TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST BY FULTON LEWIS, JR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP63T00245R000100220038-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 18, 2004
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: June 12, 1958
• Content Type: TRANS

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TRANSCRIPT OF BROADCAST
By
Fulton Lewis, Jr.,
Station WGMS at 7-7:15 P.M.
12 June 1958
Mr. Cyrus Eaton--the 74-year-old Cleveland financier in-
dustrialist who thinks that conditions in the United States
are worse than they ever were at the height of the Gestapo
operations of Adolf Hitler in Germany--now says he wants to
appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee
to tell his views on relations between the United States and
Soviet Russia and how we are being unfair to the poor Russians.
And he said so today in an interview in Cleveland, Ohio, amid
some considerable verbal pyrotechnics about his experiences
yesterday at a closed meeting with the Un-American Activities
Committee members and counsel, which, he requested by the way,
and which I reported to you exclusively last night.
Mr. Eaton's position today seems to be that he was badly
treated in the meeting yesterday by committee chairman Francis
Walter of Pennsylvania, and called the meeting Walter's "latest
sortie conducted with characteristic intellectual dishonesty."
He said he took the opportunity yesterday to, and these are
further quotes, "tell them in plain terms what I thought of
their intemperate antics. I let them know unmistakably that
the May 19th television performance by committee counsel
Richard Arens struck me and countless other Americans as re-
plete with misrepresentation, exaggeration, and demagoguery
of the lowest and most inflammatory order. I should like
nothing better than to have the chance to tell the committee
face to face, and let the world know, how despicable are the
un-American tactics of Messrs.Walter and Arens in attempting
to intimidate, bully, and push citizens around."
This is becoming somewhat bewildering because what started
all of this was, if you remember, that Mr. Eaton, who fancies
himself as others before him over the ages have fancied them-
selves, as the ordained preservator of international peace
and particularly endowed with knowledge and undertahding to
help save the world from possible destruction by an atomic war.
A speech which he gave, an appearance he made, in a nationwide
interview with Mr. Mike Wallace under the sponsorship of the
ultra left-wing Fund for the Republic, which,if you remember,
has long been under criticism for its softness toward Communism,
particularly toward anti, anti-Communism.
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The Fund for the Republic has been financing these broad-
casts, and Mr. Cyrus Eaton was one of the very first stars.
On that occasion, Mr. Eaton had some very rough things to say
about the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Un-American Ac-
tivities Committee, the security operations and activities of
the government in general, and the army of government snoopers
who frighten scientists and creep up on people. He identified
these snoopers yesterday in the stormy closed-door session as
inspectors for the Interstate Commerce Commission who annoy
railroads by inspecting railroad cars, rolling stock, roadbeds
and tracks, and switches too, I guess. Other snoopers were the
Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with protecting
the public against dangerous drugs and unfit food, other snoop-
ers of the Securities Exchange Commission, which is supposed
to operate to protect the public against improper issuance of
securities, and there are other spropers too. Among the ones
which Mr. Eaton could have mentioned, but did not specifically
mention, are those of the Internal Revenue Service, who in the
past have conducted some extensive investigations into Mr. Eaton's
own tax affairs.
So Mr. Eaton had his half hour of free speech on TV, coast
to coast, and expressed his views in no uncertain terms. Where-
upon Mr. Richard Arens--the director and chief counsel of the
Un-American Activities Committee--got a half hour of time on
the same network for himself to reply to Mr. Eaton, and this
seems to be what Mr. Eaton is objecting to. Let me point out
that in his statement, today, Mr. Eaton mentions that the May
19th Arens' television performance "struck me and countless
other Americans as replete with misrepresentation, exaggeration,
and demagoguery of the lowest and most inflammatory order."
The interesting part about this statement is that in that
May 19th television talk Mr. Arens barely mentioned Mr. Cyrus
Eaton, except so far as was necessary to explain that he was
answering Mr. Eaton, and that this was the reason for his own
broadcast. Rather, he spent his time in a general discussion
of the Communist conspiracy, in statistics and facts about the
conspiracy, what it has done, how it is operated, and how it
is a threat to the security of the nation.
That's the only possible conclusion--that this informa-
tion which Mr. Arens presented is what Mr. Eaton considers to
be "misrepresentation, exaggeration, and demagoguery of the
lowest and most inflammatory order." He thinks that Mr. Arens
should not have said these things and that, in turn,brings us
to the interesting situation that Mr. Cyrus Eaton feels that
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he was completely entitled to set forth his own thoughts on
Communism in Russia and whether it is or is not a threat to
the world and the nation, but that Mr. Arens does not have
the right to set forth his views and that when he does so,
those views and appraisals are "misrepresentation, exaggera-
tion, and demagoguery of the lowest and most inflammatory
order."
This is particularly interesting in light of the fact, when
you get down to it, Mr. Arens is a long-time trained expert
in the facts about Communism and subversive activity, but,
on the other hand, there is no evidence at hand that suggests
Mr. Cyrus Eaton is particularly schooled in them at all.
Chairman Walter said today that so far as he's concerned
the question of whether Mr. Eaton will, or will not,appear be-
fore the committee to testify in open sessions is a subject
for the full committee to decide, and he will be guided ac-
cordingly. One member of the committee who was present at
the session yesterday, unhappily, Representative Gordon Shearer
of Ohio, said that he is in favor of Mr. Eaton's appearance be-
fore the committee, perhaps the more so, after hearing Mr. Eaton
yesterday.
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