Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” - A.J. Liebling
My father Bob Wilson took this to heart, and bought one and started his own newspaper, the Prairie Post of Maroa, Illinois in 1958, and ran it until he died in 1972. It never had a circulation of more than 2500 or so, but every week, he would fire off editorials at everyone and everything from local events to the actions of the nations of the world.
He may have been a Quaker peace activist in a Republican district, but his love and support of the farming communities garnered him enough respect that he eventually ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, though he lost. (He might have tried again, had he not died of an accident while only 49.) Many of his views ring true today. And he might have been willing to change the ones that fell behind the times. Although raised in the casual racism of the 1920s and 1930s, at the age of 15 he took stock of what he was being taught and discarded much of it as being wrong, and lived his life with respect for all. [well, almost all. I have found that his views on homosexuality were those common to his time. Would he have been able to change again? Maybe...]
I decided to transcribe his old editorials (I may make a book for some of my relatives) and every once in a while I will repost one here, as a view of how the world has changed wildly, or remained stubbornly the same.
November 25, 1964
TIME TO RETIRE
An entire nation of eyebrows rose in a thoughtful arch when the Warren Report recently revealed that “lack of communication” between federal agencies had contributed to President Kennedy's death. Put bluntly, agents of the FBI had talked at length with Lee Harvey Oswald not long before the assassination, yet the FBI did not give his name – in fact, no list at all – to the Secret Service which is charged with protecting the president and must know about dangerous persons in order to keep an eye on them anywhere the president travels.
John Edgar Hoover, redoubtable chief of the FBI, has apparently been doing a slow burn ever since. Described as a man with a limitless capacity for lapping up praise, but extremely thin-skinned about criticism, he blew his stack in a recent news interview and called the Warren Report “unfair and unjust” in this regard.
While he was at it, Hoover unloaded on several other favorite targets. He called Dr. Martin Luther King, recent Nobel Prize winner, “the most notorious liar in the country.”
In answer to a direct question whether he believed Dr. King had Communist connections, Hoover apparently replied, “Yes – but that's off the record.” The New York Times and other newspapers printed his statement anyhow, feeling this to be a dishonorable attempt to smear another person while hiding behind an “off the record” fence.
Dr. King, answering in what must surely rank with the greatest expressions of statesmanship, declared he could not believe Hoover would make such a statement “unless he has faltered under the awesome burdens of his office.”
And so a great public servant approaches the end of his career. The time has come to commend J. Edgar Hoover for his long service and permit him to retire into private life.
An examination of his more than forty years with this agency is a lesson in how completely such a body may be molded to the personality of one man. No president has ever evaded criticism, but J. Edgar Hoover has come to occupy a position as a small tin god above criticism of any sort. He has lashed out savagely at critics as “Communists and traitors” until even legislators fear to tangle with him. The FBI has at times, according to their own admissions before congressional hearings, searched the offices of senators without their knowledge, and attempted to bribe their employees to inform on them.
The FBI's non-cooperation with local police officials, which contributed to the tragedy in Dallas, has played a part in other fiascos. John Dillinger was given a publicity build-up as “Public Enemy No. 1” and the FBI has never ceased to congratulate themselves for having captured him.
The facts were not so simple according to prize-winning reporter Fred J. Cook, whose article “The FBI Nobody Knows” has just appeared in book form, with excerpts in the December TRUE magazine. Dillinger, he points out, may or may not have killed one bank employee in his “murderous” career, but FBI agents most certainly shot to death one innocent man and wounded others in the Little Bohemia fiasco. By failing to secure local advice, the FBI permitted the gangsters to sneak out the back while they were shooting up roadhouse customers who walked out the front door.
At the final scene in the alley near the Biograph Theater in Chicago, FBI agents again nearly botched the deal by “poor communications.” At the moment Dillinger walked out, alert Chicago police were holding guns on a part of the mob of strange men lurking near the theatre, checking their identification. They were FBI agents, but how were the patrolmen to know?
The reputation of the FBI, according to Cook, appears to have been largely a public-relations legend based on man-hunts of kidnappers and individual desperadoes such as Dillinger, Karpis, and Nelson. The real lords of the underworld, collecting an estimated twenty billions from gambling and drugs, are within FBI jurisdiction because they regularly cross state lines in the commission of crimes... but they have gone almost untouched by the FBI. Hoover has even denied the existence of the “Syndicate” or the “Mafia.”
The Narcotics Bureau of the Treasury Department, on the other hand, is daily involved in the desperate struggle against these real forces of crime, and they grab no headlines for rewards.
The “infallibility” of the FBI may be another fiction. Hoover asserts his agency has a 97% or 98% conviction record; but actually, a government report some years ago found them at 72.5%. A Senate committee under conservative Senator Harry F. Byrd made a study and found the FBI (in 1936) well behind the Narcotics Bureau, the Secret Service, the Alcohol Tax Unit, the Post Office Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Bureau. The only agency with less convictions was the Customs Bureau, with 71.5%.
This report also pointed out that the FBI pads its figures by taking credit for every conviction for moving a stolen car across a state line... many of which were entirely the work of local officials.
Hoover's greatest prop and support has always been the Red Menace. As early as January, 1920, Hoover was instrumental in organizing (something he later denied) the infamous Palmer Red Raids. Ten thousand persons were seized and jailed throughout the country on “suspicion of subversion.” A Senate committee later revealed that 6,500 of these were released without any charge, and of those actually tried, only a handful were convicted of any wrongdoing.
In later years, Hoover has regularly fanned the “Red Spy” hysteria while his budget mounted to the present level of $130,000,000 per annum. A former FBI agent, Jack Levine, revealed in October 1962, however, that the Communist Party had shrunk from a high of 80,000 members to a present 8,500. One out of every six of these is now an undercover FBI agent, which makes the FBI the largest financial contributor to the Communist Party, U.S.A.!
Hoover's greatest success, the near-destruction of the Communist Party, is the one he keeps the greatest secret. IF the public and the Congress realized the Communist Bugaboo has been beaten to its knees in this great nation of free people, they would not be so willing to contribute vast sums toward fighting it.
Many of Hoover's strict rules for the behavior of his agents are to be commended. No agent may drink or smoke, and each is so typically the All-American Boy that if you knew an FBI man were present in a crowd of 100, you could pick him out.
Other rules reflect facets of his character which may not please everyone. There are no Jewish and no Negro FBI men. The Bureau in 1921 smashed a nationwide strike of railroad shopmen by arresting 1,200 key members. The FBI will tap your telephone and open your mail if they become curious about your activities, both violations of your rights as a citizen.
In 1949 the government had what appeared to be an excellent espionage case against a Miss Judith Coplon. The famous Judge Learned Hand wrote the decision by which the justices unanimously threw out the verdict. Although her “guilt was plain”, the FBI had destroyed their own case by first flatly denying to the federal judges that any wiretaps had been used... and then, under pressure, finally confessing that they had kept 30 agents at work full-time listening to conversations of Miss Coplon and her friends and family – including her conversations with her lawyer in preparing her case!
Wiretapping is generally carried out in the one foolproof way that you cannot hope to detect; by a direct connection made in the offices of the telephone company. According to Fred Cook, the telephone companies officially deny and unofficially permit this all over the country. Company officials are hardly in a position to refuse help to “the feds.” Even less prepared to withstand such pressure is the postal employee whose job would instantly be forfeit if an unfavorable security report were to be made on him. His cooperation with the FBI ranges from the “cover check”, a compilation of addresses “from” and “to”, on up to opening and photographing any correspondence he considers suspicious. Like the wiretapping, this activity is strenuously denied.
J. Edgar Hoover has in some respects done an excellent job of upgrading the detection techniques of police forces throughout the nation. He must realize, however, that he does not have the right to use the powers of his office to further his personal quarrels; and he must acknowledge that no-one in this great democracy has given him any lifetime tenure in the office he now holds.
He could be replaced by any of a long list of competent individuals; and we believe the time has come. Within one year, look for an announcement that the old Gang Buster is “retiring” for “reasons of health.”