[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

[[Page E78]]

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.

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