Jack Whittier Barnes, born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1940, came from a strictly middle-class, middle-brow family.
His father was a commercial tire salesman and Barnes had one sister.
At high school, he was willfully ambitious. In his third year, he was treasurer of the junior class and sergeant-of-arms in his Hi-Y group (the YMCA), while in his fourth year he became vice president of Stivers High School Hi-Y, treasurer of the senior class, treasurer of the Ace Chapter and a member of the National Honor Society, a Stars and Stripes organization.
He belonged to the high school band, and did well academically; he received a scholarship to Camp Miniwanca in his junior year, placed in the upper 20 percent in the Ohio State history test, 11th in the state algebra test and was a finalist in the Merit Scholarship test.
He was also an ardent member of the Virginia Hollinger Memorial Tennis Club where he worked during his vacations.
As a high school graduate, Barnes had ambitions to study law at college and become a corporation lawyer. But this was only to be a stepping stone for other things — a career in politics.
Those who knew him at the time figure that Barnes had his sights set on becoming a Congressman ... for the Republican Party.
Early in 1957, Barnes wrote to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, seeking admission later that year. He accompanied his application with a two-page biographical sketch which said:
'As my high school days are rapidly drawing to a close, it is not so difficult as it first seemed to look back and find a few experiences to relate to you.
'I was born in Dayton and haved (sic) lived here all my life, thus being lucky enough to attend only two different schools, Lincoln Grade School and Stivers High School.
'I was born with a congenital loss of my left forearm, but I realized it was not a handicap early in life. I played basketball on my grade school basketball team and in my high school church team, played the trumpet in my grade school orchestra and high school band, and carried a paper route during my eighth and ninth grade years.
'During the summer preceding my freshman year I started playing tennis and with the help of a great coach, Vinnie Westendorf, I was able to progress enough to go to the semi-finals of the Dayton Public Parks tennis tournament.
'For my summer accomplishments in tennis I was awarded membership to the Virginia Hollinger Memorial Tennis Club of Dayton.
'This enabled me to participate in the Junior Davis Cup and tournament play in Dayton and gave me the opportunity to meet and make many wonderful friends.
'Tennis has been very important to me as I have played, followed and enjoyed tennis more than any other thing in my life.
'Toward the end of my Junior Year, I was fortunate enough to be awarded a scholarship to Camp Miniwanca, a leadership training camp in Michigan.
'I think this two weeks among some of the foremost professors and ministers in the country and my fellowship with young men from all over the United States has done much to shape my life.
'Their four-fold development program — scholarship, physical, spiritual and mental — made me realize the importance of a full well developed life.
'It is here while in a 'Choice of College' course taught by Professor Hoffman Erb of Ohio State University that I first got the idea of attending Carleton.
'Like most teenagers of my own age, my future plans are uncertain, but I think I would like to attend a Liberal Arts college of high standing, go on to law school and then become a practicing attorney and possibly venture into corporation law and/or politics.'
Camp Miniwanca was one of the cross roads in Barnes's life. Not only did it determine his path to Carleton College but also his future marriage.
It was in the bracing fellowship of the camp that he met Elizabeth Stone from Massachusetts, they teamed up again as undergraduates at Carleton, married and then were 'plugged into' the Socialist Workers Party.
His application to Carleton was supported by letters of recommendation by a number of family friends and teachers who declared that Jack Barnes embodied the honesty of George Washington and the integrity of Abraham Lincoln.
One referee wrote saying:
'Jack will be an excellent student and you will be proud to have him on your campus.'
The family doctor observed:
'He was third highest in his high school class — He has always been away above average in his entire life — Sang in boys' choir — Plays wind instrument — Always congenial — He told me he had a definite goal in mind and from his report in school to date, I believe he will attain it.'
A teacher wrote:
'He has held class office. Excellent in sports. He loves to be master of ceremonies and does such duties with exceptional ability.'
Barnes's arrival at Carleton coincided with a climate of dreary apathy on American campuses which was largely the legacy of McCarthyism and the Cold War.
It was not the students who decided to revolt against this, but the Carleton administrators. They updated 'student democracy' and introduced 'Challenge' debates in which students, staff and outside visitors would be allowed to import diverse opinions on US and international issues.
They encouraged the Carleton Student Association (CSA) to take an active part in scrutinizing tradition, customs, rules and procedures.
The deathly politics of the 'silent majority' was ended in 1961 when the CSA introduced a three-party system into student elections with candidates from the Action, Reform and Reactionary Parties.
Barnes not so much took part in this, he was groomed for it. He was elected treasurer of his sophomore class and attended the Student Leadership Conference which is a special annual gathering at which undergraduates discuss and meet with government and big business representatives about their future vocations.
He served as both secretary and treasurer and president of the Junto Club, a group devoted to training public speakers. He was co-editor of Manuscript, the student literary magazine, and editor of the Enquirer, a campus newspaper.
As recognition for his diligent services to Carleton, Barnes was made a member of Pi Delta Epsilon, the national journalism honor society, made senior proctor in his final year (1961) and given a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.
During these years at the Midwest's Ivy League college Barnes showed political views of only one kind — he was a Republican. In the 1960 presidential election he supported Senator Taft against President Nixon for the Republican nomination and then Nixon against Senator John Kennedy.
But whatever Barnes was publicly, there was something distinctly sinister taking place in the background. Early in 1960, the Ford Foundation paid him a grant to visit Cuba for nine weeks.
What criteria was used to select Barnes and another Carleton student, George Tselos, from the hundreds of thousands of American students?
What interest did the Ford Foundation have in Cuba following the 1959 revolution and the establishment of the Castro government?
The foundation was created in 1936 as a tax dodge, but it has since grown into a multi-billion-dollar arm of the Ford Motor Company's public relations and foreign policy.
More often than not, what's good for the Ford Foundation is good for America and therefore loans, grants and scholarships are co-ordinated with the US State Department.
When Barnes set off for Havana in April 1960 with his Ford Foundation traveller's checks in his pocket, there was a virtual state of undeclared war between Washington and the Cuban government.
In his book, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, Thomas Powers says that the plan for Castro's overthrow was put into action following a meeting between CIA director Allen Dulles and his operations chief Richard Bissell in March 1960.
'It depended heavily on exile efforts outside of Cuba (anti-Castro networks inside Cuba having proved will-o'-the-wisp) and on a military landing which grew in scale from a paramilitary, over-the-beach operation into a convention amphibious invasion with a fleet, an air force and 1,400 men.' (The Man Who Kept the Secrets, page 105).
Aside from the coup plot the CIA had also drawn up a list of assassination plans to do away with the Cuban leaders, some of them involving Mafia support.
In the capitalist press, Castro was depicted as America's No. 1 enemy and a demonic communist tyrant, and public opinion was being mobilized to near war hysteria.
So Barnes was not going on an exchange cultural scholarship to the sun-drenched Caribbean, he was going into a proposed war zone where the CIA was actively initiating a clandestine counterrevolution.
Back from their Cuban assignment, Barnes and Tselos wrote an article for Carleton's International Relations Club newsletter. This would indicate that the IRC was linked with the foundation grant and the supervision of the mission.
The IRC was founded in 1930 at Carleton to provide a forum for discussion on international relations. It survived and grew because of the large number of diplomats' sons and daughters who attend the college.
The Barnes-Tselos article marked the turning point in the evolution of the 'new Jack Barnes.' It was a two-page tribute to the Cuban revolution which richly praised Castro and liberally quoted from his May Day speech to the workers and peasants.
In the hallowed cloisters of conservative Carleton there had been nothing like it before, it must have been a bombshell. But it wasn't.
It was the cultivation by the IRC and the Carleton dean, Richard C. Gilman, of a new image and role for Barnes.
The article included such statements as:
'The people of Cuba — through the unions, co-ops, and their own militias were now engaged in the real revolution — the expropriation of the social means of production for society, not for the vested interests of a few, plus trade with all.
'This was the establishment of the revolution that the honest capitalists, the Catholic Church and the US government did not like.'
Had the Ford Foundation wasted its money and given birth to a Carleton revolutionary? No, this was an investment in a much longer-term project which was just beginning.
Barnes's 'conversion' from Republicanism to Castroism coincided with the launching of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York and the subsequent establishment of chapters in Carleton and other campuses.
In short, Barnes had been 'plugged in' to Cuba by Carleton administrators and the Ford Foundation, and from there to the revisionist Socialist Workers Party.
On June 2, 1961, Barnes received his BA having majored in economics. The main speaker was Dr. O. Meredith Wilson, president of the University of Minnesota, and the sermon was delivered by Dr. David J. Maitland, associate professor of religion and chaplain at Carleton.
On the same day, history major, Miss Elizabeth Stone, the vice president of the Tennis Club, also received her degree.
She and Barnes married soon after and then moved to Northwestern University in Chicago where he continued graduate studies in economics.
In all, 190 seniors received their BA on that day. For two of them it was their graduation as the first of the SWP's 'Carleton Twelve.'