They Must Have Been Stoned

On a shelf next to the desk where I am writing this is an old personal telephone book (wow, that ages me) with a torn cover that is, I suppose, suitably colored red. Inside, among many long-forgotten friends is a virtual telephone directory of the old left that I compiled while working for the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in the 1970s.

Every so often I leaf through the pages to remind myself of those wonderful people who I remember as being so sharp and lively but are now just the ghosts of my youth. The numbers are so old, they even have the alphabetical prefixes. There's Jim Aronson, the former editor at of the National Guardian (and the person who got me into journalism school) at OR-3-0863; Bob Coe, one of Whittaker Chambers' targets at UL-9 1929 and Chambers's chief nemesis, Alger Hiss, at GR7-1958. There are other once-notorious names, including Frank Donner, Emile de Antonio, Corliss Lamont and Ludwig Ullmann among others.

There under the "s"'s, at 202 WO-6, 1218 is I.F. Stone. Izzy, as everyone called him, was a hero to many budding journalists of my generation. Whoever coined the slogan "Question Authority" might have had Stone in mind. His I.F. Stone's Reader was a model of investigative reporting that is still worth reading just to see how he was able to use government's own documents to cut through official disinformation.

I only had a few occasions to speak to him. It was always in connection with the Hiss case, which I was working on then -- and still am. I can still hear that high scratchy voice, complaining that his failing eyesight was frustrating his efforts to teach himself ancient Greek, a project he had set up for himself to better understand the trial of Socrates.

This week's issue has a marvelous profile of Izzy by his biographer, D. D. Guttenplan. Last week, Guttenplan reviewed of a new book called "Spies," by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, who say that recently released Soviet files show that Stone was a Soviet spy. Guttenplan eviscerates their arguments, but anyone who was acquainted with Stone or his work would already know that such a claim is a lot of hooey. Haynes, Klehr and Vassiliev make the same assertion about Hiss and several former officials of the New Deal. Sadly, their book is just the latest example of a book on the Soviet files, written by people whose cloudy judgment leaves them uninterested in undertaking the kind of digging that made Stone such a respected journalist. That his work made such an important contribution to our democracy is an irony that is lost on them.

D. D. Guttenplan and I will be at a two-day conference discussing the book at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D. C., May 20-21. The allegations about Stone and Hiss are sure to be Topic A. Too bad Izzy isn't around to defend himself. Had he been, we would have seen three birds killed with one Stone.

Stone was a frequent contributor to The Nation. I thought I'd offer this article by Stone on Carl Marzani, another another entry in my old phone book who liked to call himself the first casualty of the cold war.

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