From: orwell@reg.triumf.ca (BALDEN, RON)
Subject: Smearing I.F. Stone
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Keywords:  propaganda
Organization: TRIUMF: Tri-University Meson Facility
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 23:53:00 GMT

John McCarthy has repeated at least twice now the smear that newsman
I.F. Stone (1907 - 1990, approx.) was a "paid K.G.B. agent", a smear
picked up and amplified from the original source by the right-wing
ideological bully boys "Accuracy in Media" (a misnomer if ever there
was one). 

This smear is refuted in the August 3/10 (1992) issue of "The Nation".
("Izzy an Agent?", by D.D. Guttenplan) (my ellipsis):

""... Romerstein, [writer Herbert Romerstein, who started the ball 
rolling] who retired in 1989 as head of the U.S.I.A.'s Office to 
Counter Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation, and whose resume 
includes a stint on the HUAC staff as well as authorship of 
"Communism and Your Child", must have known his story would not stand 
much scrutiny.  When I asked him if he had sought confirmation from 
Kalugin, [Romerstein's supposed source, who flatly denies it] he
refused to answer, saying he was "not going to go into detail about 
that aspect of it."  Indeed, the stories he set in motion are 
remarkably devoid of detail -- words like "bankroll", 
"Moscow gold" and "propaganda shill" breeze through them without even 
the pretense of evidence.

In terms of ideological reliability, the editor of "I.F. Stone's
Weekly" would have been a lousy investment. ... [Reviews Stone's
frequent criticism of the Soviet Union] ...

.. But if Stone was nobody's apparatchik, he was also no A.D.A. 
liberal, and here we come to the heart of the matter.  To the
right wing and its corporate allies, the Soviet Union was never more 
than a stand-in for the real enemy: homegrown radicalism.  It was not, 
after all, the moral example of the Russians that prompted workers to 
demand better wages and conditions, sparked the civil rights movement
or brought antiwar protestors, women, gays and lesbians out into the
streets.

  Now the Soviet Union is gone, and there is as yet no new external 
enemy to distract us.  In this context, Romerstein et al.'s coarse 
smear can be viewed partly as the old cold warrior's attempt to trade 
in depreciating assets before the market collapses. ...

.. Why this attack, at this time, on this target?  Communism may be 
dead, but Marxism, while hardly in vogue, is still breathing.  And 
much of the credit must go to unrepentant radicals like I.F. Stone.  
Destroy his credibility and you effectively deny the possibility of an 
independent left position.  Concede him his credibility -- grant him 
the compatability of his beloved Jefferson and his equally beloved 
Marx -- and I.F. Stone remains, even in death, an extremely dangerous 
man.""  [D.D. Guttenplan, "The Nation"]

A few notes on "Accuracy in Media"; it  has served as a conduit of C.I.A.
disinformation (CovertAction Information bulletin, 1984 issue, quoted 
in  Michael Parenti's study of the U.S. mass
media, "Inventing Reality" (1986, St. Martin's Press)),  and is part
of a network of mutually-justifying rightwing "think tanks" 
(the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation
are the most prominent of these) whose purpose is to convince U.S.
citizens that democracy is so precious it shouldn't be "worn out" by
people actually exercising their democratic rights. 

A useful, brief (170 page) guide to this network is 
"Ominous Politics: The New Conservative Labyrinth" by 
John S. Saloma III (Hill and Wang, 1984).  Note that the "Mr. Deep 
Pockets" of the New Right is Richard Mellon Scaife (heir to the
Mellon fortune) who has been funding these New Right organizations to
the tune of 10 to 15 million dollars a years since about 1973
(when his mother died and he gained control of various 
trust/foundation funds worth hundreds of millions) -- i.e. the *total
property wealth* of a "merely rich" person every year. 

Ron Balden
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d