publisher of International Services of Information in Baltimore; his son Clendenin Jr. was a sponsor of William F. Buckley Jr. and the Young Americans for Freedom. Ryan transformed The American Mercury in a conservative direction. Huie's experiment William Bradford Huie—whose work had appeared in the magazine before—had gleaned the beginning of a new, post-World War II American conservative intellectual movement. He sensed that Ryan had begun to guide The American Mercury toward that direction. He also introduced more mass-appeal writing, by figures such as Reverend Billy Graham and Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover. Huie seemed en route to producing a conservative magazine. William F. Buckley Jr., whose God and Man at Yale was a best seller, worked for Huie's Mercury, as a young staffer. In 1955, Buckley founded the longer-living conservative National Review. Buckley would succeed at what Huie was unable to realize: a periodical that brought together the nascent but differing strands of this new conservative movement. Antisemitic and racist takeover Huie faced financial difficulties sustaining the Mercury in this new direction. In August 1952, he sold it to an occasional financial contributor, Russell Maguire, owner of the Auto-Ordnance Corporation (original producers of the Thompson submachine gun). Rather than turn over editorial control to Maguire, Huie stepped down as editor after the January 1953 issue. He was replaced by John A. Clements, a former reporter for the New York Journal and Daily Mirror, then director of public relations for the Hearst Corporation. Within a short time, Maguire steered the magazine "toward the fever swamps of antisemitism", as National Review publisher William A. Rusher would describe it. The sale to Maguire spelled the end of The American Mercury as a mainstream magazine. It survived, steadily declining, for nearly 30 more years. Maguire's anti-semitism led to controversy and the resignation of the magazine's top editors after he took control of the editorial process in 1955. In 1956, George Lincoln Rockwell was hired as a writer, and later became the founder of the American Nazi Party. Between 1957 and 1958, William LaVarre served as editor. In January 1959, Maguire published an American Mercury editorial supporting a theory that there was a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. Maguire did not remain long as the magazine's owner/publisher, but other owners continued that direction. Maguire sold the Mercury to the Defenders of the Christian Faith, Inc. (DCF), owned by Reverend Winrod and