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FTR #36 Tribute to George Seldes

Lis­ten now: One Seg­ment [1]

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. (Record­ed on 7/2/95 and 7/3/95.)