Alan Cranston Article Index for
Alan
Website Links For
Alan
 

Information About

Alan Cranston




Alan MacGregor Cranston ( June 19 , 1914December 31 , 2000 ) was a U.S. journalist and Democratic Party politician and United States Senator from California. He was born in Palo Alto, California , earned his diploma from Mountain View High School, and attended Pomona College and the National Autonomous University Of Mexico before graduating from Stanford University in 1936.

He was a correspondent for the International News Service for two years preceding World War II . When an abridged English-language translation of Adolf Hitler 's '' Mein Kampf '' was released, sanitized to exclude some of Hitler's Anti-semitism and militancy, Cranston published an unabridged and annotated translation which he believed more accurately reflected the contents of the book. In 1939, Hitler's publisher sued him for copyright violation in the state of Connecticut ; a judge ruled in Hitler's favor and publication of the book was halted.

Before enlisting in the armed forces in 1944 as a , calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to allow U.S. participation in a federal World Government .

A '').

Cranston was Democratic Whip from 1977 to 1991 and an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination for the 1984 Election .

He was reprimanded by the U.S. Senate Select Committee On Ethics for "improper conduct" on November 20 , 1991 after he accepted $1 million in campaign contributions from the Lincoln Savings And Loan head, Charles Keating . Keating had wanted federal regulators to stop ''hounding'' his S&L. The committee deemed Cranston's misconduct the worst among the Keating Five . Cranston decided against running for a fifth term while he battled Prostate Cancer .

He dedicated his retirement to the global abolition of nuclear weapons, first through the Nuclear Weapon Elimination Initiative of the State of the World Forum, and then as President of the Global Security Institute, which he founded in 1999. He lived in Los Altos, California from his retirement until his death.

SEE ALSO



REFERENCES