Upton Close Breaks Up Anti-defamation League Press Conference in Washington

A press conference called by the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith at the Willard Hotel here was abandoned following the appearance at the conference of Upton Close, radio commentator who is charged with spreading anti-Jewish propaganda.

Mr. Close complained to Judge Meier Steinbrink, national chairman of the League, who was scheduled to address the press conference, that the A.D.L. interfered with his efforts to earn a livelihood. Herman Edelsberg, Washington director of the A.D.L., told him that he was “the victim of his own record as a commentator.” Judge Steinbrink offered to meet with Close at a later date to discuss any question, and asked him to leave the room so that the press conference could proceed. The conference was abandoned when Close refused to leave.

Close’s writings, unfriendly to Jews, have been inserted in the Congressional Record by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. The Senator later withdrew the material from the record following his receipt of a letter of protest from David Rabinowitz, co-chairman of the Federated Jewish Charities in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. However, he wrote to Close explaining that he had removed some of this material because he felt that his “fight to clean Communists out of our government was too important to take any chance of getting mixed up in any anti-Semitic charges against you, or anyone else, regardless of how unjustified those charges might be.”

In his letter to Close, Sen. McCarthy emphasized that he knows nothing about the commentator except that he is anti-Communist, “You can be certain that you, or any other radio commentator who takes part in the anti-Communist fight will also be smeared from hell to breakfast,” he wrote, adding that “a favorite smear, of course, is to claim that a man is anti-Semitic.”