THE
VENONA SECRETS: THE DEFINITIVE EXPOSE OF SOVIET ESPIONAGE
IN
AMERICA (Regnery History, 2001) by
HERBERT
ROMERSTEIN and ERIC BREINDEL
Rev.
by Hugh Murray
Why
review in 2016 a book published in 2001?
Because there is need for another look at this important volume. The main reason for that need is that
schools, universities, and media, all ignore the explosive findings presented
in this and in similar works. Thus,
Marquette U., founded as a Roman Catholic institution by the Jesuits over a
century ago, in 2016 invited Angela Davis as a featured speaker for 2017. Ms. Davis, once a prominent member of the
Communist Party, USA (hereafter, CP) and who in 2014 sent greetings to that
year’s CP convention, will not have to contend with opposition speakers invited
to the platform. Her usual fee for such
speeches begins at $25,000 = a pittance compared to Hillary Clinton, but a
sizable sum for a once most controversial figure, and one probably still very close
to the CP.
In
November 2016 former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Fox News praised the
appointment of Breitbart News’s Stephen Bannon as President-elect Trump’s Chief
Strategist. Gingrich, who earned a
doctorate in history from Tulane U. and who taught history himself at the
university level, on television extolled Bannon’s appointment, and compared Bannon
to FDR’s chief advisor for many years, Harry Hopkins. Hopkins was so close to Pres. Roosevelt, he literally
lived in the White House. Had Gingrich
read the Venona book, he surely would have avoided the Bannon-Hopkins
comparison, because in Venona on learns that Harry Hopkins was a Soviet agent.
One
of the most popularly assigned books in high schools and universities is A People’s History of the United States
by Howard Zinn. Although Wikipedia
quotes Zinn’s description of himself as an “anarchist,” “socialist,” maybe a
“democratic socialist,” Robert McCain in The
American Spectator argued that Zinn had been a member of the CP, at least
beginning in the 1940s, that Zinn lied about his membership to the FBI, and he
made clear that he would not identify any comrades he might have known. This was his attitude in the early 1950 at
the height of Stalinism. Might such
views be reflected in Zinn’s history of America – his most influential history
of America, today?
To
reinforce a pro-Communist approach to American history, Public Broadcasting in
some cities has shown “American Reds,” a 90-minute documentary on the American
CP. A distributor of the film reports it
raises “a number of key issues concerning social change, idealism, ideology and
the nature of our economic and political system…” Bill Moyers deemed the film “an important
addition to public television’s mission to throw light on obscured corners of
our history…” Moyers fails to expose how
that film omits, distorts, and spins.
This is another reason why we should read, and re-read The Venona Secrets.
Here
is an example of how the Venona volume of 2001 can shed light on the
pro-Communist propaganda spinning in the schools and on PBS-TV.
One
activist interviewed at length (perhaps more than any other in this film) was
Steve Nelson, who was born in what is today, Croatia in 1903 to Hungarian
parents. He arrived in America in 1919,
and was soon working in Pennsylvania slaughter houses and other
non-professional jobs. He looks and
sounds like a typical American blue-collar worker. For the documentary Nelson describes his
efforts to organize laborers into various unions at times when unions were
barely legal. Nelson relates one
incident when, after his arrest, he was
interrogated by police. They beat
him. One hit his jaw so hard that Nelson
passed out with that question. A cartoon
recreated the scene. In the late 1930s
Nelson, along with 3,200 other radical Americans, joined the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade, part of the Communist-sponsored International Brigades to defend
Republican Spain against Francisco Franco and his fascist rebels. Nelson expresses sorrow at the loss of
comrades who fell in the fight. The
narrator even interviews Nelson’s adult daughter, who remembers that as a child
she was told not to discuss certain topics at home because the family was aware
that their home was bugged. No word is
said, but the implication is – how horrible that in America children were not
free to discuss things at home because the government was listening in.
In
the case of Steve Nelson, the government was indeed listening in. But never does the documentary indicate what
the government heard in Nelson’s Oakland abode.
Thanks to the release of various government documents, we now know, and
thanks to authors like Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel (hereafter R &
B), we can readily discover the workings of the Nelson household. For example, in March 1943 the FBI bug
revealed that Nelson met with atomic scientist Joseph Weinberg. Nelson instructed Weinberg to gather and send
him information from other Party members working with him on the atomic bomb
project at the Univ. of California, Berkeley.
Nelson also told Weinberg to inform the comrades working there to
destroy their CP membership books, and refrain from using liquor.(p. 255)
In
April 1943 Nelson received another visitor, a member of the Soviet Embassy in
Washington DC. The Soviet official
instructed the America Communist to establish an espionage network in the
American atomic program. The Soviet counted
out specific amounts of cash to fund the project, and told Nelson where he
should place reliable Communists for this “special work” in conveying to the
Soviets what the Americans were discovering in the US atomic program.(p. 259)
When
in 1980 Nelson was interviewed by two sympathetic academics, Nelson assured
them, “I never had any links with Soviet espionage in the United States.”(p.
259) And what about any such links in
Spain? Because of the release of the
Venona documents, we now know that Nelson lied.
We have known this for over a decade.
But the 2016 documentary ignores Nelson’s treason to portray a
poster-boy worker and sympathetic CP activist whose privacy was invaded by an
oppressive FBI.
If
you read Venona you will learn that the Rosenbergs were not the only atomic
spies. That there was good reason to
suspend the security clearance of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer in the 1950s, and
wonder why it was not suspended earlier.
One learns of the power of Harry Hopkins, who lived in FDR’s White
House, and that he was a Soviet agent.
Even Eleanor Roosevelt sought to close down the Venona project of
recording and trying to decipher messages sent to the Soviets. One learns that leaders of the American CP
vetted members to find who would best serve as Soviet agents. One learns of Soviet agents in the White
House, the State Dept. the Treasury Dept., the Attorney General’s Dept., the
Agricultural Dept. etc. These agents
probably hastened the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and delayed a possible
German surrender to the western Allies in WWII by publicizing the draconian
Morganthau Plan to turn a defeated Germany into a backward, impoverished, agricultural
land. One learns that Alger Hiss, of the
American State Dept., received a Soviet medal on a trip to Moscow for his
service to Soviet intelligence.
And
after reading Venona, one can conclude that the CPUSA was probably the 3rd
most influential political organization in 20th century
America. It may have influenced the
Communist take-over in China, the Korean War, and Soviet atomic bombs and industrial
development as when an American CP member developed the first Soviet computer.
While
many on the Left stress the halcyon days of the popular front, the Venona
volume reminds us of Communist rhetoric during the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Thus, in 1940 Milt Wolff addressed a
convention of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Chicago, in which
he damned President Franklin “Demagogue” Roosevelt as a “red-baiting,
union-busting, alien-hunting, anti-Negro, anti-Semite.”(285)
One cannot
discuss the CP rallies, its skills and bravery in union organizing, and in
defying segregation, etc., without discussing how American CP leaders took
Moscow money, how the leadership scouted Party members seeking a right fit to
place “reliable” Party members in “special work” to supply Soviet intelligence
with information.
Those
Americans involved in spying for the USSR were so dedicated that “not one broke
with Soviet intelligence as a result of the alliance with the Nazis.”(37) Far from being just another left-wing party,
the CPUSA provided a pool from which the Party leadership would recruit agents
to serve Moscow. “Although any American
Communist would have been proud to have been chosen to spy for the Soviet
Union, only a small number of Party members had the jobs or other
qualifications that the Soviets needed.”(11)
Here I think the authors exaggerate – if every
Party member desired to spy, why bother to vet?
Part of the leadership’s duties was to choose only those willing to spy;
and determine those who, if asked to spy, would not go to American authorities and
expose the system. One duty of the CP
leadership was to keep the spy system hidden.
Even R & B admit few members of the CPUSA were directly involved in
such activities. Furthermore, if none of
those already involved in spying quit because of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, that
was not true of the general membership.
The CPUSA lost about one fourth of its members during that period. The film ‘American Reds” notes that about one
million Americans joined the CP at some point.
Yet, at its high points, the CP had only 100.000 members. Not all Party members were spies-in-waiting. During the popular-front period, some Blacks
quit the Party because the Soviets were supplying Mussolini with oil in his
invasion of Abyssinia. While many left
the Party with the announcement of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, some joined during
this period because the CP was opposed to intervention in Europe’s wars and
created the American Peace Mobilization. Bayard Ruston, who would later organize the
1963 March on Washington, quit the Party when after June 1941 it abandoned its
peace policy in favor of intervention against Nazi Germany. A few years later Richard Wright quit the
Party. Of the million who joined at some
point, perhaps 850,000 quit the CP because they disagreed with its
policies. I would suggest that 85% were
not willing to mindlessly follow any orders given to them. Clearly, not all members of the CP were so enamored
of the Soviet Union.
Overall,
Romerstein and Breindel have written a book as pertinent today as when it was
first published in 2001. It is a book
needed to counteract the propaganda still emitting from the academy and the
media.
