[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 18 (Friday, January 28, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E77-E78]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HONORING WORLD WAR II VETERAN AND LEGENDARY REPORTER MORTON A. MINTZ
______
HON. JAMIE RASKIN
of maryland
in the house of representatives
Friday, January 28, 2022
Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Morton Abner
Mintz, a World War II veteran and legendary investigative reporter who
turned 100 years old this week. And what a century it has been for this
great and modest man of exceptional gifts.
Born January 26, 1922, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mr. Mintz enlisted in
the Navy after graduating from the University of Michigan. He served as
Communications Officer and then Commanding Officer in World War II on
USS LST 505, which supported troops in the D-Day Invasion of Normandy
from June 6 to June 25, 1944; the Invasion of Southern France from
August 15 to September 25, 1944; and in the Pacific Theater during the
assault and occupation of Okinawa from May 29 to June 10, 1945, and
subsequently in China.
Married for 68 years to the lovely Anita Inez Franz until she passed
away in 2015, he has two daughters, Margaret and Roberta, and a son
Daniel, 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson. Following his service in
the Navy, Mr. Mintz became a newspaper reporter and editor in St.
Louis, then moved to Washington, D.C. to work at the Washington Post in
1958. He was to become one of America's most independent, highly
respected, and public-interested reporters. For decades he was a first-
class investigative journalist and peerless muckraker.
Widely recognized by his peers for his relentless focus on protecting
the public against both corporate and governmental abuses of power, the
prodigious Mr. Mintz covered a wide range of topics, including
anticompetitive business practices, automobile safety, air pollution,
the tobacco, pharmaceutical and medical device industries, waste and
fraud in military contracting, the corrupting power of the campaign
finance regime and the corrosive influence of lobbying and large
corporate donations on elected officials. He knew much could be learned
from covering seemingly obscure congressional hearings and reading the
fine print in legislation and administrative rulemaking processes.
Mr. Mintz' dogged investigative work repeatedly exposed corporate
actions undertaken to
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increase profit at the expense of consumer safety, leading to
significant government regulations that curbed corporate misconduct and
saved lives.
In 1962, he broke the story of how FDA scientist Frances Kelsey had
discovered the dangers of the drug Thalidomide, which led to the last-
minute banning of the drug from entering the US market and likely
avoiding thousands of horrifying birth defects as were experienced in
Europe. In the late 1960s, Mr. Mintz chronicled the inadequate testing
of the original birth control pills and, years later, tracked the story
of how a pharmaceutical corporation willfully ignored the safety
hazards of the contraceptive Dalkon Shield, causing serious injury to
thousands of women. He broke the extraordinary story of General Motors'
corporate surveillance of Ralph Nader, the automaker's biggest public
critic. He wrote about how profit driven decisions in the infant
formula business led to great harm in impoverished populations with
limited access to safe drinking water. And he reckoned with difficult
and indigestible truths, such as in a 1983 exclusive interview with
Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, who had served in the
Roosevelt administration, where he revealed some of the story behind
the refusal of the United States during World War II to bomb the rail
lines transporting Holocaust victims to the Birkenau or the Auschwitz
concentration camps.
Following his retirement from the Washington Post in 1988, Mr. Mintz
continued his work as a journalist and media critic. In 1993, he
exposed the failure of the American Civil Liberties Union to inform its
members that it accepted money from the tobacco industry and, under the
guise of defending free speech, also actively opposed legislation that
would ban or limit tobacco advertising and promotion. In 1999, he wrote
media criticism for Tompaine.com. ``Mort Wants to Know,'' and posed
questions that the press should be asking of presidential and
congressional candidates in the 2000 national elections. A Senior
Advisor to the Nieman Watchdog Project for many years, he also
contributed commentary to niemanwatchdog.org on vital topics including
military spending, congressional ethics and oversight, single payer
health insurance, pharmaceutical pricing, executive pay, corporate
welfare and the corporate shield that protects executives from
punishment for their decisions to market products known to be harmful,
as well as tough questions that reporters should be asking legislators
and corporate executives. He served as chair of The Fund for
Investigative Journalism for three years and on the board of Project on
Government Oversight (POGO).
Mr. Mintz was an active member of the Washington-Baltimore News
Guild. His bestselling book ``America, Inc.: Who Owns and Operates the
United States,'' written with the late Jerry S. Cohen, demonstrated the
pervasive and often hidden influence of corporate power. Mintz and
Cohen later co-wrote ``Power, Inc.: Public and Private Rulers and How
to Make Them Accountable,'' continuing their investigation of the
pernicious impact of unaccountable power in the interlocking corporate
and government realms. Mr. Mintz's other books include ``The
Therapeutic Nightmare,'' ``By Prescription Only,'' ``The Pill: An
Alarming Report'' and ``At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the
Dalkon Shield.'' He received many prestigious journalism awards
including Nieman Fellowship 1964, the Worth Bingham, Heywood Broun,
Raymond Clapper and George Polk Memorial Awards, the Columbia
Journalism Award, The Playboy Foundation's Hugh M. Hefner First
Amendment Award for Lifetime Achievement, (More) Magazine's A.J.
Liebling Award, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild award for
Public Service and for Distinguished Writing and the Association of
Trial Lawyers of America Special Literary-Public Service Award.
I have known Morton Mintz since the seventh grade when his son Daniel
became one of my closest friends. As kids, we all marveled at Mr.
Mintz, an old-fashioned gentleman with a golden pen, rock-ribbed
integrity and sparkling intelligence.
I commend Mr. Mintz for his splendid commitment and service to the
public interest always--whether the subject be consumer safety,
corporate and government accountability, or the truth about humanity's
wars--through his many decades of extraordinary investigative
reporting, I am proud to share a small piece of his story with my
colleagues and the nation.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing Mr.
Morton Mintz on the occasion of his 100th birthday for his exceptional
service to our nation, both as a patriot in uniform and as a crusading
investigative reporter in love with the truth.
____________________