Biography
John L. Spivak was an anti-fascist investigative journalist — author of 'Secret Armies,' exposing native fascist networks — who was jailed twice in one week in late March 1940 on criminal-libel charges, first in Coraopolis near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on a complaint by an ex-Dies-committee investigator. Handcuffed and, per New Masses, 'mauled' by police, he was held on $5,000 bail in prosecutions widely seen as retaliation for his exposés.
The dictionary gives the journalist’s fuller name as John Louis Spivak. It identifies him as a New York reporter and writer who worked as the International News Service correspondent in Berlin and Moscow and investigated fascist activities in the United States. It confirms the existing birth date of June 13, 1897 in New Haven, without adding a custody date.
Jacob Rader Marcus, editor, and Judith M. Daniels, associate editor, The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography, printed page 617 (PDF page 612).
