SCOTT STANLEY JR. OF THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000200880002-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 15, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
Crossfire CNN-TV
STATION
September 15, 1983 11:30 P.M. Atlanta, Ga.
DATE CITY
Scott Stanley, Jr. of the John Birch Society
ANNOUNCER: ...In the Crossfire, Scott Stanley, Jr. of
the John Birch Society.
By a two-to-one vote today, the United States Senate
rejected diplomatic sanctions against the Soviet Union proposed
by conservatives Armstrong and Helms, and settled for a verbal
condemnation.
To comment on what one columnist has derided as the
pusillanimous response of Ronald Reagan to Soviet barbarism over
the Sea of Japan, we have a spokesman of the John Birch Society.
That's the right-wing political organization whose leader, Larry
Patton McDonald perished in the Korean Air massacre.
TOM BRADEN: Mr. Stanley, among the comments that you've
made about the death of Larry McDonald in that terrible shooting,
murder, you said this: "He was the most important Communist
leader in the world. They shot down the plane because they knew
he was on it."
Could you explain that to me?
SCOTT STANLEY, JR: He was the most important anti-
Communist leader...
STANLEY: ...in the world. And what I said was that
they might well have shot down the plane because he was on it. I
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don't know why they shot that plane down. Why did they starve
ten million Ukrainians in...
BRADEN: But surely -- come on, let's be reasonable.
They didn't shoot the plane -- you can't believe they shot the
plane down because Larry McDonald was on it.
BUCHANAN: You think it was a political assassination?
STANLEY: Absolutely, it was a political assassination.
The man was the foremost anti-Communist leader in the United
States, certainly in the Congress.
BRADEN: Just because he was head of the John Birch
Society? Does that make him the foremost anti-Communist leader?
STANLEY: He was the National Chairman of the John Birch
Society. He was on the board of the [unintelligible] Conserva-
tive Caucus. He was on the board of a Committee for a Free
Congress.
BRADEN: I would have thought that maybe the Secretary
of State or the President was the most important anti-Communist.
STANLEY: Well, the Secretary of State and the President
will be out of office in four years or so. Larry McDonald was a
relatively young man in his forties. He was the first national
conservatiave leader to unify both the New Right and the Old
Right.
BRADEN: Well, let me get into this. You say that they
might have shot it down because Larry McDonald was on it. Am I
mistaken, or didn't Larry McDonald miss his plane and catch this
one ten minutes later?
STANLEY: He missed it and then he went two days -- he
went two days later. And that is what happened.
BRADEN: Well, would it be possible for the Soviet Union
to say, "Look, he's taken a different plane. We'll shoot that
one down"?
STANLEY: That's an awful naive question for a former
covert action man at CIA. You know very well they would have...
BRADEN: Well, let me get to the point. I cannot -- I
mean I cannot believe, and I don't think any reasonable person
could believe, that the Soviets shot the plane down because Larry
McDonald was on it.
STANLEY: Well, Larry McDonald was the great thorn in
their side on active measures. He had put hundreds of --
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literally hundreds of articles into the national press on Soviet
active measures. He was turning the heat on the peace movement
in very serious ways.
BRADEN: I would have thought that the leader -- without
respect to Mr. McDonald, whom I knew and I found him an intelli-
gent fellow. But on the whole, I would say that the John Birch
Society is one of the greatest assets that the Communist Party
has in this country.
STANLEY: Well, I understand you would say that because,
of course, you have a liberal commitment and you want to knock
the fellows on the other side.
BRADEN: Well, but the things that the John Birch
Society has said over the past years is so silly that they can't
help but be laughed at. They're not...
STANLEY: Mr. Braden, you obviously don't know much
about the John Birch Society over the last -- say, since 1977.
For example, in our campaign to communicate the nature of the
United Nations, we put together some -- petitions with some 12
million signatures.
right.
BRADEN: ...12 million signatures doesn't mean you're
Let me just quote you...
STANLEY: Well, no. But it means we are able to reach
12 million people who agree with our statement of policy.
BRADEN: Howard Cosell reaches more people than that.
Listen, here's Mr. Jerry Allen, one of the major figures
in the Birch Society. Here's his quote. This is recent.
"Communism is only one arm of the master conspiracy in which
socialist American insiders are plotting to establish a world
government. Among the other represenatives, Haig and Bill
Casey," the head of the CIA.
STANLEY: I think that's balderdash. Where'd you get
BRADEN: This came from Mr. Jerry Allen, a spokesman for
hte John Birch Society.
STANLEY: He's not a spokesman for the John Birch
Society, number one. Where'd you get the...
BRADEN: ...chapter and verse. That's chapter and
verse.
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STANLEY: Well, let me hear it. Let's hear it.
BRADEN: I just read it to you.
STANLEY: What you read wasn't chapter and verse.
BRADEN: Well, I took it out of a magazine which quoted
your Mr. Jerry Allen...
STANLEY: What magazine was it?
BRADEN: I don't know. It was an article about the
Birch Society.
STANLEY: Well, it's not -- that's not the -- that's not
BUCHANAN: Let me get on this. Let me get on this.
You said at the commemoration services, I guess, to
memorialize Larry McDonald at Constitution Hall when you spoke,
you said that Larry McDonald, the late congressman, was deeply
hurt by the fact that he'd been somewhat ostracized, I guess, by
other conservatives because he belonged to the John Birch
Society. Now, the John Birch Society was sort of read out of the
conservative movement in 1964 by the magazine National Review of
William F. Buckley, who was our guest yesterday.
Let me ask you. Why do you think conservatives shun the
John Birch Society, and people like Buckley, who are conserva-
tive, that magazine?
STANLEY: Well, Buckley's complaint was always against
our leader Robert Welch. And he and Mr. Welch were not...
BUCHANAN: He said you hurt the cause of anti-Communism.
STANLEY: Yes. He said we hurt the cause of anti-
Communism because he and Robert Welch had differing views on some
personalities. And it was Buckley's desire to be the leading
spokesman for American conservatives.
BRADEN: Let me interrupt here. I'll tell you one
reason why this is true. Because the leader of the John Birch
Society said -- and I hope you won't argue with me about where I
got this quotation -- "Dwight David Eisenhower was throughout his
whole career a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist
conspiracy."
Now, any kind of balderdash like that can't help but
help Communism.
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STANLEY: Well, what he said was, after a very long book
of hundreds of pages, that after looking at this whole back-
ground, either Eisenhower was (A) or (B) or (C) or (D), and then
the reductio ad absurdum that you now quote. And I don't think
that's in keeping...
BUCHANAN: Mr. Stanley, let me get back to the question.
Why do true conservatives today shun the John Birch Society, if
they do?
STANLEY: I don't think they do. And that was what made
Larry McDonald so valuable, because he crossed between the Old
Right and the New Right. He was the man who was the new National
Chairman of the John Birch Society.
BUCHANAN: Why don't conservatives -- I mean you know a
lot of prominent conservative writers, intellectuals, politici-
ans, etcetera. John Rousselot was a member of the Society. I
think he denounced it when he left. Larry McDonald was the only
one I can think of now in Congress who was a major public figure
in -- well, maybe that's an exaggeration. But other people
refused to join the John Birch Society. Why?
STANLEY: Well, Pat, there have been -- really, weekly
news magazines call it the review of the news, and review of the
news does feature interviews. On the cover of review of the news
over the last three to four years, there have been 25 United
States senators...
BUCHANAN: [Unintelligible], people like that.
STANLEY: Yes.
BUCHANAN: But they don't join it.
STANLEY: Well, they're welcome to join it. We 111 be
glad to have them.
BUCHANAN: Why do you think they don't?
STANLEY: The Society is not a political organization.
It's primarily an educational organization.
BUCHANAN: Look, you mentioned Larry McDonald was on the
Board of the Conservative Caucus. There's Paul Weyrich's group.
There's Terry Dolan's NCPAC. A lot of these groups, the ACU, all
the conservatives, interlocking boards, just like the left, and
everybody goes back and forth. But nobody crosses over and goes
to the Birch Society.
STANLEY: Pat, somebody's got to take the point. And we
have been taking the point, and we go out on the issues and we go
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out front on them, and our people are essentially activists.
The other organizations you're talking about, many of them are
mailing lists. Our people meet regularly...
BUCHANAN: The Conservative Caucus, you said yourself,
has got a million members.
STANLEY: It has a million members on its mailing list.
Society.
BUCHANAN: Is Howard Phillips a member of the John Birch
STANLEY: I don't...
[Confusion of voices]
BUCHANAN: It's a what?
BRADEN: Secret conspiracy. Sure it is.
STANLEY: The NAACP doesn't release its membership list,
either. And the reason they don't is because there are people
who want to harass you for your political views and...
BUCHANAN: Let's take Howard Phillips. He's a conserva-
tive outspoken guy. Why would he be -- why would he not want to
be associated with the John Birch Society. Larry McDonald, after
all, was associated with the Conservative Caucus.
STANLEY: Howard Phillips sponsored the great memorial
service, four thousand people here in Washington on Sunday.
BUCHANAN: But he didn't take baptism, did he?
STANLEY: Well, he had the preachers on the stage. I
think it's clear enough from the response of that crowd that the
Society was warmly and...
BUCHANAN: Do you think you were hurt badly by Robert
Welch, who -- every time I've been on a show, that quote, here it
comes.
BRADEN: Well, here it comes again. I'm going to do it
again because I'd like to know what he thinks of that.
I used to work closely with John Foster Dulles. In
fact, I once helped him write a speech that he delivered on the
subject of Communism. [Unintelligible] Robert Welch: "It is
certain beyond dispute that John Foster Dulles sold anti-Commun-
ism down the river into Communist hands as cleverly as he knew
how and as rapidly as he could."
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Do you really believe that that's true of John Foster
STANLEY: I think John Foster Dulles's policies,
particularly employing people like Tom Braden in those years in
the '50s when we had a thing called the Braden Doctrine, where
America poured two million dollars a year into left-wing activi-
ties under the guise of fighting Communism, I think that kind of
thing makes any Secretary of State suspect.
BUCHANAN: Do you want to elaborate on the Braden
STANLEY: It's the CIA doctrine that you send socialists
to fight Communists, and therefore you put money into the
socialist labor unions, into the...
BUCHANAN: We put two million dollars?
STANLEY: Two million...
BUCHANAN: Mr. Braden, did you give two million dollars
a year to socialist labor unions?
BRADEN: I don't know, Pat. But I...
BUCHANAN: Where'd you get that information?
BRADEN: I don't know where he got that information.
But just let me point out to you, if you knew anything
about fighting Communism in Western Europe in the '50s, the one
thing you didn't do was go give it to the royalists, who weren't
going to get anywhere.
BRADEN: Look -- look, I was -- look, I was taking on
Communism in Western Europe when you were in kneepants, for
heaven sakes. I was...
STANLEY: A fight between the Communists and the
royalists?
BRADEN: I will tell you right now the CIA...
STANLEY: Is that why you...
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BRADEN: The CIA licked Joseph Stalin's last great
offensive in Western Europe, and it did it by helping liberals,
intellectuals, and socialists, which is to say conservatives,
because socialism in France and Belgium is nothing but a sort of
moderate Republicanism.
STANLEY: Is that why you...
BRADEN: And you don't know anything about fighting
Communism.
STANLEY: Is that why your top aide was the former head
of the United World Federalists?
BUCHANAN: Who's that?
STANLEY: Cord Meyer.
BRADEN: What've you got against him?
STANLEY: He was the former head of the United World
Federalists. Is that correct?
BRADEN: That's right.
STANLEY: What is the United World Federalists? Is that
an organization dedicated to the destruction of American sover-
eignty and the sovereignty of every other individual nation in
favor of establishing a world government?
BRADEN: [Laughter] No. I think the United World
Federalists was an idealistic organization...
BRADEN: ...Cord Meyer. I don't hold any brief for
Cord. I'm not here to argue his case. But he worked for me in
the CIA. And I would say he, too, knows about four times as much
about Communism as you do and of any silly member of the John
Birch Society.
STANLEY: ...running around with a $2000 tan, strutting
and saying that the fight is between Communism, on the one hand,
and royalists, on the other.
BRADEN: No, I didn't say that.
BUCHANAN: That's what you intimated.
BRADEN: Don't misquote me. I did not say that. I said
if you think that after World War II we were going to fight Joe
Stalin's last great offensive by putting money into the hands of
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Bourbons in Paris or royalists or the Royalist Party in Belgium,
you're wrong. That wasn't going to get anywhere.
STANLEY: I wouldn't argue that we should do that.
But let's talk about what you did. In your article in
the Saturday Evening Post in 1960, you...
BUCHANAN: Could you hold it up till we come back?
BUCHANAN: We're talking with Scott Stanley, Jr., editor
of Review of the News and American Opinion, two publications of
the John Birch Society. We'll take off where we left off as soon
as we get back.
BRADEN: Now, Mr. Stanley, let me correct the record,
because I attributed a quotation to a Birch Society member -- I'm
quoting here from an article in Newsweek -- a Birch Society
member named Jerry Allen, and I made a mistake. I should have
given that same quotation and attributed to public relations
director John F. McManus. He says, and I quote, "It considers
Communism," the Birch Society, "only one arm of a major conspira-
cy in which socialist American insiders are plotting to establish
one-world government. Even the Administration has its share of
insiders," says public relations director John F. McManus, "among
them, Secretary of State Alexander Haig and CIA Director William
Casey." Let the record be clear.
Okay. Now let me ask you what are you -- I just want to
pin you down on this. Do you think that Dwight D. Eisenhower was
a conscious agent of the Communist Party?
STANLEY: No. I don't now and never did. It's prepost-
erous to say that, and the Society never argued this. It's
nonsense. Let's go back...
BUCHANAN: Let me ask you about what -- what did you say
about Mr. Braden's famous piece in the Saturday Evening Post?
What was it, "I'm glad the CIA" -- what's the title of it, Tom?
STANLEY: We were talking about providing funds and we
were talking about how bravely you have provided them to social-
ists and labor unions to keep them out of the hands of royalists
and, I presume, monarchists, which is about as silly a red
herring as I've heard this week. But the...
BRADEN: How old were you when World War II ended? Do
you know anything about what was going on in France or Italy?
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STANLEY: Are you really going to do one of those...
BRADEN: I'm certainly going to do one of those because
you're an ignoramus. You don't know anything more about Commun-
ism than what you read in the John Birch Society magazine.
STANLEY: How about the $50,000 in small bills you gave
to -- you talked about giving to Walter Reuther for Walter and
Victor to go over to Europe and spread around and buy labor
unions? Is that a correct reflection of what you wrote about?
BRADEN: ...unions in Western Europe in 1950 or 1947 or
'8, we wouldn't have -- we wouldn't have democratic governments
in Western Europe.
STANLEY: Why give it to Walter Reuther and Victor
Reuther after the famous letter from the Soviet Union signed
"Yours for a Soviet America," the one tha was also run in the
Saturday Evening Post?
BRADEN: ...in the early '30s.
STANLEY: They became right-wing extremists...
BRADEN: Several generations and a war had intervened.
I'm not going to argue with you about Walter and Victor Reuther.
They were American labor leaders and they had strong influence on
German labor leaders, and they were able...
STANLEY: Alger Hiss was an American official with the
State Department. What you're talking about...
BRADEN: ...red herring.
STANLEY: What did you want to do about Alger Hiss?
BRADEN: What does that have to do with anything?
STANLEY: Well, you're saying they were American labor
leaders. I'm telling you that there are Americans...
BRADEN: Would you say they were Communists? Do you
think the Reuther brothers were Communists?
STANLEY: The Reuther brothers sent a letter from the
Soviet Union signed "Yours for a Soviet America." What do you
think that means? They ran it in your Saturday Evening Post, the
same editorship that published your article about...
BUCHANAN: Would you equate the late Walter Reuther with
Alger Hiss? Are you putting Alger Hiss...
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STANLEY: Oh, no. My point is that because someone is
an American citizen, they can commit very bad, very foolish,
quite insane...
BUCHANAN: How do you think -- well, let me change the
subject...
BRADEN: Well, I'd say it is not very bad or very
foolish. I'd just say that the John Birch Society, and you
too...
[Confusion of voices]
BRADEN: You're paranoid.
STANLEY: ...fifty dollar bills. Is that the way you
operate in the CIA? Tell us about -- tell us about the money you
provided to the National Student Association to buy and corrupt
young American students in order to use them for your programs.
Did you do that?
BRADEN: I don't think we corrupted any American
STANLEY: Did you buy, did you covertly buy -- provide
funds to the National Student Association?
BRADEN: No. But you...
STANLEY: There were Senate hearings that state you did.
BRADEN: You, in your silliness, would think so because
it's part of the John Birch Society's maxim to be paranoid.
BUCHANAN: The CIA did provide funds to the National
Student Association. One of the recipients, I believe, was
Gloria Steinem, who headed it at one time.
BRADEN: Well, the National Student Association was a
CIA front.
STANLEY: It was?
BRADEN: Yes.
STANLEY: Well, that's the first time I've heard that.
I'm glad to hear it from a former covert action chief.
BRADEN: Well, we...
BUCHANAN: You weren't a covert action chief, were you?
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BRADEN: We knocked the German student movement right
over from being a Communist front to being a good democratic...
STANLEY: Did you do tha with people like Gloria Steinem
and Paul Potter and some of the people who later created the
anti-Vietnam movement? They were very clever, weren't they?
BRADEN: I don't know anything about those people. I
didn't deal with them.
STANLEY: What, you'd just send a bag of money? You
didn't give them the fifty dollar bills like you did with Walter
Reuther?
BRADEN: Well, we ran some covert operations. Some of
them cost money and some of them didn't. But we certainly didn't
-- we certainly -- I'll tell you one thing we did do. We kept
the Daily Worker going for a couple of years, and I wish we
hadn't because you paranoids would have hopped on that and said
that...
BUCHANAN: You kept the Daily Worker going?
BRADEN: Oh, sure.
BUCHANAN: Did you know that?
BRADEN: You had to have a target. You had to know who
your enemy was.
STANLEY: Well, our point for many years has been that
people like Mr. Braden and CIA put up the funds for half the
left-wing organizations in the world.
BRADEN: [Laughter]
STANLEY: Now he tells us they were even funding the
Daily Worker. I'm not surprised at all.
BRADEN: Well, you don't know anything about fighting
Communism.
STANLEY: Well, I don't fight Communism by giving money
to Walter and Victor Reuther to fight monarchists.
BRADEN: No, you just put out magazines which quote
Patrick J. Buchanan, John C. Calhoun, and the South African
newspapers on the subject of race and say that's anti-Communism.
STANLEY: Well, I'm prepared to put your anti-Communist
description tonight up against my own. Let's let the people of
Washington decide...
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Our guest has been Scott Stanley, who's the editor of
Review of the News and American Opinion, two publications of the
John Birch Society.
BRADEN: Pat, I was looking at the simple-minded
nonsense which Mr. Stanley puts out in the form of a Review of
the News and American Opinion. And I noted that on three
separate occasions you were quoted very favorably, along with the
South African Observer. Aren't you a little ashamed of yourself
to be getting paeans of praise from the John Birch Society?
BUCHANAN: Well, well, well. Funding the Communist
Daily Worker, were we?
BRADEN: [Laughter] Pat, that was scientific...
BUCHANAN: Did they quote you favorably, Mr. Braden?
BRADEN: No, they didn't have to quote me.
Scientific exposes of Communism in the '50s required
taht we have,a Communist Daily Worker.
BUCHANAN: And tell me the purpose of funding the
Communist Daily Worker in the '50s.
BRADEN: It was to find out exactly what the American
Communist Party was doing.
BUCHANAN: How did you get the money to them?
BRADEN: You know I'm not going to tell you all the...
BUCHANAN: Did you have fun?
BRADEN: I'm not going to tell you all the...
BUCHANAN: Mr. Braden, I don't...
BRADEN: Have you joined the John Birch Society?
BUCHANAN: No, I'm not a member.
BRADEN: Why not?
[Confusion of voices]
BUCHANAN: ...list of names quoted: Alexander
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Solzhenitsyn, John C. Calhoun, Patrick J. Buchanan.
BRADEN: John C. Calhoun. Yeah he used to hit his
slaves. There's that famous letter: "Take the slave who ran
away from my wife and give him 30 strong lashes."
BUCHANAN: Now you're denouncing George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, and John C. Calhoun, but funding the Daily
Worker.
BRADEN: No, you don't couple those, Pat.
BUCHANAN: All three...
BRADEN: But if I were you, I would be ashamed to be
quoted favorably by the John Birch Society.
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