Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S. was
stripping the Russian Consul-General, Jacob Lomakin, of his official
position and demanding that the Soviets remove him from the country
because of his conduct in the case of Oksana Kosenkina, the Russian
school teacher seeking asylum in the United States after jumping
from a third-story window of the Russian consulate in New York to
escape her "cage". The Consul-General had claimed that
Ms. Kosenkina and Mikhail Samarin, another Russian teacher seeking
asylum, along with his wife, were abducted by the Tolstoy Foundation
with the cooperation of the American Government. The Russians had
taken Ms. Kosenkina from the foundation to the consulate. According
to her, the action was against her will. The State Department's
diplomatic note rejected the Russian charge. White House press
secretary Charles G. Ross stated that the actions were undertaken by
orders of the President. The directive was signed "L",
presumably standing for Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett.
Before HUAC, meeting in executive session in Washington,
former New Deal lawyers John Abt, Lee Pressman, and Nathan Witt
testified this date, pleading the Fifth Amendment regarding whether
each had been a member of the pre-war Communist underground in the
country or knew their accusers, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker
Chambers. They also claimed that the proceeding, itself, and the
Committee were unconstitutional, for HUAC having John Rankin as a
member after he had been elected to Congress from Mississippi under
rules which excluded blacks from voting in the primaries.
Congressman Richard Nixon leaked the information to the press.
Where are the plumbers?
Probably out fixing Chambers.
Don't hiss, you Commie.
Mr. Nixon wanted the Immigration Service to locate and
produce J. Peters, identified by Mr. Chambers as the head of the
Communist underground during the mid-thirties when Mr. Chambers
admittedly was a member. Mr. Nixon said that it was "inconceivable"
that he could not be found.
He was inside the coach, waiting with the glass slipper.
Russian and East German military police invaded the American
zone of Berlin this date purportedly to arrest black marketeers.
They arrested five German police belonging to American sector
forces. An AMG spokesman said that the action violated U.S.
jurisdiction. An earlier raid this date had preceded the action, in
Potsdamer Platz, where the Russian, American and British zones met.
The Russians and East Germans, numbering about 70 in all, arrested
about 200 Germans without violence, also on charges of black
marketeering. They also seized the borough police chief when he
arrived on the scene to protest the action. Russian troops pursued
an A. P. photographer after he took pictures of the raid, but he was
able to escape into the British sector.
Soviet sector police chief Paul Marksgraf had enunciated a
policy of seizure of Western police on sight without regard to zonal
boundaries.
Col. Frank Howley, U.S. Commander in Berlin, said that the
forces of Herr Marksgraf were criminals.
The three Western ambassadors to Moscow met again with one
another, this time at the French Embassy, to confer further on the
diplomatic talks attempting resolve the Berlin blockade crisis.
A disabled B-17 carrying General Hoyt Vandenberg, Air Force
chief of staff, landed safely at National Airport in Washington
after one of the plane's four engines stopped during a
trans-Atlantic flight from Germany. The mishap began 60 miles off
the coast of Virginia.
The engine belonged to Mr. Molotov.
The credit curbs signed into law by the President would go
into effect on September 20. Do all of your installment buying
before that date or you will have to pay more money down and pay it
back faster.
In Raleigh, a suit began, brought by the Dixiecrats to
challenge the Board of Elections decision not to permit the party
candidates to be on the November ballot. Since the August 3 deadline
for submission of 10,000 names of registered voters who had not
voted in the primaries, the local registrars had certified over
12,000 of the more than 18,000 signatures presented by the
Dixiecrats by the deadline, but not at the time, as required by law,
certified by the local registrars.
In Kings Mountain, N.C., a coroner's jury declined to rule
that the two men held in the murder of a fifteen year old unwed
mother, with whom one of the men was having an affair, had anything
to do with her death by gunshot wound to the head. They determined
that she met her death by a person or persons unknown. The dead
girl's sister testified at the hearing that the man with whom she
had the affair had stated to the girl a few hours before the killing
that he was going to blow somebody's brains out and it might be
hers. The ruling did not disturb the murder warrants already issued
against the men by the Sheriff.
In Charlotte, a dog bit a child on both arms. The child was
in good condition.
In Walnut Cove, N.C., "Big Joe" Hairston,
sportsman and raiser of coon hounds, had issued a challenge to the
toughest goat in nearby Stokes County to meet him head-on in a
butting contest to raise money for building a polio hospital in
Greensboro. At 1:00 p.m. Saturday, the butting would begin, expected
to sound as a bowling alley. The Humane Society had been contacted
to be ready to administer salts in case the goat succumbed in the
trial by ordeal.
On the editorial page, "Right Way in Slum Clearance" discusses the new enforcement of the Housing Ordinance in Charlotte
to provide for slum clearance of substandard housing, without indoor
plumbing, electricity, heating apparati, screens and other such
essentials.
It find that a concession for lack of bathing facilities to
have been a wise one, deferring enforcement.
"Charlotte's Blood Center" notes that after the
Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta on December 7, 1946, many were saved
by the fact of an adequate blood donor reserve supply being
immediately available in the city.
The Red Cross was establishing during the fall a regional
facility to collect and store blood from 29 counties within 75 miles
of Charlotte. It was to be the second such facility in the South and
the eleventh in the nation.
"Miami Defends Free Press" tells of the Miami
City Commission having voted to enact a one percent tax on gross
receipts of daily newspapers, but then rescinding the action five
hours later. The action had attracted nationwide attention as the
tax was intended to chill freedom of the press. The Miami Herald
and the Miami News had drawn the ire of two Commissioners
after three Commissioners had voted to fire the Mayor regarding an
appointment by the Mayor, prompting press criticism and a subsequent
recall effort against the three Commissioners. The gross receipts
taxing ordinance was the retaliatory response.
The reversal occurred when one Commissioner decided that the
ordinance likely would not pass constitutional muster in the courts.
The incident was a warning that regressive forces in the
country were always ready to strike and that the power to tax could
be used to destroy.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled
"North Carolina Slipping?", tells of North Carolina,
whose high birth rate had caused it to gain seats in each of the
previous two decennial re-apportionments, possibly set to lose a
seat after the 1950 census. But the state usually fared better after
the actual census than in preliminary estimates. The only other two
states to gain members in the previous two re-apportionments gained
by heavy migration from other states. North Carolina gained by
having the highest birthrate in the nation.
Robert Allen, substituting for Drew Pearson, on vacation,
relates that the reported dispute between Ambassador-at-large for
ERP Averell Harriman and General Lucius Clay, American occupation
zone governor in Germany, was nothing new for General Clay. He had
quarreled with American agencies as much as with the Russians.
General Clay had unquestioned ability but could not delegate
authority and could not work harmoniously with equals. He tended to
work himself to exhaustion, leading to snap judgment disputes with
other executives. He supported the decisions of staff with few
exceptions, often leading to bad decisions and disagreements with
Washington.
Mr. Allen notes that General Patton said that more battles
were lost by tired generals than by tired troops.
He says that General Clay never differed with Undersecretary
of the Army William Draper because Mr. Draper never crossed the
General, still acted as the one-time subordinate to the General.
Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder in 1933, had applied
for a $2,900 job as conservator of a failing Federal bank, enclosing
a picture of himself in a World War I captain's uniform.
It was being reported that the indictment of the twelve
American Communist Party leaders had delayed efforts of
Communist-dominated unions, led by the Electrical and Tobacco
Workers unions, to pull out of CIO to form their own labor
organization. CIO leaders were disappointed.
The President continued to exude confidence despite continued
poor poll ratings versus Governor Dewey. He had recently told a
Senate friend that he could beat the Governor and intended to do so.
He was crazy.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop continue their story of Ann Smith,
a real person but not her real name, who had been declared disloyal
by the Navy in her role as a secretary, following a perfunctory
investigation before a hearing panel of the Navy Loyalty Board
headed by Commander Joe E. Munster, obviously a real name of someone
somewhere in the Bronx. Questions were posed concerning Ms. Smith's
past as a supposed rebellious student at the University of Southern
California, focusing on whether she went across town to UCLA where
certain radical activities had taken place. She said that she had
not. She also denied knowing certain individuals whom the Board
believed were subversive. Very little else was asked.
The Alsops conclude that the Board was not sinister in its
questioning but simply stupid. From the scant information, the Navy
Board declared Ms. Smith to be disloyal and terminated her.
Not to be deterred, she wrote to her Congresswoman, Helen
Gahagan Douglas, who, after checking Ms. Smith's background and
finding her completely loyal, referred her to former OPA
administrator Paul Porter who represented the woman for free and
eventually got the Board decision reversed and her employment
reinstated with back pay.
So in this instance, the matter had a happy ending, but, they
advise, not all such cases did. Perhaps, they speculate, the
original conclusion of the Board was either the result of Ms.
Smith's tolerant racial views or a case of mistaken identity. Fully
41 of the first 245 cases investigated by the FBI had involved
mistaken identity.
Regardless of cause, as long as Congressman J. Parnell Thomas
and his like were conducting hearings designed to attract headlines,
the very real espionage menace in the country would go unchecked in
favor of sensationalism.
Marquis Childs, still in McCall, Idaho, discusses Senator
Glen Taylor of Idaho, the vice-presidential nominee of the
Progressive Party. Mr. Taylor had gained notoriety as a singing
cowboy, performing on a circuit with his wife and children before
the war. In 1938, he had run for Congress and lost. In 1940 he tried
for the Senate and lost. But in 1944, he had won, utilizing in each
campaign the same recipe, the cowboy song, bits of recited
melodrama, and reference to King Gillette's denunciation of the
soulless corporations in favor of a giant public corporation in
which all capital wealth would be subject to the shareholders, all
of the American people, as urged in The People's Corporation
by the safety razor magnate.
Mr. Childs posits that perhaps Senator Taylor believed that
such a system would work. He likens it, however, to corporate
syndicalism, the Mussolini state-owned corporation under Fascism.
The West had a tendency to reject the large corporations,
believing them rightly to be controlled by Eastern wealth. The
Eastern railroads determined the price of the farmer's produce,
leading to great resentment by Western farmers through time.
No one in Idaho believed that the Wallace-Taylor ticket had a
genuine chance in the fall election, would like not garner many
votes in Idaho, but in a less prosperous time, he ventures, Senator
Taylor's populist line might have enjoyed greater appeal. His
performance, therefore, could not be laughed off the scene.
Putting together this piece with the editorial by the Alsops
and the report of the HUAC hearings on John Abt, Progressive Party
counsel and attorney for Senator Taylor in the Birmingham case in
May in which Senator Taylor had sought to enter a church where he
was scheduled to speak, originally scheduled at 16th Street Baptist
Church, through the black-only entrance whereupon he was arrested by
Chief Bull Connor, one comes quickly to the conclusion that the
emphasis in the HUAC hearings was indeed on collection of headlines
while undermining for political gain the New Deal, associating it
with Communism in the public mind, and tracking it to the doorstep
of former Vice-President Henry Wallace and his key Progressives
Party advisers and aides. Add the ingredient of racial tolerance,
grating the racism of HUAC member John Rankin, and the picture
becomes complete.
Does the sensationalist track, albeit coursing circuitously through many switchings in the interim, not then lead directly to
Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963?
A letter writer, a mother, provides a copy of a letter she
had addressed to Superior Court Judge Wilson Warlick, whose
appointment as a Federal District Court Judge had not yet been
confirmed by Congress. The letter criticized the sentences given to
the two boys who had kidnaped the man who had given them a ride and
then stole his car at gunpoint, only to be apprehended 20 minutes
later after an alert motorist witnessed the men walking the victim
into the woods and then leaving in the car, getting stuck. The two
had pleaded guilty and were sentenced to five to eight years in
prison. She believes the sentences excessive because on the same
day, Judge Warlick had sentenced another defendant to eighteen
months for assault with a knife.
But the latter was just picking his feet in Poughkeepsie on
the edge of the bed. Don't have a heart attack about it. Kidnaping
and armed robbery are far more serious than an old knife attack,
lady.
The editors note that the minimum sentence for armed robbery
was five years while the maximum for assault was three years.
Keep your Poughkeepsies straight.
A letter from A. W. Black discusses the indictment of the
twelve American Communist Party leaders and the dedication of the
Communists to overthrow of democratic governments by force or
violence and specifically the dedication of the American party to
the overthrow by force of the U.S. Government.
Lock up all the Commies and throw away the keys before they
get the keys and lock us all up. Civil liberties are for the birds.
