FDR's ADVISORS & STALIN's AGENTS

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 2^nd 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 2^nd 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 3^rd 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 4^th 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 5^th 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 5^th 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 20^th 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?”

Joe McCarthy: Blacklisted by History

BLACKLISTED BY HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY OF SENATOR JOE MCCARTHY

AND HIS FIGHT AGAINST AMERICA’S ENEMIES (NY: 2007)

BY M. STANTON EVANS

Rev. by Hugh Murray (complete review)

            On 22 February 2012 Reuters reported that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “praises Cold War-era scientists…for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets so that the U.S. would not be the world’s sole atomic power…Spies with suitcases full of data helped the Soviet Union build its atomic bomb, he told military commanders.  They were carrying the information away not on microfilm but literally in suitcases.  Suitcases!” (Story by Steve Gutterman).

            In the May 2009 Smithsonian Michael Walsh writes of “George Koval: Atomic Spy Unmasked.”  The man was born in Iowa, became a Communist, left for the USSR where he was trained.  He returned to the US at the beginning of WWII to work for the US government on atomic projects in Oak Ridge, Ohio. and elsewhere.  He returned to the Soviet Union in the late 1940s.  He died there in 2006, and in 2007 Putin posthumously bestowed on him a gold star as recognition of his efforts at stealing American secrets.  Putin identified him as “Delmar.”  A book published in Russia in 2002, THE GRU AND THE ATOM BOMB focused on the Soviet military spy network and the man with the code name Delmar, “who with the exception of…Klaus Fuchs may have done more than anyone to help the Soviets achieve its sudden, shocking nuclear parity with the US in 1949.”  Anyone writing prior to 2007 would have no way of connecting Koval with Delmar.

            Morton Sobell, a co-defendant of the Rosenbergs, had been convicted and served several years for spying.  Like others accused of these types of crimes, Sobell maintained his innocence over the decades.  However, in an interview published in the New York Times on 9/11/2008, Sobell finally admitted his guilt.(Wikipedia, Atomic Spies)

            American Theodore Hall (born Holtzberg) died in 1999 in Cambridge, England, where he had resided for decades.  As a precocious student at university in America, he had joined the John Reed Club, a Communist student organization.  Hall became the youngest physicist to work on the atomic project at Los Alamos.  The New York Times obituary headlined, “Theodore Hall, Prodigy and Atomic Spy, Dies at 74.”  Hall was never charged nor convicted of espionage, but apparently admitted his deeds to friends and reporters in the late 1980s.

            Some of these cases we have learnt of only recently.  Were there others spying for the Soviets?  Who was stuffing the suitcases described by Putin?  No wonder Putin could smile, brag and gloat - perhaps, smiling about more than he revealed in his speech.  Even now, do we know all?  Or are there more shocking revelations to come?

Evans’ book notes that the FBI was aware as early as December 1942 “that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist then becoming a central figure in the atomic energy project, was identified by Communist leaders as a secret party member who had to be inactive because of the wartime work he was doing.”(p. 6)  Evans also notes that a Communist leader in Californian declared in November 1945 that Oppenheimer had informed them “several years ago that the Army was working on the atomic bomb.”(318 –footnote, emp. mine)  If he told them this, say in 1942, what else was he revealing to them?  “Like Hiss, Remington would later be convicted in federal court for lying about his Red connections, which meant the Truman loyalty program had been incapable of discharging a flagrant risk found guilty by a jury.   Along with Oppenheimer, Condon, Service, and Adler – all holding down significant federal posts in 1950 – the Remington case made it clear that the alleged security crackdown under Truman was a myth.” (330)

            Yet, when McCarthy first made his charges about Communists holding federal jobs in early 1950, many thought, and still think. he was being irresponsible.

            There can be little doubt that the Soviets gathered important data from their agents and spies in the US – including those working for the American government.  In February 1950 McCarthy, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia claimed that Communists were on the federal payroll, and many were in the US State Department.  Whether he alleged 205 or 57 became one of the first big disputes, but it is a diversion.  The question was, were there subversives in the State Department and other high government offices?

            Unfortunately, there are two major omissions that illustrate a major flaw in Evans fact-filled book.  Had these been included, and the issues that they represent been fully analyzed, then the book might provide better understanding to the McCarthy era.

            1) Though Evans refers to Democratic Representative Samuel Dickstein, a Congressman who helped establish what would later become the House un-American Activities Committee, Evans neglects to mention that Dickstein was a paid agent of the Soviet Union.(49)  Soviet agents were in high places.  2) In 1943-44 Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles was compelled to resign, but not because he was accused of being a Soviet agent (indeed, he had opposed US recognition of the Soviet takeover of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia during the era of the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact).  Although Welles had several marriages, he was forced out because he was also homosexual and had solicited sex with men.

            These two cases show that there were Soviet agents in government in high places – sometimes in most unexpected places.  Also, the Roosevelt Administration was more willing to force the retirement of a friend of the President because he was homosexual, than to fire Communists and Soviet agents.  To rephrase: the government deemed both Communist subversives and homosexual security risks as threats, though at different times, it seemed more interested in firing one than the other.  The red scare and the lavender scare were conflated in the minds of many, and some blame McCarthy, not only for the effort to rid the government of Communists and Soviet agents, but also of gays.  The reality was for more complex than is revealed in Evans book.

            Why were homosexuals considered security risks?  At the time, homosexuality was a mental illness and homosexual activity was a crime.  Thus, the assumption in government was that their promiscuous behavior would lead to possible arrest and blackmail whereby they might reveal the nation’s secrets.  In theory, this was not limited to gays, for there was the lingering image from WWI of the seductress Mata Hari passing on Allied secrets to the enemy Hun.  The issue would arise later when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI discovered that Sen. John Kennedy had had a liaison with a pretty European gal who was thought to be an East German spy.  Yet, in reality, men having a good time with women did not result in punishment.  Indeed, it might enhance one’s reputation and result in promotion.  On the other hand, having a gay relationship was ground for dismissal.

            The issue of reds and lavenders is conflated from the outset of McCarthy’s charges of Communists employed by in the State Department in February 1950.  The following week Secretary of State Dean Acheson appeared before a Senate committee on another matter, where he was questioned about security in his department.  Replying for Acheson on this issue was Dept. of State official, John Peurifoy who announced that 91 had recently been dismissed as security risks.  However, under further questioning, it became clear that they were fired NOT for being Communists or Soviet agents; they were fired for being gay.

            When McCarthy demanded the firing of subversives, the Democratic Truman Administration, and even more so that of Republican Eisenhower, responded by firing sexual deviants instead.

            When McCarthy made his charges of Communists in the State Department, the Senate passed such a resolution to investigate the allegations.  Democratic Sen. Millard Tydings of Maryland was selected to chair the process.  Evans is particularly good at detailing the misuse of the committee by Tydings and its Democratic majority.  Tydings colluded with the Truman Administration and representatives of the State Department to investigate McCarthy, to allow his enemies like Owen Lattimore to expound at length and without interruption, to refuse to call McCarthy’s witnesses, to belittle the Wisconsin Senator, to whitewash any investigation of the Dept. of State, to issue a committee report that was incomplete, that lied about previous investigations conducted by the Republican controlled 80^th Congress; in short, the Tydings committee was a kangaroo court determined to avoid investigating Communists in government  and smear McCarthy instead.  Moreover, to prevent McCarthy from subpoenaing pertinent material, Truman had State Department files moved to the White House.  The Democrats developed a policy of smear and cover-up, while finessing the issue the committee was created to investigate – Communists in government.  Meanwhile, the liberal press portrayed McCarthy as the bully and mudslinger.

            Furthermore, when McCarthy revealed information about suspected subversives in government, the Truman Administration was far more worried about detecting McCarthy “moles,” than rooting out Communist spies.  Evans reveals how the Trumanites investigated thoroughly seeking out employees who were suspected of providing information to McCarthy.  Truman seemed to deem a whistle blower for McCarthy as a greater threat than a Soviet agent. 

            Were there subversives in State?  Evans details the Amerasia case whereby an official of State provided secret material to the journal that had Communist connections.  J. Edgar Hoover thought the case was “air tight,” but in 1945 a deal was made by higher-ups.  The DA who was to prosecute told the grand jury that the stolen material was of little import, Amerasia was an academic journal, and the incident should be ignored.  Following his lead, the grand jury voted against an indictment.  John Service, who was charged with stealing the papers which included military information, remained an employee at State.  Worse, informants later revealed that Service spent considerable time viewing the security files of many employees of the State Department.  As there was then no proper filing system, anyone who viewed the files could also remove damaging material, and no one would be aware that it was missing.  Such was security at State.

            But there had been problems in other areas of government, too.  Lauchlin Currie (“the Soviet’s man at the White House on China policies,” Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy, p. 111), for example, was an executive assistant to President Roosevelt in the early 1940s, with a specialty on China affairs.  In 1941 Currie arranged to have Roosevelt appoint Owen Lattimore as the President’s personal advisor to China’s Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek.  Of course, Lattimore, like Currie, was hostile to Chiang and sympathetic to the rebel forces in Yenan under Mao Tse-tung.  The Americans in this group of China hands invariably reported that Chiang was “dictatorial,” “feudal,” “fascist,” “reactionary,” “corrupt,” etc.  By contrast, their reports of Mao and his rebels were glowing: “democratic,” “popular with the peasants,” “rational,” “progressive,” “resisting the Japanese,” etc.  After Japan surrendered, the Soviets marched into Manchuria, where they aided the Communists under Mao.  Should the US aid Chiang?  The China hands in State said no.  The 80^th Congress passed resolutions to aid Chiang, but subversives in the Treasury Dept. delayed and obstructed any transfer of money to the Chinese Nationalists.  When military aid was promised, again there was delay and obstruction.  Documents reveal it was purposely delayed.  Finally, when a small portion of the promised military materiel arrived in China, it was defective.  Was this American incompetence, or treason?  Who were the culprits?

            When Republicans asked, “Who lost China?” Democrats replied, “It was not ours to lose in the first place.”  Nevertheless, the Soviets were aiding the Communists, while subversives in the US government were preventing American aid from reaching Chiang and the anti-Communists.  Evans is superb in presenting much of this material.  And the same people in the American government were also writing off the little Chiang, Synghman Rhee of South Korea.  Moreover, the American leadership was planning to assassinate Chiang and award Taiwan to Mao and the mainland Communists.  Indeed, In January 1950 Secretary of State Dean Acheson announced that South Korean and Formosa were beyond the American security perimeter.  One weakness in Evans book is why Truman decided to about face in summer 1950.  After  declarinf South Korea beyond the security perimeter (and thus liable to be seized by the  North Korea), Truman decided to go to war (or police action) to defend South Korea and then placed the 7^th fleet near Taiwan to prevent the mainland Communists from invading that island.  This was a major policy change.  Who made the change?  More relevant, who had favored the old policy of appeasing the Communists?

            When there were public cases where officials were identified as Communists or spies, the Administration often pressured the accused to resign, but slowly, over time.  McCarthy wanted them fired, and complained that by allowing them to resign, they entered a revolving door whereby those exposed as subversives simply left one department for another, where in the new section no one would be aware of the possible danger.  Thus, the security problem would begin all over again.  Or those who were forced to resign left for positions with the UN, the International Monetary Fund, or other such influential posts.

            After the Republican victory in 1952, McCarthy became chair of a committee and hired various researchers, including a young attorney, Roy Cohn, who had helped in the prosecution of the Rosenbergs.  Cohn was aided by another young enthusiast, G. David Schine.  They travelled to Europe to expose the imbalance of materials in the American library reading rooms, that were meant to counter the Marxist culture of the Communists.  However, many of the books intended to promote the American way, were written by Communists and fellow travelers who undermined the West and praised the Soviets.  Cohn and Schine sought to purge the libraries, and liberals were quick to denounce them as book burners.  (Of course, the left had proudly burnt Nazi and right-wing materials in 1945.)  Still, one wonders if Orwell’s Animal Farm or The God That Failed collection existed in these libraries.  Certainly the Voice of America had continued its WWII left-wing approach to broadcasts: criticizing conservatives and praising socialists and communists.  Even in 1950 during the Korean War, VOA was broadcasting attacks on South Korea’s anti-Communist, Rhee.  One wonders if VOA broadcasters preferred Kim Il Sung, founder of the present dynasty in North Korea.  But to liberals of Europe and America, Cohn and Schine were simply a pair of intolerant witch-hunters.

            McCarthy charged that there was treason in military bases in New Jersey, where radar and sophisticated technical research was conducted.  There was good reason to believe that secrets from Jersey shore were washing up in Eastern Europe.  One officer, Maj. Gen. Kirke Lawton, alarmed about the problem of subversion in the area, cooperated with McCarthy.  Unfortunately, Lawton would then be sacked.  His replacement, Gen. Ralph Zwicker, was initially cooperative with the McCarthy inquiry, but quickly learnt the lesson of Lawton.  Over night, Zwicker changed tactics from cooperation to obstruction of and lying to McCarthy and his committee.  In time Zwicker was promoted.  That was the Army way.

            The Evans book includes so many facts and exposes of the liberals that one cannot detail them here.  Yet, sometimes Evans spotlights the trees and misses the forest.  This is especially true of the Army McCarthy Hearings.

            While McCarthy maintained that there was treason in New Jersey and that to expose and end it was the purpose of the hearings, the Army had another view.  It maintained that Roy Cohn had threatened to destroy the Army through the hearings because the Army was not granting sufficient privileges to his friend, the now draftee, Private G. David Schine.  The subtext was simple – Cohn wanted hearings to undermine the Army because he felt it was mistreating his boy friend.  The issue was not Red treason, but Lavender revenge.

            McCarthy had been an amateur boxer while a student at Marquette University and he had served during WWII; he had a macho image.  In the 1952 election campaign, McCarthy planned to make a speech attacking the Democratic nominee for President Adlai Stevenson.  There were some rumors about the divorced Democrat, and McCarthy proposed a television address to denounce the Stevenson campaign as one filled with “pinks, punks, and pansies.”  Democrats heard of the project and threatened to expose Eisenhower’s liaison with his WAC chauffeur, Kay Summersby.  The family guy Ike had even considered divorcing Mamie to marry his driver.(David K. Johnson’s The Lavender Scare, pp.121-22)  With the treat of retaliation, McCarthy then abandoned that speech and the Democrats remained silent about Eisenhower’s indiscretion.

            On McCarthy, David Johnson writes, “notorious for his attacks on alleged Communists in government, [McCarthy] was often pressured by his allies to denounce homosexuals in government, but he resisted and did not do so.”(Wikipedia, “gay bashing”)  Furthermore, “McCarthy was not involved in any of the congressional investigations or hearings into homosexuals in government.  Though he was a member of the congressional committee that spent several months examining the homosexuals-in-government issue, McCarthy mysteriously recused himself from those hearings.”(Johnson, Lavender, p. 3)  Johnson speculates that the reason may have been that McCarthy, 43 and unmarried, was himself vulnerable on this issue.     

                      In the Army-McCarthy hearings the Left, the Army, and the Eisenhower Administration sought to destroy McCarthy.  The Army again used deception and diversion, the Eisenhower Administration used cover up, and all used anti-gay prejudice to smash the McCarthy assault.  Army Council Welch spent much time inquiring about a cropped photograph of Private Schine with army officers.   Instead of the GOP questions like “Who lost China?” Welch queried, “Who cropped the Schine photo?”  Cohn was called as a witness.  His “own performance on the stand was, as he admitted a quarter-century later, ‘a disaster’…The unsympathetic [Sen.] McClellan pressed him on whether there was something ‘unusual’ about his relationship with David Schine.  Cohn shifted uneasily and said no.  Then Welch had his sport with him.  Earlier he had worked in a nasty comment about ‘pixies’ and ‘fairies’ having handled the cropped photograph, which raised gales of laughter from the audience…”(Herman, p. 273)  The hearings were televised.  In an era when I Love Luch could not use the word ‘pregnant’ to describe her condition, the liberal Welch was taunting Cohn with words implying he was queer.  Yet, McCarthy is the man whom history portrays as the bully and mudslinger.

            There were tapes made of the Army officials preparing their trumped-up case against Cohn about trying to destroy the Army.  Their whole purpose was to obfuscate, divert attention from the question of possible spies on Jersey military bases, and point instead to Cohn’s queer-love vendetta against the Army.  The Army knew there was nothing to Cohn’s “threat”;  the entire Army case against McCarthy and Cohn was a fraud.  The tapes would reveal that.  And when McCarthy sought to subpoena them, Eisenhower invoked Executive Privilege to deny revealing the tapes.  Evans explicates how the New York Times and Washington Post cheered as the President rejected the demands of Congress for such data.  They expounded how Eisenhower was simply upholding the Constitution and the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. The liberal Establishment all agreed with Ike, Congress had no power to subpoena the tapes.

            Evans is superb at exposing the hypocrisy of the liberals – for when Congress demanded another set of tapes in the 1970s from President Richard Nixon, those very same newspapers reversed themselves and joined the demand.  When Nixon invoked Executive Privilege to prevent Congress from snooping into the President’s affairs, the liberals denied there was such a privilege, and responded with impeachment.  But in the 1950s the same liberal Establishment praised Ike for doing what they would later condemn Nixon for doing.  The liberals did not demand the impeachment of Eisenhower – they demanded the destruction of McCarthy.

            “On June 1 [1954, liberal Republican] Ralph Flanders gave one of the nastiest, ugliest speeches ever made in the Senate Chamber…It compared him[McCarthy] to Hitler…and accused him of homosexuality…Flanders spoke of Cohn’s ‘passionate anxiety’ to protect David Schine and insinuated that McCarthy had his own reason to keep Schines’s ‘services available.’  He urged the Mundt subcommittee to investigate the ‘real issue at stake’ in the McCarthy-Cohn-Schine triangle.”(Herman, p. 274)  McCarthy did not marry until he was 44, and liberal columnist Drew Pearson had provided information which was published in Nevada alleging that McCarthy had partaken in gay activities.  On the other hand, Evans discounts the story that McCarthy or Schine were homosexual, but concedes that Cohn was.

            The Army McCarthy hearings were followed by the Senate’s censure of the Wisconsin Senator in December 1954.  All the Democrats joined with half the Republicans to condemn McCarthy.  (Democrat Sen. John Kennedy did not vote because he was in hospital recuperating from back surgery.)   Thereafter, McCarthy would cease to be a political force.  Spent, he drank more and died in May 1957 at age 48.  His name became an “ism,” a synonym for witch hunts, irresponsible charges, cruelty, smears, and bullying.

            But was McCarthy right?  Putin gloats in 2012 because of the help provided by American spies who helped to make the USSR/Russia a nuclear power.  Putin knows what is in the archives of the spy agencies in Moscow.  However, what is held in the archives of the agencies in Beijing?  Herman writes (p. 168): “In 1945 George Marshall went to China to try to arrange a truce between the warring factions and to propose a coalition government.  Chiang refused, and despaired of Marshall’s and the American government’s naivete in dealing with the Communists.  The result was an American aid embargo to force Chiang’s hand, which lasted until April 1948 – while Mao’s Communists were receiving constant supplies and training from Stalin.  When the Truman administration finally lifted the embargo and authorized an aid package of $400 million, it delayed delivery until November.  By then the Communists were poised for their victorious campaign.”

            Evans clarifies this even more.  The US withheld aid toChiang until he formed a coalition government with the Communists.  In effect, this gave the Chinese Communists a veto power over aid to Chiang.  Because the Communists refused to enter into an agreement with the Nationalists, the US government responded by cutting of aid to Chiang.  Under the circumstances, the Communists did not enter into the coalition, and Chiang received no American aid.  Meanwhile, the Communists received Soviet aid and grew more powerful.(Evans, 416-17)  

            “Sinister figures like Lauchlin Currie flit in and out of the story,…, and FE [foreign expert] officials like [John Stewart] Service and [John Carter] Vincent worked hard to undermine official and public support for the Nationalists.  One of the critical factors in Chiang’s collapse, a rampant inflation and a worthless currency, was certainly engineered by Soviet agents in the Kuomingtang and the American Treasury Department…But when all is said and done, if Chiang would have been an inadequate leader for the Chinese people, Mao was a disastrous one.  If Chiang was willing to countenance corruption and incompetence, Mao was prepared to commit mass murder: perhaps as many as 50 million would die between 1949 and 1969 thanks to Mao’s policies.”(Herman, 168)

            McCarthy was demanding that some of those responsible for America’s pro-Mao policy  be exposed, fired, and not transferred to another government department or to the UN.

            Evans reveals another aspect of the Cold War – but occurring prior to McCarthy’s prominence.  The FBI and other investigations of Communists in government had taken place, especially with the Hitler-Stalin pact.  The FBI even had a list of people to be detained in case of emergency, like J. Robert Oppenheimer.  However, in 1944 government agencies began to remove such anti-communist files to basements, or remote locations, away from personnel offices.  Then many of those files were discarded or disappeared.  In 1950 when McCarthy charged that there were subversives on government payrolls, in time the government would finally tighten security.

            In any bureaucracy, whistle-blowers are usually unappreciated and often considered a threat by and to the directors of the department.  When McCarthy encouraged everyday workers in government to send him information about possible subversives, both  the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations saw him as a threat.  Their actions demonstrate they considered McCarthy “moles” more of a threat than Communist “moles.”

            In taking on the government, McCarthy felt the wrath of the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, and he endured the hatred of the Left and the Liberal Establishment.  The New York Times, the Washington Post, Edward R. Murrow of CBS, academia, all pitched stories with sufficient spin so that McCarthy would finally strike out. After the censure by the Senate, the Establishment had won.  It might have advised McCarthy, in the manner of the friends of Job, “to curse God and die.”  McCarthy may well have cursed some, but it is unlikely he cursed God.  He died two years after censure, along with his reputation.

            Putin’s boast of 2012 must make us ponder.  Who stuffed the suitcases for Stalin?  Did American “advisors” pull the rug from Chiang and propel Mao to power in China?  Did subversives inside the American government help to accomplish this – and all the millions of murders that ensued?  (In March 2012 even Chinese Communist Premier Wen Jiabao called the Cultural Revolution an “historical tragedy” disaster for China.)  It is time to reconsider McCarthy, and books and by Evans and Herman’s can help us to do just that.