Last week, The Nation‘s London correspondent, D.D. Guttenplan, was back in New York City to celebrate the publication of American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone, a biography of the legendary independent political journalist. (We usually hate these sorts of comparisons, but if Stone had access to blog technology, well, let’s just say the results would be impressive.) Unfortunately, we were unable to attend the party ourselves, but one of the guests told us an anecdote making the rounds that evening, about how Guttenplan had been invited to a Washington, D.C., conference earlier in May where other scholars, working from the notebooks of a former KGB officer, claimed to have proof Stone was spying for the Soviets for a two-year period during the FDR administration.
Guttenplan has debunked the Stone-as-spy theory pretty thoroughly, so he wasn’t expecting to be greeted at the conference with open arms, but—so the story goes—he was told that while he wouldn’t be on the official roster for the conference, he’d have a chance to make his counterargument. So he sits through three presentations denouncing Stone as a spy, then when he begins his rebuttal, the moderator cuts him off just 90 seconds in. Guttenplan explained that he wasn’t just asking a question from the audience, and that he wanted five minutes to make his case. The reported response? Guttenplan’s microphone was shut off.