Monday, March 16, 2009

Steve Rendall and other idiots lie about Jean Seberg (to protect the CIA?)

I don't read columns in newspapers for the most part. Returning a friend's call while enroute to the airport resulted in me being asked why I hadn't called out the Los Angeles Times column by Allan M. Jalon that ran Friday? I didn't see it. I would still have avoided it were it not for the fact that Steve Rendall of so-called FAIR was pimping lies futher.

Here's reality. Bill Thomas was handed that 'tip'. It was given to him by the FBI though he lied for publication. [Jim note: A friend of C.I.'s called and said, "Pull the parenthetical." C.I. dictated this and the friend read it and noted it had something in it that didn't need to be in it and also wrongly assumed someone was dead who is very much alive. So I've logged in and removed the parenthetical.] Allan M. Jalon wants to say Bill said it came from a reporter. Bill may have said that in this decade. As someone who set up an interview for a reporter with Bill back in the seventies and sat in on it, I know Bill's claim then was that he didn't remember where it came from. I also know Bill was continuing to make that claim in the 80s. (When I learned of it in the eighties, I confronted him and asked him if he was ever going to get honest? Apparently not.)

I'm not interested in lies, I'm not interested in garbage. Jean Seberg was destroyed. And she was destroyed by the US government.

What FAIR's Steve Rendall and LAT's Allan M. Jalon are offering are LIES. Bold faced BLOOD LIES and I'll be damned if I'll stand for it.

The Los Angeles Times' part of the story is actually rather minor. It's important more as a footnote in terms of the pain caused to Jean (and Romain). Bill passed on the FBI tidbit to Joyce Haber and said it came from a source -- not a reporter.

And please note, the hard copy of that still exists. Allan appears not to know that -- or appears willing to lie for the paper's former publisher -- ask Allan why his 'factual' column is so damn fact-free? Bill vouched for the source to Joyce on paper. Said the man was reliable. That is in Bill's handwriting. The tidbit was that Jean Seberg was pregnant by a Black Panther. Seberg, an American actress who'd made a home in Paris, was married to Romain Gary (noted French intellectual and author). The Black Panthers were thought to make Middle America 'nervous' at the time and we weren't far past the time -- in this country -- where Petula Clark touching Harry Belfonte's arm while they performed a duet, getting that moment on air was a battle. That was 1968. May 19, 1970 was when Harber's item ran. (In the Los Angeles Times and around the country, her column was syndicated.)

To read Allan's crappy column (or Steve's b.s. at FAIR), you wrongly think all of America said, "Jean Seberg!" They did no such thing. It was a blind item. I can quote it in full if need be. It wasn't very long and it's interesting that neither Allan or Steve wants to quote it. But quoting it would prevent some of the LYING they're doing. It could have been Jean Seberg, but the blind item could have been Jane Fonda (whom most people thought it was) or any number of people. It was a vague item. Steve writes that Allan says J. Edgar Hoover passed it. Does Allan write that? I can only take Allan's garbage in small doses. Read the column and see if he says that. But Allan does note this:

As it got picked up by news organizations around the world, Haber was questioned by the Associated Press and other organizations. Asked for her sources, she didn't give them. Her sources were her editors. Neither Bellows nor Thomas came to her rescue. "Joyce took a real beating on the Seberg thing," Bellows told me and I reported in The Times. Asked why he didn't step forward as his writer took the blame, he admitted, "I should have."

That's a lie. Haber's item wasn't picked up. Those that ran her column, ran her column. The blind item did not stand out and it was not the source of intense speculation. (Which is why the FBI routed it to another paper shortly after.) In real time she wasn't asked and no one was asked. A few months after her item ran, she would be asked and Bill and Jim Bellows would be as well. But Steve Rendell ignores that paragraph and repeats the LIE that Joyce Harber destroyed Jean. Steve really needs a woman in there, doesn't he? He's not able to get his jollies if he can't attack a woman. In the meantime, he lets the CIA off the hook, now doesn't he?

Allan needs to grow the hell up and stop being such a damn chicken s**t. He lies in his column:

Soon after the item appeared, Seberg lost the baby after a premature delivery. At the baby's funeral, the 31-year-old actress had the casket opened to show the baby was white and the gossip started by The Times was false.

Jean did that? Did she? You knew her Allan? I knew her (and Romain) and you're a damn, dirty liar.

Jean didn't give birth soon after. Ask any one who's ever actually been pregnant -- this would eliminate Allan and Steve -- and we will tell you that August 23rd is not "soon after" May 19th.

Why did Jean give birth (premature) August 23, 1970? Why did she insist the baby's coffin be opened? (And that it be buried in the US -- she gave birth and the baby died in France -- which is where she lived.) It had nothing to do with Joyce Haber or the Los Angeles Times. Newsweek.

Newsweek is the one who caused all that happened. They didn't print a blind item. They ran an item asserting Jean Seberg was pregnant by a Black Panther. That was the August 24, 1970 issue (then as now, the issues were dated ahead). When Newsweek published that, Jean's life crashed. Romain never sued Joyce Haber. He never sued the Los Angeles Times. He sued Newsweek. I'm getting damn tired of the liars and the chicken s**ts.

I have no idea whom Edward Behr gave head to that provided him with so many years of cover but if FAIR wants to grow the hell up, Edward Behr and not Joyce Haber is the one responsible. After the baby's death, Jean never failed to bring up Behr's name. Joyce wasn't an issue with her. Joyce was a "silly woman" and just a gossip columnist who ran a blind item. Edward Behr did the government's dirty work and did it with names.

This is not a minor issue to me. I have never forgiven Newsweek for what they did which is why we so rarely link to Newsweek here. When we do, as with Saturday, they have to jump through hoops. January 21, 2007 at Third's "Roundtable," Betty raised the issue of a book that, as Allain does, attempted to rewrite history to let Newsweek and Edward Behr off the hook. My language will be edited in the excerpt below but -- language warning -- if you go to the "Roundtable." I have no idea why alleged 'expert' Allan or 'alleged' media critic Steve can't get the damn facts right. But I'm not in the mood for their lies. Here's the excerpt from Third:

C.I.: Thank you. That is such a [f**king] lie -- and I just told one member last week I'd try to watch my own language in these editions. I do not take kindly to anyone lying about Jean Seberg. Rebecca said skip the book or you'll be pissed. Jean Seberg went into the hospital in August. The trauma at that time was Newsweek, not The Los Angeles Times. When the Haber blind item ran it was May of 1970.

Betty: May 19, 1970 according to the endnote.

C.I.: Thank you. Seberg ends up in the hospital in August, after Seberg o.d.ed on sleeping pills, which was not thought by all to be a suicide attempt, she was taken to the hospital. While she was in the hospital, Edward Behr wrote up a bit on her for Newsweek. He maintained that he included the 'news' that the baby's father was a Black Panther in his cable to Newsweek's NY headquarters because he was just trying to prove he was 'on' the story and in the know but it wasn't for publication. In the cable he does mark that "Strictly FYI". That ends up running in Newsweek. Kermit Lasner will offer the laughable excuse that he had no idea how that piece of shit made it into the magazine because he'd had a scooter accident at lunch. Newseek printed, August 24th issue, 1970, that, this is a quote, I damn well know what they printed: "She and French author Romain Gary, 56, are reportedly about to remarry even though the baby Jean expects in Ocotober is by another man -- a black activist she met in California." That's what got picked up everywhere, including in The Des Moines Register, Seberg's hometown paper. Now that book is supposed to utilize government documents and the FBI had Seberg's phones tapped, including her hospital phone, so they knew very well that her state of mind was frantic after Newsweek published the item. She lost the baby because of the Newsweek article. I question everything that Betty quoted including the timeline. Newsweek printed it, it got picked up everywhere, Jean Seberg lost her baby, and Romain Gary was quite clear whom he blamed when he wrote "The Big Knife" which was published in France-Soir. This was a very huge thing, in press on both sides of the Atlantic. It's still a huge deal to many and one of the main reasons I never link to the piece of crap Newsweek.


Betty: I knew it was wrong. We've discussed this and it's addressed in "Spying and Seberg" but I had to wonder how an author gets it that wrong? Maybe because it's a little easier to go after a dead gossip columnist than it is to go after Newsweek?

C.I.: To be honest with you, that's exactly where I went as well. Joyce Haber was scapegoated for that thing which she never would have read if the city editor hadn't vouched for it. Bill Thomas got off scott free. But what Haber did was a bit of gossip. In a blind item. Newsweek, not a gossip publication, printed a lie in their magazine and that set off a wave outside of any gossip community. They knew what would happen when they did that, both to Seberg and in terms of being echoed throughout the press. That was nothing but corporate media going after a peace activist. It's exactly the kind of crap they've always done and for an author of a book published by The Free Press to either not know or to avoid telling readers the actual truth is just disgusting. It's the August 24, 1970 issue of Newsweek. Anyone who doubts it can get their ass to a library and utilize the reels or microfiche.

Haber's nothing item appeared. (An item that made Jean nervous but one that she laughed off because it was such a blind item.) She never forgave Newsweek nor did Romain. (Both would take their own lives.) And the item being planted from France? That wasn't the FBI, kids, that was the CIA. And all the garbage Steve and Allan offer allows a government plot to destroy a citizen to be minimized and allow a "silly woman" to be made the fallguy when Newsweek has never -- because they can't -- offered an explanation on how they allowed CIA propaganda into their pages intentionally. The item -- not a blind item -- did not meet Newsweek standards. But never expect an answer from Behr or anyone else when Steve Rendall and Allan continue to distract you from how HUGE the government assault on Jean was by getting their panties twisted over a blind item in a gossip column as opposed to a named-item in a news weekly -- Newsweek sent Jean to the hospital, not Joyce's months old column. Get your damn facts straight. What was done to Jean is done all over again to her when you refuse to challenge Newsweek, when you write them out of the story even though they named her, even though their item sent her into the hospital, even though she and Romain blamed them and even though Romain sued them. You're working for the CIA or you're a blithering idiot if you can't get the facts straight on this.

This is obviously a very personal issue to me. I don't take it lightly. I am far from alone on that. In other news, Ty passes on that US war resister Kristoffer Walker has a website. Krisoffer is the 28-year-old Iraq War veteran who has stated he will not return to Iraq.









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