The Charlotte News

Tuesday, April 10, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that allied troops had reached the southern shores of the Hwachon reservoir, stopped short, however, by heavy enemy mortar fire. The enemy had the previous day opened ten of the dam's eighteen floodgates to try to stop the drive, but without success as the allies obtained high ground and waited for the flood waters to recede. It was believed that the Chinese lacked the equipment to blow up the large dam.

Communist resistance to allied patrols was reported significant on the western front, and on the east coast, allied warships hit Communist supply dumps and traffic routes.

In the air, American F-86 Sabre jets shot down one Russian-built MIG-15 jet and damaged another near Sinuiju close to the Manchurian border. Other Fifth Air Force planes flew close support of ground action and attacked enemy supply lines.

As the offensive moved north, informed sources reported that General MacArthur had sought more troops and greater authority in fighting the campaign, wanting to bomb the Chinese troop and supply sanctuary, reportedly telling Secretary of the Army Frank Pace that it would be a mistake to neglect Asia in deference to defense of Western Europe.

Correspondent Russell Brines reports that General MacArthur had made it plain to his superiors in Washington that he intended to continue fighting for a freer hand in Korea and it was reported that Secretary Pace had reprimanded him for his recent public statements involving politics. The British were reported to desire the firing of the General and the French were also unsettled by his remarks urging not neglecting Asia for Western Europe, a report carried by the British news agency Reuters.

The President canceled an appointment requested by American Legion commander Earle Cocke, Jr., after he made public statements that he would tell the President that he supported General MacArthur's stance on Far Eastern policy regarding use of Chinese Nationalist guerrillas on the mainland, obviating, according to press secretary Joseph Short, the necessity for the conference, as Mr. Cocke said he had just returned from Europe and wanted to talk to the President before talking to the press.

Mr. Short declined comment when asked about any forthcoming Presidential directive regarding General MacArthur.

Nationalist China reported that Nationalist guerrillas had killed 7,000 Communist Chinese and taken 1,000 prisoners on the mainland in recent months.

The State Department reported that the Navy had suspended former Commander Stephen Brunauer pursuant to Navy Department loyalty and security procedures. He had been employed as a civilian in explosives research for the Navy. He had been named, along with his wife, by Senator Joseph McCarthy the previous year as being among the list of Government employees who were subversive. His wife, who had previously declared to Congress that she had never been a member of the Communist Party, had also been suspended from a Navy Department job pending the outcome of the case on her husband.

Actor Sterling Hayden told HUAC that he had joined the Communist Party for six months in 1946 but thought it was the "stupidest, most ignorant thing" he had ever done. He turned against the party after finding it not to be democratic, a notion he had acquired while working with the Yugoslav underground as a Marine lieutenant during the war.

In Yokohama, Japan, first elements of the U.S. 40th infantry division of the National Guard landed this date to strengthen the occupation army in Japan.

New violence flared along the Israeli-Syrian border as Israeli police were reportedly fired on and returned fire while patrolling the DMZ near the Jewish settlement of Engeb. No casualties were reported. It followed an incident the previous week in which seven Israeli police officers had been killed by Syrian troops followed by a retaliatory bombing of Syrian positions by Israeli planes. Israel resumed peace talks with Syria after the U.S., Britain, and France condemned the retaliatory bombing attack. The Israeli Government declared its northern area bordering Syria and Lebanon a security zone.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell proposed to the House of Commons an expenditure of 4.197 billion pounds, the largest peacetime budget in British history, the equivalent of 11.751 billion dollars, for the following fiscal year. Defense spending would amount to about the equivalent of 4.2 billion dollars under the proposed budget.

The Soviets had adopted a record military budget equivalent to 24 billion dollars and the President had proposed a U.S. military budget of 41.4 billion dollars, both also record peacetime budgets for defense.

In Raleigh, legislation to outlaw the Communist Party in North Carolina died in committee when action on the measure was postponed indefinitely. The same House Judiciary Committee suspended action on measures to provide elections of ten additional resident Superior Court judges, after a State Supreme Court Justice asked that the matter be given more study. The 1951 biennial legislative session was set to adjourn the following Saturday.

On the editorial page, "Truman and Lincoln—A Parallel" compares the plight of President Truman with respect to General MacArthur to that of President Lincoln in 1861-62 regarding General George B. McClellan, finds considerable parallel. Each President faced a stubborn general who was from the opposing political party with active political interests behind him, General McClellan becoming the 1864 Democratic nominee for the presidency. Both generals had finally been fired after a long period of vacillation and problems in respecting Presidential orders, in the case of General McClellan, refusing to move the Army of the Potomac against the Confederates with the aggressive vigor the President had ordered. Both Presidents came to realize that the military had to be headed by the civilian executive branch.

It finds perceptive the piece on the page by Winston-Salem Journal executive editor Wallace Carroll, who had worked for the OSS during the war and became an expert in psychological warfare. He found that General MacArthur had taken advantage of the freedom of action given him to make repeated statements which had strained foreign alliances and caused confusion at home.

It finds that even if the General were right in his assessment of the international situation, there would be objection for his headstrong disregard of Presidential directives that he restrict public comments to military matters and not make statements concerning policy. The dilemma was that if he fired the General, the President would receive flak from members of Congress who supported the General, potentially further delaying implementation of the foreign policy.

It concludes that it was perhaps the greatest challenge of the President's career and that he had to meet it decisively, recapturing control of the military and diplomatic policies for the good of the country, to avoid military and diplomatic disaster.

"Fixing the Responsibility" tells of Joseph C. Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor attributing to an apathetic public partial responsibility for the revelations coming from the Kefauver and Fulbright committees, the former revealing that organized crime was tacitly enabled by big city graft, and the latter exposing RFC favoritism in dispensing business loans through Government wire-pulling. Voter turnout in 1950 had been only 43.7 percent, compared to 84 percent in Britain the same year. In 1948, it had been 51.6 percent, down from 59 percent in 1940.

Boston had elected James Curley Mayor while he was serving a prison term and New Jersey had re-elected former HUAC chairman, Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, despite revelations of bogus staff salary kickbacks to him, subsequently sending him to prison for fraud against the Government.

It finds that while there was an argument for the idea that cues for such behavior trickled down from the top, the more convincing argument was that voters had responsibility for setting the standard for integrity and could not blame anyone but themselves for graft and corruption if either they did not vote or voted for known corrupt individuals.

"Decision by a Minority" tells of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, head of Eastern Air Lines, having not given up his fight to obtain for the airline a route approval from the Southeast to the West Coast, claiming that it was discriminatory to the Southeast for the Civil Aeronautics Board to decline authorization for such a route, approved by two of the Board's five members. The piece thinks every Southeastern state ought support the effort to obtain a reconsideration of the matter by CAB.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "They Can't Be Pressed", suggests that Senators J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee had developed recently into prime presidential timber for the Democrats with the RFC hearings chaired by Senator Fulbright and the televised crime investigating committee hearings headed by Senator Kefauver. The problem for both men, however, was that they were Southern and the Democrats took for granted the South in each quadrennial election. Tennessee had not voted for the Republican presidential nominee in modern times and Arkansas had only registered one exception in voting for U.S. Grant over Horace Greeley in 1872.

It concludes that no true Southern statesman could achieve the Presidency as long as the GOP remained weak in the South.

Wallace Carroll of the Winston-Salem Journal, as indicated in the above editorial, chronicles the dispute between the President and General MacArthur, starting with the Wake Island meeting in October where the General told the President that the Chinese could not put more than 30,000 troops into Korea, when six weeks later they would come close to overwhelming the U.N. forces after they moved north to the Yalu River border of Manchuria. Shortly before the Chinese counter-offensive in late November, the General had said that the Chinese lacked logistical support for more than 60,000 troops, contrary to the national intelligence estimate formed in Washington by the CIA, the Joint Chiefs and the State Department, which had concluded that the Chinese could deal a severe blow to the allies. Then came General MacArthur's disastrous "troops home by Christmas" offensive of late November which prompted the immediate Chinese counter-offensive, forcing the allies to evacuate from Hungnam.

On March 23, the General had caught Washington and the U.N. by surprise in making his peace offer to the Chinese field commander and suggesting that if the U.N. approved attacks on Chinese bases and coastal defenses, the war would soon be over. The statement complicated considerably peace negotiations with the Chinese which were carefully being prepared at the U.N. and through the State Department. The statement was an implied threat of attack on China, which Administration and U.N. policy had strictly forbidden as broadening the war.

Preceding that statement, on March 7, the General had stated that the best which could be expected to come from Korea was a stalemate, seemingly contradicting his March 23 statement which essentially declared victory.

The previous week, he had endorsed the proposal of Congressman Joe Martin to enlist Chinese Nationalist guerrillas in the fight on the mainland, contrary to Administration and U.N. policy, and had also said that the main thrust of the Communist stand was now in the Far East and not Europe.

While the Administration was concerned over becoming embroiled in a war with China, General MacArthur was making public statements which made that prospect more likely. Such a war, in addition to involving such a vast territory and unlimited supply of manpower, also would alienate much of Asia and the Middle East and endanger the entire system of alliances who also disfavored war with China.

He finds that part of the responsibility for the problem lay with the Administration for allowing unprecedented freedom of action to General MacArthur in the Far East. They had tolerated repeated statements which undermined policy and meddled in domestic politics against the commander-in-chief. Mr. Carroll also finds, however, that the Republican leaders in Congress were also responsible for having promoted the General in his temerity, coming close to insubordination to the President.

Drew Pearson discusses the Administration's problems in reeling in General MacArthur and making him cease engaging in political statements. Sometimes the President was exasperated with him while at others, he had praised the General, as after the Wake Island meeting the prior October.

The problems stemmed from the General having been an active GOP candidate for the presidency in 1948, entering the Wisconsin primary, maintaining his own publicity representative inside the RNC, Brig. General Bonner Fellers. He also had great support among GOP leaders, including the heads of the United Press and Scripps-Howard newspapers, whose press anent the General was naturally favorable.

The result was that the some of the President's advisers wanted him to fire the General on the basis that at 71 he was long past retirement age and was paying more attention to politics than to Korea. Other advisers, however, believed such a move would only give the General excuse to come home and attack the Administration. All groups agreed, however, that the standoff was probably the most difficult ever between a President and a field commander.

Labor was back in the Administration fold as they had approved the new Mobilization Advisory Board comprised of 17 persons, four each from industry, labor, agriculture and the public, with Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson as director, plus the assurance by the President that he would join Board meetings at least once per month. The President had also said that future control of mobilization might be vested in the Board rather than in Mr. Wilson. The new Board would consider problems arising in wage controls and labor conditions determined by the nine-person Wage Stabilization Board.

Joseph Alsop, in Frankfurt, Germany, finds time to be hurrying as a "winged chariot" and much time being wasted for preparing Western European defenses. He was headed to Tehran to examine the potential for an East-West showdown brewing there, with Soviet takeover of the vitally important oil supply to Britain and France threatened.

He suggests that if war were to come in the ensuing two years, it would be decisive for the nonce, with a surrender by one side or the other, or at least a stalemate, the latter being the object of Western defense policy. The danger of such a war lay in the potential for Soviet miscalculation of the consequences of waging armed aggression. In Europe, Berlin and Yugoslavia were the most sensitive points of potential aggression.

Time was needed to rebuild Western European defenses, with U.S. plans calling for a buildup schedule to be accomplished by 1954 or 1955. But Soviet buildup was expected to be complete, with a ready stockpile of atomic weapons and 67 divisions in the Soviet European satellites, by 1953, leaving a gap of one to two years when the danger of war would be greatest.

Yet, there had been delay in the Congressional debate regarding authorization of the President to send four additional divisions to NATO and the debate between the NATO powers regarding rearming of West Germany and the preparation of air bases. Rearming was not being treated as an emergency, when such delay could lead to disaster.

Robert C. Ruark discusses the trend of celebrity endorsements of various products for fat fees and the newest form of it, with the celebrity pocketing five percent of the product's profits bearing his or her name. Martin Stone of the Kagran Corp. had developed endorsements from a whole range of celebrities, including ice skater Sonja Henie, baseball player Jackie Robinson, Howdy Doody and Gene Autry, totaling ten million dollars the prior year.

But problems had also developed as Hopalong Cassidy was being sued for his endorsement of a "Zoomerang" toy gun which had shot a paper wad alleged to have nearly blinded a woman. Roy Rogers, also the subject of a suit, had endorsed a cowboy suit which caught on fire and burned its young wearer severely.

He decides that a movie cowboy was not safe away from the plains of Hollywood and that the ways of making a living were "devious and plentiful." But if he had something to license, he says, he sure would.

In 1968, six days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, the assassin, who had committed his act and then managed to escape the area amid a bevy of police officers and police surveillance both in and around the Lorraine Motel, including an undercover police officer assigned to the civil rights leader's entourage, remained unidentified and at large. Fingerprints left on several items, including a .30-06 rifle believed to be the assassin's weapon, contained in a bundle left in a doorway just outside the rooming house from which the fatal shot was believed to have been fired, would shortly identify the suspect as James Earl Ray, an escapee from a Missouri prison not quite a year earlier, where he had been in his seventh year of a twenty-year sentence for robbery.

But was there too much evidence linking James Earl Ray to the scene of the crime and not enough putting him in the role of the shooter? How did he manage to elude police, escaping through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, ultimately driving 400 miles to Atlanta, in a white Mustang when radio reports that police were searching for such a vehicle seen hurriedly leaving the boarding house area had aired within an hour after the assassination? How did he then catch a bus to Canada, obtain a fake passport, and, after he had been identified as the suspect from the fingerprints and persons at the boarding house and his picture well disseminated internationally in the newspapers and television reports, fly to London, then to Lisbon, and back to London during the ensuing two months, leaving a trail of twenty dollar bills along a well-financed road, both during the months preceding and after the assassination? Was there a financier named "Raoul", as Mr. Ray claimed, who involved Mr. Ray in gun-running activities, ultimately presumed by Mr. Ray after the assassination to be a pretext to cover his purchase in Birmingham on March 30 of the murder weapon, delivery of it to Raoul on April 3 and Raoul's directive to meet him the next afternoon at the rooming house, where someone else used it, or another weapon, to assassinate Dr. King, framing Mr. Ray for the act?

All of these questions would be examined in 1978 by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and as the fiftieth anniversary of the continuing events transpire in the coming two months regarding capture of Mr. Ray in London in June, 1968, we shall explore them again.

Prior to her death in 2006, Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. King, and the adult children of Dr. King, as well as Ambassador Andrew Young and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, both present at the time of the assassination, all expressed considerable doubt that Mr. Ray was the assassin. A Memphis jury in a wrongful death action filed by the King family found in December, 1999 that Loyd Jowers of Memphis and unknown co-conspirators were responsible for the assassination. Mr. Jowers, owner of a cafe adjacent to the rooming house in 1968, died in May, 2000 and had been too ill to testify at the trial, but had stated in 1993 in an ABC network television interview that a Memphis produce merchant, Frank Liberto, dead by the time of the interview, had paid him $100,000 with which he hired someone other than Mr. Ray to commit the assassination, refusing to identify who the other persons in the conspiracy were. The Memphis District Attorney investigated the claims of Mr. Jowers and found them not credible, being based on his motive to acquire money from a book and movie deal.

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