“This is Liberty Lobby,” a five-minute broadcast of “news” and commentary controlled by one of the most notorious professional anti-Semites currently active In America, is being carried regularly by 126 stations in 39 states and the District of Columbia, a survey by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League disclosed today. Lawrence Peirez, chairman of the ADL’s national civil rights committee who made the survey public, identified Willis A. Carto, an “outspoken anti-Semite” who founded Liberty Lobby 16 years ago as a front for Jew-baiting and other racist propaganda as “the un-publicized force” behind the broadcasts.
The program originated in March, 1973 with only four stations, gathered 62 more outlets by Sept. and broke the 100-station mark a month later, according to John L. Goldwater, chairman of the ADL’s national fact-finding committee which conducted the survey. As a result of a recent contract signed with the Mutual Broadcasting System, it will soon be available to Mutual’s network of more than 600 radio stations, the ADL reported. It is carried by most stations on a paid basis but by some as a “public service,” the ADL report noted.
The nature of “This is Liberty Lobby” was indicated by its “daily attacks” on Israel and American Jews during and immediately following the Yom Kippur War last Oct., Goldwater reported. These attacks included descriptions of Israel by the program’s commentator, Bob Bartell, as “a bastard state” and charges that American Jews are subversive and disloyal.
According to Goldwater, at the conclusion of each “This is Liberty Lobby” broadcast, listeners are offered “a blatantly anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby pamphlet” titled “America First.” Gold-water questioned whether the managements and licensees of the stations carrying the program were unaware of its contents or “uncaring about their role in helping to peddle bigotry.” The program is heard in the New York area on radio station WTHE in Mineola, L.I. and WVOX and WVOXFM in New Rochelle. It has 19 outlets in California, the most in any state.
Goldwater said that Carto, 47, began to work as a “professional bigot and organizer” in 1954. He has served as a director of Congress of Freedom, a right-wing racist organization and as an organizer for the far-right John Birch Society. In 1966 he took over the once venerable “American Mercury” magazine and used its respected name for “a quarterly devoted largely to anti-Jewish hate.” Carto founded Liberty Lobby in Washington, D.C. in 1958 as a money-raiser and front for his “seamier operations,” Goldwater said. He identified Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin D. Gilbert, the principal owners of the Mutual Broadcasting System, as heavy financial contributors to Liberty Lobby since 1966.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
