(so he gave) up the office....work(ed) from home," and launched the IF Stone Weekly as a platform to produce radical commentaries for his readers...."slowly, almost imperceptibly, his audience return(ed)" to its final year 1971 peak 70,000 circulation level.
According to Guttenplan, Stone "rode into battle not as a paladin of the powerless or a gadfly, but as an insider, a confidential agent of the (left-wing) 'party within a party' that served" progressive politics in the 1930s. He later broke with Harry Truman and supported Wallace. The FBI followed him everywhere, investigated him for five years, and accumulated 6,000 pages in his file, threefold its size for Al Capone. His phone was tapped and his mail intercepted on suspicion he was a Soviet spy, that was, of course, untrue.
By 1970, he was invited in from the cold and given a special George Polk Award in journalism. He got honorary degrees from American University, Brown, Colby, and others, including a baccalaureate and doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania where he dropped out before graduating.
His numerous awards included:
- Newspaper Guild of New York Honors Page One Must for his book, Underground to Palestine — written before his views about Israel changed after the 1967 war
- The Eleanor Roosevelt Award
- the National Press Club Journalists' Journalist Award
- ACLU Award
- the Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award of the Association for Education In Journalism & Mass Communications
- Columbia University Journalism Award, and
- on March 5, 2008, The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University announced an annual IF Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence award and an IF Stone Workshop on Strengthening Journalistic Independence.
In his name, the annual Izzy Award is presented to "an independent outlet, journalist, or producer for contributions to our culture, politics, or journalism created outside traditional corporate structures."
Three of Stone's great quotes were:
One of several versions of his saying "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."
"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins...."
"You've really got to wear a chastity belt in Washington to preserve your journalistic virginity. Once the secretary of state invites you to lunch and asks your opinion, you're sunk." Not Stone. His honor and integrity weren't for sale.
In a June 19 - 25, 2009 Counterspin interview, Guttenplan said Stone was never ideologically rigid, and would always change his views in light of new information. He:
"never pretended to be a liberal. He was an unashamed radical, and in a way, the most important way in which he matters is he shows us, he reminds us what's possible. He reminds us what the left can do. He reminds us what our country can do. He reminds us what our government can do if we keep on its back and we make sure it delivers on its promises."
And he showed how good journalism can make a difference, the kind so lacking then and now with no IF Stone around to write it.
He "challenged power by using power's own record against itself." And after his hearing failed, he relied increasingly on documents to prove what he famously said:
"All governments lie, but the truth still slips out from time to time," and it's up to good journalists to find and report it. Stone did, what the powerful wanted suppressed in his Weekly and numerous books, including (a treasured signed used copy this writer owns of) his Hidden History of the Korean War.
Published in 1952, Monthly Review co-founders Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy wrote in the preface:
"This book....paints a very different picture of the Korean War — one, in fact, which is at variance with the official version at almost every point." Stone's investigations into official discrepancies led him "to a full-scale reassessment of the whole" war.
First published, in part, in the Compass and two articles in France's L'Observateur, its publisher, Claude Bourdet explained in his article titled, "The Korean Mystery: Fight Against a Phantom?"
"If Stone's thesis corresponds to reality (and it did), we are in the presence of the greatest swindle in the whole of military history....not a question of a harmless fraud but of a terrible maneuver in which deception is being consciously utilized to block peace at a time when it is possible."
Stone called it international aggression. So did Huberman and Sweezy writing in August 1951 (14 months into the war):
"....we have come to the conclusion that (South Korean president) Syngman Rhee deliberately provoked the North Koreans in the hope that they would retaliate by crossing the parallel in force. The northerners (who wanted a unified Korea, not war) fell neatly into the trap." Truman was the instigator who took full advantage when they did, as Stone believed in writing:
"we said we were going to Korea to go back to the status quo before the war but when the American armies reached the 38th parallel they didn't stop, they kept going, so there must be something else. We must have another agenda here and what might that agenda be?"
The same one, he later learned, we had in Vietnam that made him outspoken against it. He was the only journalist asked to speak at the first nationwide November 15, 1969 "Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam War," that half a million to Washington one month after a global event was held.
He matched his anti-war spirit with his support for the disadvantaged, the oppressed, social equity, and above all accuracy and truth, and used his journalism as a "crusade" to produce it. He wrote:
"I was heartened by the thought that I was preserving and carrying forward the best in America's traditions, that in my humble way I stood in a line that reached back to Jefferson. These are the origins and the preconceptions, the hopes and the aspirations" behind all his writings and the legacy that's now ours.
On June 17, 1989, he died of heart failure in Cambridge, MA and is buried there at Mount Auburn Cemetery, leaving behind his wife, Esther, of 60 years, and three children, Celia, Jeremy and Christopher. He once told his wife that "if (he) lived long enough (he'd) graduate from a pariah to a character, and then if (he) lasted long enough, from a character to public institution." He omitted a legend, a committed radical, consummate independent, and ideological hero symbolizing what Public Affairs' Peter Osnos called his "stubborn tenacity, ferocious independence, and extraordinary will" in pursuing truth.
Or as Guttenplan ended his book:
"IF Stone wrote not to create a sensation, or to promote himself (or his 'brand'), but to change the world. We read and work - and wait."
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen AT sbcglobal DOT net. Visit his blog at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.