Monday, September 24, 2007

NATIONAL REVIEW: a CIA front?

Was the launch of Bill Buckley’s National Review in the mid-1950s a CIA operation? I first heard Joseph Sobran imply this in 1993 at a Rothbard-Rockwell Report conference in San Mateo, California. I thought the idea was kinda paranoid and kooky at the time. But here’s Murray Rothbard himself suggesting the same thing in The Betrayal of the American Right, written 30 years ago:

“In the light of hindsight, we should now ask whether or not a major objective of National Review from its inception was to transform the right wing from an isolationist to global warmongering anti-Communist movement; and, particularly, whether or not the entire effort was in essence a CIA operation. We now know that Bill Buckley, for the two years prior to establishing National Review, was admittedly a CIA agent in Mexico City, and that the sinister E. Howard Hunt was his control. His sister Priscilla, who became managing editor of National Review, was also in the CIA, and other editors James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall had at least been recipients of CIA largesse in the anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom. In addition, Burnham has been identified by two reliable sources as a consultant for the CIA in the years after World War II. Moreover, Gary Wills relates in his memoirs of the conservative movement that Frank Meyer, to whom he was close at the time, was convinced that the magazine was a CIA operation. With his Leninist-trained nose for intrigue, Meyer must be considered an important witness.

“Furthermore, it was a standard practice in the CIA, at least in those early years, that no one ever resigned from the CIA. A friend of mine who joined the Agency in the early 1950s told me that if, before the age of retirement, he was mentioned as having left the CIA for another job, that I was to disregard it, since it would only be a cover for continuing Agency work. On that testimony, the case for NR being a CIA operation becomes even stronger. Also suggestive is the fact that a character even more sinister than E. Howard Hunt, William J. Casey, appears at key moments of the establishment of the New over the Old Right. It was Casey who, as attorney, presided over the incorporation of National Review and had arranged the details of the ouster of Felix Morley from Human Events.”

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3 Comments:

At 9:01 AM, Blogger FSK said...

Nearly every popular mainstream news source has been founded by people who wanted to spread propaganda, or has been infiltrated by people who want to spread propaganda.

The only sources of true unbiased news are blogs and discussion forums on the Internet.

 
At 3:13 PM, Blogger B.W. Richardson said...

"The only sources of true unbiased news are blogs and discussion forums on the Internet." WTF?

Bottom line - Everyone writes from their own personal bias. The best a news person can do is try to describe all sides as accurately as possible from their perspective, but you'll never achieve "unbiased" because it doesn't exist.

That's different from the allegation about National Review, which (it's suggested) lied about its bias.

 
At 6:39 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's absolutely true. I can prove it within 6 degrees. Kevin Bacon was in Animal House, written by Harold Ramis, who also wrote Groundhog Day, which is the stated favorite movie of Jonah Goldberg, who was hired by William F. Buckley.

Thus Kevin Bacon = CIA agent.

 

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