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"The least popular publication at the Pentagon is the
Overseas Weekly ..."
"TWITTING THE BRASS"
Oct. 20, 1967
The least popular publication at the Pentagon is the Overseas
Weekly, a racy tabloid that caters to the G.I. and competes
with the official military paper, Stars and Stripes. It
is not so much the competition that bothers the Pentagon as the
fact that the Overseas Weekly never tires of twitting
the military establishment. In between gobs of cheesecake and
lurid crime stories, it exposes such eccentrics as the colonel
who was able to commit an enlisted man to a psychiatric ward
because the man had defended his friends at courts-martial. Or
the officers who punished two G.I.'s by tying them together and
leading them around like dogs on a leash. Not to mention former
Major General Edwin Walker, who was discovered by the Weekly
back in 1961 to be indoctrinating his troops with John Birch
Society propaganda.
In 1953, the Pentagon tried to ban the Weekly from military
newsstands in Europe, but Congressmen objected. Two years ago,
when the Weekly applied for permission to be sold at PX
newsstands in the Far East, it got a firm no. Last year, the
paper asked for an injunction against the ban in a federal District
Court, but the court ruled that the Pentagon could distribute
what "merchandise" it pleased. This month, however,
a U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the lower court and ruled that
the Weekly was entitled to a court trial to prove that
the ban amounted to censorship. The Pentagon has 90 days in which
it can appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, go to trial
- or drop the matter and start distributing the Weekly
in the Far East.
The ban has hurt circulation (30,000 in Europe; 15,000 in Asia),
but the Weekly has grown no less bumptious. ''We like
to hire a man in his 20's who has been discharged in Europe and
feels strongly about correcting military injustices," says
Editor Curtis Daniell, 32. There seem to be plenty of candidates
for the job, even though the Weekly pays reporters only
$70 a week to start - and beards are banned.
"If the Army sees a beard, they think you're a Communist,"
says Publisher Marion Rospach, 42, who got fed up with her job
on Stars and Stripes and founded the Weekly in
1950.
Along with a heavy dose of anti-militarism, staffers get a good
grounding in investigative reporting on the Weekly; many
move on to jobs with more illustrious publications. Pacific Editor
Ann Bryan, 35, formerly managing editor of the Weekly's
sister publication, The Family, is praised even by officers
in Viet Nam. Without sacrificing femininity, the comely redhead
has repeatedly gone out into the field under fire and written
knowledgeably about combat troops.
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