Rebirth of a Realist

Rebirth of a Realist

William Sloan Coffin

Well, Bill finally is at peace. The last time I saw him speak he said he had about six months to live. That was at least a year ago. He would like folks to say that he was a pretty tough guy.
We had our differences about realism and how to apply it. Coffin was an ex CIA agent. He had been a friend of George W.H. Bush since his youth. They both attended Phillips Academy (1942), and he brought Coffin into the exclusive Scull and Bones secrete society at yale. As a CIA agent he spent three years in West Germany recruiting so called anti-Soviet refugees, and bring them to the US and train them on how to undermine Stalin's regime. Some of them were the most ruthless Nazis such as Radislow Ostrowski and Emanual Jasiuk The darlings of the Einsatzgruppen and Major Dimitri Asmowitch the Ruthless Nazi mayor of Smolensk. I could never forgive him for that. The Nazis destroyed my father’s hometown in Byelorussia.
Many left-liberals in the civil rights and anti- war movements never could take Coffin to their hearts knowing about his CIA background.

When I first met him I compared him with Cardinal Spellman of New York.
I often referred to the war in Vietnam as “The Cardinal's War.”Spellman saw the war as a We (Catholics) against the anti Christ Commies and no one had more influence on the Kennedy family than Spellman did. Coffin also put all Communists in the same Anti-Christ, enemy bag.

But like Doctor King,William Sloan Coffin finally grew into a Realist.
It was not easy for him to shed the Yale Seminary anti Communist, anti Christ brain washing, but I think the New Coffin was born when he learned of the C.I.A coup that brought down Mossadegh in Iran and the other clandestine operations that had nothing to do with Christian ethics, but were in fact motivated only by greed.

I used him on two or three occasions once as a keynote speaker at an open air
Anti war demonstration. As an orator he was surpassed only by Doctor King. On another occasion I produced a Public (Then Educational) television program that featured Coffin and the Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh. After the program Bill told me that he was unhappy with his performance. "“Nhat Hanh was talking about love and that’s my business, But I was talking about politics.” The subject was “War and the Church”
I remember the tear gas filled streets of New Haven and Coffin racing around trying to calm the “Crazies”. I remember the long talks in his office about violence and non-violence and the image of man. I also remember the chiding I got for a piece that I wrote titled “The religion of football.”

Yes, he grew into one of the most remarkable Realists I ever met. When I heard him say he only had six months to live I could not help but get very emotional. After the Historic “Freedom Rides,” the many anti- war demonstrations and speeches, the many arrests, are we not at war again? Are our school systems not just as segregated? Are we not just as divided? Rest in Peace Bill.

David Truskoff
Author of Rebirth Of A Realist.