On Sunday, July 13, there appeared in the “New York Times Book Review” a quick look at Charlie English’s new non-fiction book, entitled, “The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature.” I have not read the book yet, but I will soon.

     Joseph Finder, author of the review, declares that “English’s book is a bracing reminder that, not so long ago, forbidden literature really could help tip the balance of history.”

     A startling idea: that literature can redirect history, topple dictatorships, and subdue tyrants.

     It is difficult for young Americans today to understand, that in the latter half of the twentieth century, millions of people who lived in the Soviet Union bloc, north and south across most of Eastern Europe, could not read what they wanted to read. Liberties to read and think were cut.

     Communist party officials, with their strong ties to Marxist-Leninist principles, prohibited Western books, from people either owning, selling, buying, copying, printing, publishing, or reading them. Hence the phrase, “forbidden literature.” The risk was imprisonment.

     Finder writes, “Even a volume about carrots might be banned if it hinted at the joys of gardening outside the collective [farm].” The people were starved into stupidity, lacking ideas. 

     Adam Michnik, a leading book smuggler in Poland, wrote, “A book was like fresh air. They allowed us to survive and not go mad. A book is like a reservoir of freedom, of independent thought, a reservoir of human dignity.”

     For me, a new word, “samizat.” It means, “The clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state, especially in former Communist countries of Eastern Europe.”

     George Minden, an official at the CIA, based in Manhattan, worked to promote smuggling.  He and his colleagues formed QRHELPFUL, code name for CIA’s book smuggling operation. Together they shipped ten million books into the Soviet Union bloc over several decades.

     George Minden said, “Truth is contagious.” 

     Joseph Finder said of the smuggling, “This was spy craft as soul craft.”

     What books? the Bible, George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm,” Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” spy novels by John LeCarre, mystery novels by Agatha Christie, stacks of “Cosmopolitan” magazines, plus “Three Hundred Years of American Painting.”

     Although those titles do not sound subversive, Communist Party officials thought otherwise.

     Minden also smuggled in typewriters, duplicators, printing presses, and copy machines.

      A single copy of “1984” may have been retyped or rewritten by hand multiple times, or it was printed on hidden printing presses. With copy machines, smugglers copied it countless times.

     Finder calls those copies, “flying libraries.” “They devoured them in a night, and then passed them on to their friends, so the circle of readers was far larger than the few thousand copies run off on hidden duplicators.” 

     Of the Soviet Bloc countries, Minden enjoyed the most success in Poland.

     Some CIA officials ridiculed Minden’s covert book-smuggling scheme. “Real men don’t sell books.” They refused to believe “the idea that books could topple regimes.” 

     Yet, please remember that Lenin said, “Ideas are much more fatal things than guns.”  

     The cost for Minden’s book smuggling was a fraction of the hundreds of millions that the American taxpayers, via the CIA, paid to arm the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

     In 1980, Lech Walesa and his trade union, Solidarity, went on strike at the Gdansk shipyard and won the people’s support across Poland. In 1989, voters elected him President of Poland.

     Per Charlie English, “it was forbidden literature that helped to win the cold war.” Per Joseph Finder, “a paperback in the right hands helped crack the cement of totalitarian thinking.”

Ken Burns, the filmmaker, met David McCullough, the historian, on the stage at the 92Y in New York City in May 2015, and together they discussed, before a live audience, McCullough’s most recent book, “The Wright Brothers,” published that year. 

     McCullough gushes about Wilbur and Orville’s achievement. He says, “For two brothers who never finished high school, this is a powerful American story, with many lessons to be learned.

     “It is an extraordinary accomplishment. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

     “How hard they worked. They were not just brilliant, but unwavering. Nothing would stop them. They had high purpose, their way to find happiness, a wonderful and worthy ambition. 

     “In the movie “Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid,” Paul Newman, who played the role of Butch Cassidy, shouts, ‘Who are these guys?,’ when he refers to the lawmen chasing them.

     “The same can be said of the two Wright brothers? Who are these guys?

     “They were not in it to get rich or famous. They did it without any backing from any deep-pocketed donors. The Federal government slammed a door in their faces four times. 

     “Their story is so revealing, a wonderful human interest story.”

     Ken Burns says, “I like Wilbur Wright’s comment, ‘If I were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio.” Indeed, McCullough places that quote on page one of his book.

     McCullough points out that “the first person to fly an aircraft, in December 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was Orville Wright. The first person to step onto the moon, in July 1969, was Neil Armstrong.”

     Orville was from Dayton, Ohio, Armstrong from Wapakoneta, Ohio, 56 miles from Dayton.

     Wilbur and Orville never married. In essence, four people lived together for years in a house at 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton, after their mother Susan died, when quite young.

     Their father, Bishop Milton Wright, an official in the United Brethren Church, was often away on church business for months every year, Wilbur and Orville worked together in the Wright bicycle shop, and Katharine graduated from college and taught Latin in Dayton’s high school.

     There was no running water or electricity in their home, but there were books, lots of books. All four were great readers, especially Wilbur. After a hockey stick knocked out most of Wilbur’s  front teeth, he began a massive reading project that continued for years, his college at home.

     Years later, Orville said, “The greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was encouragement to expand and incite our intellectual curiosity.”

     McCullough points out that “when Wilbur arrived his first time in France, the French people were floored by how much he knew about European history, music, and architecture. No American was ever as popular in France as was Wilbur Wright, save for Benjamin Franklin.

     “The French people loved his modesty, his courage, his perseverance.”

     Someone said, that “the problem of flight is one thousand problems thrown at you at once.” But Wilbur and Orville were methodical, in that they tackled each as it appeared.

     First, they designed a three-axis control system for roll, yaw, and pitch. Then, they fashioned an aerodynamic wing by studying birds in flight. Next, they built a light-weight aircraft. Then, they built an aluminum engine to provide propulsion. Piloting skills was next.

     McCullough says, “It is one thing to build a flying machine, another thing to fly it,” and Orville said, “The secret of flight is like learning the secret of magic from a magician.” 

     It is well worth watching Burns and McCullough’s hour-long interview. The book is a delight.

Last time in these pages, I wrote about the sharp division within George Washington’s Presidential administration, that between Alexander Hamilton, founder of the Federalist Party, and Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic-Republican Party. 

     That division between the two parties accelerated throughout the 1790’s.

     In the election of 1796, John Adams won the presidency with 71 electoral votes to Thomas Jefferson’s 68 votes. Per the Constitution then, the one with the most votes would serve as President, and the one with the second most votes would serve as Vice-President. 

     It was an unpleasant situation, Adams as President and Jefferson as Vice-President. In their respective newspapers, the two parties pummeled each other and fell into vicious name calling.

     Newspaper editors who favored the Jeffersonians called John Adams “a hideous character, who has neither the force and firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” The same editors labeled Adams “a fool, a hypocrite, and a tyrant.”

     Editors who supported Adams called Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, a weakling, an atheist, and a libertine.” In addition, they called into question Jefferson’s English parentage.

     A certain Federalist was convinced that Jefferson intended to “unleash the terrible evils of democracy,” allowing the unwashed masses to seek office in the Federal government. Another Federalist said that “when the pot boils, the scum will rise.”

     In early 1798, Matthew Lyon, a fierce anti-Federalist and a Congressman from Vermont, drifted into a war of words, trading back and forth put-downs, with Roger Griswold, a volatile Democratic-Republican, also a Congressman, but from Connecticut. 

     On January 31, Lyon propelled tobacco juice into Griswold’s eyes.     

     Two weeks later, on February 15, Griswold “walked up to Lyon’s desk and hit him about the head and shoulders with a hickory walking stick. Lyon grabbed a pair of fireplace iron tongs and beat Griswold back. The two men dropped their weapons and threw fists at each other.”

     Because the Federalists had the votes in Congress, they passed four laws that summer. 

     On June 18, 1798, Congress passed the Naturalization Act, that extended the residency requirement for immigrants from five to fourteen years before they could attain citizenship.

     On June 25, Congress passed the Alien Friends Act, that authorized the President to deport any non-citizen deemed dangerous to the peace and safety of the U.S.

     On July 6, Congress passed the Alien Enemies Act, that authorized the President to detain or deport immigrants from a hostile nation during wartime. 

     On July 14, Congress passed the Sedition Act, that made criminal any “false, scandalous, or malicious writing against the government,” in pamphlets or newspapers.

     Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republicans were aghast. They perceived those four laws as a political attack upon their party. The four laws raised questions about the proper balance between the two parties, and the limits of free speech and a free press. 

     The Alien Friends Act and the Sedition Act both expired in 1800, and Congress repealed the Naturalization Act in 1802. The Alien Enemies Act (AEA) though is still the law of the land.

     Presidents have used it four times: the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. The AEA was used to intern in camps certain Japanese, German, and Italian people during World War II.

     Last March, Donald Trump attempted to use the 1798 AEA to “justify deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador, that they were members of a Venezuelan gang that had infiltrated the U.S.”

     In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson received 73 votes, the same as Aaron Burr. A vote in Congress made Jefferson President and Burr Vice-President. The Federalists were swept out.    

Last time in these pages, I wrote about the sharp division within George Washington’s Presidential administration, that between Alexander Hamilton, founder of the Federalist Party, and Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic-Republican Party. 

     That division between the two parties accelerated throughout the 1790’s.

     In the election of 1796, John Adams won the presidency with 71 electoral votes to Thomas Jefferson’s 68 votes. Per the Constitution then, the one with the most votes would serve as President, and the one with the second most votes would serve as Vice-President. 

     It was an unpleasant situation, Adams as President and Jefferson as Vice-President. In their respective newspapers, the two parties pummeled each other and fell into vicious name calling.

     Newspaper editors who favored the Jeffersonians called John Adams “a hideous character, who has neither the force and firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” The same editors labeled Adams “a fool, a hypocrite, and a tyrant.”

     Editors who supported Adams called Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, a weakling, an atheist, and a libertine.” In addition, they called into question Jefferson’s English parentage.

     A certain Federalist was convinced that Jefferson intended to “unleash the terrible evils of democracy,” allowing the unwashed masses to seek office in the Federal government. Another Federalist said that “when the pot boils, the scum will rise.”

     In early 1798, Matthew Lyon, a fierce anti-Federalist and a Congressman from Vermont, drifted into a war of words, trading back and forth put-downs, with Roger Griswold, a volatile Democratic-Republican, also a Congressman, but from Connecticut. 

     On January 31, Lyon propelled tobacco juice into Griswold’s eyes.     

     Two weeks later, on February 15, Griswold “walked up to Lyon’s desk and hit him about the head and shoulders with a hickory walking stick. Lyon grabbed a pair of fireplace iron tongs and beat Griswold back. The two men dropped their weapons and threw fists at each other.”

     Because the Federalists had the votes in Congress, they passed four laws that summer. 

     On June 18, 1798, Congress passed the Naturalization Act, that extended the residency requirement for immigrants from five to fourteen years before they could attain citizenship.

     On June 25, Congress passed the Alien Friends Act, that authorized the President to deport any non-citizen deemed dangerous to the peace and safety of the U.S.

     On July 6, Congress passed the Alien Enemies Act, that authorized the President to detain or deport immigrants from a hostile nation during wartime. 

     On July 14, Congress passed the Sedition Act, that made criminal any “false, scandalous, or malicious writing against the government,” in pamphlets or newspapers.

     Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republicans were aghast. They perceived those four laws as a political attack upon their party. The four laws raised questions about the proper balance between the two parties, and the limits of free speech and a free press. 

     The Alien Friends Act and the Sedition Act both expired in 1800, and Congress repealed the Naturalization Act in 1802. The Alien Enemies Act (AEA) though is still the law of the land.

     Presidents have used it four times: the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. The AEA was used to intern in camps certain Japanese, German, and Italian people during World War II.

     Last March, Donald Trump attempted to use the 1798 AEA to “justify deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador, that they were members of a Venezuelan gang that had infiltrated the U.S.”

     In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson received 73 votes, the same as Aaron Burr. A vote in Congress made Jefferson President and Burr Vice-President. The Federalists were swept out.