Since the question has been asked:
In his memoir, Biddle discusses Pound's broadcasts only in connection with
those of the ten other indicted Americans -- Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Mr.
Guess Who, Paul Revere, and the rest. He also says that he personally
wasn't much concerned about them. When Under Secretary of War Robert
Patterson urged him to indict, he says, "I said to Patterson that I knew
the Axis line, it was very much like the cranks and isolationists here:
scurrilously anti-Jewish and anti-Roosevelt, pro-Hitler, defeatist. Only a
few nuts paid any attention to it. But Bob thought we ought to take action
-- if we branded this talk as criminal it would stop people listening to
it. But why stop them, I said. It just made them mad, and probably was
helping the war effort . . . but I promised to take a look at it." (291-92;
ellipsis Biddle's)
Then Biddle jumps to the sequel: Pound in St. Elizabeths. Visitors, Biddle
says, "reported that he appeared to be sane enough unless something tempted
him into his old demonophobias that were the source and inspiration of his
treason: his abomination of democracy -- 'jewocracy' as he called it -- of
bankers, who were all 'usurers,' of President Roosevelt ('Roosenfelt,' he
would say venomously), and of the Attorney General, who had sent him where
he was." (293)
Jonathan Morse
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