Tad Szulc
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Tadeusz Witold Szulc (July 25, 1926 – May 21, 2001) was an
Early life
Szulc was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Seweryn and Janina Baruch Szulc.[1] He attended Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland.[1] In 1940, he emigrated from Poland to join his family in Brazil; it had left Poland in the mid-1930s.
In Brazil, Szulc studied at the
Career
Early career
In 1947, Szulc moved from Brazil to
The New York Times
From 1953 to 1972, Szulc was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times.[1]
In 1961, Szulc reported on preparations for a US-sponsored assault on Cuba by anti-Castro forces - the counterinsurgency that would become known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. This reporting, and the stories published in the New York Times, have become the subject of a long-standing dispute about whether the U.S. government tried to suppress the story, and whether the New York Times went along and killed it.
In The Powers That Be,
Halberstam reports that as word began to leak out that Szulc was planning to publish an article about the invasion preparations, "
The Times editors agreed to remove the word "imminent" from the article, reasoning that the word was a prediction more than a provable fact. They also decided to remove the references to the CIA's role in planning the attack, changing the references to "U.S. officials." Perhaps most importantly, they decided to run the article under a single-column headline instead the four-column banner that had been planned - a headline which would have designated the story as one of "exceptional importance," according to the memoir of Times reporter Harrison Salisbury.[5]
According to Halberstam, because of these choices "Some editors in New York were absolutely enraged, and they demanded that Dryfoos meet with them. It was a very heated meeting. Dryfoos was clearly surprised by the degree of anger among his own people."[6] Nevertheless, Dryfoos held firm, and the "much sanitized" version of the story ran on April 7, 1961, followed by more reporting in later articles.
The invasion took place on April 16, and was crushed by Castro's Cuban Revolutionary Forces within three days.
According to American University scholar W. Joseph Campbell, the decision by the Times to "sanitize" its coverage has swelled into a mythical event in which President Kennedy called Dryfoos directly to demand that the newspaper spike the story, and Dryfoos agreed not to run it at all.[7] Given the publication of Szulc's article on April 7, that version is clearly myth. Campbell has also found no evidence in White House phone logs to support the notion that Kennedy called Dryfoos on April 6.[8] But his published findings do not refute Halberstam's assertion that Kennedy called Reston, and Reston passed on Kennedy's pressures to Dryfoos.
Szulc's interest in Cuba continued over time, and he published an in-depth biography of Fidel Castro.[9]
In 1968, Szulc was a reporter in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion against the Prague Spring.
Other publications
Szulc also wrote articles regarding Latin America for several other publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Penthouse, National Geographic, and The Progressive.[10]
Death
In 2001, Szulc died of cancer at his home, in Washington, D.C.[2] He was survived by his wife and his two children.[2]
He was a Knight of the French
Books
External videos | |
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Booknotes interview with Szulc on Then and Now: How the World Has Changed Since World War II, August 19, 1990, C-SPAN |
- Pope John Paul II: The Biography (ISBN 0-671-00047-0)
- Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer, Scribner, 1998 (ISBN 0-306-80933-8)
- The Secret Alliance: The Extraordinary Story of the Rescue of the Jews Since World War II (ISBN 0-374-24946-6)
- Fidel: A Critical Portrait (ISBN 0-688-04645-2)
- To Kill The Pope : An Ecclesiastical Thriller (ISBN 0-684-83781-1)
- Twilight of the Tyrants
- The Cuban Invasion
- The Winds of Resolution
- Dominican Diary
- Latin America (ISBN 0-689-10266-6)
- The Bombs of Palomares
- Portrait of Spain (ISBN 0-07-062654-5)
- Czechoslovakia Since World War II (ISBN 0-448-00007-5)
- Innocents at Home (ISBN 0-670-39843-8)
- Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (ISBN 0-670-23546-6)
- The Illusion of Peace: Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years, Viking, 1978
- Then and Now: How the World Has Changed Since WW II (ISBN 0-688-07558-4)
References
- ^ a b c d e Lewis, Daniel (May 22, 2001). "Tad Szulc, 74, Dies; Times Correspondent Who Uncovered Bay of Pigs Imbroglio". The New York Times. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Oliver, Myrna (May 22, 2001). "Tad Szulc; Foreign Correspondent Broke Bay of Pigs Invasion Story". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
- ^ Halberstam, David, The Powers That Be, Alfred Knopf 1979, p. 447
- ^ Halberstam, p. 448
- ^ "Sixty Years After Bay of Pigs, New York Times' Role – and Myth – Made Clear", W. Joseph Campbell, in The Wire, April 7, 2021
- ^ Halberstam, p. 448
- ^ Shafer, Jack (May 21, 2010). "W. Joseph Campbell corrects the record on 10 important misreported stories". Slate. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
- ^ "Sixty Years After Bay of Pigs, New York Times' Role – and Myth – Made Clear", W. Joseph Campbell, in The Wire, April 7, 2021
- ^ (in Italian) Cuba: vade retro perestojka Avanti! 24 maggio 1989.
- ^ "Collection". Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. Retrieved August 26, 2019.
External links
- Tad Szulc Collection of Interview Transcripts Archived 2017-04-13 at the Wayback Machine with Fidel Castro and other government officials in Cuba and with Cuban exiles in Miami, Florida, from 1984 to 1985, Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries
- Appearances on C-SPAN