I.F. Stone is celebrated for his left-wing politics, not for any great journalism he produced. He missed the biggest stories of his lifetime. He was very late in grasping that people who thought they were fighting for Socialism, such as, well, himself, were really fighting for gutter Russian nationalism, without realizing it. He knew little about economics, so he vastly under-estimated the resilience of indutrial capitalism, as demonstrated by the growth of dynamism of Third World countries (regarded by Stone as seedbeds of revolutionary socialism) when they adopted capitalist policies, most notably in China and India - and even in Vietnam. For a long time, he did not spot the inevitable leftist alienation from the State of Israel, of which Stone was originally a strong supporter; when leftist winds started blowing against Israel for being too successful vis-a-vis the more ideologically exotic Arab lands, Stone obediently wafted with them. I don't want to lay too much on Stone, since he was only human, but given the idolatry to which he is subject, it's fair to ask exactly what big stories he did 'break', and whether his journalism over his career really holds up in terms of predictive value.

No one reading Stone's life's work would have much notion that the most vigorous ideological force as the 21st century opened would be religious belief, in the form of the most reactionary elements of Islam; Stone was an unquestioning believer in the left/progressive theory of history, in which secularism and socialism were inevitable. Nice man, but no prophet.

Why did you not interview Klehr or Haynes? If you're going to let Lears accuse them of "posthumous character assassination," you should let them defend themselves. I have found their writings persuasive, although I do think Lears can make a credible argument they exaggerated Stone's Soviet ties.

Marking the 15th anniversary of Stone's death in 2004, your program lionized him, giving space to his supporters like Victor Navasky. Navasky has been proved wrong on Alger Hiss, so perhaps his views on Stone also bear another look.

It really seems as if Stone is such a heroic figure to On the Media that it can't bear to hear the case against him.

why not do a show on homegrown propaganda, i.e., jack anderson, billy buckley, jack valenti, etc. these guys and girls are spooks 'working' as writers, journalists, think-tankers, etc. why not call them on their true calling, instead of picking on lil' ol' i.f. stone? they pose a bigger threat to our democracy, if only because of their size and 'volume,' don't you think?
thank you.
sincerely,
craig
nj

Great Garf,
Now you are sympathetically profiling communist traders. Were's the balance in "OTM"? Bring back Brook! What does Katya Rogers do besides hawk t-shirts and caps? Your commentator here writes for "The Nation" and "The New York Times". Now that is fair and balanced.

Bob, I was amused by this quote from you: “State department officials and Hollywood directors who were victimized in the panic”. Are you really so bold as to imply that people like Alger Hiss were somehow being victimized? The FBI, via the VENONA transcripts, had the codenames of hundreds of Soviet agents and with the testimony of people like Elizabeth Bentley the public had knowledge of large well organized spy rings operating in all branches and at all levels of the US government.

Your apologetics and demonization are bold, even for a clueless left wing drone like you.

Interesting, Stone couldn’t prove that the Gulf of Tonkin was a “set up” but went to press with the story any way based on his instincts. Turns out he was right, but this same “blame the West first” mentality that afflicted Stone also caused him to report, quite erroneously, that South Korea had “provoked” war with the North by invading them firs, with US backing naturally. I guess Stone was the proverbial broken watch but he was apparently worn by every leftist in the US.

Anyhoo, the charges that Stone was a covert Soviet agent are documentable and fully supported, this is no longer the realm of speculation. Stone knew who he was dealing with, that is he was fully aware that the Soviet individuals he was communicating with were covert KGB agents. He consciously cooperated with Soviet intelligence for several years after some of their most horrid atrocities had been made public.

Please recall that when Haynes and Khler first made waves with their original books on the VENONA archive, the academic community furiously denied all of the substantive issues raised and hurled baseless accusations after accusation at Haynes and Khler. Victor Navasky, a favorite of this show suggested the VENONA messages were part of a sinister American government project “to enlarge post-cold war intelligence gathering capability at the expense of civil liberty.”
The least you could have done was to have them on the air as well, or is that sort of impartiality too much for Bob Garfield?