BRIEFING NOTES ON RAMPARTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000200230132-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 132
• Publication Date: February 20, 1967
• Content Type: BRIEF

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BRIEFING NOTES ON RAMPARTS
RAMPARTS magazine was founded in 1962 as a five-
times-a-year journal aimed at liberal Catholic intellec-
tuals. It has been financed largely by Mr. Keating, the
heir to a real estate fortune and to a larger extent by
his wife, the former Helen B. English, whose wealth
derives from the US Gypsum Co. It is believed that
RAMPARTS' operating losses, which run in the neighbor-
hood of $450,000 per year, had just about depleted the
Keatings' joint estate by July 1965.
In September 1966 Keating announced that he had
admitted four other stockholders to the corporation of
which he had been sole owner. These are Editor Warren
Hinckle, III, 28; Comptroller Joseph Ippolito; Louis
Honig, president of a San Francisco advertising agency;
and Frederick C. Mitchell, a professor of history at the
University of Kansas. The New York Times of February 20,
1967 reports that Irving Laucks, an 85 year-old million-
aire associated with the Center for Democratic Institu-
tions at Santa Barbara, has also become a stockholder.
For the first two years RAMPARTS was devoted al-
most exclusively to aesthetic, literary and religious
commentary. Beginning in 1964, RAMPARTS became increas-
ingly preoccupied with political issues at home and abroad--
civil rights and the Vietnam war. In July of 1965,
Keating made a widely-publicized effort to take the
magazine out of its Catholic orientation by establishing
a new three-man editorial board comprised of himself;
of Arthur A. Cohen who is prominent in Judaic studies in
America and a vice-president of the Holt, Rinehart. and
Winston publishing firm; and William Stringfellow, a
New York attorney, author, lecturer and prominent Protes-
tant layman. This attempt to establish a responsible
non-sectarian sponsorship was short-lived. Cohen's name
disappeared from the masthead in February 1966. String-
fellow dropped off the board in March 1966 and withdrew
from all association with the magazine in November 1966.
The staff of the magazine includes Don Duncan, the
former Army Special Forces Sargeant who wrote a denun-
ciation of the role of the Green Berets in Vietnam;
William Turner; a former special agent of the FBI, who
has written articles denouncing J. Edgar Hoover and
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allegations against the Bureau's wire tapping practices;
Jean Lacouture, the Southeast Asia correspondent; Jessica
Mitford; and Adam Hochschild, the 23 year-old heir to an
American Metal Climax Corporation copper fortune.
The Washington correspondents of RAMPARTS are
Marcus Raskin and Arthur Waskow, both of whom are on the
staff (Raskin is Co-Director) of the Institute for Policy
Studies, 1900 Florida Avenue, N. W. One of the RAMPARTS
trustees, Eleanor Piel, is married to Gerard Piel, pub-
lisher of Scientific American and a trustee of the Insti-
tute for Policy Studies.
The Statement of Circulation issued by RAMPARTS
as prescribed by law lists the net paid circulation as
79,576 for the October 1966 issue.
The Managing Editor of RAMPARTS is Robert Scheer,
30, who was a leader of an organization called "Fair Play
for Cuba" and who participated in stop-the-train protests
sponsored by the Vietnam Day Committee in San Francisco.
He was an author of the April 1966 article charging that
CIA was employing Michigan State University as cover for
its activities in Vietnam. Scheer was one of five self-
styled "peace candidates" who ran against moderate incum-
bents for Congress from California. He ran strongly
against Jeffrey Cohelan, winning a 45 per cent of the
votes in Alameda County's Seventh (Berkeley-Oakland)
District. RAMPARTS publisher Keating and board member
Stanley K. Scheinbaum were among two other of the "peace
candidates" who lost out in the primaries.
The chief targets of RAMPARTS political attack
are the leaders of America's moderate democratic estab-
lishment, what it calls "corporate liberalism". Pres-
ident Johnson, Senator Robert Kennedy, Secretary McNamara,
Secretary Rusk, and Vice-President Humphrey and Ambassador
Lodge are all variously branded as "totalitarians" using
a "social purpose to justify their militarism". The
magazine's anti-war propaganda and sensational exposes
presented in a Playboy format are designed to make the
magazine attractive and credible to campus radicals.
Its goal appears to be to smear the liberals and under-
mine any faith in reform movements without presenting
any positive or even alternative programs of its own.
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Approved For Release 2004/05/12 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000200230132-5