John R. Rathom
Rathom's claims that his newspaper routinely uncovered German espionage plots were also later revealed as fraudulent, although his reputation as an heroic anti-German crusader endured.
He cut a large figure in the world of journalism and as a political spokesman advocating Anglophilia, anti-White ethnic sentiment, the Special Relationship, and anti-communism, while denouncing the League of Nations.
An exhaustive review of Rathom's accounts by the staff of the Providence Journal, the paper where he gained national notoriety, documents the problems in the historical record.
Under his management, The Providence Journal produced a series of exposés of alleged German espionage and propaganda in the U.S. Duped or willingly misled by British Intelligence sources whose information confirmed his own Anglophilia and Germanophobia, Rathom then exaggerated his own role in uncovering supposed plots.
In speeches at pro-British assemblies, he amplified the Journal's articles with breathless accounts of his journalists running undercover operations and thwarting German intrigues.
Newspapers across the United States reprinted Providence Journal exclusives, further magnifying Rathom's myth that he was directing a counterespionage cadre.
[6] The national press turned Rathom and the Journal journalists into national heroes, naming both the editor and the paper in headlines like these in the New York Times:[7][8] Many of Rathom's reports attacked U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's administration for failing to recognize and defend against supposed German espionage efforts, using phrases like "almost criminal negligence" to characterize the federal government's response.
In October 1917, Dr. Karl Muck, the internationally renowned conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was falsely accused by Rathom of knowingly having refused a request to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" during a recent Classical music concert.
[10] Despite having been completely unaware of the request at the time and always ending future concerts with America's national anthem, Theodore Roosevelt and many other US citizens took Rathom's accusations at face value and were furious with Muck, who, along with 26 of the orchestra's musicians, was accordingly arrested and interned at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, until he and his wife agreed to be deported in the summer of 1919.
Also in late 1917, the U.S. Department of Justice made it clear to Rathom that the government was concerned about his claims, criticisms, defaming the President, and taking credit for fictitious counterintelligence achievements.
Early in 1918, Rathom arranged to publish a series of articles called "Germany's Plots Exposed" in a monthly magazine, The World's Work.
First, they threatened to subpoena Rathom to testify under oath and name his sources before a grand jury, which would mean facing charges for perjury or contempt of court, or revealing how much of what appeared in the Journal was fabricated by British Intelligence propagandists at Wellington House.
Rather than testify, Rathom negotiated and on February 12, 1918, signed a lengthy statement in the form of a letter to U.S. Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory.
In essence, he admitted that the bulk of his sensational stories came not from the investigations of his newspaper staff but from British intelligence agents and propaganda operatives.
When it transpired that Navy investigators had authorized sailors to entrap their targets and even to have illegal gay sex in the course of their undercover work, Rathom railed against those responsible up the chain of command to Roosevelt and United States Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who Rathom had long viewed as a foe for his lack of enthusiasm for the Special Relationship and American entry into the Great War.
Rathom and Roosevelt had what the New York Times characterized as a "tart exchange of telegrams" over the issue of who in Washington authorized the illegal investigative methods used at Newport.
In July 1920, Roosevelt resigned his Navy post and accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for Vice President, making him an even more valuable target for an unscrupulous newspaper editor looking to sell papers and keep his name before the public.
Rathom charged that the Democratic candidate for Vice President had acted improperly while Assistant Secretary of the Navy in releasing sailors convicted by court martial of sodomy from Portsmouth Naval Prison and had destroyed documents relevant to those cases.
Rathom continued to maintain a high profile, addressing public meetings and rallies, some patriotic in nature[19] and others aligned with conservative causes.
[20] As an officer of the American Defense Society, he joined the campaign against President Wilson's proposed League of Nations, signing a statement of objections that pleaded for America to remain "aloof from all this pandemonium of tribal conflicts."
The recently defeated Weimar Republic was an easy target, and he chided English immigrants for failing to become American citizens, but he spared nothing in denouncing Irish-Americans during the Irish War of Independence, whom he called "that crew of hyphenates who seek to embroil us with Great Britain and who would be willing to see civilization totter and die if their hatred of England could thus be satisfied.
