The Extensive New
Evidence of a Radical Right Conspiracy (Moreland Press, 2015)
Rev. by Hugh Murray
I begin
with some of my background related to this 1,000-page book: 1) I attended P T G Beauregard Jr. High in
New Orleans, 1952-53, a year when Lee Oswald was also a student there. As there were a thousand students, and we
were in different grades, I never knew him.
2) From 1953-1956 I attended
Warren Easton Sr. High, also in NO. Some
report that Oswald attended Easton for about a month in 1954 before he enlisted
on his 17
th birthday in the Marines.
Again, I did not know him.
3) In the mid-1950s I began to
attend the First Unitarian Church in NO, and my conservative views were
challenged, especially on the race issue.
About May 1955, a year after the US Supreme Court’s notorious decision
overturning segregation in schools, students at Easton chose to demonstrate
their disapproval of the “Black Monday” decision. Almost all students left the school to march
in protest, stopping street cars, and demanding continued good schools through
segregation. This was one demo in which
I did not partake, and was one of the few who remained inside the school.
4) In the summer of 1955 I attended Pelican
Boys’ State, organized by the American Legion (an organization that features
prominently in Caufield’s book). (A few
years later student Bill Clinton would meet John Kennedy at the Arkansas Boys’
State, and be inspired to enter politics)
(In Louisiana, Bayou Boys’ State was conducted for incoming Black
high-school seniors; of course, all our schools were still segregated.) I was elected to the Pel. Senate, and on the
final day of the conclave, we would take over the La. State Senate Chamber and
debate a law that we thought should be enacted.
One Pel. Senator proposed that all public high schools include a ROTC
program for basic military training. One
suspects the Legion was delighted with this suggestion. Instead, I proposed the integration of public
schools in Louisiana as the legislation we debate on the night of big publicity
in the Capitol Senate. I suspect the Legionnaires
were less pleased with my idea. Another
Pel. Senator thought my proposal a poor choice, for I was the only Senator who
favored it. Suddenly many other Pel.
Senator rose to disagree with him and support my proposal. We were high school jun/seniors in Louisiana
in 1955. Indeed, we did debate my
proposal for integrated schools on the big night, but, probably because there
was a close division of opinion, no vote was taken because the officials
informed us, “we ran out of time.”
5) Because I had moved so far to the Left and
favored integration, some high school friends showed concern. Probably in the spring of 1956, a very sweet
student, Mary Jane, urged me to speak with her father whom she thought could put
some sense into my head. I was not enthusiastic
about such a meeting, and, turns out, neither he. So, we went through the motions to satisfy a
kind young woman. I went to her home and
met her father, Guy Banister, while he was sorting mail. He said little to me other than some
grunts. He did not convert me from my
turn to the Left. Mary Jane and I
remained friends.
6)
From 1956-60 I attended Tulane U. in NO on scholarship, eventually deciding
to major in American history. Also, at
the Unitarian Church I met one of my professors, Georg Iggers and his wife
Wilma, both refugees from Nazi Europe, and both teaching at Black colleges in
NO. Georg also taught a few courses at
Tulane, in one of which I had enrolled.
One day, I asked him if I might sit-in one of his classes at Dillard,
and proceeded to attend his class on the Black campus about twice a week. In that class I met Shirley Dede, who told me
they were organizing a Youth Chapter of the NAACP. I joined.
Shirley also subscribed to Workers
World, a Trotskyist newspaper. The
youth chapter did little, for soon the NAACP was outlawed in Louisiana, using a
1924 anti-KKK law.(p. 723. Caufield
states the injunction against the NAACP was issued in 1956, but I do not think
the organization closed down in Louisiana until about 1958 or 59.) The adult NAACP was then reincarnated as the
New Orleans Improvement Assn.
7) In Feb. 1960 the modern sit-in movement
started in North Carolina and spread in much of the South. Today, one forgets that New Orleans was still
the largest city in the South in 1960 as it had been since 1840. The 60 census figures had not yet been
published so. NO was still viewed larger
than Miami, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta.
Meanwhile, the civil rights movement seemed unable to crack the South’s
largest city. Tulanian Lanny Goldfinch
informed me in the spring of 1960 that there would be a meeting at Dillard to
organize a sit-in in NO. I went. There was an awareness that such action would
likely bring arrests, and many in the large hall were hoping to avoid such
drastic consequences. The Dillard Dean
was able to persuade the students not to be imitative of others, not to simply
sit-in as had been done elsewhere, but to do something unique to Dillard. There would be a march for civil rights on
the sidewalk in front of Dillard campus.
I felt that was an operation for Dillard students and did not
participate. There were no arrests.
8) Later that spring Lanny Goldfinch told me the
Consumers’ League (a Black group) would be picketing shops in the Dryades
Street area that refused to hire Blacks.
Both Lanny and I picketed for short periods with the League on different
days. 9)
Late spring, summer 1960, national Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sought
to form a group in NO. With some from
the Consumers League and students from various universities, CORE began to meet
at the Negro YMCA on Dryades St. There
would be a 3-week training program in Miami that August, and CORE sought
participants from NO. Seven of us went
and an 8th was a driver. I
had trouble convincing my parents to allow me on this excursion, but I could
point to another white who was also going.
He was a staunch Roman Catholic, a junior at Loyola U. in NO. He was a year or 2 older than I. As a youth he had had troubles, dropping out
of school, and on the road to becoming a “juvenile delinquent.” But Oliver St. Pe was saved when he joined
the Civil Air Patrol and was guided in the right direction by its leader, David
Ferrie. I did not know it at the time,
but Oliver was legally blind. In Miami
there were only about 45 official participants from all over the country with 7
from NO indicating how important CORE assessed New Orleans for the future of
the organization. One day we had a
lecture by baseball great Jackie Robinson, who was also a firm supporter of the
Republicans led by Richard Nixon that election year. Another day we had a lecture by Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr., who, then off the record, was for Democrat Jack Kennedy. We had training in non-violence and how to
conduct demonstrations. In one sit-in,
Oliver and 16 others of our CORE conclave were arrested.
10) Shortly after we returned to NO, we organized
for the sit-in. Tulane seemed to know
about our plans, and read us the rules that, if arrested, we would be suspended
until proven innocent (which, if lucky would have to await a US Supreme Court
decision, which would take years). (Suddenly
many more people were coming to the CORE meetings, and one stood out because he
was fatter and looked older than most white college students. In today’s p.c. world, we should not notice
things like that but we do. I remember
George Higginbotham because he looked unusual for a white student. I had no idea at the time he was employed by
Guy Banister to spy on the Left.)(41) I
was entering TU as a grad student in history.
Happily, there was another white Tulanian, so with 5 Blacks we had 7 in
the first sit-in. (Our defiance led
eventually to a change of Tulane’s rules and neither Bill Harrell nor I was
kicked out.) I moved from my parents,
but that did not stop the threatening phone calls (all our names had been in
the local papers, and we had been on national TV, though we did not see that as
we were still in jail for the nightly news shows. My father had to borrow a pistol and bullets
from a co-worker to defend the house. In
November 1960, when the NO integrated school crisis erupted, the hate-crowd
moved on to that issue, and my dad felt safe enough to return the items to his
co-worker. The worker asked him, “Why did
you borrow so many bullets? Only one
would have done the job.” I was not too
popular with some union members.
11) To restore honor to the
family, my father’s brother, my uncle, sent $20 to George Lincoln Rockwell’s
Nazi Party. His wife, my aunt Vera,
would have trouble on her side of the family in a few years. Her relative, a pastor of a Methodist Church
on Esplanade Ave., formed the Quorum Club beside his church and across the
street from the French Quarter. It was
probably in 1963 when the police raided the club and arrested about 33 in
attendance and the papers printed their names and addresses on page 1. The police said it was a hangout for
homosexuals, drug users, and race mixers.
Vera had been razzing my Uncle Jim about me, but suddenly she had a
black sheep on her side of the family too.
I don’t know if Jim sent more money to Rockwell about the Quorum Club.
12) Also during these years, my mother’s Avon
lady lived a few doors down the street.
She was attractive, rather young, and the wife of an American Legionnaire
activist who in 1960, was elected as a Democratic member of the State
legislature, James Pfister. Pfister
would lead the raid on SCEF in October 1963, an important key to Caufield’s
understanding of the Kennedy assassination.
I point this out to show that in NO people on the Left had connections,
sometimes relations, to those on the Right.
13) In 1962-63 I returned to Tulane as a grad
student, but I changed the topic of my thesis.
I had heard the reason no legitimate Black organization could work with
Communists was because of what they had done during the Scottsboro
campaign. So my topic was the Scottsboro
rape cases that began in 1931 Alabama. I
tried to be objective: my title “The NAACP vs. the Communist Party” was neutral
enough, but my conclusion was that the CP and its front group the International
Labor Defense had saved the 9 young Blacks accused of rape, while the approach
of the NAACP would have led to their conviction and likely executions. Although several chapters have since been
published in academic journals, the Tulane history dept, then headed by “the
Confederates” was determined that I not remain at Tulane for a doctorate. I worked hard on the thesis, some 270
pages. But I was slow and could not
finish in time to receive my degree in May.
So I had to work harder to finish in the summer of 1963 with little time
for political protest. I received my MA
in August 1963.
14) In Nov. 1962 I published an article in The Reed, the left-wing alternative to
the Tulane Hullabaloo. I titled it, “The Munich of the 60s,” in
which I analyzed the recent missile crisis with an analogy. I compared Kennedy’s demands for removal of
Soviet missiles from Cuba, a sovereign nation, to German demands upon
Czechoslovakia concerning the Sudetenland; and I compared Khrushchev’s yielding
to Kennedy’s demands to Chamberlain’s concessions to Hitler at Munich. I entered a class room and saw copies of The Reed, not torn in half, not in
quarters, but into fingernail-size fragments.
My article was not popular.
15) Summer 1963 when Oswald was most active in
NO, I was busy finishing up my MA thesis.
Friends, a history student and his wife told me they had heard an
unusual discussion on WDSU radio with a Marxist who had lived in Russia and was
involved in a pro-Castro group in NO. I
may have seen an Oswald leafleting incident on local TV news. 16)
One afternoon I walked into the Tulane U. Library (now Joseph Jones
Hall) and on a small table in front of the glass to the staircase was a stack
of leaflets – Hands Off Cuba! I took
one, and went upstairs to the carrels (desks) behind the book stacks to find a
grad student friend who had been involved in Fair Play in another city. “What are you putting out?” “Let me see that.” Harold Alderman knew nothing about it. Who might be organizing then? There was only a post office box address on
the flyer. Should we respond? I joked, it might be the FBI. Neither of us made contact with the
address. Harold did tack the leaflet to
his dorm-room door - until Nov. 22.
17) Even with my MA, the best job I could get was
teaching 5th grade at a brand new private school in NO. It payed higher than public schools, and
better, there were fewer pupils per class.
There were 3 of us teaching 5th, Mrs. Flagg who was much
older and had taught in the public schools; and Richard Humphries, a new grad
who was born in British Guyana. He and I
became friends, and one autumn afternoon
after school, we played tennis.
Consequently, I arrived home late (I was back at my parents). When I arrived, my mother greeted me with,
“Huh, I thought they had rounded you up too.”
I did not know what she was referring to, but rushed to the TV as it was
news time. Oct. 4, 1963, the Louisiana UnAmerican
Activities Committee (led by neighbor Jim Pfister) and over 100 police and
troopers raided the SCEF offices and the homes of James Dombrowski, Ben Smith,
and Bruce Walzer. A good friend was a
junior law partner in Smith’s firm, and Jack Peebles wondered if he too was to
be arrested. The SCEF raid is a pivotal
event in Caufield’s book and analysis.
18) Life went on.
Work went on. I was teaching
around midday, when Mrs. Flagg, whose class was directly across the hall, came
to me and requested that I come to her class.
I told my class I would return shortly, and went with the older
woman. Her class was then having a combo
lunch and recess, and as we had no cafeteria, they were eating in class and
playing about, shouting, but not out of hand. One boy had brought with him a new invention,
a transistor radio, and he was listening.
Mrs. Flagg and I then hovered over the boy trying to hear the radio
above the din of the kids playing. I
heard and then had to return to my class.
I entered and announced, “I just heard on the radio, Pres. Kennedy was
shot in Dallas.” The kids immediately
cheered and applauded. I was taken
aback. One girl, the exception, put her
head on the table and cried. The others expressed
glee. These were 10 and 11-year-olds,
and a few older ones. I normally liked
them very much, but suddenly I was angry.
“You think that this means the end of integration. You think that this means segregation will be
the law of the land. After the Civil
War, some thought that the South could rise again, if only Lincoln were
dead. They killed him. Instead of making it easier for the defeated
South, it made the North more determined to destroy slavery, to destroy the
plantations, to destroy most things connected to the South. The result was Radical Reconstruction, and
for many white southerners it was a difficult time. Killing Lincoln made things more
difficult. Killing Kennedy will make
things more difficult.” Those were not
my exact words but it was the message of my unscheduled history lecture.
19) The school let us out early that Friday
afternoon. I went home and soon
thereafter received a phone call from Shelly, the wife of Carlos Zervigon. Carlos was of Mexican-Cuban heritage, a
friend and fellow Tulanian 1956-60, and a former member of CORE during the year
I was active 1960-61. Shelly was less
politically active, but went along with her husband. On the phone she asked if I had heard the news. “About Kennedy? Of course.”
“You know they found the assassin.”
“No.” “He’s a communist from New
Orleans.” “What?!” I could hardly believe her words. A communist from NO? My mind is blank on the rest of our conversation.
I suddenly began to fear. If they are
rounding up “communists” in NO in October over nothing, what will happen
now? Many assumed I was a communist. I knew that in 1938 a young Jew entered the
German Embassy in Paris and shot an official.
A few days later, the Nazi government hammered its revenge, the first
major pogrom in Nazi Germany with burnings of numerous synagogues, massive
arrests of Jews, some killings, and so many shop windows shattered it was
called Kristallnacht. And that was for
the assassination of a minor official.
What would happen here with a NO communist killing the President?
20) That Friday night I went out to get drunk,
thinking it might be my last chance before the roundup. I met a few friends, and had the same
question – “Who the hell is Lee Oswald?”
No one I spoke with that night ever knew him. Later that year, I began to feel lucky that I
never knew him, and that no one on the Left seemed to have known him. That was my basic feeling until the Garrison
probe, when I learned that Oswald had right-wing associates in NO. Caufield’s book provides even more evidence
that Oswald was associated with the far right wing in New Orleans and
Texas. Caufield has amassed far more
research on this aspect of Oswald, and his book should be kept as a reference
work.
This book
is 1.000 pages with footnotes at the back, so you must refer back and forth
many times. A cheaply manufactured book
would fall apart. This book is well-made
and can endure the activities of researchers as they peruse both text and
notes. Many of the chapters are written
as if they are independent articles; consequently there is much
repetition. But the hefty volume is
worth wading through. Caufield has
performed considerable research. He
bested me in searching for members of the New Orleans Council for Peaceful
Alternatives, some of whom did encounter Oswald. He found at least 11 people who linked Oswald
with Guy Banister. Unlike some who
portray Jim Garrison as more liberal to make him more acceptable to the
Northern Left, Caufield reveals that in Garrison’s first run for the DA post in
New Orleans, he spoke before a White Citizens Council gathering, and won the
backing of segregationist Judge Leander Perez. (Despite such, Garrison remains a hero to
me.) Caufield spoke with many people in
New Orleans and in Texas. His
description of the FBI informer William Somersett and his most important
exposes of proposed assassinations, of Pres. Kennedy, of Rev. M L King, of many
on the Left, is fascinating. Caufield’s
description of the riot at Ole Miss is to the point, with 2 dead and many
injured, and led by Gen. Edwin Walker.
Caufield
interviewed a Right-winger who claimed that Gen. Walker wanted to stage his own
kidnapping in a phony publicity stunt.
Caufield suggests there was a link between Walker and Oswald, and the
shooting at Walker’s home was a publicity stunt that occurred just before
Walker was to begin a speaking tour. Caufield
also posits that that shooting was as staged as the fight in New Orleans
between anti-Castro Cuban Carlos Bringuier and the leafleting, “pro-Castro”
Oswald.
Caufield’s
thesis is that Oswald was in reality a man of the Right. Even as a boy, when skipping school in NYC,
one reason for his truancy was there were Negroes in his class. His favorite TV show was “I Led 3 Lives,”
about a man who pretended to be a Communist for the FBI. Back in NO in the 1950s, Oswald joined the
Civil Air Patrol led by the charismatic David Ferrie. Ferrie, himself, was extreme right-wing. On Oswald’s 17th birthday, he
joins the Marines. Caufield discovered a
letter in which an official involved in anti-communist activities wrote that he
had found someone, no longer in NO, who would be good at infiltrating
university left-wing groups. Caufield
contends that Hubert Badeaux was referring to Oswald.(274, 727-29)
Meanwhile,
the threat of communism in the South grew, for to right-wingers, integration
was communism. The 1954 Supreme Court
decision overturning over 50 years of precedent that segregation was
Constitutional, the integration of Central High in Little Rock with the use of
Federal troops (under Gen Walker’s command),
the bus boycott in Montgomery, the sit-ins throughout the South, the
Freedom Rides, the integration of Ole Miss (in which Gen. Walker now led an
impromptu army to oppose integration), and Pres. Kennedy’s proposing a civil
rights bill in 1963 – along with his failure to support the anti-Castro
invasion at the Bay of Pigs, his refusal to invade Cuba during the missile
crisis, his talk of peace, all showed how communism was advancing in the US.
Louisiana
was inventing a method to halt the flow of communism and integration. In 1962 Louisiana passed a Communist Control
Act, led by Rep. Jim Pfister, but originating with Judge Perez, according to
Caufield. The point was to impose heavy
fines and decades in jail for those who associated with Communists or
Communist-front organizations. When
Oswald returned to NO in 1963, he sought to infiltrate CORE, the NOCPA, he
organized his own FPCC, and all of these organizations had connections with the
Southern Conference Educational Fund.
Prove it is communist; show the “communist” Oswald in CORE, NOCPA, and
FPCC, and all of those organizations become tainted, and any member can be
arrested and face up to 30 years in prison.
In this scenario, Oswald is a fake communist who will be used to destroy
the Left, and particularly the integrationist movement in the South. The man who had lived in the USSR and had a
Russian wife, who admitted to being a Marxist, who subscribed to the Worker and the Militant (CP and Trot newspapers) would be used to destroy
integration.
But,
another conspiracy was afoot. Caufield
thinks Oswald would continue to pretend to be a communist, but was assured
either the shooter would miss, or would not use his rifle, so he need not
worry. Caufield’s chapter on Dallas 22
November is not overly convincing, but should be read for an alternative view. Much of Caufield’s material prior to 22 Nov.
is powerful in a cumulative way. Not one
thing, not one speech, not one action, but together, he makes a strong
argument. Caulfield thinks Oswald was a
patsy, he got in over his head, and the President lost his.
One good
thing, Caufield is not politically correct in his use of language. The racism of speeches given to large
audiences is presented without pc euphemisms.
Sometimes it is surprising, as when Gen. Walker tells someone how to add
an ingredient to the motor oil that will destroy a car’s motor so the Black
owner will be stranded after so many miles.
Or when he describes the office of the voter registrar in Clinton, La.,
where the official has a black doll with a string to look like a noose – a visual
lesson to discourage Black voter applications.
Caufield
has amassed much material to demonstrate how much Pres. Kennedy was hated – not
just by 10-year-olds. Some spoke, on
tape, of conspiracy. After the
assassination, Walker was worried that Jack Ruby might leave a Texas hospital
alive, and Walker kept his eye (or other surveillance) on Oswald’s mother. Caufield makes much of Ruby’s request to
Chief Justice Earl Warren to be taken out of Texas, but the testimony, in which
Ruby does mention Walker, seems rambling, confused, and Warren seems justified
to me in denying Ruby’s request. Even
Badeaux’s report that he had found a young man who might infiltrate college
left-wing groups might not be referring to Oswald. Oswald had just quit high school to join the
Marines. Interesting but not always
convincing. But neither the Warren
Commission nor various Congressional inquiries have satisfied the American
public either. Caufield gives the public
much to ponder.
Caufield’s
research also discovered that many files have been destroyed. Files of the LUAC, of Guy Banister, of some
submitted to the Warren Commission with photos, but some of the photos deleted. Yet, there may be various reasons for the
destruction. I recall a PBS documentary
on the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and their records revealed
that a Black minister who went to Ohio during Freedom Summer, supplied
information on the integrationists preparing to go to Mississippi. He provided information to Mississippi
segregationist officials about Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman (they were
killed in Philadelphia, Miss. during Freedom Summer along with Mississippi
native James Chaney.). The minister was
not happy about being exposed as an informer decades after the murders.
There are
some minor errors in this lengthy volume.
Plaquemines Parish (county) is not adjacent to New Orleans (St. Bernard
is the neighboring parish to the south)(p. 68)
Caufield writes that Gentilly Parish was outside of New Orleans.(356) But Gentilly is not a parish at all, it is a
section of New Orleans. SCEF was not the
Southern Christian Educational Fund (546) but the Southern Conference…, and it
was the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, not the ECL Union.(547) Mary Jane Banister was a friend, but we never
dated (619, 854); I dated Karol Kloepfer of the NO Quaker family, some of whom
were involved with the NOCPA, and Ruth (the mother, Karol, and Ruth Ann
(daughter) visited the Oswalds on Magazine St. just prior to their departure
for Texas. When in 1963 Oswald
distributed FPCC flyers in front of the old Trade Mart Building, it was not
located on Canal St.(746) US Supreme
Court Justice William Brennan was on the high court in the 1960s; there was no
Justice Brenner.(766, 946) One of the
Black attorneys who represented CORE in New Orleans was Lolis Elie, not Lelis
Ely.(688)
Coufield
writes: “The FBI sent Somersett to New Orleans…Nov. 15-28, 1960 to monitor the Catholic
school crisis…”(195) The crisis that
November was the first integration of two elementary public grade schools, in
which almost all whites withdrew, angry parents protested the arrival of a few
Blacks each day, and the family of a white pupil who defied the boycott was
threatened and rocks thrown through their home’s window. Eventually they had to flee to the
North. The daily protests in favor of
segregation made international news. The
Catholic schools at that time remained segregated, and quiet.
In several
places Caufield calls Pres. Kennedy’s proposed civil rights bill of 1963
sweeping and “it would end segregation in the South.”(289, 311) But Kennedy’s proposals were less sweeping
than the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was passed in 1964 after his
assassination, in part out of sympathy evoked by Kennedy’s martyrdom.
For what
comes next, I should add a warning. I am
not here to record my political drift from Left to Right. Simply put – in Louisiana in the 1950s and
60s by demanding that “we treat people without regard to race, color, or
creed,” I was considered a communist by many.
Indeed, that phrase was one of the traditional slogans for civil
rights. Today, when I still demand that
we treat people without regard to race, color, or creed, I am deemed a racist,
Nazi, etc. Today, I am a staunch opponent
of affirmative action, diversity, and other tools for treating people
differently.
` One of the
heroes of Caufield’s book is William Somersett.
In his home in Miami Somersett
tape recorded a conversation with extreme right-winger Joseph Milteer on 9 Nov.
1963. Caufield deemed the tape so
significant he devotes pages to its transcription. (98-105) On tape Milteer discusses the upcoming visit
of Pres. Kennedy to Miami set for 18 Nov. 63.
Somersett interjects, “...he will have a thousand body guards.” Milteer responds: “The more body guards…,the
easier it is to get him…From an office building with a high-powered rifle…Oh,
yeah, it’s in the working…disassemble a gun…you don’t have to take a gun up
there, you can take it in pieces.”(85-104)
Then there will be a patsy arrested, “just to throw the public
off.”(105) Somersett recorded that for
the Miami Police and the FBI. As a
result, Kennedy’s visit of 18 November was altered and his motorcade through
the city cancelled. That tape also
included references to the recent bombing of the church in Birmingham and a
possible plot to kill Martin Luther King, Jr.
Later Milteer informed Somersett that Louisiana segregationist Judge
Leander Perez helped finance the assassination of Pres. Kennedy.(260) Indeed, several years later Somersett
recorded something about the King murder, that would occur soon
thereafter. Clearly, Somersett was a
most courageous man to record the words of some very dangerous people. Somersett is a hero, in the book and
out. He was an FBI informant, amazingly
courageous in collecting facts, whether they were used fully by an agency or
not.
There is a
contradiction in Caufield’s thought. When
it comes to FBI agents informing on right-winger, KKKers, Nazis, he
cheers. When it comes to those who
informed on Communists, Caufield smears.
Diana West,
in her American Betrayal reported
that in April 1943, the FBI bugged the home of California Communist leader
Steve Nelson when he was visited by a Soviet Embassy official. The Soviet presented money for the American
party, but also wanted Nelson, through power in labor unions, to assign
Communists to posts in various new defense facilities – facilities connected to
the development of the atomic bomb.
According to West, this was the first that the FBI learned of America’s
Manhattan Project – and learned it from a Soviet agent!
In many
places Caufield criticizes Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his investigations of
subversives. Caufield is critical of the
ex-communists who identified old comrades to the FBI, etc. He is especially critical of the paid
witnesses, those who made a living exposing those whom they knew to be or have
been members of the CP.
Finally, on
the more difficult issue of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the exposing of Communists
and treason, it is clear that Caufield holds the liberal-left position – “The
1950 Joseph McCarthy Communist witch hunts were front-page news…”(210) Here Caufield describes former Communist,
“paid witness,” Paul Crouch: “Crouch testified before McCarthy’s committee in
1955, that Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, was a
Communist. Oppenheimer denied…Crouch
alleged that he had been at Oppenheimer’s home at a meeting of top drawer
Communists.”(708) Caufield judges that “a
blatant lie” on Crouch’s part. Oppenheimer
had conclusive proof that he was in another state on the date of that alleged
communist meeting. Blatant liar! However, Crouch may have simply had the date
wrong. Oppenheimer’s wife was a member
of the CP. So was his mistress. So was his brother. And his sister-in-law. More recent allegations about Oppenheimer
came from a Soviet secret agent. He
maintained Oppenheimer was himself a CP member, though a secret one to avoid
problems while he headed the sensitive atomic project. If you google Oppenheimer on these issues, he
apparently was responsible for assigning communists to places like Oak
Ridge. Might he have passed
secrets? Or may he have simply set it up
so others could do it? In January 2012
Russian leader Vladimir Putin thanked Western scientists who provided secret
documents on atomic research to hasten Stalin’s acquisition of the bomb. Putin bragged, “They provided suitcases full;
suitcases full!” Oppenheimer was a
secret member of the Communist Party. Why
try to discredit Crouch? Sen. McCarthy
was on the right track. Caufield and I
disagree on this issue.
Caufield
writes that despite the allegations of treason, Alger Hiss was merely convicted
of perjury. But the Venona files, only
released to the public in the 1990s, show that Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent. Indeed, only a small percentage of the Venona
files have been deciphered, so there may well have been many more Soviet agents
handing over America’s secrets to the Soviets.
The
problem, especially in the South, was that those investigating subversion
equated integration with communism. And
communists were indeed some of the most determined to destroy segregation and
discrimination. The communists were
determined, showed bravery, knowledge of tactics, and organizing
abilities. Was it a coincidence, or a
plot, that Rev. M L King sat beside Communist Abner Berry at the Highlander
Folk School? Remember, when the FBI
first wire tapped King on the phone, they were not listening for him, but for Stanley
Levison. The FBI believed Levison, a
former communist, was still a secret member, and a leading financial figure in
the Party. They were taping his calls
when suddenly they heard him advising Rev. King.
And it was
not only King who had connections to the left and possible members of the
CPUSA. Rosa Parks, so the story goes,
the tired seamstress, simply wanted to remain in her seat on the Montgomery
bus. This may well be true. But before she was arrested for that crime,
she had gone to Highlander Folk School for training. Highlander was a popular-front operation, and
anti-racists, including Communists were welcome.
The main
question in the South was not one of espionage and atomic secrets; the question
was of a political group set upon destroying segregation. To some, this translated, destroying the
Southern way of life – subversion. And
that is what the integrationists were indeed trying to do. But did they deserve 30 years in jail for
doing so? Even if they were Communists?
The NAACP
went out of business in Louisiana for a year when it refused to hand over to
the state its membership list. If the
Attorney General of Louisiana had that list, he would have gone after any
school teachers or public employees and fired them. That is why the NAACP refused to reveal its
membership list. That is why LUAC and
the Eastland Committee wanted the membership list of the SCEF – to punish
anyone pressing for integration.
I would
argue that the civil rights movement was a popular front movement, including
the religious, radicals, communists, (most liberals in the South preferred not
to get involved). I doubt if many atomic
secrets were passed along. Phones were
tapped and mail was opened. Realistically,
compared to what happened to dissidents in other nations, most of us lived to
talk about the era. Unfortunately,
President Kennedy did not. Caufield
makes a case that the assassins shot
from the right.
