Lis­ten now: Side 1 | Side 2

This two-part pro­gram focuses on the life, work and prob­a­ble assas­si­na­tion of United Auto Work­ers Union chief Wal­ter Reuther. The first seg­ment con­sists of an inter­view with Dr. Michael Par­enti (along with Peggy Noton), the co-author of an arti­cle about Reuther pub­lished in Covert Action Quar­terly. The inter­view focuses on Reuther’s career as one of the most influ­en­tial labor lead­ers in the United States, as well as the numer­ous attempts on his life and the mys­te­ri­ous 1970 plane crash in which he died. Through­out his life, Reuther was the focus of hos­tile activ­ity by big busi­ness, the FBI and Repub­li­can politi­cians. In addi­tion to head­ing the largest labor union in the United States, Reuther was very active on behalf of a num­ber of pro­gres­sive social causes includ­ing civil rights, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, health care reform and oppo­si­tion to the Viet­nam War. Hav­ing nar­rowly escaped numer­ous attempts on his life dur­ing the labor strug­gles of the 1930’s, Reuther appears to have been the vic­tim of a well-orchestrated con­spir­acy. Reuther was almost killed in the sus­pi­cious crash of a pri­vate plane in early 1970 and then died (along with his wife) in an almost iden­ti­cal crash sev­eral months later. This crash occurred a few days after Reuther vocally expressed his oppo­si­tion to Nixon’s Viet­nam strat­egy and the shoot­ing of stu­dent pro­test­ers at Kent State Uni­ver­sity in Ohio. The cir­cum­stances of the crash are dis­cussed at length in the Parenti-Noton arti­cle and those cir­cum­stances over­whelm­ingly point to the con­clu­sion that Reuther was mur­dered. The sec­ond half of the pro­gram con­sists of a com­plete read­ing of the Parenti-Noton arti­cle. (Recorded in the spring of 1996.)