Milo Radulovich, an Air Force reservist caught in the net of 1950s communist hunters and whose case was championed by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in a historic program that led to the collapse of the McCarthy era, died Monday in Vallejo, Calif. The cause was complications from a stroke. He was 81.
In 1953, Radulovich was threatened with discharge because of allegations that he was a security risk because of his “close and continuing association” with his Yugoslavian immigrant father, who subscribed to a Socialist newspaper from the old country, and his left-leaning sister, who protested against war and racial discrimination.
On Oct. 20, 1953, Murrow devoted his television show “See It Now” to Radulovich and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade.
“The downfall of Joe McCarthy began with the Radulovich story,” radio commentator Daniel Schorr, a former colleague of Murrow’s, said Tuesday.
Lester Ziffren, 101, who broke news of the Spanish Civil War as a young reporter in Madrid and whose career took him to Hollywood as a movie writer, South America as a diplomat and New York as a public relations executive, died Nov. 12 at his home in Manhattan. He had congestive heart failure.
“Ziff” Ziffren was thought to be the oldest surviving reporter for the United Press wire service. He earned a place in the news agency’s lore for his scoop revealing that Spanish army units were in revolt.
On July 17, 1936, he used a simple code to defy censors and get word to his editors in London. His apparently scrambled message began: “Mothers Everlastingly Lingering Illness Likely Laryngitis Aunt Flora Ought Return Even If Goes North Later Equally Good If Only Night.” The London desk was quick to see the news in the first letters of each word — the army had launched its fight from Melilla, in North Africa.
One of his stories reportedly so angered Gen. Francisco Franco that Ziffren’s editors in London feared for his safety. The journalist arranged to leave the country with the Mexican ambassador.
Victor Rabinowitz, a lawyer who represented leftist causes and clients such as Alger Hiss, the Black Panthers, Fidel Castro and Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin, has died at 96.
Rabinowitz died Friday at his Manhattan home.
In a 1996 memoir, “Unrepentant Leftist,” Rabinowitz said he had been a member of the American Communist Party from 1942 — when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies — until the early 1960s because it seemed the best way to fight for social justice.
