The Wayward Editor

For 30 years, Shanghai's China Weekly Review was a respected, independent English-language magazine. When Editor-Owner John Benjamin Powell died in 1947 (as a result of Japanese imprisonment and torture during World War II), his son John William Powell took over. Young Powell had different ideas, most of them Communist. He changed the Review into a monthly, converted it into a Communist mouthpiece, until it was forced to shut down more than a year ago because of currency regulations and shrinking circulation (TIME, Aug. 17, 1953).

Last week, back in the U.S., Editor Powell, 35, appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Fifty-three times he refused to answer, on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment, such questions as whether he is or was a Communist. But a parade of former U.S. prisoners in Korea supplied the answer.

In Red prison camps, they testified, prisoners were required to read the Review as part of their brainwashing. The magazine ran eleven articles in 14 months on alleged U.S. germ warfare in Korea.

Charged Carroll Wright Jr., who had been in Red prison camps for more than 34 months: "I really feel that in my opinion [Powell] is responsible for physical injury, and also I think directly . . . must bear some of the stains of the blood of the boys that did die there, and who did receive punishment. In my opinion I would classify him as a murderer." Added Marine Lieut. Colonel John N. McLaughlin, a prisoner for 33 months, "I don't believe that most of the Americans believed that any American was actually . . . editing that magazine . . . I still don't believe that any American citizen worthy of the name could do such a thing."

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