Chicago Tribune Apologizes to Jewish Organizations for “secret Government” Article

The Chicago Tribune today apologized to Jewish organizations for a front-page article asserting that Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Henry Morgenthau Jr., and Sen. Herbert H. Lehman constituted a “secret government of the United States.” The article appeared May 29 under a Washington dateline.

The apology was made in the form of a letter addressed by J. Loy Maloney, managing editor of the paper, to the Chicago chapters of the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee and Anti-Defamation Leagus of B’nai B’rith. However, the letter was not published in the Chicago Tribune.

Declaring that the article to which the Jewish organizations took exception “was an isolated news report and not the start of a series,” Mr. Maloney’s letter says that the Washington correspondent dealt with Justice Frankfurter, Mr. Morgenthau and Sen. Lehman as public men, regardless of their religious beliefs. “The story was not meant to imply any association or parallelism between Zionism and Communism,” the editor said.

“The Tribune is not anti-Semitic,” Mr. Maloney continued. “Its record has been that of a defender of minorities when they were right, however unpopular their cause.” Emphasizing that in printing the article, the Tribune “did not foresee the interpretations which have been put upon it in Jewish circles,” the letter concludes by saying that “these implications were not intended by the Tribune, which has no desire to create ill-feeling or to furnish ammunition to anti-Semites.”