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For members who are uncertain of answers to "loyalty questions." Facts Forum recommends the word of such authorities as the Rev. Dr. Carl McIntire, President of the fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches, who has accused the National Council of Churches, which embraces most Protestant denominations, of pro-Communism. He has also called the U.S. Roman Catholic Church a "spy system . . . committed to a foreign power."
Facts Forum has used its platform as well as its own "free circulating library," reported Bagdikian, for "known race-hate agitators." One of the original library books, withdrawn after protests, was We Must Abolish the United States, by Joseph Kamp ("I pull no punches in exposing the Jewish Gestapo or any Jew who happens to be a Jew"). Kamp was jailed for contempt of Congress after refusing to reveal the backers of his Constitution al Educational League. Bagdikian also set forth that Facts Forum tells its members how to get on the mailing list of such organizations as Merwin K. Hart's National Economic Council, described by the Buchanan Lobbying Committee of the 81st Congress as a group that attempts "to disparage those who oppose its objectives by appeals to religious prejudice, often an ill-concealed anti-Semitism." In Manhattan, where a Forum unit v/as formed, the first meeting was addressed by Allen Zoll. whose American Patriots, Inc. was listed by the Attorney General as a "Fascist" organization. Zoll, said the Journal-Bulletin, charged that the U.N. is "a device to permit the colored races to rule the white races [and that] UNESCO is an alien conspiracy to teach sex delinquency to American schoolchildren."
The Net Effect. Facts Forum's Angel Hunt, who lives in a house that is a reproduction of George Washington's Mount Vernon home (but five times bigger), refused to tell Reporter Bagdikian what Facts Forum's annual budget is, claimed it has "strict rules against carrying on propaganda or attempting to influence legislation," and therefore deserved its tax exemption and free radio-TV time. But Reporter Bagdikian vigorously disagreed, said that the "operations of Facts Forum have often exhibited a spirit which is the opposite of free debate in good faith." Concluded Bagdikian: "[The] net effect [of Facts Forum] is to disseminate fear, suspicion and divisive propaganda . . . The results of this, if carried into the entire field of mass communications, could be to increase the pressures dividing segments of American society, to increase group hatreds and implant suspicions which did not exist before."
*Hunt, the Journal-Bulletin said, put up 95% of the money to start Facts Forum. Among the members of its national board: Sears, Roebuck Chairman Robert E. Wood, Cinemactor John Wayne, Texas Governor Allan Shivers, General Albert C. Wedemyer, All-America Football Player Doak Walker.