Lis­ten now: One Seg­ment

This pro­gram memo­ri­al­izes the late George Seldes, arguably America’s pre­mier inves­tiga­tive reporter. When he passed away at the age of 104 on July 2, 1995, Seldes left behind a legacy of hard-hitting, fear­less, rel­e­vant, informed and inform­ing writ­ing. His work paved the way for inves­tiga­tive reporters and polit­i­cal sci­en­tists inves­ti­gat­ing the cor­po­rate machi­na­tions under­ly­ing both Amer­i­can and inter­na­tional polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and cul­tural life. One of the ear­li­est and most vis­i­ble crit­ics of Mussolini’s fas­cist state in Italy, Seldes risked his life in a con­fronta­tion with Il Duce in which he exposed, among other things, the pro­found Amer­i­can cor­po­rate and jour­nal­is­tic sup­port for Mussolini’s “cor­po­rate state.” Those polit­i­cal and eco­nomic inter­ests were instru­men­tal in attempts to sup­press Army Fact Sheet Num­ber 64. This fact sheet informed front­line U.S. troops on how to rec­og­nize fas­cists (includ­ing those pow­er­ful, pro-fascist ele­ments in the United States that had col­lab­o­rated with Hitler and Mus­solini.) Seldes was one of the few jour­nal­ists to cover the story of the active attempts to block both dis­tri­b­u­tion and jour­nal­is­tic cov­er­age of the Fact Sheet. This seg­ment sets forth Seldes’ account of those attempts. The pro­gram also doc­u­ments an attempt to court-martial Major Gen­eral Smed­ley But­ler for allegedly slan­der­ing Mus­solini. But­ler had foiled attempts by pow­er­ful Amer­i­can cor­po­rate fas­cists to over­throw Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt in a fas­cist coup in 1934. The excerpt was read, coin­ci­den­tally, on the day that Seldes passed away. The fol­low­ing evening (7/3/95), Mr. Seldes’ obit­u­ary was read into the record at the con­clu­sion of Mr. Emory’s broad­cast on another sta­tion. (See also: FTR #’s 29, 37, 38, 99, 102.) (Recorded on 7/2/95 and 7/3/95.)