I may be one of the few, if only Freeper alive on this website who actually heard and met/talked to Whitaker Chambers, shortly before his death. He gave a talk to our Boys’ Club about the Pumpkin Papers, his questioning of communism and then his turn to Christianity. And he looked like he always did in a somewhat crumbled trenchcoat.
Schlesinger was many things, from Communist/Party dupe to liberal Democrat to making up things later in life. Schlesinger wrote for “Class and Society” in the late 30’s, a CPUSA “intellectual” magazine (I have two issues from 1938/39 and he’s in one of them).
His name shows up in a number of Appendix IX references re sponsors of CPUSA/CIO fronts from the late 1930’s thru 1944 but not much else afterwards. (He became a Roosevelt Liberal/Socialist and didn’t like the CPUSA).
He was also a good to fair historian, depending on what work of his you read. I feel that he was all over the place, looking to be a part of the power structure, esp. under JFK/LBJ. Nothing sinister, just a partially blind liberal for the rest of his life.
Here’s a story you’ve never seen in print. One of my classmates in an experimental “Summer Seminar on Strategic Affairs” or something like that, 1976-77, Un. of Miami, DC office, under Leon Goure’, the well respected Soviet/Communism exper, was, the late Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham (Deputy Dir, CIA/ DIA, Vietnam Intelligence, “High Frontie”, later SDI-Star Wars space defense systems.
He sat next to me. One day he showed me a column by Schlesinger in the Wall Street Journal wherein, besides being an all-out attack on him for his “space defense” systems advocacy, accused Danny of “slowly walking down the halls of Congress” lobbying for it (as close to an accurate reconstruction of what he wrote without having the article in front of me).
Danny looked at me and said “I wasn’t even in the country at the time he said I was at Congress” (About 98% accurate quote).
Then he asked me “What can I do about it”?. As the only journalist in the class (others were military, diplomats, intelligence veterans), I said, “Two things”.
{This is almost an exact quote of what I said) - “First, write a letter to the editor of the WSJ and tell him about Schlesinger’s error and ask if you can write a Letter to the Editor correcting Schlesinger”.
He did it and it was published, a relatively small letter of about 100 or so words.
Then I said to Danny that after getting an answer about having them publish your letter on correcting Schlesinger, ask the WSJ if you can write a long column (like Scheslinger did), explaining what the space defense system in question was, the threat it was addressing, how it would work, etc.
He did. They published it, dead-center Op-Ed Page. Never heard from Schlesinger again on that issue.
End of story.
We both had smiles on our face. Score one for the good guys.
Schlesinger, not as bad as traitor Seymour Hersh but a foolish little man in a world he was losing touch with.
Next, as I was telling Ronald Reagan about how to challenge Jimmy Carter for the presidency ....
More likely Schlensinger figured out what caused his fellow traveler Henry Wallace to fall out of political favor and read the tea leaves on how to maintain some level of acceptance that could keep him employed. More pragmatic than dogmatic, if you will.
Thanks MMtGR. Great personal account.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3885809/posts?page=10#10