Catogate: Who's the Mole (Or Moles) at Cato?

     

This article was first published in the June-July, 1981, issue of Libertarian Forum, Vol. 15.3-4.

They seek him here They seek him there Cato seeks him everywhere.

Is it a man, a woman, a band, or…? That damned, elusive Friend of Candor.

~ with apologies to The Scarlet Pimpernel

In this world we must take our fun where we may. In the titanic struggle now taking place within the LP and the libertarian movement, the struggle over Crane and his Machine and his institutions, there is a fun aspect which we should not overlook. A few days before my own confrontation with Crane and the Cato power elite (see “It Usually Ends with Ed Crane,” Lib. Forum, Jan.-April 1981), many Cato board members and libertarian periodicals received a missive from a certain anonymous “Friend of Candor” detailing a power struggle within Cato between Crane and Cato Vice President Bob Formaini. The important point is that F of C obviously had access to top-secret Cato memoranda supposedly seen only by Crane and Formaini themselves. Typical of Cato, paranoia struck, and suspicion fell feverishly on one and all. Such is the atmosphere at Cato that one bigwig half seriously set forth the thesis that Crane himself was the Friend of Candor, since the revelation of a Crane/Formaini split served to solidify the Cato board against an “outside” or public enemy, thereby strengthening Cranels hand against my own case. Well, who knows? It is not a hypothesis that can be ruled out of court apriori.

But the Friend of Candor letter, apparently, was only Phase I of the underground war. For now Libertarian Vanguard has emerged, June 1981 issue, with a veritable battery of revelations about not only Cato, but other Cranian institutions: Libertarian Review and SLS. Everyone owes it to himself or herself to rush out and buy this sensational issue. (504 from Libertarian Vanguard, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102).

The issue contains not only an article based on the Friend of Candor letter, but also other articles grounded on damaging secret memoranda from Chris Hocker about LR, and from Crane to Glenn Garvin attempting to impose a more right-wing line on Inquiry. I also base much of my own critique of the Craniac SLS power elite on a number of secret SLS memoranda.

The most fun aspect of the Mole Question so far is that the day Lib. Vanguard came out, a copy was found on the desk of each and every Cato staff member when he or she arrived in the morning. Knowing the aggravated paranoia which infects the atmosphere of Cato at even normal times, it would have been great fun to have been a fly on the wall at Cato when Crane & Co., astonished, saw and read-this damaging and subversive publication in their very offices. Who did it? Who is the mole or moles at Cato? Frankly, I have no idea. What will Crane do? There was serious talk of changing the locks at Cato, but apparently cooler heads prevailed.

But the moles may be everywhere. For on that same morning, every SLS national officer and libertarian biggie in Washington found a copy of Vanguard on his office or at his doorstep. A case can be made that there are moles everywhere, at SLS, at LR, in Washington, even at Mother Wichita itself.

Who is/are the Friend of Candor?

Reprinted from Mises.org.