01.15.08
Farewell, Walter Bowart
It was only recently announced that underground press pioneer and author Walter Bowart died from colon cancer on December 18, 2006 in Inchelium, Washington. He was 68.
Bowart is best remembered for co-founding, in 1965, The East Village Other — a seminal underground newspaper which he also edited for four years — and for his remarkable 1978 book, Operation Mind Control: Our Secret Government’s War Against Its Own People. He also co-founded the Underground Press Syndicate, an incredibly important if now little-known alternative “wire service” (actually, they mailed mimeographed copies of articles) that was a crucial nexus for underground publications of every size and description across the country during the pre-Internet ferment of the Vietnam War era.
If you’ve never heard of any one of these, then you really are not paying attention.
Mr. Bowart’s work has been a great inspiration to me for many, many years. My heartfelt condolences go out to his tribe, family, friends, and loved ones.
To borrow from the Columbia Journalism Review, a Dart goes to the New York Times, which chose to simultaneously impugn Bowart’s integrity and dismiss irrefutably established history when it published in their Jan. 14, 2008 obituary that in Operation Mind Control Bowart “argued that the United States government conducted covert psychological experiments on unwitting people.” [Emphasis added.] Screw you, NY Times and obit author Margalit Fox (or maybe just your dipshit editor). Walter didn’t “argue” the point, he quoted directly from the CIA’s own documents, which had been revealed thanks to a Congressional investigation…one assisted, it must be pointed out, by Mr. Bowart himself…and revelations only borne out in greater, more horrifying detail via lawsuits and subsequent publicly published interviews with agents directly involved in the crimes.
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