Howard Fast, best-selling American author, Communist Party USA member, and journalist who in 1943 was the chief writer and editor of Voice of America (VOA) news, died on March 12, 2003. He was one of many Communists and Soviet Russia sympathizers who spread Soviet propaganda and disinformation in Voice of America programs during World War II. In his memoir Being Red published in 1990, Howard Fast bragged:
“I established contact at the Soviet embassy with people who spoke English and were willing to feed me important bits and pieces from their side of the wire. I had long ago, somewhat facetiously, suggested ‘Yankee Doodle’ as our musical signal, and now that silly little jingle was a power cue, a note of hope everywhere on earth…” 1
Howard Fast, 1953 Stalin Peace Prize winner, best-selling author, journalist, former Communist Party member and reporter for its newspaper The Daily Worker, decribing his role as the chief writer of Voice of America (VOA) radio news translated into multiple languages and rebroadcast for four hours daily to Europe through medium wave transmitters leased from the BBC in 1942-1943. Howard Fast, Being Red (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), pp. 18-19.
The photo shows him addressing high school students in Oswego, New York in June 1943.
During World War II the Voice of America was part of the Office of War Information (OWI). The photo shows his OWI Personnel Record Card.