A very long chapter,which I decided to break down into at least 2 parts.Their dealings with the media are highlighted in these first 4 sub-chapter's,particularly one certain writer.The family's actions in tandem with some corrupt judges in New York against this writing was the start of Americans losing their first amendment right to Free Speech,but yet the Family was entitled to their free speech in this precedent setting incident dealing with Corporate entities...

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Bredin, the dapper husband of Octavia DuPont, wore many hats over the years. Since leaving DuPont Company in 1950 and later graduating to the board of directors, he had concentrated on real estate, the Artisans Savings Bank, Canadian companies (Terminal Warehouse, Ltd., and Baymond Corporation, in association with Reynolds DuPont) and had been vice-president of a secret DuPont family front for investments around the world (including Germany) named Penas de Hicacos, based in Cuba until General Batista’s fall to Castro’s revolution. Because he had financed many scientific expeditions for the Smithsonian to tropical colonies like the Belgian Congo (1955) and the Caribbean isles, often using his own yacht, he was named a Fellow by the institution; similar bequests by his tax-free foundation won him a seat on the board of trustees of the University of Delaware. But if there was anything that marked Bruce Bredin it was his loyalty to his adopted clan. It was Bredin who allowed his eight month-old baby girl, Aletta, to be used in a DuPont publicity stunt, photographed in her crib with the caption “Fingered by Uncle Sam” in an attempt to discredit the federal government’s GM divestiture suit.

Bredin’s reaction to the manuscript of Behind the Nylon Curtain was predictable: after a cursory review, he decided it was “unfriendly” 84 and delivered it to the Public Affairs Department of DuPont, where Vice-President Thomas Stephenson sent it on to Irénée DuPont, Jr., Bredin’s brother-in-law and fellow stockholder of Christiana Securities and director of GWDC and Wilmington Trust. DuPont’s lawyers also gave it a closer inspection and concluded there was nothing the company could do at that time; no immediate action was recommended. 85 Within a month, however, word came to DuPont through its informer, Marc Duke, that the book had been selected for distribution by a subsidiary of Book-of-the-Month Club, Fortune Book Club. 86 This meant the book would be widely distributed throughout the nation. Irénée and A. Felix DuPont noted “concern” 87 and, after Irénée left the country on an inspection of DuPont operations in Latin America, the Public Affairs Department swung into action, reversing its earlier wait-and-see strategy. Phone calls were made—not to Prentice-Hall, the publisher, as would be expected if there were to be demands for “corrections” in the text—but instead to an old contact, Robert Lubar of Time, Inc. (whose Fortune magazine DuPont mistakenly believed still controlled Fortune Book Club) and then to Book-of-the-Month Club warning that the manuscript had been reviewed around Wilmington by “family members and lawyers” and been found “actionable” and “scurrilous.” 88 Book-of-the Month Club officials quickly reversed the earlier selection by its editors, while DuPont over the phone denied Prentice-Hall’s accusations that the chemical giant had threatened litigation. After a hasty trip by DuPont lawyers to New York to confer with BOMC officials the following week, this denial was finally put in writing in a letter to Prentice- Hall, although it did not rule out a suit “if and when the book is published.” 89

The ruse apparently worked; a “chill” of the First Amendment’s freedom of press and speech settled in. Without informing the author of DuPont’s interference for over three months, Prentice-Hall secretly cut the print run by one-third so that the book could “not price profitably according to any conceivable formula” 90 and slashed the advertising budget in half. When rave reviews and the Delaware State News serialization (arranged by the author with a reluctant Prentice-Hall) nevertheless stimulated such sales that the first print run of 10,000 copies was virtually sold out within six weeks, Prentice-Hall’s delay in printing another 3,000 copies allowed many orders to go unfulfilled for weeks. Meanwhile, according to at least two sources from within the company, DuPont sent an official with a helper to buy up and remove copies from bookstores.

It was all too much for either the book’s editor, Bram Cavin, or Prentice-Hall’s own legal counsel, William Daly, to take, and they bolted, cooperating in an investigation by the New York Times of DuPont’s interference. The Times’s subsequent article, “Club Withdraws Book on Du Ponts,” in January, 1975, again stimulated orders that went unfulfilled, some in Delaware, until as late as March; by that time interest in the unavailable book had waned and Prentice-Hall refused to print any further copies, spend any more money on advertising, or to return the rights to the book to the author. (Although the book was quietly categorized as “out of print” by Prentice-Hall in 1976, rights were not formally returned in writing until legal pressure was exerted by the author in 1982.) DuPont, meanwhile, encouraged unfavorable reviews by circulating an internal company critique of the book among sympathetic media outlets; at least in one case, however, DuPont told the reviewers not to give Du Pont any public attribution. DuPont’s opinions then ended up in reviews with readers unaware of DuPont’s hand behind the scenes.
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/05/part-12-dupont-dynasty-behind-nylon.html