Difference between revisions of "Communist Party of the United States of America"

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Duffield, who saw in Snow's ''People on Our Side'' a fine book "by a scrupulously accurate reporter."
 
Duffield, who saw in Snow's ''People on Our Side'' a fine book "by a scrupulously accurate reporter."
  
The incestuous relationship of Communist [[propagandist]]s can be seen when Lattimore's book ''Solution in Asia'' was reviewed in the ''New York Times''<ref>''New York Times Weekly Book Review'', February 25, 1945.</ref> by Edgar Snow. Another of Lattimore's books a short time earlier recieved accolades from Edgar Snow's wife, [[Nym Wales]], in the ''Saturday Review of Literature''.<ref>''Saturday Review of Literature'', March 25, 1944.</ref>  In the ''Herald-Tribune''<ref>''New York Herald-Tribune Books of the Week'', February 25, 1945.</ref> A. T. Steele said Lattimore's book was one which "belongs in the brief case of every diplomat and general concerned with the reshaping of Asia." [[T. A. Bisson]], also arrested in the ''Amerasia'' scandal, wrote in the ''Saturday Review of Literature'', "The breath of the future blows through . . . this stimulating review of Far Eastern issues."<ref>''Saturday Review of Literature'', March 10, 1945.</ref> ''The Nation''<ref>''The Nation'', March 17, 1945.</ref> review was done by [[Maxwell S. Stewart]], also an editor of the same publication and was involed with some 40 [[Communist front]] activities.
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The incestuous relationship of Communist [[propagandist]]s can be seen when Lattimore's book ''Solution in Asia'' was reviewed in the ''New York Times''<ref>''New York Times Weekly Book Review'', February 25, 1945.</ref> by Edgar Snow. Another of Lattimore's books a short time earlier received accolades from Edgar Snow's wife, [[Nym Wales]], in the ''Saturday Review of Literature''.<ref>''Saturday Review of Literature'', March 25, 1944.</ref>  In the ''Herald-Tribune''<ref>''New York Herald-Tribune Books of the Week'', February 25, 1945.</ref> A. T. Steele said Lattimore's book was one which "belongs in the brief case of every diplomat and general concerned with the reshaping of Asia." [[T. A. Bisson]], also arrested in the ''Amerasia'' scandal, wrote in the ''Saturday Review of Literature'', "The breath of the future blows through . . . this stimulating review of Far Eastern issues."<ref>''Saturday Review of Literature'', March 10, 1945.</ref> ''The Nation''<ref>''The Nation'', March 17, 1945.</ref> review was done by [[Maxwell S. Stewart]], also an editor of the same publication and was involved with some 40 [[Communist front]] activities.
  
 
Of the 23 pro-Communist books, Owen and Eleanor Lattimore, Edgar Snow and his wife Nym Wales, Agnes Smedley, Mark Gayn, [[John K. Fairbank]], [[Theodore White]] and [[Annalee Jacoby]], [[Harrison Forman]], [[Foster Rhea Dulles]], and  [[Lawrence K. Rosinger]] wrote 12 and turned in 44 reviews, either touting each other's books, or blasting the 7 anti-Communist books.  Throughout this extensive and concerted propaganda campaign it was made to appear that the Communists wanted unity to fight Japan but that Chiang Kai-shek was only interested in fighting his own people.<ref>''While You Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It'', John T. Flynn,  New York : The Devin-Adair Company, 1951, [http://www.mises.org/books/whileyouslept.pdf pg. 152] pdf.</ref> Lattimore wrote, "The Soviet Union stands for democracy"<ref>''Solution in Asia'', Owen Lattimore, pg. 108.</ref> and Snow "The Soviet Union cannot have any [[expansionist]] tendencies."<ref>''Battle for Asia'', Edgar Snow, pg. 300.</ref>
 
Of the 23 pro-Communist books, Owen and Eleanor Lattimore, Edgar Snow and his wife Nym Wales, Agnes Smedley, Mark Gayn, [[John K. Fairbank]], [[Theodore White]] and [[Annalee Jacoby]], [[Harrison Forman]], [[Foster Rhea Dulles]], and  [[Lawrence K. Rosinger]] wrote 12 and turned in 44 reviews, either touting each other's books, or blasting the 7 anti-Communist books.  Throughout this extensive and concerted propaganda campaign it was made to appear that the Communists wanted unity to fight Japan but that Chiang Kai-shek was only interested in fighting his own people.<ref>''While You Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It'', John T. Flynn,  New York : The Devin-Adair Company, 1951, [http://www.mises.org/books/whileyouslept.pdf pg. 152] pdf.</ref> Lattimore wrote, "The Soviet Union stands for democracy"<ref>''Solution in Asia'', Owen Lattimore, pg. 108.</ref> and Snow "The Soviet Union cannot have any [[expansionist]] tendencies."<ref>''Battle for Asia'', Edgar Snow, pg. 300.</ref>

Revision as of 04:58, December 14, 2007

The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States.

The Soviet Union conducted an extensive and continuous espionage attack against the security institutions—political, economic, and scientific—of the United States from the time of Washington's diplomatic recognition of the USSR by the Roosevelt Administration. [1] That attack continued not only during the time the USSR was allied with Nazi Germany from 1939 until it was attacked by Germany in 1941, but during the war years 1942–1945. The main thrust was to give impetus to the Soviet drive for World Revolution; to increase the political power of CPUSA, and to strengthen the Soviet economy by economic and scientific espionage. But principally it sought to weaken and subvert the government of its "main enemy," the United States. A major instrument of Moscow's policy was the CPUSA. Many of America's liberal political elite still refuse to acknowledge this, despite the evidence. [2] Members of the liberal elite have claimed over the years that the CPUSA has never been connected with Soviet espionage despite a solid body of evidence to the contrary. For example, Victor Navasky, then editor of the leftist The Nation published an article identifying Victor Perlo as merely a "New Deal economist." [3]

Early years

It was formed in 1919 as a splinter group of the left-wing of the Socialist Party over the issue of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The left wing socialists supported Lenin and Trotsky, and broke off the SP to form two rival parties: the Communist Party of America and Communist Labor Party. Under pressure from the Communist International, these two communist parties officially merged in Chicago in 1919. From its inception, the Communist Party, USA came under attack from the FBI and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer for defying the Sedition Act of 1918. Consequently, the Communist Party went underground and went through name changes to evade the authorities.

During the early 1920s, the party apparatus was to a great extent underground. It reemerged in 1923 with a small legal above ground element, the Workers Party of America. As the Red Scare and deportations of the early 1920s ebbed, the party became bolder and more open. An element of the party, however, remained permanently underground. It was through this underground party, often commanded by a Soviet official operating as an illegal in the United States, that Soviet intelligence was able to co-opt CPUSA members. [4][5] The Comintern supplied the American Communist movement with the equivalent of several million dollars in valuables, an enormous sum in the 1920s. [6] By 1930 it had adopted the title Communist Party of the USA.

In the 1930s the CPUSA recruited several hundred persons among thousands of new employees hired by the federal government under the impact of the New Deal's rapid expansion of governmental programs. Federal regulations forbade partisan political activity by federal employees, and open membership in the Communist Party brought discharge. The CPUSA evaded the law by organizing caucuses of government employees that met in secret. Joseph Peters, a senior member of the Central Committee of the CPUSA, headed the party’s underground apparatus from 1932 to 1938 and pioneered its role as an auxiliary to Soviet intelligence activities. CPUSA operatives did not move in heavily until Roosevelt's second term and not en masse until the third term, although the entering wedge was made during his first term.

In 1932, Sergei Ivanovich Gussev, who had served as Comintern agent and Stalin's personal representative in the United States, "commanded the Communists in the United States to take up four tasks. Two of them were the defence of the Soviet Union and the furtherance of Red conquest of China." In 1933 the notorious Gerhart Eisler "was secretly sent into the United States by Moscow to make sure these orders were carried out." [7]

Edgar Snow introduced Mao and Zhou Enlai to American readers in 1937 in his book, Red Star Over China, shortly after the Chinese Red Army’s route by Chiang Kai-shek in 1934 and their year long retreat to Yenan known as the Long March. Snow wrote, "the political ideology, tactical line and theoretical leadership of the Chinese Communists have been under the close guidance, if not positive detailed direction, of the Communist International, which during the last decade has become virtually a bureau of the Russian Communist Party." And he further declared that the CCP had to subordinate itself to the "strategic requirements of Soviet Russia, under the leadership of Stalin."[8][9][10] Communists in the United States hailed the book. Victor A. Yakhontoff wrote in the New Masses (January 11, 1938): "I want to urge you with all my force to read this new book by Edgar Snow." A few weeks later in the same Red organ, he added this revealing comment: "The value of this material can be judged by the fact that most of it was supplied by Mao Tsetung, the head of the Soviet regime, and that some of it was checked by personal observation of the author" (January 25, 1938).

In 1940 Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party wrote a book entitled The New Democracy. It carried an introduction by Earl Browder. Mao wrote, "We cannot separate ourselves from the assistance of the Soviet Union."[11]

November 18, 1945, William Z. Foster told delegates to the National Convention of the Communist Party that "on the international scale the key task is to stop American intervention in China." On December 4, 1945, the Communists staged a "Get Out of China Rally," while communist dominated labor unions put on work stoppages with the same slogan.

Leadership

Earl Browder assumed party leadership after 1929 and actually dissolved the party in 1944 replacing it with a Communist Political Association. For this he was in turn expelled and William Z. Foster became head of the party. Foster published a 'new history' of America, which was highly praised in Moscow, translated in many languages and made a handbook of anti-American propaganda all over the world. Of it Browder wrote, "This extraordinary book interpreted the history of America from its discovery to the present, as an orgy of 'bloody banditry' and imperialism, enriching itself by 'drinking the rich red blood' of other peoples. Foster joined in the Thorez declaration of French Communist Maurice Thorez that said if the Soviet armies found it necessary to occupy all Western Europe the working people would greet them as liberators; the only thing missing was a direct welcome to Soviet armies in America itself." Foster was to lead the party until he retired in 1958 and was succeeded by Gus Hall.

Whittaker Chambers testified that Sandor Goldberger AKA "Joseph Peters" who commonly wrote under the name J. Peters, a Comintern apparatchik who worked in the Fourth Department, a Comitern functionary, headed the party’s underground secret apparatus from 1932 to 1937 and pioneered its role as an auxiliary to Soviet intelligence activities. Bernard Schuster, Organizational Secretary of the New York District of the CPUSA was the operational recruiter and conduit for members of the CPUSA into the ranks of the secret apparatus, or "Group A line". [12]

Secret apparatus

In the 1930s CPUSA membership became largely native-born, and more educated people joined, including many scientific and technically trained professionals. American Communists considered the 'capitalist' corporations which employed them as morally illegitimate institutions. When Soviet intelligence officers approached and asked that the scientific secrets of these corporations be shared with the Soviet Union, few had moral objections.

Soviet intelligence agencies were able to use over 400 American citizens during the 1930s and up to 1946. The CPUSA was not just a recruiting ground for Soviet intelligence, it functioned within Soviet espionage as an auxiliary organization. Earl Browder, with the active assistance of a dozen high-level CPUSA officials, and numerous rank-and-file members, supervised CPUSA cooperation with the OGPU and GRU. Browder was given personal credit for recruitment of eighteen agents in a 1946 OGPU memo.

In the 1930s, the chief Soviet espionage organization operating in the U.S. became the GRU. J. Peters, headed the secret apparatus that supplied internal government documents from the Ware group to the GRU. Browder assisted Peters in building a network of operatives in the Roosevelt administration. This group included Alger Hiss, John Abt, and Lee Pressman. Courier for the group at the time was Whittaker Chambers. Browder oversaw the efforts of Jacob Golos and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Bentley, whose network of agents and sources included two key figures at the Department of Treasury, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster and Harry Dexter White.

By the end of 1936 at least four mid-level State Department officials were delivering information to Soviet intelligence: Alger Hiss, assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Francis Sayre; Julian Wadleigh, economist in the Trade Agreements Section; Laurence Duggan, Latin American division; and Noel Field, West European division. Chambers told how a tank design by C.W. Christie was procured, and was put into production in the Soviet Union as the Mark BT.

In the late 1930s and 1940 the OGPU, known as the Political Directorate, used the U.S. as one of several staging areas for multiple OGPU plots to murder exiled Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, then living in Mexico City. It was American Communists who infiltrated Trotsky’s killer into his own household . They were also central to the NKVD's unsuccessful efforts to free the killer from a Mexican prison. In the late 1930s Soviet agents sought to provide Moscow with a wide range of information on high-performance aircraft, battleships, cruisers, armor, navigation equipment, tank engines, and armaments from key U.S. defense contractors, including Northrop, Douglas, and Marietta. The operations were run by Soviet Case Officers working under the cover of Amtorg Trading Corporation[13], the Soviet Society of the Red Cross, TASS, Sovfil'meksporta and some other establishments.

By 1940 Soviet interest was focused on atomic energy and other scientific developments, with some emphasis also being given to infiltration of Trotskyite and White Russian activities.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and American entry into the war in December, the USSR became a major recipient of American military aid. Thousands of Soviet military officers and technicians entered the U.S. Scores of Soviet intelligence officers were among those arriving in America. These Case Officers, with the assitance of American citizens, waged a successful unrestrained espionage campaign against the United States, from 1942 to late 1945.

General Secretary Josef Stalin of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), directed Soviet intelligence officers to collect information in four main areas. Pavel Fitin, the 34-year-old chief of the KGB First Directorate, was directed to seek American intelligence concerning Hitler's plans for the war in Russia; secret war aims of London and Washington, particularly with regard to planning for Operation Overlord, the second front in Europe; any indications the Western allies might be willing to make a separate peace with Hitler; and American scientific and technological progress, particularly in the development of an atomic weapon.

Since 1933 one of the main objectives in Soviet policy had been to maneuver America into war with Japan. Japan was a serious threat to Soviet designs on the Far East. If Japan's power were broken, there would be no difficulty in realizing Soviet objectives in Asia. The Roosevelt Administration wittingly or unwittingly followed the Soviet line, and Harry Dexter White, an important and trusted official in the Administration, drafted a note to Japan that produced the war for which Roosevelt had long been looking. [14][15]

Soviet recruitment of sources within American intelligence agencies, particularly within the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency was impressive. The highest ranking recruit was Duncan Lee, counsel to General William Donovan, OSS head. Lee, however, was extremely cautious and less productive than other OPGU sources, like Maurice Halperin, or Donald Wheeler, in the OSS Research and Analysis division. At least fifteen Soviet agents penetrated the OSS, with the actual number more likely around twenty.

The Soviets also developed about twenty sources within the U.S. State Department and other wartime foreign relations agencies. The two most senior Soviet operatives had been active in the 1930s, Alger Hiss and Laurence Duggan. A number of other Soviet infiltrators connections to American diplomacy have only been identified by code-names in the Venona project materials. Some of these identities have not been determined. Some most likely continued to operate in the post-war period. American counter-intelligence officials spent decades interviewing and examining the backgrounds of hundreds of American diplomatic personnel attempting to attach an identity to the code-name of many of these known operatives.

Silvermaster network

Main article: Silvermaster group

The United States Treasury hosted nearly a dozen Soviet sources, including one of the most important, Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the treasury and the second most influential official in the department. In Late May 1941 Vitaly Pavlov, a 25 years old NKVD officer, approached White and attempted to secure his assistance to influence U.S. policy with towards Japan. White agreed to assist Soviet intelligence in any way he could. The principle function of White was to aid in the infiltration and placement of Soviet operatives within the government, and protecting sources. When security concerns arose around Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, White protected him in his sensitive position at the Board of Economic Warfare. White likewise was a purveyor of information and resources to assist Soviet aims.

Silvermaster denied any links with agents of a foreign power and appealed to Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson to overrule the security officials. Harry Dexter White contacted Patterson and told him suspicions about Silvermaster were baseless. Lauchlin Currie, a presidential aide who also cooperated with Soviet intelligence, personally phoned Patterson and urged a reconsideration of Silvermaster’s case. Patterson accepted these highly placed sources and overruled military counterintelligence. This decision facilitated the work of one of the most productive Soviet espionage rings, and provided substance for the postwar partisan charge that high officials in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations aided Soviet espionage against the United States.

Stalin publicly disbanded the Comintern in 1943. A Moscow OGPU message to all stations on 12 September 1943 detailed instructions for handling intelligence sources within the CPUSA after the disestablishment of the Comintern.

In late 1944 two senior OGPU officers, Stephan Apresyan of the New York rezidentura, and Vladimir Pravdin, a OGPU officer working out of Washington D.C., sent cables to Moscow criticizing each other’s performance, but also disagreeing over OGPU tactics. Apresyan denounced Pravdin for believing that “without the help of the ... secret appartus we are completely powerless.” Apresyan argued that “it is ... untrue that without ... Browder we are ‘powerless.’” While “we shall have to have recourse to the ... secret appartus ... they ought not to be the one and only base especially if you take into account the fact that in the event of ... Thomas Dewey’s being elected President, this source may dry up.” Apresyan lost that particular argument. Thomas Dewey was not elected in 1944, and the OGPU was able to continue to use the CPUSA as an auxiliary, but the reprieve ended in 1945.

Many of the OGPU’s sources in this period regarded themselves to be under CPUSA as well as Soviet direction. In early 1945, Ishkak Akhmerov, the KGB illegal officer, sent a long cable to Moscow discussing the Silvermaster group. Akhmerov noted that “it is doubtful whether ... the OGPU could get the same results as ... Silvermaster.” He told Moscow that “it costs ... Silvermaster great pains to keep ... [the American sources] in line. ... Silvermaster being their leader in the CPUSA line helps him give them orders”, and added, “that our ... OGPU officers would not manage to work with the same success under the CPUSA flag.” The productivity of the secret apparatus networks supervised by Akhmerov is illustrated by OGPU records of the numbers of reels of microfilm of United States Government documents delivered to Moscow via Akhmerov: 59 roles in 1942, 211 in 1943, 600 in 1944, and 1,896 in 1945.

In the 1930s and early 1940s there was only limited “compartmentalization” between the CPUSA and Soviet espionage. The organizational blending of these different aspects of the Communist movement allowed the Soviet Union to maximize its return on the assets it possessed. But after World War II when American authorities belatedly paid attention, and the FBI began an aggressive investigation, the vulnerability of this arrangement also became clear. An organization as large as the CPUSA had too many areas of weakness. Many party-linked espionage operations were exposed and neutralized by American counterintelligence in the late 1940s and 1950s. And the CPUSA itself became tainted with disloyalty.

In August 1945 Elizabeth Bentley turned herself in to the government. Afterward, the Soviets quickly closed down the networks with which she had contact and recalled to Moscow those OGPU officers whom Bentley could identify. Shortly after Bentley’s defection came Igor Gouzenko, a GRU cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Canada who disclosed information about Soviet espionage both in Canada and the U.S and Soviet codes.

The first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 was a virtual carbon copy of “Fat Man,” the implosion-type plutonium weapon the United States dropped on Nagasaki four years earlier.

The latter 1940s and early ’50s were a time of tense, explosive conflict, in the world at large and in American politics. Soviet expansionism in Europe, the Chinese Civil War, and the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War shatterred the dreams of post-war cooperation with the Soviet Union. American policy dealing with this rapidly changing scene was often confused, naive, slow to respond, and contradictory. [16] In Korea, for example, the U.S. aided and armed South Korea to contain the spread of Soviet communism, while in China only two years earlier the U.S actually told the Nationalist Chinese government to do what the Soviet Union wanted — unite with the Soviet backed Chinese Communist Party. When Gen. Chiang Kai-shek refused, we U.S. disarmed him.[17]

Popular Front

Main article: Popular Front

The CPUSA was adamantly opposed to fascism during the Popular Front period. In fact, the Popular Front was motivated by a fear of fascism, and the possible threat to the Soviet Union that Nazi Germany posed. Although membership in the CPUSA rose to about 75,000 [3] by 1938, nearly a third of its members left the party after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Nonaggression Pact of 1939 pact with Hitler. A committed core remained in the ranks. The CPUSA even went so far as to accuse Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt of provoking aggression against Hitler. The CPUSA went so far as to denounce the Polish government as fascist after the German and Soviet invasion.

Benjamin Gitlow, a Communist who later broke with the Party, wrote in 1940: "Stalin's hopes, through the activities of the American Communist Party, to create a public opinion in tbe United States that would favor a war ...Stalin is perfectly willing to let Americans die in defense of the Soviet Union even if they are not members of the Commumist Party...." [18]

American Labor Party

Stalin publicly disbanded the Comintern in 1943. A Moscow NKVD message to all stations on 12 September 1943 detailed instructions for handling intelligence sources within the CPUSA after the disestablishment of the Comintern. Earl Browder had been both Chairman of the CPUSA and recruiter for the NKVD (in the Venona project he is known as Agent "HELMSMAN"). He was expelled from the leadership when Soviet policy shifted. His crime had been to follow Moscow’s orders in 1941 and “disband” the party in a show of unity with the US Government. But the NKGB thought his services worth keeping, and they succeeded in covertly financing him, by setting him up as a representative of Soviet publishers. Even then, that didn't work, as Browder was dropped after violating the Party Line again in favor of Titoism. Lovestone said of Browder, "There, but for an accident of geography, walks a dead man".

As the Presidential election of 1944 approached Browder and Sidney Hillman teamed up to capture the American Labor Party. Hilman’s Council of Industrial Organizations (CIO) enjoyed a favored position before Franklin Roosevelt’s National Labor Relations Board.

Propaganda

Between the crucial years of 1943 and 1949 some 30 books on the general political situation in China were published in the United States. Of these, 23 were pro-Maoist and seven were anti-Communist. Several of the pro-Maoist books are noted here:

Every one of the 23 pro-Communist books, where reviewed, received glowing approval in the literary reviews of the New York Times, The Herald-Tribune, The Nation, The New Republic and The Saturday Review of Literature. And every one of the anti-Communist hooks was either roundly condemned or ignored in these same reviews.

When Edgar Snow's People on Our Side appeared, it was reviewed in the Hearld-Tribune[19] by Joseph Barnes, whom Lattimore had instructed to replace non-Communist Chinese in OWI with Communists.[20] Mark Gayn reviewed it in the Saturday Review of Literature[21] In the New Republic[22] an equally glowing review came from Agnes Smedley. The Nation[23] came along with a review by Marcus Duffield, who saw in Snow's People on Our Side a fine book "by a scrupulously accurate reporter."

The incestuous relationship of Communist propagandists can be seen when Lattimore's book Solution in Asia was reviewed in the New York Times[24] by Edgar Snow. Another of Lattimore's books a short time earlier received accolades from Edgar Snow's wife, Nym Wales, in the Saturday Review of Literature.[25] In the Herald-Tribune[26] A. T. Steele said Lattimore's book was one which "belongs in the brief case of every diplomat and general concerned with the reshaping of Asia." T. A. Bisson, also arrested in the Amerasia scandal, wrote in the Saturday Review of Literature, "The breath of the future blows through . . . this stimulating review of Far Eastern issues."[27] The Nation[28] review was done by Maxwell S. Stewart, also an editor of the same publication and was involved with some 40 Communist front activities.

Of the 23 pro-Communist books, Owen and Eleanor Lattimore, Edgar Snow and his wife Nym Wales, Agnes Smedley, Mark Gayn, John K. Fairbank, Theodore White and Annalee Jacoby, Harrison Forman, Foster Rhea Dulles, and Lawrence K. Rosinger wrote 12 and turned in 44 reviews, either touting each other's books, or blasting the 7 anti-Communist books. Throughout this extensive and concerted propaganda campaign it was made to appear that the Communists wanted unity to fight Japan but that Chiang Kai-shek was only interested in fighting his own people.[29] Lattimore wrote, "The Soviet Union stands for democracy"[30] and Snow "The Soviet Union cannot have any expansionist tendencies."[31]

Owen Lattimore in the leftist New York Compass said that the U.S. should give Korea a "parting grant" of $150,000,000 and "let South Korea fall but not to let it look as though we pushed it."[32]

Infiltration

Infiltrating the United Nations organization became a priority in the wake of the disbanding of the Comintern, the death of Golos which led to the ultimate breakdown in security, and the end of the War. Hiss was influential in the employment of 494 persons by the United Nations on its initial staff. [33]

Gradually it became apparent that the objectives of World War II for which the United States and others made tremendous sacrifices were not fully realized, and there remained in the world a force presenting even greater dangers to world peace than the Nazi militarists and Japanese warlords. Consequently, the United States made the decision in the Spring of 1947 to assist Greece and Turkey with a view to protecting their sovereignties, which were threatened by direct or instigated activities of the Soviet Union.

President Truman's Executive Order 9835 of 22 March 1947 tightened protections against subversive infiltration of the US Government, defining disloyalty as membership on a list of subversive organizations maintained by the Attorney General.

Truman’s denunciations of the charges against Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and others, all of whom appear under code names in decrypted messages translated before Truman left office, suggest that Truman was never briefed on the Venona program, or if he was briefed, did not grasp its significance. Truman insisted Republicans trumped up the loyalty issue, and that wartime espionage had been insignificant and well contained by counteritelligence agencies.

It was the belief of opponents of the CPUSA such as J. Edgar Hoover, long-time director of the FBI, and Joseph McCarthy, for whom McCarthyism is named, and other anticommunists that the CPUSA constituted an active conspiracy, was secretive, loyal to a foreign power, and dedicated to the clandestine infiltration of American cultural and political institutions. This is the "traditionalist" view of some in the field of Communist studies such as Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chairman of the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy wrote in 1997, "President Truman was almost willfully obtuse as regards American Communism."

Harry White

Main article: Harry Dexter White

Harry Dexter White was positively identified as Agent Jurist [34] in an FBI memorandum dated 16 October 1950. White became involved with Soviet intelligence espionage in May of 1941. One of the most valuable assets to Soviet intelligence was his ability to infiltrate the United States Department of the Treasury with persons the Silvermaster spy ring wanted to have assinged there. Among the other American citizens and government employees acting as Soviet agents were Lud Ullman, William Henry Taylor, and Sonia Gold.

On December 4, 1945, the FBI transmitted to the White House a report entitled "Soviet Espionage in the United States." The report summarized White's espionage activities. Copies of the report were sent to Attorney General Tom Clark also. The evidence indicated a substantial spy ring operating within the Government and involving White. Given the secrecy of the Venona project materials, the president went ahead six weeks later and nominated White for appointment to head the newly created International Monetary Fund, one of the chief institutional pillars of the postwar international economic order.

White was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee in August of 1948. Elizabeth Bentley told the FBI White that had been involved in espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union during World War II. Whittaker Chambers earlier had testified of his association with White in the Communist underground secret apparatus up to 1938. White, recovering from a series of heart attacks, proclaimed his lifelong commitment to the principles of democracy and the ideals of President Roosevelt's New Deal. He died of a heart attack three days later and HUAC. The positive identification of Harry Dexter White as agent Jurist came two years after his death.

Manhattan Project

Main article: Manhattan Project
File:Image-Lenssketch2a.jpg
Hand sketch by Morton Sobell of the detonator for the atomic bomb

Oppenheimer had been an ardent Popular Front liberal and ally and gave generous contributions often deliverd to Isaac Folkoff. Oppenheimer did not know just the secrets of some parts of the project; as director, he knew all the secrets, and just as soon as they came into being. Up to the time he reported the Chevalier recruitment approach, he may have overlooked the conduct of others, a passivity motivated by personal and political ties to those persons. Sins of ommission or neglect. (Although another theory states the Chevalier approach may not have been an attempt at recruitment, but part of the big shake up after Stalin publicly disbanded the Comintern in 1943, and agents had to be reassigned new case officers).[35]

An internal Soviet memorandum reads,

"In 1942 one of the leaders of scientific work on uranium in the USA, Professor R. Oppenheimer while being an unlisted [nglastny] member of the apparatus of Comrade Browder informed us about the beginning of work. On the request of Kheifetz, confirmed by Comrade Browder, he provided cooperation in access to research for several of our tested sources including a relative of Comrade Browder…Due to complications…it is expedient to immediately sever contacts of leaders and activist of the American Communist Party with scientists and specialists engaged in work on uranium.

Excerpts from the testimony of CPUSA functionary, Paul Crouch, p. 1834 -1841 [36] concerning J. Robert Oppenheimer.

"Chairman – Were you a top functionary of the party?
Crouch – Yes...I was a full time organizer for 15 years [1925 -1942]
Chairman – What were some of the positions you held...?
Crouch – I was a representative of the Young Communist League and the Communist Party of the United States to the meetings of the executive committee of the Communist International, Young Communist International, Moscow...I was an honorary officer of the Red Army...a member of the editorial staff of the Daily Worker...a district organizer...in Virginia, New York and South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah; member of the district bureau in the Alabama district and the California district, Alameda County [CA] organizer, 1941...
Chairman – ...and you were informed by two Justice Dept. lawyers that you would not be used because if you were...you would have to identify Robert J. Oppenheimer? [as a member of the CPUSA]
Crouch – To that effect, yes sir.
Chairman – Is there any doubt in your mind that Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist Party?
Crouch – No, sir, none whatever. I met him in a closed meeting of the Communist Party in a house which was subsequently found to have been his residence at the time...and following that I met him at quite a number of Communist Party affairs in Alameda County.
Chairman – Is there any doubt in your mind that but that Oppenheimer was under Communist party discipline at the time...?
Crouch – No, sir, none whatever
Chairman – And naturally they would be interested in any atomic information he had?
Crouch – Yes, sir. Just as a matter of fact, the Communist Party might have chosen to direct him to turn over the information; they might have chosen to direct him to appoint other Communists to key positions who would in turn, turn over the information. It is a matter of record that Dr. Oppenheimer has appointed many Communists to key positions to the atomic energy program..."

CIA

After working as a journalist, Kim Philby was recruited by Valentine "Vee Vee" Vivian of the British Secret Intelligence Service (the so-called M.I.6) in 1940, later becoming part of the Special Operations Executive, and coming into contact with Office of Strategic Services agents.

After World War II Philby was assigned to Istanbul, and then to the United States, where he later became first secretary at the British Embassy in Washington. While there he visited Arlington Hall for discussions about VENONA and regularly received copies of transcripts as part of his official duties. He returned to Britain in 1950 and in 1951 managed to warn Burgess and Maclean of an internal British intelligence probe, which allowed them sufficient time to escape to the Soviet Union. Suspicion of his involvement forced his retirement from intelligence and he went to work in Beirut.

However, in 1956 Philby was again in the employ of SIS as an "informant on retainer". He was given the task as second-in-command to the point man for Operation Musketeer, the British, French, and Israeli plan to attack Egypt and depose Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Only in 1963, with the defection of Anatoliy Golitsyn, did Western intelligence unmask Philby's true allegiance; however, Philby was able to escape to the Soviet Union before he could be detained.

Espionage

In June 1947, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee addressed a secret memorandum to Secretary of State George Marshall, calling to his attention a condition that developed and still flourished in the State Department under the administration of Dean Acheson.


It is evident that there is a deliberate calculated program being carried out not only to protect Communist personnel in high places, but to reduce security and intelligence protection to a nullity. On file in the Department is a copy of a preliminary report of the FBI on Soviet espionage activities in the United States, which involves large numbers of State Department employees. . . this report has been challenged and ignored by those charged with the responsibility of administering the department. [37]

The memorandum listed the names of nine of these State Department officials and said that they were "only a few of the hundreds now employed in varying capacities who are protected and allowed to remain despite the fact that their presence is an obvious hazard to national security." On June 24, 1947, Assistant Secretary of State John Peurifoy notified the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that ten persons had been dismissed from the department, five of whom had been listed in the memorandum. But from June 1947 until McCarthy's Wheeling speech in February 1950, the State Department did not fire one person as a loyalty or security risk. [38]

Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine delivered her famous Declararation of Conscience on the floor of the U.S. Senate:

The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed. But there have been enough proved cases, such as the Amerasia case, the Hiss case, the Coplon case, the Gold case, to cause the nationwide distrust and strong suspicion that there may be something to the unproved, sensational accusations.

The Democratic Administration has greatly lost the confidence of the American people by its complacency to the threat of communism here at home and the leak of vital secrets to Russia through key officials of the Democratic administration. [39]

Director Hoover told a House Committee in February 1950 that counterespionage required "an objective different from the handling of criminal cases. It is more important to ascertain his contacts, his objectives, his sources of information and his methods of communication" as "arrest and public disclosure are steps to be taken only as a matter of last resort." He concluded that "we can be secure only when we have a full knowledge of the operations of an espionage network, because then we are in a position to render their efforts ineffective." [40]

In summary memorandums to Director Hoover of Venona project information begun in 1950 entitled, Operations of the MGB Residency at New York, 1944-45, Special Agent Belmont reported the FBI had identified 206 persons involved in Soviet espionage activity who had been active in United States. Of this number the FBI had information from defector Elizabeth Bentley and other sources regarding espionage activity on 87 of these persons. However, espionage activity on the paert of 119 persons from Venona information were not previously known to the FBI prior to 1946 but were mostly identified through investigation by 1950. [41]

Most but not all of Senator McCarthy’s numbered cases were drawn from the “Lee List” or “108 list” of unresolved Department of State security cases compiled by the investigators for the House Appropriates Committee in 1947. Robert E. Lee was the committee’s lead investigator and supervised preparation of the list. The Tydings subcommittee also obtained this list. The Lee list, also using numbers rather than names, was published in the proceeding of the subcommittee. [42]

Senator McCarthy furnished the Tydings Committee the real names attached to his numbered cases, and the Tydings Committee received the real names attached to the Lee list as well. [43] Over the years that followed all of the names became public one way or another. Additionally, in a series of speeches McCarthy named others as secret Communists, spies, security risks, or participants in the Communist conspiracy.

Subversive Activities Control Act

In the "Findings and declarations of fact" of the United States Congress in the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, in 50 U.S. Code Chapter 23 Subchapter IV Sec. 841, that,

"The Congress finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States...the policies and programs of the Communist Party are secretly prescribed for it by the foreign leaders...members of the Communist Party are recruited for indoctrination with respect to its objectives and methods, and are organized, instructed, and disciplined to carry into action slavishly the assignments given them...the Communist Party acknowledges no constitutional or statutory limitations upon its conduct...gives scant indication of capacity ever to attain its ends by lawful political means. The peril inherent in its operation arises not from its numbers, but from its failure to acknowledge any limitation as to the nature of its activities, and its dedication to the proposition that the present constitutional Government of the United States ultimately must be brought to ruin by any available means, including resort to force and violence. Holding that doctrine, its role as the agency of a hostile foreign power renders its existence a clear present and continuing danger to the security of the United States. It is the means whereby individuals are seduced into the service of the world Communist movement, trained to do its bidding, and directed and controlled in the conspiratorial performance of their revolutionary services.[4]

Further reading

  • American Communist History a peer-reviewed journal published by the Historians of American Communism. [5]

See also

References

  1. Felix Wittmer, The Yalta Betrayal, Claxton Printers, 1953, p. 15.
  2. Earl M. Hyde, Bernard Schuster and Joseph Katz: KGB Master Spies in the United States, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Volume 12, Issue 1 March 1999.
  3. John E. Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Outed From the Cold, Weekly Standard (15 April 1996).
  4. "The COMINTERN (Communist International) was a Soviet-controlled organization that conducted liaison with the national Communist parties of various countries, including the United States, in order to further the cause of revolution. Moscow issued guidance, support, and orders to the parties through the apparatus of the COMINTERN." The Venona Story, Robert L. Benson, Ft. George G. Meade, MD: National Security Agency, Center for Cryptologic History, [n.d.].
  5. Venona 142(a) Moscow to Canberra 12 September 1943. Text reads: "change in circumstances - and in particular the dissolution of the Comintern - necessitates a change in the method used by the workers of our residencies to keep in touch with the leaders of the local Communist organizations on intelligence matters.
    2. Our workers, by continuing to meet the leader of the Communists, are exposing themselves to danger and are giving cause [orgs of] local authorities to suspect that the Comintern is still in existence.
    3. We propose:
    a. That personal contact with leaders of the local Communist organizations should cease and that Communist material should not be accepted for forwarding to the Comintern.
    b. That meetings of our workers may take place only with special reliable undercover [ZAKONSPIRIROVANNYJ] contacts of the Communist [D% organizations], who are not suspected by the [orgs of] local authorities, exclusively about specific aspects of our intelligence work (acquiring [1 group unidentified] contacts, leads [NAVODKI], rechecking of those who are being cultivated, etc.). For each meeting it is necessary to obtain our consent.
    Representative of the Soviet Union.
    No. 4084
    Lt. Gen. P.M. Fitin.
    Notes: [a] This message is known to have been sent also to NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO, and OTTAWA.
  6. Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy Report, Appendix A, 4. The Encounter with Communism (1997).
  7. Louis F. Budenz, The Techniques of Communism, (Chicago: Henry Regnery and Company, 1954), pp. 162-163.
  8. Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow, New York, 1937.
  9. The Secret World of American Communism, by Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, Yale University Press, 1995, pgs. 343 - 344, Document 94. ISBN 0-300-06183-8
  10. The West Has Always Been Deceived by Communism, An interview with Xin Haonian, an expert on the history of communism, By Lin Dan, Xie Zongyan, and Chen Xiuwen, Epoch Times, Jun 23, 2006.
  11. The New Democracy by Mao Tse-tung (1940), quoted in While You Slept : Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It, John T. Flynn, New York : The Devin - Adair Company, 1951, pg. 21 pdf.
  12. Hyde, Bernard Schuster and Joseph Katz
  13. Herbert Romerstein and Stanislav Levchenko, The KGB Against the "Main Enemy": How the Soviet Intelligence Service Operates against the United States (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1989), pp. 19-21, 176-177.
  14. Communism at Pearl Harbor, How the Communists Helped to Bring on Pearl Harbor and Open up Asia to Communinization, Dr. Anthony Kubek, Dallas Texas, Teaching Publishing Company, 1959. Dr. Anthony Kubek was the Editor of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Report on the Morgenthau Diaries. The records of the Morgenthau Diary Study, 1953-65 consist largely of copies of portions of memorandums, correspondence, transcripts of meetings, and other records preserved by Secretary Morgenthau in order to document his tenure. The original records are in the custody of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, NY. In 1965, the SISS issued a two volume committee print entitled Morgenthau Diary (China), Edited by Dr. Anthony Kubek, containing entries from the records at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library selected to illustrate the implementation of Roosevelt administration policy in China. According to Dr. Anthony Kubek, the subcommittee wanted to produce a documentary history on the subject and "also indicate the serious problem of unauthorized, uncontrolled and often dangerous power exercised by nonelected officials," specifically Harry Dexter White. White was a major figure in Senator William Jenner's investigation of interlocking subversion in Government departments in 1953. The bipartisan investigation continued for twelve years, and the Subcommittee's Report took another two years to write. [1] Dr. Anthony Kubek also is a recognized expert on the subject of U.S. Naval Intelligence's Operation Magic, the effort to crack Japanese diplomatic ciphers. [2]
  15. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, Carroll Quigley, Collier-Macmillan, 1966, pgs. 735 - 741. ISBN 0-945001-10-X
  16. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, Collier-Macmillan, 1966, pg. 909. ISBN 0-945001-10-X
  17. While You Slept : Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It, John T. Flynn, New York : The Devin - Adair Company, 1951, pg. 15 pdf.
  18. Benjamin Gitlow, I Confess, New York: E P. Dutton, lnc., 1940, pgs. 485-486.
  19. New York Herald-Tribune Books of the Week, September 10, 1944.
  20. The Yalta Betrayal, Felix Wittmer, Claxton Printers, 1953, pg. 36.
  21. Saturday Review of Literature, September 9, 1944
  22. New Republic, October 2, 1944.
  23. The Nation, September 23, 1944.
  24. New York Times Weekly Book Review, February 25, 1945.
  25. Saturday Review of Literature, March 25, 1944.
  26. New York Herald-Tribune Books of the Week, February 25, 1945.
  27. Saturday Review of Literature, March 10, 1945.
  28. The Nation, March 17, 1945.
  29. While You Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It, John T. Flynn, New York : The Devin-Adair Company, 1951, pg. 152 pdf.
  30. Solution in Asia, Owen Lattimore, pg. 108.
  31. Battle for Asia, Edgar Snow, pg. 300.
  32. New York Compass, Jan. 17, 1949.
  33. Activities of U.S. Citizens Employed by the UN, second report of the SISS (March 22, 1954), p. 12.
  34. FBI Memorandum identifying Harry Dexter White as agent Jurist, Ladd to the Director, 16 October 1950.
  35. Haynes & Klehr, Venona pp. 327-330.
  36. McCarthy Hearings, Testimony of Paul Crouch, Executive Session, Vol. 3: 1834 - 1841, 15 September 1953. (PDF file, pgs. 33-41).
  37. McCarthyism: Waging the Cold War in America, by M. Stanton Evans, Human Events, 05/30/1997. Updated 05/08/2003.
  38. John Emil Peurifoy, Foreign Service Office & United States Ambassador, Arlington National Cemetery Website, retrieved 21 March 2007.
  39. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, "Declaration of Conscience", 1 June 1950. Retrieved from americanrhetoric.com 24 June 2007.
  40. J. Edgar Hoover, Testimony before House Appropriations Committee, 2/7/1950.
  41. FBI Venona file
  42. U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, State Department Employee Loyalty Investigations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1950).
  43. McCarthy to Tydings, 18 March 1950 with attached list.
  • The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic Books, 1999, hardcover edition, p. 287-293, p. 306, ISBN 0465003109. Vasili Mitrokhin was an archivist who worked for the KGB. After 1972 when the KGB established its new modern offices at Yasenovo, Mitrokhin was entrusted with transferring the corpus of KGB files from its old office at the Lubyanka in Moscow to the new offices. During the next ten years while performing these duties he copied many files which he turned over to British intelligence when he defected in March, 1992.
  • Operation Solo: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin, John Barron, Regnery Publishing, 1996, ISBN 0895264862; 2001 edition, ISBN 0709160615. This biography of Morris Childs, who together with his brother Jack arranged for and handled the money transfers during the 1960s and 70s, contains much of the same material.

External links