Alexander Cockburn

His defenders charge that his criticism of Israeli government policies was behind the firing. Cockburn said he left the Voice following the offer of a regular column in The Nation called "Beat the Devil" (after the title of a novel by his father). After leaving the Voice, he wrote columns for the Wall Street Journal, New York Press, and the New Statesman. Cockburn was also a regular contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser.<br /><br /> Cockburn originally chose Irish citizenship (over UK citizenship), but in 2009 he became a citizen of the United States. Read Less

Cockburn contrasted that response to the response to revelations in 1989 that Graham had advocated destroying Vietnam's irrigation infrastructure, which by Nixon's estimate would kill a million civilians, if the Paris peace talks failed. The latter revelations, in Cockburn's view, received little press coverage, while the anti-Semitic remarks caused a media firestorm. Cockburn wrote that Graham's anti-Semitic comments were <br /><br /> consonant with the standard conversational bill of fare at 75 percent of the country clubs in America, not to mention many a Baptist soiree? But they (Nixon, Graham, and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman) didn't say they wanted to kill a million Jews. That's what Graham said about the Vietnamese and no one raised a bleat.<br /><br /> His critics quoted the final passage, reproduced below, to accuse Cockburn of spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: <br /><br /> Certainly, there are a number of stories sloshing around the news now that have raised discussions of Israel and of the posture of American Jews to an acrid level. The purveyor of anthrax may have been a former government scientist, Jewish, with a record of baiting a colleague of Arab origins, and with the intent to blame the anthrax on Muslim terrorists. Rocketing around the web and spilling into the press are many stories about Israeli spies in America at the time of 9/11. On various accounts, they were trailing Mohamed Atta and his associates, knew what was going to happen but did nothing about it, or were simply spying on US facilities. Read Less