Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 1

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger (http://www.pegseeger.com/) has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 1 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

I was in the bookstore looking at the magazine section, and I noticed a lot of glossy magazines featuring people who were singing folk music in the 1960s and 1950s. You know, an article like “Generation X and Joan Baez.” Also books. Like When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. What’s your explanation?
Peggy Seeger: Who was that by?

Robert Cartwell. So it seems like every decade there’s a revival of interest in the folksingers of the 1950s and 1960s and in folk music in general. How do you explain the cross-generational appeal?
Seeger: When you say “cross-generational appeal,” do you mean “why is it appealing now to younger people?”

Yeah.
Seeger: Are you sure that it is?

That’s what these articles are saying. In the early Nineties—no. But now, in the last few years—yes.
Seeger: Well, then the young people now are getting romantic about the Sixties. They’re not listening particularly to folk music now. You go to the festivals now and there aren’t all that many. Probably at festivals there are younger people. But at the concerts there are more older people, generally speaking. Although I went to a Joan Baez concert down in Asheville and there were a terrific number of women there—young and older women.

So maybe that’s where it’s centered? Among women.
Seeger: I think we’re hungering for a more innocent period, to be quite honest. I think many people feel that folk music has an innocence about it. That the music that we’re being presented with now, as pop music, doesn’t. It’s interesting that there wasn’t a folk music revival back in the Thirties and the Twenties when there was a lot of really innocent, quite joyful, music.

So many movements seem to run almost in pendulum-like form. Look at the way the working-class movement and the union movement spurs up every now and then. And look at the way feminism is spurred up every now and then. The ecological movement as well. Although I hope the pendulum is going to stay where it is and move even further over.

But I think, certainly, as far as the Fifties and the Sixties are concerned, it was a kind of glowing period. People kind of look on it as—even though it included things like the Vietnam War—if we still had a kind of innocence about us then.

You lived in both the United States and in Britain during the Fifties and Sixties?
Seeger: I lived in England for most of that. I was abroad for most of that time. From 1955 onward I was abroad.

You’ve been back in the States in the Nineties. Is it much of a culture shock?
Seeger: Yes. Although I had been back several times before then. I was blacklisted in early days, even though I hadn’t done very much. Or at least, if not blacklisted, it was very difficult to get in. You had to hire a civil liberties lawyer to kind of plead your case. And you had to get work permits and special visas and all those kind of things

But coming back now, despite the fact that I have come back about eight or ten times between 1960 and 1990, yes—quite a culture shock. But not as much as if I had been a foreigner. I’m quite comfortable with American people. Always have been. Not all. The ones that are the kind of people that I meet I’m quite comfortable with.

Why would you be blacklisted as a musician? I thought that was only political people. I thought artists weren’t blacklisted?
Seeger: No. No, no, no. My brother, Pete [Seeger], wasn’t allowed to leave the country for a long time in the Fifties. Or early Sixties. And to be a folk musician, was to be regarded as quite “left-wing” and “red,” in the Fifties and Sixties. Definitely.

In the 1990s, what have you been up to artistically?
Seeger: I performed by myself up to 1958 or ’59. And then I joined with Ewan MacColl and sang with him for over 30 years. And when he died in 1989, I swung immediately to singing with my old comrade, Irene Scott. We formed a duo called “No Spring Chickens.” And we sang together for 4 years. And then she decided she didn’t like touring life. And I decided to come back over here.

And so I have been learning to sing by myself again. And it was extremely interesting. Because working with Ewan MacColl it was very, very serious. And fairly static onstage. Working with Irene, she wanted to bring humor onto the stage. So I started using a reasonable amount of humor and being lighter onstage, in terms of presentation. Although not necessarily in terms of the kinds of songs being sung. And, of course, the big difference now is that I’m swinging over to ecological and feminism politics, rather than the old left-wing politics of the jobs and the unions.

This is not to say that I don’t find them important. Because they are. But I believe that the major push, the most important push now, is ecology. And feminism goes hand-in-hand with that, because so many of the feminist principles are ones that mesh in perfectly with ecological action.

Next: Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview—Part 2

Nader vs. The Clintons Revisited

In an August 19, 1996 speech before the 1996 Green Party Convention, long-time U.S. consumer advocate Ralph Nader (www.nader.org) indicated why he ran against 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s husband in 1996:

“Next time someone says to you, `Why are you building a third party? Don’t you know that a progressive third party will take votes away from the Democratic Party. Why are you being a spoiler?’ Well, the easy answer is you can’t spoil a system spoiled to the core.

“And another answer is that we are sick and tired and weary of being told every four years we have to choose between the bad and the worse, because every four years they both get worse. Because we don’t look kindly on two parties who…sign into law an increased child poverty legislation, where they literally throw out the baby with the bathwater, so-called welfare reform: no child care, no job opportunities, restricted food stamps, 350,000 disabled children off public assistance, and on and on. What’s the difference between these two?...The corporations are pulling both parties to the right, reactionary wing of American politics…

“Look at the basic problems. Energy: solar energy, energy efficiency—those are the solutions…Housing: There are pilot housing projects showing the way to go, so we don’t have this disgraceful, inadequate, decrepit, decayed housing stock, not to mention the homeless…Health care: we have the solution to health care…Universal health care, the single-payer Canadian system…Modern public transit:…Look at the work done in Northwestern University…on the subject and ask yourself why don’t we have…modern public transit that’s fast, reliable, that’s very close to zero pollution…Agriculture: Instead of highly chemical-intensive agriculture…organic agriculture…How about the unemployment problem?...The jobs aren’t there because billions of dollars of pension funds are being used for mergers and acquisitions and empire building instead of productive activity…”

In a September 1996 article, Luis Martin also characterized the White House record of Hillary Clinton’s husband in the following way:

"While posing as the defender of the poor and children, Clinton has led the charge against social programs, with cuts larger than anything proposed by Reagan or Bush [I]. Since becoming president, he has quietly signed cuts amounting to half the budget of the federal government. The cuts go far beyond anything implemented in Europe and Japan…Now Clinton has obtained even deeper cuts by signing the `welfare reform’ law…Clinton proposes cutting $192 billion from Medicare alone…”

Yet as Martin also noted in his article, “if the richest one percent could content themselves with 7.3 percent of the national income—instead of the current 12.1 percent—then the deficit could be eliminated.”
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/30/96)

Next: Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview—Part 1

'Ms.' Magazine's `Restricted' Archives--Part 2

After women anti-war activists who had been involved with Movement groups like SNCC and SDS collectively developed an updated radical feminist critique of patriarchal U.S. society, Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem then decided to write about the new wave of feminism for Clay Felker’s New York magazine. She attended a November 1968 meeting in New York City of the Redstockings radical feminist group to gather material for her magazine column.

But, as previously indicated, in 1975 members of Redstockings held a press conference to disclose to other U.S. feminists Steinem’s previous involvement with the CIA. Redstockings noted at this time that “It has been widely recognized that one major CIA strategy is to create or support parallel organizations which provide alternatives to radicalism and yet appear progressive enough to appease dissatisfied elements of the society.”

Because the “material regarding Redstockings events” in the Ms. magazine archives was pulled by Smith College librarians at Steinem’s apparent request, neither feminist scholars nor progressive journalists will be able to let their readers fully know how Ms. magazine reacted to the 1975 Redstockings disclosure about Steinem’s past CIA links. But there is some evidence that a Random House book on the feminist revolution which was to have contained a chapter on Steinem’s past CIA links also had “restricted” material pulled at Steinem’s request. As Current Biography Yearbook 1988 noted, "a Village Voice columnist, writing in the May 21, 1979 issue, darkly hinted that she [Steinem] might have prevailed upon Random House to delete a chapter entitled `Gloria Steinem and the CIA’ from The Feminist Revolution, a collection of essays by writers affiliated with the Redstockings.” And as Nancy Borman observed in the July 1979 issue of the Lower East Side-based Overthrow Magazine:

“Publication of Feminist Revolution was delayed nearly three years…and when the book was finally released…the chapter on Gloria Steinem and the CIA had been deleted in its entirety…Six weeks after Feminist Revolution was finally published five members of the Redstockings held a press conference to argue that their book would be better described as `censored.’…The near-total blackout on the Steinem/Random House censorship story is reminiscent of the level of enthusiasm Redstockings encountered when they first tried to get coverage for the story of Steinem and the CIA.”

Other politically radical women anti-war activists have attempted in the past to alert a new generation of feminists to the Ms. magazine founder’s past CIA links. Australian anti-war writer-activist Joan Coxsedge’s 1982 book, Rooted In Secrecy: The Clandestine Element In Australian Politics, for instance, contained a section titled “Sisterhood and the CIA,” in which she made the following observation:

“It goes without saying that because of the growing participation and influence of women in the political arena, certain radical sections of the women’s movement are under scrutiny by secret agencies, including the CIA…The CIA attacks in a variety of ways. One method is to defuse the movement by infiltration and diverting its aim into safe reformist channels. Another method is to set up rival conservative organizations…The CIA involved itself in the international women’s movement as early as 1962. At that time, it contributed thousands of dollars a year to the Committee of Correspondence, a New York-based group consisting of 18 American women and 12 associates…The Committee was in contact with at least 5,500 women in 120 countries…The Committee made a big point in its literature that it was `non-government and independent.’ It held conferences in conjunction with the United Nations and was in a prime position to locate and collect information on women leaders around the world…An example of the watering-down of radical demands was provided by the 1975 disclosure of Gloria Steinem’s role in the Women’s Liberation Movement…Feminists have accused Ms. of substituting itself for the genuine movement, blocking knowledge of authentic activists and ideas.”

And in her 1983 book, The Future Of Women, former University of Chicago Professor of Sociology Marlene Dixon wrote:

“Bourgeois feminism…fights only to gain…equality with men under the rule of capital…Bourgeois women can become controllers of bank and finance capital, petty bourgeois women can become their vice presidential lieutenants. For 10 years this has been the obsession of the bourgeois feminist movement, under the hegemony of such CIA types as Gloria Steinem…And yet during those same years…the conditions of life of all women have been under increasing attack.”

According to Ms.’s editor in the late 1990s, Marcia Ann Gillespie, the magazine’s then-current management played no role in formulating the Smith College library’s policy of restricting the access of journalists in the 1990s to some of the Ms. archives material from the period when Pat Carbine and Gloria Steinem managed the magazine, prior to its subsequent re-organization.

Ms. was purchased in 1996 by Jay MacDonald’s MacDonald Communications, in partnership with Bud Paxson’s Paxson Communications media conglomerate. In its May 15, 1998 issue, the New York Times described Paxson Communications as “the nation’s largest owner and operator of television station” in 1998; and noted that Paxson’s vice-chairman at that time, William Simon Jr., was the son and business partner of former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, Sr.—the then-president of the right-wing John M. Olin Foundation.

Later in 1998, Ms. founder Steinem and other investors created Liberty Media and repurchased the magazine from MacDonald Communications and Paxson Communications. But by 2001, Steinem’s Liberty Media was facing bankruptcy and Ms. magazine was sold to the tax-exempt Democratic Party-oriented Feminist Majority Foundation, which then turned it into a quarterly publication. But Steinem is still listed on the Ms. magazine masthead as a “Consulting Editor,” according to the magazine’s web site at www.msmagazine.com .

Despite its policy of restricting the public’s access to some of the Ms. archives material during the late 1990s, the Sophia Smith Collection reported in its February 1998 newsletter that it received a $107,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities “to process eight collections documenting women’s activism.”
(end of article)

Next: Nader vs. The Clintons Revisited

`Ms.' Magazine's `Restricted' Archives--Part 1

Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], Ms. magazine has generally claimed to be in favor of freedom of information. Yet when a woman anti-war activist and I drove out to Northampton, Massachusetts in the late 1990s to examine the contents of the 250 boxes of Ms. archives donated by the magazine to the Smith College library’s Sophia Smith Collection, guess what happened? The librarian wouldn’t let us look at any of the material until she and other members of the library staff first got a chance to remove “the restricted material.”

Feeling that the notion of maintaining a “restricted” magazine archives seemed similar in spirit to the notion of maintaining restricted country clubs, I telephoned the collection’s reference archivist, Susan Boone, the next morning to ask her to clarify the library’s policy on providing journalists with access to Ms. magazine’s archives.

“Ms. records are available. And the Steinem material has been separated. But there’s a possibility that there is other restricted material in the records,” said Boone. “And that means that we can and we will go through the boxes and pull any restricted material.”

Some of the separated “Steinem material” was briefly described in the typed index of the Ms. records which the woman anti-war activist and I were allowed to look at. The restricted “Steinem material” contained in box 115 of the Ms. archives includes Gloria Steinem’s 1971-1977 correspondence, material on the Ms. Foundation, Women’s Action Alliance annual meeting reports for the years 1980 to 1982 and “Gloria Steinem—correspondence clippings, 1971-1982.” The restricted material in Box 62 is described as “Gloria Steinem speaking request—fee correspondence” for the years 1973 to 1976. And the restricted material in Box 132 includes material on Gloria Steinem’s 1970 to 1981 appearances, more material on the Ms. Foundation and more Steinem correspondence.

In the course of examining this typed index, the woman anti-war activist who was with me noticed the following hand-written note on one page: “Material re: Redstockings events & Elizabeth Harrris restricted.” The phrase “Redstockings events” likely refers to the events surrounding that radical anti-war feminist group’s 1975 revelation that Ms. magazine founder Steinem’s political activity had been funded by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950s and 1960s.

A February 1967 article in the now-defunct U.S. left magazine Ramparts had revealed that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Independent Research Service organization—which Gloria Steinem apparently had set-up in 1958—received at least $180,000 in CIA funds between 1961 and 1965. The CIA funds were funneled to the Independent Research Service organization through a CIA foundation conduit: the Independence Foundation.

In her 1997 book Inside Ms.: 25 Years Of The Magazine And The Feminist Movement, former Ms. editorial staff member Mary Thom claimed that the Independent Research Service entity “had been founded by former National Student Association [NSA] officials”—not by Steinem; and that “Steinem learned of the CIA financing from NSA people.” Yet in a February 21, 1967 New York Times article which confirmed the Ramparts magazine disclosure, Steinem had told the Times that: (1) the CIA had been “a major source of funds” for the Independent Research Service since its formation in 1958; (2) “she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Association, who told her CIA money might be available;” (3) she “was a full-time employee of the service” until 1962; and (4) “The CIA’s big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast enough.”

Under Steinem’s leadership, the CIA-funded Independent Research Service had, according to Ramparts magazine, “actively recruited a delegation of hundreds of young Americans to attend” world youth festivals in Vienna in 1959 and in Helsinki in 1962 “in order to actively oppose the communists;” and important officers and ex-officers of the CIA-funded National Student Association “were very active in the Independent Research Service activities in Vienna and Helsinki.” At the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival, the Independent Research Service distributed a daily newspaper, The Helsinki News, which was printed in five languages. The Helsinki News was apparently edited by Clay Felker—the New York magazine editor who would later fund and distribute Ms. magazine’s initial December 1971 sample issue as an insert in his patriarchal New York magazine.

Also attending the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival with Steinem under CIA sponsorship was Barney Frank, who subsequently became an aide to Democratic Boston Mayor Kevin White and then a long-time Massachusetts Democratic representative in Congress. As The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream by Richard Cummings would note in 1985:

“Barney Frank at Harvard had been with the Independent Research Service delegation to Helsinki, an operation which, by Frank’s own admission, he clearly understood was CIA-backed. Frank joked about the role of fellow delegate Gloria Steinem, whom he described as running around at nightclubs set up by the CIA in Helsinki, helping to win over Africans.”

Steinem was “on the agency’s payroll” for 4 years, according to America’s Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty by Sig Mickelson. And in late February 1967, the then-32-year-old Steinem had told Newsweek magazine:

“In the CIA, I finally found a group of people who understood how important it was to represent the diversity of our government’s ideas at the Communist festivals. If I had the choice, I would do it again.”
(end of part 1)

Next: Ms. Magazine’s “Restricted” Archives—Part 2

Hillary Clinton's Historical Holt and `Time' Magazine Connections

One reason the husband of 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was able to beat the draft was apparently because aides to U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Fulbright apparently used their special influence on behalf of Bill Clinton in 1969. While attending Georgetown University in the 1960s, Hillary’s husband had begun working on a part-time basis at $3,500/year with Fulbright’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he is quoted in Clinton: Young Man In A Hurry by Jim Moore as saying that “They gave me the job when I was nobody from nowhere. My family had no money, no political influence, nothing.” The same book also notes, however, that:

“Actually Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jack Holt had recommended Clinton to Lee Williams, who was Senator Fulbright’s administrative aide. Clinton had campaigned for the chief justice’s uncle during a gubernatorial campaign.”

(Coincidentally, former Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jack Holt’s son—former U.S. Air Force Colonel Jack Holt Jr.—was the Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1992—just like his Dad used to be.)

At the same time Hillary’s husband was apparently allowed by the U.S. government to ignore two separate orders to report for military induction in 1969 and to continue studying at Oxford University in England, “Clinton’s best friend was Time magazine senior correspondent Strobe Talbott [who later worked as a U.S. State Department official during the Clintons’ first two terms in the White House].” Coincidentally, Time magazine—whose editor-at-large during the 1992 presidential election campaign was Strobe Talbott—was not eager then to let its readers know exactly why the induction orders of Hillary’s husband were apparently handled differently by the U.S. government than the induction orders issued to other young men of the Clintons’ baby-boom generation.

Asked by Downtown in a 1992 telephone interview if Time magazine’s campaign coverage had been influenced by editor-at-large Strobe Talbott’s past friendship with Hillary’s husband at Oxford, Time’s then-managing editor, Henry Mueller, replied: “No. Of course not.”
(Downtown 10/7/92)

Next: Ms. Magazine’s “Restricted” Archives—Part 1

Ford Foundation Owns $14.9 Million Worth of Halliburton Stock

I recently got a chance to check out the Form 990 PF financial filing of the Ford Foundation for the year beginning Oct. 1, 2005 and ending Sept. 30, 2006. In 2004, the Ford Foundation gave a $150,000 grant to help subsidize the Democracy Now! Productions alternative media enterprise.

It turns out that as of September 30, 2006 the Ford Foundation's $12 billion dollar stock portfolio included:

526,500 shares of Halliburton stock, worth $14.9 million;

710,854 shares of Chevron stock, worth $46.1 million;

314,424 shares of Caterpillar stock, worth $20.6 million;

2,103,362 shares of ExxonMobil stock, worth $141 million;

530,000 shares of Aetna Insurance stock, worth $20.9 million;

463,663 shares of Boeing stock, worth $36.5 million;

606,006 shares of United Technologies stock, worth $38.3 million;

8,749 shares of Raytheon stock, worth $420,039;

3,186,694 shares of Time Warner stock, worth $58 million; and

415,596 shares of Wal-Mart Stores stock, worth $20.4 million, etc.

Ironically, when Democracy Now! aired its show about the Gates Foundation article of L.A. Times reporter Charles Piller on January 9, 2007, which it titled "Report Gates Foundation Causing Harm With The Same Money It Uses To Do Good," Amy Goodman apparently forgot to mention that the Ford Foundation that gave her media group $150,000 in 2004 was also engaged in unethical practices. Following is a portion of the transcript from that 1/9/07 show which indicates how Amy Goodman spun the issue of tax-exempt foundations that help fund alternative media groups also investing in anti-humanistic corporations:

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Piller, we only have a few minutes, and you’ve done such extensive reporting here. I want to get to a number of the cases you cite, but the issue of the firewall, the kind of, I think it's called, blind-eye investing, the Gates Foundation pouring money into these philanthropic endeavors, yet at the same time are pouring money into investments in these polluting corporations.

CHARLES PILLER: Yes. I think the fundamental issue here is that American foundations, because of tax laws, generally give away about 5% of their net assets every year. And this allows them to avoid most taxes. The other 95% is invested. It's invested in a wide range of securities, stocks, bonds. And the reason why a wide range is used is that obviously a prudent investor wants to protect their investment.

Now, the issue that we found is that the Gates Foundation established a firewall between the people who manage its investments and the people who give away its grants, and as a result, there is no coordination made so that the investments don't tend to contravene the grants and the charitable goals of the foundation. And so, as a result, what we found is that the 95% that's invested every year, in large measure, tends to go to industries, to companies that not just may be doing some harm, because, frankly, a lot of companies do harm in the world, and it's a difficult thing to police at times, but they go to companies that in many cases directly engage in activities that tend to subvert the charitable goals of the foundation, not just in the pollution angle.

But we found, for example, $1.5 billion approximately in foundation investments in pharmaceutical companies whose practices tend to price their AIDS drugs out of reach of the very people that the Gates Foundation has decided are its highest priority to help: AIDS victims in the developing world who can only afford a very meager price for AIDS drugs, but are unable to afford the drugs from companies that the Gates Foundation is making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from
.
AMY GOODMAN: Charles Piller, we have less than two minutes. And in your second piece, you begin your piece, “Gates Foundation Invests in Firms Accused of Abuses,” about a couple, Cheryl and Jeff Busby, and Ameriquest. Please quickly describe that story.

CHARLES PILLER: Yes, well, one of the highest priorities for the Gates Foundation has been service programs within the Pacific Northwest, their home. And, in particular, they've attacked homelessness and housing instability as a key goal. What we found is that, as the Gates Foundation is giving tens of millions of dollars to assisting people in unstable housing and poor people who need help and homeless people, they are also invested to the tune of well over $2 billion in companies that are in what’s called the sub-prime loan industry.

Now, this is an industry that is designed to serve people who have less-than-perfect credit and still want to be homeowners. But this industry has been rife with abuse for many years, and as a result, many of the investments are contributing to the financial well-being of the Gates Foundation and to the companies that have been implicated widely in abuses of lending that have resulted in people losing their homes, thousands and thousands of people losing their homes all throughout the Pacific Northwest and throughout the country.

The Busbys are one example of that, a poignant example because Cheryl Busby works for an agency that was given donations by the Gates Foundation, in part to counsel victims of predatory lenders, victims of the sub-prime industry. And this same -- the company that was a predator in their case, Ameriquest, was implicated as a predator in their case, is also a company that the Gates Foundation is profiting from as an investor.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times reporter -- two-part series on the Gates Foundation -- I want to thank you very much for being with us. We’ll certainly link to it at our website, democracynow.org.

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Historical Holt and Time Magazine Connections

Hiroshimagate?

Wilfred Burchett was the first Western journalist to enter Hiroshima after an atomic bomb was dropped on it by the U.S. government’s Enola Gay B-29 plane one morning 62 years ago. In his 1983 book, Shadows Of Hiroshima, Burchett wrote the following:

“In 1945 I was too overwhelmed by the enormity of what had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to appreciate the cool deliberation and advance planning that went into manufacturing the subsequent cover-up…

“…As I learned of the experiences of journalistic contemporaries and Japanese survivors, I was forced to recognize the existences of an official policy to suppress accurate reportage of the terrible after-effects of nuclear war. This cover-up—which continues today—is closely related to other attempts to disguise the reasons why President Truman decided to drop two atomic bombs on an already prostrated and defeated Japan. The total accumulation of lies, half-truths and manipulated public opinion, at the ultimate expense of thousands of lives…makes the Watergate Affair look like rather small change…"

According to A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn, in addition to the 100,000 Japanese civilians who died immediately and the “tens of thousands more” who died more slowly from radiation poisoning, “twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail” were also killed in the atomic bombing—although “the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged” this fact. The same book also noted that at the time the A-bomb was used “it was known that the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies” and that A World Destroyed by Martin Sherwin asserted that after a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki “among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war.” Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths Of American History by Richard Shenkman also observed:

“In 1946 the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after an exhaustive survey, found that…`in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped…and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated…’ On June 20, 1945, the emperor and leading members of the Supreme War Direction Council had secretly decided to end the war…”
(Downtown 3/15/95)

According to Killing Our Own: The Disaster Of America's Experience With Atomic Radiation by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, among the civilians bombed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki "were several thousand Americans of Japanese ancestry, stranded in Japan when the war began" and "at least 11 American POWs being held in Hiroshima died from the bombing." In his introduction to the same 1982 book, a former third-party presidential candidate named Dr. Benjamin Spock also observed:

"Shortly after the blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American soldiers were sent in to help clean up the rubble...They have suffered an extraordinary rate of rare cancer that could only havae been caused by that radiation...Our government set up a massive study of the Japanese victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the data was kept secret, and it was later used in a way that brought charges of manipulation and deliberate suppression of the dangers of radiation..."
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 8/7/96)

Next: Ford Foundation Owns $14.9 Million Worth of Halliburton Stock