Edward Hunter

Edward Hunter (July 2, 1902 – June 24, 1978) was an American writer, journalist, propagandist, and intelligence agent who was noted for his anticommunist writing. He was a recognized authority on psychological warfare. Both contemporary psychologists and later historians would criticize the accuracy and basis of his reports on brainwashing, but the concept nevertheless became influential in the Cold War-era United States. Early life Hunter was born in New York on July 2, 1902. Journalism Hunter began his career as a newspaperman and foreign correspondent for the old International News Service. From 1926 to 1928, Hunter worked for the Hankow Herald newspaper in Hankow, China, and traveling in Japan and China during the Japanese invasion of Manchukuo and its detachment from China. He reported on the Japanese invasion of Manchuria before spending five years in Spain covering the Spanish Civil War. He later covered the Second Italo-Abyssinian War between Italy and Ethiopia and took note of the psychological warfare methods used in all those instances as well as during the preparations by Germany for World War II.