SESSION V
253
LANGHAM: I don't know exactly myself where it did come from
because I was in Madrid moat of the time during that phase of it.
But what they were going to do was to let the farmersthemselves
pick the area they wanted it brought in from, So they picked an
area that wasn't too lar away.
:
FREMONT-SMITH: You mean we don't hae any USA soil over
there?
LANGHAM: No, it wasn't shipped from this country.
local soi) that wasn't contaminated.
It was
SPEAR: One of the disturbing things about it, if [ read this correctly, is that apparently the suppression of news, the suppression
af information, was a very helpful factor in holding down any kind
of panic reaction; that if thie had been a more sophisticated local
population they would not have been as ready to accept the simple
word that ‘You're going to be all eight; you'll be taken care of,"
Thie ft find disturbing.
HOOT:
Well, they had had a controlled press in Spain for so long
that even if it got decontrolled, people would take a long time before
thoy would begin to read it, Newspapera in Spain are very rarely
read because they are governmert handouts and have been known to
be so for & great many years, whereas in Japan, ae Dr. Schull.
pointed ow, there's the most terrible competition lor news, The
‘ Newepapers themselves are so rich that Yomiurt, for instance, has
a whole pool af automabiles and when @ reperter was taking me out,
he just commandeered # car with a chauffeur and took off, You don't |
even have that in New York, Also they send two or three reporters
out on the same etory so that they can cut each other's throats and
get the best report possible,
:
DUNHAM: The beat in what sense?
ROOT:
[he most detailed with the most intimate pictures,
Re-
porters were piling in through the windows in the hospital, where
you're not even supposed to enter without permission. They were
climbing up the walle and falling through the windows to get pictures.
EISENBUD They carry aluminum scaffolds with them. They
will think nothing of pust rigging a ecalfold up to & second story butid-
ing and Jooking in a window, and nobody stops them, {Laughter}