U.S. Loses A Great Patriot--And "little notes nor long remembers!"

Albert V. Burns
Thursday, July 31, 2003

    A great American patriot died this past Thursday, August 24, 2003. Only the "gray hairs" among us will remember even his name, let alone the accomplishments in his life. But the United States is the poorer with his passing.
    How many of you reading this remember the name: Dan Smoot? Dan was one of the earliest freedom fighters yet is virtually unknown today. Granted because of poor health and advanced age he has not been in the public eye for the past decade or so but we who knew him will miss his vast knowledge of those who were (and are) working diligently to destroy our Constitution, our sovereignty, our freedoms and those of the rest of the world.
    Dan rose from the most un-auspicious beginnings. He was born in a log cabin in Missouri in 1913, the son of penniless sharecropper parents. By the age of SIX, out of necessity, he was already hoeing and picking cotton in the fields. Even though his father was poor, he nevertheless taught Dan to read the classics from an early age.
    He was orphaned at the age of 11 and sent to live with an uncle who had little use for reading "and similar harmful influences." Dan finally ran away from home when he was 14 and had ten cents in his pocket. Having grown up in terrible rural poverty and near-starvation, he had few of the "social graces" although he was a physically tough teenager.
    Dan "bummed" around the country for a few years, learning survival skills from transients in the "hobo jungles" of the depression years. He finally wound up in Dallas where he worked nights and attended school during the days, finally graduating from high school as salutatorian.
    Because of his brilliant mind, he was able to earn scholarships which put him through Southern Methodist University. By then he had married his high school sweetheart when she was 16 and he was 20. Dan always credited his wife with patiently "civilizing" him and preparing him to move on to mingle with the highly educated leaders of this country.
    After obtaining a master's degree he went on to a teaching fellowship at Harvard where he ultimately earned a PHD in American Civilization. He might have remained at Harvard or some other university except that suddenly, on Dec. 7, 1941, the United States was at war. Dan tried to enlist in all three services, the Army, Navy and Marines. Even though his was in great physical shape he was turned down by all three services because of flat feet. Unable to get into the armed forces, he wound up joining the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
    By the time he left the FBI some nine years later he had been exposed to the knowledge that there WAS a conspiracy, that the conspiracy controlled communism and he had a great deal of knowledge of just who the masterminds were. Since he had been working in the anti-communist section of the FBI he had witnessed the manner in which high government officials, including Presidents Roosevelt and Truman had sheltered and promoted communists in government even after their communist activities had been documented by careful investigation. He had seen how the Office of Strategic services had been used to overthrow capitalist governments in Africa and Asia and install communist governments in their places. When the OSS was converted to the Central Intelligence Agency, it hired precisely those applicants which had been identified as Marxist agitators and how those individuals later destroyed many governments which had been friendly to the United States.
    Dan Smoot was determined to alert the American people to the threats facing them, but how was he to do it? He was fortunate to meet the fantastically rich H. L. Hunt who was already well informed about how many influential men (and women) in this country were seeking to destroy it. It was a fortuitous meeting since Hunt was at that precise time inaugurating his "Facts Forum" which was to be "an educational effort to reestablish America as an independent constitutional republic." After being hired as the head of Facts Forum, Dan eventually made it a tremendous success. By 1952 Dan Smoot was heard on 80 television stations and 350 radio stations reaching some 20 million people a week.
    In spite of that success, Dan was not totally comfortable with the format of Facts Forum since it, in an effort to deflect attacks from the far left, was set up to present "both sides" of the issues discussed. Believing that the mass media of the day was already doing a massive propaganda job in favor of the left Dan Smoot began his own broadcasting and publishing enterprise known as the Dan Smoot Report. This was just at the time of the communists' attack on anyone espousing Americanism, most especially Joe McCarthy. After a year of hard work, Dan's radio program was on only four radio stations.
    Again, a chance meeting with another rich patriot D. B. Lewis (where are such today?). Lewis was a fighter who was willing to put his money where his mouth was. Already the largest advertiser on the west coast, Lewis had to fight to buy time for the Smoot Report. Because of the fearless backing of Lewis and the hard work and obvious truth of what Dan was reporting, by 1957 the Dan Smoot Report was heard on 150 stations and had garnered 50 sponsors. At this point Dan was reaching some 16 million people a week in addition to those who were reading the printed version of the Dan Smoot Report. Incidentally, those printed pamphlets are a treasure trove of factual information of history, government, personalities, etc. of the 50s and 60s.
    In 1962, Dan Smoot wrote the first widely available source book on the Council on Foreign Relations called "The Invisible Government." Dan published the book with his own money. Although it was never carried through the normal book distribution channels and ignored by the mass media the book has nevertheless sold over two millions copies. Now, 41 years after it was first published, it is still an excellent primer on the CFR, its early members and methods, and the manner in which its members in government, academia, industry and the mass media were working to destroy this country.
    It was the federal government itself which finally destroyed the Dan Smoot broadcasting effort. The Federal Communications Commission, at the demand of the far left, issued its so- called "Fairness Doctrine" which mandated that any station which carried conservative programming HAD to provide "equal time" to leftwingers, FREE, of course. As a result, station after station was forced to deny air time to Dan Smoot even though HE was paying for the time.
    Back in 1956, Dan Smoot had met and become friends with Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society. Dan had been closely associated with the JBS in its early years and did some of his finest writing for the American Opinion magazine. In his autobiography, "People Along The Way," he stated: "The John Birch Society has become the brightest hope our nation has for the restoration of American constitutional government."
    Between "The Invisible Government" and "People Along The Way" Dan Smoot wrote several other books, "The Hope Of The World" and "The Business End Of Government." The cover of "Business End", rather prophetically, featured a hand holding a revolver aimed directly at the reader. Written in 1973, Business End clearly foretold the ever tightening stranglehold which the government would impose on businesses in this country.
    Dan Smoot was one of the most outspoken, fearless supporters of the Constitution. He was one of the valiant few who risked their all in the name of freedom: Gary Allen (None Dare Call It Conspiracy), John Stormer (None Dare Call It Treason), John T. Flynn (While You Slept), M. Stanton Evans (Politics of Surrender), Joseph McCarthy (America's Retreat >From Victory), Arthur Bliss Lane (I Saw Poland Betrayed), James Burnham (The Web Of Subversion), Dan P. Van Gorder(Ill Fares The Land: The Famine Planned For America), Blair Coan (The Red Web), G. Edward Griffin (The Fearful Master), Robert Welch (The Politician) to name just a few of them off the top of my head. Sadly, almost all of these great Americans are no longer with us. Even worse, they have NOT been replaced with others of equal abilities and courage.
    Most of the foregoing information came from Dan's autobiography and from review of that book by Jane Ingraham. In closing her review (1994), Jane Ingraham concluded with:

    "...Of all those in the original generation of fighters, Dan Smoot is the only survivor, his life having spanned most of the 20th century. He has seen and been a part of the whole show. He tells of ‘how business tycoons' financed huge rallies in the 1950s in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles where many thousands of people wildly cheered Senator Joseph McCarthy and other outstanding conservatives.
    "Where are such business tycoons today? Would it even be possible to have over ten thousand people show up to protest government perfidy? Have the American people lost their spirit of rebellion? Or will that long slumbering spirit soar again to the heights of greatness, once the American people are fully awakened to the attack on their liberties?
    "Dan Smoot does not reflect on any of this. Perhaps this is not his nature. Perhaps it has been enough for him to have been propelled by faith— faith in the fundamental necessity of man to be free to think, act, create, and worship outside the coercive bonds of government."

    In bidding farewell to this great American patriot, the Dallas Morning News expended exactly 98 words! That tells us a great deal more about the newspaper than it does about Dan Smoot!

    We, who knew you, will miss you, Dan! Rest in peace!

Contact Al at avburns@mindspring.com.