`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 12

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its recent bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest has been owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 11 of article).

About 53 percent of the non-voting stock of the profit-making Reader’s Digest Association was owned by “non-profit” institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center and the New York Zoological Society in the early 1990s. But the DeWitt Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund which Mr. & Mrs. Wallace established before their deaths in the 1980s still owned over 50 percent of the voting stock of the Reader’s Digest Association, as well as about 30 percent of its non-voting stock, in the early 1990s.

The “non-profit” DeWitt Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund owned $1.1 billion in assets and was the 15th-largest U.S. foundation in terms of assets in the early 1990s. The “non-profit” Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund owned $802 million in assets and was the 20th-largest U.S. foundation in terms of assets in the early 1990s. And the same U.S. Establishment figures who directed both the “non-profit” DeWitt Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund and the “non-profit” Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund also directed the then-profit-making Reader’s Digest Association Incorporated in the early 1990s. (end of part 12)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 11

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its recent bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest has been owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 10 of article).

As a result of their 100 percent ownership of the Reader’s Digest Association’s voting stock, both DeWitt “Wally” Wallace and Lila Acheson Wallace became quite wealthy during their lives [before both dying in the early 1980s]. Fortune magazine estimated DeWitt Wallace’s worth at nearly $300 million [in 1960s money] in 1968 and this made the Reader’s Digest co-founder among the 31 wealthiest men in the United States at that time, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom by John Heidenry. The same book also noted that, at the time of her death in 1984 at the age of 95, Reader’s Digest co-founder Lila Acheson Wallace “was the richest woman in the United States,” with a net worth of at least $250 million [in 1980s money] that was “two and a half times the size of the estate left by Henry Luce” of the Time-Life magazines media conglomerate.

As early as 1935, Mr. & Mrs. Wallace had pocketed a huge fortune from their Reader’s Digest publishing hustle and they used part of this fortune to buy 105 acres of land in Mount Kisco, New York, upon which the childless couple built a 22-room castle called “High Winds”—during the height of the Great Depression. Although Mr. & Mrs. Wallace were quite eager to spend $277,336 [of 1930s money] in the 1930s to build their “Reader’s Digest Castle,” in 1936 their Reader’s Digest Association only donated $4,418 to 13 organizations, including “a check for a mere $10” to the American National Red Cross, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom. The same book noted, however, that “As the Digest’s fortune grew, Wally and Lila…established trust funds for numerous members of the Wallace and Acheson families.” But over $500,000 [in 1930s money] per year from their Reader’s Digest Association’s gross income was personally taken home by Mr. & Mrs. Wallace in the form of salaries during the late 1930s.

To reduce their federal income tax bills, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace apparently utilized the “non-profit” philanthropic foundations which they established. As Theirs Was The Kingdom revealed in the early 1990s:

“Wally’s greatest vulnerability lay with his philanthropies, which he often used as a cover to pad the retirement or compensation packages of favored employees…He arranged for Digesters to serve on the boards of organizations to which he gave money. But honorariums, free travel, and other perquisites—many of them nontaxable—were often involved. Another of Wally’s tax-evading ploys was to arrange for the children of privileged Digesters to travel abroad courtesy of the Reader’s Digest Association’s Foreign Study League…”

(end of part 11)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 10

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest  was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 9 of article).

In 1950, the Reader’s Digest Association established its lucrative Reader’s Digest Condensed Book Club which condenses a number of novels and/or nonfiction books into one volume and distributes these volumes around the globe to its members. The Reader’s Digest Condensed Book Club quickly became the largest book club in the world, with over 2.5 million members by 1955.

In 1955, after its newsstand sales began to drop when many of its readers began buying TV sets, Reader’s Digest then began to sell ad space for the first time in its U.S. edition to make up for its lost revenues. Reader’s Digest has also sold ad space to U.S. corporations like Eastman Kodak, Gillette, international Harvest, Exxon, Mobil, U.S. Steel, Texaco and Lockheed in its international edition. By 1980, a full page ad in the U.S. edition of Reader’s Digest cost $65,000 (in 1980s money) per issue.

Although $1.6 million worth of Reader’s Digest equipment at its Havana, Cuba plant—that had been used to produce its Spanish-language edition for Latin America—was confiscated in June 1960, following the Cuban Revolution, the Reader’s Digest Association continued to prosper during the Vietnam War Era of the 1960s and early 1970s. A division to sell vinyl record albums around the globe, which had been set up in 1959, had also proven to be quite profitable.

By 1980, the Reader’s Digest Association was a billion dollar/year business that employed 10,000 people around the globe and earned $100 million (in 1980s money) per year in profits. But in 1981, Reader’s Digest co-founder DeWitt Wallace died at the age of 91 and, in 1984, Reader’s Digest co-founder Lila Acheson Wallace died at the age of 95. (end of part 10)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 9

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 8 of article).

According to the book Little Wonder by John Bainbridge, the “transformation of the Reader’s Digest into something other than a digest began in the early 1930s.” The magazine began to hire writers directly to produce articles for Reader’s Digest to reprint—after Reader’s Digest first “planted” these same articles in other magazines. Theirs Was The Kingdom by John Heidenry recalled: “The Digest…subsidized original articles in its client magazines” like Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly, but “nowhere in those magazines, were readers given notice that articles purporting to be original with the respective editor of each publication were, in fact, either original with the Digest or paid for with Digest money.” According to Little Wonder:

“In the five years from 1939 through 1943, the Digest planted articles in more than 60 publications…Of 47 articles reprinted from Harper’s, eight were Digest plants; of 39 furnished by the Atlantic Monthly, eight were plants;…of eight taken from The Nation, five were plants; of 26 credited to the New Republic, eight were plants and 13 others were on the Digest’s presses before the New Republic appeared on the stands with them…The Digest gave Commonwealth credit for nine reprinted articles; all were plants…”

By 1962, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom, “articles planted in other magazines for reprinting later in the Digest now constituted 70 percent of every issue in the U.S. edition.” Its policy of subsidizing and planting articles in other magazines before re-printing them in Reader’s Digest “gave the Digest power to propagandize its right-wing political views across a broad spectrum of the periodical press,” according to a reference book titled The Magazine In America. (end of part 9)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 8

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 7 of article).

After Reader's Digest Founder DeWitt "Wally" Wallace started selling Reader’s Digest on U.S. newsstands in 1929, some of the editors and publishers who had been letting him reprint their magazine articles in condensed forms for free finally realized how profitable the Digest had become by that time. Some now began to view Reader’s Digest as a competing product on the newsstand. So to induce them to keep allowing Reader’s Digest to reprint articles from their magazines and to insure that imitators would not have access to a similar source of articles, Wallace signed exclusive reprint agreements with 35 other U.S. magazines in 1929, in which he agreed to now pay these magazines quite generously.

By 1934, 1.5 million copies of Reader’s Digest were being circulated in the U.S., including over 500,000 copies that were sold on U.S. newsstands. The magazine’s then-net profit exceeded $400,000 during the height of the Great Depression and by 1938 Reader’s Digest’s circulation had jumped to three million—the largest of any U.S. magazine at that time. By 1942, its U.S. circulation was five million. And by 1946, the U.S. circulation of Reader’s Digest was 9 million.

After 1939, the Reader’s Digest Association began publishing the international editions of its magazines in nine foreign languages, as well as in English, which the CIA apparently utilized as propaganda outlets following World War II. By 1947, the combined circulation of Reader’s Digest’s international editions exceeded 4.6 million. The nine foreign languages utilized were Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Arabic, Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, French and German. (end of part 8)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 7

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 6 of article).

Reader’s Digest was first published in February 1922 by DeWitt “Wally” Wallace and his wife, Lila Acheson Wallace, after a $5,000 [in 1920s money] loan from Mrs. Wallace’s brother—Barclay Acheson—was obtained. The initial issue consisted of 31 articles which the then-32-year-old “Wally” had clipped from old magazines in the public library, and then condensed for his own magazine’s use.

The son of a Minnesota college president, DeWitt Wallace was from St. Paul, Minnesota and “belonged to an elite that had virtually nothing in common with the masses who were to be his future audience,” according to Theirs Was The Kingdom by John Heidenry. But the same book also asserted that during the 1920s the Reader’s Digest publisher “packed his magazine with articles pandering to the most reactionary elements among his readers” and by 1929 the adless magazine’s circulation had reached 216,000, “thanks to relentless direct-mail solicitations.” Between 1922 and the 1990s, the corporate headquarters of Reader’s Digest was always located in the Pleasantville-Chappaqua area of Westchester County, in suburban New York.

The Magazine In America: 1741-1990 reference book attributed the Reader’s Digest’s almost immediate success in attracting subscribers in part to the fact that “Wallace was offering his customers the `best’ from the periodical press, shortened to an easy length…for a bargain price.” But, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom, “a critical factor in the Digest’s…prosperity was that Wally paid nothing for the articles he selected and condensed from other publications—in other words, the entire contents of his magazine” and “Wally for years limited his direct mail promotion to points beyond a 500-mile radius of New York” so “no editor or publisher was likely to…discover that it was stealing copyrighted material wholesale.”

The same book also recalled that “for the first eight years of its existence, DeWitt Wallace took great care to hide the extraordinary success of his magazine” and “since it did not carry advertising, he did not have to submit to an annual circulation audit.” Among the articles the Reader’s Digest published during the Roaring Twenties was an article in its January 1926 issue which was entitled “The Klan: Defender of Americanism” and the magazine also exhibited “an almost rabid hostility towards immigrants and Catholics” during the 1920s and 1930s, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom. The Reader’s Digest also was profitable enough to start publishing an edition in Braille for the visually-impaired in 1928. (end of part 7)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 6

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 5 of article).

Reader’s Digest was also connected, historically, to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company—one of the giant “Big Five” insurance companies which apparently stood to benefit most from the 1990s Clinton administration’s [initial version of the Democratic Obama Administration’s] health care reform plan. During the early 1990s, the then-chairman of the board at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Robert Schwartz, also sat on the board of the Reader’s Digest Association’s corporate board and another Reader’s Digest Association board member in the 1990s, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense named Melvin Laird, also sat on Metropolitan Life’s corporate board in the 1990s.

In the 1990s, the “non-profit” Metropolitan Museum of Art then owned about 11 percent of the nonvoting stock of the then-highly profitable Reader’s Digest. In 1991, for example, the net income of the Reader’s Digest Association exceeded $200 million and it was then the 209th largest corporation in the United States.

Coincidentally, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1990s—George Grune—was then the chairman of the board of the Reader’s Digest Association and he took home an annual salary of $1.2 million in the early 1990s. In addition to being Reader’s Digest’s board chairman at that time, Grune also sat on the corporate of Chemical Bank in the early 1990s.

Downtown telephoned the Communications Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art three times in the Fall of 1993 to ask a museum spokesperson to characterize the nature of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s historical connection to Reader’s Digest. But no one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Communications Department was available to communicate any comments about its historical Reader’s Digest connection in the Fall of 1993.

Sitting next to then-Reader’s Digest board chairman Grune on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board of trustees in the early 1990s was the then-New York Times Company Board Chairman Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. In the early 1990s, Sulzberger was the chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board of trustees and Sulzberger’s son—Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.—held the post of New York Times publisher. Another New York Times Company board member in the 1990s—former IBM corporate board chairman John Akers—also sat next to then-Reader’s Digest Association board chairman Grune on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board of trustees in the early 1990s.

The then-Reader’s Digest Association Chairman Grune also sat next to the following other “art lovers” on the Metropolitan Museum of Art board of trustees in the early 1990s: then-CBS Chairman of the Board Laurance Tisch; then-CBS Director James Houghton; then-New York magazine owner Henry Kravis; and Kissinger Associates Chairman Henry Kissinger. (end of part 6)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 5

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 20111 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 4 of article).

In addition to apparently collaborating historically with the CIA, the Reader’s Digest apparently acted, historically, as a propaganda tool of the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI]. As Unreliable Sources: A Guide To Detecting Bias In News Media by Martin Lee and Norman Solomon recalled, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation, led by J. Edgar Hoover from 1924 to 1972, had long cultivated sympathetic contacts in the media” and “these included journalists such as…Reader’s Digest editor Fulton Oursler.”

In 1973, the book Investigating The FBI also noted that “Over the years, Hoover maintained extremely close ties with several magazines—U.S. News & World Report and Reader’s Digest being perhaps the closest.” The FBI, for instance, “fed” Reader’s Digest Washington bureau editor John Barron “information on a spy case and then, during the trial, deposed him as a professional witness,” according to Theirs Was The Kingdom by John Heidenry. The same book also recalled that “Hoover’s byline appeared frequently in the Digest, which was his favorite publication,” “between 1942 and 1972 at least 12 articles” by FBI Director Hoover were published by Reader’s Digest, and the magazine’s Washington bureau during the 1950s and 1960s was used by Hoover “as if it were his own personal PR firm.” (end of part 5)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 4

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 3 of article).

In a 1993 telephone interview, Downtown asked Reader’s Digest’s then-press spokesperson, Craig Lowder, what the magazine’s response is, to the criticism that it has acted as a tool of the CIA since 1948, as asserted in John Heidenry’s book Theirs Was The Kingdom.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate to respond to every allegation made in Heidenry’s book. But I can comment generally on the book. Frankly, we feel his book is full of a lot of gossip, a lot of unsubstantiated innuendos, and many factual inaccuracies,” replied Lowder. “We learned about Heidenry’s plans to write a book and were initially excited about it. But then we found out what he was doing, when we received complaints from some former employees about the kind of questions he was asking. They didn’t believe what he was doing. His book became an unfair character assassination of [Reader’s Digest co-founder] DeWitt Wallace. There’s so much in that book that’s completely false. There are some charges made in which his only alleged sources are people who are now dead.”

The Reader’s Digest then-spokesperson, however, wasn’t willing to specifically confirm or deny the specific allegations in Heidenry’s book regarding the magazine’s historic CIA ties.

Despite its history of apparently using Reader’s Digest as a secret propaganda instrument, the Central Intelligence Agency wasn’t too eager in the early 1990s to let the many readers of Reader’s Digest read about the exact nature of the CIA’s relationship to Reader’s Digest co-founder DeWitt Wallace and the magazine. Theirs Was The Kingdom author Heidenry, for example, noted in 1993: “An FOIA request to the CIA for its files on DeWitt Wallace and on the Reader’s Digest was denied, as was an appeal…” (end of part 4)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 3

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and  2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was  owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for parts 1 to 2 of article).

In Mexico, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom by John Heidenry, an “outspoken critic of the Reader’s Digest’s cozy relationship with the CIA was Manuel Buendia,” a muckraking columnist. In his 1983 book, La CIA En Mexico, Buendia charged that the Spanish-language edition of Reader’s Digest in Mexico—Selecciones—frequently published articles by a U.S. writer named Daniel James, who, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom, “has only written what he has been ordered to by the CIA.” Theirs Was The Kingdom author John Heidenry also noted that “Buendia further identified Antonio Rodriguez Villar, director of Selecciones in Mexico City as a CIA agent…” and “Buendia claimed the CIA,`a longtime friend of Selecciones [had] taken over its Latin American editions, through individuals such as Rodriguez Villar.’” Shortly after Buendia’s book La CIA En Mexico, was published, the muckraking columnist was “shot four times in the back at point blank range in a parking-lot” after leaving his office on May 30, 1984, according to Theirs Was The Kingdom.

Unreliable Sources: A Guide To Detecting Bias In News Media by Martin Lee and Norman Solomon also noted that “The CIA cultivated high-level contacts within the most prestigious media in the U.S., including the three TV networks and the newspaper of record” and “more than 20 other American news organizations occasionally shared a bed with the CIA, including Reader’s Digest…” The same book also observed that “It was rather convenient that people like…Eugene Lyons of Reader’s Digest sat on the board of directors of the National Committee for a Free Europe [NCFE], which functioned as a thinly-veiled private-section cover for channeling funds to neo-Nazi émigré groups…” and “other NCFE board members included CIA director Allen Dulles…” (end of part 3)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 2

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and its 2011 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm. See below for part 1 of article).

Theirs Was The Kingdom by John Heidenry also observed in 1993 that “in the late 60’s the Reader’s Digest editor-in-chief"—Hobert Lewis—“walked into the office of treasurer Dick Waters, accompanied by two men whom he introduced as agents of the CIA,” when the CIA wanted to put some of its agents on the Reader’s Digest payroll in Peru, and “Waters agreed to go along with the plan.” The same book also revealed that a consultant to the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee, which investigated CIA misconduct, “suspected that the Reader’s Digest had at least the appearance of an institutional relationship with the CIA and was involved in four areas of intelligence gathering: photography…; editorial research for articles that were never printed; market research and polls; and special projects.”

According to Theirs Was The Kingdom, Reader’s Digest was charged by some Italian critics of launching an Italian edition, Selezione del Reader’s Digest in 1948, “in direct response to widespread fears that Italy would fall to the Communists” in its 1948 elections; and of letting its Italian edition be utilized “as a conduit for anti-Communist propaganda originating from…both the American and the European intelligence communities,” under the editorial direction of a former British intelligence officer named Terrence Harmon. These same Italian critics also charged that “the 1948 Italian campaign marked the first time the Central Intelligence Agency…got involved in large-scale political propaganda,” according to the same book.

In Chile, Reader’s Digest was also apparently utilized by the CIA to help create favorable conditions for the Chilean military’s 1973 overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende regime. Theirs Was The Kingdom stated the following:

“When…Salvadore Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970, according to Landis, the Digest sent a reporter to remote areas of the country to investigate industrial accidents in the country’s copper mines. Previously, a Finnish newspaper had accused a Digest employee of being a CIA agent for taking photographs of a copper mine. Though the reporter’s research never resulted in a published article, the CIA soon afterward organized a strike among Chile’s copper workers…”

(end of part 2)

(Downtown 10/27/93)

`Reader's Digest''s Hidden History--Part 1

(The following article originally appeared in the October 27, 1993 issue of the now-defunct alternative Lower East Side weekly, Downtown. Between 2007 and  2009 bankruptcy, Reader’s Digest was owned by Citigroup board member Tim Collins’ Ripplewood Holdings’ private investment/leveraged buy-out firm.)

“…The Atlantic Journal, in a series on CIA infiltration of the media, noted that in the fifties and sixties Time-Life Inc. had enjoyed an extremely close relationship with the intelligence agency. But now some CIA watchers saw the Reader’s Digest `as gradually achieving that “most favored’ status granted by the CIA’—John Heidenry in Theirs Was The Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and The Story of the `Reader’s Digest’ in 1993

“Perhaps the most important fact about the Digest is that it isn’t a digest. It buys and `plants’ articles to suit the views of its owner, in other publications, thus spreading bias and prejudice—and I believe I proved, native fascism and even pro-Nazi propaganda—throughout the magazine press of America…Being the largest circulating publication in the world, it manipulates the minds of many millions of people.

“In the course of decades all these charges have been proved and documented…”—George Seldes in Never Tire Of Protesting in 1968

In his 1957 book Of Lasting Interest, James Wood noted that “There is evidence that the Digest has more than once helped implement United States foreign policy in various parts of the world.” One way Reader’s Digest has apparently helped to “implement United States foreign policy" has been to secretly collaborate with the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]. According to the Theirs Was The Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and The Story of the `Reader’s Digest’ book by John Heidenry, “The Reader’s Digest Association [RDA] enjoyed an intimate relationship with the agency perhaps unmatched by any other major American communications giant, with the exception of Time-Life” and “as the country and the world entered the Cold War era, the Digest was to become…a highly valuable propaganda outlet for both the CIA and, to a lesser extent, the Federal Bureau of Investigation…” The same book also noted that Reader’s Digest’s Washington bureau “has been serving as a primary conduit for CIA and FBI propaganda, self-promotion, and disinformation since the days of Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover” and that its roving editor in the Washington bureau—John Barron—had “close ties to the FBI and CIA.”

Barron was “the man who usually handled Soviet defectors in the media once they had been thoroughly debriefed by the CIA and were good only for propaganda purposes,” according to Theirs Was The Kingdom. The same book also recalled that “over the years the Digest’s bylines on espionage-related activities amounted to a veritable Who’s Who of CIA upper management and fellow-traveling journalists…” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 10/27/93)