The Politician Truth Will Ultimately Prevail Where There Is Pains Taken to Bring It to Light
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The Politician Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light. —George Washington Obvious pressures to smother and ignore The Politician since its official publication are unmatched in the history of the American book world. Now that this explosive volume is available to anyone who will read and judge for himself, the hundreds of periodicals which were quoting and misquoting from it regularly for two years have failed to give it a review or a mention of any nature. There have been many case histories showing the influence exerted on the seven thousand regular bookstores in the United States which has resulted in a virtual boycott of the book—even by those stores that wanted to offer it for sale. In spite of these problems, the sale of forty thousand copies in the first six months after publication and the continuing strong sale have been encouraging. The truth, so fully documented, is not easy to keep buried, even by all of the powerful influences that are so determined to hide it. BELMONT PUBLISHING COMPANY Belmont, Massachusetts 02178 Copyright 1963 by Robert Welch All rights reserved. Except in quotations for review purposes, of not more than five hundred words in any one review, and then with full credit given, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 64-8456 Manufactured in the United States of America CONTENTS Please Note vi Prologue vii Again, Please Note xvi Dear Reader 1 Introduction 3 1. The Lieutenant Colonel 7 2. "Lucky Ike" 13 3. The Supreme Commander 19 4. "Operation Keelhaul" 31 5. The Hero 47 6. The Candidate 61 7. The Campaign 69 8. The Anti-anti-Communist 83 9. The Pro-Communist 97 10. The Republican 107 11. The Modern Republican 117 12. The President Of The United States 133 13. Leader Of The Free World 147 14. The One-Worlder 169 15. The Propagandist 187 16. Associates And Appointments 215 17. The Word Is Treason 251 18. The Present Danger 281 Epilogue xvii Bibliography xxxviii Footnotes cxii Index clxxxv There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange. — Daniel Webster Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light. — George Washington Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth—whether about the President or anyone else—save in the rare cases where this would make known to the enemy information of military value which would otherwise be unknown to him. — Theodore Roosevelt Please Note Explanations are like government. Nobody loves them, but a minimum amount of both is a necessary evil. The original manuscript of The Politician has been reproduced herein, with typographical errors corrected and a few other minor changes as noted. 2 The "documentation" for footnote purposes is not complete. Digging out the source materials five years later, for what was originally written as a private letter with no thought of publication, has not been easy for either myself or those who have helped me. More such footnotes will be added in later printings. In the Epilogue and elsewhere, especially in the footnotes written by others, there are occasional references to, and passages paraphrased from, earlier books, articles, and speeches of my own. But in this fight I sacrificed the comfort of modesty long ago. And it has seemed important to get within these covers as much contribution as I can make, within practicable limits, to a basic understanding of the Communist conspiracy—no matter where some of these thoughts have appeared before. Especially in the Prologue and Epilogue, also, I have not dared make normal use of the editorial "we." For it might be misunderstood, and appear to some extent to involve others in a responsibility they do not share. So an abnormal use of the pronoun "I" has been unavoidable. From a professional viewpoint, there are too many different type faces and sizes in this book. It is because, trying to crowd in so much material, I have wanted to give each segment a readability in proportion to its importance. Finally, some of the writing in this letter, especially in the informality of the language, and as to the order and arrangement of materials, is not up to the standard I would have set for myself in anything planned for publication. But it seems far better, for many reasons, not to attempt a face-lifting job on the manuscript at this time. And so, with this much explanation but without apology, I now send The Politician out into the world. RW PROLOGUE "And with forced fingers rude . before the mellowing year." Thus John Milton complained of having to put pen to paper when the season was not yet ripe. And while this writer is certainly no Milton, we can sympathize with his feelings. For never was this author under more compulsion, from more different sources and of a more varied hue, than to consent to premature publication of The Politician. By an increasing stream of letters from individuals, by resolutions passed at meetings of patriotic organizations, by personal pleas from many friends, he has been urged—and by the utterly unfair taunts of some Liberal publications has been dared—to make this "book" available to the public. The situation has been difficult simply because this document was never written, nor intended, for publication at all. It was an adventure in one-man research which led to quantities of evidence and possible conclusions that surprised even the author. And it was 3 sent personally and in confidence to various friends (too many, I'm afraid), in an effort to shake them out of their complacency and awaken them to both the dangers of the Communist conspiracy and the extent of its influence. Under these conditions a brief account of how the project came into existence would seem to be in order. For without such explanation both the character of the "book," and its purpose, would be badly misunderstood. II In December, 1954 I was riding back to New York from a visit up the Hudson, with three friends, in a car provided by one of those friends. They were well informed, we were able to talk freely, and the conversation became quite serious. In the course of that conversation I expressed my concern over what appeared to me to have been the double-crossing by Mr. Eisenhower, in the Congressional elections just finished, of a number of conservative Republican candidates for both the Senate and the House. He had promised to go into the states or districts of these candidates to help in their campaigns. With his immense popularity at that time such help was of great importance. These candidates had been led to count on that promised help, and to build their campaigns around it, more than was wise. As these respective campaigns got under way, Mr. Eisenhower had found one excuse and reason after another for delaying and postponing his appearance in different areas, but always with the assurance that he would still be there. When these campaigns were all over, with no help from Mr. Eisenhower, our whole Congress had been moved a few notches further left by the defeat of several Conservatives. Just how much Mr. Eisenhower's smooth procrastination had contributed to those defeats it was hard to guess. But I expressed the opinion that this effect was probably intentional. This surprised one of my listeners so much that, when I began to bring out parts of Mr. Eisenhower's earlier record which made such a view possible, this friend asked me if I would be willing to put my comments in the form of a memorandum which he could study. I agreed. And on my return to Boston I wrote him a letter of some nine thousand words, recapitulating the points I had made during our conversation. This was the beginning of The Politician. I sent carbon copies of this letter to each of the other friends. And one or two of them immediately wanted additional copies sent to other friends. It was quite a while before I could have a new typing of the letter made, and in the meantime I had added a considerable amount to it. The demand and this process continued until, some three years later, the letter had evolved into over two hundred pages reproduced by offset and collated with a plastic link binding. I still considered it a private unfinished manuscript for limited confidential distribution, but a study which might sometime be further expanded, modified, and probably moderated for formal publication. 4 Sometime before this I had given up my business responsibilities, and was devoting all of my time to the anti-Communist cause. I did not want what had been started simply as a private confidential letter at the request of a friend to get any further out of hand, even to please other friends, nor did I want the more studiously considered efforts I could now make, in this anti-Communist cause, to be twisted into a polemic path which I had never intended to follow.