STALIN’S SECRET
AGENTS: THE SUBVERSION OF
ROOSEVELT’S
GOVERNMENT (New York, etc.: Threshold Editions, 2014)
By M. STANTON EVANS
AND HERBERT ROMERSTEIN
Rev. by Hugh Murray
The book is
readable and provocative. When
considering the results of WWII, the authors found the real victor among the
Allies was not the US, Britain, France, or China, but the Soviet Union. And the reason for this Communist victory was
not merely their performance in battle on the ground, but the influence of
their secret agents in Western governments promoting the interests of the
Soviets, especially during war-time summits at Quebec, Teheran, and Yalta. Moreover, Communist infiltration of the
British spy organization and the US Office of Strategic Services (predecessor
to the CIA) resulted in the betrayal of anti-Nazi (but non- and anti-Communist)
leaders in Poland and Yugoslavia.
The authors
note that during the war the pro-Communists demanded that US and Britain open a
2nd front in Europe to relieve some of the burden faced by Stalin in
the war against the Axis. However, until
1945 the Left never urged a 2nd front against Japan from Soviet
Siberia (not until war’s near end).
Indeed, the authors maintain that some of the American Lend Lease
material sent by the US to the Soviets was traded during the war to Japan, America’s
lethal foe in the Pacific.(59-60) The
authors explore how some policies, pressed by the Left, like the demand for
unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, may have made the Germans fight
more determinedly rather than surrender to the Western allies after their
landings at Normandy. By intensifying
the fighting in Western Europe, the Soviets could then conquer more in Eastern
Europe. And when unconditional surrender
was asked of Japan, again these terms played into Stalin’s hands. Stalin knew the Japanese wanted to surrender because
in summer 1945 they asked for his help in negotiating terms with the US. Despite the view of various American military
leaders that the US could defeat the Japanese without Soviet help, a deal was
made at Yalta, so that if Stalin would
enter the Pacific war withinin 3 months after the conclusion of the war
in Europe, 8 May 1945, then he would be rewarded with prizes of victory. To encourage Stalin, massive material was
sent to him so he could mount a major offensive against Nippon. Many Americans assumed that invasion of the
Japanese home islands would be extremely costly in the lives of both natives
and Americans. The American A-bomb had
not yet been fully tested. So there were
reasonable arguments to promise Stalin something if he would enter the war
against Japan. In August 1945 the
American bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviets entered
the war against Japan. Japan quickly
surrendered.
As a
consequence of entering the war against Japan for a total of 5 days, the
Soviets received south Sakhalin and the Kurile island chain. They were also allowed to occupy the northern
half of the Korean peninsula, occupy rail and other facilities in Manchukuo,
and confiscate Japanese weapons and industries in those areas. Evans and Romerstein write: “It was an
amazing coup that put not only China but other nations of Asia at risk of
Communist domination – among the most stunning diplomatic triumphs ever
recorded by one major power against another.”(201) Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin made the
decision at Yalta. The leader of the
Chinese government, Chiang Kai-shek was not even present as the other powers
moved Manchukuo from the Japanese to the Soviet sphere. Worse, a conservative American intelligence
agent who opposed Soviet intervention, Col. Ivan Yeeaton, had predicted what
might happen if the Soviets entered the Pacific War. His report warned that giving so much to the
Soviets in Asia would make Chiang Kai-shek’s position so vulnerable that China
might become the Poland of Asia to be overrun by Communists.(205) The Yeaton Report, if read, had no effect on
American policy. Indeed, American OSS operatives
attempted to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek to make way for the “democratic,” peasant
leader Mao Tse Tung.(152-54)
Evans and
Romerstein (hearafter, E & R) show how the pro-Soviet crowd in the Roosevelt
and Truman Administrations went along with lies propounded by the Communists:
1) that the thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals murdered at Katyn
Forest had been slain by the Nazis (although many familiar with the massacre
knew that it had been executed by the Soviets); 2) in forcing all Soviets who had fled Stalin’s rule back to
the USSR, the US pretended this was no violation of human rights; and 3) in
requiring use of forced German labor as reparations to the USSR, the US again
pretended such slave labor was no violation of human rights. (Unmentioned in this book but related is the
failure to get back American POWs captured by the Axis and then “liberated” by
the Soviets. Diana West makes the point that the US did not push for return of such
Americans from the Soviet sphere.)
Bottom line – E and R have made a powerful case for the extensive
Communist penetration of the US Administration of Franklin Roosevelt – a
penetration that not merely fed secret documents to Stalin’s regime, but
equally if not more important, by diverting American policy from action to
promote American interests into those which would instead aid and expand
world-wide Communism.
Pres. Harry
Truman famously had in his office a desk plaque inscribed, “The buck stops
here.” There seems an ambivalence by E
& R as to where the buck stopped under Roosevelt. For example, before the all important Yalta
Conference of 1945, Pres. Roosevelt asked specifically that one of the
attendees be Alger Hiss. At Yalta, when
Averill Harriman objected to some protocols written by the Soviets which
declared that “Moscow’s claims ‘shall unquestionably be fulfilled’”, Roosevelt
dismissed Harriman’s concern for we should not “haggle over words.”(208) When earlier Secretary of War Henry Stimson
complained to Roosevelt about his approval of the harsh Morgenthau Plan for
post-war Germany agreed to at the conference in Quebec, Stimson found “the
President ‘was frankly staggered by this and said he had no idea how he could
have initialed this.’”(183) And there
are other examples where after Yalta Sec. of State Stettinius reported, “FDR
was definite that we didn’t want to approve German labor for
reparations.”(191) But, it was in the
Yalta agreement. There are several
possibilities: 1) Roosevelt was very ill and allowed Communist agents to make
the decisions and was unaware of what they were doing in his name; or 2)
Roosevelt knew well what he was doing and chose his advisors because they would
do his bidding. Furthermore, FDR was a
politician – the only one elected by the American people 4 times to the
Presidency.
Look at
this from the other side for a moment.
In his 3 volume history of the 1948 Progressive Party, C. D. MacDougall
necessarily spent some pages on earlier campaigns. MacDougall was an activist for the Wallace
Progressive Party, and his bias is clear in his work. (Gideon’s Army, 1965, New York) Henry Wallace had been a mid-western
Republican but was made Sec. of Agriculture in Roosevelt’s Cabinet in
1933. Roosevelt had been elected with
John N. Garner of Texas, a conservative Texan, as his vice president. In 1937 Garner openly broke with FDR when the
Texan opposed FDR’s proposal to “pack” the US Supreme Court by appointing
additional members. Garner had little
influence on the Administration and gave a job description of his post that the
vice presidency was not worth a bucket of piss.
In 1940, when Roosevelt decided to run for an unprecedented 3rd
term as President, Garner ran against him for the nomination but lost
badly. Roosevelt replaced Garner on the
ticket with Henry Wallace of Iowa. Though
some party regulars were unhappy with Wallace on the ticket, Roosevelt asserted
he would not run without him. The
Democrats easily defeated the GOP ticket of Wilkie and McNary. Even in 1940 Wallace was deemed too far left
by many traditional Democrats, but their suspicions of him increased once he
held higher office. “Vice President
Henry Wallace [became] arguably the most prominent pro-Soviet political figure
of the time,.”(113) even visiting a Soviet gulag camp during the war and
praising it as a reeducation center.
By 1944
some believed Roosevelt’s health was in decline, and Democratic Party leaders
were determined to dump Wallace from the ticket and replace him with a more reliable,
regular politician. But much depended on
Roosevelt, who would be running for a 4th term. I do not recall the details, but it was clear
that while the President was reassuring Wallace of his support, Roosevelt was
also encouraging the opponents of Wallace to get in the race. Roosevelt lied. He was duplicitous. He did not demand the convention renominate
Wallace (or others he urged to run). Simply
put, Roosevelt was a politician, telling different people different
things. Wallace was dumped and replace
by Missouri Senator Harry Truman.
Reading
this volume, I find a tendency to excuse Roosevelt for much of what was done at
Quebec, Teheran, and Yalta in explaining the expansion of the Soviet sphere
throughout the world. Some imply FDR was
too sick, and their proof includes some jokes.
When Stalin proposed killing 50,000 Germans, Churchill objected, but FDR
urged compromise, shooting only 49,500.
FDR also suggested giving the king of Saudi Arabia all of America’s Jews
(aware of the Saudi’s attitudes toward them).
Clearly, such comments do not reveal sickness, but a sense of humor
prevalent before the puritan era of political correctness, when people were
allowed to laugh at a much wider range of humor. Similarly, the authors write that when conservatives
objected to major leftwing policies, like the US acceptance of the Morgenthau
Plan – Roosevelt tells Stimson he does not see how he could have initialed it
for approval.(183) But he did, and
according to the authors, though there was verbal backtracking by the
Administration, in reality the Morgenthau was the basis for American post-war
policy in Germany into 1947.(147) When
pressed, Roosevelt, without haggling over words, was continually endorsing pro-Soviet
policies, nor did he require Soviet agents to conclude his pro-Soviet deals.
There is
little doubt that E & R prove again that there was large-scale Soviet
penetration of the US Government under Roosevelt. But was FDR a conservative surrounded by
traitors who distorted his instructions for the benefit of Stalin? Or might these policies have been implemented
EVEN IF there was not a single Soviet agent in the US Government? Were these not Roosevelt’s policies?
How could
the US cede so much to the Soviets? “The
most obvious and most powerful influence of this [pro-Soviet] nature was the
President himself,”(112) write E & R.
They add that Mrs. Roosevelt was a progressive involved in left-wing
cases.(112) Moreover, beginning in the
late 1930s, in the State Dept. those who were known as anti-Soviet began to
lose influence, sometimes demoted, sometimes exiled to posts in South America
or other distant, and less important assignments. Some blamed these purges on Mrs. Roosevelt
and Presidential advisor Harry Hopkins.
Just before Yalta when Roosevelt asked specifically for Alger Hiss to
attend the important conference, rather than his more experienced but
conservative superior at State, this request may not indicate “conspiracy,” but
simply Roosevelt selecting people who agree with him to go with him – though in
this case Hiss happened to be a Soviet agent.
But if Hiss had not been available, perhaps another, non-agent, would
have been drafted by the President to devise the same pro-Soviet policies. I agree with E & R that Soviet penetration
of the US Govt. was probably much greater then already revealed. The authors note that only 3,000 Venona decrypts
have been decoded out of hundreds of thousands, so the possibility of their
having been many more Soviet spies and agents then we know is most likely.(252-53)
Although
the authors devoted little space to the Communist Party, USA, it is worth
considering their opinion. “As the
record clearly shows, communists and fellow travelers on official rosters in
case after case were agents of the Soviet Union,…striving to promote the casue
of dictator Stalin. This is of course
contrary to the notion that American Reds were simply idealistic do-gooders,
perhaps a bit misguided but devoted to peace and social justice, and thus
shouldn’t have been ousted from government jobs because of their
opinions.”(4) The authors summarize
their view: “The CPs more important Cold War role [was] as 5th
columnist agent of a hostile foreign power.”(89) In their assessment, the CPUSA created
various front groups to reach a larger section of Americans. With those front organizations a conveyer
belt was established so that from the fronts, some will join the CP, and from
the CP, some (if not all) will pledge primary allegiance to the working class
leadership emanating from Moscow, and some of these will become spies or 5th
column agents of influence. Admittedly,
from Moscow’s perspective, this may have been the primary function of the front
groups and of the CPUSA itself. And
Moscow subsidized the American party for decades, as we now know. The USSR created and financed the CPUSA and
some of its front groups for the good of the USSR.
But does
the child always serve the interest of the parent? In 1931 several young Blacks were accused of
raping 2 white women aboard a freight train in Alabama. They were quickly found guilty, and 8 of the
9 sentenced to death. Enter the
International Labor Defense, a Communist front.
Using a combination of hiring top-notch attorneys for inside the court,
plus mass agitation outside the courtroom, the ILD made the Scottsboro case
into the most famous rape case of the 20th century. ILD attorneys appealed the case to the US
Supreme Court twice, and won significant rulings concerning the right to
adequate defense lawyers and exposing the exclusion of Blacks from jury
rolls. A CP-front group changed American
Constitutional history in the 1930s. And
for the better!
Decades
later, the FBI was taping the phone calls of a man deemed a secret member of
the CP and a major financial officer of that organization. Listening in, the FBI overheard Stanley Levison
talking with and advising a Black minister in the South regarding civil rights
tactics. And so the FBI wanted to also
have a tap on the phone of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., which Atty. Gen.
Robert Kennedy then approved. The point
is that King was receiving some advice from Levison and other Communists, and
it is probable that some of King’s writings were ghosted by Levison. Once again, one may argue that the American
CP had influence on the larger American society, and for the better.
In 1948
Henry Wallace ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket, against
Democrat Truman, Republican Dewey, and States’ Rights (Dixiecrat)
Thurmond. Truman and many others accused
the PP of being dominated by the CP, and Lillian Hellman in one of her memoirs
recalls being asked by investigators if she was or had ever been a member of
the CP or the PP. The Progressive Party
was considered by many to be a CP front group.
Yet, the Henry Wallace, PP campaign tour of the South in 1948, with the
support of the National Negro Congress, the Civil Rights Congress, the Southern
Conference on Human Welfare and the Southern Negro Youth Congress WAS the civil
rights movement of that era. Not only
did Wallace refuse to speak to segregated audiences, but he roused enthusiasm
for integration. He also roused the
hatred of the segregationists and had dozens of rotten tomatoes and eggs hurled
at him. His VP candidate, Sen. Glen
Taylor of Idaho, was arrested in Birmingham for entering the Negro entrance of
a building for a rally of the SNYC, which was pronounced snick. The arresting officer in charge was Bull
Connor. If you look at the PP campaign
in the South of 1948, you will suddenly be aware that many of the names will
resurface with the later civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Rosa Parks attended radical Highlander Folk
School in Tennessee for training in how to oppose segregation before she was
arrested on the bus in Montgomery.
Highlander sometimes had Communists participants, and one sat beside
Rev. King when he attended. Bottom line,
the Communists and Progressives were some of the most dedicated to civil rights
in the South. They get no credit for it,
because when the movement reawoke, it was judged necessary to hide the
connections between the old left and the new.
But sometimes, one could note the connection. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee that was so involved in the Southern sit-ins of the early was also
known as “snick,” the same as the front-group, the Southern Negro Youth
Congress. In promoting civil rights,
once again I would contend the CP and its fronts helped America.
I do not
contend that all the tactics of the CPUSA and its front groups and its attempts
to penetrate various organizations were always successful, or that they were
always good for those groups or America.
Indeed, years ago wrote an article critical of the CP tactics in the
American Irish movement. Communists
provided crucial organizers in organizing the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (the CIO once had millions of members), struggled for equal
rights for various ethnic groups, and probably changed America more than mose
of us know or would like to admit.
What the
Communists brought to a movement was knowledge of how to organize. They had members trained in how to write and
set up a movement flyer or newspaper, and they had contacts with the wider
media. They knew how to run meetings,
etc. And most importantly, many of them
were brave. Some of the bravest people I
have known have been Communists. But
bravery and experience was subsidized by and entangle with and ultimately
subordinate to the demands of a foreign government. I certainly am not saying that every member
of a front group was a Stalinist agent.
I am not saying that about every member of the CP. But I recall the memoir of North Carolina CP
leader Junius Scales, who acknowledged that he had never been asked to spy by
the party, but he was unsure how he would have answered if asked.(See my review
of Cause at Heart, in Labor History, Winter 1989).
So to the E
& R linear formula: from front group into the CP and into an agent, I respond
that it was more complex; moreover, some of the accomplishments of the fronts
and even of the CP were good for America overall. Of course, in the end there are virtues beyond
bravery and knowing how to organize.
Communist parties world-wide were responsible for the deaths of about
100 million, and even in the US, according to E & R, one comrade lost
influence when he failed to kill Elizabeth Bentley, who would go on to expose many
of the agents discussed in this book.
When handsome actor Ronald Reagan came in conflict with the Communists
in his union, one threatened to ruin his career by tossing acid on his
face. And Whittaker Chambers decided to
expose Communist agents in part because he believed the Party responsible for
murdering an American comrade during the Soviet purges of the 1930s.
Finally, a
most important point re history – what is kept in government files? E & R observe how in the early stages
some reports are classified top secret, and thus unavailable to the public (and
often to Congress as well). Over time,
some elements are then redacted. Then,
the report may disappear altogether.
Sometimes, files were ordered to be destroyed, as in WWII when the Roosevelt
Administration defied the laws excluding Communists from government
positions. Communists were hired,
sometimes when other agencies were absorbed into larger ones, as when the OSS
was merged with the State Dept. and no security checks were made. Thus, members of the OSS, heavily penetrated
by Communists, were suddenly working for the American State Dept. The Roosevelt Administration also ordered the
destruction of security files on Communists and alleged spies – so many
security files which would show the depth of Communist infiltration disappeared
on government orders. The justification,
the aims of the US and the Communists were identical in the midst of WWII. In a previous work Evans notes how
occasionally those suspected of treason were allowed into classified areas, and
they apparently removed damaging material from their own files. Also, in Evans’, Blacklisted by History (New York, 2007), he demonstrates that
Presidents Truman and Eisenhower used the notion of Executive Privilege to block
Congressional investigators from acquiring files which might prove their cases
against alleged Soviet agents. (Evans
also contrasted the media reaction which praised Ike for protecting the power
of the Executive (thereby shielding accused foreign agents), with how the media
denounced Nixon for invoking Executive Privilege to cover the crimes of
Watergate.
In this
book, E & R show that the Truman Justice Dept engaged in a “fix” in the
Grand Jury that resulted in John S. Service walking away free despite stealing
State Dept. papers. Service had also
used his position in China to boost the “democratic” Mao insurgents against the
“corrupt” forces of Chiang Kai-shek. In
the end, American aid to Chiang was curtailed.
The Truman Justice Dept. also sabotaged another Grand Jury case
involving the accusations of a spy network by Elizabeth Bentley. Worse, Truman’s Justice Dept. preferred to
ignore Soviet agent Alger Hiss, while attempting to indict his accuser, the
whistleblower Whittaker Chambers, for perjury.
And the authors give an example of what can happen to files that the
Soviets found offensive. An American POW
was in Poland when the Germans discovered the Katyn grave site, in which
thousands of Polish officers had been killed by the Soviets. “…on his return to the US [he] filed a report
to this effect with his superiors in the Army.
This report…would be concealed from view, labeled ‘top secret,’ then
disappear entirely.”(172)
Disappearing
files and files that may still be classified so neither public nor Congress may
examine them – interesting. Earlier this
year WGN Chicago/America televised a series, “Manhattan,” about the project to
build the Atomic bomb in the American Southwest. One of the heroes of the series is J. Robert
Oppenheimer. His wife was a member of
the CP. So was his brother. Now we know he himself was a secret member of
the CP. Might this membership have urged
him to share secrets with our Soviet ally?(253-54) Is there more on Oppenheimer in secret
files? Remember, in 2012 Russian leader
Putin praised all the Western atomic scientists who shared their secrets with
the Soviets. He bragged that they had received
suitcases full of atomic secrets. Were
Fuchs and Hall and the Rosenbergs the only culprits?
Back to
secret files that are closed and may eventually disappear. I have mentioned the contact of Martin Luther
King with various American Communists, some of whom advised him. Why are 900 pages of FBI files on King closed
until 2027? Is it merely because of his
sexual escapades? Or because of his relations
with Communists? When the files are
finally opened, will they be empty? Or
watered down?
Missing
from the files? What about the brain of Pres.
John Kennedy? Those who support the
official version that Oswald did it alone, assert that Atty. Gen Robert Kennedy
wanted the brain buried with his brother’s body. Perhaps.
Or, the brain may have provided evidence that contradicted the official
theory of the Warren Commission. One
researcher for a later Congressional probe of the assassination alleged that he
had seen a film showing a training camp north of New Orleans in summer
1963. The men were anti-Castro militants
preparing for a renewed military assault on Cuba. Among these anti-Castroites was Lee
Oswald. Then, Congress shook up the
leadership of the investigating committee followed by firings of some
investigators. Before he quit, he noted
that that film had disappeared from the files.
And under
Pres. Obama, the “most transparent Administration in American history,” we are
not allowed to inspect the grades or read the papers he wrote for classes at
the universities he attended.
Governments cover up, especially when they fear releasing the
information will harm them.
What E
& R ferret out is that Communist penetration of the Roosevelt
Administration was extensive. Though spying
was part of it, perhaps more important was the advice by government officials
that somehow always coincided with the Soviet line; and to the benefit of the
Soviets and not necessarily to the benefit of the US or it other allies. To make my point:
1) From the American policy view, by 1941 there
may well have been a good argument that Japan was totally imperialistic –
Korea, Manchukuo, much of coastal China, and then Vietnam. That it was finally time to take a stand, to
cut off oil, and prepare for war (Roosevelt was already engaged in acts of war
against Germany in the Atlantic, but it was undeclared).
2) There were sound arguments for Lend Lease
priorities to the Soviet Union, which was then baring the brunt of the Axis
invasion.
3) Our demand for an unconditional surrender by
the Axis powers demonstrated to our Soviet ally that we would not make a
separate deal that might mean peace in the West, but continued war against
Stalin.
4) Based on intelligence (from secret Communist
agents), Gen. Mihailovich in Yugoslavia and later Chiang Kai-shek in China were
condemned as collaborators with the Axis enemies. This misinformation urged Western countries
to support Tito in Yugoslavia and Mao in China instead.
5) Germany was responsible for the war and
therefore its industrial might must be destroyed after war’s end.
6) Germany was responsible for the war and
therefore its young men may be drafted to serve in other nations (chiefly the
USSR) as a form of reparations. (in
effect, this would be slave labor.)
7) Those who fled the USSR must be returned, no
matter their personal wishes. They chose
to live in fascist countries, abandoning the wonders of the Soviet homeland.
There were
reasonable arguments for all these pro-Soviet policies. However, when the US Govt. adopted the
pro-Soviet line on all of these issues, and many more, one must ask, what was
going on?
The
contention of E & R that the Communists, with their great influence, used
it to turn American policy into pro-Soviet agreements.
FDR was not
a Communist. Had he been one, he would
have stood by Henry Wallace and demanded that Wallace remain on the Democratic
ticket as VP at the 1944 party convention as he had done in 1940. But FDR did not make such a demand in
1944. Had he done so, in all likelihood,
Wallace would then have won the nomination (he almost won it anyway), and
become President Wallace in April 1945 upon the death of FDR.
Roosevelt
may not have been a Communist, but clearly HE supported the Soviet foreign
policy positions in case after case. One
can blame Harry Hopkins, Alger Hiss, John Sergeant, and the numerous Soviet
agents and Communist sympathizers in government. One can even blame Mrs. Roosevelt for purging
and exiling conservative voices in the State Dept. But in the end, the buck stopped at the desk
of FDR. He appointed the leaders of his
Administration. He is responsible for
agreements at Quebec, Tehran, and Yalta.
He is (with Stalin and others) responsible for Communist rule in Poland,
Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, Yugoslavia, and East
Germany. And though the question was
asked later, “Who lost China?” it seems Roosevelt’s policies explain much of
the change in Asia after WWII. In 1950
Republicans asked the question, “Who lost China?” In 2020 will Republicans be asking, “Who lost
America?”
