A backward glance: Sowing the seeds of destruction.

You may have seen some of my own ideas as to how WBAI's deterioration began. If so--whether you agree, or not--you know that I place much of the blame on three individuals who seized the opportunity to reshape the station into a form that suited their egos and aspirations.

A particularly ugly facet of this effort was the witch hunt that began as soon as they had command of the microphones. While they boasted long and hard of being a part of New York's only "free speech" radio station, they got busy narrowing that freedom down to themselves. The worst offender was Steve Post, a person who became widely admired by people who either never saw his nasty side or saw it and partook in his viciousness. I would rank Josephson as second, but he was also driven by self-interests and he did not allow morals and responsibility to get in his way. Bob Fass' case was slightly different for he already had access to WBAI's air and that ego was still bubbling under the surface. It was the era of the "flower children" and I used to say that Bob was quite capable of strangling you with his love beads. In the phase that I will deal with now, Bob's main flaw—a rather big one—was that he never spoke up against the, shall we say, integrity-busting "celebritizing" that the opportunists were introducing. WBAI has never recovered from that, nor is it likely to.

People who did speak up were ridiculed and demonized on the air. Remarkably, the victims included Lou Schweitzer, the man to whose generosity and love of free speech Pacifica owed its ownership of WBAI.

When Chris Koch turned against Pacifica and, to my amazement, pursued a job at right-leaning Time magazine, his trip to Hanoi brought him speaking engagements at which he never failed to suggest that he had been forced to leave WBAI because the manager "censored" his reportage. That was an absolute lie, but people like Post picked up on it--although they new better--and used it to turn listeners against me. That sort of thing is not difficult to do at a station like WBAI, where the walls of idealism are thin. I was bothered by it, disappointed to find the length to which people I once trusted and, indeed, had hired would go in pursuit of their personal agenda, but I was more upset by what they were doing to dedicated WBAI workers like Tana DeGamez, and it really upset me when Steve Post started lying about Lou Schweitzer. Soon, Lou became everybody's target--the absurdity  was mind-boggling, for here was a man whose belief in free speech was beyond reproach. 

I finally decided that we had to discuss this whole mess openly in a live, open-ended broadcast with call-ins. Harold Taylor, who headed the local board and was only seen when he could get some personal press out of it, thought it was a good idea and offered to moderate (if that is the term). Chris Koch turned down my invitation to participate, although his presence was absolutely necessary, but he gave in when Harold told him that his absence would not look good. Koch, like Fass, Dale Minor, and others who knew the truth, had remained silent, thereby seeming to be on the side of the finger pointers.

The broadcast went on at the announced time, but when--about an hour later--the questions became tough for Koch to answer, Harold announced that we had run out of time and, in very short order, ended the program. I was furious. The tapes I had ready in Master Control were never played, they contained outright lies leveled against Lou and me. This is when I decided it was time for me to leave WBAI, which I did a couple of months later. 

The attacks on Lou Schweitzer were outrageous. Susan Brownmiller wrote a shamelessly slanted piece in the Village Voice, where she referred to Louis as "Fat Cat Schweitzer," and membership cancellations were beginning to come in, all based upon the slanderous lies Post and company spread.

Herbert Biberman at HUAC hearing.

On the day of the broadcast, I received a telegram from film director Herbert Biberman who--having been one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten"--knew better than most people how vital freedom of speech is. His 1954 film, "Salt of the Earth", was deemed Communist propaganda and he was jailed and blacklisted. Congress denounced the film, and all but a dozen theaters refused to show it. That would change dramatically in later years and "Salt of the Earth" was described by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."  The current WBAI marathon has the film as part of a premium, but it can be purchased on DVD for much less.

Here is the telegram Biberman sent regarding the upcoming live on-air discussion. He was reacting to the vile accusations made by Post and others of his ilk against Lou Schweitzer.  WBAI/Pacifica never had a better friend than Lou.