I. F. Stone

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I.F. StoneCredit: Burnt Pixel / Keith Jenkins
I.F. Stone
Credit: Burnt Pixel / Keith Jenkins

Isidor Feinstein Stone (December 24, 1907 - June 18, 1989; born Isidor Feinstein, better known as I.F. Stone) was an iconoclastic American investigative journalist.[1]

He is best remembered for his political newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly. At its peak in the 1960s, it had a circulation of about 70,000,[2] but was regarded as very influential.

Contents

[edit] Early life and career

Stone was born Isidor Feinstein in Philadelphia. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who owned a store in Haddonfield, New Jersey. He studied philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and as a student he wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer.[1]

He started his own newspaper, the Progress as a high-school sophomore in Haddonfield. He later worked for the Haddonfield Press and the Camden Courier-Post. After dropping out of the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the The Philadelphia Inquirer.[1] Influenced by the work of Jack London, he became a radical journalist. In the 1930s, he played an active role in the Popular Front opposition to Hitler.

In 1929, he married Esther Roisman, who later served as his assistant at I.F. Stone's Weekly.[1] They remained married until his death, and had three children: Celia (m. Gilbert), Jeremy, and Christopher.

Stone moved to the New York Post in 1933 and during this period supported Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. His first book, The Court Disposes (1937), was a critique of the Court's role in blocking New Deal reforms. Around the time of its publication, he took the last name Stone and began signing his name I.F. Stone.[1]

After leaving the New York Post in 1939, Stone became associate editor and then Washington editor of The Nation.[1] His next book, Business as Unusual (1941), was an attack on the country's failure to prepare for war.[citation needed] Underground to Palestine (1946) dealt with the migration of Eastern European Jews at the end of the Second World War.

At that time he shared many of the Zionists' positions. While he strongly defended the State of Israel at its inception, he became sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in the Sixties.[1]

In 1940, Stone joined the progressive afternoon newspaper PM which went under in 1948 and was replaced first by the New York Star and then the Daily Compass until it ceased publication in 1952. A critic of the emerging Cold War, Stone published the Hidden History of the Korean War that same year.[1] One of Stone's more famous books, Hidden History, alleged that South Korea initiated hostilities with constant and unprovoked cross-border attacks, and that United States and Syngman Rhee welcomed the conflict.

Inspired by the achievements of the muckraking journalist George Seldes and his political weekly, In Fact, Stone started his own political paper, I.F. Stone's Weekly in 1953. Over the next few years, Stone campaigned against McCarthyism and racial discrimination in the United States (in 1955, Stone's name was included in the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee's list of the 82 most active and typical sponsors of Communist fronts in the United States). In 1964, Stone was the only American journalist to challenge President Johnson's account of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

During the 1960s, Stone continued to criticize the Vietnam War. His newsletter enjoyed a circulation of 70,000, but in 1971 ill health and failing eyesight forced Stone to cease publication. After his retirement, he learned Ancient Greek and wrote a book about the prosecution and death of Socrates called The Trial of Socrates, in which he argued that Socrates wanted to be sentenced to death, to shame the Athenian democracy which he despised.

According to Nation Magazine editor Victor Navasky, Stone's journalistic work drew heavily on obscure documents from the public domain; some of his best scoops were discovered by peering through the voluminous official records generated by the government. Navasky also believes that as an outspoken leftist journalist working in often hostile environments, Stone's stories needed to meet an extremely high burden of proof to be considered credible. Navasky argues that most of Stone's articles are very well sourced, typically with official documents.[3]

In 1970 Stone received a Special George Polk Award.

[edit] Debate over relationship with Soviet Union

Several historians and researchers — including Herbert Romerstein, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr — as well as retired KGB officials have published claims and evidence that Stone was one of a number of persons inside the U.S. journalism community who were used by Soviet intelligence agencies as agents of influence. The available evidence shows clearly that Stone was approached by the KGB during the Second World War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were allied, but debate exist as to his relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies after this initial meeting.

The remarks of Oleg Kalugin, a former major general in the KGB, shortly after Stone's death set off months of speculation about Stone's alleged collaboration with that espionage agency, with one columnist going as far to call Stone "the KGB's front man in American journalism." Romerstein claimed that Kalugin, who had worked as a press officer at the Soviet embassy in Washington, had verified his accusations.[4] Kalugin later wrote in The First Directorate (1994) that KGB headquarters had cabled him to re-establish contact with Stone because "he was a man with whom we had regular contact".

He goes on to describe Stone as a "fellow traveler who made no secret of his admiration for the Soviet system." Kalugin later elaborated on his relationship with Stone, explaining that Stone was not a paid agent of the KGB, only that he was a friendly contact who regularly had lunch with him.[5]

According to Kalugin, Stone sought to sever his ties with the KGB after his first visit to the Soviet Union in 1956 and hearing Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" denouncing Stalin and the tyranny of his regime. Stone returned home and wrote "Whatever the consequences, I have to say what I really feel after seeing the Soviet Union and carefully studying the statements of its leading officials. This is not a good society and it is not led by honest men." Stone's conclusion that "nothing has happened in Russia to justify cooperation abroad between the independent left and the Communists" cost him over 400 subscribers to the Weekly.[citation needed] Kalugin stated that while Stone sought to sever ties in 1956, Kalugin eventually persuaded Stone to maintain his ties to the Soviets after the 1968 Czechoslovakian uprising and subsequent quelling of the revolt.

Miriam Schneir, writing in The Nation, said that Kalugin's memoirs merely mention Stone as one of many "leading journalists and politicians" Kalugin knew in Washington, DC and that "KGB headquarters never said [Stone] had been an agent of our intelligence service…" The only mention of a money matter between Kalugin and Stone was that after the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring, Stone "angrily" refused to let Kalugin pay a lunch tab and (in Schneir's words), "They never met again. End of story." [6]

In their book Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr identify Stone as BLIN in VENONA Project cables.[7] Venona transcript #1506 October 23, 1944 from the New York KGB office to Moscow, after a meeting with Vladimir Pravdin states, he "not refusing his aid," but "had three children and did not want to attract the attention of the FBI." Allegedly Stone’s fear "was his unwillingness to spoil his career", since he "earned $1500.00 per month but… would not be averse to having a supplemental income." In response to Pravdin's question as to "liaison" Stone is reported to have "replied that he would be glad to meet but he rarely visited New York City." The cable went on to record: "for the establishment of business contact with him… we are insisting on reciprocity." American journalist and KGB operative Samuel Krafsur also was set to the task of recruiting Stone. (See list of VENONA references below).

Klehr and Haynes, who reported the cable contents, state that there is no evidence in Venona that the KGB had recruited Stone, but that Kalugin’s comments leave open the possibility that he may have been at a later date. [8]

Walter and Miriam Schneir writing about this particular passage[9] remark at length on the difficulties with the Venona materials (their hearsay nature, with many steps between a conversation and the sending of a cable; language difficulties; possibility of imperfect decryption; etc.), concluding, "the Venona messages are not like the old TV show You Are There, in which history was re-enacted before our eyes. They are history seen through a glass, darkly."

In a 1992 Nation article, D.D. Guttenplan claims that the evidence shows clearly that Stone was never a witting collaborator with Soviet intelligence, while leaving open exactly the question of exactly what the Soviets may have meant by the term "agent of influence".[10]

Cassandra Tate, of the Columbia Journalism Review, argues that accusations of Stone’s involvement with the KGB are based on a few lines at the end of the KGB officer's speech and that after some research into Stone's history she concluded that he was not an "agent" and there is no evidence he was a collaborator with the agency.[11]

Records of investigations of Stone from 1953 through the 1970s by the FBI, CIA, Army, State Department, and U.S. Postal Service have been declassified; years of tailing by agents, informants, illegal car searches, and even pawing through his trash produced not a shred of evidence of clandestine activities.

[edit] Quotes

"You may just think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive." [on journalistic marginalization of him]

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." [12]

[edit] Trivia

Composer Scott Johnson makes extensive use of Stone's voice taken from a recorded 1981 lecture in his large-scale musical work, How It Happens, completed in 1991 on commission for Kronos Quartet.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Flint, Peter B., "I.F. Stone, Iconoclast of Journalism, Is Dead at 81; His integrity was inspiration and annoyance for decades", New York Times June 19, 1989. p. D1.
  2. ^ I.F. Stone Weekly (sic), Spartacus Schoolnet, accessed online 21 December 2006.
  3. ^ Navasky, Victor, I.F. Stone, The Nation, posted July 2, 2003, July 21, 2003 issue, accessed September 9, 2006.
  4. ^ Soviet Active Measures in The 'Post-Cold War' Era 1988-1991: Appendix: Recent Revelations About Soviet Active Measures. A report prepared at the request of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations by the United States Information Agency June 1992. Table of contents. Accessed online September 9, 2006.
  5. ^ Breindel, Eric, "Moscow Gold", Commentary Magazine, December 1992.
  6. ^ Miriam Schneir, "Stone miscast", The Nation, November 11, 1996.
  7. ^ Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response 1939–1957, Part II: Selected Venona Messages on the website of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Table of Contents. Accessed online September 9, 2006.
  8. ^ John Earl Haynes, Venona : Decoding Soviet Espionage in America; Yale University Press, August 11, 2000.
  9. ^ "Cables Coming in From the Cold", The Nation, July 5, 1999 issue.
  10. ^ D.D. Guttenplan, "Izzy an Agent?", The Nation, August 3/10, 1992; Romerstein's letter in response and Guttenplan's "Stone Unturned," September 28, 1992. For a more comprehensive critique of Romerstein's limitations see Stephen Schwartz, "A Tale of Two Venonas" in The Nation, January 8, 2001.
  11. ^ Tate, Cassandra, Who's out to lunch here? I. F. Stone and the KGB, Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 1992. Accessed online September 9, 2006.
  12. ^ Stone, I.F. Time of Torment, p. 317

[edit] References

  • Oleg Kalugin. (1994). The First Directorate. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.
  • Frank J. Donner. (1980). The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  • Victor S. Navasky. (1980). Naming Names. New York: The Viking Press.
  • Miriam Schneir, "Stone Miscast," The Nation, November 4, 1996.
  • Ellen Schrecker. 1994. The Age Of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents. Boston: St. Martin's Press.
  • Ellen Schrecker. 1998. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little Brown.
  • Stanley Sandler. 1999. The Korean War, University Press of Kentucky

[edit] Books

[edit] Biographies

  • Andrew Patner. (1988). I.F. Stone: A Portrait, Pantheon.
  • Robert C. Cottrell. (1992). Izzy: A Biography of I.F. Stone, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
  • Myra MacPherson. (2006). ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE - The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone, Scribner.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

[edit] Venona

I.F. Stone is referenced in the following Venona decrypts:

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