How JFK Helped Pave the Way for Trump’s Crackdown on Dissent
Foreign Policy · Julia Harte ·
Warnings about transnational radicalism are rooted in the same accusations that sought to silence a renowned reporter decades ago.
Warnings about transnational radicalism are rooted in the same accusations that sought to silence a renowned reporter decades ago.
The Justice Department once prosecuted a U.S. journalist for coming home without a passport after a reporting trip to Cuba. He was charged with violating an obscure requirement in the Immigration and Nationality Act. As the journalist pointed out, dozens of white Americans had reentered the United States without passports for various reasons since the law’s enactment, but only he—a Black reporter with a penchant for muckraking—had been punished for doing so.
This happened in 1962, under President John F. Kennedy, and the target was William Worthy, one of the nation’s most distinguished international correspondents. A recipient of Nieman and Ford Foundation fellowships, Worthy had circled the world twice on reporting assignments—from Indonesia to South Africa to Czechoslovakia—and had been the first U.S. reporter to broadcast news from Moscow since the start of the Cold War. He had lacked a passport since 1957, when he visited China despite a U.S. ban on travel to the country.
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