The Biggest Mail Censorship Program in U.S. History (Which You Never Heard Of)
In February 1953, China Monthly Review exposed an extensive U.S. mail censorship program. Ironically, few in the U.S. heard about it, as copies of CMR were seized & destroyed by the U.S. Post Office!
This article is dedicated to Julian Assange, who today is fighting in the UK High Court against extradition to the United States for trumped-up charges meant to keep him imprisoned for the rest of his life for exposing U.S. war crimes. There are plenty of people you can read concerning the background and significance of the charges against Assange, but there are few that provide important historical context in regards to U.S. suppression of knowledge of its war crimes (except, perhaps, for stories about the Pentagon Papers). This article will attempt to remedy this ommission with a look at the most draconian policy of mass mail censorship the United States ever undertook.
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“Inadmissible to the mail”
In February 1953, China Monthly Review (CMR), an English-language magazine published for decades in Shanghai, carried a special “Letter to Subscribers in the USA.” Editor John W. Powell and associate editors Julian Schuman and Sylvia Campbell (Powell’s wife) had been perplexed by complaints from readers that they had not been receiving their subscription issues for some time.
Many CMR readers were savvy about U.S. dirty tricks, especially during the McCarthyite witch-hunt crackdown of the early-to-mid 1950s. One reader in Kansas wrote to the magazine:
It has been several months since I have received the Review, I have been on the government's black list for many years and am not surprised they won't let me get it. However, this widespread stoppage of the Review coming to subscribers in the States is most likely due to your articles on germ warfare. The Pentagon has good reasons to hide the facts from our people. I do not want you to make good the missing copies as you are not to be blamed for the corruption of our elected officials. Put me down for another year and let me know the cost. — O.W.J. [Bold italics added for emphasis]
A reader in California chimed in:
Have missed last two issues. Maybe US authorities are holding them up to get names of those in our country "subversive" enough to want to know what's really going on in China. If so, here's my name for 'em again. I am not satisfied to remain in ignorance behind the Truman-Acheson iron curtain. — A. E. S.
CMR even received a message from Washington, D.C. from a surprising subscriber, testifying to the reach and influence of the China-based periodical:
We failed to receive the Review for December 1951, and January-May 1952, a total of six issues. We shall therefore appreciate an extension of our subscription. — International Monetary Fund
One reader in Honolulu wrote to say he or she had taken action:
Well, today I found out why there's been such a long delay getting the Review. I called Customs and they told me to call the postoffice. Because the solicitor in Washington, after examining the Review, found it to contain "political propaganda," he declared it inadmissible to the mail. Not only that, but they've destroyed the magazines on hand. I asked why they never informed me of that. They don't inform the addressee, they told me.
As you might imagine, I got pretty hotheaded about it but of course that didn’t do any good. They’re now in the book-burning stage here. You may have seen that they're also enforcing an amendment to a 1937 housing bill which makes the loyalty oath a prerequisite to living in any housing project that's been financed by federal funds. With that kind of law, of course, they can make it illegal to ride on a federal highway or buy a federal postage stamp — unless you've taken the loyalty oath. Remember, one used to wonder how the German people could let Hitler happen? — E. R.
Indeed, E.R. had learned the truth, or a good part of it. The confiscation of CMR was not unique, sad to say, but part of a draconian U.S. Cold War crackdown on foreign-derived information, particularly information coming from Communist countries. I have covered this story before, and admit to being surprised how little attention it received.
From 1950 to 1965, the U.S. Post Office and U.S. Customs, with the assistance of the FBI, destroyed hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail per month coming from so-called Iron Curtain countries, like the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the People’s Republic of China, etc. First class mail was not affected, but other bulk mailings from these countries, such as newspapers, magazines, books, recordings, academic journals, etc., were confiscated and destroyed.
The confiscation of this material — which included items as innocuous as chess manuals and mathematics texts — stemmed from an executive branch interpretation of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) law, made on the eve of World War II, and initially meant to stem the importation of Nazi propaganda. The unconstitutional aspects of this program were described in depth in this 1959 University of Pennsylvannia Law Review article.
Millions of pieces of mail seized
The administration of the government mail censorship program must have been uneven, especially in its early years. As an example, a public library in New England wrote CMR, as published also in their February 1953 issue:
The only issue of China Monthly Review which we have not received recently is that for March 1952. As we bind this periodical annually, we would prefer, if possible, to have this missing issue replaced. If, however, this cannot be done, we shall accept a one month's extension of our subscription.
But overall, the government suppression effort was gargantuan. As I wrote in my 2001 article on the mass mail censorship program: “The number of control offices that captured the mail and cited ostensible ‘political propaganda’ for destruction had gone from three regional offices to ‘10 or 11 screening points through which is routed all unsealed mail from the designated foreign countries,’ according to a Supreme Court case that ultimately declared the policy unconstitutional (see Lamont v. Postmaster General, 1965). Initially, the program attempted to set up some sort of screening operation at every major point of entry for foreign mail.
“According to testimony from an attorney in the USPS’s General Counsel’s office, given during a 1956 Congressional hearing on Communist propaganda coming into the U.S., upon referral by the Customs Office, the Post Office had ‘seized millions of pieces [of mail]. We have done that. It has been going on for a period of years now. We are regularly seizing this propaganda which is coming in without compliance.’”
This blog is all about retrieving evidence of and publicizing the past history about U.S. war crimes. The suppression of knowledge concerning such crimes is part of that agenda. Below is the full text of CMR’s editorial response to the FARA-derived policy. It is important to point out that the three CMR editors involved in the “Letter to Subscribers”, Powell, Schuman, and Campbell, were all later tried for sedition when they returned to the United States after the close of the Korean War. The trial ended in a mistrial, but they remained in legal jeopardy until the first year of the JFK administration.
The Powells, et al., case is examined in some depth in this July 2021 article, and in even more depth by John W. Powell and Sylvia Campbell Powell’s son, Thomas, in his recent book, The Secret Ugly: The Hidden History of U.S. Germ War in Korea. (Also see my review of this book.)
“This is thought control, pure and simple”
Letter to Subscribers in the USA
Dear Friends:
Since we first wrote asking you to report missing copies, we have solved the "mystery." Several subscribers have reported the results of their investigations. Here is what one reader in California writes:
"The US postoffice has confiscated and destroyed all copies it has been able to spot. It has done this under 18 Code 1717, a regulation containing a number of unrepealed war-time restrictions. An inquiry to the postoffice as to what specifically was objectionable in the Review brought forth the comment: 'This information is for postoffice employees only.'"
Among the types of material considered unmailable under this code are publications urging treason, insurrection, and so on.
None of the objections listed could be twisted to apply to the Review. This explains why the US postoffice, when pushed for a definite explanation, attempts to defend its action by saying that the reason cannot be made public. This is thought control, pure and simple.
Unpopularity with officialdom is not a new experience for us, although this is the first time the Review has experienced difficulties getting into the United States. An American-owned magazine established in Shanghai in 1917, the Review has always done its best to report accurately developments in China. As a result we are accustomed to trouble. In the 'twenties when we editorially endorsed the Nationalist movement as opposed to the regional warlord regimes, we encountered opposition from the foreign vested interests in China which preferred to see a weak and divided country.
In the 'thirties we opposed the Japanese invasion of China and warned of the coming Pacific War. The Japanese government banned the Review, seized copies from the mails and even tried to assassinate the editor [John W. Powell’s father, J.B. Powell - JK]. In the post-war period, the Review reported the corruption and degradation of Chiang Kai-shek's regime and foresaw its ignominious defeat. Again, we were at logger-heads with Chiang and his American supporters.
For the past three and a half years we have been carrying on as usual — giving our honest estimation of the new China, reporting the tremendous achievements which this country has made and is making. Again, we are met with hostility by the same old crowd: those who fear the truth. The Review is currently banned in Malaya by the British colonial authorities, in Japan by the American puppet Yoshida regime — and now in the United States distribution is interfered with by a government which fears lest its people learn a few basic truths about this part of the world — such as the fact that China has a progressive and honest government for the first time in its history, such as the facts of American germ warfare in Korea and China.
We have yet to trim our sails to prevailing winds and do not propose to do so now. We shall continue to report the developments here as we honestly see them and we shall continue to make every effort to see that your copy of the Review reaches you.
You can help by protesting this arbitrary official interference with the Review to your postmaster and to the Postmaster General in Washington. The government's action is illegal and cannot withstand public examination. If the protest is strong enough, Washington will have no alternative but to rescind it. We have great faith in our people and are convinced that they will not allow officialdom to put blinders on them, to decide what is "suitable" for them to read and think.
THE EDITORS
Unfortunately, the censorship program Powell stumbled onto, and which he publicized as best he could, would remain in effect for another 12 years. However, given that his magazine was being seized and destroyed at ports of entry to the United States, few were aware of the censorship program. Perhaps even more egregiously, the episode has slipped out of contemporary public consciousness, as well as the official histories of civil liberties violations and state censorship obtainable online.
I knew it. We’re an isolated, restricted, piece of fake shit country. No wonder everyone’s so depressed and desperate.