—"-_—.._— _ . . ~ '. . h . 0 I‘50- o ‘ ..' V. .. a. ‘ .“ . I '- 4 , a _. .H...v ‘ . .. N . . , A ‘ — ”‘00” - .-, -g‘ . I. F. STONE: AN INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST’S EARLY mssgm _ ON THE VIETNAM WAR, 19619-1965 - Thesis for the Degree of M. A, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY MICHAEL MANLEY 1973 Q ~ _ . - I II III IIZIIIIIIIILI II IIII IIIII III IIIIII 0146 97 III ‘ LIBRARY Michigan State ' University I I ABSTRACT I. F. STONE: AN INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST'S EARLY DISSENT ON THE VIETNAM WAR, 1961-1965 This study examines independent journalist I. F. Stone's coverage of the early years of the Vietnam war and. compares his reportage with that of the "establishment" press. The two-fold purpose of this thesis is to study the first American journalist who was outspokenly critical of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and, by so doing, point out some of the failures of the national news media in adequately informing the public about the longest, costliest, and most tragic war in American history. Stone was editor, publisher, and sole reporter of his one-man publication, I.F. Stone's Weekly, a four-page journal of fact and opinion published in Washington from 1953 until his retirement in December, 1971. The study covers the early period of growing American involvement in Vietnam, from the beginning of President John F. Kennedy's administration in 1961 until March, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the sustained bombing of North Vietnam. During this time, American ground combat forces increased from 685 to over 20,000. Michael Manley Stone's reportage is examined along with that of three of the largest and most influential members of the print medium, the New York Times, and weekly news maga- zines Newsweek and Time. These three were chosen because of their national impact on public opinion and because each had a correspondent in Vietnam during the early years of the war and, therefore, should have had more accurate first-hand information than those newspapers and magazines that covered the war exclusively from Washington. Edito- rial opinions of the war are examined closely and compared with Stone's. All reportage is examined and analyzed in light of the Pentagon Papers, which serves as a major source in this study, and other public documents. During this period, Stone was the lone dissenting voice on Vietnam in the American press. As early as 1961 he urged complete U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia and warned that the present policy of intervention, unless halted, would lead to a major land war involving the United States. The national press at this time was unanimously united behind the policies of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and, as a result, became a willing and often eager tool of the government. There were no dissenting edito- rial voices and little investigative reporting. Stone and the national press differed sharply in their coverage of such major events as the coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, the Buddhist protests, the Gulf Michael Manley of Tonkin incident of 1964, and the U.S. State Department White Paper of March, 1965, which sought to fix the re- sponsibility for the war on outside intervention by North Vietnam. The difference in the reportage came about be- cause Stone was the only journalist to probe beyond government handouts, official papers, and briefings to seek the truth about the war. Refusing to take government spokesmen at their word, Stone sought out the findings and opinions of independent scholars of all nations, for- eign journalists, and the handful of Congressional dis- senters. He also poured over official government reports, congressional testimony, and other documents. As a result, he caught the government in numerous contradictions and many outright lies as it sought to justify its policy. His detailed dissections of the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the 1965 White Paper have become classics in investi- gative reporting. Stone's journalism during the early years of Vietnam was in the best tradition of the American free press. If other larger, more established institutions of the press would have demonstrated the same independence and courage, the war in Vietnam might not have lasted for more than a decade. I. F. STONE: AN INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST'S EARLY DISSENT ON THE VIETNAM WAR, 1961-1965 BY 1‘5. { Michael'Manley A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS School of Journalism 1973 Accepted by the faculty of the School of Journalism, College of Communication Arts, Michigan State University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree. 41.). @WW0 '7' Director of Thesis } ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am an acknowledgments freak. Whenever I pick up a book I instinctively turn to the page on which the author gives his or her profuse thanks to everyone from spouse to typewriter repair man. I used to think they were clichés. Now I know better. Many peOple were involved in this study even though they knew the only public exposure it is destined to receive will be on my living room coffee table when friends come over. I would like to thank first of all my adviser, Dr. W. Cameron Meyers, whose inspections, detec- tions, and suggestions helped immensely in making this study coherent. When he finished with the first draft, the red pen marks almost outnumbered the black type. It was Dr. Meyers who first turned me on to Izzy Stone. I would also like to thank Henry Koch, the assistant librar- ian at M.S.U., for cutting through the red tape to obtain the complete microfilm run of the Weekly from 1953 on. I would have been lost without it. Deepest thanks also to June Burnett for typing the final manuscript, and to my wife, Judy, for working so hard while I hung out at the library and sat at home in front of the typewriter waiting ii for divine inspiration. Special thanks also to the U.S. Selective Service, whose abiding interest in my future was a source of constant inspiration. And finally, thanks to I. F. Stone for being the best damn journalist I've ever read. His impact on my future will be immeasurable. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 CHAPTER I. A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 II. THE ORIGINS OF THE VIETNAM WAR, 1950-1960 0 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 24 III. THE KENNEDY YEARS, 1961-1963 . . . . . . . . 41 IV. THE POLITICS OF ESCALATION, 1964 . . . . . . 74 V. THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT WHITE PAPER MARCH, 1965, AND STONE'S REPLY . . . . . . 124 CONCLUSION O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O 0 14 l SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 iv INTRODUCTION American foreign policy during the early 19605 was shaped by the Cold War. The ideological confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, particu- larly over Cuba, dominated the news and made the threat of nuclear war a very real one. As Timg_magazine viewed it, the United States, as leader of the "free world," had the obligation "to meet and battle, in a time of great national peril, the marauding forces of Communism on every 1 Both the United States front in every part of the world." and the Soviet Union had produced devastating nuclear weapons and phrases like "first strike capability" became part of the international vocabulary. Fallout shelters quickly grew to be as much a part of American popular cul- ture as rock 'n' roll music. At no time was the threat of nuclear war more evident than during the Cuban Missile Crisis of late October, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy demanded that the Soviet Union remove all its missile bases from Cuba. Only the last minute decision of Soviet Premier lTime, Jan. 5, 1962, p. 14. Nikita Krushchev to divert his ships from sailing directly into the American blockage around Cuba avoided a direct confrontation. That Cuba is just ninety miles off the coast of Florida made the crisis even more immediate. But while the American press focused on the Cold War rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union, this country was gradually increasing its involvement in a war some 10,000 miles away in Vietnam. Lacking both the geographical immediacy and drama of the Cuban crisis, Vietnam went virtually unnoticed by the American press. As late as 1963, when South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in a military coup, the only news- paper in the United States with a full-time reporter in Vietnam was the New York Times. The rest had to rely on wire service reports and government sources in Washington. Yet it was during this period (1961-1964) that major decisions were made that led to the full-scale commitment of both American ground troops and air power in a war that in early January, 1973, cost the United States more than 50,000 lives and some $150 billion. What role did the American press play during this significant period of the war? Why was there so little critical reporting and editorial comment among newspapers and magazines in the United States? Jules Witcover, Washington Bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, offered this assessment of the press: While the Washington press corps in those years diligently reported what the Government said about Vietnam, and questioned the inconsistencies as they arose, too few sought out opposing viewpoints and ex- pertise until very late, when events and the prominence of the Vietnam dissent no longer could be ignored. [Alaska Senator Ernest] Gruening and other early dis- senters from official policy in and out of the Senate attest that they found very vew attentive ears among Washington reporters in the early 19605. In coverage of the war, the press corps' job nar- rowed down to three basic tasks--reporting what the Government said, finding out whether it was true, and assessing whether the policy ennunciated worked. The group did a highly professional job on the first task. But it fell down on the second and third, and there is strong evidence the reason is that too many reporters sought the answers from the same basic source--the Government. . . . One can only speculate how the course of the might have been affected had more members of the Washington news community relied less on their government and more on its responsible critics in appraising the veracity and effectiveness of govern- ment policy.2 There was one journalist in Washington, however who did not rely on government propaganda on Vietnam and who became an outspoken critic of United States involve- ment as early as January, 1961, even before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated. He is I. F. Stone, editor, pub— lisher, and reporter of his one-man publication--I. F. Stone's Weekly, (since 1968, a bi-weekly) a four-page journal of opinion and fact published in Washington from 1953 until his retirement in December, 1971. 2Jules Witcover, "Where Washington Reporting Failed," Columbia Journalism Review, Winter, 1970-71, pp. 7-8. The purpose of this study is to examine Stone's coverage of the Vietnam war and to compare and contrast it with that of the "establishment"3 press. This study will concentrate on the critical years of increasing American involvement in the war in Southeast Asia from 1961 to March, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the sustained bombing of North Vietnam. Stone's reportage will be examined along with three of the most influencial members of the print media, the New York Times, and weekly newsmagazines Newsweek and Time. These three were chosen because of their national impact on public Opinion and because each had a correspondent in Vietnam during the early years and, thus, should have had more accurate first-hand information than those newspapers and magazines who covered the war exclusively from Washington. Editorial opinions on the war will be examined closely and compared with Stone's. All reportage will be examined and analyzed in light of the Pentagon Papers, which will . 4 serve as a major source. 3Journalist Henry Fairlee first introduced the term "Establishment" into the common language and speech of England in an article in the London Spectator, Sept. 23, 1955. He described the term as meaning, TrEHe whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exchanged." Fairlee was referring to government in the article but since then the term "establishment" has come to encompass a variety of institutions, including the press. For a fuller discussion, see Fairlee, "Evolution of a Term," New Yorker, Oct. 19, 1968, pp. 173-206. 4The Pentagon Papers, a series of articles based on a 2.5 million word study of United States' involvement in Indochina from 1946 to May, 1968, commissioned by then Before examining the specific news coverage of the war, some background is needed. The first chapter, accord- ingly, will trace I. F. Stone's career as a journalist and attempt to develop his philosophy, which plays such an important role in his writing. The second chapter will trace the path of American involvement in Vietnam from 1950 to 1960 during the Truman and Eisenhower administra- tions. Hopefully, this study will not only examine the reportage of I. F. Stone on Vietnam but, in doing so, point out some of the failures of the establishment press in adequately informing the public about the longest and most tragic war in American history. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967, appeared in the New York Times beginning on June 13, 1971. The papers are based on investigative reporting by reporter Neil Sheehan and earned the Times a Pulitzer Prize. CHAPTER I A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him keep step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. 1 --Henry David Thoreau Isadore Feinstein Stone has been marching out of step with his contemporaries all his life. He became a radical while in his teens, an atheist by the time of his bar mitzvah, a publisher at fourteen, and a member of the Socialist party before he was old enough to vote. Non- conformity and a belief in utopian idealism have been life-long characteristics. Stone began his career as a newspaperman during his sophomore year in high school in Haddonfield, New Jersey, where he was born in 1907. He published a monthly newspaper called the Progress. His first issue attacked William Randolph Hearst's Yellow Peril campaign, praised Ghandi, and called for the cancellation of World War I 1Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Co., 1969), p. 348. debts provided that the debtor nations agreed to stay out of the arms race for twenty-five years.2 This philosophy, which Stone calls "practical idealism," was to become a fundamental characteristic of his newspaper career. The paper was a financial success with Stone selling adverti- ing to local merchants after school. But his father, who noted his son was spending too much time with the paper and not enough on school work, made him retire the Progress after three issues. But the newspaper business was in his blood and within a few months Stone went to work for the local paper. During his junior year in high school, at age fifteen, J. David Stern, publisher of the Camden, (New Jersey) Evening Courier, hired Stone to cover Haddonfield for his paper. Stone confesses: "I was a natural in the business from the start."4 The newspaper business took its toll on his school work however, as Stone graduated forty-ninth in a class of fifty-two and had his application to Harvard rejected. Instead, he attended the University of Pennsyl- vania which, fortunately, had open enrollment for schools in the Philadelphia area. He began working ten hours a day on the Philadelphia Inguirer and eventually dropped out of college during his junior year. 21. F. Stone's Bi-Weekly, December, 1971, p. l. 3Ibid. 41bid. I loved learning and hated school. I devoured books from the moment I first learned to read but resisted every effort to make me study whatever I saw no sense in learning. A few teachers I loved, the rest I despised. At college I was a philos0phy major, and Penn had two philosophy teachers of stature, Newbold and Singer, whom I revered. I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed away by seas of pettiness and medi- ocrity. The smell of the newsroom was more attractive. I was full of romantic nonsense and looked down on college degrees as artificial.5 Stone's idealism was molded during his teenage years when he began reading such authors as Jack London, Frederick Engels, Herbert Spencer (he became an atheist after reading First Principles), Karl Marx, and Peter Kropotkin. His idol was the Russian philosopher Kropotkin, whose vision of Communist anarchism had a profound effect on Stone's thinking. Kropotkin really thrilled me. I thought this was the way to organize a good society, without coercion, without police, without private property, on a volun- tary basis. I still think it's the most beautiful ideal,6because once you get cops and soldiers, well While Stone was attracted to anarchism, he still was active in conventional American politics during the 19208, although he shunned the traditional Democratic and Republican parties. At seventeen, he supported Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette, the Progressive candidate for 51bid. 6Thomas Powers, "The Achievement of I. F. Stone," Rolling Stone, Feb. 17, 1972, p. 22. President. Four years later, he worked as a volunteer for Norman Thomas, the Socialist party candidate. But Stone soon moved away from left-wing politics because of what he called "the sectarianism of the left." . . . I felt that party affiliation was incom— patible with independent journalism, and I wanted to be free to help the unjustly treated, to defend everyone's civil liberty and to work for social reform without concern for leftist infighting.7 Stone quit the Camden Evening Courier in 1927 when the city editor would not let him cover the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolemeo Vanzetti, the two socialists who were found guilty despite questionable evidence in 1921 of murdering two factory employees in one of the most controversial "political" trials in American history. The trial took place during a period of "anti-radicalism" in the United States and aroused world—wide protest. From 1932 to 1939, he worked as an editorial writer on the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post, both of which were strongly pro-New Deal newspapers. In 1939, he also became associate editor of the Nation magazine. Stone moved to Washington, D.C., in 1940 as the Washington editor of the Nation and has been there ever since. From 1946 to 1952, he worked as a reporter and columnist for a series of independent, radical dailies, 7I. F. Stone, The Haunted Fifties (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), p. xvii. 10 PM, the New York Star, and the Daily Compass. When the Compass folded in November, 1952, Stone inquired about getting back his former job as Washington editor for the Nation, but the magazine was in financial trouble at the time. After waiting several weeks for an answer, Stone decided to start his own publication. As Sol Stern pointed out in an article in Ramparts in 1968, Stone had few choices at this stage. When the Compass folded, he had few options. As a journalist, he had pretty much burned his bridges to respectability behind him when he publicly sup- ported Henry Wallace in 1948, at a time when many of his old liberal colleagues such as Max Lerner and James Weschler were already enthusiastically embracing the Cold War. Stone had become anything but an "in- sider." . . . Perhaps if he had trimmed his sails a bit, he could have returned to the New York Post, where he started as an editorial writer in the '305. But "Izzy" had been spoiled, having always enjoyed the good fortune of writing for publishers who let him have his say.8 The idea of publishing an independent newsletter was not a new one. A decade earlier journalist George Seldes put out a four-page paper, In Fact, which offered readers news they could not find in the conventional press. Seldes had the advantage of publishing his liberally—oriented newsletter however, during the late 19305 and early 19405, when the political climate was more receptive to left-wing journalism and powerful labor unions and liberal organizations were willing to support 8801 Stern, "The Journalist as Pamphleteer," Ramparts, February, 1968, p. 53. 11 such a venture. Stone's newsletter made its debut in less friendly surroundings. When the Weekly began publish- ing in January, 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican from Wisconsin, and the anti-Communist crusade were reaching their peak in the United States, intimidating nearly everyone left of center. Also, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was under way. It was not the most ideal time to launch a radical publication, especially when its editor and pub- lisher had supported Henry Wallace in 1948, fought for civil liberties of Communists, and urged peaceful coexist- ence with the Soviet Union while a newspaperman during the 19405. As Stone admitted: "There was nothing to the left of me but the Daily Worker."9 The Weekly was made possible by what Stone calls "a piggy-back launching."10 Using the mailing lists of the two defunct radical papers, the Compass and PM, Stone was able to get 5,300 subscribers by the time the first issue was published on January 17, 1953. Financially, Stone had $3,500 in severance pay from the Compass, and received some $10,000 in contributions through the mail. Since he would work in his Washington home, expenses would be minimal. He also received a financial helping hand from an admirer, who lent him $3,000 without interest.11 9Stone, Haunted Fifties, p. xviii. loBi—Weekly, December, 1971, p. 3. llIbid. 12 Despite the political climate of the period, Stone was able to secure a second—class mail permit that made it possible to mail the Weekly at that time for one-eighth of a cent per copy. It is hard to imagine the Weekly surviving without it. As Stone wrote: I shall always be grateful that the post office not only granted second class quickly but gave me a refund for the first few issues mailed at a higher rate. Second class made my survival possible. Though I was regarded in the paranoid atmosphere of those McCarthy years simply and plainly as a Red, I had no trouble whatsoever with the post office. No political questions were asked me. I was treated with the ut- most courtesy by the postal authorities then and since. It is no small testimonial to the strength of the First Amendment that a new publication could be launched in those years with what amounts to a postal subsidy to a left-wing journalist.12 Stone made two basic decisions at the outset, one business and one editorial. He decided to concentrate on doing a thorough and accurate job of reporting and to let the paper grow with its reputation rather than attempting to spend time and energy on raising money for quick finan- cial growth. Although the paper grew slowly,l3 Stone feels he made the right decision because it left him more lZIbid. l3Stone began with 5,300 subscribers in 1953. His circulation increased to 10,000 in 1955 but it took another eight years to reach 20,000. In 1968, when he switched to a bi-weekly publication, it reached 40,000. Stone 13 time for reporting.14 His wife, Esther, handled the business side of the Weekly from the beginning. The other decision Stone had to make concerned the kind of publication he wished to put out. He decided to make the Weekly radical in viewpoint but conservative in format. I picked a beautiful type face, Garamond, for my main body type, and eschewed sensational headlines. I made no claim to inside stuff--obViously a radical reporter in those days had few pipelines into the government. I tried to give information which could be documented so the reader could check for himself. I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible. I also sought to give the Weekl a personal flavor, to add humor, wit and good writing to the Weekly report. I felt that if one were able enoug an ad sufficient vision one could distill meaning, truth and even beauty from the swiftly flowing debris of the week's news. I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context called "the significant trifle"—-the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation. These I often used in "boxes" to lighten up the other- wise solid pages of typography unrelieved either by picture or advertising. I tried in every issue to provide fact and opinion not available elsewhere in the press.15 In the premier issue of the Weekly, Stone told his readers that he intended to "fight for peace and civil liberties" and that he would be as "independent as Sandburg's added 10,000 readers a year from that point and at the time of his retirement in 1971 his publication had 70,000 subscribers. l4Bi-Weekly, December, 1971, p. 3. 15Stone, Haunted Fifties, p. xviii. 14 hog on ice."16 Holding his "utopian ideals" and hatred of war, Stone was not likely to be converted to the Cold War arguments of men like Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles, and Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. From the beginning, the Weekly was a constant critic of the United States' militant, anti- Communist foreign policy. In fact, the first page-one piece in the Weekly was critical of President Truman's final State of the Union message. Stone wrote: Mr. Truman fears war, but remains evasive on peace. . . . Mr. Truman's emphasis was on his old hope that if the cold war and containment were con- tinued long enough the Soviet regime would somehow crack up from within. Negotiation requires compromise, but there was in Mr. Truman's message the same self- righteous insistence that any settlement must be made on our terms. . . . Only negotiation, coexistence and peace can emancipate us from the campaign of hate and its hateful consequences.17 Stone also wasted little time in exposing Senator Joseph McCarthy. In that first issue, he highlighted a Senate subcommittee report on the Senator's financial dealings while in office, a report that was not given prominence by the daily press. In the article, Stone wrote: The picture drawn is of a man who cannot resist speculation on margin. His activities in and out of the market since 1942 are those of a born gambler. . . . Newly brought to light in this report is the $20,000 note signed for McCarthy by the Washington representative 161. F. Stone's Weekly, Jan. 17, 1953, p. 3. l7Ibid., p. 1. 15 of Pepsi-Cola at a time when the Senator's bank account in Wisconsin was overextended. Pepsi-Cola was then lobbying for decontrol of sugar and McCarthy was Chair- man of a Senate subcommittee--on sugar! In the piece, Stone reported the other financial dealings of McCarthy that were exposed by the subcommittee report, including the $10,000 loan to fight communism deposited in a special account only to be withdrawn by the senator three weeks later and passed on to a friend for speculation in soybeans.19 Stone issued this prophetic warning to government officials at the end of his first McCarthy article: Outgoing Democrats and incoming Republicans will live equally to regret that they did not cut McCarthy down to size when they had the chance. With his con- genital cheek and the enormous powers conferred upon him by his key Senate chairmanship, McCarthy promises to become Eisenhower's chief headache. McCarthy is in a position to smear any government official who fails to do his bidding. With much daring and few scruples, McCarthy can make himself the most powerful single figure in Congress and terrorize the new Admin- istration. That first issue was a preview of the kind of re- porting that would fill the pages of the Weekly during its nineteen years. Unlike the reporters who work for the large daily newspapers, Stone not only reported the news but wrote with a point of View and with emotion. He was lBIbid., p. 2. lgIbid. 2OIbid. 16 not merely a reporter, but a writer who could capture the mood of an event. One of his finest pieces appeared during the Weekly's first year, a biting satire of Cold War America entitled "Charlie Chaplin's Farewell Custard." There are two voices of America. One is the Voice with a capital V, which broadcasts in so many languages so many hours a day what we would like people abroad to think about us. The other, the voice with a small v, is the inadvertent message of our own actions. This, the real voice of America, broadcast a strange message last week about Charlie Chaplin. It told the world that the little funny man on whom we were brought up could no longer bear the spirit of contemporary America and had turned in his re-entry permit. It said there must be something seriously wrong with our America if Chaplin could no longer live in it. The "voluntary" exile of Chaplin is a measure of how America has changed since we were children. He never became an American citizen but Charlie Chaplin was and will remain more truly American than the blackguards and fanatics who hounded him, the cheap politicians who warned him not to come back. We do not blame Charlie Chaplin for leaving us. Who could blame a comic genius--one of the greatest of all time--for being unwilling to live in a country which seems to have lost its sense of humor? But we ask him not to desert us altogether. The man who made "The Great Dictator" owes it to us and to himself to put into a new film the tragi- comedy overtaking America where greasy informers are public heroes, protectors of gambling dens set them- selves up as guardians of public morality, and a senator who is afraid to answer questions about his own financial accounts becomes the great investigator of others. Come to think of it, "The Great Investi- gator" would be a worthy successor to "The Great Dic- tator." Turn the laugh on them, Charlie, for our country's sake. This capital needs nothing so badly as one final well-flung custard pie.21 21Weekly, April 25, 1953, p. 2. 17 During the cold war days of the 19505, when he was one of the few dissenters, Stone said he felt like a guerrilla warrior, swooping down in surprise on a stuffy bureaucracy where it least expected independent inquiry."22 This was his method of operation for nineteen years with the Weekly. In fact, it is ironic that while he was labeled a radical by many critics, Stone owned and oper- ated his own business along purely capitalistic guidelines that would doubtlessly make Adam Smith smile with satis- faction. He was the complete nineteenth century entre— peneur, as he admits: I am, I suppose, an anachronism. In this age of corporation men, I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise, subject to neither mort- gager or broker, factor or patron. In an age when young men, setting out on a career of journalism, must find their niche in some huge newspaper or maga- zine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone, without organizational or party backing, beholden to no one but my good readers. I am even one up on Benjamin Franklin--I do not accept advertising. . . . I pay my bills promptly, like a solid bourgeois, though in the eyes of many . . . I am regarded, I am sure, as a dangerous and subversive fellow.23 What makes Stone unique in Washington journalism is that he disassociates himself completely from govern- ment officials. As he told A. Kent MacDougall of the Wall Street Journal: "You've really got to wear a 22Stone, Haunted Fifties, p. xviii. 23Ibid., p. xiii. [if lti: