Ernest Cuneo
Ernest Cuneo was born in Carlstadt, New Jersey, on 27th May, 1905. He studied law at Penn State University. A talented sportsman, he played for in 1929 for the Orange Tornadoes in the National Football League. The following season he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. After retiring from football he worked as a journalist for the New York Daily News.
In 1932 Cuneo became law secretary to Fiorello LaGuardia, a congressman from New York City. The following year he was elected mayor of the city. In 1936 James Farley appointed Cuneo associate general counsel of the Democratic National Committee. It has also been claimed that Cuneo acted as a liaison between Franklin Roosevelt and Walter Winchell.
In July 1942 President Roosevelt established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under the leadership of General William Donovan. Roosevelt arranged for Cuneo to become Donovan's liaison officer with MI6, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of State. During this period he became friendly with William Stephenson, Roald Dahl, Noel Coward and Ian Fleming. Later, Fleming admitted that Cuneo provided him with the basic plotlines for Goldfinger (1959) and Thunderball (1961).
Cuneo was also friends with Drew Pearson. He leaked several stories to Pearson including one concerning General George S. Patton. On 3rd August 1943, he visited the 15th Evacuation Hospital where he encountered Private Charles H. Kuhl, who had been admitted suffering from shellshock. When Patton asked him why he had been admitted, Kuhl told him "I guess I can't take it." According to one eyewitness Patton "slapped his face with a glove, raised him to his feet by the collar of his shirt and pushed him out of the tent with a kick in the rear." Kuhl was later to claim that he thought Patton, as well as himself, was suffering from combat fatigue.
Two days after the incident he sent a memo to all commanders in the 7th Army: "It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospital on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards and bring discredit on the army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle while they, themselves, use the hospital as a means of escape. You will take measures to see that such cases are not sent to the hospital but are dealt with in their units. Those who are not willing to fight will be tried by court-martial for cowardice in the face of the enemy."
On 10th August 1943, Patton visited the 93rd Evacuation Hospital to see if there were any soldiers claiming to be suffering from combat fatigue. He found Private Paul G. Bennett, an artilleryman with the 13th Field Artillery Brigade. When asked what the problem was, Bennett replied, "It's my nerves, I can't stand the shelling anymore." Patton exploded: "Your nerves. Hell, you are just a goddamned coward, you yellow son of a bitch. Shut up that goddamned crying. I won't have these brave men here who have been shot seeing a yellow bastard sitting here crying. You're a disgrace to the Army and you're going back to the front to fight, although that's too good for you. You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. In fact, I ought to shoot you myself right now, God damn you!" With this Patton pulled his pistol from its holster and waved it in front of Bennett's face. After putting his pistol way he hit the man twice in the head with his fist. The hospital commander, Colonel Donald E. Currier, then intervened and got in between the two men.
Colonel Richard T. Arnest, the man's doctor, sent a report of the incident to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The story was also passed to the four newsmen attached to the Seventh Army. Although Patton had committed a court-martial offence by striking an enlisted man, the reporters agreed not to publish the story. Quentin Reynolds of Collier's Weekly agreed to keep quiet but argued that there were "at least 50,000 American soldiers on Sicily who would shoot Patton if they had the chance."
Eisenhower now had a meeting with the war correspondents who knew about the incident and told them that he hoped they would keep the "matter quiet in the interests of retaining a commander whose leadership he considered vital." Ernest Cuneo, who was fully aware, now decided to pass this story to Drew Pearson and in November 1943, he told the story on his weekly syndicated radio program. Some politicians demanded that George S. Patton should be sacked but General George Marshall and Henry L. Stimson supported Eisenhower in the way he had dealt with the case.
After the war Cuneo headed a group of investor who gained control of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA). By 1950 he had become president of the organisation. On 11th April, 1950, Drew Pearson wrote in his diary: "Cuneo thinks that I am nuts to go after McCarthy, claims the tide is in the opposite direction and that the entire country is determined to clean out the Communist. I agree except I think that the Communists have been pretty well cleared out. Now it has got to a point where anyone who was sympathetic to Russia during the war is in danger of being called a Communist."
Gaeton Fonzi, the author of The Last Investigation (1993), argues that Cuneo employed pro-CIA journalists like Virginia Prewett and Priscilla Johnson. In his book, Oswald and the CIA (1995) John Newman explores Johnson's relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Anthony Summers argues in his book, The Kennedy Conspiracy (1980): "For many years, Prewett wrote for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), a syndication organization founded by prewett's friend Ernest Cuneo, a veteran of the CIA's forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services... In 1963 NANA was severely criticized in a Senate Committee Report, for syndicating pro-Chiang Kai-shek propaganda written by a paid American lobbyist".
Cuneo was a strong opponent of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government in Cuba. He joined forces with Henry Luce, Clare Booth Luce Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, William Pawley, Virginia Prewett, Dickey Chapelle, Edward Teller, Arleigh Burke, Leo Cherne, Sidney Hook, Hans Morgenthau and Frank Tannenbaum to form the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC). On 25th March, 1963, the CCFC issued a statement: "The Committee is nonpartisan. It believes that Cuba is an issue that transcends party differences, and that its solution requires the kind of national unity we have always manifested at moments of great crisis. This belief is reflected in the broad and representative membership of the Committee."
He was also editor-at-large of the Saturday Evening Post and for many years he wrote a syndicated column, Take It or Leave It, which appeared three times a week. Cuneo sold the North American Newspaper Alliance in 1963.
Ernest Cuneo, who lived in Arlington County, Virginia, died after suffering a heart attack at the National Hospital for Orthopedics and Rehabilitation in Washington, D.C. on 1st March, 1988.
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Primary Sources
(1) Drew Pearson, diary entry (11th April, 1950)
Cuneo thinks that I am nuts to go after McCarthy, claims the tide is in the opposite direction and that the entire country is determined to clean out the Communist. I agree except I think that the Communists have been pretty well cleared out. Now it has got to a point where anyone who was sympathetic to Russia during the war is in danger of being called a Communist.
(2) The New York Times (5th March, 1988)
Ernest L. Cuneo, lawyer, writer and former owner of the North American Newspaper Alliance, died Tuesday at the National Hospital for Orthopedics and Rehabilitation in Washington after a heart attack. He was 82 years old and lived in Arlington, Va.
He acquired the Newspaper Alliance in the mid-1950's and was its president until 1963, when he sold it. The news service discontinued operations in 1980.
Mr. Cuneo worked as a law assistant to Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1931 and 1932, when the future New York City Mayor was a Republican Representative. Mr. Cuneo was the author of ''Life with Fiorello,'' published in 1955, which served in considerable part as the basis for the Broadway musical ''Fiorello.'' Mr. Cuneo was admitted to the New York Bar in 1932.
From 1936 to 1940, Mr. Cuneo was associate counsel to the Democratic National Committee.
During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services under Gen. William J. Donovan as liaison officer for the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and British intelligence. He worked with the Italian underground and handled special operations in the Western Hemisphere and North Africa.
