Tadeusz Witold Szulc ( ; July 25, 1926 – May 21, 2001) was an author and foreign correspondent for The New York Times from 1953 to 1972. Szulc is credited with breaking the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Early life
Szulc was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Seweryn and Janina Baruch Szulc.
Halberstam reports that as word began to leak out that Szulc was planning to publish an article about the invasion preparations, "President Kennedy called Scotty Reston, the Times's Washington bureau chief, and tried to get him to kill it. Kennedy argued strongly and passionately about what the Szulc story would do to his policy and spoke darkly of what the Times's responsibilities should be.... Reston, somewhat shaken, called Orvil Dryfoos, the publisher, and passed on Kennedy's comments.... Reston suggested toning down the story and removing the references to the forthcoming invasion. Dryfoos agreed and ordered the story sanitized."
The Times editors agreed to remove the word "imminent" from the article, reasoning that the word was a prediction more than a provable fact. They also decided to remove the references to the CIA's role in planning the attack, changing the references to "U.S. officials." Perhaps most importantly, they decided to run the article under a single-column headline instead the four-column banner that had been planned - a headline which would have designated the story as one of "exceptional importance," according to the memoir of Times reporter Harrison Salisbury.
According to Halberstam, because of these choices "Some editors in New York were absolutely enraged, and they demanded that Dryfoos meet with them. It was a very heated meeting. Dryfoos was clearly surprised by the degree of anger among his own people." Nevertheless, Dryfoos held firm, and the "much sanitized" version of the story ran on April 7, 1961, followed by more reporting in later articles.
The invasion took place on April 16, and was crushed by Castro's Cuban Revolutionary Forces within three days.
According to American University scholar W. Joseph Campbell, the decision by the Times to "sanitize" its coverage has swelled into a mythical event in which President Kennedy called Dryfoos directly to demand that the newspaper spike the story, and Dryfoos agreed not to run it at all. Given the publication of Szulc's article on April 7, that version is clearly myth. Campbell has also found no evidence in White House phone logs to support the notion that Kennedy called Dryfoos on April 6. But his published findings do not refute Halberstam's assertion that Kennedy called Reston, and Reston passed on Kennedy's pressures to Dryfoos.
Szulc's interest in Cuba continued over time, and he published an in-depth biography of Fidel Castro.
In 1968, Szulc was a reporter in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion against the Prague Spring.
Other publications
Szulc also wrote articles regarding Latin America for several other publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Penthouse, National Geographic, and The Progressive.
Testimony on the CIA and the Israeli nuclear program
In June 1975, Szulc testified before the Church Committee (the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) regarding a story he was investigating for Penthouse magazine. Szulc testified that he had received information that the CIA's counterintelligence division, then headed by James Angleton, had provided Israeli intelligence with technical assistance and the services of nuclear physicists in the late 1950s, subsequent to the 1956 Suez War, to aid in developing a nuclear weapon. While Angleton confirmed that the meeting with Szulc at the home of their mutual friend Benjamin Wells did occur, he directly and completely contradicted Szulc's account under oath. When asked by committee counsel if he had denied the story about transferring atomic technology, Angleton testified, "I said, it is wrong."
Death
In 2001, Szulc died of cancer at his home, in Washington, D.C.