A few weeks ago, Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald received an “Izzy” Award from the Park Center for Independent Media – congrats to him on the accomplishment. Well, as FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher notes, the award sparked an email to Greenwald from Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kinkaid:

Sent: Monday, May 4, 2009 9:10:55 AM GMT -02:00 Mid-Atlantic
Subject: Your “Izzy” Award

Mr. Greenwald:

It has come to our attention that on March 31 you accepted an “Izzy” Award from the Park Center for Independent Media, named for I.F. “Izzy” Stone. You called Stone an “independent” journalist.

However, as you must know, I.F. Stone has been exposed as a Soviet agent. This identification is based on information in the Venona World War II-era Soviet spy cables that a Soviet intelligence officer named Vladimir Pravdin had recruited I.F. Stone but that Stone had to be paid. Now, the May issue of Commentary is reporting additional evidence. See http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/special-preview--i-f--stone--soviet-agent-case-closed-15120

I am preparing a story about Stone and would like your comments and about receiving an award named for a Soviet agent. Are you considering disavowing or giving back the award?

Thank you in advance.

Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media

Greenwald's response speaks for itself:

Sent: Monday, May 4, 2009 9:33:54 AM GMT -02:00 Mid-Atlantic
Subject: Re: Your “Izzy” Award

Two of the most extremist and discredited entities in the United States are Commentary Magazine and Accuracy in Media. Someone who is smeared by those two groups immediately has their credibility enhanced. Don't you have Barack Obama's birth certificate to hunt down and Hillary Clinton's sex life to sniff around in?

Izzy Stone was one of the only journalists in America to challenge the government's lies about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, to oppose the Vietnam War from the start, and to relentlessly highlight the pernicious poison of the McCarthyite witch hunts, which are alive and well in the marginalized and irrelevant fringes of the Right, such as Commentary and AIM.

There is much dispute about what Stone thought in the 1940s and early 1950s, but what is not in dispute is that in one of his earliest newsletters, he wrote: “Whatever the consequences, I have to say what I really feel after seeing the Soviet Union and carefully studying the statements of its leading officials, this is not a good society and it is not led by honest men” and “nothing has happened in Russia to justify cooperation abroad between the independent left and the Communists.” Those anti-Soviet statements resulted in the loss of numerous previous supporters, a courageous stance that dishonest propaganda rags like Commentary would never take.

A publication with some actual credibility, Columbia Journalism Review, conducted a comprehensive review of the evidence and thoroughly debunked these falsehoods.

The fact that Stone is being smeared by the likes of the consummately chicken-hawk, nepotistic, bloodthirsty Podhoretz family and the truly deranged, sex-obsessed, conspiracy-monger Cliff Kincaid will make me place my Izzy Award on an even more prominent shelf in my office.

Glenn Greenwald