They're done.

The best I can say is that she just wants to see this through to the end, make her case, and then accept her lumps. That's the BEST I can say. I can think of much worse, too.

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

In 1967 both the New York Times and the Washington Post carried interviews with Steinem in the wake of Ramparts' expose of CIA funding of the National Student Association and other organizations. Steinem was the founder and director of one of those groups, Independent Research Service, for which she had solicited and obtained CIA money to carry out covert operations at Communist youth festivals in Vienna and Helsinki in 1959 and 1952. Unlike most of the other principals in the scandal, who had repudiated their past work with the agency and turned over information to the press, Steinem defended her secret deal with the CIA, calling the undermining of the youth festivals "the CIA's finest hour."

Random House first learned of Feminist Revolution in January 1976, when Betty Friedan mentioned it to her editor James Silberman, also Random House vice president, publisher, and editor-in-chief. Random House eagerly bought the manuscript, offering the authors a $12,000 advance and a June publication date, pending the outcome of a libel reading by an outside law firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Of the lawyers' few objections, the only one that involved the chapters on the CIA was Redstockings' charge that a particular police agent had conceived of and pushed black community activists into a conspiracy to bomb the Statue of Liberty. Redstockings submitted further documentation on each point and no further issue was taken with any part of the book before the contract was signed on March 15. An editorial fact sheet was drawn up for the company's sales conference confirming the June 1976 pub date, and on March 18 the authors were paid half of their advance.

Meanwhile, some time between March 9 and 11, Random House editor Christine Steinmetz had sent out routine requests for permission to reprint a number of documents used in Feminist Revolution, including a classified ad which had appeared in Ms. soliciting data on men who support the women's movement, and a form letter from the Women's Action Alliance (a group founded by Gloria Steinem) asking women to send in detailed information on feminist projects. Rather than clear the way for Random House to include the 2 minor documents in the Steinem/CIA chapter, the requests apparently served to tip off Steinem and her circle that the Redstockings material was about to receive mass distribution. Had Random House not sent letters, Steinem might not have popped up in Bernstein's office on March 15.

Source: http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg02217.html


"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes