Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 March 3

= March 3 =

Robert S. Allen
I was reading Robert S. Allen, having gotten to that article by way of Operation Mockingbird, which targeted him specifically. Apparently the man had a distinguished career in the military, being close to Patton and awarded the Silver Star, and then the press, and after he died, some documents came out of the Soviet Union saying he had been a spy for a few months in 1933. Our article now showcases this part of it. What seems fishy to me is that I don't see any reason why his temporary allegiance to the Soviets couldn't have been with the connivance of the US, simply as a means of feeding them disinformation. Especially once I read one of the semi-accessible sources which says that he had earlier joined the Ku Klux Klan in order to write an expose! Also that source says his activities were legal in 1933, before passage of the Foreign Agents Act. Can anyone shed more light on what was going on? It smells like we're being used, in a "he who controls the past controls the future" kind of way. Wnt (talk) 16:34, 3 March 2019 (UTC)