TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST BY FULTON LEWIS, JR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220127-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 3, 2006
• Sequence Number: 127
• Publication Date: February 5, 1958
• Content Type: TRANS

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TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST
By
Fulton Lewis, Jr.
Station WGMS 7-7:15 P. M.
5 February 1958
There's an old saying which I'm sure you've heard that
whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. That is
apropos of a letter which I have here signed Lester J. Marier,
executive secretary to the chairman and the president of the
Westinghouse Corporation, and it's on Westinghouse Corporation
stationary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is addressed to Mrs.
Allen Cox, Los Angeles 24, California, and the letter reads
as follows:
Dear Mrs. Cox: I have for reply your letter addressed
to the attention of the board of directors of this com-
pany with .regard to Mr. Gwilym Price's association with
the Crusade for Freedom. I'm glad to have the opportuni-
ty to discuss this matter with you. I naturally regret
that you have apparently accepted as gospel truth the
tripe which Fulton Lewis, Jr., has seen fit to write in
his newspaper column and say over his radio program about
the Crusade for Freedom. I enclose for your information
two pieces of literature regarding the Crusade for Free-
dom which I hope you will do me and yourself the favor
of reading.
As is indicated therein, the Crusade has the strong sup-
port not only of President Eisenhower and the numerous
prominent industrial leaders of the country, whose names
you will find therein, but of the 76 social, fraternal,
religious, veteran and labor organizations mentioned,rep-
resentative of every segment of the American population.
I ask you, Mrs. Cox, do you suppose that the President
of the United States, the other individuals named con-
stituting a major segment of the industrial backbone of
this country, and these 76 patriotic and God-fearing or-
ganizations would lend their endorsement, their support,
and their dollars to a "discredited" organization? Do
you believe that this endorsement, this support, is given
blindly? Do you believe, Mrs. Cox, that Fulton Lewis, Jr.,
is better informed that the President of the United States
and his advisers on foreign affairs on what is best for our
country? Have you ever asked yourself why not a single
reputable columnist or commentator has joined with Fulton
Lewis in his attempt to discredit the Crusade? Do you
know that the only support Lewis has received for his at-
tacks has come from Communist Russia. Why?
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Certainly it is your privilege to place your confidence
in whomever you wish. Personally, I prefer to place my
trust in the people who are directly responsible for the
welfare and security of our country rather than in a
washed-up third-rate columnist who, with total disregard
for the accuracy of his statements by inference, innuendo,
half truth, and misrepresentation is frantically striving
to attract attention with the sole objective of bringing
himself to the attention of an audience greater than the
relatively meager one he enjoys at the present time.
Very truly yours, Lester J. Marier, executive secretary
to the chairman and the president.
That's me you've been hearing about. Mrs. Cox, the re-
cipient of the letter, forwarded it to me with the following
note: "Dear Mr. Lewis: Enclosed is a letter I received from
Westinghouse. Can you help me with a reply? Please return
the letter unless you care to use it. Thank you. I have im-
plicit faith in you. Sincerely, Bernice Cox." I have talked
to her by telephone late this afternoon to ask her whether
she's a Westinghouse stockholder perhaps. She said, no, she's
just a consumer, who wrote in to express the opinion that Mr.
Gwilym Price's connections with the Crusade for Freedom are
hardly doing the Westinghouse name any good, and this is what
she drew in return.
By way of answering the specific questions in the letter
as requested by Mrs. Cox, the answers are these. Yes, I do sup-
posethat the President of the United States and the other in-
dividuals named and the 76 patriotic and God-fearing organiza-
tions would lend their endorsement,, their support, and their
dollars to a discredited organization because they're doing
it in this case. The Crusade for Freedom has been specifically
disapproved by the National Information Agency which leading
corporations all over the nation have set up as a clearing
house for fund-raising organizations, and it reports that the
Crusade for Freedom fails to meet its minimum acceptable stand-
ards. The reason they do lend their support and their dollars
is that up until the present time they just didn't know the
facts, these people, and that includes the President of the
United States. So yes, I do believe that this endorsement,
this support, is given blindly.
As for the third question, Fulton Lewis, Jr., may not be
better informed than the President of the United States and his
advisers on what is best for our country, but he is much better
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informed on the subject of the real operations of Radio Free
Europe for which the Crusade is raising its money because he
has spent many months in a most intensive study of it, and
the others have just taken the word of interested parties.
The reason no other columnist or commentators have taken up
the story is that few of them have although, material
which I have, none of them really, cessgha some
have taken it up. National Review Magazine has, so has the
Washington news letter, an ven sue, I don't know that
the only support Lewis has for as attacks has been from Com-
munist Russia because that is a stupid, reckless, irresponsi-
ble untruth.
We have received the largest single mail response from
this series of stories that I can ever remember in any similar
case over the past 20 years, and I could count the critical
letters in them out of all these thousands on the fingers of
one hand. Furthermore, there have been extensive reprints
of columns and broadcasts in newspapers all over the world
as well as this country, congratulatory messages, and resolu-
tions and commendations, and two committees of the Congress
are right now preparing to go into the whole subject as they
went into the Fund for the Republic two and a half years ago
and corroborated every detail of what I reported to you in
that case.
In any event, I thought you'd be interested in the man-
ner in which Mr. Gwilym Price reacts when a potential customer
It
of Westinghouse products writes in to ask just how come.
suddenly becomes a highly personal matter, when actually it's
not a personal matter at all. I have merely been trying to
get the facts on the record, perform a public service by letting
you, the public, know what's going on in the basement which no-
body seems to want to face up to. The good working people in
Radio Free Europe and the organization know what's going on,
however, and they're thoroughly disgusted. I'll have more news
for you in just one minute.
No answer as yet to my telephone call to General Jerry Per-
sons at the White House. This is the second day I can't find
out anything at all about the reported visit to the White House
of Lt. Gen. Willis Crittenberger, president of the Free Europe
Committee. General Persons must be awfully busy but I'll keep
trying and keep reporting to you.
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