'The Rest Of The Story'

FBI File: Paul Harvey Was Nearly Shot

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Were it not for a security guard who was remiss in his duty, the nation might never have heard, or heard of, legendary radio personality Paul Harvey — because he would have been dead at age 32.

Harvey, who died in February at age 90, was known for his trademark delivery of “The Rest of the Story,” and had been heard nationally since 1951 when he began his “News and Comment” for ABC Radio Networks.

At the peak of his career, Harvey reached more than 24 million listeners on over 1,200 radio stations, and his syndicated column was carried by 300 newspapers.

But early in his career, Harvey narrowly escaped with his life when a publicity stunt backfired, according to an FBI file obtained by Newsmax through the Freedom of Information Act.

In February 1951, Harvey — then a reporter at an Illinois radio station — sought to publicize what he felt was lax security at federal installations by climbing a 10-foot fence and gaining access to a restricted area of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

His overcoat got caught in the barbed wire at the top of the fence, and he was apprehended almost immediately by a security guard.

He was held at gunpoint and FBI agents were sent to question him. An FBI document said Harvey was “questioned not detained.”

But Illinois presented the case to a Federal grand jury, seeking to charge him with “making public, information regarding national defense,” punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. However, the jury did not indict him.

The story doesn’t end there. The most intriguing piece of information in Harvey’s FOIA file is a report that the guard who seized Harvey was suspended “because he failed to open fire immediately.”

Leslie Groves, wartime head of the atomic bomb project, said the guard who seized Harvey “had every right to shoot him.”

Harold Urey, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry, said he was disappointed that guards did not shoot Harvey. Urey conducted research that aided the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons. Related work was carried out at the facility that later became Argonne.

And Harvey acknowledged in a radio broadcast that “I risked getting shot.”

Now you know “the rest of the story.”