Victor Riesel (/rɪˈzɛl/;[2][3] March 26, 1913 – January 4, 1995) was an American newspaper journalist and columnist who specialized in news related to labor unions.

[4] In an incident which made national headlines for almost a year,[5] a gangster threw sulfuric acid in his face on a public street in New York City on April 5, 1956, causing his permanent blindness.

[2][3][9] While in high school, Riesel began typing stories about the American labor movement and sending them to English language newspapers around the world, charging $1 for publication rights.

[12] He enrolled in City College of New York (CCNY) in 1928, taking classes at night in human resource management and industrial relations.

Nathan Riesel was now fighting organized crime influence in his union, and despaired of keeping his local out of criminal hands.

[16] In 1952, he publicly alleged before the Subcommittee on Internal Security (led at the time by Sen. McCarran) that Local 65 of the Distributive, Processing and Office Workers of America was controlled by the Communist Party.

[16] The same year, he denounced Gambino crime family member Anthony "Tough Tony" Anastasio for engaging in labor racketeering.

[16] On February 6, 1953, Riesel spoke with New York University philosophy professor Sidney Hook and others on "The Threat to Academic Freedom" in the evening on WEVD radio.

[18] In 1956, Riesel began working with United States Attorney Paul Williams to rein in labor racketeering in the New York City garment and trucking industries.

[10] A slender, black-haired man in blue and white jacket stepped out of the shadows of the entrance to the Mark Hellinger Theatre and threw a vial of sulphuric acid into Riesel's eyes.

[22][23] On August 29, 1956, Genovese crime family underboss Johnny Dio was arrested for conspiracy in the Riesel attack, pleaded not guilty, and was released on $100,000 bond even though prosecutors later publicly linked him to the Telvi murder.

[28] When the trial finally began, Carlino and Miranti recanted their pre-trial statements and courtroom testimony, claiming they did not know who had ordered the attack on Riesel.

[5][35] Clark R. Mollenhoff, editor of the Des Moines Register, was so alarmed by the attack on Riesel that he ordered extensive investigations into trade union corruption.

[36] Mollenhoff's investigative efforts unearthed much evidence that Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa was engaged in labor racketeering.

[36] The attack also convinced Robert F. Kennedy, then chief legal counsel for the Senate Committee on Government Operations, to lead an investigation into labor racketeering.

[39] In 1941, he told the Union for Democratic Action that Rep. Martin Dies Jr. was intent on establishing a national fascist police force to suppress freedom of speech in the United States.

[42] At least one author alleges that Riesel even cooperated with the Central Intelligence Agency beginning in the early 1950s, providing information on liberal politicians and union leaders.

[44] He publicly called for a "preventive war" with the Soviet Union in 1951, and demanded that President Harry S. Truman drop the atomic bomb on Russia and China.

He supported Nixon in his column, discussed labor union issues and outreach to working-class voters with him personally over the phone, and occasionally met with Cabinet members.

[47] Even as late as 1973, Riesel was defending COINTELPRO, a series of covert and often illegal projects conducted by the FBI aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations in the U.S. suspected of disloyalty.

He strongly criticized Samuel Fuller's 1951 Korean War film The Steel Helmet for promoting communism and portraying American soldiers as murderers.

[49] He also attacked the 1954 pro-union film Salt of the Earth as communistic, and implied that the production's on-location proximity to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Nevada Test Site was a cover for Soviet spying on the American nuclear weapons program.

Along with Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell, he would meet privately with these individuals, assess the sincerity of their penance, and then work with them to help rehabilitate their careers if he believed they were being honest with him.

[4] Three men who leased coin-operated pool tables to establishments in California sued Riesel for libel in 1965, alleging that his column on racketeering in the vending industry defamed them.