Wesley McCune, 87; His Group Tracked Right-Wingers
Wesley McCune, 87, who founded and for more than 30 years directed a Washington-based research and news organization that tracked right-wing organizations and individuals, died Monday of congestive heart failure in Washington, D.C.
From 1962 until 1996, McCune produced a monthly newsletter, Group Research Report, operating out of a three-room downtown office crammed with file cabinets, newspaper clippings, hundreds of back issues of right-wing pamphlets and periodicals, and extensive files on the American right. He sold his papers and files to Columbia University in 1996, shut down the newsletter and retired.
Over the years, McCune became a regular source of information for journalists, members of Congress, labor organizations, universities, the Justice Department and political campaigns looking for ammunition against conservative opponents.
A reporter for Newsweek, Time and Life during the 1940s, McCune was executive assistant from 1948 to 1953 to Charles Brannan, the secretary of Agriculture during the Truman administration.
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