In a Time of Torment 1961-1967: A Nonconformist History of Our Times

Several recent reports examine through a variety of media how enslaved our once free now corporate and monopolistic press has grown. For example, Tim Robbins in his play Embedded Live exposes the way our press, unlike for instance under the journalism of Al GOre in the rice fields of Vietnam, are led around on a leash by the military Public Disinformation Office, and never report the thousands we kill each day in our lust for oil. Similarly, we see in Orwell Rolls in His Grave how and why this occurs on the domestic front as well, with our political front men and spin doctors tightly controlling the corporate owned media to dictate how we the public must frame our thoughts on important issues, and waste much time on insignificant ones. This modern travesty of our Founding Fathers's legacy of a free press in order to provide our democracy with the necessary well-informed public was deftly delayed by the great IF Stone, whose likes we need now more than ever. This collection of articles from his weekly, published between 1961 through 1967 (and thus covering the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), illustrate the kind of journalism our people now must hunger for: intelligent, independent and fearless. In his brilliant introduction, Stone astutely and prophetically foretold our current dismal condition of a tightly controlled press. He explores how disfavored reporters could be locked out of news sources, just as we have seen happen these past few years. He explores how reporters are seduced by their sources, dazzled in the Pentagon, until Stockholm syndrome fully sets in. Writes Stone: "Reporters tend to be absorbed by the bureaucracies they cover; they take on the habits, attitudes, and even accents of the military or the diplomatic corps. Should a reporter resist the pressure, there are ways to get rid of him (p. xviii)." Stone then cites exclusion through innuendoes, of irresponsibility, or radicalism, even then of Marxism. Nowadays it is accusations of less than fervent patriotism. Stone avoided such lock-outs by being his own boss and beholden to no one. We must therefore read with reliability his monumental and validated work. He further states in this introduction that "No bureaucracy likes an independent newspaperman. Whether capitalist or communist, democratic or authoritarian, every regime does its best to color and control the flow of news in its favor (p. xx)." I think in bureaucratic we may now read corporate, and seek for that forum of our reliable independent newspaperman. Perhaps the monopolistic media now would simply dismiss Stone as a fringe whacko (they did then), but we may read his record of contemporary events with confidence, and mourn the lack now of such a strong philosohy of journalism in keeping with Thomas Jefferson's vision for our free democracy. Stone further writes: "I believe that no society is good and can be healthy without freedom for dissent and for creative independence. ( . . .) In the darkest days o

I.F. Stone was a virtual legend among political junkies in the sixties and seventies, as indeed he was for well over a half century in various journalistic capacities from the Depression era until the late 1980s. He published an independent weekly journal for well over twenty years from the early 1950s until the mid-1970s in which he acted as soul reporter, editor, and publisher, and the work was acclaimed for its consistent accuracy, poignancy, and verve. He caught many scoops others were either not clever enough or courageous enough to cover, and his ability to focus on the way the facts of the situation fit together into a political byline made him a `must-read' for anyone interested in understanding how politics actually got done (down and dirty) in Washington, DC. This particular book, "In A Time Of Torment, 1961-1967", is a superb collection of some of his most memorable articles, thought-pieces and observations taken from both the I.F. Stone Weekly as well as from the pages of `The Nation' and elsewhere during the most outrageous of times indeed, the turbulent and raucous 1960s. Also important in understanding Stone's approach is the book's subtitle, 'A Nonconformist History Of Our Times'; Stone is the most radical of journalists in that he approaches the issues at hand with supreme objectivity and without political blinders, and yet does so informed by a set of values and ethics that one wonders at his ability to `cut to the chase' and render the truth so consistently and so reliably that one often marvels at how simple he makes such erudition seem. While describing himself as an anachronism, meaning he represented no one but himself, and found himself uncomfortable working within the constraints of a more institutional setting (even though he had done so quite marvelously for extended periods of time), he was that most rare of literary lions, a widely-read and intellectually circumspect truth-seeker. Like H.L Mencken, his prose often inspired one toward imitation, yet he also wrote clearly, unambiguously, and quite memorably. Herein we find a whole rafter of memorable articles, all short, ranging from several paragraphs to three or four pages in length. He covers subjects as distant from each other as JFK and the free press, from LBJ to China, and from Jeffersonian democracy to the racist issues inherent in the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Indeed, Stone and his opinions were often viewed with alarm by the powers that be, for they understood all too well that he was read by many of the most important opinion makers and policy wonks within the Washington beltway and beyond, and that his weighing in on a specific issue often resulted in unwanted attention and a virtual spotlight being thrown in that general direction. This is a great book to have in your travel-bag; full of little gems you can read en route to almost anywhere, a pleasurable and intelligent companion that you can enjoy and finish in a few minutes and walk away better inform

I. F. Stone seemed to take it personally whenever any part of the globe was under consideration for being sent back to a new Stone Age by modern weaponry. Regarding proposals for more relentless pursuit of American policy in Vietnam on January 20, 1966, he wrote, "But this tough old troglodyte is not through yet. The whole air force drive in Vietnam is to transform a war we can't win to a war we might; from a war for the loyalties of the Vietnamese people into a war to destroy them; this is giving the obsolete B-52 its last murderous gasp over South Vietnam's jungles and rice paddies." (p. 104) That was a long time ago, and Stone can hardly be blamed for failing to see that the situations which could make such activities popular would fail to end in his own time. He had some grasp of history, but hardly could tell that we were all heading for catastrophes in which being unable to relate would be the new norm.Torment is the key word in the title. The 1960s were years which were my golden age for understanding the geopolitical situation, because I was young enough to appreciate political views without regard for who was making money or controlling the means of production. I. F. Stone was astute enough to make his own economic criticism count in such times, even in the unlikely context of a review of the life of General Curtis LeMay, "after a lifetime of bomber command, as he told it to the writer of his story, MacKinley Kantor." (p. 92):His nearest approach to an unfriendly remark about the capitalist system is an angry comment in his account of how the Air Corps flew the mails in 1934 under Roosevelt. "The public bought the idea (and still retains it)," he comments sourly, "that scores of Air Corps pilots lost their lives in an heroic but absurd attempt to emulate the superb performance of the commercial airlines." It is only in the bitterness of his feud with McNamara, that he allows himself to reflect by implication on the Business Man. . . .(p. 93).Much as such disputes might have mattered in the Department of Defense, I. F. Stone was independent enough, in his own paper, to have his own approach: "The military-industrial complex never had an officer more loyally blinkered." (p. 94). These were merely preliminary matters to be gotten out of the way before discussing the forms of torment which were to be most closely associated with General Curtis LeMay in the tasks which he had willingly attempted to accomplish. The point at which I feel that I learned the most from I. F. Stone was in finding an intellectual foundation for this kind of torment in "the doctrine of the Prussian military writers of the nineteenth century." (pp. 96-7). It was an approach adopted by Hindenburg in Poland, early in World War I, on November 20, 1914, when he wrote, "Lotz is starving. That is deplorable, but it ought to be so. The more pitiless the conduct of the war the more humane it is in reality, for it will run its course all the sooner." (p. 97