DENVER Below is the transcript of Colorado Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeens (R-Monument) speech on the opening day of the First Regular Session of the 74th General Assembly. Photo of Minnesota Sen. Ernest Lundeen, April 1940. ", On the afternoon of August 31, 1940, Lundeen was a passenger on Flight 19 of Pennsylvania Central Airlines, flying from Washington, D.C. to Detroit. Maddow: William Power Maloney arrested and indicted George Sylvester Viereck. 1890-1914, Guide to a Microfilm Edition of the Alexander Ramsey Papers and Records, 2021 Directory of Licensed and Certified Health Care Facilities (PDF), CHAIRMEN of SENATE STANDING COMMITTEES [Table 5-3] 1789Present, Minnesota's Scandinavian Political Legacy, Knute Nelson and the Immigration Question, History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier.Pdf, CAPITOL AREA ARCHITECTURAL and PLANNING BOARD (CAAPB) and the MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Federal Government President of the United States, Farmer-Labor, Minnesota) Senator Lundeen Gave This Speech Detailing the History of the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party on August 15, 1940, Norse Centennial in America from Bemidji MNS Newspaper, The Pioneer Sunday, August 1 2004 Page B5, The Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota Politics: 1918-1948, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. Note that he may make real-time changes to some of the exact language. All these sitting members of Congress. Senator Ernest Lundeen, a scandalous story had begun to unspool about how the Senator was tangled up with a Nazi agent. For most of our customisable plastic, metal writing instruments and drinkware, the enitre value chain - from design and production, including tool manufacture through to assembly, printing and logistics - is located in-house. Mr. Pretty soon were talking right past each other and the cacophony can only be described as noise. And some Americans didnt need much persuading. He should write books or something! Each state in the US elects two senators who serve six-year terms in Washington, DC, where they pass laws and vote on policies. All accusations of this nature are emphatically denied in the letters of the Attorney General Jackson and J. Edgar Hoover. Those of us charged with the burden of representing the peoples interests face a dilemma. In the bestselling Seven Habits of highly effective people, Steven Covey suggested we make more headway and create more good in life when we first seek to understand, and then to be understood. On each Senator's Home Page you will find his/her contact information, Capitol and District addresses and phone numbers, a map of the district, the Member's biography, a list of all the legislation authored by that Senator, his/her committee memberships, press releases and other publications, district links, and more. As far as prosecutors could tell, this D.C. publicist, and Senator Ernest Lundeen, and Viereck the Nazi agent, theyd all been involved together in a scheme to secretly disseminate pro-Nazi disinformation and propaganda. Send any friend a story. The members of Congress who were working with this Nazi agent, they were members of both the Senate and the House. Join our email list to receive press releases and other important news about legislation delivered straight to your inbox. "[5], On June 14, 1939, Lundeen joined a civilian and press delegation aboard USS Hammann for its sea trials off Fire Island. [10] Viereck's defense called her as a witness during his trial. The answer rings clear. Environments We help to create collaborative learning spaces. President, Mr. The biggest names really in Republican congressional politics, they all fall under the spell of this sort of Nazi propaganda operation. Maddow: After the plane crash that killed her husband, Norma Lundeen traveled to Washington D.C. He served from January 3, 1937, in the 75th and 76th Congresses until his death. The word senator has been used Maddow: When George Viereck was looking for a member of Congress to rope into his new scheme to have the Hitler government advance its work through the U.S. Congress, Senator Ernest Lundeen was perhaps an obvious first target for him. quotations . We are The Senator Group Senator Products Go to senator.online Allermuir Products Go to allermuir.com Discover What we offer _All Services Environments Global Reach Sustainability Services Learn more about our workplace consultancy. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States . George Viereck and the Nazi government were using the America First movement and America First members of Congress for those ends. Senator Patricia Billie Miller Senator Miller represents Darien and Stamford. Programming card from NBC News Radio cataloguing Sen. Ernest Lundeen's appearances in 1940. His excellent, excellent book is called Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States. Highest recommendation, 12 stars out of ten! Senator Ernest Lundeen: I have never heard a German, or a German born American, with the gall to ask that we help Germany, but red, yellow, brown, black and white races all are expected to die for the British Empire. In that demand for the papers, there is what could be read as an acknowledgement of guilt. The full episode transcript for Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra | Episode 4: A Bad Angle. Senator. And we have a responsibility to represent our constituents, as well as the principles of individual freedom, the wisdom of crowds, or said another way, market forces, and a constrained government that animates creativity among the people, and of course we have a burden to hear and amplify the voices of people from every corner of Colorado. I had not read about her or her husband before. What she was there to do really was, as she put it, something unprecedented in radio broadcasting. We face challenges too big to ignore and opportunities too important to fumble. A - Agriculture. She had essentially just been handed the airwaves at NBC, at the National Broadcasting Company, set loose to say whatever she wanted. But it's almost something from a James Bond film. We can ratchet up the noise of politics or we can elevate the level of debate. He was kind of their top banana here. In 1941 in New York, a big academic study was done of Germany's propaganda efforts here to try to figure out why the Hitler government was putting so much effort, so much money, into propaganda targeting americans. How many members of Congress were in on this thing? It turned out that Viereck also helped write speeches for several isolationist congressmen, including ghostwriting at least six speeches for Lundeen all of which came out during his closely-watched trial in early 1942, seven months before the Minnesota primary. That said, it's a longshot because, as Greg Brophy explained on today's show, the GOP would have to win 6 of the 7 currently contested seats. It helped him transform his scheme from a two-man band into a kind of assembly-line of Nazi propaganda being pumped out of the U.S. Captiol and into the mailboxes of unsuspecting Americans from coast-to-coast. Ernest Lundeen (August 4, 1878 August 31, 1940) was an American lawyer and politician. January 17, 2023 at 11:16 a.m. Below are the remarks as delivered by Gov. Lundeen was adamantly opposed to the United States involvement in World War I and campaigned on that stance. Perhaps that is why the Senator's wife, Norma, took that file from his office and hid it away in the days after his death, in the hopes that that secret would follow Senator Lundeen to the grave. Millions of Americans receive pro-Nazi, anti-interventionist content in this period. Occupation. Its meaning is derived from a very ancient form of social organization, in which advisory or decision-making powers are reserved for the eldest men. January 17, 2023 at 11:16 a.m. Below are the remarks as delivered by Gov. Norma Lundeen: A number of photographs of my husband were taken while he was speaking. Young: Norma Lundeen is going all spouse-proud and, "My husband was not a Nazi," saying things like that to the press. From Jan 1937 to Aug 1940, Lundeen missed 76 of 416 roll call votes, which is 18.3%. Amateurs were turning this stuff up, not the authorities. In the United States, senators are elected by voters to represent them in a state or federal senate. There was no Facebook, no Twitter, there was no news on TV. They asserted that Lundeens speeches were bitterly anti-British and vigorously against American preparedness. Whether certain foreign agents figured that they were about PROCEEDINGS and DEBATES of the SIXTY-FIFTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION, Exhibit 1 62-CV-18-254 Filed in Second Judicial District Court 1/30/2018 2:53 PM Ramsey County, MN, A Guide to the Records of Minnesota's Public Lands, Sixty-Eighth Congress March 4, 1923, to March 3, 1925. That's what they were expecting. The German agent would provide speeches to Senator Lundeen, Lundeen would then deliver on the Senate floor, theyd get tons of copies made, then the publicist would run logistics on getting those copies mailed out to the public. Legislative Council. But besides their connection to this German foreign agent, they did all have one other thing in common. Norma Lundeen: I am the widow of Ernest Lundeen, United States senator from Minnesota, who was killed in an airplane crash on August 31, 1940. But for this scheme to be truly successful, Viereck needed his propaganda to go beyond Senator Lundeens reach with his constituents in Minnesota. They were all being held in that D.C. apartment raided by William Maloney that day. Together we must find balance in our discussions and a willingness to look to that far horizon. It was disbanded when Derrick was only six, after that grouchy old ultra-Libertarian Senator Timothy de Illy They had failed to act on advance warning of explosions at American munitions plants, planned as sabotage. A special thanks to historian Bradley Hart. Hart: Many of these men begin sort of searching their own files, trying to find out what their legal exposure might be. Maddow: This turbocharged Viercks operation. Many were Communists, including Party chairman Earl Browder. Lundeens secretary arrived at the senators office on that fateful morning and found Lundeen slumped over on his desk: Hes got his head down on his desk, his head is To do that, within 2 days after the crash she travelled to his office in the Capitol to retrieve the "Viereck files". A copy of the Congressional Record from 1940, containing Sen. Ernest Lundeen's last speech on the floor of the Senate. Maddow: Once George Viereck was arrested, the members of Congress who had participated in this scheme, they knew that prosecutors were onto them. Norma then proceeded to falsely testify that she indeed took the Viereck files, but the files are gone due to a burglary that has taken place at their residence. But that was only step one. Letter from Attorney General Robert H. Jackson addressed to Sen. Ernest Lundeen's widow, denying that there was ongoing investigation into Lundeen at the time of his death. She threatened to sue one radio journalist who had reported a story about her late husband. She did not want the photos of his kids off his desk. William Maloney had managed to run up an eye-popping, 400-to-nothing record as a prosecutor there. Lundeens candidacy had as much or more to do with clearing her husbands name than in actually winning his Senate seat. People are thinking my husband is on trial, she pleaded in an anguished voice. It went on for years, right up until the day Lundeen died with one of Vierecks speeches in his pocket. And George Sylvester Viereck was the top German agent in charge of executing that mission in the United States. But the speaker was in fact doing something unusual. The Latin word senator was adopted into English with no change in spelling. That was classic Viereck. ICPSR #5839 Because apparently it wasn't just this one Senator, this one recently-deceased Senator Ernest Lundeen who had been involved. Because George Sylvester Viereck was not the kind of a person who ought to have been a long-standing close friend and work-collaborator with a sitting U.S. He was criminally charged for his role in the scheme that he ran through Congress, which was a shot across the bow to all the members of Congress who had helped Viereck carry out the scheme. Despite the bill's Communist origins, the party mustered considerable support for it, including from union locals, international unions, and state labor federations. Lundeen was carrying these pages when he died, and they were found near the scene of the plane crash. To commemorate the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and recognize the service of the first female senator in 1922, learn about the Women of the Senate. To the People of Colorado: We care about your familys ability to get aheadnot just survive. In 1906 he was admitted to the bar. And yet we must not mislead ourselves into believing that the government can solve all problems. He graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1901 and then studied law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Coloradans remain optimistic. Senators died in relative obscurity in 1983 at the age of 87. [6] Lundeen said the experience was "astounding" and that the test showed that American ship designers "need bow to none. This statement is malicious and atrociously false. An IPR Editorial January 6, 2021 Our John Brown Moment? So, though in many cases, misguided policies have created or exacerbated the problems of today, I am optimistic that when we more fully embrace the principles and values that have made this country and this state exceptional we change our future for the better. He was under federal investigation for, effectively, colluding with a hostile foreign power. He needed more pre-paid envelopes. senador. ( sometimes abbreviated to Sen. in titles) a member of a lawmaking senate. [3], Lundeen was elected to the United States Senate in 1936 as a member of the Farmer-Labor Party. Fr nhere Informationen zur Nutzung Ihrer Daten lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklrung und Cookie-Richtlinie. And so, newly appointed by the Attorney General, William Power Maloney decided to move quickly. Much broader. This was Vierecks life's work. Education. She later made a dramatic plea for justice for her late husbands memory, but was denied an opportunity to speak directly to the jury. If they could advance their career by playing footsie with Nazis, and if that meant winnowing away the strength of American democracy, then so be it. The Colorado Senate is just three seats away from a conservative check on the out-of-control Democrat agenda. Her name was Norma. They represented a bunch of different states, up and down the political spectrum. Maddow: It was just a bad angle. He said a lot of aspirational things about making Colorado better," said Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen. Postal Service at essentially their own cost. No one wrote my husband's speeches. In reality, a number of the most high-profile America First members of Congress were in cahoots with a paid agent of the Hitler government who was supplying them with propaganda intended not just to keep the U.S. out of World War II, but also to divide Americans along political lines, racial lines, religious lines, class lines, all in the interest of national demoralization." And members of Congress, importantly, were able to do that for free. We wont be able to fix every problem this state faces during these next 119 days. Like the charter airplane accident that killed DFL Sen. Wellstone, his wife and daughter and four others near Eveleth, Minn., Oct. 25, 2002, the accident that took the life of the 62-year-old Lundeen changed the course of Minnesota and perhaps even American political history. 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