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| | Levine also told David Dubinsky,<ref>[http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/laborhall/dd.htm 1993 Honoree David Dubinsky, 1892-1982], Labor Hall of Fame Honoree, United Stated Department of Labor</ref> president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union,<ref>[http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/ilgwu.htm International Ladies Garment Workers Union (1900-1995)], Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, National Park Service</ref> about [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]]' revelations. Dubinsky, wrote Levine, "took up the Chambers matter with the [[Franklin Roosevelt|President]] at the first opportunity and was brushed off with an amiable slap on the back." Levine wrote that he also told fellow journalist Walter Winchell<ref>[http://www.radiohof.org/news/walterwinchell.html Walter Winchell], Radio Hall of Fame</ref> of "a ring of six [[Soviet]] agents operating within the [[State Department]] alone. In his broadcast of December 12, Winchell announced that he had carried my information to President Roosevelt. Still there was no action."<ref>Isaac Don Levine, ''Eyewitness To History: Memoirs and Reflections of a Foreign Correspondent for Half a Century'' (Stroud, Glos.: Hawthorn Books, 1973) ASIN B000ONBAW0, pp. 197-9</ref> Winchell's posthumously published memoir confirms Levine's story.<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), ISBN 0394495462, p. 331</ref> | | Levine also told David Dubinsky,<ref>[http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/laborhall/dd.htm 1993 Honoree David Dubinsky, 1892-1982], Labor Hall of Fame Honoree, United Stated Department of Labor</ref> president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union,<ref>[http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/ilgwu.htm International Ladies Garment Workers Union (1900-1995)], Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, National Park Service</ref> about [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]]' revelations. Dubinsky, wrote Levine, "took up the Chambers matter with the [[Franklin Roosevelt|President]] at the first opportunity and was brushed off with an amiable slap on the back." Levine wrote that he also told fellow journalist Walter Winchell<ref>[http://www.radiohof.org/news/walterwinchell.html Walter Winchell], Radio Hall of Fame</ref> of "a ring of six [[Soviet]] agents operating within the [[State Department]] alone. In his broadcast of December 12, Winchell announced that he had carried my information to President Roosevelt. Still there was no action."<ref>Isaac Don Levine, ''Eyewitness To History: Memoirs and Reflections of a Foreign Correspondent for Half a Century'' (Stroud, Glos.: Hawthorn Books, 1973) ASIN B000ONBAW0, pp. 197-9</ref> Winchell's posthumously published memoir confirms Levine's story.<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), ISBN 0394495462, p. 331</ref> |
| | | | |
| − | That September, the [[Nazi]] and [[Soviet]] armies staged a joint victory parade through the streets of occupied Brest-Litovsk, [[Poland]].<ref>Olaf Groehler, ''Selbstmorderische Allianz: Deutsch-russische Militarbeziehungen, 1920-1941'' (Berlin: Vision Verlag 1993), pp. 21-22, 123-124; Aleksandr M. Nekrich, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=ZliWXGydrzAC Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922-1941]'' (Columbia University Press, 1997), both cited in Benjamin B. Fischer, "[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art6.html The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field]," ''Studies in Intelligence'', Winter 1999–2000</ref> Hiss was at this time among a handful of the Soviets' most important agents, who were run individually and not through spy networks, according to Oleg Gordievsky. Hiss' wartime controller, wrote Gordievsky, was [[Akhmerov]], the leading [[NKVD]] illegal in the [[United States]],<ref>Douglas O. Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html The VENONA Files and the Alger Hiss Case]," Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law)</ref> who, in a lecture before a [[KGB]] audience, identified Hiss as a Soviet agent during [[World War II]].<ref>Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, ''KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev'' (New York: Harpercollins, 1990) ISBN 0060166053, p. 287</ref> | + | By 1944, Hiss would be deputy director of the [[State Department]]'s Office of Special Political Affairs, a policy-making office for postwar planning and international organization.<ref>Gregor Dallas, ''1945: The War that Never Ended'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) ISBN 0300109806), p. 412</ref> In August, he organized the Dumbarton Oaks Conference,<ref>Douglas O. Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissaccount.html The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Commentary], Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 2003). Hiss even suggested the location from which the conference derives its name. (Robert C. Hilderbrand, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=BFHJMfMtiKsC Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security]'' [Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2001] ISBN 0807849502, p. 67)</ref> where he served as executive secretary,<ref>Robert G. Whalen, "[http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/reviews/chambers-strange.html Hiss and Chambers: Strange Story of Two Men]," ''The New York Times'', December 12, 1948; "[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,811892.html The Case of Alger Hiss]," ''Time'', February 13, 1950</ref> presiding over the drafting of the proposed [[United Nations]] Charter.<ref>[http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/history/dumbarton.shtml Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta], History of the Charter of the United Nations (UN.org)</ref> |
| | + | |
| | + | By 1948 Berle, ousted from the [[State Department]], would be serving as chairman of [[New York]]'s Liberal Party. That year, the New York bureau of the ''Christian Science Monitor'' would send a teletype to the home office in [[Boston]], relating a background interview with the party's publicity director, Arnold Beichman: |
| | + | {{cquote|From a thoroughly reliable contact: According to this informant Berle has said privately that classified material which Hiss was handling was reaching the [[Russians]]. It was coded stuff. Berle took the handling out of Hiss' hands and the leaks stopped.<ref>Ralph de Toledano, “[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n3_v13/ai_19048238 Embarrassment aided and abetted the Top Soviet spy - Alger Hiss],” ''Insight on the News'', January 27, 1997</ref>}} |
| | + | But in the wake of Dumbarton Oaks, Berle was ousted as Assistant [[Secretary of State]] in charge of security, defeated by the [[State Department]]'s pro-[[Soviet]] faction, Hiss prominent among them. As Berle put it: |
| | + | {{cquote|[I]n the fall of 1944 there was a difference of opinion in the [[State Department]]. I felt that the [[Russian]]s were not going to be sympathetic and cooperative.... I was pressing for a pretty clean-cut showdown then when our position was strongest. The opposite group in the State Department was largely ... [[Dean Acheson|Mr. Acheson]]'s group ... with Mr. Hiss as his principal assistant in the matter.... [A]t that time Mr. Hiss did take what we would call today the pro-Russian point of view....<ref>Subcommittee on Internal Security, Committee on the Judiciary, U. S. Senate [http://ia360635.us.archive.org/3/items/interlockingsubv1953unit/interlockingsubv1953unit_bw.pdf Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments] (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1953), p. 28 (PDF p. 34)</ref> I got trimmed in that fight, and, as a result, went to [[Brazil]], and that ended my diplomatic career.<ref>M. Stanton Evans, "[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=453 McCarthyism: Waging the Cold War in America]," ''Human Events'', May 30, 1997</ref>}} |
| | + | |
| | + | ===Hatch Act Investigation=== |
| | + | |
| | + | In September 1940, the [[Nazi]] and [[Soviet]] armies staged a joint victory parade through the streets of occupied Brest-Litovsk, [[Poland]].<ref>Olaf Groehler, ''Selbstmorderische Allianz: Deutsch-russische Militarbeziehungen, 1920-1941'' (Berlin: Vision Verlag 1993), pp. 21-22, 123-124; Aleksandr M. Nekrich, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=ZliWXGydrzAC Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922-1941]'' (Columbia University Press, 1997), both cited in Benjamin B. Fischer, "[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art6.html The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field]," ''Studies in Intelligence'', Winter 1999–2000</ref> Hiss was at this time among a handful of the Soviets' most important agents, who were run individually and not through spy networks, according to Oleg Gordievsky. Hiss' wartime controller, wrote Gordievsky, was [[Akhmerov]], the leading [[NKVD]] illegal in the [[United States]],<ref>Douglas O. Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html The VENONA Files and the Alger Hiss Case]," Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law)</ref> who, in a lecture before a [[KGB]] audience, identified Hiss as a Soviet agent during [[World War II]].<ref>Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, ''KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev'' (New York: Harpercollins, 1990) ISBN 0060166053, p. 287</ref> |
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| | [[Image:FBI-Hiss-chart.jpg|thumb|300 px|FBI chart illustrating the dissemination to the White House, State Department and Attorney General of dozens of secret memos and reports on Alger Hiss in 1942-47. ''Image source: J. Edgar Hoover Official & Confidential File #34, FOIA Reading Room, Federal Bureau of Investigation'']]In 1941, during the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]], the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities|Dies committee]] obtained the membership list of the Washington Committee for Democratic Action, which would be confirmed as a [[Communist]] front the following year by [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]]'s [[Attorney General]] Francis Biddle.<ref>M. Stanton Evans, ''Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies'' (New York: Crown Forum, 2007) ISBN 978-1-4000-8105-9, p. 55, n. 6 (p. 610)</ref> Included on the roster was the name of Priscilla Hiss,<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), ISBN 0394495462, p. 329; G. Edward White, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=FvR4HBTiYzAC Alger Hiss's Looking-glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy]'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0195182553, p. 48</ref> with the notation appended, "[[Husband]] with [[State Department]]."<ref>FBI Report: [http://education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster082.pdf Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government], October 21, 1946, [http://ultra-secret.info/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster082_Folder/Silvermaster082_page120.pdf p. 109 (PDF p. 120)]. FBI file: Silvermaster, Vol 82</ref> As mandated by the [[Hatch Act]], the [[FBI]] subsequently conducted an investigation of Hiss, in the course of which one of Hiss' former colleagues at the AAA told investigators that Hiss and his circle were [[fellow traveller|fellow travelers]], if not [[Communist]]s.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> Hiss denied everything, although he said he thought his wife might have been a member of the League of Women Shoppers,<ref>[http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss134_main.html League of Women Shoppers Records, 1937 - 2001], Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College</ref> a [[Popular Front]] group<ref>Michael Denning, ''The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century'' (New York: Verso, 1998) ISBN 1859841708, p. 410</ref> identified as a Communist front by the committee in 1939.<ref>Meg Jacobs, ''Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-century America'' (Princeton University Press, 2005) ISBN 0691086648, p. 171</ref> In 1942, the FBI sent a report of this investigation to the [[Secretary of State]],<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> the first of what would become a veritable avalanche of FBI memos and reports on Hiss disseminated to the [[State Department]], Attorney General and [[White House]] over the ensuing five years. | | [[Image:FBI-Hiss-chart.jpg|thumb|300 px|FBI chart illustrating the dissemination to the White House, State Department and Attorney General of dozens of secret memos and reports on Alger Hiss in 1942-47. ''Image source: J. Edgar Hoover Official & Confidential File #34, FOIA Reading Room, Federal Bureau of Investigation'']]In 1941, during the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]], the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities|Dies committee]] obtained the membership list of the Washington Committee for Democratic Action, which would be confirmed as a [[Communist]] front the following year by [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]]'s [[Attorney General]] Francis Biddle.<ref>M. Stanton Evans, ''Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies'' (New York: Crown Forum, 2007) ISBN 978-1-4000-8105-9, p. 55, n. 6 (p. 610)</ref> Included on the roster was the name of Priscilla Hiss,<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), ISBN 0394495462, p. 329; G. Edward White, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=FvR4HBTiYzAC Alger Hiss's Looking-glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy]'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0195182553, p. 48</ref> with the notation appended, "[[Husband]] with [[State Department]]."<ref>FBI Report: [http://education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster082.pdf Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government], October 21, 1946, [http://ultra-secret.info/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster082_Folder/Silvermaster082_page120.pdf p. 109 (PDF p. 120)]. FBI file: Silvermaster, Vol 82</ref> As mandated by the [[Hatch Act]], the [[FBI]] subsequently conducted an investigation of Hiss, in the course of which one of Hiss' former colleagues at the AAA told investigators that Hiss and his circle were [[fellow traveller|fellow travelers]], if not [[Communist]]s.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> Hiss denied everything, although he said he thought his wife might have been a member of the League of Women Shoppers,<ref>[http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss134_main.html League of Women Shoppers Records, 1937 - 2001], Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College</ref> a [[Popular Front]] group<ref>Michael Denning, ''The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century'' (New York: Verso, 1998) ISBN 1859841708, p. 410</ref> identified as a Communist front by the committee in 1939.<ref>Meg Jacobs, ''Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-century America'' (Princeton University Press, 2005) ISBN 0691086648, p. 171</ref> In 1942, the FBI sent a report of this investigation to the [[Secretary of State]],<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> the first of what would become a veritable avalanche of FBI memos and reports on Hiss disseminated to the [[State Department]], Attorney General and [[White House]] over the ensuing five years. |
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| | {{cquote|I cannot keep silent any longer.... I can no longer support double-faced political maneuvers... toward collaboration with the [[United States]] and [[Britain]] while pursuing aims incompatible with such collaboration. | | {{cquote|I cannot keep silent any longer.... I can no longer support double-faced political maneuvers... toward collaboration with the [[United States]] and [[Britain]] while pursuing aims incompatible with such collaboration. |
| | The [[Soviet]] Government has dissolved the [[Communist International]] but only in form.... The new democratic terminology is only a maneuver... to promote the inclusion of [[Communist]]s, obedient to the [[Kremlin]], in the future Governments... of Italy, Austria and other countries.<ref>"[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885439,00.html The Kravchenko Case]," ''Time'', April 17, 1944. In 1966, Kravchenko would be found [http://www.americansterling.com/ASPL_Film_Defector.asp shot] to death in his Manhattan apartment. Although his [[death]] would be ruled a [[suicide]], his son Andrew maintains that he was executed by a SMERSH assassination squad.</ref>}} | | The [[Soviet]] Government has dissolved the [[Communist International]] but only in form.... The new democratic terminology is only a maneuver... to promote the inclusion of [[Communist]]s, obedient to the [[Kremlin]], in the future Governments... of Italy, Austria and other countries.<ref>"[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885439,00.html The Kravchenko Case]," ''Time'', April 17, 1944. In 1966, Kravchenko would be found [http://www.americansterling.com/ASPL_Film_Defector.asp shot] to death in his Manhattan apartment. Although his [[death]] would be ruled a [[suicide]], his son Andrew maintains that he was executed by a SMERSH assassination squad.</ref>}} |
| − | That year, Hiss was promoted to become deputy director of the [[State Department]]'s Office of Special Political Affairs, a policy-making office for postwar planning and international organization.<ref>Gregor Dallas, ''1945: The War that Never Ended'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) ISBN 0300109806), p. 412</ref> In August, he organized the Dumbarton Oaks Conference,<ref>Douglas O. Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissaccount.html The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Commentary], Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 2003). Hiss even suggested the location from which the conference derives its name. (Robert C. Hilderbrand, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=BFHJMfMtiKsC Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security]'' [Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2001] ISBN 0807849502, p. 67)</ref> where he served as executive secretary,<ref>Robert G. Whalen, "[http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/reviews/chambers-strange.html Hiss and Chambers: Strange Story of Two Men]," ''The New York Times'', December 12, 1948; "[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,811892.html The Case of Alger Hiss]," ''Time'', February 13, 1950</ref> presiding over the drafting of the proposed [[United Nations]] Charter.<ref>[http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/history/dumbarton.shtml Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta], History of the Charter of the United Nations (UN.org)</ref>
| |
| − |
| |
| − | By 1948 Berle, ousted from the [[State Department]], would be serving as chairman of [[New York]]'s Liberal Party. That year, the New York bureau of the ''Christian Science Monitor'' would send a teletype to the home office in [[Boston]], relating a background interview with the party's publicity director, Arnold Beichman:
| |
| − | {{cquote|From a thoroughly reliable contact: According to this informant Berle has said privately that classified material which Hiss was handling was reaching the [[Russians]]. It was coded stuff. Berle took the handling out of Hiss' hands and the leaks stopped.<ref>Ralph de Toledano, “[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n3_v13/ai_19048238 Embarrassment aided and abetted the Top Soviet spy - Alger Hiss],” ''Insight on the News'', January 27, 1997</ref>}}
| |
| − | But in the wake of Dumbarton Oaks, Berle was ousted as Assistant [[Secretary of State]] in charge of security, defeated by the [[State Department]]'s pro-[[Soviet]] faction, Hiss prominent among them. As Berle put it:
| |
| − | {{cquote|[I]n the fall of 1944 there was a difference of opinion in the [[State Department]]. I felt that the [[Russian]]s were not going to be sympathetic and cooperative.... I was pressing for a pretty clean-cut showdown then when our position was strongest. The opposite group in the State Department was largely ... [[Dean Acheson|Mr. Acheson]]'s group ... with Mr. Hiss as his principal assistant in the matter.... [A]t that time Mr. Hiss did take what we would call today the pro-Russian point of view....<ref>Subcommittee on Internal Security, Committee on the Judiciary, U. S. Senate [http://ia360635.us.archive.org/3/items/interlockingsubv1953unit/interlockingsubv1953unit_bw.pdf Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments] (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1953), p. 28 (PDF p. 34)</ref> I got trimmed in that fight, and, as a result, went to [[Brazil]], and that ended my diplomatic career.<ref>M. Stanton Evans, "[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=453 McCarthyism: Waging the Cold War in America]," ''Human Events'', May 30, 1997</ref>}}
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| | ===Yalta=== | | ===Yalta=== |