Facts Forum

Facts Forum, Inc., was a foundation at 1802 Main Street, Dallas, created by H.L. Hunt in 1951 to produce radio and television programs, a poll, and a magazine, Facts Forum News. It described itself as "nonprofit and nonpartisan, supporting no political candidate or party," and told donors that "such contributions carry a tax-deductible status." Hunt withdrew his support in 1955 and revived the operation in 1958 as the Life Line Foundation.¹

Hoover

On August 9, 1951, about six weeks after the founding, Hunt wrote to J. Edgar Hoover enclosing poll cards and asking the director to supply "two or three of the fine questions" for the polling committee. The FBI opened file 62-94811 on the organization. A New York office memorandum of March 10, 1953, captioned "H.L. Hunt / Facts Forum / Security Matter - C," noted that Hunt had been the victim in an extortion case in 1948.²

Staff and Board

The commentator was Dan Smoot, an FBI agent until 1951. Robert E. Lee, a former bureau man who as an investigator for the House Appropriations Committee had helped compile, with Jean Kerr, the list of names used by Senator Joseph McCarthy, moderated the first three television programs. He was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission under McCarthy's sponsorship, and Hunt testified at his confirmation. The editor was Medford Evans. The president was the Dallas lawyer Robert H. Dedman, with John L. Dale, Warren A. Gilbert Jr., and Joe Nash as officers. The advisory board in June 1955, chaired by Major R.A. Hanley, included Governor Allan Shivers of Texas, General Albert C. Wedemeyer, General Robert E. Wood, Hanford MacNider, and the actor John Wayne.¹³

The Reece Committee

In 1954 Representative Wayne Hays of Ohio, a member of the House committee investigating tax-exempt foundations, demanded that the exemption be lifted. "Facts Forum is not only a propaganda machine," he said, "but it puts up money to defeat people for Congress like me." The Internal Revenue Service gave the organization what the trade weekly Broadcasting-Telecasting called "a clean bill of health." A Facts Forum spokesman, Hardy Burt, wrote to Hays asking whether his "vociferous antagonism" was connected with the Daily Worker's endorsement of his candidacy in 1948. Hunt put 5,000 dollars on Hays's opponent in a later race and lost.³⁴

Life Line

In October 1957 a source advised Hoover of the successor program and asked for his suggestions on content. Hoover replied on November 5 that he could not comment. Hunt's office then sent him tapes of commentary "highly critical of the U.S. Supreme Court." Life Line was a daily program of fifteen minutes carried on several hundred stations, and more than four million dollars had been spent on it by 1964, deductible through the foundation. Its commentators included the Church of Christ minister Wayne Poucher and another former agent, Milton Eugene Scudder. The Reverend W.A. Criswell of the First Baptist Church of Dallas mailed its material to his congregation. The broadcast heard in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, concerned the confiscation of firearms under communism. A writer in The New Republic observed that "the brooding Oswalds of the left or right wing listen to and sometimes act on" it.⁴⁵

When The Nation published these details on February 24, 1964, an FBI memorandum to Cartha DeLoach two days later listed the former agents connected with "H.L. Hunt's right-wing groups," recited unverified file entries that Hunt was "reportedly a professional gambler" and was "alleged to have operated prostitution activities in Arkansas," and recommended "that the Director not see H.L. Hunt." A House subcommittee examining some 15,000 foundations, which had already found one serving as "a conduit for secret Central Intelligence Agency disbursements," termed Life Line "more political than educational or charitable."⁵⁶