Winston Burdett

Winston Burdett (December 12, 1913--May 19, 1993) was an American broadcast journalist and correspondent for the CBS Radio Network during World War II and later for CBS television news. He was born in Buffalo, New York.

College years

The son of a successful engineer, Burdett attended Harvard University. He moved through Harvard quickly, where he majored in Romance languages, graduating magna cum laude in just three years. He left Harvard at age 19 in 1933.

Early career as a spy/journalist

Burdett began his career at the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle", working therein for five years. The "Eagle"'s editors thought he was "too slow" for front page news so he did some work as a film and book critic. In the years before he worked at CBS, while working at the "Eagle", Burdett joined the Communist Party. His involvement as what he called an "ideological Communist" attracted the attention of the party whip who had orders from Moscow to find someone to cover the Winter War, also known as the Russo-Finnish War, from the Western side of the conflict.

As an ideological member of the party, Burdett was disillusioned when he met the liaison for his work as a spy in Finland - a tough, crude and offensive KGB man. Burdett didn't keep his disillusionment a secret.

At the time Persia figured heavily into Cold War political posturing. North Persia was occupied by the Soviet Union and South Persia by Britain. Burdett's wife Lea Schiavi, an Italian anti-fascist journalist, was a reporter in South Persia. One day her car was stopped in Azerbaijan (at the time a Soviet occupied Iranian territory) by a truck full of Russian soldiers who inquired about her presence. She was killed instantly. Burdett assumed the death was a result of his espionage work.

py work in Finland and beyond

Burdett detailed his involvement with the Communist Party and his work as a spy at a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee hearing in 1955. He first hooked up with Communism at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle through a group in the American Newspaper Guild. He joined the party in 1937. In January 1940, he was approached about spying for the Communist Party by Nathan Einhorn, a fellow reporter and executive secretary of the New York local of the ANG. Einhorn, a Communist as well, suggested that Burdett meet with Joseph North, the Communist editor of "New Masses", the journal of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). North told him of a mission and introduced him to a man whose name Burdett was not told. Through a clandestine meeting in a Union Square cafeteria he was told that his mission was in Finland. Finland had fought a 1939 Soviet invasion to a stalemate at the time. The clandestine contact was later identified by Burdett in a photo as the late liaison between CPUSA and the KGB Jacob Golos. Using his Eagle credentials and the Party's cash, Burdett arranged to travel as an unpaid roving correspondent.

Burdett left the United States in February 1940, and once he reached Stockholm he met a "Mr. Miller" who gave him $200 and orders to report back on the morale of the Finnish troops. Finland surrendered three weeks later while Burdett was visiting Finnish army positions. Back in Stockholm he met his contact, "Miller", who asked how the Finnish took the end of the war. Burdett told him that they were ready to go on fighting and "Miller" handed him $400 and thanked him. Burdett remarked at the hearing, "I was surprised it was all over."

Burdett's spy career lasted two more years, as he told it, mostly spent cajoling around war torn Europe waiting for orders that rarely came and contacts he often missed.

In Moscow he was told to report to the Soviet consulate in Bucharest. He reported twice, waited for weeks, but never received orders. In Belgrade he met one contact, who wore one glove and carried the other as proof of identity, but then lost track. In Ankara he reported to a Russian embassy official, "Madame," whom he met at a ball. When he finally broke off with "Madame" and the party in March 1942, he recalled that she "acted like a child who has just been deprived of something she enjoyed."

Work at CBS

Burdett was one of Edward R. Murrow's original "Murrow's Boys." He was hired in 1940 while still a member of the Communist Party, information he did not divulge to CBS until a loyalty questionnaire in 1951. As a Murrow cohort he helped pioneer the field of broadcast journalism through radio reports that he and the other "Boys" filed.

Burdett filed reports for CBS while covering the invasion of Norway, the Axis retreat in North Africa, the Invasion of Sicily, the fight for Italy, and the Allied capture of Rome. During the war, the Nazis kicked Burdett out of two countries, Finland and Yugoslavia, because he was so aggressive.

After being expelled from Yugoslavia, Burdett began working in Ankara, Turkey. It was here that he would do his most extensive spy work, all while on the payroll at CBS. While in Ankara, his wife was murdered.

Burdett wasn't just a spy, though, but was also a dedicated journalist. Once, while working based in Rome, Burdett, Joe Masraff, and a CBS cameraman from Cairo went into Yemen to cover a story. They vanished for four weeks with not a soul in the New York City office knowing where they lurked, save they went into Yemen. When the trio emerged from the Arab nation four weeks later, they emerged with what Marvin Kalb, the Director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University called "the most beautifully shot, beautifully written significant, substantive story about an Arab revolution."

Burdett retired from CBS in 1978 after 22 years in the Rome bureau.

Burdett's Senate testimony

Years later he told the story of his wife's death, which he speculated was due to his refusal to spy for the Soviet Union any longer, to New York Municipal Judge Robert Morris, in the early 1950s, and Morris encouraged him to speak up about the incident to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, where Morris had counseled a few years earlier. The June 28, 1955 testimony was damning as he provided a list of names to the committee of others who were Communists in 1930s, at least 23 other people were affected adversely by Burdett's testimony.

Burdett named ten other newsmen who were involved with the pre-WWII Communist Party "cell" at the Brooklyn Eagle. Of the first five journalists called at 1955 hearing before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, only one came clean about his affiliation with the Communist Party, Charles Grutzner of the New York Times.

Among the other journalists that Burdett named were David A. Gordon, of the New York Daily News, who took the Fifth Amendment 29 times. Other reporters included Melvin L. Barnet, a New York Times copyreader since 1953. Barnet lost his job because of his failure to answer questions at the hearing.

Another witness, Charles S. Lewis, who had moved on to become news director of WCAX radio and TV stations in Burlington, Vermont, was much more cooperative with the Senate panel. He admitted that "he had been living with this dark secret."

Ira Henry Freeman, a New York Times reporter and New York Herald Tribune Military and Aviation Editor Ansel Talbert also testified after being divulged by Burdett.

Though many at CBS considered him a traitor after that testimony, Murrow and the network protected him and had him reassigned to Rome. He became an expert in Vatican affairs and lectured students visiting Rome from the rooftop of the CBS building.

Once in Rome, Burdett also worked for the FBI as an informant. The FBI still has 900 pages of classified documents regarding Winston Burdett.

Burdett's testimony also prompted a wave of 35 subpoenas by the Internal Security Subcommittee, headed by Sen. James O. Eastland, in Nov. 1955. Of those subpoenas 26 went to present or past New York Times employees.

November subpoenas

This is a list of other newspaper employees subpoenaed in November 1955 due to Burdett's June testimony.

*James Glaser: a "New York Post" copy editor
*Clayton Knowles: a "New York Times" Washington correspondent from 1947 to 1954
*Benjamin Fine: "New York Times" education editor
*Alden Whitman: "New York Times" copy editor
*Seymour Peck: "New York Times" employee
*Robert Shelton: "New York Times" copy editor
*Jack Shafer: "New York Times" foreign desk copy editor
*Nathan Aleskovsky: assistant editor of the "Times Sunday Book Review" section
*Samuel Weissman: supervisor of indexers for the "New York Times" Index
*Matilda Landsman: "New York Times" stenographer and secretary
*Jerry Zalph: "New York Times" proofreader
*Otto Albertson: "New York Times" proofreader
*John T. McManus: general manager of the independent left-wing weekly "National Guardian", "New York Times" employee from 1921-1937
*James Aronson: executive editor of the "National Guardian", "New York Times" employee in 1946-48
*Richard 0. Boyer: freelancer who contributed profiles to "The New Yorker" and wrote for the "Daily Worker"
*William A. Price: "New York Daily News" police reporter
*Dan Mahoney: a rewriter for the "New York Daily Mirror"

Books

He wrote "Encounters Of The Middle East" in 1969.

Honors

*Overseas Press Club Award: (1959) For coverage of the death of Pope Pius XII and the subsequent election of Pope John XXIII.
*Sigma Delta Chi Awards: For distinguished service in journalism.

References

* [http://daggy.name/cop/bkofdead/obits-bu.htm Caskets on Parade]
* [http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/centers/dewitt/papers/archive/33/33_2.doc Whatever Happened to the News? by Marvin Kalb (Word Document)]
* [http://ehub.journalism.ku.edu/history/1940/1940.html Presentations on Murrow's Boys from Kentucky University]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n12_v45/ai_13952924 The National Review Obit]
* [http://archives.cjr.org/year/96/6/books-murrow.asp The Pathfinder, Book Review, Columbia Journalism Review]
* [http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=2-1402200269-1#product_details Lubertozzi, Alex, Bernstein, Mark, "World War II on the Air: Edward R. Murrow and the Broadcasts That Riveted a Nation," May 2003, Sourcebooks]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,891525-1,00.html Time.com: July 25, 1955]
* [http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807316-1,00.html Time.com: July 11, 1955]
* [http://www.raleighspyconference.com/news/Haynes%20CPUSA%20as%20Auxiliary.pdf#search=%22Winston%20Burdett%20soviet%22 Raliegh Spy Conference-- The American Communist Party as an Auxiliary to Espionage: From Asset to liability]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,861830-1,00.html Time Magazine article] , Jan. 16, 1956