George Polk

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George Polk (17 October 1913, Fort Worth, Texas - May 1948) was an American journalist for CBS who disappeared in Greece and was found dead a few days later on Sunday May 16, 1948, shot at point-blank range in the back of the head, and with hands and feet tied. Polk was covering the civil war in Greece between the right wing government and communists and had been critical of both sides. He alleged that a few officials in the Greek government had embezzled up to $250,000 in aid (or $2.2 million in 2007 dollars) from the Truman Administration, a charge that was never proved.

He had been particularly outspoken in his criticism of the Truman government's unqualified support for the rightist authoritarian regime in Greece. In the late 1970s, the story emerged as to how AMAG (American Mission for Aid to Greece) authorities helped the Greek police frame two young communists for his death.^{[citation needed]}

A communist journalist, Gregorios Staκtopoulos, was tried and convicted of helping Vaggelis Vasvanas and Adam Mouzenidis, members of the illegal communist army, commit the murder. Staktopoulos himself maintained that the confession that led to his conviction was obtained through torture, and in fact it was later revealed that Adam Mouzenidis arrived at Salonica, where he was allegedly introduced to Polk, two days after Polk's murder, and Vasvanas was not in Greece at the time.^{[citation needed]} An investigation by James G.M. Kellis (also known as Killis), a former OSS officer with knowledge of Greek political circles and power brokers, concluded that Greek communist circles lacked the power and influence to commit the murder and cover it up. Kellis worked on contract for the Wall Street law firm of William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, the former head of OSS, who was hired by journalist Walter Lippman to investigate the case. Following Kellis' conclusion that it was more likely Polk had been murdered by right-wing groups within or affiliated to the Greek government, the investigation was halted and Kellis recalled to Washington. At the time the US government was financially supporting the Greek government mainly to prevent a communist take-over of the country. The Greek government had been supported by the British Government throughout 1941-1945 but this became an impossibility after the war.

According to journalists for mainstream US and British newspapers in the mid-1940s, the US-installed Fascist Greek government routinely used mass arrests, torture, and the forced expulsion and "re-education" of political undesirables.^{[citation needed]}

In fact, the government's foreign minister had resigned in disgust in early 1946 because of rampant "terrorism by state organs."

US reporters who pursued these stories were often pressured by US government officials and their editors to examine their "unpatriotic" views. People sent for "re-education" had to endure abhorrent conditions of lack of water and lack of hygienic conditions.^{[citation needed]}

This Truman Doctrine policy became a cornerstone of Cold War neo-colonialism; as Truman explained it, the US government and military would brazenly intervene in the internal affairs of any nation that did not comply with the global political and economic objectives of the US.^{[citation needed]}

Polk had married Rea (also known as Rhea) Coccins, a Greek national and ex-stewardess, seven months prior to his death. They had no children. After being allegedly harassed and threatened by the Greek government, Rea fled to the U.S. where she was debriefed by Donovan's law firm. She became friendly with Barbara Colby, the wife of William Colby, a former OSS officer attached to Donovan's firm, who later would become director of the CIA.

Reporters in New York city started a fundraising project to send an independent investigation committee to Greece, and from this effort the newsmen's commission was formed. Members included Ernest Hemingway, William Polk (Polk's brother), William Price (his cousin) and Homer Bigart. This was soon however eclipsed in media coverage by the Lippman Committee, comprised mostly of Washington journalists with Walter Lippman as chairman and James Reston of the New York Times.

Within months of his death, a group of American journalists instigated the George Polk Awards for outstanding radio or television journalism. These awards were modeled after the Pulitzer Prize which is awarded for outstanding print journalism in newspapers.

The roles of the US government, William Donovan's law firm (at the time already a front for some CIA operations), and the Lippman committee in rubberstamping and acknowledging the Greek government's whitewash and show-trial are strongly criticized.^{[citation needed]}

In February 2007, Polk's "status as a symbol of journalistic integrity" was called into question by historian Richard Frank, who provided evidence that Polk made false claims about his service record in World War II. In particular, Frank draws "the inescapable conclusion is that George Polk did not simply verbally recount false tales of his wartime exploits to his family and to his journalist colleagues, he actually forged documents to buttress his stories." http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/313fgojr.asp

George Polk's brother, William, replied to this attack, which he called slanderous, in a letter to the Guardian Monday March 19, 2007. http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2036930,00.html He pointed out that Frank did not discuss a single article Polk ever wrote and that his military record is amply substantiated in a range of military documents, including a picture of Polk being decorated by Vice-Admiral John McCain on November 30, 1943, on behalf of the "Airplane Cruiser Detachment for their heroic role during the Battle for the Solomons." A more detailed reply can be found at http://www.williampolk.com/pdf/2007/open%20letter%20to%20winners%20of%20the%20geo%20polk.pdf

In April 2007, Frank responded to William Polk's letters and to what he considered a baffling silence from journalists that greeted his charges: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/506hdoal.asp

On October 5, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that it would honor five journalists of the 20th century times with first-class rate postage stamps, to be issued on Tuesday, April 22, 2008: Martha Gellhorn, John Hersey, George Polk, Ruben Salazar, and Eric Sevareid.^[1] Postmaster General Jack Potter announced the stamp series at the Associated Press Managing Editors Meeting in Washington.

George Polk grew up in Fort Worth, Texas.

[edit] References

^ The Associated Press (2007). Stamps Honor Distinguished Journalists (English). The Associated Press. Retrieved on October 18, 2007.

Prados, John (2003). Last Crusader: The Secret Wars Of CIA Director William Colby. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512847-8.
Bernhard, Nancy E (1999). U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960. Cambridge University Press.
Keeley, Edmund (1989). The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Marton, Kati (1990). The Polk Conspiracy: Murder and Cover-Up in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk. Farrar Straus and Giroux, New York.
Unger, Sanford (1990). "The Case of the Inconvenient Correspondent", Columbia Journalism Review 29 (November/December 1990).
Vlanton, Elias, and Zak Mettger (1996). Who Killed George Polk? The Press Covers Up a Death in the Family. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.