The question isn’t who is Temple—no one knows that—but rather what is Temple. Is he a hero? Is he a vigilante? What Temple most certainly is not is a communist, as the junior senator from Wisconsin has recently suggested in a press conference. The mere idea is preposterous, and the senator has no valid evidence to support such a claim. Earlier, the senator asked, “Upon what meat does this, our Caesar, feed?” Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare’s Caesar, he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

—from Edward R. Murrow’s broadcast of

See It Now, May, 9, 1954

Today a bill has been passed in the Senate to require Temple to turn himself in to the federal authorities. I am coming before you tonight to tell you that I will veto any legislation of this kind that passes my desk. It is not the opinion of this office that Temple poses any risk to our national security. The complete opposite is true, in fact, as this office maintains that Temple is a hero and a patriotic American. As long as I am President, I will make sure he is protected just as he protects our country.

—President John F. Kennedy,

October 21, 1963

76 DEAD IN CENTRAL PARK BOMBING. HAS TEMPLE FORSAKEN US?

—New York Post headline,

July 17, 1997