Before the Storm
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114 Founding meetings of the John Birch Society are described in Heinsohn to Montgomery, March 7, 1959, CM, Box 69/4 (for quote); Welch to Manion, July 13, 1959, Box 69/7; Buffett to Manion, August 6, 1959, and Manion to Thompson, September 17, 1959, both in CM, Box 70/1; Welch to Buckley, January 2, 1959, and July 2, 1959, WFBJ, Box 9; NYT, April 1, 1961; Welch, Blue Book, xv-xx; Frank E. Holman, The Life and Career of a Western Lawyer 1886-1961 (n.p., 1963); and Rusher, The Rise of the Right, 61. Tapes of Welch’s presentations filmed in 1959, “An Invitation to Membership” and “Look at the Score,” are available from the John Birch Society, Appleton, Wisconsin.
114 “We are living in America today”: Welch, Blue Book, 1. All other quotes from Welch, Blue Book.
115 For Welch’s salesmen, see Schomp, Birchism Was My Business, passim; and Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 89. Estimates varied: 20,000 is in “Far Right and Far Left,” NYP, April 2, 1964; 60,000 is in Alan F. Westin, “The John Birch Society: Fundamentalism on the Right,” Commentary, August 1961; 100,000 is in Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds, The Reader’s Companion to American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 597. Office descriptions in Donald Janson and Bernard Eismann, The Far Right (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 29; and Welch, Blue Book, 162.
116 For the paranoia-inducing quality of everyday Cold War rhetoric and the quote from Kennan, see Allan C. Carlson’s brilliant article “Foreign Policy and ‘The American Way’: The Rise and Fall of the Post-World War II Consensus,” This World (Spring/Summer 1983). “Repeal of industrialism”: Westin, “John Birch Society.” “They controlled the trade union movement”: Freedman, The Inheritance, 159. “Communist espionage here”: attachment from Congressional Record, Rusher to White, February 28, 1962, WR, Box 18/“Congressional Contact.” Army recruits saw films: Red Nightmare, available from International Historic Films, Chicago, cat. no. 273. For AEC’s denials of fallout danger, see Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 103. For Angleton, see Thomas Powers, “Spook of Spooks,” NYRB, August 17, 1989.
117 “Less government and more responsibility”: An Invitation to Membership film. Betty Friedan’s book, of course, is The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1984 [original edition 1962]). “I just don’t have time”: Fred J. Cook, “The Ultras: Aims, Affiliations, and Finances of the Radical Right,” special issue, The Nation, June 30, 1962; and Time, December 8, 1961. Bulletin dictates are in Westin, “The John Birch Society.”
118 The beginning of Welch’s Impeach Warren campaign is noted in Welch to Regnery, February 22, 1961, HR, Box 78/1.
118 Stephen Young’s Senate speech: Congressional Record, April 12, 1961, 5268f. For Senator Eastland, see “Eastland Says John Birch Society Patriotic,” SFC, March 19, 1961; and “Birch Society Leader Asks Probe by Eastland’s Subcommittee,” SFC, April, 1961. For Cardinal Cushing, see “The John Birch Society: Patriotic or Irresponsible,” Life, May 12, 1961. For Hiestand and Rousselot, see “Storm Over Birchers,” Time, April 7, 1961. For Ezra Taft Benson, see Fred J. Cook, “The Ultras.” BMG quote is in Time, April 7, 1961.
118 “On February 25, 1961”: Bulletin of the John Birch Society, April 1961.
7. STORIES OF ORANGE COUNTY
120 The story of Joel Dvorman as a spark for right-wing grassroots organizing in Orange County is told in Lisa McGirr, “Suburban Warriors: Grass-Roots Conservatism in the 1960s” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1995), 82-91.
121 For Schwarz “animal husbandry” quote, see “Will You Be Free to Celebrate Christmas in the Future,” poster of Schwarz congressional testimony, May 29, 1957, JCJ.
121 Everyday right-wing neighborhood culture is described in McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 86-101, 114-19. For Communism on the Map, see Fred J. Cook, “The Ultras, Aims, Affiliations, and Finances of the Radical Right,” special issue, The Nation, June 30, 1962; and Edward Cain, They’d Rather Be Right: Youth and the Conservative Movement (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 162.
121 For favorite speakers on the right-wing circuit, see “Combatting Right-Wing Activity in Your Community,” ML, Box 29/Group Research. For W. Cleon Skousen’s firing, see Time, December 8, 1961; and George B. Russell, J. Bracken Lee: The Taxpayer’s Champion (New York: Robert Spellers and Sons, 1961).
122 For Reagan’s peak, see Gary Wills, Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home (New York: Penquin, 1988), 177. “Going over Niagara Falls”: Douglas Brinkley, “The President’s Pen Pal,” The New Yorker, July 26, 1999.
122 Sources for General Electric’s unusual corporate culture and “Boulwarism” are Herbert R. Northrup, “The Case for Boulwarism,” Harvard Business Review (September-October 1963); Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream (New York: Verso, 1986), 117-21; Stanford M. Jacoby, Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 232, 242-47; and Lemuel R. Boulware, “The New Requirement for Business Success,” speech, in HR, Boulware Folder.
123 “Today,” he would say: Ronald Reagan and Richard Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me? (New York: Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1965), 303. “Let’s give it a try”: Anne Edwards, Early Reagan: The Rise to Power (New York: Morrow, 1987), 455.
123 “Shouldn’t someone tag”: Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999), 315-16. “The inescapable truth”: Edwards, Early Reagan, 543-46.
124 For southern California’s competitive edge over the East and statistics, see James L. Clayton, “Defense Spending: Key to California’s Growth,” Western Political Quarterly 15 (June 1962). For Santa Ana lease, see McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 34. Population boom is in McGirr, 32, 39.
124 Irvine’s origins: ibid., 56-57. For James Utt and the “Liberty Amendment,” see Kurt Schuparra, Triumph of the Right: The Rise of the California Conservative Movement, 1945-1966 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 47.
125 R. C. Hoiles: Schuppara, Triumph of the Right, 43-44. For residential segregation: McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 60-61.
125 For Orange County religion, see McGirr, 120-30. “Preachers are not called”: Michael B. Friedland, “Giving a Shout for Freedom, Part II: The Reverend Maclolm Boyd, the Right Reverend Paul Moore, Jr., and the Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements of the 1960s and 1970s,” Viet Nam Generation 5, nos. 1-4 (March 1994). For Billy Graham quote, see William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1996), 44. For Oxnam, see ibid., 38. For FCC ruling, see Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford, 1995), 162. The pamphlets are ones that found their way into the vestibule of “Fighting Bob” Wells. McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 124-25.
126 A 1961 issue: ibid., 77. “Show me one, just one”: ibid., 35. North American Aviation’s lobbyist is noted in G. R. Schreiber, The Bobby Baker Affair: How to Make Millions in Washington (Chicago: Regnery, 1964), 10.
126 They had two million index cards: McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 49.
126 For the Walter Knott legend: author interview with Gus Owen; “One Man’s Crusade for Everybody’s Freedom,” Reader’s Digest, June 1964; and Roger Holmes, Fabulous Farmer (Los Angeles: Westernlore Publishers, 1956). For an IRS judgment against him for $60,000 for falsely claiming the Freedom Center as a business expense, see GRR, June 29, 1964.
127 For the boysenberry as welfare case, see Holmes, Fabulous Farmer.
128 For Reagan and TVA, see Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, 268-69.
128 For Newburgh background: Joseph P. Ritz, The Despised Poor: Newburgh’s War on Welfare (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966); Edgar May, The Wasted Americans: Cost of Our Welfare Dilemma (New York: Harper and Row, 1964); Edward Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1991), 103; James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty, 1900-1980 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 107-111; A.H. Raskin, “Newburgh’s Lessons f
or the Nation,” NYHT, December 17, 1961; Business Week, July 22, 1961; The Reporter, August 17, 1961; NYT, July 22, 1961; USNWR, July 24, 1961; Newsweek, July 17, 1961; The Nation, September 19, 1961; and Commonweal, February 2, 1962.
129 “The colored people of this city”: May, Wasted Americans, 34. The city manager, convinced: ibid., 34.
129 “The dregs of humanity”: ibid., 19.
129 “Your welfare check”: ibid., 21. The Cadillac story and the exchange between Mitchell and Ryan is in The Nation, September 19, 1961.
130 The commission report is quoted in NYT, July 22, 1961; NR, July 29, 1961; Business Week, July 22, 1961; and May, Wasted Americans, 22.
130 The thirteen points are quoted in May, 25-26.
131 NYT Mitchell profile (“Famous Overnight”) is June 24, 1961; the “Dark Ages” editorial is June 29, 1964.
131 “A substitute of police methods”: Richard S. Wheeler, “The Battle of Newburgh,” Insight and Outlook: A Conservative Student Journal (October 1961).
131 The letters to NYT are dated July 7, 1961.
131 For Cleveland Plain Dealer and Detroit Free Press, see NYT, “News of the Week in Review,” July 16, 1961.
131 Liberal debunking is noted in The Reporter, August 17, 1961.
132 “It’s a fine commentary”: WSJ, July 10, 1961.
132 “I find myself in the unenviable”: Newsweek, July 17, 1961.
132 I am greatly indebted to Jennifer Mittelstadt to author, March 31, 1998, for an account of the social welfare context. “Atomic engineers”: Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State, 105.
133 YAF’s march through the streets of Newburgh is described, and pictured, in Ritz, The Despised Poor, 143-47. Liebman’s scavenger work is in May, The Wasted Americans, 30.
133 BMG’s telegram is quoted in May, 28.
133 Mitchell’s trip to Washington and his meeting with BMG is in NYHT, July 19, 1961.
134 For BMG tours for Nixon, see F. Clifton White with William Gill, Suite 3505: The Story of the Draft Goldwater Movement (New Rockelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1967), 24. “GOLDWATER SAYS DON’T DODGE”: The Keynoter: The Magazine of the American Political Items Collectors (Summer 1982): 4.
134 BMG interview in NYT: Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 146. For his confrontation with Nixon in Phoenix, see Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1961), 357-58.
134 BMG’s letters to Nixon and Hall are in Lee Edwards, Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), 141.
135 For the New York GOP presidential strategy meeting and JFK’s joke, see White, Making of the President 1960, 356; and Bill Adler, More Kennedy Wit (New York: Bantam, 1965), 19.
135 For votes for 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts, see RNC Research Division, “Facts on the Civil Rights Record of Political Parties,” August 1963, JCJ. For 1960 Democratic Convention walkouts, see Tom Wicker, JFK and LBJ: The Influence of Personality upon Politics (Baltimore: Penguin, 1968), 60; and Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson, OL’ Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond (Atlanta: Longstreet, 1998), 190.
135 The biggest party in Atlanta: White, Making of the President 1960, 297. In the capital of South Carolina: Thompson to Rymer, “The Goldwater Tour of the South,” n.d. (September 1964), AHF, Box W3/4.
135 On the “Big Six” and the black swing vote, see White, Making of the President 1960, 255, 291; and Robert Novak, The Agony of the GOP 1964 (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 77, 106. For Graham’s blandishments, see Martin, With God on Our Side, 52.
136 The Democrats whistle-stopped: Robert J. Donovan, op-ed, LAT, February 5, 1964. For “counterfeit confederate” see Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 146. But when Henry Cabot Lodge: Time, May 15, 1964.
136 King’s arrest, Wofford and Shriver’s efforts, and RFK’s horror is in Thomas C. Reeves, A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy (New York: Free Press, 1991), 208-211; White, Making of the President 1960, 251-53; and Christopher Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 171-73.
136 Robinson’s entreaties to Nixon: Jackson Lears, TNR, February 2, 1998. BMG’s: Edwards, Goldwater, 141; Robert Novak, “Barry and Me,” The Weekly Standard, June 15, 1998; Time, November 21, 1960.
137 “No Comment” Nixon: Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, 173. With a President Nixon, “there will be”: “Georgians for Nixon-Lodge” flyer, FCW, Box 19.
137 If Eisenhower had pump-primed: Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 72. If not for Henry Cabot Lodge’s: author interview with Phyllis Schlafly. If Henry Luce hadn’t: Martin, With God on Our Side, 54. They also pointed out that in Illinois: Stephen Shadegg, How to Win an Election (New York: Taplinger, 1964), 18.
137 “It’s just what I’ve been saying”: Time, November 21, 1960.
137 For Tony Smith, see NYT obituary, September 12, 1991. For Air War College speech, see Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater?: The Inside Story of the 1964 Republican Campaign (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965), 30; Buckley quote is Buckley to Manion, September 24, 1959, CM, Box 69/5. For speech to Congress of American Industry, see Cain, They’d Rather Be Right, 105. Cartoon in NYHT, December 9, 1960.
138 For the effort to dump BMG from RSCC, see William Knowland editorial, Oakland Tribune, January 10, 1961; and Stephen Shadegg, What Happened, 22. For the “Forgotten American” speech, see HE, January 27, 1961; Edwards, Goldwater, 145; and Robert Novak, “Barry and Me.”
138 For BMG’s votes in the Eighty-seventh Congress, see “Voting Record of Senator Goldwater,” AHF, Box W2/4. For education, see Congressional Record, May 23, 1961, 8664-76, and May 24, 1961, 8720-33.
139 “Salesman for a Cause”: Time, June 23, 1961. Conscience sales: Andrew, Other Side of the Sixties, 46. Newsweek put Goldwater on the cover: “Conservatism in the U.S.... And Its Leading Spokesman,” Newsweek, April 10, 1961. Even the country’s most liberal major daily: NYP, May 5, 1961. For column growth: Newsweek, April 10, 1961; and Time, June 23, 1961. His suite in the Old Senate Office Building: “Goldwater vs. Rockefeller?,” CT, September 4, 1961. A negative profile in Life: Gore Vidal, “A Liberal Meets Mr. Conservative,” Life, June 1961.
139 For JFK’s legislative failures, see Wicker, JFK and LBJ, 25-150.
139 For JFK approval ratings, see Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, 194; and Reeves, A Question of Character, 2.
140 Barry Goldwater gave 225 speeches: Robert Novak, WSJ, September 14, 1962. “The favorite son of a state of mind”: Richard Whalen, Taking Sides: A Personal View of America from Kennedy to Nixon to Kennedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 92.
8. APOCALYPTICS
141 “Sometimes, I’m afraid that the Good Lord”: interview with W. W. Rostow in CNN documentary Cold War, Episode IX, prod. Jeremy Isaacs.
141 It was, said Khrushchev: Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing, Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945-1991 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), 170.
141 My main sources for the Berlin crisis are Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1-43; and Thomas C. Reeves, A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy (New York: Free Press, 1991), 292-309.
142 In Rockford, Illinois, Barry Goldwater: “Salesman for a Cause,” Time, June 23, 1961.
142 “And if that means war”: Reeves, A Question of Character, 299.
142 July 25, 1961, speech is in PPP: JFK, 533-40.
143 For the bomb shelter panic in the summer of 1961 I draw on Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 200-217; and Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 126-31.
144 Was like talking to a statue: Cold War, Episode IX.
144 Time Inc. even helped: Allan C. Carlson, “Foreign Policy and ‘The American Way’: The Rise and Fall of the Post-World War II Consensus,” This World (Spring/ Summer 1983).
145 “Now we have a problem”: Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1983), 248. E. M. Dealey’s crack is quoted in Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 143. My interpretation of the origins of the Vietnam escalation in nuclear fears stemming from the Berlin crisis is indebted to Francis X. Winters, The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam, January 25, 1963-February 15, 1964 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997).
145 “Would stimulate bitter”: Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, Vietnam: The Early Decisions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 20. For JFK’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Vietnam, see ibid., ,101.
145 For the development of distrust between JFK and his Joint Chiefs of Staff, see George C. Herring, “Conspiracy of Silence: LBJ, the Joint Chiefs, and Escalation of the War in Vietnam,” in Gardner and Ted Gittinger, Vietnam: The Early Decisions; H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperCollins, 1997); May and Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes, 1-43; Curtis LeMay, Mission with LeMay: My Story (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965); and the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, Seven Days in May (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), and the film based on it (1964).
146 For the Mosk report, see Stanley Mosk and Howard H. Jewel, “The Birch Phenomenon Analyzed,” NYTM, August 20, 1961.
146 For the 1956 “brain-washing” report, see Catherine Lutz, “The Psychological Ethic and the Spirit of Containment,” Public Culture (Winter 1997): 135-59. My sources for the 1958 NSC directive, the Fulbright memo, and the right-wing response to the 1958 NSC directive are NYT, June 18, 1961; “The Radical Right,” Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Intergroup Relations Conference, 1965; and Dr. Frederick Schwarz, Beating the Unbeatable Foe: The Story of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1996), 253.