---
title: 'The Web of Subversion - UNDERGROUND NETWORKS IN THE U. S. GOVERNMENT'
url: 'https://samisdat.in/books/the-web-of-subversion-1954/read'
markdown: 'https://samisdat.in/books/the-web-of-subversion-1954/read.md'
lang: eng
date: '1954-05-24'
description: 'BOOKS BY JAMES BURNHAM THE WEB OF SUBVERSION INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS (With Philip Wheelwright) The Web of Subversion UNDERGROUND NETWORKS IN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT THE JOHN DAY COMPANY New York Copyright, 1954, by James Burnham Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-7583 MANUFACTUR…'
---

# BOOKS BY JAMES BURNHAM

THE WEB OF SUBVERSION

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
(With Philip Wheelwright)

# The Web of Subversion

UNDERGROUND NETWORKS
IN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

THE JOHN DAY COMPANY

New York

# Copyright, 1954, by James Burnham

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-7583

MANUFACTURED IN

AMERICAN BOOK-STRATFORD PRESS, INC.

NEW YORK

# Acknowledgments

THE ORIGINAL IDEA for this book, and many specific suggestions for the way in which to write it, came from Paul Palmer.

I wish to thank the staffs of the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security, the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for their invariably courteous and informed assistance.

JAMES BURNHAM

Kent, Connecticut January, 1954

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# Contents

| 1. | . The Senate Caucus Room |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2. | Spiders or Flies? | 15 |  |
| 3. | Two Truth Tellers | 32 |  |
| 4. | Three Web Dwellers | 46 |  |
| 5. | The Spinning of the Web | 65 |  |
| 6. | On the Threshold | **7** 5 |  |
| 7. | The Reception Halls | 84 |  |
| 8. | Phase I: The Economic Agencies (1933-40) | 95 |  |
| 9. | Phase II: The War Agencies (1940-44) | 108 |  |
| 0. | Phase III: The International Agencies (1944- ) | 125 |  |
| 1. | State and Treasury | 139 |  |
| 2. | White House and Pentagon | 159 |  |
| 3. | The Capitol | 179 |  |
| 4. | The Atom in the Web | 188 |  |
| 5. | Sleeper Apparatus | 203 |  |
| 6. | How Much Damage? | 214 |  |
| 7. | What Is To Be Done? | 222 |  |
|  | References | 237 |  |
|  | Index | 243 |  |

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# The Web of Subversion

#### CHAPTER 1

Across one end was a long, fixed table, like a judge's bench. Several chairs were in back of this, and a few in front. Farther out, at right angles, were a half dozen tables for reporters. Off to each side were small groups of chairs for such special visitors as the relations or close friends of senators. All this occupied about a third of the room. In the remainder there were three or four hundred chairs for whoever might enter, for the citizens of a free country who might want to watch their representatives carrying out their duties, for the merely curious, or even for enemies who for whatever purpose of checkup or intimidation might want to come.

them we recognized from the other similar hearings that we had watched: specialists; professionals in subversion (on one or the other side); observers for the military intelligence services, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency; informal representatives of four or five foreign governments. The rest were Public, just anyone who happened to open the door, tourists from Nebraska, high school seniors from Nashville who had won a bus trip to Washington, a couple of old men who had nothing else to do. All through the hearing that soon began, the Public drifted in and out. Some had only a few minutes allotted to this official "sight" of a conducted tour. Others were quickly bored. There were a few, though, who came, who realized suddenly, with a tightening of the face, what was unfolding there, and who stayed.

Senator William E. Jenner of Indiana, in a fresh, grey double-breasted suit, took the chair in the middle of the front table, or bench. The Subcommittee on Internal Security of the Senate Judiciary Committee was about to begin its session. When the Democrats had lost control of Congress, Senator Jenner, replacing Democratic Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, had become the subcommittee chairman. He was joined that morning by Senator Herman Welker of Idaho; the subcommittee's director of research, Benjamin Mandel; and the subcommittee counsel, Robert Morris.

The TV lights and cameras started, along with the opening of the hearing. The witness, whose name turned out to be Edward J. Fitzgerald, was questioned principally by Robert Morris, occasionally by one of the senators. His voice was undistinguished, low and hard to follow.

There was nothing remarkable in the official story of his career, as this emerged under Robert Morris' steady questioning, supplemented by the documents that Benjamin Mandel had always exactly at hand.¹ After study at the University of Vermont during the depression days, and a brief job on a "Eugenic Survey," Edward Fitzgerald went to work, as many a young man has done, for "the government." And, as some do, he prospered. He climbed, indeed, rather quickly for one who had had no special training and no highly placed family connections.

Fitzgerald's initial salary was a modest \\$1,800 a year, but it rose fast for those depression days. By 1941, always with David Weintraub's kindly sponsoring, it had reached \\$4,000. In that year Fitzgerald accepted a reduction to \\$3,200 when he shifted first to the Federal Security Agency and then to the Federal Works Agency. His modesty was soon rewarded. By 1942, a year later, he had completed a shift to the War Production Board, where, as "Principal Economist," he was drawing \\$5,600. His advance continued through a period in the Foreign Economic Administration and then the Department of Commerce. When he resigned from Commerce in September 1947, he had topped \\$8,000.

There Edward Fitzgerald might seem to be—in appearance, manner and the framework of his career indistinguishable from ten thousand others. Why, then, was he in that chair that morning? The record gives the incredible answer.

<sup>1 Numbered references will be found at the end of the book

In November 1945, two years before Fitzgerald resigned from his last government job, the Federal Bureau of Investigation prepared a top secret memorandum that was circulated a few weeks later among high government officials. It was this memorandum to which Attorney General Brownell referred in the speech on the Harry Dexter White case that he delivered in Chicago, November 6, 1953. One paragraph of the memorandum read as follows:

The head of the next most important group of Soviet espionage agents with whom Bentley has maintained liaison was Victor Perlo of the War Production Board. Members of this group were introduced to Bentley in 1944 at the apartment of John Abt, general counsel of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, CIO, in New York City. The individuals in this group include Charles Kramer . . .; Henry Magdoff of the War Production Board; Edward Fitzgerald, formerly of the Treasury Department and then with the War Production Board. . . .

Soviet espionage—that is, spying: the unauthorized transmission of information to a government that is officially dedicated to the destruction of the United States government and the American form of society. A generation or even a decade ago, the suggestion of such a charge would have seemed to most Americans unbelievable, absurd. Did Edward Fitzgerald, then, at once and most indignantly deny it? Let us consult the record:

Mr. Morris. Were you a member of the espionage ring described in that memorandum?

Mr. Fitzgerald. I decline to answer on the ground it might tend to incriminate me.

Mr. Morris. Did you know Mr. Victor Perlo who was named here as head of the ring?

Mr. Morris. Do you know that Mr. John Abt named in this memorandum?

Mr. FITZGERALD. I decline to answer on the same ground.

And so on.

Mr. Fitzgerald was no less reticent on many other subjects about which he was questioned that morning. He declined (on the same ground that it might tend to incriminate him) to explain the circumstances leading to his job in the National Research Project. He declined to state whether he had been aided by David Weintraub or Irving Kaplan, then or later, or even whether he knew or had known them. He declined to explain any of his transfers from one agency to another, or whether anyone had suggested these transfers or helped in securing them.

He declined to say whom he had listed as references in connection with his transfers. Documents were, however, introduced to supply some of the answers on this point. His superior officers on the National Research Project, David Weintraub and Irving Kaplan, could always, apparently, find a good word for their subordinate. Not only was Weintraub a recurrent reference. He spared no pains in writing letters of recommendation for Fitzgerald. He found Fitzgerald a man of "excellent judgment... capable of assuming responsibility, ingenious, many good ideas, pleasant disposition, highly cooperative, diligent, straightforward, loyal." He gave an unqualified "yes" as answer to such questions as: "Is this person efficient and industrious? Is this person temperate in habits? Is this person of good moral character?"

Senator Welker had no more luck than Robert Morris at getting answers:

Senator Welker. While you were with the War Production Board did you give away any secret material to

any known Communist or any espionage ring operating in Washington?

Mr. FITZGERALD. I decline to answer that question on the ground it might tend to incriminate me....

Mr. FITZGERALD. I decline to answer that question on the same ground. . . .

Mr. FITZGERALD. I decline to answer that question on the same ground as before.

In 1947, Mr. Averell Harriman, then Secretary of Commerce, suggested to Fitzgerald that he take a leave of absence. "I said I preferred under the circumstances to resign." The subcommittee displayed interest in what Fitzgerald has been doing since his resignation from government service. He has become, he testified, a free-lance writer. He has written some fiction for Confession Magazine \[sic\], but principally he has been a book reviewer, assigned most often to novels. For an economic analyst he seems to have taken readily to this new field of interest. His main clients have been three of the nation's most important book-screening media: the New York Times Book Review; the New York Herald Tribune Book Review; and the Saturday Review. In the first four months of 1953, he had six reviews published in the Times, 53 in the Saturday Review, and about 50 in the Herald Tribune.

Mr. FITZGERALD. May I consult?

Mr. Morris. You may

(Witness confers with counsel.)

Mr. FITZGERALD. I discussed the matter with Norman Cousins

Mr. FITZGERALD. I decline to answer that question.

Mr. Morris. Did you deny the allegations in the published testimony about your participation in the war espionage ring?

Mr. FITZGERALD. I decline to answer that question on the same ground as before.

2

Without fanfare the witness was excused. There had been no excitement during the entire questioning. No voice had been raised; there had been no shouting or denunciation from either side. But among the casual members of the audience, the citizens who had just happened to come to such a hearing, I could sense the same change that I had noticed so many times before. I could see it in the faces of the middle-aged couple who were sitting to my left. They looked as if they came from a town in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Their expression when they entered, and their whispered comments, showed that they had absorbed the skepticism about these investigations that has been so widely induced by certain newspapers, cartoonists and commentators. They had half expected, no doubt, to watch hooded inquisitors waving rubber truncheons and screaming at heroic victims.

Now they were observing through their own eyes and ears. As the import of the proceedings pierced through, their faces were eloquent. Mounting amazement was followed by a hardening of the skin and mouth. I saw the husband's fist clench as he again turned to whisper to his wife.

The pattern of his story was much the same. He took a degree in economics at New York University in 1935. After a year of private employment, he too, like Fitzgerald, entered government service through the hospitable door of David Weintraub's National Research Project. There he stayed from 1936 to 1940, while his pay rose from \\$2,900 to \\$4,000 per year. He then transferred (by an "excepted appointment"—that is, without a civil service examination) to the Council of National Defense, and then to the agencies that were handling the war economy: the Office of Production Management and its successor, the War Production Board. By July, 1942, he was at the \\$6,500 level. In 1944, as the end of the war came near, he shifted into the Department of Commerce. He was getting \\$9,975 yearly when he resigned from Commerce on December 27, 1946.

He, also, was asked whether he was a member of the espi-

onage ring referred to in the 1945 secret memorandum. Here too he declined, as he did to all questions about other persons therein named. He declined to say whether he had talked with Fitzgerald about the testimony to be given to the subcommittee, or whether in his work for the Department of Commerce he ever conferred with members of the Communist Party. Consulting often with counsel, he declined to say whether he had supported Henry Wallace as candidate for the Presidency, whether he had been loyal to the United States government during his employment by it, whether he had given data to representatives of the Communist Party.

The subcommittee was able to discover still less about Magdoff's present means of livelihood. He testified that he was now self-employed as a research economist, but he declined to name any of his clients.

Happily, recovery seems to have been rapid. A few days later, at the request of the subcommittee, Mr. Magdoff was examined in New York by Dr. Robert A. O'Connor. His detailed examination included a full study of electrocardiograms. Dr. O'Connor's report, submitted June 17, summed up: "It is my considered opinion at this time that there is no objective evidence of heart disease."

As Harry Magdoff finished, the hearing of May 1 adjourned. The small audience quickly left. Two or three reporters lingered to chat with the senators and staff members.

Does it make much difference what Edward Fitzgerald and Harry Magdoff are, or were, what they did or failed to do? Were they not just routine, moderately successful bureaucrats, just two among hundreds of thousands?

The pattern also shows, I believe, in the last four witnesses that we have had before this committee, that they started in the National Research Project which was an offshoot of the WPA. They started at a salary of about \\$2,000 to \\$3,000, always moving upward, not only in positions of responsibility and authority near to the top policy-making people, but always with an increased salary....

The National Research Project, started during the days of the depression, dealt with the great economic problems which were then so urgently posed. These two men were an intimate part of that project. They then shifted to the agencies that organized and directed the war effort of the nation on its economic side. Both were excused from military service on the claim that their talents and experience were too valuable to spare. (Miss Bentley, the Soviet courier, commented in a 1952 hearing: "The Soviet intelligence didn't like to lose anybody to the Army unless they could get into strategic positions. . . . They could give us little aid, and they would also get knocked off.")

In recommending Fitzgerald's deferment, Mr. Stacy May, his superior on the War Production Board, wrote: "He is responsible for basic information, analyses, and reports on industry operations in the key metal products industries. . . . The WPB's periodic survey of some 12,000 manufacturing concerns (Form WPB-732) is under his direction, involving a staff of 20 professional and clerical persons in the Bureau of Planning and Statistics and 135 persons assigned by the Bureau of the Census. On the basis of this survey and other sources, regular and special reports are prepared to inform top officials of current developments and to recommend policies. The material assembled and analysed under Mr. Fitzgerald's direction constitutes the only source of current information available in the WPB on the production of components for military and other end products, on the production of civilian metal products, and on individual plants in the war programs. They are also the only source of information on the labor situation in these industries."

Not unimportant information, this, for the men who, wherever located, are charged with making basic policies, planning war and peace, reflecting on the problems of what is sometimes called in military jargon "strategic target determination."

By a coincidence (or was it a coincidence?) Harry Magdoff had devised that same "Form WPB-732" for the monthly checkup of, specifically, the metalworking industries of the

United States. He was a particular expert on the machinetool industry. In 1945 his assistance and help were urgently requested by "Project 11," which dealt with "The Post-Surrender Treatment of the German Machine Tool Industry."

In the Department of Commerce, Edward Fitzgerald "was responsible for reports and review of trade programs, for import requirements and foreign financing of all European countries. . . ." As a routine matter, he had conferences with the Secretary—Henry Wallace, then Averell Harriman—and prepared material for use in official publications and speeches. Harry Magdoff also, in Commerce, "prepared weekly reviews on economic developments—with a bearing on policy matters—for the Secretary." In his final job, he served "in a staff capacity to the Secretary, represents the Secretary on matters relating to the program and policy of the Dept. . . . Prepares testimony to be presented to Congress. . . ."

Let us put it this way: what would be thought in Moscow if two officials of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, with comparable jobs, had answered as these two men answered an analogous set of questions?

## CHAPTER 2

# SPIDERS OR FLIES?

DURING THE 1930's and '40's an invisible web was spun over Washington. Its interlaced threads were extended to nearly every executive department and agency, to the military establishment, the White House itself, and to many of the committees of Congress. Through the records of the Congressional investigating committees and through the trials of Alger Hiss, the Communist leaders and the atom spies, part of the pattern of this web can now be traced. The existence of the web, and its general significance, are now, I think, beyond the doubt of any reasonable man who becomes acquainted with the evidence that has already been assembled.

In reality one should say that there are several interlacing webs, interlocked networks. They are part of the underground. They are field units of the secret, illegal apparatus of the Communist enterprise and the Soviet state.

The Communist leaders have always stressed the necessity for illegal, underground activity. They have always insisted that it is more important than the legal, public activities of "open" Communists. "Legal work," Lenin declared in an attack on the British socialist, Ramsay MacDonald, "must be combined with illegal work. The Bolsheviks always taught this. . . . The party which . . . does not carry on systematic, all-sided, illegal work in spite of the laws of the bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois parliaments, is a party of traitors and scoundrels." In a document submitted to a Congress of the Communist International, and there adopted, he repeated: "The time has fully matured when it is absolutely necessary for every Communist Party systematically to combine legal with illegal work . . . legal with illegal organizations. . . ." The third of the Twenty-one Conditions of Admission to the Communist International is that a party must "create, parallel to its legal organization, a secret apparatus, capable of fulfilling, at the decisive moment, its duty to the Revolution."

From the Communist point of view, in fact, open Communist activities are primarily an auxiliary and front for the underground—"a screen," as Stalin expressed it, "behind which . . . illegal activities for the revolutionary preparation of the masses may be intensified."

The Communists aim, through the underground, to infiltrate every region and level of society. In What Is To Be Done?, the basic work of the Communist doctrine, Lenin states that revolutionists "must go among all classes of the population, must despatch units of their army in all directions." (Lenin's italics.) We must, he says "have 'our own men' everywhere, among all social strata, in all positions."

The key target of infiltration is government, in all of its branches, civilian and military. This is the key target because the objective of the Communists is the destruction of all governments (except their own)—not capture, let it be stressed, but destruction. About this objective there is no confusion in Communist ranks. In order to establish Communist power, Stalin wrote, it is indispensable "to smash entirely the bour-

To say that the Communists aim at the destruction of all non-Communist governments is the same thing as to say that they aim at the triumph of the Soviet government. Therefore the web, the infiltrated networks, always operate to serve the interests of the Soviet Union. "A revolutionary," in Stalin's definition, "is he who without arguments, unconditionally, openly and honestly . . . is ready to defend and strengthen the USSR. . . . An internationalist is he who, unreservedly, without hesitation, without conditions, is ready to defend the USSR."

Vishinsky, in 1948, made the problem of "loyalty" very plain:

At present the only determining criterion of revolutionary proletarian internationalism is: are you for or against the USSR, the motherland of the world proletariat? An internationalist is not one who verbally recognizes international solidarity or sympathizes with it. A real internationalist is one who brings his sympathy and recognition up to the point of practical and maximal help to the USSR in support and defense of the USSR by every means and in every possible form. . . . The defense of the USSR . . . is the holy duty of every honest man everywhere and not only of the citizens of the USSR.

Whoever has studied this quotation will need no further guide to the inner mystery of the Washington underground.

Moscow directs, then, the attempt at the secret infiltration of all agencies of the American government. In the expected

- (3) Undermining the administrative, physical and moral framework of the government, and acquiring "reserve" positions where this can be done on a large scale in time of emergency—war or revolution. The "undermining" activities vary from outright military sabotage to what might be called "administrative sabotage" in such documented instances as the lifting of papers from security files.

2

The structure of the web is complex. Its inhabitants occupy different locations within it, and differ also in their personalities, functions and motives. The web over Washington is

The heads of the Soviet secret police—Yezhov, Yagoda, Beria—naturally have known what was being done, and why. So also have General Berzin and the other directors of Soviet Military Intelligence; Stalin and his Secretariat; the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party and the leaders of the international Party organization. Colonel Bykov, Golos, "Ulrich," Markin, "Boris," "Helen," "Richard" and the other Soviet representatives to whom Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, Hede Massing and other couriers as yet unnamed turned over microfilms and documents, and from whom they took orders—they also have known. J. Peters, chief of the underground section of the American Party, knew, and Earl Browder, Secretary of the Party through the thirties and the war years.

But what of the others, the American citizens, the men and women, most of them obscure, who have composed the warp and woof of the web? Have they known just what they were

It is possible that some of them, individually, have not understood these truths. If so, this ignorance mitigates their legal and no doubt their moral guilt. Under our legal code, an individual is condemned only for actions that he intended, for which he can be deemed individually responsible. However that may be, it does not alter the objective, historical fact that all who collaborate in any measure with the underground, through ignorance or by design, from the best motives or the worst, in that same measure aid Soviet Communist interests and injure American interests.

How could anyone unintentionally commit espionage, you ask? Does that seem to you absurd? Think back a moment. Not infrequently you have been asked to post a letter for a friend or neighbor, have you not? Did you know what those letters contained, or in all cases why your friend did not choose to post it himself? Did a neighbor, leaving perhaps for a vacation, ever ask you to deliver a small message, verbal, written or even by telephone, to someone who might call? When you were about to take a trip across country, or better still to Europe or back from there, has someone you know ever asked you to deliver a note or small box, perhaps just post it from the other side?

the Publications Division of the United Nations Secretariat, with a salary of \\$14,000. Whittaker Chambers testified 3 that Zablodowsky had aided the Communist underground and the "Robinson-Rubens" ring that faked U. S. passports for the use of Soviet agents. Zablodowsky, in his sworn testimony,4 denied that he had been a Communist, but admitted that he had "in a sense" aided the underground.

Mr. Zablodowsky. Yes, or in any case I was passed on, I was introduced. Whether it was in the form of a message, I can't say....

Senator Eastland. What was the message that you took from Chambers to Peters?

Mr. Zablodowsky. I can't say that it was a message or merely an introduction, that I was to await a call from him. The circumstances are vague to me....

Senator Eastland. Did the call come?

Mr. Zablodowsky. Yes. . . .

Mr. Morris. Did you ever aid anybody who was conducting an illegal passport ring?

Mr. Zablodowsky. If I did, I did so unknowingly.

Senator EASTLAND. Well, did you?

Mr. ZABLODOWSKY. Here is the circumstance, Senator. I actually did agree to transmit an envelope, a letter, to somebody who called for it... I was told that a certain person would call with a certain name and I was to give it to him.

Senator Eastland. What was in the letter, do you know?

Mr. Zablodowsky. I haven't any idea.

Senator Eastland. Did you give him the letter?

Mr. Zablodowsky. Yes, I did.

A number of those who aided the underground testified, as Zablodowsky further did, that they believed it to be

Mrs. \[Hede\] Massing. At the end of 1933... on my way back from Moscow I met Ludwig in Paris and was assigned to the United States...

Mr. Morris. What was your assignment in the United States?

Mrs. Massing. My assignment was not clearly defined in Paris. I was briefed by Ludwig to the effect, really ideology mostly... He said, "You are going to a great country where there are many good people. You understand fascism. Bring the message of fascism to them and rally people behind the fight against fascism."

Now that sounds rather vague for an espionage agent and I do want to emphasize that I am pretty sure that during the years between 1933 and 1935 many Americans have been solicited into the services \[i.e., the Soviet espionage services\] with this very idea, the fight against fascism. . . .

Mr. Morris. You say the Soviet organization capitalized on that feeling in order to create an atmosphere by which people would be drawn in their orbit?

Mrs. Massing. Yes. . . . These are slow processes, because, you see, you must understand that a person who does not willingly want to be an agent will have a resistance to recognize his own function. He will rationalize. . . . 5

sons who have been identified as belonging to or collaborating with the underground networks, a few have denied the allegation under oath. A few, but very few. More, either at once or after a few years' reflection, have confirmed it. Most have fallen back on the Fifth Amendment.

Let us stop briefly on this matter of the Fifth Amendment. That notable early appendix to our Constitution contains among its other provisions the following: "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." This rule of law dates back to days when direct physical torture, such as the rack, was sometimes used to extort confessions from prisoners, who were then convicted on the sole "evidence" of these confessions. Its relevance and desirability in normal juridical proceedings are not self-evident. There is no comparable rule outside of the Anglo-Saxon countries. Even in the English legal tradition, which we share, it is not included in the great charters of the past, like the Magna Carta, that define the basic rights that we hold to be the guarantors of liberty.

During recent years, this part of the Fifth Amendment has been interpreted to apply indirectly to the proceedings of congressional committees and comparable investigating bodies, even though these are not courts, and have no powers of trial or conviction. A witness testifying under oath to a committee may, when questioned, reply: "I decline to answer on the ground that my answer would tend to incriminate me." Witnesses in the investigations of the web of subversion have seen fit to make this reply as often as two hundred fifty times during the course of a short hearing.

The natural interpretation of the self-incrimination plea has frequently been remarked by the courts. In the congressional investigation of the Teapot Dome scandal, various witnesses associated with the Sinclair Oil Company gave evasive testimony or did not testify at all. A witness named Everhart, son-in-law of Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall (who had made the lease of the Teapot Dome oil field to Sinclair), invoked the Fifth Amendment. In the case of United States v. Mammoth Oil Co. which grew out of this investigation, the District Judge, conjecturing a number of reasons consistent with innocence for these failures to testify, dismissed the suit.

The silence and evasions in this suit suggest many pertinent inquiries. Why should Osler refuse to disclose the connection, if any, of Sinclair with this company? Why is silence the answer of a former cabinet officer to the charge of corruption? Why is silence the only reply of Sinclair, a man of large business affairs, to the charge of bribing an official of his government? Why is the plea of self-incrimination—one not resorted to by honest men—the refuge of Fall's son-in-law, Everhart? . . .

Men with honest motives and purposes do not remain silent when their honor is assailed. . . . Is a court compelled to close its eyes to these circumstances? . . . These gentlemen have the right to remain silent, to evade, to refuse to furnish information, and thus to defy the government to prove its case; but a court of equity has the right to draw reasonable and proper inferences from all the circumstances in the case, and especially from the silence of Secretary Fall and the failure of Sinclair to testify.

Instant impulse, spontaneous anxiety, and deep yearning to repel charges thus impugning his honor would be expected from an innocent man. Refusal to testify himself or to call witnesses in his own behalf under such circumstances warrants inferences unfavorable to the respondent. It is conduct in the nature of an admission. It is evidence against him. This principle of law has long been established and constantly applied. The reason is that it is an attribute of human nature to resent such imputations. In the face of such accusations, men commonly do not remain mute but voice their denials with earnestness, if they can do so with honesty. Culpability alone seals their lips.

This logical consequence has not escaped the attention of jurists. In late 1952, for example, a number of UN employees of United States nationality invoked the Fifth Amendment before the Internal Security Subcommittee. The then Secretary-General of the UN, Trygve Lie, consulted a special panel of eminent legal scholars as to whether he was warranted in dismissing them. The members of this panel were William D. Mitchell, former attorney general of the United States, Sir Edwin Herbert of Great Britain, and Professor

• Strictly speaking, the danger of self-incrimination might lie not in the answer to the specific question but in some other fact logically connected to that answer.

Paul Veldekams of Belgium. It concluded that the dismissal had been warranted, and in its finding said in part, as reported by the New York *Times* (December 4, 1952):

It follows from this, in our opinion, that a person claiming this privilege cannot thereafter be heard to say that his answer, if it had been given, would not have been self-incriminatory. He is in the dilemma that either his answer would have been self-incriminatory, or, if not, he has invoked his constitutional privilege without just cause. As, in our opinion, he cannot be heard to allege the latter, he must by claiming the privilege have admitted the former. Moreover, the exercise of this privilege creates so strong a suspicion of guilt that the fact of its exercise must be withheld from a jury in a criminal trial.

There is an odd boomerang effect in the repeated use of the Fifth Amendment plea. When a witness says that he knew Mr. A. and Mr. B., but declines to answer whether he knew Mr. C., then to the average citizen, things look rather bad for Mr. C.—who may be a splendid fellow. Edward Fitzgerald had no hesitation in saying that he knew Donald Nelson (head of the War Production Board), but he declined to answer on Victor Perlo. Senator Jenner brought the point out rather neatly:

Mr. Morris. Did you give Mr. Irving Kaplan as a reference for this position, Mr. Fitzgerald?

Mr. Morris. Did you give Edmond J. Stone as reference for this particular position?

Mr. FITZGERALD. I decline to answer on the ground that it might tend to incriminate me.

Mr. Morris. Mr. George Perazich?

The CHAIRMAN. Did you give Senator Welker as reference for that job?

Mr. Fitzgerald. I did not.

Mr. Morris. You what?

Mr. FITZGERALD. I did not.

An experiment was devised to test the significance of the Fifth Amendment plea. It had been argued that many of the Fifth Amendment cases might be innocent or reformed, but unwilling to talk under oath in public. This attitude might arise from fear of personal danger, the chance of prosecution for past misdeeds, distaste at involving past associates, or a feeling of righteous anger against the committee methods. If so, such persons might well be willing to talk confidentially, off the record, in order to help their country deal with the underground menace.

(1) Thirty-three of these individuals had some type of identification with the Communist Party. Of the re-

- (2) Of these 35 individuals 7 had appeared before a Congressional committee on a prior occasion. They proved uncooperative before the committee on each appearance.
- (3) All 35 were interviewed by FBI agents; 26 were interviewed before their appearance before the Congressional committee; 9 were interviewed subsequent to the Congressional appearance.
- (4) Of the 35 interviewed by the Bureau, 28 flatly refused to talk to agents. Of the 7 that did talk to agents, 3 denied allegations as to their Communist connections. They were not under oath.

One denied knowing he was engaged in espionage activity from 1939 to 1945. On a subsequent interview he refused to talk on the grounds of his privilege against self-incrimination.

One furnished some information about Communism but did not admit Communist Party membership. On a subsequent interview he refused to answer any questions.

One gave seemingly false information regarding his knowledge of a certain individual. On a subsequent interview 2 years later he refused to talk.

(5) The 35 uncooperative individuals refused to answer questions not only about their own Communist affiliations but about Communism in general....

This book raises no question of the legal guilt or innocence of individuals. That is for juries to decide in accordance with our accepted legal procedures. This book is not concerned with open, professed Communists, or with the

The exclusive subject matter of this book is the pattern of the web of subversion that has existed in Washington, the concealed network of Communists, espionage agents and their allies who have operated within the agencies of the United States government.

In surveying the web of subversion, reference will be made to the following individuals only:

- (b) Those who, when questioned under oath, have declined on the ground of self-incrimination (the Fifth Amendment) to reply to some or all questions related to Communism or espionage. Most of such individuals have been identified, though not always in public hearings or trials, as Communists or espionage agents.

No conclusion is stated or implied concerning the individual legal guilt of any of these individuals, except for those who have been duly convicted in a court of law.

Theoretically, a distinction must be made between a cell of the Communist underground and an espionage cell. It is possible that an underground Communist cell could have existed in the Government without ever having carried out espionage, and it is certain that individual underground Communists who never engaged in espionage were located in government agencies. Nevertheless, Communist doctrine and discipline, with the priority given to the defense of the USSR, mean that every Communist is a potential espionage

It is also possible that someone who is not a Communist should act as a Soviet espionage agent—for money or revenge, for example. Undoubtedly this happens. In fact, it is established practice that professional Soviet agents should not be formal members of the Communist Party. Much converging testimony proves that Harry Dexter White, one-time assistant secretary of the Treasury, author of the Morgenthau Plan and chief formulator of the November, 1941, ultimatum to Japan, collaborated actively with Soviet espionage. A number of persons, however, have stated that he was more a fellow traveler than an out-and-out Communist.

It became manifest at an early stage of this Inquiry, and has been overwhelmingly established by the evidence throughout, that the Communist movement was the principal base within which the espionage network was recruited; and that it not only supplied personnel with adequately "developed" motivation, but provided the organizational framework wherein recruiting could be and was carried out safely and efficiently.

In every instance but one, Zabotin's Canadian espionage agents were shown to be members of or sympathizers with the Communist Party. The exception was Emma Woikin, who was not, so far as the evidence discloses, of the above class. Her motivation was a sympathy

with the Soviet regime based, as she said, on "what I have read." . . .

A further technical advantage, which this system has provided to the leading organizers of the espionage network, has been a surprising degree of security from detection. By concentrating their requests to assist in espionage within the membership of secret sections of the Communist Party, the leaders were apparently able to feel quite confident . . . that even if the adherent or member should refuse to engage in activities so clearly illegal and which constitute so clear a betrayal of his or her own country—such adherent or member would in any case not consider denouncing the espionage recruiting agent to the Canadian public or to the Canadian authorities.7

These comments apply without change to the situation in the United States. Let us add that in the strange world of underground subversion, we can easily make our distinctions so subtle that they confuse instead of guide us. We may wisely follow a well-known legal maxim: the record will speak for itself.

# CHAPTER 9

# TWO TRUTH TELLERS

THE GENERAL PUBLIC first heard of the existence of the web of subversion during the summer of 1948.8 On July 31 of that year, Elizabeth Terrill Bentley testified at length before an open session of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. She was followed, on August 3, by David Whittaker Chambers.

This was not, however, the first occasion on which Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers had told their stories. On September 2, 1939, a few days after the Wehrmacht rolled across the Polish border to begin the second World War, Chambers went to Washington for a confidential meeting with Adolf A. Berle, then assistant secretary of state in charge of security. Chambers' friend, Isaac Don Levine, who had arranged the meeting, was also present. Sitting on Berle's lawn during three hours of the warm, soft Washington night, Chambers summarized the conspiracy, and told Berle most of the names with which he was directly acquainted. Berle took a series of notes that were preserved, to be introduced a decade later at the Hiss trial. Chambers was told later that Berle had taken the information at once to President Roosevelt, who had laughed it off.

In late August, 1945, Elizabeth Bentley went to the New Haven office of the FBI, and there disclosed what she knew of the web of subversion. Some of these disclosures were incorporated in the secret memorandum of November, 1945,

Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers are unexpected figures to have played so principal a role in a drama of such vast and tragic import. Elizabeth Bentley has the prim background of New England and Vassar, supplemented by proper but not strenuous graduate study in Florence and Perugia. She was born in 1908 in the quiet village of New Milford, Connecticut, on the foothill-rimmed banks of the Housatonic, fifteen miles south of where I am writing this chapter. It would be hard to imagine a natural setting more seemingly remote from the world struggle than our wooded, sparsely peopled valley of the Housatonic.

Whittaker Chambers came out of the somber, ravaged home that he has described so intimately in his extraordinary book. From that background he might have veered into suicide, art or the gutter. His squat, chunky figure is utterly without glamor. In magical contrast are the splendid timbre of his voice, and the glowing insights that flash from deep within his prose.

At those hearings in the summer of 1948, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers told parallel and intersecting narratives. Miss Bentley had, she testified, acted for some years (1941–44) as the courier and paymaster of two espionage cells or networks that were operating within agencies of the United States government. From members of these cells, she had gathered secret documents, plans, microphotographs, all kinds of secret and confidential data, and had transmitted these, directly or indirectly, to Soviet representatives.

Mr. STRIPLING. How many trips would you say you made to Mr. Silvermaster's home to collect information?

Mr. Mundt. Where would they meet you in New York?

Miss Bentley. Various places. Very often, one or the other of them stayed in the Hotel Victoria or the Hotel Times Square, and I would meet them there, or I would have breakfast with them at Schraffts on Times Square. . . .

Mr. Stripling. Now, you stated that photographs were made. . . .

Miss Bentley, Yes.

Miss Bentley. When Mr. Ullman\[n\] was available, he did it, because he made himself into an expert photographer. When he was away, or if it was just too much for him to handle, Mrs. Silvermaster worked with him. . . .

Miss Bentley. The contact I had at that time arranged for me to meet him, that I was to meet him at a drug store on M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, and I have forgotten the word we used, but I was to carry a copy of *Time* magazine. . . .

Miss Bentley. I had told Mr. Golos \[the direct Soviet agent\] about Mr. \[Duncan\] Lee, and he thought that the prospect was very interesting. He wanted to meet him personally. Therefore, I had asked Mr. Lee what would be a convenient place for us to meet because I knew he knew so many people in Washington we would have to find a rather obscure place. He suggested this German beer place at 823 Fifteenth Street, I think it is.

I remember it distinctly because it has a terrific flight of stairs going down, and Mr. Golos had a bad heart....

Whittaker Chambers testified to the existence of an underground Communist apparatus that was organized in the early thirties for the purpose of infiltrating the federal government. He stated:

The purpose of this group at that time was not primarily espionage. Its original purpose was the Communist infiltration of the American Government. But espionage was certainly one of its eventual objectives. Let no one be surprised at this statement. Disloyalty is a matter of principle with every member of the Communist Party. The Communist Party exists for the specific purpose of overthrowing the Government, at the opportune time, by any and all means; and each of its members, by the fact that he is a member, is dedicated to this purpose.

Chambers, also, explained some of the technical methods.

He had sent up to the genealogical division of the New York Public Library a group of young Communists, I presume, who collated the birth and death records; that is, they found that a child had been born, let us say, in 1900 and died a month or so later or several months later.

The party through some members then wrote to the proper authorities in New York for issuing birth certificates and asked for a birth certificate in the name of that dead child. The certificate was forthcoming and a passport was then applied for under that name by someone using that birth certificate.

In the course of these 1948 hearings, the case of Alger Hiss emerged as the unique public symbol around which public curiosity and passion swirled. It was natural, perhaps inevitable, that this should have happened, but one result has been to obscure the greater part of the story. Alger Hiss was only one among many. From the point of view of the Kremlin and of the web of subversion taken in its entirety, he was a less important unit than several others, by no means an essential part of the apparatus.

2

The crux of the Bentley-Chambers testimony was the assertion that by direct acquaintance they knew of the existence of a number of underground groups or "cells," composed of U. S. government employees, which had operated within the governmental structure. Three of these can be identified as: (1) the Ware cell; (2) the Silvermaster cell; (3) the Perlo cell. Miss Bentley "handled" the Silvermaster and Perlo cells. It was the Ware cell that Chambers described.

## Ware Cell

Harold Ware: Department of Agriculture.

John J. Abt: Department of Agriculture; Works Progress Administration; Senate Committee on Education and Labor; Justice Department.

Alger Hiss: Department of Agriculture; Special Senate Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry; Justice Department; State Department.

Donald Hiss: State Department; Labor Department.

Victor Perlo: Office of Price Administration; War Production Board; Treasury Department.

## Silvermaster Cell

Nathan Gregory Silvermaster: Director of Labor Division, Farm Security Administration; detailed at one time to Board of Economic Warfare.

Frank Coe: Assistant Director, Division of Monetary Research, Treasury; special assistant to United States Ambassador in London; assistant to the Executive Director, Board of Economic Warfare and successor agencies; Assistant Administrator, Foreign Economic Administration.

Lauchlin Currie: administrative assistant to the President; Deputy Administrator of Foreign Economic Administration.

Mrs. Bela (Sonia) Gold: research assistant, House Select

Committee on Interstate Migration; labor-market analyst, Bureau of Employment Security; Division of Monetary Research, Treasury.

Abraham George Silverman: director, Bureau of Research and Information Services, United States Railroad Retirement Board; economic adviser and chief of analysis and plans, Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Materiel and Services, Air Force.

William Taylor: Treasury Department.

William Ludwig Ullmann: Division of Monetary Research, Treasury; Materiel and Service Division, Air Corps Headquarters, Pentagon.

## Perlo Cell

Victor Perlo: head of branch in Research Section, Office of Price Administration; War Production Board; Monetary Research, Treasury.

Harold Glasser: Treasury Department; loaned to Government of Ecuador; loaned to War Production Board; adviser on North African Affairs Committee in Algiers, North Africa.

Charles Kramer (Krevitsky): National Labor Relations Board; Office of Price Administration; economist with Senate Subcommittee on War Mobilization.

Solomon Leshinsky: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

Harry Magdoff: Statistical Division of War Production Board and Office of Emergency Management; Bureau of Research and Statistics, WPB; Tools Division, WPB; Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.

Allan Rosenberg: Foreign Economic Administration.

Miss Bentley further testified that Irving Kaplan, then an employee of the War Production Board, was associated with

both the Silvermaster and the Perlo cells. He paid dues to the Perlo group and submitted information to the Silvermaster group. She identified Harry Dexter White, then assistant secretary of the Treasury, as another person who cooperated with the Silvermaster cell.

She also testified that certain other individuals "cooperated in obtaining information from the files of the Government for the use of Russian agents but... were not actually attached to either the Silvermaster or Perlo groups." She named the following:

Michael Greenberg: Board of Economic Warfare; Foreign Economic Administration, specialist on China.

Joseph Gregg: Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, assistant in Research Division.

Duncan Chaplin Lee: Office of Strategic Services; legal adviser to General William J. Donovan.

Robert T. Miller: head of political research, Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs; member, Information Service Committee, Near Eastern Affairs, State Department; Assistant Chief, Division of Research and Publications, State Department.

William Z. Park: Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. Bernard Redmont: Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.

Helen Tenney: Office of Strategic Services, Spanish Division.

Kaplan as well as Miss Bentley herself are links between the Silvermaster and Perlo cells.\*

A few months after these hearings, in connection with the libel action that was brought against him by Alger Hiss, Chambers carried his narrative forward. Then, and at the subsequent Hiss trials, he testified that in the period 1934-37 he was the courier and organizer of an active espionage group in Washington. He stated that the chief government "sources" in this group included Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Henry Julian Wadleigh (of the Agriculture and later the State Department), and an employee of the Bureau of Standards for whom, in his book Witness, Chambers uses the pseudonym "Abel Gross." There were other lesser, or inactive members. One of these Chambers addresses, without naming him, in Witness:

This group that was "handled" by Chambers constitutes a fourth "cell." Alger Hiss appears as a link between it and the Ware cell; Harry White links it to the Silvermaster cell.

\* Lauchlin Currie (who for some years has maintained uninterrupted residence in Colombia, South America), Harry D. White (who died three days after giving testimony in August 1948), Bela Gold, Sonia Gold, Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, Robert T. Miller and Duncan Lee, testifying under oath in 1948, denied being Communists and denied all collaboration with espionage activities. Since then Alger Hiss has been convicted of perjury, and Harry White has been publicly described by Attorney General Brownell as "a Russian spy." Frank Coe made the same denials in 1948, but in 1952, before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, refused on the ground of self-incrimination to answer questions connected with Communism and espionage. In 1953, William Taylor denied these and subsequent identifications. Later in this book we shall consider the cases of individuals in greater detail.

Chambers was himself acting under the orders of his superior in the Soviet intelligence apparatus, Colonel Boris Bykov. Through other couriers, Bykov was directing at least one, possibly several, additional cells.

The 1948 testimony of Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers set off against them a campaign of abuse almost unprecedented in this country. Communist, fellow traveling, and some liberal and government circles denounced and dismissed their testimony as ridiculous, laughable, fantastic, maudlin. By rumor and gossip, by cartoon and editorial, they were "exposed" as thieves, degenerates, psychotics, perverts. Artists in character assassination invented entire biographies for them, filled with lurid episodes of sexual fantasies, trips to insane asylums, bribes and dreams of vengeance. Indignation at red herrings and the "slandering" of loyal public servants thundered even from the White House and the halls of the State Department. In whispered conversations at cocktail parties, washrooms and bars, no phrase was thought too vile if it was applied to Elizabeth Bentley or Whittaker Chambers.

Under every assault, the solid rock of their testimony has stood firm. They had no illusions about what was coming. They knew the storm of lies and filth that would be heaped on them from the moment that they spoke before the House committee. They knew, and Whittaker Chambers especially knew, the real forces that they were challenging. They knew that by speaking they had abandoned for the remainder of their lives all hope of personal peace or serenity. That is why there was a heroism, even if it will remain forever unacknowledged, in their decision to speak.

It cannot yet be said that everything stated by each of them has been independently and sufficiently confirmed. Doubtless they were in error on some points, even important points. No memory is exact, and in the shadows of the underground it is hard for the most faultless observer to be wholly sure of what he sees. It may even be that by some grievous confusion, two or three of the individuals named on their lists do not belong there.

This much is certain. When they first spoke in public, there was only their unsupported word against the skepticism, disbelief, flat denial, or ignorance, of the world's opinion. Every month since they spoke has brought mounting confirmation to their story.

One after another, direct witnesses have corroborated this or that part of what they had to say: Louis Budenz, former managing editor of the *Daily Worker*, confidant of Earl Browder and auditor of the meetings of the Communist Party's Political Bureau; Lee Pressman and Nathaniel Weyl of the original Ware cell; Hede Massing, courier for another Washington "apparatus"; Julian Wadleigh, junior colleague of Alger Hiss in the State Department, who admitted his collaboration in the espionage; several others who have finally spoken, though not yet in public.

Indirect corroboration has come from a dozen directions: the disclosure of other parts of the web of subversion that were spun in other countries; the piecing together of Communist Party history from the stories of those who have broken with it; the reports of patriots like Herbert Philbrick, Mary Stalcup Markward, Matthew Cvetic and Angela Calomiris who, at much sacrifice, served their country under FBI direction inside the ranks of the Party; the trials of the Communist leaders; the publication of parts of the secret reports of the FBI; the general unmasking of the plans and methods of the Communist world conspiracy. Month by month the congressional investigating committees have patiently added to the accumulation of knowledge. The very silences of witnesses, punctuated by the pleas of self-incrimination, have gradually formed a pattern of confirmation.

Not one of the individuals listed in this chapter from the

Not only does an expanding mass of evidence confirm one after another of the Bentley-Chambers assertions. No positive evidence has ever been produced to refute convincingly any major point that either of them made. Indeed, very few of the minor points have been seriously impugned. Is this not astonishing, in a matter of such complexity? If they are liars, note, they must be liars on a colossal scale. Their intricate stories fit together internally, which means that if they are lying about major issues then they have told thousands of lies. Lies are often hard to refute, but out of thousands, surely one at least would have exploded.

# 4

In confirming a story that seems at first incredible, it is sometimes small things that are most convincing. Let me give two little examples.

In the executive (i.e., closed and secret) session of the Un-American Activities Committee that was held August 7, 1948, the following colloquy took place:

I recall once they saw, to their great excitement, a prothonotary warbler.

Mr. Chambers. I never saw one.

What hobby, if any, do you have, Mr. Hiss?

Mr. Nixon. Is your wife interested in ornithology? Mr. Hiss. I also like to swim and also like to sail. My wife is interested in ornithology, as I am, through my interest. . . .

Mr. McDowell. Did you ever see a prothonotary warbler?

Mr. Hiss. I have right here on the Potomac. Do you know that place?

The CHAIRMAN. What is that?...

There are many who believe it was this gorgeous bird with the beautiful yellow head that put Alger Hiss in jail.

Street, N.W. Did that house actually contain a basement photographic room?

The trouble was that the Silvermasters had sold it in 1947. Silvermaster himself refused to state whether it had had a photographic room when he lived in it. (Later, the others from the list of what Miss Bentley called "the Silvermaster group" also either refused to answer on the question, or had, they said, forgotten or never noticed. Even Lauchlin Currie couldn't recall, although he did testify that he had been in the Silvermasters' basement, to see "the workshop".)

The interior of this fine brick home must be seen to be appreciated. Custom built 9 years ago, contains nine rooms and three baths . . . In the basement an excellent photographic room, workshop, gas hot-water heat. . . .

A formal recognition of Elizabeth Bentley's truth telling, applicable equally to Whittaker Chambers, came on November 17, 1953. J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, stated under oath to the Internal Security Subcommittee:

# CHAPTER 4

# THREE WEB DWELLERS

LET US EXAMINE three typical inhabitants of the web of subversion, as they are impaled on the record.

1

Harold Glasser, a rather thick-set, stolid man with glasses, blue eyes, brown hair, a ruddy complexion and a short, tight mouth, was named by Elizabeth Bentley as a member of the Perlo cell.10 In the 1945 secret memorandum, to which reference was made in Chapter 1, there appears the following sentence:

Glasser studied economics, first at the University of Chicago and then at Harvard. After working for the Brookings Institution and the People's Junior College in Chicago, he went into government employment. He declined, on the ground of self-incrimination, to say whether he had lived with Solomon Adler in Chicago, or whether Adler, later on, had anything to do with his government jobs. Adler, who became an official of the Treasury Department and its field representative in China, has been independently identified by two witnesses as a Communist.

In 1935, Glasser started with the Works Progress Administration. He quickly mounted the upward path that seemed to stretch so easily before all the web dwellers. He was shifted to the Department of Agriculture, and then, at the end of 1936, to the Treasury Department. There he made his principal career, ending in the top professional category (P-8) at an annual salary of more than \\$9,000.

He worked in the foreign affairs side of the Treasury, where he was soon assigned to the Division of Monetary Research. This was headed by Harry Dexter White, later assistant secretary, who has been identified as a collaborator with the espionage and underground networks. Glasser declined to answer all questions concerning White.

In 1940 Glasser received his first of many foreign assign-

He then became the official American financial expert on the Council of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), under UNRRA's first chief, Herbert Lehman, then under Fiorello LaGuardia. "Were you a Communist at that time?" Robert Morris asked, and again came the reply: "I refuse to answer that question, sir, on the ground it may tend to incriminate me." Well, in any case, the Communists of Europe and Asia had small reason to be dissatisfied with the allocations of the billions of dollars which the United States pumped into UNRRA, and which UNRRA, with the help of Harold Glasser's advice as its chief financial expert, distributed so generously. Whether Harry White or Alger Hiss was ever present at the meetings of UNRRA's financial advisory group, Glasser declined to answer, as he did questions about conferences with Communists.

Mr. Morris. Did you meet with any Italian Communists at that time?

Mr. GLASSER. I refuse to answer that question, sir, on the ground it may tend to incriminate me.

Senator Welker. Were you a member of the Communist Party at that time?

Senator Hendrickson. Did you perform any services at that time that might have incriminated you?

Mr. GLASSER.... there were some Russian officers attached to the Allied Commission.

Mr. GLASSER. I refuse to answer that question, sir, on the ground that it may tend to incriminate me.

He went to Europe several more times during 1945 and 1946. (A convenient job from the point of view of a web spun internationally, with all travel paid for by the U. S. Treasury.) In 1945 he was in England and France. In 1946 he was helping Germany's liberation, with a quick trip to Austria on the side. In January, 1947, it was Trieste, but he refused to say whether he met any Communists in Trieste. On August 22, 1946, he had been made head of the Division of Monetary Research, at which post Harry Dexter White and Virginius Frank Coe had preceded him.

Then in March, 1947, as a kind of climax to his government career, he went to the Moscow Council of Foreign Ministers as an adviser to General Marshall.

Mr. Morris. Were you a Communist at that time?

Mr. GLASSER. I refuse to answer that question, sir, on the ground it may tend to incriminate me.

Mr. Morris. Did you confer with other Communists in connection with the advice you gave General Marshall at that time?

Mr. GLASSER. I refuse to answer that question on the ground it may tend to incriminate me.

In December, 1947, Glasser resigned from the Treasury Department, with a gratifying letter and a warm recommendation from the then secretary, John Snyder. He did not walk the streets. He accepted a post, "on a part-time basis," as "director of the Institute on Overseas Studies for the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds," at the quite decent part-time wage of \\$10,000. His friend Dean Acheson had also written to recommend him. "We worked together on the problem of foreign funds control and other economic warfare matters. . . . I was impressed with his technical competence and his ability to work under the strain of long hours and difficult negotiations. . . . He was a good working companion, maintaining an extraordinary evenness of temper and good humor under what were sometimes very trying circumstances."

Luckily, since Mr. Glasser is obviously a man who likes to travel, his new job, which he still held when he testified in April and June, 1953, takes him abroad "generally . . . twice a year."

In the course of his testimony Mr. Glasser saw fit to decline all questions concerning any relations with Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Victor Perlo, J. Peters, David Weintraub, Frank Coe, Colonel Bykov, Harry White, Elizabeth Bentley, Allan Rosenberg, Charles Kramer, Irving Kaplan, George Silverman, Edward Fitzgerald, William Ullmann, John Abt, William Taylor, Maurice Halperin, Sol Leshinsky, Joel Gordon. He declined to answer whether it was true, as the secret 1945 memorandum had stated, that Alger Hiss had "turned him over" to the direct control of a Soviet official.

One other odd little incident came up.

Mr. Morris. This is from page 429 of Whittaker Chambers' book, Witness.... "Harry Dexter White was

the least productive of the four original sources. Through George Silverman"—

Do you know Silverman?

Mr. GLASSER. I refuse to answer that question on the ground it may tend to incriminate me.

Mr. GLASSER. I refuse to answer that question on the ground it may tend to incriminate me.

"I went to J. Peters"-

Did you know J. Peters?

Mr. Morris (reading). "... who was in Washington constantly in 1937 and who I also saw regularly in New York. I explained the problem to him and asked for a Communist in the Treasury Department who could control White. Peters suggested Dr. Harold Glasser, who certainly seemed an ideal man for the purpose, since he was White's assistant, one of several Communists whom White himself had guided into the Treasury Department."

Did Harry Dexter White guide you into the Treasury Department?

The CHAIRMAN. Let the record show the reasons for refusal to answer.

Mr. Morris. Were you ever given the assignment of controlling Harry Dexter White?

Mr. GLASSER. I refuse to answer the question, sir, on the ground it may tend to incriminate me.

2

In background, appearance and personality, Henry H. Collins, Jr., is quite another dish of tea.11 He is one of the nice boys, from a family that has been living on the right side of the tracks since before there were any tracks. There are several others of the same sort among the Fifth Amendment cases who have appeared before the congressional committees. They act pretty much alike. They get indignant, huffy. They lecture the Committees on patriotism. They talk about their ancestors, the Constitution, and the Revolutionary War. And then, just as their more humbly born associates do, they decline, on the ground of self-incrimination, to answer the key questions.

The record becomes a little ridiculous, really:

Mr. COLLINS. . . . My public career . . . began under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose progressive social ideals I espoused and worked for. . . . My ancestors came from England to this country in 1640. Members of my family have served our country in every war since the Revolution, when one of my great-uncles was an aide to Washington. I myself volunteered in the last war and spent 2 years in the European theater . . . in England, France, and Germany.

Mr. Stripling. What commission did you receive?

Mr. Collins. Captain.

Mr. STRIPLING. Was that the highest rank you obtained?

Mr. Collins. Major.

Mr. Stripling. And you were discharged as a major?

Mr. STRIPLING. Are you a major in the Reserves at this time?

Mr. Collins. Yes.

Mr. Stripling. Are you a member of the Communist Party?

Mr. Collins. I decline to answer that question on the grounds that my answer might tend to incriminate me.

Whittaker Chambers, we have seen, identified Collins as a member of the Ware cell. In 1952 Nathaniel Weyl, himself a member of the Ware cell, confirmed this identification. In a passage from *Witness* which the Internal Security Subcommittee introduced into its record, Chambers writes of Collins:

A number of these men I knew personally as Communists. The treasurer of the Ware apparatus, Henry H. Collins, Jr., Princeton and Harvard, and scion of a Philadelphia manufacturing family, was my personal friend. He also served voluntarily and in fact irrepressibly as a recruiting agent for the Soviet apparatus among members of the State Department. It was he who recruited one of the Bykov apparatuses of State Department sources, a man of much more glittery social background than Alger Hiss. . . . As long as Henry Collins lived in St. Matthew's Court, his apartment was one of my informal Washington headquarters. . . .

Collins agreed as to Princeton and Harvard, and that he had lived in St. Matthew's Court. On all other questions concerning this quotation, and on whether he had known Whittaker Chambers, he declined to answer.

Henry Collins, Jr., was born in Philadelphia in 1905, and graduated from Princeton in 1926. (I was Princeton 1927, and I remember him on the campus.) He kept up Princeton

In 1933 he got a job with the National Recovery Administration (NRA). From then on for fifteen years he worked for the government. When NRA ended in 1935, after being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Collins shifted, with the ease of all the web dwellers, to the Department of Agriculture. In 1939 he transferred to the Department of Labor. Beginning in 1940 he was for several years "loaned" successively to a number of congressional committees.

The committees on the staffs of which he served appear frequently in the web's record. Their fields of interest were either economic development or (later) war mobilization and the war economy. The order in Collins' case was as follows: (1) House Committee on Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens (the "Tolan Committee"); (2) Senate Small Business Committee; (3) Subcommittee on Technological Mobilization of the Senate Military Affairs Committee (the "Kilgore Committee"). For the first of these, Collins was in charge of field hearings, "preparation and planning for hearings, selection of witnesses and organization of testimony." For the second, he was in charge of committee hearings. For the Kilgore Committee, he was "in full charge, under Senator Kilgore, of the work of the Subcommittee staff including research, legal, administrative, information and editorial work and preparation for, and interrogation at hearings."

With respect to each of these jobs, Collins was specifically asked whether he was at the time a member of the Communist Party. To every such question his reply was the same:

He went into the Army, where he was put through the Military Government School at Charlottesville. At the end of the war he went abroad to help govern liberated France and Germany according to his lights. Europe was not new to him. Like many other Princeton boys, he had been traveling regularly abroad. His first passport was issued in 1923, in his eighteenth year, and there were others regularly thereafter. In the record we may note that his fourth passport, issued June 14, 1933, mentions travel to Germany, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and France.

As to acquaintance with the familiar names, and some not so familiar—Alger Hiss, David Weintraub, Carl Marzani, William Ludwig Ullmann, Palmer Weber, and dozens more—Collins declined to answer.

His job during 1950 and 1951 was more curious. Henry Collins became "agent" (as he testified) for the San Cristobal Valley Ranch. He was asked whether he had met various individuals at the Ranch: Clint Jencks, for example, of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, a union well known for Communist domination and expelled from the CIO therefor; Irving Bazer, Ernie Leiberman, and Howard da Silva, a Hollywood writer who had had a grievous run-in with the

Un-American Activities Committee. All such questions Collins declined to answer.

This ranch has been the topic of questioning on other occasions. During the inquiry of the Internal Security Subcommittee into the activities of certain United States citizens working in the Secretariat of the United Nations (October–December, 1952), a U. N. employee named Joyce Campbell testified. She stated that from 1939 to 1946 she had been the wife of Craig Vincent. She was asked: "Do you know whether he \[Vincent\] is running a Communist ranch in San Cristobal now?" She replied: "No, Sir; I do not know whether he is running a Communist ranch. I do know that he has a farm or ranch of some sort in the Rocky Mountain States, in the southern Rocky Mountains, and that he owns or runs that ranch and is married." She had previously observed that "as far as I can determine, sir, he was not a member of the Communist Party."

(Joyce Campbell has a poor nose for Communists. She was not aware that there were any Communists in the United Nations, although she thought that there might be a few on the Soviet delegation. She had been an official of the Federal Workers Union, later the United Public Workers, expelled by the CIO as Communist-run, but she had known of no Communists there, she testified. She had been executive secretary of United Yugoslav Relief when Tito was still Stalin's favorite, but she had detected no Communist taint there. She was acquainted with the notorious Communist organizer, Steve Nelson, now in jail. Nelson is especially renowned for his activity in the neighborhood of the University of California's Radiation Laboratory, to which Los Alamos was administratively attached.)

Craig Vincent himself testified on June 12, 1953. He has a new wife, Jennie, whom he married in January, 1949. She had formerly been married to a man named Henry K. Wells. Wells was once a professor at Columbia; and "subsequently," according to the testimony, "was a teacher at the Jefferson

School for Social Research." Documents identified the latter more exactly as the Jefferson School of Social Science, the central educational institution of the American Communist Party.

It turns out that Jennie Vincent is the owner of the San Cristobal Ranch, and Craig Vincent its manager since his marriage to Jennie. When asked, "Is the San Cristobal ranch operated as an adjunct of the Communist Party of the United States of America?" Craig Vincent refused to reply, as he also refused when asked whether he or his wife was a Communist. Mr. Sourwine (counsel for the Judiciary Committee) asked: "Do you know, sir, that the Communist Party in Denver, Colo., at a meeting on March 17, 1950, decided that the San Cristobal Valley Ranch would be operated for the benefit of the Communist Party and all the proceeds derived therefrom would be at the disposal of the Communist Party?" Again Craig Vincent declined to reply. 12

Rather early in Henry Collins' government career, in the Department of Labor, his official superior was a Merle Vincent. Craig Vincent was Merle's son, and then became, as he has remained, Henry Collins' close friend.

We have taken a good deal of trouble over this remote and, for all I know, quite unimpressive ranch. Still, the following passage from the record might stir an idle curiosity:

Mr. Morris. Will you tell us where this ranch was located, Mr. Collins?

Mr. Collins. The ranch was located 20 miles north of Taos, on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Mr. Morris. In what State?

Mr. Collins. The State of New Mexico.

Mr. Morris. Was it your habit and practice while you were at the ranch to take short excursions from the ranch?

Mr. Morris. Where were the Indian villages?

Mr. Collins. Down around Santa Fe, the valley, Bandolier National Monument.

Mr. Morris. Did you ever go to the monument?

Mr. Collins. I did.

Mr. Morris. What did you go there for

Mr. Collins. Birds: to watch birds.

(Like Alger Hiss, Henry Collins testified that he is an ornithologist and bird watcher. He continued:)

And also to take people down there. It is an Indian Cliff dwelling.

Mr. Morris. That is immediately contiguous to the Los Alamos \[sic\]; isn't it?

Mr. Morris. In fact, it surrounds it, does it not, physically?

Mr. Collins. I don't know.

Los Alamos, of course, is the final assembly plant for atomic weapons.\*

3

Elizabeth Bentley stated that one of the espionage groups for which she acted as courier was headed by Nathan Gregory Silvermaster—"Greg," as his intimates know him.13 In 1948 she testified at length about Greg, his wife Helen, and their friend, William Ludwig Ullmann of the Treasury Department and the Air Force, who lived and worked with them.

Miss Bentley. . . . I would go to the Silvermaster home, very often have dinner with them, spend the evening, and collect from them the information which they

\* A special dispatch to the Dec. 31, 1953 issue of the *Daily Worker* reported that the Vincents are closing down the "guest operations" of the San Cristobal Ranch. It will continue with "farming and ranching."

had previously collected from the members of the group....

Mr. Stripling. What type of information was actually turned over to you, and which you transferred to Mr. Golos?

Miss Bentley. Military information, particularly from the Air Corps, on production of airplanes, their destinations to the various theaters of war and to various countries, new types of planes being put out, information as to when D-day would be....

Miss Bentley. That depended. In the very early days they either typed it out or brought me documents. Later on they began photographing it.

Mr. STRIPLING. Where was the photographing carried out?

Miss Bentley. In the basement of the Silvermaster house.

Mr. Stripling. They had the equipment there to do it?

Miss Bentley. Yes; they did. They had a Contax camera, and had the set-up all ready for putting documents in and holding documents in place.

Mr. STRIPLING. What did you do with the photographs or documents once you received them? . . . How did you take them back to New York?

Miss Bentley. Well, whatever way was practical. If I had a large pocketbook and there was room in that, I took them, or in a knitting bag or a shopping bag or whatever was handy, depending on the size of the collection. . . .

Mr. Stripling. . . . Do you know who made these photographs?

Miss Bentley. When Mr. Ullman\[n\] was available, he did it, because he made himself into an expert photog-

rapher. When he was away, or if it was just too much for him to handle, Mrs. Silvermaster worked with him.

In her autobiography, Out of Bondage, Miss Bentley describes a typical evening in the Silvermasters' home. After the meal, business would be taken up according to a regular agenda: Greg would turn over the dues collected from the members of the cell on a kind of progressive income tax basis; Miss Bentley would give him American and Russian Communist literature, and would relay the Soviet requests for information; the documents and microphotographs for transmittal would be assembled and put in order; and they would end with chai—Russian-style tea—at the kitchen table.

He first came to Washington in 1935, to work for the Resettlement Administration (later made part of the Department of Agriculture) at \\$3,800 a year. As he recalled, it was George Mitchell who offered him the job. (It must be the same George Mitchell whom I remember from my years at Oxford. He and I were both at Balliol College. He was the first "Southern liberal" I had known, a deadly serious young man with prematurely balding hair. He talked about "the labor movement" with the passionate intensity that intellectuals often show in order to make up for the fact that they aren't workers. I remember a meeting of the "Junior Commons Room"—the undergraduate organization—that was held to decide on magazine subscriptions for the coming year. George condemned us all for triviality because we voted to

take the young New Yorker. That was in 1928, when the New Yorker had not itself gone political but was just trying to be amusing.) Silvermaster declined to say whether he was a Communist when he took this first job.

Silvermaster's governmental career was cut according to the web's usual happy pattern. In 1938 he went to the Maritime Labor Board, and in 1940 to the Farm Security Administration. He shifted to the Treasury, Office of Surplus Property, in 1944, where he reached the highest professional classification (P-8) in 1945. He continued in the Treasury until his resignation in 1946, at which time he was drawing down \\$10,000 a year.

In his case, too, some of the record makes paradoxical reading. On April 16, 1953, before the Internal Security Subcommittee, he was permitted at the outset to read a prepared statement. Indignantly the statement protests: "I am a loyal citizen and I have never betrayed the interests of the United States." The record then continues:

Mr. SILVERMASTER. I refuse to answer the question under the Fifth Amendment.

Mr. Silvermaster. I claim my privilege of refusing to answer this question under the Fifth Amendment.

It is clear that Greg has a broad view of "the interests of the United States."

Within government security agencies, and perhaps elsewhere, Silvermaster's extracurricular point of view was not altogether unknown. In 1942, Silvermaster was assigned to the Board of Economic Warfare. Military Intelligence (G-2) protested that he was a security risk and should not be given access to confidential material. The protest was shown to Silvermaster by William T. Stone, assistant administrator of the Board of Economic Warfare—a rather odd procedure with a confidential intelligence communication. Silvermaster went to Lauchlin Currie, one of President Roosevelt's personal aides in the White House. Currie intervened with Robert P. Patterson, Under Secretary of War. The Silvermaster record was cleared. He went back to the Farm Security Administration, there to continue his career "without prejudice."

Elizabeth Bentley had told this story; and Silvermaster confirmed it in 1948. In 1953 he no longer chose to answer questions concerning it, or concerning his acquaintance with Lauchlin Currie. Nevertheless, documentation was introduced into the record, including parts of the unfavorable intelligence report, Silvermaster's own memorandum on the subject, the adverse communication from General George V. Strong (G-2), and the letter from Secretary Patterson in which, after the intervention of Currie, he rejected General Strong's memorandum.

General Strong had concluded: "G-2's opinion having been asked in relation to Mr. Silvermaster, we adhere to our opinion that he should not be employed where he has access to

confidential or secret information." This seems mild enough as we read excerpts from the intelligence report:

There is considerable testimony in the file indicating that about 1920, the applicant was an underground agent for the Communist Party. From that time he has been, according to the testimony of numerous witnesses, everything from a fellow traveler to an agent for the OGPU (Russian Secret Police). He has been known and listed in the files of the Seattle Police Department, the Thirteenth Naval District, the San Francisco Police Department, the subversive unit of the American Legion at San Francisco, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as a member and leader of the Communist Party. . . .

Greg Silvermaster has now retired from the strenuous life of the nation's capital. For some years he has been living in the little village of Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, once known as High Point. His old friend and colleague, William Ludwig Ullmann, is again living with him. Together, Silvermaster testified, they are conducting a building and construction business. He was not anxious to say more about rural life in Jersey.

Mr. Morris. Does Mr. Ullman\[n\] have all his photographic equipment with him?

Mr. SILVERMASTER. I refuse to answer this question

Mr. SILVERMASTER. I refuse to answer this question under the same privilege.

As with Henry Collins, problems of geography get into the record. A map of the New Jersey coast is reproduced. Harvey Cedars appears about six miles south of Barnegat Light, on the thin strip of sand that lies some distance off the main shore, pointing out toward the open sea, and the sights and sounds and creatures that the sea brings.

# CHAPTER 5

# THE SPINNING OF THE WEB

THE PATTERN of the web of subversion is intricate. Its methods of growth are various and complex.

These cases must be exceptional, however. It is only rarely that the Communist enterprise leaves its adherents isolated. There is not much that can be done in isolation; in fact, nothing can be done if the isolation is complete. Ordinarily, even in the most secret and conspiratorial operations, several individuals are organized into a group, "nucleus" or "cell" which is linked through one of its members to another cell or to someone in the next higher echelon of the apparatus. A single Communist might be temporarily isolated in a job at, say, the Bureau of Standards. It would be his mission to recruit others and thus form a cell.

We have already identified four cells within the government: the Ware, Silvermaster, and Perlo cells; and the small cell or apparatus with which Whittaker Chambers worked in 1936 and 1937. One of these, the Ware cell, was at its beginning confined to a single agency, the Department of Agriculture, more particularly the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. This is analogous to what is called in the open

Communist organization a "Party fraction." The other cells included individuals from a number of different agencies.

We possess direct evidence of several other underground cells of the Ware or "fraction" type. During 1953, for example, a man named Max Elitcher, who was a witness at the Rosenberg atomic spy trial, gave sworn testimony that has not yet, as I write, been made public. He was an electrical engineer who worked until 1948 for the Naval Bureau of Ordnance. It is known that he identified an underground cell, with a membership of from four to a dozen persons, that existed within the Bureau of Ordnance. For some years he was himself the leader of this cell, and he has identified by name about ten individuals who belonged to it, including advanced technicians working on such projects as aiming and fire control devices

During 1953 the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, under the chairmanship of Senator McCarthy, brought two cells to light, both of which were still in existence when the hearings took place. One of these was in the Government Printing Office, where, along with ordinary public documents, thousands of secret documents are printed for the intelligence and military agencies of the government. Mrs. Mary Stalcup Markward, who under FBI direction belonged for seven years to a Washington branch of the Communist Party, gave direct testimony about the cell and a number of its members. Further direct testimony was given by a printing office employee named James B. Phillips, whom the cell members had at one time attempted to recruit. Frederick Sillers, Jr., and Edward M. Rothschild, identified as members of the printing office cell, were among those who declined to testify on the ground of self-incrimination.

This cell was apparently initiated by Julius Rosenberg,

The existence of these seven cells is now a matter of public record. It is certain that there have been (and are) many more that have not yet been publicly unearthed. There are several dozen Fifth Amendment cases who worked in a variety of government agencies and who were not members of any of the seven cells that I have just listed. Communist procedure guarantees that almost all of these persons did in fact belong to a cell either organized as a "fraction" at their place of work or set up on an inter-agency or geographical basis. Undoubtedly there are additional cells that have not yet been touched even indirectly by any investigation. In a later chapter, I shall return to this problem of still-hidden cells and of the "sleeper apparatus."

In estimating the extent and density of the web of subversion, we must make a still broader allowance. Whittaker Chambers has explained that the Ware cell, at the time when he was directly acquainted with it, was an upper echelon, "elite" grouping. It had a leader (first Harold Ware himself, then Nathan Witt, then John Abt) and in turn each of its members was the leader of an entire cell that operated at a lower level. Chambers stated that he had himself attended a meeting of one of these sub-cells.

On October 28, 1953, testimony bearing on this problem was given by Ismail Gusseynovich Akhmedoff, who on becoming a Turkish citizen a few years ago took the name of Ismail Ege. Colonel Ege (Akhmedoff) was born in 1904 at Orsk, in the Ural Mountain region of the Soviet Union. He was educated as an engineer and assigned to Soviet General Staff intelligence. In 1940 he was appointed Chief of the Fourth Section, a branch specializing in technical intelligence, with a jurisdiction that included the United States.

Colonel Ege explained in detail the operational methods

of his Section, and more generally of the entire military intelligence apparatus. He made the following distinction:

Usually the Soviet intelligence organization has two channels, one is so-called legal network, which in Soviet intelligence it is understood are networks consisting of Soviet citizens working in some Soviet foreign office or in some Soviet office working as Tass, VOKS, foreign section of the state bank, AMTORG, foreign offices and so on. . . .

Persons working here, of course, have Soviet passports. . . . They are conducting the espionage under cover of these organizations. . . .

\* Colonel Ege's testimony was not in print while I was writing, and I have based this summary on the typescript of the hearing. He is of course referring exclusively to espionage cells, not underground Communist cells active in other (e.g., subversive) fields.

So far as the public record shows, the first organized underground group in the U. S. government was the Ware cell. This was initially formed in the latter part of 1933. It does not seem possible that the record is complete here. We know that there were individual Communist employees of the government prior to 1933. There were, in fact, functioning branches of the open Communist Party that included government employees among their members. There were Party-controlled fellow-traveling organizations, such as the John Reed Club, that during the 1920's had branches in Washington. Granted the known intentions and the established methods of international Communism, it would seem probable that at least by the late '20's there must also have been underground units as well as direct Soviet espionage agents.\* There are, however, causes in both Soviet and American history as well as in the situation of the American Communist Party to explain why the large-scale extension of the web may well have waited until 1933. In Chapter 8 I shall comment further on this time scheme.

• In the hearings conducted on the Government Printing Office by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Mrs. Markward testified that a Mrs. Gertrude Evans was a Party member. Mrs. Evans, when called as a witness, stated that she had worked for the government for 25 years, beginning in 1918. She declined to answer concerning Party membership in 1943. However, she was not specifically asked about the earlier years. Another older lady from Maine, Alice Prentice Barrows, remarkably out of place in the setting, testified before the Internal Security Subcommittee on June 23, 1953. She had worked for 23 years in the Office of Education, first in the Department of Interior, later transferred to the Federal Security Agency. She declined to answer whether she had been a Communist when she started, in 1919, or thereafter. She would not tell whether she had recruited members into the Communist Party. Documents that were introduced indicated that her participation in Communist-controlled organizations has continued through recent years.

Pressman—have given sworn testimony concerning it. Indirectly, much has also been learned from the testimony of other ex-Communists and from what may be inferred from the non-cooperating testimony of other Ware cell members.

Harold Ware was himself a famous figure in Communist circles. He was the son of a charter Communist, Ella Reeve Bloor, who was long known to the Party as "Mother Bloor." His wife (Jessica Smith) has for many years been editor of the Soviet propaganda magazine, Soviet Russia Today (now New World Review), and is at present married to John Abt, identified as a Ware cell member. Carl Reeve, his half brother, was a Communist Party organizer. His sister, Helen, according to Chambers' testimony, had a violin studio in Washington that was used as a liaison point for the espionage apparatus.

In the 1920's, Ware went for several years to the Soviet Union. He returned in the service of the international apparatus. He did some consultant work for the Department of Agriculture, and set up a small Washington office which he called "Farm Research," now run by Frank Coe's brother, Charles ("Bob"), a Fifth Amendment pleader. From this base Harold Ware spun his section of the web. His first recorded salient was into the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in the Department of Agriculture. There he organized into a functioning group the able lot of young men who were listed in Chapter 3, most of them recently come from the Harvard Law School. They were soon deploying into many areas of the government, and we shall often meet their names again in other connections.

The administrative staff of the White House; the Departments of State, Treasury, Army, Navy, Defense (under the

This list does not take into account the indispensable support furnished to the structure of the web by fellow travelers, sympathizers, and mere dupes. These were and are to be found throughout the government, from top to bottom. We have seen how Under Secretary of War Patterson was induced to clear Nathan Gregory Silvermaster. Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau made Harry Dexter White his principal adviser. General Donovan's OSS was crowded with web

The Subcommittee examined in public session 36 persons about whom it had substantial evidence of membership in the Communist underground in Government. All of them invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions regarding Communist membership, on the grounds of self-incrimination.

Almost all of the persons exposed by the evidence had some connection which could be documented with at least one—and generally several—other exposed persons. They used each other's names for reference on applications for Federal employment. They hired each other. They promoted each other. They raised each other's salaries. They transferred each other from bureau to bureau, from department to department, from Congressional committee to Congressional committee. They assigned each other to international missions. They vouched for each other's loyalty and protected each other when exposure threatened. They often had common living quarters. There was a group that played handball together. There was another group whose names appeared together in a telephone finder.

David Weintraub,\* as head of the National Research Project, hired ten Fifth Amendment cases. More recently, as director of a division in the U.N. Secretariat, Weintraub had under him Irving Kaplan, Herbert S. Schimmel, Sidney Glassman, Herman Zap, and Joel Gordon, all Fifth Amendment cases. Weintraub was tireless in writing references and recommendations for the web dwellers.

As chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties (the LaFollette Committee), John Abt was the supervisory officer of Charles Kramer, Charles Flato and Allan Rosenberg, all Fifth Amendment cases. Rosenberg followed Abt into the National Labor Relations Board, and there became senior attorney in the Litigation Division.

Henry Collins, Jr., was staff director of the Senate's Small Business Committee, and under him served Alfred Van Tassel and Harry Magdoff (the latter assigned by the then Secretary of Commerce, Henry Wallace.)

Frank V. Coe and Harry Dexter White, near the top of the Treasury Department, watched over the welfare of the web dwellers. Coe promoted, for example, Victor Perlo. He rated Harold Glasser "excellent" on efficiency reports; Glasser rated Perlo; Perlo rated Charles Kramer, and so on down the line. Irving Kaplan in 1946 listed Frank Coe, Harry White and Abraham George Silverman as his references. The Treasury's Division of Monetary Research, headed by Harry Dexter White, then by Frank Coe, and then by Harold Glasser, harbored at least ten Fifth Amendment cases.

• Weintraub has denied Communism and espionage; he has admitted active acquaintance with a couple of dozen of the Fifth Amendment cases.

They all used each other in arranging new jobs or transfers. Lauchlin Currie hired Michael Greenberg. William Ullmann gave Greg Silvermaster as reference on his application to Officer Candidate School. Irving Kaplan, George Perazich and David Weintraub were among Edward Fitzgerald's references in applying for a better post. Harry Magdoff gave a recommendation of Irving Kaplan. Frank Coe put Harold Glasser into the Office of War Mobilization and Conversion, with a clean bill of health. Charles Kramer recommended Charles Flato for jobs; Herbert Schimmel recommended Kramer; Weintraub recommended Schimmel. Maurice Halperin (according to Elizabeth Bentley) soon got Helen Tenney into OSS on his heels: "Once we got one person in he got others, and the whole process continued like that."

The web dwellers regard this whole manipulative operation, by which they furthered their mutual interests, as so important and revealing that for the past year or two they have uniformly declined to answer questions concerning who helped them to get jobs, to transfer, to get raises or draft deferments, who wrote references, gave recommendations, etc. Nevertheless, documents concerning these matters (letters, application forms, memoranda) exist in quantity, and have been put in the record. In the web of subversion, personal log-rolling was raised to the level of a fine as well as success-

# CHAPTER 6

# ON THE THRESHOLD

IN THIS BOOK I am restricting my survey to the portion of the web of subversion that has stretched over and into agencies of the United States government. Obviously, the web could not have been successfully spun over the government unless there had been points of support in the nation's private and unofficial life. Thickly or tenuously the web has extended into most social institutions: trade unions, churches, the educational system, the press, the movies, the theater, radio and TV, foundations, book publishing, pacifist organizations, civil rights and other reform groups. In a number of these fields competent investigations have uncovered the pattern of the web. To try to give an account here would lead us too far aside.

(1) The United Public Workers of America was formed by a merger of two earlier unions: the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America and the United Federal Workers of America. As early as 1944 the Committee on Un-American Activities, after exhaustive hearings, placed it among the unions that had "Communist leadership... strongly entrenched." 15 In 1950 it was expelled from the CIO on the ground of Communist domination.

The United Public Workers thus gave the Communists—ultimately the Soviet leadership of the world Communist enterprise—an open channel into nearly every government agency and installation. When government employees were brought into the union, the Communists were usually in a position to "educate" them. Even when the union members did not thereby turn into full-fledged Communists or reliable fellow travelers, their views were likely to be influenced in such a way that they would be no hindrance to Communist operations.

At the same time, the union was a made-to-order intelligence organization for the Communists. It enabled them to know what was going on inside the various agencies. Among other advantages, this enabled the leadership to spot openings where agents, Communists or fellow travelers could be placed or transferred.

(2) The Institute of Pacific Relations, founded in 1925, is a private, international association composed of national councils. There has always been a branch in the United States, and from 1934 until recently there was a Soviet branch. The stated purpose of the Institute (IPR) is to carry on a program of research, publications and conferences dealing with the Pacific area.

During 1951 and 1952 the Senate Subcommittee on Inter-

nal Security conducted a detailed investigation of the IPR, the results of which have been published in fifteen volumes of hearings and a 244-page report. Among the findings of the subcommittee are the following:

The IPR has been considered by the American Communist Party and by Soviet officials as an instrument of Communist policy, propaganda and military intelligence. . . .

Members of the small core of officials and staff members who controlled IPR were either Communist or pro-Communist. . . .

The effective leadership of IPR worked consistently to set up actively cooperative and confidential relationships with persons in Government involved in the determination of foreign policy. . . .

It was the continued practice of IPR to seek to place in Government posts both persons associated with IPR and other persons selected by the effective leadership of IPR. . . .

The effective leadership of the IPR used IPR prestige to promote the interests of the Soviet Union in the United States. . . .

The IPR was a vehicle used by the Communists to orientate American Far Eastern policies toward Communist objectives.

The IPR, heavily supported by the Carnegie and Rocke-feller foundations, was the major, and in fact the only important, organization concerned in this country with Far Eastern problems. No matter what its views, it would inevitably have had great influence on the formulation of the government's Far Eastern policies, and on the individuals in the government who worked in this field. The Senate subcommittee's findings indicate the direct relation between some of the IPR activities and the spinning of the web of subversion. Of special relevance is the conclusion: "It was the continued practice of IPR to seek to place in Government posts both persons associated with IPR and other persons selected by the effective leadership of IPR."

Not all of such persons were actual Communists or Soviet agents. Most may be presumed to have absorbed to one or another degree the ideological atmosphere of the IPR, which the Senate subcommittee has so plainly defined. On the list of persons actively associated with the IPR, we find a number of those names that we have already encountered in pursuing the threads of the web of subversion: Alger Hiss, for example, and Frank V. Coe, Lauchlin Currie, Harry Dexter White, Laurence Duggan and Lee Pressman.

Among the persons who have been identified under oath as Communists or collaborators in espionage, and who, after being associated with the IPR, entered government service are the following: Solomon Adler (special Treasury representative in China); Joseph F. Barnes (former foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune, now a partner of Simon and Schuster, during the war an official of the Office of War Information); Evans F. Carlson (brigadier general in the Marine Corps); Hugh Deane (employee of the Coordinator of Information); John K. Fairbank (professor at Harvard, important wartime official of the Office of Strategic Services); Julian R. Friedman (assistant of John Carter Vincent in the State Department); Michael Greenberg (in Lauchlin Currie's White House office); Mary J. Keeney (State Department);

Philip O. Keeney (Pentagon); Owen Lattimore (personal envoy of President Roosevelt, chief of one section of the Office of War Information). Several of these persons—Joseph Barnes, John Fairbank, Julian Friedman, and Owen Lattimore—have denied the identifications. However much we may feel that judgment should still be suspended on the specific question whether they were conscious Communists or agents, their intimate association with Communist front organizations as well as with individual Communists and fellow travelers is spread on the record.

Among the high officials of the State Department who were actively associated with the IPR there were, besides those already listed, John S. Service and John Carter Vincent. Service, who was heavily implicated in the *Amerasia* case, has been dismissed from government employment on security grounds. Vincent was named under oath as a Communist Party member, but denied this in his lengthy testimony before the Senate subcommittee. Early in 1953 he too was separated from the government, although the formal grounds did not include any security or loyalty issue.

A good many colleges and universities are represented in the biographies. Three are conspicuous: Harvard University, both the undergraduate division and especially the graduate School of Law and School of Business Administration: Columbia University; the College of the City of New York. The Universities of California and North Carolina were not far behind. Parts of the nation's higher educational system have proved fertile breeding grounds for the spinners of the web.

Along with Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, Irving Goldman and Nathaniel Weyl, all of whom admitted residence in the underground, the following were among the Fifth Amendment cases who attended Columbia: Victor Perlo, Ruth Rifkin, Margaret Bennett Porter, Stanley Graze, Herman Zap, Craig Vincent, Sidney Glassman, Myron Hoch and Irving Kaplan. Kaplan, Hoch and Graze studied also at City College, as did Harry Ober, Max Elitcher, Morton Sobell and Jacob Grauman.

2

From the founding of the commission in 1883 until 1942, no question concerning "loyalty" or membership in subversive organizations appeared on the standard application forms for government employment. Up until the first World War,

there was no real reason why there should have been. It could be taken for granted that American citizens, whatever their other defects, were loyal to their nation and government, and certainly not loyal to any other nation, government or power. The exceptions—hopeless cranks or paid spies—were so few that they could be left out of ordinary account, and dealt with by special means.

It is a tribute to the innocence and trust, but not to the wisdom, of the civil service commissioners that they continued this disregard of the problem of loyalty for a generation after the advent of the great totalitarian revolutions had made it an inescapable problem in all nations.

Certain other special factors ease the extension of the web into and through the government agencies. The individuals who are, or become, web dwellers very often get their first

In 1943, the Ramspeck Act "blanketed" tens of thousands of non-civil-service employees, who had been given jobs on an emergency or temporary basis, into the permanent civil service system. This covered large regions of the web of subversion, and meant that scores of web dwellers were granted the formidable job protections that are riveted into the permanent system.

Shortly after the end of the war, part of the Office of Strategic Services, Office of War Information, Foreign Economic Administration and Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs were shoved wholesale into the State Department. These emergency war agencies (OSS, OWI, FEA and CIAA) were riddled with members of the underground. The State Department was not trained or equipped to deal with the resultant security problems, or to take on the new functions that went with this influx. Not a few of the department's subsequent troubles can be traced to this shotgun wedding.

The Civil Service Commission was itself not left immune from the touch of the web. Testifying on December 11, 1952, Benjamin Wermiel, resigned eleven days previously from the United Nations staff, stated that he had worked for the Civil Service Commission from 1938 until June, 1947.17 When asked whether he was a member of the Communist Party during that period, he declined to reply on the ground of self-incrimination.

Wermiel's job for most of those years would have been of some interest to a Communist, or to an espionage agent. He worked with the so-called "National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel." This roster listed, with full information, all the professionals, scientists and technicians in

Irving P. Schiller, graduate of Harvard and the University of North Carolina, also spent a while in the Civil Service Commission before going on to the National Archives, the records management section of the Navy, and the U. N. On Tuesday, December 2, 1952, he testified that he was not a member of the Communist Party, but with respect to the preceding Saturday (November 29) and all preceding times back through his days at North Carolina, he declined to reply, on the usual grounds.

As the old saying goes: But who will watch the watch-

# CHAPTER 7

# THE RECEPTION HALLS

JUST INSIDE the government's open door there were several "reception halls," as we might call them, where the creatures of the web (whether spiders or flies) found a friendly welcome, and a helping hand for their further journey.

One of these reception halls was the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, part of the Department of Agriculture, where the original Ware cell first took form. There Witt, Kramer, Abt, Collins, Perlo, Pressman, Alger Hiss, Margaret Bennet Porter and no doubt others whose names we do not publicly know, got their governmental bearings, took a kind of orientation course or "boot training," and were despatched in due course to other and more critical fronts.

Nathan Witt, for example, went on to become secretary of the National Labor Relations Board; Kramer, to various Congressional committees; Abt also to committees and then to the Department of Justice as a special assistant to the Attorney General; Perlo to the War Production Board and the Treasury. Henry Collins' career we have already traced.

Outstanding among the reception halls for its hospitality was the National Research Project, under its genial director, David Weintraub.19 The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee paid Mr. Weintraub a special tribute: "David Weintraub occupied a unique position in setting up the structure of Communist penetration of governmental agencies by in-

dividuals who have been identified by witnesses as underground agents of the Communist Party, and who, when asked about the truth of this testimony, either invoked the Fifth Amendment on grounds of possible self-incrimination or admitted such membership." Of the project itself, the subcommittee comments that it "appears to have been a kind of trap door, through which agents of the Communist underground gained entrance to government."

The project, of which Weintraub was director from 1933 to 1941, had a formidable title: National Research Project on Reemployment Opportunities and Recent Changes in Industrial Techniques of the Works Progress Administration. Its headquarters were in Philadelphia. Like a mother hen, David Weintraub spread his wings over fifteen hundred or so employees. His associate director was Irving Kaplan. Among his brood were Edward J. Fitzgerald, Charles Flato, Jacob Grauman, Harry Magdoff, Harry Ober, Herbert S. Schimmel and Alfred Van Tassel, who were all in later days to invoke the plea of self-incrimination when asked about relations to Communism and Communists.

Mr. Nixon. You were on the pay roll?

Mr. CHAMBERS. I was on the pay roll.

Mr. Nixon. Mr. Kaplan arranged that job?

Mr. CHAMBERS. I understand that he and Silverman together arranged it. . . .

Mr. Nixon. But you were still a paid functionary of the Communist Party at that time?

Mr. CHAMBERS. Certainly, certainly. . . .

Mr. Nixon. Well, what type of work did you do?

Mr. Chambers. I was put to marking an index for some railroad-labor study, I believe, and I was told not to hurry with the job because that would bring it to an end prematurely, so it was purely a boondoggling operation. . . .

Mr. NIXON. Could you recall within certain limits as to what your salary was?

Mr. Chambers. I think it was more than six thousand, but I have forgotten exactly what it was....

Mr. Nixon. And you got that job, you say, within roughly 24 hours after the wheels started to turn?

Mr. Chambers. I would say that this is a spectacular instance of the ease with which a Communist could at all times slide other Communists into practically any Government agency in which they had a foothold. . . .

Mr. Nixon. When these people employed you and recommended you, they knew you were a representative of the Communist underground in Washington?

Mr. Chambers. They gave me that assistance on that understanding.

Mr. Nixon. And this was a cover job for those activities?

Mr. CHAMBERS. That is correct.

then became an assistant to Harry Hopkins when Hopkins was head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. For a while he was in the Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation of the State Department. After that he went into the budding United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), where he became deputy director, in charge of supplies. He was, that is to say, at the top of that organization, with all its billions of dollars.

In 1946 Weintraub had a series of quarrels with Fiorello LaGuardia, then director of UNRRA. The culminating quarrel, like so many of the fiery LaGuardia's furious encounters, took place in an automobile. Mr. Weintraub testified in a shocked tone: it "netted me perhaps some of the worst abuse I ever received from anybody. . . . It was a most unpleasant affair. I don't remember any more what I said to him and what he said to me. It was one of those things I would rather forget, as a matter of fact." As a result, he was fired from UNRRA.

But Mr. Weintraub had no occasion to seek unemployment relief. The United Nations was opening up shop, and he was evidently just the man the U. N. needed. In a jiffy he was hired, at more than \\$14,000 a year, and installed in the U. N. Secretariat as director of the Economic Stability and Development Division. He was never one to neglect his chicks. Soon there appeared at his side his old associate director, Irving Kaplan, at a \\$12,440 salary, and Herbert Schimmel, at \\$11,670. To preserve the traditional atmosphere, there were also present in his U. N. division, Joel Gordon (\\$13,000), Herman Zap (\\$8,700) and Sidney Glassman (\\$8,500), all three of whom pleaded self-incrimination when questioned about Communism in the autumn of 1952.

given many another man pause. One after another, scores of names of individuals who have been identified as members of the underground, or who have declined to answer questions concerning it, were brought up, and Mr. Weintraub readily admitted acquaintance with dozens of them. Many had been employees, close working associates, or personal friends

He knew Abraham George Silverman well, and Solomon Adler, Sidney Glassman, Alfred Van Tassel, Marjorie and Herman Zap, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, George Perazich, Alger Hiss, Victor Perlo, Frank Coe, Harry White, Lauchlin Currie, Edward Fitzgerald, Harold Glasser, Solomon Leshinsky, Allan Rosenberg (he thought he remembered), John Abt, Lee Pressman. With Silverman, as with Frank Coe, he used to lunch every now and then, and sometimes "have a drink together." In his original testimony, Mr. Weintraub said that he had not seen Silverman since leaving Washington, but he amended this negation in a letter written a week later to Senator Ferguson:

I subsequently recollected that I saw Silverman again about half a dozen times in New York shortly after I joined the staff of United Nations. . . . He got in touch with me and since he indicated that he was having difficulty in getting a hotel room during his visits to New York I told him to feel free to stay over at our house whenever he wanted to. At that time we lived in a furnished 10-room apartment at 955 Park Avenue and had plenty of spare rooms since our normal requirements are about 5 rooms. Mr. Silverman availed himself of that invitation on several occasions.

In general, the Weintraubs seem to have kept a friendly home. He recalled that George Perazich was "a fellow with green fingers": I owned a house here, and I had a garden. I had no time to do anything in the garden, and as I remember it, George loved to work with flowers, and for a time when his family wasn't here he used to come around on Sundays and just putter away. . . .

With Harry Magdoff, on the other hand, the family relationship was differently founded:

Mr. Sourwine. He did not have a green thumb?

Mr. WEINTRAUB. No, sir. At least I don't know of it

It might seem that in some respects David Weintraub was unlucky in his friends, but they have no reason to be ungrateful to him. As it happens, Silverman, Perazich and Magdoff were all named in the 1945 secret memorandum as members of espionage cells. But even in 1952, when he testified at such length, this does not seem to have soured Mr. Weintraub. He was, in fact, a busy man, and he does not appear, from what he said, to have paid much attention to these passing problems of Communism and espionage. He never, he said, went over any of the testimony before the Congressional committees, though so many of his old friends and colleagues had figured so prominently in so much of it. It did not occur to him to consult his brother-in-law, Arthur Stein, who as

an officer of the United Federal Workers might have been expected to have had a certain experience of Communists. Nor did he talk the problem over with his sister, Rose Alpher, a teacher at the Georgetown Day School (Washington) who in October, 1952, refused to tell the Internal Security Subcommittee whether she had been a Communist in the late '30's.

Senator Ferguson was somewhat puzzled

Mr. Weintraub. In a general way; yes, sir Senator Ferguson. Just generally curious?

Mr. Weintraub. Yes, sir.

Senator FERGUSON. You could not quite fathom why these people would be taken before the Un-American Activities Committee, and refused to answer on the ground that it would tend to incriminate them? That did not even incite your curiosity?

Mr. WEINTRAUB. Well, it incited my curiosity, but obviously not sufficiently for me to make any serious investigations of it to go into the testimony and the records. . . . I was busy with other things.

David Weintraub was evidently a man who believed in the goodness of human nature. Toward all his acquaintance he strictly followed the ancient law of the East—he neither saw nor heard nor spoke evil of any man:

Mr. Sourwine. Were any of \[the employees of the National Research Project\] to your knowledge Communists?

Mr. Sourwine. Were any of them pro-Communists so far as you know?

Mr. Weintraub. Not so far as I know.

Mr. Sourwine. Did you have any reason to believe that any of them were Communists or pro-Communists?

Like Weintraub, Kaplan was born in Poland, in either 1900 or 1901 (there is a confusion about the date). His parents came from Grodno, Russia, and as a child he arrived with them in this country. He was educated in New York (City College, Columbia, Fordham Law School), and took his first job with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company in San Francisco. He refused to reply to questions concerning Communist connections at that stage of his career, as at all others.

After his stint as associate director of the National Research Project, Kaplan went over to the Justice Department, as special assistant to the Attorney General. He shifted to

the Federal Works Agency, and then to the War Production Board. In 1944 he took an \\$8,000 post with the Foreign Economic Administration. The next year he transferred into the Treasury's Division of Monetary Research. He was assigned to the "Group Control Council" in the German occupation, and left at once for Germany. There he dealt with such problems as "de-cartelization" and the sending of reparations to the Soviet Union. With a further lift in salary above the \\$9,000 mark, he appeared the next year in the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. By 1947 he was back with his old director, Weintraub, this time in the United Nations.

"Were you ever a Soviet espionage agent?" Mr. Sourwine asked him in 1952.

Mr. Sourwine. Are you a Soviet espionage agent now? Mr. Kaplan. I refuse to answer.

There are a number of mysteries connected with Irving Kaplan's work in Germany. He was in an office originally set up by the Treasury Department and at first headed by a Treasury man named Colonel Bernard Bernstein. Colonel Bernstein was recalled to Washington. He was replaced by his deputy, Russell Arthur Nixon. Nixon, testifying before the Un-American Activities Committee on June 9, 1953, turned out to be a Fifth Amendment case. On December 10, 1945, a telegram was sent from the Office of Military Government in Germany to the War Department: "Important Irving Kaplan be recalled immediately. Use high air priority. On finance investigation and other matters Treasury interest." On December 13, an inter-office memorandum was circulated in the Treasury Department. It came from Bernstein, and read: "As you know, Kaplan's name was included in the list of 25 names we requested the War Department to

recall. Do you want to make a stronger specific request for his recall?"

This memorandum was sent to three officials of the Treasury Department: Messrs. Harry Dexter White, V. Frank Coe, and William Ludwig Ullmann. Mr. Nixon declined to say whether he knew any of the three, who have all been named as part of the espionage underground. Neither then nor in the questioning of Irving Kaplan by the Un-American Activities Committee and the Internal Security Subcommittee was this tantalizing little incident ever clarified.

It was Coe who had got Kaplan his Treasury job and who later arranged his transfer to the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. Coe and his Treasury colleague, Harold Glasser, had officially rated Kaplan's Treasury work as "E" (for Excellent). Harry Magdoff had given a "favorable comment concerning Mr. Kaplan's character" in connection with the German assignment. Earlier, in both 1942 and 1944, Kaplan had used Abraham George Silverman and Lauchlin Currie as character references.

Mr. Kaplan did not himself aid in assembling such little facts as these. He is one of the champion Fifth Amenders, and in one session alone (before the Un-American Activities Committee on June 10, 1953), he testified that it might incriminate him if he gave truthful answers to no less than 244 questions. He was almost too systematic in his refusals, perhaps, and we sense the boomerang effect to which I have earlier made reference. He declined to say whether he knew Harry White, but just a moment before was willing to answer with respect to Henry Morgenthau. (Harry White was less reticent. He testified how he used to play ball with Irving Kaplan. "He is not a very good player, incidentally," he declared under oath.) Kaplan refused on Alger Hiss, but answered on Dean Acheson. He refused on Magdoff, Perazich, Charles Kramer, Victor Perlo, the Silvermasters, Jacob Golos, Lee Pressman, and so on, but answered readily enough on Henry Fowler (1952 head of the National Production Au-

thority) and Alben Barkley. He had no objection to stating his acquaintance with officials of the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (Messrs. Cullinan and Vincent, for example) but declined consistently with respect to Whittaker Chambers and some other names, like Veet Bassie, Richard Sasuly and Bruce Waybur, that have not been publicly identified as belonging to the underground.

It is hard not to wonder just how Irving Kaplan made us his mind whether to reply or not reply.

At the end of the House committee hearing, Representative Donald L. Jackson summed up his own impressions:

The exhibits, the documents, and the testimony given here today, demonstrate, to me, at least, the fact that there existed in the United States government and its agencies and departments a well-integrated, coordinated conspiracy, the members of which forwarded each other's welfare, furnished recommendations for each other and on each other's behalf. Through the entire testimony today there has been a constant repetition of names of those who have either been identified as Communist Party members, those who have transferred official documents from this Government's secret files to the Soviet Government, or those who have, without being members of the Communist Party, played the Communist Party game. . . .

I do not know what it is to others, but, to me it is simply treason to the United States Government.

As far as Mr. Kaplan is concerned, I am personally convinced that he was a Communist and that he undoubtedly is a Communist today.

# CHAPTER 8

# Phase I: THE ECONOMIC AGENCIES (1933–40)

THE WEB of subversion has spun its threads within nearly all the branches, departments and agencies of the government. The concentration or tactical focus, however, has shifted from time to time. The Subcommittee on Internal Security has outlined the changing design:

When the principal concern of Government was economic recovery, they were in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and new sections of old departments. During the war, they joined such wartime agencies as the Board of Economic Warfare, the Federal Economic Administration, the Office of Strategic Services, and the like. Toward the end of the war and in the post-war period, they were operating in the foreign policy field. At the end of the war, they were gravitating toward the international agencies.20

These tactical shifts have been dictated both by internal American factors and by the requirements of Soviet policy. Within the United States, the "critical area" of national interest changes in accord with circumstance. During the 1930's the fate of the domestic economy, ravaged by the world economic crisis, was the dominating issue. The Com-

munist underground, seeking to penetrate the nation in such a way as to exercise maximum present influence and to prepare for deeper subversion to come, could expect the most favorable results by concentrating on the economic field.

As the '40's began, the economic crisis was replaced by the war crisis. The issue of the war became decisive for both the Soviet Union and the United States. It became the immediate objective of the world underground to exploit the war in the manner that would best defend the interests of the Soviet Union and the world revolution. This required a maximum penetration and manipulation of the agencies (in all countries) that were managing the war effort.

Similarly, as soon as the direct military problem was solved through the assurance of Hitler's defeat (Spring, 1944), the issues of post-war international organization and policy became paramount. The major effort of the underground was correspondingly redirected.

The task of the underground was simplified by the fact that new agencies were devised to meet the special challenge of each successive "crisis." For the economic crisis, there were the New Deal agencies; for the war, there were the Board of Economic Warfare, War Production Board, Foreign Economic Administration, Office of Strategic Services, and so on; for the end-of-war and postwar period, there were the Central Intelligence Agency, the occupation agencies for Germany and Japan, the Marshall Plan and Mutual Security agencies, the United Nations together with the International Bank, International Monetary Fund and other U. N. auxiliaries.

The newness, in each case, of the batch of relevant agencies meant that they were less settled in their ways, more flexible and confused, freer from the grip of an entrenched and routine bureaucracy. It was easier for a determined newcomer to find a road into them. Often their personnel had to be recruited quickly. Examinations, investigations, "screening" had to be waived.

We have noted that, according to the public record, the first large-scale penetration of United States government agencies began in 1933. Even if we assume that there was more pre-1933 penetration than the public record yet shows, there were a number of reasons why it should have expanded rapidly at about that time. Among these reasons we may list the following:

- (1) Under the New Deal program that began with the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt in March, 1933, dozens of new agencies were created, consolidated, liquidated, reorganized. Because the major national purpose at the time was to make more jobs and thus lessen unemployment, these agencies were far from critical about whom they hired. An alert conspiracy could easily place its men.
- (2) Within the Soviet Union, Stalin had completed his consolidation of all power in the hands of his own faction. He had crushed the political independence of the various oppositions both inside the Soviet Union and throughout the Communist International. This meant that more of the energies of the international apparatus could be directed outward, to the task of infiltrating non-Communist institutions. Moreover, there was by now a sufficiently large body of trained agents to carry out large-scale operations.
- (3) Hitler had become chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. The victory of Nazism caused growing alarm to the Communist high command. The Communist leaders did not believe that the "old-fashioned" revolutionary methods sufficed to defend the Soviet state and the world revolution. They felt it necessary to influence the policy of the Western democracies along lines that would counter Hitler and protect the Soviet Union. To do this meant the adoption of "Trojan horse" tactics on a massive scale, and the attempt to infiltrate all major institutions of the democratic powers. In order to supplement these tactics, they dropped the extremist revolutionary slogans. Beginning in 1934 they proceeded under the cover of a "progressive," "popular front" platform
- (4) American public and official opinion, which had been strongly anti-Bolshevik and anti-Soviet, had softened, and had in some sections changed over toward a definitely pro-Soviet and pro-Communist sentiment. This was reflected in the leadership of the new administration, which within a few months of taking office extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet regime. Recognition not only symbolized a more cordial atmosphere for Soviet nationals and for Communists, but also made it easy for subversive operatives to enter and leave the country, many of them under the guise of diplomatic and consular officials.
- (5) The Communist Party of the United States, after more than a decade of fantastic squabbles and absurd actions, had at last been pulled together under full Stalinist control, and was able to get down to work. The milieu that surrounds the Communist Party—not only the Party itself, but the constellations of front and sympathizing organizations—is, within any country, a primary source from which native members of the underground are drawn.
- (6) From the beginning of the century, the traditional values of patriotism, religion and the family had been weakening. Materialist and Marxian ideas had been creeping into the educational system, and into the set of ideas that were acceptable in educated circles. Against this cultural background, the harsh experiences of the post-1929 depression had completed the demoralization of a whole segment of younger men and women. They were disillusioned about their own country and about "capitalism." They were eager to believe the myth of a magical new social system and a budding earthly paradise across the seas. Their minds and emotions were, in short, wide open to the skilled manipulations of the Comintern propagandists.

2

It is impossible to estimate how many individual officials and employees of the government's economic agencies had some connection, during the 1930's, with the underground. By public record alone, the number is large. But it should be remembered that the congressional committees have been investigating the past only so far as it bears rather directly on the present. Except as such information might coincidentally arise in the course of enquiry, they have not tried to list persons who, in temporary government jobs, belonged to or collaborated with the underground. Moreover, many of the past and present members of the underground are so deeply concealed that they have not been and in many cases may never be unearthed.

tion, was also there in the early '30's. Julia Older Bazer was present, working in the Farm Security Administration, where she would have found Nathan Gregory Silvermaster. In 1952, at which time she had a \\$9,100 job at the U. N., she declined to testify whether she had been, or still was, a member of the Communist Party. After leaving the Department of Agriculture, she had gone on to the Coordinator of Information, parent organization to the Office of Strategic Services. Henry Julian Wadleigh, who testified in the Hiss case concerning his services to the Bykov-Chambers espionage apparatus, was in the Agriculture Department from 1930 to 1936, and went from there to the State Department.

Greg Silvermaster himself was in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; and in the RFC's San Antonio, Texas, office was a young man named Lynne L. Prout. Prout appeared before the Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 21 and told his story with considerable frankness. He became a Communist while a student at the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College. He won a prize of a trip to New York, which the Party offered to the most successful recruiter. When he got to New York he discovered that he was a delegate to the national convention of the Party. His activities had been "embarrassing my folks there no end." The convention seems to have cured him.

Silvermaster, Ullmann, and Lee Pressman helped the Resettlement Administration carry on its affairs. John Abt did a

WPA (the Works Progress Administration) is studded with Fifth Amendment names. Most of the enormous work relief projects carried out under WPA and related agencies have not been investigated by the congressional committees. They have faded away into the past, and there is not much point in reviving their memory. From other evidence, we know that many of them—especially the white-collar projects like the writers' project, the theater and arts projects—were riddled by Communists, some of them underground and some exceedingly public. There was also a heavy concentration in the special congressional committees on economic problems that were set up in those days.

I wish to turn here to another of the depression-born agencies, perhaps the most important of all: the National Labor Relations Board, the supreme agency first set up under the National Industrial Recovery Act, continued under the Wagner Act ("Labor's Magna Carta," as it was called), and now functioning under the Taft-Hartley Act. In this NLRB epoch, labor organization has made the vast expansion that has by now been consolidated to form a permanent part of our national life.

All sections of the labor movement shared in this expansion. Among the leaders of unions that were newly formed or that greatly grew were Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and Communists. The American Federation of Labor bounded forward, as did the independent unions. At the same time, an entirely new national trade-union federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (as it came in time to be called) was established and flourished like a whole forest of bay trees.

All sections of the labor movement grew, but the CIO grew more than the rest. Labor leaders of all political attachments prospered, but none made so swift a rise from rags to riches as the Communist leaders. Huge, powerful unions covering key sections of the nation's economy were brought under Communist control. Even unions like the great United Automobile Workers Union and the Steel Workers had Communist fractions that came close to taking over. In the A. F. of L. there were also fractions. Some A. F. of L. unions and "district councils" got into Communist hands. In the CIO only a bitter struggle of many years prevented the Communists from taking over the entire federation.

It was not until 1950 that the non-Communists in the CIO were strong (and clear-headed) enough to expel a dozen important constituent unions as Communist-dominated. These included such strategically placed organizations as: American Communications Association; International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (Harry Bridges' union); International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers; United Public Workers of America; United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers of America; United Office and Professional Workers of America.22 At the end of the war, under Communist seduction and pressure, the CIO had affiliated with the Communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions. Today, Communist influence, though relatively weakened, is by no means eliminated from the American labor movement.

Under the given historical circumstances, it is almost certain that the American labor movement would have made great advances during the past twenty years no matter what kind of labor law there had been and no matter who was administering it. It is far from certain, and is indeed most improbable, that the Communists were inevitably destined to share so heavily in that advance.

The law was administered by the National Labor Relations Board, which combined many of the duties of executive, lawmaker and judge. With respect to this powerful

and history-making agency, the Internal Security Subcommittee declared: "This Subcommittee . . . encountered a situation which very strongly indicated that the Communist penetration of the National Labor Relations Board approached control." 28

David Saposs, former chief economist of the NLRB, explained to the subcommittee how the control was exercised:

Nathan Witt, first, as I mentioned, was the attorney of the Review Board, which was the unit which reviewed all cases and, of course, in reviewing cases, it was possible to interpret and analyze data.

Later on when he became Secretary, he was, of course, the executive officer of the Board, which gave him full responsibility for the staff..., the hiring of the regional directors, the hiring of the field examiners...

In addition . . . all the routine work of the Board . . . gravitated and was carried through the Secretary to the Board, and therefore, Nathan Witt, as Secretary of the Board, was undoubtedly the most influential person in the conduct of the affairs of the Board.

Mr. Saposs. Well, Edward \[Edwin\] Smith was a member of the Board, of course, and was always a very close, or sort of buddy or crony of Nathan Witt, and, so far as I was able to observe . . . they were the two people that evidently exercised the greatest influence. . . .

mittees, he has steadily fallen back on the Fifth Amendment in declining to answer questions concerning Communism and espionage. After getting his Harvard Law School degree in 1932, he joined the Ware cell's nesting ground, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, in July, 1933. The next year he shifted to the National Labor Relations Board. In 1935 he became an assistant general counsel of the board, and from 1937 to late 1940 or early 1941 he was its secretary (chief administrative officer).

In 1941 he left government service, but the relations that he had had opportunity to establish during his NLRB days did not thereupon evaporate. He has been counsel since 1941, for example, to the American Communications Association and the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union. The first of these unions, under the protection of rules and procedures built up during Witt's regime in the NLRB, is the bargaining agent for the critical "long lines" workers of the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Radio Corporation of America. These workers man the facilities through which go many of the secret international messages of government and military agencies.

a lot of time in trying to convince me that Harry Bridges was the greatest labor leader in the United States.") Smith admitted conferences with Bridges, which are in part a matter of record, but again he declined to testify when asked whether he had attended Communist meetings with Bridges.

The further question was put

Mr. Smith. Mr. Counsel, I would refuse to answer that question on the grounds already stated. I do refuse to answer.

Edwin Smith did testify that he had been a member of the Washington executive committee of the American League for Peace and Democracy, a well-known Communist Party front, ultimately placed on the attorney general's official list of subversive organizations. Mr. Morris submitted to the subcommittee and placed in the record "a list of 47 employees of National Labor Relations Board who were active in the American League for Peace and Democracy during the period that Mr. Smith was a member of the National Labor Relations Board."

In general Edwin Smith was less reticent than most of the other witnesses in this series. He appealed to the Fifth Amendment only a modest twenty or twenty-five times. He admitted knowing Nathan Gregory Silvermaster and Lee Pressman, answered (with a qualified negative) concerning Victor Perlo, did not altogether shy away from questions about International Publishers (a Communist firm) and Soviet diplomats. The one class of question on which he consistently declined was anything that involved Communist Party membership or attendance at Communist meetings.

Since leaving the NLRB Mr. Smith has had an active life.

For several years he directed the CIO campaign to organize the oil workers. From 1942 to 1945 he was director of the National Council of Soviet-American Friendship. In 1945 he attended the anniversary celebration, in Moscow, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. From 1947 to 1949 he taught at the Putney School in Vermont, and after that became for a while an official of the United Public Workers Union.

This work, Mr. Smith granted, brought him into frequent touch with the Soviet and other Communist embassies. Even before his Sovfoto days, he had known the Soviet wartime Ambassador, Constantin Oumansky, and had entertained him at dinner. A less well known but perhaps not less important diplomatic acquaintance was Dr. Ignace Zlotowski, a Polish nuclear scientist, for some years a collaborator of the eminent French physicist and Communist, Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Dr. Zlotowski had a few years teaching at American colleges (Minnesota, Vassar, Ohio State), and then became representative of the Communist Polish Government on the U. N. Atomic Energy Commission. Mr. Morris asked Mr. Smith:

Do you know there has been testimony to the effect that he has been engaged in espionage, atomic espionage for the Soviet Union?

Among the associates of Messrs. Witt and Smith on the

# CHAPTER 9

# Phase II: THE WAR AGENCIES

DURING 1940 and 1941 the war was becoming the center of national as of international life. Correlatively, the underground shifted its tactical concentration to the war agencies, old and new, that were then rapidly expanding. In order to know what was going on and to influence events, it was necessary to penetrate the institutions that were charged with the war effort. As in the case of the New Deal agencies during 1933–35, it was easy to get jobs in the hastily contrived offices and administrations. For a reasonably able man it was not hard to advance swiftly into their upper levels.

From the point of view of Moscow, tactical concentration on the war agencies was imperative. The Soviet leaders knew, once the war had started, that all great issues for decades would depend on its outcome. By "outcome" they meant not merely "which side" won, but just how and when victory came, with what commitments and what internal grouping of forces. They knew that the Soviet Union would have to enter the war before it was over, in order to have a voice in the victory even if no attack should come. They understood that in terms of material power the United States was the deciding factor.

Proceeding on these premises the Soviet leaders used the underground in the United States to gain full information

During the war, most Americans believed that Soviet and American interests were identical, and could be summed up as the military defeat of Hitler and the Mikado. This belief was mistaken. Although there was a partial, very temporary overlapping of interest, basic Soviet and American interests never coincided even in the military field. Moscow never reduced its military problem—much less its political problem—to the bare aim of defeating Hitler. The Soviet leaders always had in mind what would come out of the military struggle. Their objective was not merely to defeat Hitler, but to defeat him in such a way as to extend Communist power westward into Europe.

They were little concerned with the military defeat of Japan, which they left in American hands. But they were very much concerned, as they had been for twenty years, with the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist conquest of China. They were willing to use American supplies to develop a "resistance" in the Nazi-occupied countries, but they wanted to make sure that the resistance would be Communist-led, a weapon not so much against the gauleiters and "collaborators" as against all firm anti-Communists of any political variety.

The mistaken belief of patriotic Americans in the identity of Soviet and American aims was one reason why the web of subversion went undetected—or disregarded—during the war period. Especially after the Soviet Union was attacked by Hitler, the web dwellers in Washington did work hard and long at their official jobs as well as at their private vocation. In many cases they no doubt deserved the letters of commendation from their superiors—including many of cabinet and near-cabinet rank—that are now spread on the record. Gone was the boondoggling that Whittaker Chambers had observed at the National Research Project. Their loyal colleagues did not comprehend that the sweat of the web dwellers was shed in another master's service. The toasts of the underground were drunk to Stalingrad, not to Iwo Jima; to Tito, not to Patton; to Thorez, not De Gaulle; to the smashing of the anti-Communist Polish Underground Army in the battle of Warsaw, not to Eisenhower's conquest of the Ruhr.

I do not suggest, let me repeat, that everyone who collaborated with the web of subversion understood the real consequences of his actions. Even of those who now take their refuge in the plea of self-incrimination, some, I am sure, were not consciously disloyal, much less outright traitors. But their personal motives do not in this case change the historical reality. Insofar as they aided the web, knowingly or unknowingly, they were advancing the cause of the Soviet Union and the world Communist conspiracy. And by their silence today, however it may be motivated, they continue to advance that cause.

2

The War Production Board became the master agency that directed the transformation of the nation's economy to the uses of war. High on its central staff we find David Weintraub and Irving Kaplan, the two hospitable hosts of the National Research Project. Harold Glasser was assigned to the board for a while; Edward Fitzgerald and Harry Magdoff were among its principal economic experts.

Jacob Grauman worked for the War Production Board from 1942 to 1946. In applying for his job there he had given David Weintraub, Edward Fitzgerald and Harry Magdoff as his references. Grauman was born in Sieniawa, Poland, and attended City College in New York. He declined on the ground of self-incrimination to state whether he had belonged to the Young Communist League while in college. From the War Production Board he went on briefly to the Office of War Mobilization, and then to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He resigned from the International Bank in March 1953, a month before being questioned by the Internal Security Subcommittee. He was asked by Robert Morris:

Were you a member of the Communist Party while you were working for the War Production Board from August 1942 until January 1946?

Mr. Grauman. For the reasons stated previously, Mr. Chairman, I must respectfully decline to answer that question.

Grauman made, more generally, a precise distinction. He declared under oath that "I have not been a member of the Communist Party or any subversive organization since January 1, 1948." He declined to answer any questions concerning earlier dates.24

Two others also found their postwar way from the War Production Board to an international payroll, and ultimately to the witness chair of the Internal Security Subcommittee. Stanley Graze, who had the Treasury and the State Department under his belt, became a \\$7,500 project officer in the U. N.'s Technical Assistance Administration. In October, 1952, he declined to answer all questions concerning Communism and Communists. He drew no line at January 1, 1948, nor was it only Communism that he did not choose to discuss:

Mr. Graze. Has such a charge been made against me? Senator O'Conor. Just answer the question.

Mr. Graze. I decline to answer on the ground of the Fifth Amendment.

Mr. Morris. Have you ever in the past engaged in espionage against the United States?

Mr. Graze. I decline to answer on the same grounds. 25

William Remington was with them in the WPB—that same Remington who continues threading his path through complicated legal processes after two jury convictions for perjury in denying his Communist Party membership. And Victor Perlo was also there, the Perlo with whose name one of the underground cells has been christened. He, testifying in 1953,27 refused answers to some hundreds of questions. He declared that it would incriminate him even to state whether he had resided with Henry Collins, Jr., in St. Matthews Court, Washington.

Perlo, whose brushed-back hair emphasizes his sharp, intense face, began his government career with the National Recovery Administration. He transferred to the Home Owners Loan Corporation. He took a couple of years out of government, though not out of Washington, on the payroll of the Brookings Institution, where in the '30's not a few of the Fifth Amendment cases foregathered. He re-entered government in 1938, in the Department of Commerce. Mr. Morris asked:

Mr. Perlo. That's right.

One cannot help wondering a bit about the facts that in that way came into the possession of the Secretary of Commerce, who was then the presidential favorite, Harry Hopkins.

Toward the end of 1940 Perlo was transferred to the Emergency Defense Agency. In November of that year he was made principal economic analyst for the Council of National Defense Advisory Committee. In 1942 he went to the Office of Price Administration (where he would have found himself at home among Fifth Amendment cases—Helen Kagen, for example, Charles Kramer, Doxey Wilkerson, and the handsome, ubiquitous William Remington). The next year it was the War Production Board, as "head financial economist." He refused, as on all similar items, to say whether he had been a Communist when he took the oath for the WPB job.

Concerning his period in the Treasury, Mr. Morris specifically asked:

In connection with all this work you described here in Treasury, did you ever transmit any classified mate-

Mr. Perlo. Well, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.

Since leaving the government, Mr. Perlo has not abandoned his serious interests. He has been living in Flushing, Long Island. In 1951, International Publishers brought out a book of his, called *American Imperialism*. *People's World*, the West Coast Communist newspaper, considered it so important a contribution that it carried the headline: PERLO BRINGS LENIN ON IMPERIALISM UP TO DATE. The objectivity of Mr. Perlo's analysis is indicated on page 220: "The U. S. S. R., the People's Democracies, and China lead this world struggle for peace."

More striking still, and better known, is the roll call of the Board of Economic Warfare and its successor agency, the Foreign Economic Administration. These agencies directed the international side of the war's economic effort, and very powerful they were in their impact on world as well as domestic affairs. Much of the most secret information passed over their desks. What did not come to them directly could be inferred from what they knew. If their reports did not speak openly of the Manhattan District (the atomic bomb project), they could follow the American attempt to corner the world's uranium supply. Their moves to support or destroy a nation's currency, to stockpile or boycott a given raw material, to throw economic weight to this or that corner of the world, all had repercussions that are still perceptibly felt.

From the Institute of Pacific Relations Michael Greenberg, identified as a British Communist, went into the government, where he became Mr. Currie's assistant. Around them in the BEW-FEA complex were gathered Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Frank Coe, Allan Rosenberg, Mary J. Keeney and her husband, Philip, Irving Kaplan and Henry Julian Wadleigh. These are all names that we have met before, all pleaders of self-incrimination. Julian Wadleigh, we may recall, collaborated at one time with the Chambers-Bykov apparatus. Apparently never a full Communist, he ended by dropping his Fifth Amendment pleas. In the second Hiss trial, and in a series of articles which the New York Post published between the first and second, Wadleigh—a rather eccentric graduate of Oxford and London Universities—confirmed many critical points in Chambers' story.

Within the office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, headed by Nelson Rockefeller, worked at least five persons who have been identified under oath as Communists or collaborators in espionage: Irving Goldman, Joseph Gregg, Robert T. Miller, Willard Park and Bernard Redmont. Redmont was identified as an underground Communist in the part of the 1945 secret memorandum that was based on testimony by Elizabeth Bentley. She named Willard Park as a cooperating "sympathizer." Park is a cousin of Richard Bransten, alias Bruce Minton, former editor of the Communist magazine New Masses. Joseph Gregg was also identified by Miss Bentley. So far as I know, none of these three has testified in public.

Irving Goldman, who went on to the Office of Strategic Services and the State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research, has admitted former membership in the Communist Party, which he said ended before he entered government service. He has declined on the ground of selfincrimination to testify concerning various individuals.

Robert T. Miller 28 was head of political research for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. He is one of the more complex cases, from the same social stratum as Henry Collins, Jr., Duncan Lee and Alger Hiss. He was born in Pittsburgh, and attended the well-known Kent School. He was a classmate of my brother Philip at Princeton (1931), and he stayed there to take a graduate degree the next year, not long after Henry Collins, Jr., had graduated. Miller then spent two and a half years in the Soviet Union. Hede Massing testified to having met him on shipboard while he was en route to Moscow. She gave him letters of introduction to her friends there. "Originally," he testified, "I went over with the intention of entering a business office which, however, did not succeed, so I remained as a journalist."

As a journalist he had better luck, at least in one respect. He met Jenny Levy, working on the staff of the *Moscow Daily News* (an English-language Soviet propaganda organ), and he married her. When they returned to New York, Robert went to work for an organization called "Hemisphere," along with Jack Fahy, a Spanish Civil War Abraham Lincoln Brigade veteran, and Marshall James Wolfe, who has admitted his Communist Party membership as of those days. According to Wolfe, Hemisphere "published a weekly magazine on Latin American affairs, and also supplied background material on Latin America to business houses, and I think to *Time* magazine."

Hemisphere moved down to Washington in 1941. Nelson Rockefeller first contracted for its services, and then absorbed it, along with Mr. Miller, into the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs staff. Jenny and Robert Miller settled in Chevy Chase as neighbors of the Silvermasters and William Ullmann, who became their friends.

He knew Golos, Miller testified, though under another

name and not as a Soviet agent; and it was apparently through Golos that he met Elizabeth Bentley, also under another name. He saw Miss Bentley often, sometimes in his home, "sometimes downtown in restaurants or drug stores." But, he said, he never suspected that she had any "radical or communistic leanings," nor did she seek or he give any information or money.

From 1944 to December 1946, Robert Miller worked for the State Department. He expressed surprise when Mr. Stripling, of the Un-American Activities Committee, read an official report, dated July 24, 1946, from R. L. Bannerman of the State Department's Office of Controls: "The information developed by the FBI in its current investigation of Mr. Miller supports the conclusion that his continued presence in the Department constitutes a strong risk to the security of departmental functions and to the classified information of this Department."

Miss Bentley's memory differed:

Mr. Morris. Do you know Robert Miller?

The Institute of Pacific Relations hearings brought out sidelights on the Lattimore hiring policy in OWI. In a letter to Barnes, for example, he recommended the *New China Daily News*, a paper identified as Communist-dominated, as a source of personnel.

Also in OWI were to be found Julia Bazer, another subsequent United Nations employee who fell back on the Fifth Amendment, and Adam Tarn, who after the war switched his citizenship to Communist-governed Poland.

The most formidable of the special war agencies was the Office of Strategic Services, the famous cloak-and-dagger outfit of World War II. The OSS had two principal functions. One was to gather, assess and supply to the White House and the Pentagon information required for the conduct of the war. The other was to carry out "special operations" consisting of guerilla, sabotage and similar action, paramilitary enterprises, and many other secret undertakings.

Except for the momentary needs of a military situation, the Communist objective was not in reality anti-Nazi, and not patriotic within any non-Soviet nation. It was pro-Soviet, for

the defense of the Soviet Union and the world revolution. This distinction became dramatically at issue from mid-1944 on, when, as we now know, the world-wide resistance activities of the Communists were directed hardly at all against the Germans and almost entirely against anti-Communists within the home countries.

For the massive OSS "special operations," therefore, the key question was really: which tendency within the resistance, guerilla and other clandestine groups, including the purely intelligence groups, was to be primarily aided—the pro-Communist or the anti-Communist? In many cases where the issue was present, even if unrecognized, the decision was for the pro-Communist. In Yugoslavia, in north Italy, in many of the French and most German operations, and sporadically within the confused Chinese situation, Communists and pro-Communists gained the comfort, gold, arms, supplies—and ear—of the OSS.

Perhaps this would have happened in any case. If so, it may have been only a kind of political insurance for the web of subversion to spin its threads more thickly over the OSS than, perhaps, over any other government agency. No special investigation of the OSS has ever taken place. Its wartime director, Major General William J. Donovan, a Republican (therefore not fearing partisan damage from what happened under a Democratic Administration) and an ardent anti-Communist, has never publicly encouraged such a study. (It is a subject, I have found in personal talks with him, that he does not find pleasing.) What we know about the infiltration of the OSS has come as a by-product of other enquiries.

Among the Fifth Amendment cases who served in the OSS, many of them in critical posts of both intelligence and special operations, were: Leo M. Drozdoff; Jack Sargeant Harris; J. Julius Joseph; Leonard Mins; Maurice Halperin; Irving Fajans; Paul V. Martineau; Carl Aldo Marzani (later sent to jail); Milton Wolff; Philip O. Keeney; Irving Goldman; Helen B. Tenney; George Wuchinich.

Halperin was chief of the Latin American Division. Harris was in charge of military intelligence for South Africa. Marzani was deputy chief of the Presentation Division. John K. Fairbank, who has denied under oath the identification made of him (also under oath) as a Communist, but who by any account had in the past a considerable softness toward pro-Communist fronts and writings, was head of the China section of OSS's Research and Analysis Branch. David Zablodowsky, who as we earlier saw admitted aid to the Communist underground, also served.29

Milton Wolff, Leonard Mins and George Wuchinich were all graduates of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was organized by the Soviet secret police for operations in the Spanish Civil War. In their appearances before the Internal Security Subcommittee (June, 1953), these three made a new high in rudeness of manner. In OSS they were not badly located in terms of their interests.

Leonard Mins was assigned to the collection and analysis of information on the Soviet Union. He comes from an old Communist family, and was trained in Moscow and elsewhere in the Soviet revolutionary schools. George Wuchinich, a loud, declamatory man, operated with Tito and inside China. Milton Wolff was in northern Italy. He had been commanding officer of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which at full strength was organized as a battalion of eight hundred men. He refused to answer whether he had taken part in the execution of American citizens in the brigade who "rebelled" against its Communist leadership. He described himself as by occupation "a painter, an artist."

In the relations with the German underground, which had not a little to do with the way in which the German war was concluded in a manner so advantageous to Moscow, web dwellers had a part that has not yet been traced in public. We do know that Allen Dulles, operating on Germany from Switzerland, used as a link to German sources the one-time State Department official, Noel Field. Hede Massing, for-

Duncan Chaplin Lee 30 was born in Nanking, China, in 1913, but soon came to this country. He went to Yale, became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and returned to Yale for his law degree. He entered General (then Colonel) Donovan's law firm in New York. When Donovan came to Washington to take over OSS, Duncan Lee soon followed as a special and confidential assistant.

Elizabeth Bentley testified at length concerning Duncan Lee. She said that in 1942, when she was operating under the Soviet agent, Jacob Golos, one of the Washington contacts from whom she was receiving material was Mary Price, then Walter Lippmann's secretary. Mary Price got some of her information, a little later on, from Duncan Lee, according to Miss Bentley's testimony. Acting under Golos' orders, Miss Bentley then "took over" Lee on her own account: "I went down to Washington on one of my trips, walked up to Mr. Lee's apartment on the fourth floor of, I think it is 3014 Dent Place, introduced myself as Helen."

From then on, she stated, Duncan Lee, whom she described as frightened and nervous about the whole business,

\* Mrs. Massing is usually referred to as a "courier," but strictly speaking she was a recruiting agent.

became one of her own direct "sources." She explained this alleged relation in considerable detail. She said that they made contact in drug stores, where she would be drinking a Coca-Cola, and would then meet on the streets nearby to talk. She told about introducing him to her Soviet boss, Golos. She recounted dinner meetings at Martin's Restaurant in Georgetown. She indicated some of the sorts of information that she said Duncan Lee gave her:

Mr. Stripling. Did he ever tell you anything about Oak Ridge?

Miss Bentley. Yes. Toward the end of the time I knew him, which I would say would be November 1944, he told me that he had word that something very secret was going on at that location. He did not know what, but he said it must be something supersecret because it was shrouded in such mystery and so heavily guarded.

Senator Ferguson. Did you get any information from

Miss Bentley. Ouite a bit.

Senator Ferguson. Out of the OSS?

Miss Bentley. I think he was our most valuable source in the OSS.

Miss Bentley. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. What was the nature of the material that he delivered to you, in what form, in manuscript?

Miss Bentley. Most of it was given to me orally because he was frightened to death of what he was doing and afraid to pass it on. Some of it he had written on scraps of paper.

The only public testimony of Duncan Lee's with which I am acquainted is that which he gave in 1948, before the Un-American Activities Committee. In many ways it resembles Robert Miller's. Duncan Lee did not decline to answer any questions. His replies confirmed many of the curious details of what Elizabeth Bentley had said. He admitted that he had been acquainted with her, as "Helen Grant," and that for a couple of years he and his wife had seen a good deal of her. He admitted that she had introduced him to a man named "John," whom he now realized to be Golos. He admitted friendship with Mary Price. He admitted the meetings in drug stores, which also figured in Miller's account. Lee differed with Miss Bentley in insisting that he and she had not

used the drug stores merely as a contact spot, but had drunk their Coca-Colas together at the counter. He recalled at least one meal at Martin's.

Mr. Lee totally denied that there was any touch of Communism or espionage in his relation with "Helen," that he had ever given confidential information to any unauthorized person, that he had ever known that Bentley, Golos or Mary Price was a Communist or an espionage agent. He and his wife had merely "taken up" Miss Bentley when she had obtained an introduction to them. She was a nice but neurotic woman. (As he testified at the hearings to Miss Bentley's neuroses, spectators noticed his own legs trembling so that, as one of them put it, "his knees beat against each other like a flail.") They grew bored with her a year and a half later, and dropped her. The dropping was in stages. Duncan Lee testified that first they dropped her visits to their house, but that for some time thereafter he and she continued the drug store get-togethers.

There it stood in 1948, and so far as I know there it still stands. A most unsatisfactory condition, I should think, for both Miss Bentley and Mr. Lee. It may or may not be relevant that in her book, *Out of Bondage*, a location that is not legally "privileged" as the Committee hearings are, Miss Bentley has repeated the substance of what she testified concerning Duncan Lee and Mary Price. To my knowledge, neither Duncan Lee nor Mary Price has brought action against her for libel.

With the end of the war, the OSS in its wartime incarnation faded away. But it did not die without issue. Many of its functions, along with hundreds of its staff, reappeared in the State Department or (a little later) in the still more secret, still more formidable Central Intelligence Agency.

## CHAPTER 10

# Phase III: THE INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES (1944– )

BY THE MIDDLE OF 1944 it was clear that the Nazis were going to be defeated. For Moscow, the central problem became the maximum exploitation of military victory in the interests of Soviet power and the world revolution. Although bitter fighting was still going on, the decisive issues were now political rather than military: who would pluck the prizes? how was the postwar world going to be organized?

In the War Assets Administration, Silvermaster was asso-

ciated with Alfred J. Van Tassel, who was the director of its Reports Division.32 Van Tassel had, in fact, helped to draft the Surplus Property Act of 1944. In 1952, as we have noted elsewhere, Van Tassel was in the United Nations Secretariat, and declined on the usual grounds to answer questions concerning Communism and Communists.

One of Silvermaster's subordinates at the War Assets Administration was Myron L. Hoch, in 1953 a teacher at Rutgers University and City College. Testifying before the Internal Security Subcommittee,33 he made one of those precise distinctions that we frequently find in the record. He declined on the ground of self-incrimination to state whether he had been a Communist prior to January 1, 1942, but swore that he had not been thereafter. His testimony showed that he had begun working for the government (for the War Labor Board initially) at the turn of the 1941–42 year, and therefore had at that time signed and sworn to an affidavit stating that he did not belong to a subversive organization.

Mr. Hoch's testimony concluded as follows:

The CHAIRMAN. Have you worked hard for the Communist Party at any time? You made the voluntary statement, and I would like to ask you if you worked hard for the Communist Party also?

Mr. Hoch. I decline to answer that question, sir, on the grounds—

The CHAIRMAN. All right, then, I do not care for any voluntary statement.

ment and reconstruction. Owen Lattimore, who has denied repeated identification as a Communist, was a prominent member of the Pauley mission to Japan, which had an influential part in determining economic policy toward that defeated country. A man named Philip O. Keeney, formerly in the Office of Strategic Services, was concerned with reconstructing another side of Japanese postwar life. He became libraries officer of the Civil Information and Education Division of SCAP (the military government in Japan).34 It was his function to supervise the rebuilding of the library system of the Japanese, who are great readers. In 1952 he declined on the ground of self-incrimination to answer the usual questions, including questions concerning the Institute of Pacific Relations, whose members were so active in Japan.

Andrew Grajdanzev, who has been identified under oath as a Communist but who has not been geographically available for testimony, was also in SCAP. So was T. A. Bisson, who did testify, and who denied identification as a Communist. Bisson had succeeded the British Communist, Michael Greenberg, as the active editor of Pacific Affairs, the magazine of the Institute of Pacific Relations. Greenberg earlier had, after a short interim, succeeded Owen Lattimore. Bisson did not deny his well documented membership in a long list of Communist fronts, his signature on Communistinspired petitions, his talks at pro-Communist united-front meetings, his articles for Communist-supported magazines, nor his co-sponsorship of such statements as: "This interference by America in the internal affairs of China has but one purpose: the furthering of its imperialist designs at the expense of the Chinese people." 35 In the Board of Economic Warfare he had been head of a Manchuria-Korea-Formosa unit. In SCAP he was a \\$10,000 adviser, part of whose assignment was the drafting of new legislation for Japan.

The much heavier concentration in Germany has been only lightly studied. Many of those individuals whom we

George Shaw Wheeler was chief of the denazification branch of the military government's manpower division. This made him for a while one of the most powerful men in Germany, able to grant or take away the right of Germans to jobs, political career, and even liberty and life. In 1947, as a demand for an inquiry into his background mounted, he sought—and found—political asylum in Communist Czechoslovakia.

We have already met the name of Russell Arthur Nixon, in connection with the German period in the career of Irving Kaplan. On June 9, 1953, Russ Nixon testified before the Committee on Un-American Activities.36 This was not his first acquaintance with this and other investigative committees. In 1941 he became Washington representative of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers union, and has so continued, with leaves for government employ, since that time. Over the years, he has become one of the most familiar, and most alert, spectators at the congressional hearings. His union, with its extensive base in the electronics and electrical equipment industry, was one of those expelled by the CIO in February, 1950, on the ground of Communist control.

Nixon was educated at the University of Southern California, and at the Harvard Graduate School, where he took his doctor's degree in economics. He taught for a while at Radcliffe (the female section of Harvard), Harvard itself, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then he went into Labor's Non-Partisan League, and from there into the United Electrical Workers.

He testified:

I was at first the Chief of the Denazification Section of the Finance Division, having charge of the denazification of the German financial system in the American Zone of Occupation. . . . I became Deputy Director of the Division of Investigation of Cartels and External Assets of the Allied Control Council in Berlin; and after a very brief period—matter of a few days in that capacity—I became the Director of that Division, and I was also the American member appointed by General Eisenhower and General Clay of the Quadripartite German External Property Commission.

He was in "direct charge of our efforts to locate the hidden assets of Nazi leaders outside of the boundaries of Germany," and ran into trouble with the State Department because, apparently, of his insistence that the Soviet Union should share too fully in that search.

Testimony by three direct witnesses (Victor Decavitch, Samuel Di Maria, and Mrs. Dorothy K. Funn) was introduced to prove Nixon's membership in the leading strata of the Communist Party. On all questions concerning Communism and Communists, Nixon declined to reply on the standard grounds. He used his time in the witness chair to lecture the committee on a variety of political and social issues.

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration spent some years in distributing many billions of American dollars, usually in the form of food, supplies, vehicles, tools, farm machinery, and so on. In the final stages of the war and in the immediate postwar period, the handling of this distribution could, and often did, decide what persons and what political tendencies were going to win out, or even quite simply survive, in this, that and the other country.

\*So far as I know, neither Leshinsky (sometimes spelled Lishinsky in the record) nor Perazich has testified publicly.

Mr. Morris. You held that position approximately 14 months?

Mrs. Glaser. My position was first as secretary and interpreter for the commission.

Mr. Morris. Were you a member of the Communist Party at that time?

Ruth Rifkin held only a secretarial post; but in the pattern of the web, secretaries and file clerks have often ranked higher than those with pretentious titles. After five years of work with the Foreign Policy Association, she came down to Washington and got a job with UNRRA's predecessor, the Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and then with UNRRA. According to Mr. Frank Tavenner, counsel for the Un-American Activities Committee, Miss Rifkin was a roommate of Helen Tenney, a Fifth Amendment case described by Elizabeth Bentley as "an agent who was planted in the OSS in order to give information to Soviet Intelligence." 39

Miss Rifkin herself was identified by Miss Bentley as a Communist and a source of material for the espionage apparatus. Mary Stalcup Markward, who joined the District of Columbia Communist Party under FBI direction and rose to high local office within it, said that she had handled the transfer of Ruth Rifkin's membership card from the New York Party. Mr. Tavenner stated to Miss Rifkin:

party rolls but that you would probably be contacted by someone from an underground group. Subsequently, Miss \[Mrs.\] Markward, according to her testimony, was called by you and you advised her that you had been contacted by the Communist underground here in Washington.

With respect to all of these matters, Miss Rifkin refused to testify.

Subsequently both Ruth Rifkin and Eda Glaser turned up as employees of the United Nations Secretariat.

The technical secretary of the Bretton Woods Conference was Virginius Frank Coe. Coe became the principal administrative officer of the International Monetary Fund, the secretary, at a salary of \\$20,000 a year.

Virginius Frank Coe, a slight, rather worried-looking man,

was born in Richmond, Virginia, and did his university work at Chicago, where he took a doctor's degree. After a brief job in the Treasury Department, he went up to the University of Toronto to teach from 1934 to 1939. He returned to Washington, and rose rapidly in the government service. He was with the Federal Security Administrator and the National Advisory Defense Council. He then became assistant director of the Division of Monetary Research in the Treasury Department, under Harry White. When White advanced to assistant secretary of the Treasury, Frank Coe replaced him as director of this division.

Following Miss Bentley's 1948 testimony, Coe appeared before the Un-American Activities Committee. He was questioned only briefly by the committee. At that time he denied knowing Bentley, and denied espionage and Communism. He admitted acquaintance with many of those named then or later as web dwellers: for example, John Abt (a fellow student at Chicago), Solomon Adler, Lauchlin Currie, Edward Fitzgerald, Harold Glasser (also a fellow student), Michael Greenberg, Alger Hiss, Charles Kramer, Harry Magdoff, Victor Perlo, Allan Rosenberg, Abraham George Silverman, Greg Silvermaster, William Ullmann, Irving Kaplan, and so on. With respect to many of these persons and some others, more or less those whom Miss Bentley had named as comprising the Silvermaster cell, Frank Coe had a comment to make:

So far as I can see these were never a group in any shape or form. They never acted as a group. . . . The nearest they ever came to being a group, to my knowledge, was in the playing of volley ball. They used to meet, or a number of these people used to go out Sundays and play volley ball. I personally didn't do it because I didn't get up that early. . . .

Harry White, we saw, also referred to those, or other, ball games.

Coe acknowledged his friendship with the Silvermasters, and the fact that he had often been at their house for dinner and the evening. But he could not seem to remember who else used to be there. Representative Mundt was disturbed by what he thought to be something of a discrepancy:

By December, 1952, a lot of testimony on the web of subversion had flowed through the committee hearings. Frank Coe, appearing before the Internal Security Subcommittee, now chose the familiar path of refusing on the ground of self-incrimination to answer questions on Communism, Communists and espionage, including many of the same questions that he had answered, one way or another, in 1948.

Senator Herbert O'Conor summarized as follows:

This American citizen has been continued in one of the highest posts in an international organization at a

Secretary Coe even declines to say whether he is now a member of an espionage ring or whether he has been continuously engaged in subversive activities throughout his service in his highly placed position. . . .

Why he was kept all this time in such a sensitive post, affecting world matters, is impossible to understand.

No systematic investigation has been made of the various special and auxiliary agencies of the United Nations galaxy. Our knowledge that the active leadership of the International Monetary Fund was caught in the web of subversion is a by-product of other inquiries. What would be found in the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, WHO, FAO, UNESCO, etc., we can only guess. By superficial indications, it would seem that the bank has been reasonably well guarded from penetration, while UNESCO, which has numbered notorious fellow travelers among its chief officials, has been rather thoroughly entangled.

The central staff of the United Nations, the core of the whole elaborate structure, is called the United Nations Secretariat. In the latter part of 1952 the Senate Internal Security

This list includes high officials, with salaries of from \\$10,000 to \\$13,000, like Joel Gordon, chief of the Current Trade Analysis Section; Alfred J. Van Tassel, chief of the Economic Section in the Technical Assistance Administration; Irving Kaplan, David Weintraub's old friend; and Dorothy Tisdale Eldridge, editor of the Demographic Yearbook. There were several others doing editorial work at salaries of more than \\$9,000 (Frank Carter Bancroft and Julia Older Bazer, for example); a \\$9,481 cartographer (Leo M. Drozdoff); well paid translators (Helen Kagen, Alexander Svenchansky); and lesser economists, librarians, etc., down to one modest clerk (Leon Elveson) who had the only salary of the list below \\$6.000.

The work of many of these persons has not been unimportant in the over-all UN activity. Many of the jobs have all sorts of potentialities for an imagination that might think in terms of "webs," "cells," "networks," "intelligence," and that sort of thing. Van Tassel's Technical Assistance Administration, for example, has established several dozen "training" and "demonstration" centers in odd places all over the world. Perhaps reflecting on how convenient an international cover such an operation could provide, it was natural for the subcommittee to be disturbed when Mr. Van Tassel refused to tell them whether he was or had been a Communist.

Those in the group who were engaged in editorial work were in a position where it would have been almost impossible for them *not* to influence what went into various of the UN publications, reports and studies. Svenchansky, whose name has more recently been raised in connection with the espionage ring in the Army Signal Corps, was assigned to the UN's radio broadcasting division. Most had ready access to information that is hard for the average layman to come by.

In the wartime Department of State, a major part of postwar planning, in particular the planning of the United Nations organization, was assigned to the Office of Special Political Affairs. The special assistant to the director of this office, who soon became acting director and then director, was, as it turned out, one of the ablest of the web dwellers. He was the most active participant in the meetings that prepared for the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference, where the British, Soviet and American representatives worked out the first drafts of the international organizations, and the broad plans for the postwar world.

The plans for the international organizations and other postwar arrangements were completed at a conference held the next year in the Crimea, at Yalta. The director of the Office of Special Political Affairs was a member of the committee that prepared for that conference. He attended it as a special adviser of the President. At many meetings, he sat, it is reported, beside the President.

The United Nations organization was formally launched in 1945 at a conference held in San Francisco. He was the secretary of the organizing group on arrangements for the San Francisco Conference. At that conference he was secretary general of the international secretariat—that is to say, he ran the conference, administratively speaking. It was he who, after the conference, brought back with him to Washington the original text of the Charter of the United Nations.

His name, of course, is Alger Hiss.

## CHAPTER 11

# STATE AND TREASURY

IN THE EXECUTIVE ESTABLISHMENT of the American government, the Department of State and the Treasury Department take precedence, in that order, over all others. The first cabinet, under our constitutional history, consisted of only the three secretaries: of State, Treasury and War. Foreign relations, finances, defense—these three are in fact the essential foundations of an independent nation. These three are, for just that reason, primary targets of the web of subversion.

How deeply the Department of State has been entangled within the filaments of the web of subversion we shall never entirely know. Many of the threads are so nearly invisible that they can be seen only by a lucky accident, when the beam of a passing investigation happens to strike them at a proper angle.

Even when the traces of the web are uncovered, the chiefs of the Department of State, as of any other organization, are not anxious to broadcast the news. They naturally wish to avoid the adverse public relations that open scandals bring. They therefore try to keep the skeletons inside the closet. When they can no longer avoid some housecleaning they use a cellar door to get to the rubbish heap. The tainted individuals are as a rule not publicly fired, with an open statement of the real cause, but are eased out, allowed to resign and to slip into the shadows.

During 1953 many hundreds of persons were dropped from the State Department "for security reasons." How many of these were units in the underground? There is no way for the public to know. No public distinction is any longer made between "loyalty risk" and "security risk." A government employee may be dropped as a security risk because there is evidence that he is an underground Communist or espionage agent, because he is a homosexual, or merely because he drinks too much or gets into financial jams. We therefore cannot make exact estimates; we know merely that some percentage of those who have been "separated" from the State Department have been part of the web of subversion.

There is still another obstacle to knowing the full truth. The State Department has chosen to dispose of a number of important cases without bringing them to a clear-cut conclusion. John Stewart Service, for example, played a prominent part in the department's "China service." He has been accused of having favored the Chinese Communists, and of having followed a line in his official actions that aided the Chinese Communist march to power. It has been established that he turned confidential information over to the pro-Communist magazine, Amerasia. The FBI did, indeed, record conversations between Service and Philip Jaffe, an Amerasia editor, in which such communication was made.

Early in 1953, John Carter Vincent, a high State Department official with the permanent rank of minister, was eased out with an even more meager explanation. Vincent had also been closely involved in China policy. He was for the crucial years chief of the department's Division of Far Eastern Affairs. Vincent has been identified under oath as a Communist Party member; and he has denied this identification under oath. The issue here, which logically implies that

Mr. Friedman took up the story of his going to China. He said to me that after he graduated from Harvard University he entered the State Department and that eventually he was sent to China where he was connected, I believe, with the Embassy in Shanghai, our Embassy there. He said, "I was able to do very useful work there, but eventually I got into a very tough spot." I asked him what he meant by a "tough spot." He said, "I really was on the spot. I was doing very good work for our cause, the Communist cause."

Mrs. WIDENER. Yes, sir; "in China, but somebody must have gotten wise to me." . . .

Mr. Friedman said to me: "I was asked to write a report on the Chinese Communist labor movement." He said, "That put me in a tough spot. Naturally I wouldn't write anything against the party. If I did write what I wanted to write, it would tip my hand and destroy my usefulness. So I wrote a report that any 14-year-old boy could have written and got myself dismissed without prejudice."

Before meeting Friedman, Mrs. Widener had been told, she testified: "Confidentially, I want to tell you that the man you are going to meet is absolutely brilliant. In fact, he is one of the top brains of the Communist Party."

Perhaps this was undue flattery, but in any event Julian Friedman denied under oath that he was or had been a member of the Communist Party. This case too remains uncomfortably suspended.

We traced in the last chapter a part of Alger Hiss' specialized activities while he was an official of the State Department. However doubtful we may be about the web's exact area, we can be assured that Alger Hiss was not isolated.

Senator Eastland. Is that true? Have you ever used the name Michael Zorn?

Mr. Drozdoff. I will have to refuse to answer the question on constitutional grounds.

Senator Eastland. Were you a party organizer?

Mr. Drozdoff. I will have to refuse to answer the question on constitutional grounds.

Stanley Graze went to the European section of the State Department from the Treasury and the War Production Board (and went on to the United Nations). He refused to answer all questions concerning Communism and Communists. He was asked in 1952 whether he was "presently" or "in the past" engaged in espionage against the United States, and he declined on the ground of self-incrimination to answer.43

been informed by a witness that Mr. Halperin, while a member of the Communist Party, representing Oklahoma and Texas, did in fact proceed to the Communist Party of Mexico and there met with official Communist leaders." With respect to this and all other similar questions, Professor Halperin refused to testify.

Mr. Morris. Mr. Halperin, were you a member of an espionage ring, Communist espionage ring that was directed by one Elizabeth Bentley and which operated during the war?

Mr. HALPERIN. I refuse to answer that question. . . . Mr. Morris. . . . did you pay Communist Party dues to Miss Bentley?

Mr. Halperin. Well, I cannot answer that question, sir, for the same reason.44

Halperin's OSS and State Department assistant, Irving Goldman (in 1953 a professor at Sarah Lawrence College) did, however, admit his former membership in the Communist Party. He declined to testify concerning certain of his Communist associations.45

Before Halperin's day, Latin American affairs had been in the hands of the charming, eager and tragic Laurence Duggan. Hede Massing has told how she was assigned to recruit Larry Duggan into the Soviet-directed espionage apparatus. She first met Duggan, she testified, through his State Department colleague, Noel Field. "He was a close friend of the Fields. They lived together in one house at one time. Duggan had a similar background as Field, Quaker family, well-to-do, highly intellectual, very fine straight-thinking men at the time, as I thought." She continued:

Duggan when I met him seemed very interested in my ideas. He knew a great deal about the Soviet Union. He knew a great deal about fascism in Germany. He knew a great deal about the details and technique of the fight against fascism. I did not need to work with Duggan as I did with Field. Duggan was much easier for me to reach. It took only a few weeks, probably not more than three or four meetings.

With Laurence Duggan after a few meetings I suggested to him to be of help to us and he consented. . . .

Mr. Morris. Did you succeed in recruiting Laurence Duggan?

Mrs. Massing. Yes, I succeeded.

Mr. Morris. Did you turn him over to the apparatus?

Mrs. Massing, I did turn him over to the apparatus.

Mr. Morris. To whom did you turn him over?

Mrs. Massing. I don't know. I made arrangements for him to meet a person.

Mr. Morris. You made arrangements with whom?

Mrs. Massing. With Laurence Duggan. To be more specific, my boss Boris told me to tell Duggan that he would be met by a man who would have an identification. I think it was a flower and a magazine, and he would be met in a car on a road which Duggan was to assign at a specific time on a specific day, that Duggan would enter the car of this man who would be standing in front of the car and be visible so as to be noticed by Duggan and Duggan would speak to this man. I did not know who the man was. All I knew was the time and the methods of identification. Then I dropped out.

We have noted that Henry Julian Wadleigh, who admittedly participated in the Bykov-Chambers-Hiss espionage operations, was for some years in the State Department. (His total government employment was sixteen years, seven of them in State.) Noel Field was another State Department recruit of Hede Massing's, although, according to her testimony, she had to dispute her "rights" in Field with Alger Hiss. Later he was taken out of her hands by her Soviet superiors. During the war, Field operated out of Allen Dulles' secret OSS headquarters in Switzerland, with assignments on liaison with the German resistance. After the war Noel Field, along with most of his family, vanished beyond the Iron Curtain.

Carl Aldo Marzani, after being educated at Williams and Oxford, had a spectacular career that took him from the Office of the Coordinator of Information into the OSS as its successor organization, and then on into the State Department. By a fortunate bureaucratic oddity, Marzani was drawing down a \\$7,175 salary in OSS while he had the nominal rank of an army sergeant. He boasted that he had helped pick the targets for the Doolittle raid on Japan. He became deputy chief of the Presentation Branch, in direct liaison with the General Staff at general officer level. He continued similar work in the State Department, but by 1948 was in jail for a two-and-one-half-year term on a conviction for perjury in denying his Communist Party membership. Recently, he has taken the more usual Fifth Amendment road.47

These are samples.

In 1945, at the end of the war, an organizational event took place that had lasting repercussions within the Department of State. Several of the emergency wartime agencies—in particular, the Office of Strategic Services (which had earlier absorbed the Coordinator of Information), the Office of War Information, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, and

The web of subversion was wound tightly around all of these emergency war agencies. The State Department was already infiltrated prior to 1945, but with its long tradition and its old-time methods its threshold was not easy to cross. Now, with no warning, its doors were thrown wide open. The department was swamped with thousands of new employees and dozens of new, unprecedented tasks in the fields of intelligence and propaganda. Its established protocol was not equal to the task of recognizing the features of treason in the modern mode.

2

The underground has won some of its most remarkable victories in the Treasury Department. Many persons find it puzzling that the Treasury should be a prime target of espionage and subversion. The Treasury is obviously important in our personal lives, and in the everyday life of the nation. It collects the taxes and pays the government's bills. But it is not at first clear why the Treasury should be so important in the world struggle for power.

The Treasury deals with money, in the broadest sense. It therefore differs from all other departments and agencies. Each of the others is assigned a specific, limited field of action. The Treasury, precisely because it deals with money, has no limits to its field, but is involved in every activity of every kind. To build a battleship or a postoffice or a hydrogen bomb, to hire a patriot or a traitor, to conduct war, cold war or peace—they all take money. The Treasury necessarily has a finger in every pie.

There must normally be a "Treasury representative" on hand for planning any governmental enterprise, and for controlling and auditing it. And for whatever is done, no matter how secret, payments and receipts, checks and vouchers, must flow through the Treasury channels and end up as entries in the Treasury's books. From the point of view of secret plans and information, the Treasury is the weakest link in the security chain. Data from all agencies are, at least in an indirect form, centralized in the Treasury, whereas the first principle of secret operations is decentralization.

Many of the individuals with whom we have already dealt spent some or all of their government careers in the Treasury Department. They were not minor employees and clerks, by any means (though clerks were also doubtless included within the web of subversion). They held highly paid jobs at critical points within the organizational structure. They were often in a better position to control Treasury activities than were the small handful of political appointees at the very top of the pyramid, who, as in all agencies, are likely to be unaware of half of what goes on in their own offices.

Among these highly placed Treasury officials were numbered two of those who have been identified as heads of espionage cells: Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, assigned to the Office of Surplus Property at the highest professional level (P-8), and Victor Perlo. Perlo was an economic analyst in the Division of Monetary Research. He was responsible for recommending the actions that the government should take in adjusting the domestic economy to the international financial situation.

In Chapter 4 we considered Harold Glasser's prosperous career in the Treasury, with its many foreign assignments. We found that he was the chief financial officer in the economic board that was set up after the North African invasion; the Treasury's representative on the board of UNRRA; an important official in the missions assigned to Italy, Germany, Austria and Trieste; head of the Division of Monetary Research (1946); and General Marshall's adviser in the final (1947) mission to Moscow.

William Ludwig Ullmann, the Silvermasters' perennial housemate, worked for the Division of Monetary Research from 1939 to 1947, except for war leave at the Pentagon. It was Ullmann whom Miss Bentley identified as a principal source and chief photographer of the Silvermaster cell.

Solomon Adler was another prominent member of the Treasury contingent who has been identified under oath as an underground Communist.48 It was Adler who lived with Harold Glasser in Chicago, when they were both teachers at the People's Junior College. In 1942 he was named by the Treasury as the official American representative on the American-British-Chinese Stabilization Fund. In 1944 he became the official Treasury representative in China, and there

remained during the years that accomplished China's conquest by the Communists. The Committees have been unable to question him because during recent years he has remained abroad, apparently at Cambridge University, England.

Irving Kaplan also had his whirl in the Treasury (he too in the top professional classification, P-8). It was under Treasury auspices that he worked in postwar Germany. On his 1946 federal employment application he listed the following names as references: V. Frank Coe, director, Monetary Research, Treasury Department; Harry White, assistant secretary, Treasury Department; A. G. Silverman, chief economist, French Purchasing Mission.

The Silverman here is Abraham George Silverman, of Polish birth and Harvard education, identified by Elizabeth Bentley as an active member of the Silvermaster cell, also well and actively known to Whittaker Chambers. During the war, Silverman was attached to the office of the Chief of Air Staff, Air Force—a useful spot for one with his interests. Before that he too had worked under the Treasury Department (Tariff Commission) and for the United States Railroad Retirement Board. It was Silverman, Whittaker Chambers said, who arranged to get him his temporary cover job with the National Research Project. Before the Un-American Activities Committee, Silverman expressed himself as "deeply shocked by the charges leveled against me." He was not, however, sufficiently shocked to answer the questions put to him concerning Communism and Communists.

Harry Dexter White's early years are cloaked in some obscurity. He was apparently born in Boston in 1892, of parents who under another name had emigrated from Russia. He studied at the universities of Columbia, Stanford and Harvard. He taught for a while at Lawrence College, in Senator McCarthy's home town (Appleton, Wisconsin), and then at Harvard. At the beginning of the Roosevelt administration he entered the Treasury Department. He rose quickly to become director of the Division of Monetary Research; then special assistant to the secretary; then assistant secretary—a policy appointment requiring confirmation by the Senate. In 1946 he was appointed the first United States director of the International Monetary Fund. Fourteen months later he resigned and became what he described as a "sort of financial and economic consultant."

This bare career outline hardly suggests White's importance over a period of about a decade. His special field was international monetary operations, and there he was probably the most influential person in the government. But he did not confine his activity to that field. He was one of the most intimate and trusted associates of Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. The succeeding Secretary of the Treasury, Fred Vinson, continued to hold White in high regard. White had a lively, assertive, wide ranging mind. He intervened constantly in all branches of the government's activities.

On and after this date, Mr. Harry D. White, Assistant to the Secretary, will assume full responsibility for all matters with which the Treasury Department has to deal having a bearing on foreign relations. . . .

On February 25, 1943, Secretary Morgenthau supplemented this by the following directive to White:

Effective this date, I would like you to take supervision over and assume full responsibility for Treasury's participation in all economic and financial matters . . . in connection with the operations of the Army and Navy and the civilian affairs in the foreign areas in which our Armed Forces are operating or are likely to operate. This will, of course, include general liaison with the State Department, Army and Navy, and other departments or agencies and representatives of foreign governments on these matters.

Harry White was the official Treasury representative on many of the most significant wartime committees, from the OSS Advisory Committee to the Board of Economic Warfare to the National Munitions Control Board.

what was first pointed out by Elizabeth Bentley: that he had been chiefly responsible for the so-called "Morgenthau Plan" for the "pastoralization" of Germany. This plan was taken to the 1944 Quebec Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt, and there received an endorsement "in principle," with the accompanying decision to destroy German heavy industry. As matters turned out, the Morgenthau Plan was never put fully into practice, but its spirit reinforced the unconditional-surrender demand, and the policy of vengeance that was followed in Germany during the three immediate postwar years.

There had been an earlier, less well known but far from unimportant "Morgenthau Plan," also a White product. It is discussed in *The Undeclared War*, the elaborate history of United States policy during 1940–41 by William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason. They show that in May, 1941, Harry White became extraordinarily interested in the Japanese question. On November 17 of that year, he submitted a memorandum entitled, "Suggested Approach for Elimination of United States-Japanese Tension." The "approach" was simple enough. Japan was to give up everything that it had gained or aspired to, in return for American commercial aid and credits.

It is thus only natural that the espionage apparatus considered Harry White an especially juicy prize. In August, 1945, Elizabeth Bentley told the FBI about Harry White's collaboration in the espionage and subversive activities. The FBI had evidently been aware of his name, as of most of the

others, for some while before that. In November, 1945, the secret FBI memorandum that named Harry White along with many others was prepared. In December this memorandum was circulated among high officials of the government. In February, 1946, a new secret memorandum covered the White case more fully.

White's career continued unimpeded, however, through April, 1947, at which time he resigned from the directorship of the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Stripling. Were there any other individuals in the Treasury Department who were working with your group?

Mr. STRIPLING. Yes.

It has always been her testimony, and Whittaker Chambers' also, that Harry White was probably not a formal Communist Party member. They believe that he collaborated with the underground as a fellow traveler, out of ideological sympathy for Communism and the Soviet Union.

Mr. RANKIN, Is he a Communist?

Miss Bentley. I don't know whether Mr. White was a card-carrying Communist or not.

Miss Bentley. He gave information to Mr. Silvermaster which was relayed on to me.

On another occasion, Miss Bentley explained how White helped to shift members of the network from one job to another. She also discussed the problem of his motivation. Mr. Morris. I wonder if you would tell us for our record the relationship that Harry Dexter White had with your work.

Miss Bentley. Harry Dexter White, I couldn't tell you that he had actually been a member of the party, but to all intents and purposes he was because he followed its discipline. According to Nathan Silvermaster he was afraid to meet people like myself. He had for some years been working for an agent who had turned sour, later identified as Whittaker Chambers. That had given him a terrific fright, and he had stayed away for a while from these activities.

On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers testified publicly concerning Harry White.

Mr. Stripling. Did you know Harry Dexter White? Mr. Chambers. Yes, I did.

Mr. STRIPLING. Is Harry Dexter White a Communist? Was he a Communist, to your knowledge?

Mr. CHAMBERS. I can't say positively that he was a registered member of the Communist Party, but he certainly was a fellow traveler so far within the fold that his not being a Communist would be a mistake on both sides.

Mr. Chambers. I did.

Mr. STRIPLING. You considered him to be a Communist Party member?

Mr. CHAMBERS. Well, I accepted an easy phrasing. I didn't ask him to leave the Communist Party, but to break away from the Communist movement.

Mr. STRIPLING. What did he tell you?

Mr. Chambers. He left me apparently in a very agitated frame of mind, and I thought I had succeeded. Apparently I did not.52

Mr. Chambers. Yes; I knew Harry Dexter White rather well.

Senator Ferguson. Was he in any apparatus?

The CHAIRMAN. Was a source? Give that again.

Mr. Chambers. Was a source for material. He gave both original Government documents and a weekly or fortnightly written memo summarizing information which had come to him in the course of his activities. One specimen of that memo is I believe now in the custody of the Justice Department.53

The "specimen" to which Chambers here refers is in fact one of several in Harry White's handwriting. They were found along with the many Alger Hiss documents among the "pumpkin papers," which Chambers had concealed in his espionage days, and which proved that he had in truth received documents from Hiss, White and Julian Wadleigh.

When Attorney General Brownell declared in 1953 that Harry Dexter White was a Russian spy, he was summing up the assembled evidence of many years.

On August 13, 1948, in the first stage of the public inquiry into the web of subversion, before the appearance of the pumpkin papers, before the conviction of Alger Hiss and the slow accumulation of interlocking knowledge, Harry White appeared before the Un-American Activities Committee. His testimony makes strange reading today, and was strange enough even then.

Like a number of others at that stage (Duncan Lee, Lauchlin Currie, Bela and Sonia Gold, Robert Miller, Frank Coe, Lee Pressman, Nathaniel Weyl, Alger Hiss), White did not turn to the Fifth Amendment. He denied all allegations of Communism and espionage. He readily admitted knowing well, and in many cases employing, those who had been named as members of the Silvermaster and Perlo cells. This seemed to puzzle the chairman. He asked:

Now, how do you account for that?

It seemed hard for Harry White to concentrate on that question. "That is one of those 'when did you stop beating your wife' questions," he first replied. He then spoke at some length, but on what the chairman must have felt to be irrelevant matters. At any rate, White was again asked whether it did not seem "strange" that he had so close a relationship to those individuals named by Bentley and Chambers. This time he answered: "Well, it certainly is disconcerting, but I would not say it is strange."

The hearing was amiable. The congressmen were rather deferential, indeed, to this important man with his impressive official background, who lectured them at length on the American tradition, democracy and civil rights. But toward the end of the session, the atmosphere somewhat thickened. At one point, Congressman Hébert burst out:

Mr. Chairman, I suggest you instruct the witness that it is obvious that he is a great wit, that he is a great entertainer, and would undoubtedly be a great entertainer socially, but I would ask you to instruct the witness to answer the questions. He is well able to take care of himself.

And there were a number of seemingly significant questions that Harry White did not seem able to come to grips with. Although he had often been in the Silvermasters' house, and often had played ping-pong in its basement, he, like several other witnesses, just couldn't remember whether there was a basement photographic room. Nor could he place Whittaker Chambers, either by name or pseudonym or photograph. Nor could he recall ever having known any Communist or anyone whom he had reason to believe to be a Communist.

We shall never be sure, because three days later he was dead. A year before he had had a heart attack, and a renewed attack was the reported cause of death.

Is it true, as some of his friends then believed, that the strain of the committee hearing brought on the fatal attack?

Is it possible, as other friends have come to believe, that Harry White decided to take his own life, and that he did so, probably with sleeping pills? Even in the recorded facts about Harry White's past there is perhaps some psychological basis for this belief. He is said not to have been an outright Communist. Did he collaborate with the underground without full knowledge of what many thought of as "the great Soviet experiment?" Did he suddenly realize that he was a victim, caught in a web not of his spinning? Did he then take the final and only way out of what had become for him an intolerable impasse?

There is a third hypothesis. At the Moscow trial of Henry Yagoda, formerly head of the Soviet secret police, it was testified that methods had been developed to induce heart attacks artificially, and that several persons, including Maxim Gorki, had been put to death in that manner. Is it conceivable that Harry White did die of a heart attack, but of an attack staged not by nature but by the terror section of the Soviet apparatus? Or that he did indeed commit suicide, but a suicide compelled by the diverse pressures of the Soviet operatives?

Was not Walter Krivitsky, former head of Soviet military intelligence for western Europe, found dead, an apparent suicide, in a Washington hotel room? Did not Larry Duggan, identified collaborator in the Washington web of subversion, fall or drop to his death from his office window before—and apparently just before—he might have testified?

It is an old saying of the Soviet secret police: "Any hack can kill a man; it takes an artist to arrange a natural death."

## CHAPTER 12

Has the web of subversion ever succeeded in throwing its filaments over the government's inner core, over the White House?

That various threads reached at times and temporarily to the White House is not in doubt. Alger Hiss, after all, acted at Yalta as President Roosevelt's personal adviser. Owen Lattimore, whom the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee describes as "from some time beginning in the 1930's, a conscious articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy," 54 was President Roosevelt's personal envoy to Chiang Kai-shek. Harry White, through his influence on Secretary Morgenthau, was often ideologically present at cabinet meetings, and was not unknown as an attendant in person at White House conferences.

We also know that during the Roosevelt administration the prevailing White House climate was not unfavorable to "left wing" and even pro-Communist persons and ideas. President Roosevelt often expressed his sympathy for "the Soviet experiment" and his hope that "Russia would rejoin the family of nations." These were among the motives that led him to initiate diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union during his first year in office (1933). They continued to influence his policy during the war years, as the documentation in Winston Churchill's history establishes so clearly. With such premises behind his thinking, President Roosevelt was not especially sensitive to charges that one or another individual was a Communist or Soviet agent, and perhaps not strenuously concerned even if he thought that the charges might be true.

Mrs. Roosevelt's hospitality has extended still further toward the left. The guest books of the White House as well as her travel diaries will show how many persons not unsympathetic (for a while at least) to Communism found welcome under her warm wing. Amid such company, in Washington, New York or abroad, Harry Hopkins was never out of place, and no one will minimize the importance that Harry Hopkins had as President Roosevelt's most intimate associate. David K. Niles, one of Roosevelt's administrative assistants, was not unlike Harry Hopkins in these respects. His name crops up frequently in the congressional hearings. Although he has never been publicly named as a Communist or espionage agent, several of the web dwellers have refused to reply when asked whether they were acquainted with David Niles.

In reviewing these rather tenuous atmospheric indications, we step beyond the boundaries of this book. We have excluded problems of fellow traveling, mere "pro-Communism," and for that matter open Party Communism, as well as all types of Communist activity outside of the United States government. Our self-imposed restrictions are ob-

viously arbitrary. The functioning of the government underground is related to these other matters. Still, it is necessary to draw a line somewhere.

Let us turn back to the narrower question. Is there public evidence that the actual underground penetrated the immediate White House staff more directly than in such occasional instances as I have cited? The answer is: yes, there is some evidence to that precise effect.

Toward the end of the 1930's a young Englishman named Michael Greenberg came to this country. 55 He found welcome and a job in the offices of the Institute of Pacific Relations. The institute was so well satisfied with his labors that in 1941, after Owen Lattimore had left for China as the President's special envoy to Chiang, Michael Greenberg took charge of the institute magazine, *Pacific Affairs*, as managing editor. From there he graduated, as did so many employees and friends of the IPR, to the United States government.

When he started work in 1942, however, he was not placed in the usual offices of the Board of Economic Warfare. He was made a special assistant to Lauchlin Currie, who was assigned as deputy administrator of BEW, and given a desk in Currie's own office. Lauchlin Currie was one of President Roosevelt's confidential administrative assistants. His office and desk were therefore in the White House. (Geographically speaking, the office was most of the time in the Old State Building, to which part of the White House staff had overflowed.) There Greenberg continued at the core of the war effort for several years. He felt enough at home to use White House stationery for at least some of his letters, which have been placed in evidence.

On March 7, 1947, the Civil Service Commission barred

Michael Greenberg "from competing in civil-service examinations . . . because of questionable loyalty."

Mr. Morris. Miss Bentley, was there anyone else whom you got into your organization via the IPR?

Senator Ferguson. Did Greenberg ever deliver any papers to you?

Miss Bentley. Yes; he delivered information via Mildred Price to me. He was extremely temperamental and I thought it unwise to have him meet me.

Senator Ferguson. Did this information come out of the White House?

Miss Bentley. Yes; it was mostly on the Far East, on China

Lauchlin Currie 56 was a member of the leading and inner circle of the Roosevelt administration. He was born in Can-

ada (Nova Scotia) in 1902. He was educated at London and Harvard Universities. At the latter he took his Ph.D. degree in economics in 1925. He then taught economics for some years at Harvard, and became a United States citizen. He went down to Washington in 1934, first to the Treasury and then to the Federal Reserve Board.

In 1939 Currie was appointed as one of the six administrative assistants to the President, with special duties in economics. During the war he was active in the field of "economic warfare." As part of this assignment, he functioned for a while as deputy administrator of the Board of Economic Warfare and the Foreign Economic Administration.

Currie's particular field of interest was, however, the Far East. It was he who, until his separation from the government on June 30, 1945, handled Far Eastern affairs for the White House. President Roosevelt sent Currie twice as a special envoy to China. It was Currie who arranged the famous trip that Henry Wallace made to wartime China and Siberia under the guidance of Owen Lattimore, John Carter Vincent and John N. Hazard. On Chinese and most other Far Eastern questions it was Currie's advice that was sought and followed.

Not only did Lauchlin Currie handle Far Eastern affairs for the White House. Within the White House, though without official title, Currie also handled the affairs of the Institute of Pacific Relations, which had its own close interest in Far Eastern questions. According to the report of the Subcommittee on Internal Security: "The IPR was a vehicle used by the Communists to orientate American Far Eastern policies toward Communist objectives"; and further: "The effective leadership of the IPR used IPR prestige to promote the interests of the Soviet Union in the United States."

It was Currie who in 1941 arranged Owen Lattimore's appointment as the President's special envoy to Chiang Kaishek. Lattimore maintained his contact with the White House through Currie. After Lattimore returned to Washington, for "3, 4, or 5 months" he used Currie's office, telephone and White House stationery. John K. Fairbank (who denies his identification as a Communist) was another prominent IPR member who made use of Currie's office. (After 1942, the British Communist and IPR graduate whom we have just considered, Michael Greenberg, was a fixture in that office.)

During the war period, the IPR held two large international conferences, one at Mont Tremblant in Canada, the other at Hot Springs, West Virginia. Indirectly, and not so indirectly, these were two big steps in the evolution of "the Chinese revolution." For both of these, Currie was one of the group that picked the delegates and invited guests. For the Mont Tremblant conference, the inviting group was composed of: Currie himself, Joseph Barnes (who has denied his identification as a Communist and espionage agent by five sworn witnesses), Philip Jessup, Edward C. Carter (administrative head of IPR), and Alger Hiss.

Lauchlin Currie's services for his IPR friends were still more personal. In 1942, Frederick V. Field applied for a commission in Army Air Force intelligence. This was a sufficiently fantastic move. Field was just finishing his brief career as head of American Peace Mobilization, the front established by the Communists, on the basis of the Stalin-Hitler pact, to denounce "the imperialist war." He had been an active Communist for years. According to sworn testimony he was the representative of the Party's Political Bureau in the IPR, which he, Carter and Lattimore had run from shortly after its founding. These would seem odd qualifications for a commission in intelligence. A letter introduced into the IPR inquiry showed that this did not prevent Field from expecting Lauchlin Currie to help him get it.

Currie's friendly personal services were not confined to IPR members. As we noted in Chapter 3, Currie joined Harry Dexter White and Nathan Witt as reference for Nathan Gregory Silvermaster. We also reviewed the 1942 incident, when G-2 and the Civil Service Commission wanted to get Silvermaster ousted from government employment after a secret security report had concluded: "The overwhelming amount of testimony from the many and varied witnesses and sources, indicates beyond reasonable doubt that Nathan Gregory Silvermaster is now, and has for years, been a member and a leader of the Communist Party, and very probably a secret agent of the OGPU." It was Currie who then intervened, successfully. As a result, Silvermaster continued in government employment "without prejudice" for five more years.

The report on the IPR further reads:

Currie was responsible for setting up a conference in Washington, on October 12, 1942, between himself, Sumner Welles, then Undersecretary of State, and Earl Browder and Robert Minor, then officials of the Communist Party. This conference terminated with Welles handing to Browder a memorandum. . . . This memorandum was printed in full in the Daily Worker of October 16, 1942, and was used extensively by the Communists all over the world to give prestige to the Chinese Communists.

The 1945 secret memorandum stated that Lauchlin Currie

Mr. Stripling. Are there any other names, Miss Bentley, of the Silvermaster group that you have not mentioned?

Mr. Stripling. What type of information did he give? Miss Bentley. Well, being in the position he was in, he had inside information on Government policy. . . . He furnished inside information on this Government's attitude toward China, toward other governments. He once relayed to us the information that the American Government was on the verge of breaking the Soviet code, various things.

According to Miss Bentley, it was not merely information that the underground got from Lauchlin Currie. She described him as a "friend at court," and she said, under questioning by Senator Ferguson:

Senator Ferguson. Did you have trouble or difficulty in moving these agents that you had into strategic position in Government or in the Army. . . . For example, Silvermaster, did you have trouble moving people such as that . . . ?

Miss Bentley. We didn't have too much trouble. In the case of Silvermaster, he pulled strings and got in there.

Senator Ferguson. What were your avenues for placing people in strategic positions?

had an immense amount of influence and knew people and their word would be accepted when they recommended someone.

Lauchlin Currie gave his only public testimony, so far, on the same day as Harry Dexter White. In many respects the two records read very much alike. He acknowledged long acquaintance with Silvermaster, Silverman, Ullmann, and many of the others who had been named by Miss Bentley or Chambers as cell members. He acknowledged his intervention on behalf of Silvermaster, although he denied having known what was in the security report. He said that he had been a number of times in the Silvermaster home, and had visited its basement. Like White's, his memory failed as to the presence of a photographic shop.

In fact, his recollection was generally weak that day:

Mr. Currie. I don't recall. . . .

Mr. Currie. I do not recall, Mr. Stripling. . . . He may very well have. . . .

Mr. Stripling. Do you know Helen Silvermaster's son, Anatol Volkov?

Mr. Currie. Slightly. . . .

Mr. STRIPLING. Did you recommend him or help him to get in the Coast Guard?

Mr. Currie. Not that I recollect.

Mr. Currie. I do not recall, Mr. Stripling, but I wouldn't want to be too dogmatic. . . .

Mr. Nixon. You never discussed politics with \[Silver-master and Silverman\]?

Mr. HÉBERT. Do you recall any other incidents of anybody else's loyalty being questioned and being referred to you?

Mr. Currie. Offhand, no; I do not recall. . . .

Mr. Currie. That again I cannot recall. . . .

The Chairman. Who told you that conclusion \[that Silvermaster had been adversely reported on by G-2\]?

Mr. Currie. Whoever it was who called from BEW, whose name, unfortunately, I cannot now recall. . . .

The CHAIRMAN. When you saw Silverman from time to time, did you see him in your offices, or did you see him at social affairs or where?

Mr. Currie. I do not recall the circumstances now. . .

Currie denied that he had ever transmitted any confidential information to any unauthorized person. He denied also that he had ever believed, or ever had reason to believe, that Silvermaster, Silverman, Ullmann or any of the others was a Communist.

There the matter still rests, another instance where at least one person has committed direct and deliberate perjury. It may be that we shall hear further from Lauchlin Currie, and that the obscurities will be resolved. For some years he has been gone from among us, not so far as Harry White, but in Colombia, well outside the national jurisdic-

tion of the United States government. It remains possible, therefore, that he will return.

2

In the most direct sense, the nation's freedom and survival depend on the strength, loyalty and integrity of the armed forces. To what extent have the armed forces been enmeshed by the web of subversion?

Infiltration of the military is a primary and permanent Communist mission. The objective is partly espionage and sabotage. More fundamentally it is the preparation of political and psychological conditions for the revolutionary crisis. The actual political revolution, the series of events that will smash the present government and place the Communists in power, cannot occur if the armed forces remain loyal. Therefore, in the "Conditions" established by the Second Congress of the Communist International for admitting groups and parties into the Communist enterprise, we find in Article 4: "The duty of propagating Communist ideas implies the absolute necessity of conducting a systematic and continuous propaganda and agitation among the troops. There, where open propaganda is difficult because of the special military laws, the work has to be carried on illegally. To refuse to do this would be treason to revolutionary duty."

In the case of the American Communist Party, the "military department" was one of the first functioning offices to be set up. We have direct evidence of the existence of this "military department." A man named Paul Crouch headed it at one period. He has broken with Communism, and has testified concerning military infiltration.

Earl Browder, while he was secretary of the Party during the war, said publicly that the Party had more than 13,000 members, including many officers, in the armed forces. There is no reason to think that he was exaggerating. Immediately following the war, before the Party began to go more deeply underground, the meetings and parades of Communist organizations featured veterans, often in uniform. Every Communist, unless he is assigned to the most extreme secret work, is a propagandist and recruiting agent. Moreover, the influence of disciplined Communists in the armed forces, as elsewhere, is dynamic, and far greater than it appears on mere arithmetic comparisons.

Some of the web dwellers whom we have already considered were in the armed forces during the war. Presumably they did not all change their political habits when they put on a uniform.

Let us, however, turn to certain cases that have been documented in the public record.

We have, for example, many times bumped into the name of William Ludwig Ullmann.57 He is Nathan Gregory Silvermaster's housemate, at present living and working with Silvermaster in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey. Ullmann was born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1908. He too is a Harvard man. After a few years as a tennis professional, he entered the government by one of the usual routes: National Recovery Administration to Farm Security Administration to Treasury. He worked in Harry Dexter White's Division of Monetary Research, and continued there under White's successor, Frank Coe. He resigned from the government in March, 1947.

Elizabeth Bentley has testified at length concerning "Lud"

(as she called him) Ullmann. It was he, she said, who set up the elusive photographic shop and did most of the photographing of the government documents.

Mr. STRIPLING. Could you give the committee some details regarding the photographic equipment maintained in Mr. Silvermaster's basement . . .?

Mr. Mundt. You actually saw them using this apparatus on Government documents, did you?

Miss Bentley, Yes: I did

Mr. Mundt. And Mr. Ullmann has seen it, has he?
Miss Bentley. Mr. Ullmann was the principal photographer. . . .

Miss Bentley. Well, the military information came largely from George Silverman and Ludwig Ullmann, and, as I said, it was information of the most varied things you could think of. We had complete data as to almost all of the aircraft production in the country, as

to types, how many were being produced, where they were allocated, and so on. We had all sorts of inside information on policies of the Air Corps. As I said, we knew D-day long before D-day happened, and we were right. . . . We got quite a bit of information about General Hilldrings's activities.

Ullmann, by Miss Bentley's account, got a double use out of his knowledge of the date of D-day. He carried out his duty to the cell by passing the information on, through Bentley, to the Soviet contact, "Jack." And "with that knowledge he was betting with a friend of his when D-day would be and, of course, he won the bet, since he knew it ahead of time."

When he appeared before the Un-American Activities Committee, Major Ullmann was bursting with indignation about "the scurrilous charges" that had been made against him. He denied having been "a spy or an agent of a foreign government." At the same time he declined to answer, on the ground of self-incrimination, whether he knew Elizabeth Bentley, whether he was a Communist, whether he had set up the photographic shop in the Silvermaster basement, whether there was any such shop, or whether he knew a long list of the usual names.

Abraham George Silverman, another of those identified as belonging to the Silvermaster cell, also found interesting work at the Pentagon for the war years. From 1942 to 1945 he was chief of analysis and plans, Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Materiel and Services, Air Forces.58 He too was "deeply shocked" by the charges and "incredible slanders" leveled against him, but there were hardly any questions that he was prepared to answer under oath, not even the question whether Miss Bentley's "charges" were in fact false.

Eugene Wallach, Herman Zap, and Stanley Graze. George R. Faxon, Harvard graduate and a Fifth Amendment case from the Boston school system, was an officer in the Information and Education Branch of the Army. He declined to state whether he was a Communist, or whether he had recruited persons into the Communist Party while in the Army. Sidney Glassman became a Signal Corps inspector; Irving P. Schiller went into the Navy Department; Jerome A. Oberwager was for three years in the Army Ordnance Division. All declined to say whether they were Communists.

John Lautner was once a member of one of the Communist Party's most powerful organizations: the Disciplinary Review Commission. He has broken with Communism and has testified on his career in the army:

Mr. LAUTNER. I was a graduate of Military Intelligence and I was assigned to Psychological Warfare in propaganda work.

Senator Ferguson. Now, who was your superior officer in the Military Intelligence, Psychological Warfare?

Senator Ferguson. Was he a Communist? Mr. Lautner. . . . Later on I found out he was.50

In Chapter 4 we recalled that on September 2, 1939, Whittaker Chambers spent the evening with Adolf Berle, assistant secretary of state. He told Berle about the underground operating in Washington, and Berle made notes of the names that Chambers mentioned. These notes were introduced in evidence at the second trial of Alger Hiss. There is included the following: "Vincent Reno—Now at Aberdeen Proving Grounds—Computer—Math. Assist. to Col. Zornig (Aerial bombsight Detectors) Formerly CP organizer under alias 'Lance Clark.'"

Colonel Ismail Ege, the former chief of the Fourth Section of Soviet General Staff Intelligence, testified as follows in October, 1953:

Mr. Morris. You told us in executive session, did you not, that you had reports from the Aberdeen Proving Grounds during that period, did you not?

Colonel Ege. I did.

Mr. Morris. Will you tell us about that, just by way of giving us an example of the kind of intelligence material that was coming from the U. S. to you as a member of that section.

Colonel Ege. In 1941—it was in the winter and by winter I mean February, March—to my attention came a list of materials from the United States through AMTORG, which was using the diplomatic channels as it is the usual way in intelligence in Soviet Russia. And there were hundreds of pages of technical data, photostats, blueprints, and photos of latest American tanks, artillery guns, and electronic devices, developed and tested at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland.

mittee's question: "Were you a member of the Communist Party when you were working at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds?" He also refused to answer whether he was a member "now," or whether in 1952 he had been a sponsor of, the Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case.

During 1953 the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, under Senator McCarthy, uncovered part of the history of an underground cell and espionage apparatus that has operated, and may still be operating, at the Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, Signal Corps laboratories. From a technical point of view, Fort Monmouth is one of the most important installations of the armed forces. Advanced secret research is there conducted into communications, radar and other electronic devices. Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens officially announced that espionage had occurred at Fort Monmouth. A number of employees with access to secret data refused to testify, and were suspended. There are indications that the Fort Monmouth cell had had in the past an active relation with the executed atomic spy, Julius Rosenberg. Rosenberg was himself, in fact, stationed at Fort Monmouth during 1940.

In Chapter 5 we noted that a former Communist, Max Elitcher, has testified in detail (though not in public) concerning an underground Communist cell that existed for many years within the Navy Bureau of Ordnance. Elitcher was employed by the Navy from 1938, when he graduated from City College (New York) until 1948. He was recruited into the Communist Party by Morton Sobell, who was convicted along with the Rosenbergs and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Assigned to the underground movement in Washington, Elitcher continued there until some time after he had left Navy work.

The cell included draftsmen, engineers, technicians and clerks. Elitcher, who like Sobell is an electrical engineer,

worked on such items as fire control instruments. All of the members were underground Communists who had no direct connection with the open Communist Party. The cell was, however, in liaison with a number of other government underground cells, including ones in the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture.

Sobell also worked for a while in the Bureau of Ordnance, during which time he and Elitcher roomed together. Sobell was head of the cell until 1941, when he transferred to the Reeves Instrument Company in New York, which was also constructing war instruments. Elitcher then took over cell leadership until in 1948 he joined Sobell at Reeves. He later testified at the Rosenberg trial.

On April 17, 1953, an unusual witness appeared before the Committee on Un-American Activities. She was a small, old-fashioned looking, middle-aged spinster, with her hair in a turn of the century bun. She gave her name as Mary Catherine Grier, and her birthplace as Iowa, 1907. She had graduated from the University of Washington, where she had then been a librarian for twelve years. Afterwards she worked for the Oceanographic Laboratories and as an inspector at Plant 2 of the Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle. In 1943 she came to Washington, and got a job that was transferred to the Hydrographic Office of the Navy, where she stayed until 1947. Since then she has been employed by the Arctic Institute of North America, Inc.

Mr. Kunzig. While you were residing at Seattle, Wash., were you acquainted with an individual known as Andrew Remes?

Miss Grier. I believe that I must decline to answer that question, sir.

Mr. Kunzig. For what reason?

Mr. Kunzig. Isn't it true that Andrew Remes was a Communist Party candidate in Seattle for county commissioner in 1942?

Mr. Kunzig. Isn't it true that when you left Seattle, Wash., the Communist Party transferred your membership from Seattle to Washington?

Miss Grier. I also decline to answer that question, sir, on the same grounds. . . .

Mr. Kunzig. Now, when you were working for the Navy Department, would you tell this committee whether you were a member of the Communist Party?

Miss Grier did not refuse to answer all questions concerning Communism. She had access to classified documents, she said, but she denied that she had transmitted any to Communists. She also surprised the committee somewhat by denying that she was a Communist "at the present time." This point was pursued, and became in a way still more surprising:

Mr. Kunzig. Have you at any time in the past been a member of the Communist Party?

Miss Grier. I decline to answer, etc. . . .

Mr. Scherer. Were you a member of the Communist Party or a Communist last month?

Miss Grier. I decline. . . .

Mr. Scherer. Were you a Communist or a member of the Communist Party yesterday?

Miss Grier. I will decline to answer that on the same grounds, sir. . . .

Mr. Kunzig. But today—today you are not a member of the Communist Party?

Mr. Kunzig. Prior to coming into this room to testify, were you a member of the Communist Party?

Miss Grier. I decline to answer that question too, sir.

There can be no denying that Miss Grier was precise in her distinctions.

Is it possible that she chose to make use of an esoteric Communist principle that was summed up as follows in a confidential Civil Service report:

# CHAPTER 13

# THE CAPITOL

There is no public information concerning its penetration, if any has occurred, of the judicial branch. The pattern of the web, the fact that not a few lawyers have been shown to be Communist or pro-Communist, the existence of an active lawyers' organization under Communist control, all suggest that the judicial branch has not been immune.

The public record does establish that the web has not neglected the legislative branch—that is, Congress. With respect to Congress the record is, true enough, relatively meager, even allowing for the fact that the total number of congressmen and congressional employees is only a small fraction of the number of persons in the executive establishment. No direct investigation of Congress or its employees has ever been made. This may well be because most of the investigating has been done by congressional committees.

litical, do not welcome any outside interference with their liberty to hire and fire.

Then there have been a number of congressmen, both representatives and senators, who for one period or another have been favorites of the *Daily Worker* by virtue of their support of Communist-backed issues or organizations. Who during those times were sitting in their offices? Who from among the web dwellers managed, for that matter, to insert themselves into the service of even anti-Communist congressmen, who are of course the overwhelming majority? We cannot answer these questions precisely.

In relation to the committees of Congress, the record is more helpful. During the questioning of witnesses who have been identified as involved in the web of subversion, it has been found that a number of them worked for one or more of the committees. As usual there seems to be something more than coincidence. The web dwellers were concentrated on two particular kinds of committee: those concerned with special problems of economic or social change; and those concerned with war. In nearly all cases—perhaps in all, if more of the truth were known—there were several web dwellers on any given committee, not just one. When one got on a staff, more were almost sure to follow.

When temporary ("ad hoc") congressional committees are set up for some special purpose, or when standing committees undertake some temporary special investigation, it is usual for them to "borrow" individuals from an executive agency. At other times, committee staff members will be carried on the rolls of an executive agency for bookkeeping purposes. Many of our web dwellers were in this manner "lent" to Congress by one or another executive agency. And in this loaning process also we may discern a pattern.

Margaret Bennett Porter, 61 a Columbia Law School graduate, went to work for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in 1934, at a time when the Ware cell was flourishing there. She was soon lent to the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. (On June 12, 1953, she proved one of the most obstreperous of Fifth Amendment pleaders.) Allan Rosenberg was on loan to the LaFollette Committee from the Railroad Retirement Board—where, we may recall, Abraham George Silverman, who got Whittaker Chambers his job at the National Research Project, was an important official. Charles Kramer was lent out by the Works Progress Administration. While Charles Flato was working for the LaFollette Committee, he was on the books of the Farm Security Administration. And so on.

From the record we may assemble the following examples of service on the staffs of congressional committees by Fifth Amendment cases:

- (2) John Abt, Charles Flato, Charles Kramer and Allan Rosenberg were on the staff of the Subcommittee on Civil Liberties of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor (Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., Chairman). Abt was chief counsel and Flato the public relations man. 
    - (3) Henry H. Collins, Jr., Charles Flato, Sonia Gold,\*

Herbert S. Schimmel and Frederick Palmer Weber were on the staff of the House Select Committee on Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens (John H. Tolan, Chairman).

- (5) Henry H. Collins, Jr., was executive secretary of the Subcommittee on Technological Mobilization of the Senate Military Affairs Committee (Harley Kilgore, Chairman). Charles Kramer and Frederick Palmer Weber were on the staff.
- (6) Charles Kramer and Frederick Palmer Weber were on the staff of the Senate Subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor (Claude Pepper, Chairman).

Those familiar with the procedures of congressional committees know that in determining what happens the staff is often more important than the members. It could hardly be otherwise. The congressmen and senators have many other obligations and official interests. The staff is working full time. It gathers the evidence, does the research and field work, selects the witnesses (for the most part), writes the memoranda and public releases, analyzes the evidence, drafts laws, prepares the reports, suggests lines of inquiry to follow up or disregard.

sirable to have someone placed as a secretary to White in order to facilitate the obtaining of information from his office for delivery to Soviet espionage agents. As a result of these deliberations, Mrs. Helen Witte Silvermaster went to one of the Communist functionaries in Washington, D.C., and from this source secured the name of Sonia Steinman Gold. Eventually, Mrs. Gold, through arrangements with White, obtained a position (as one of the secretaries) in the United States Treasury Department. As a result of this employment, Mrs. Gold obtained documents from White's office, which she copied and made her notes available to Mrs. Helen Witte Silvermaster."

the committees' work must have been pleasing from the web's point of view. Let us consider briefly what some of these committees did, with the aid of their Fifth Amendment pleaders-to-be.

The Tolan Committee put out a *Grapes of Wrath* type of disguised Marxian essay on the subjects of the dust bowl, seasonal workers, and the causes of economic depression.

The Murray (Small Business) Committee conducted an irregular guerilla campaign against the larger American corporations.

The Kilgore Committee considered that one of its main concerns in surveying "technological mobilization" was to sound the alarm against "cartelization" and other sins of what Marxists call "finance-capitalist imperialism." Moreover, work on the staff of this committee also meant easy access to important secret information.

\* I do not wish to suggest that all the work of these committees was tainted. Some of it, including some in which some of the Fifth Amendment

It will be seen from our list that several persons—Kramer, Collins, Weber, for example—were, one might say, professionals in this field, migrating from one committee to another. Frederick Palmer Weber is a new name for us, and he did not, so far as I know, testify until April, 1953. He is a rather large, heavy man, with an ample set of chins. He went to the University of Virginia, also new to these pages. Weber must have puzzled that marvelously handsome campus, with its architecture like its statutes designed by Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote his doctoral dissertation on "Three Uses of the Concept of Matter in Dialectical Materialism."

Mr. Weber appealed during his testimony to the name and heritage of Jefferson, which he evidently feels to be chiefly embodied in the incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment. Since the end of 1946 and a slump in his committee employment, Weber has apparently been active in promoting closer relations with the Communist satellite governments of eastern Europe. But he refused to answer questions as to whether he arranged a meeting between Silvermaster and Oscar Lange, the Polish ambassador; whether he worked for the Bulgarian government; whether he had attended meetings at the Hungarian Legation; or whether on December 21, 1948 he had gone to the Polish Legation and had left with them "some materials" that he had in his possession at that time.

cases had a hand, was valuable. Even where investigations, reports or publicity releases were favorable to Communist purposes, that did not invariably mean that they were false.

Even more insidious is the practice of coloring the information that is disseminated so that local organizations, party-line newspapers, periodicals, and circular letters can incite and inspire any desired reaction by high-pressure propaganda techniques. . . .

The staff of his Civil Liberties Committee had been for several years a smooth and fast-running machine. Take one small operation. On May 30, 1937, there occurred the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoot of the shoo

The Kramer-gathered story may have been true. But a very careful report submitted by William V. Daly, Chicago's assistant corporation counsel, to Senator James Hamilton Lewis of Illinois annotated in detail another account: that the riot was instigated, and deliberately provoked to the blood-shedding stage, by a group of individuals who were proved to be active Communists. It does seem strange that the clinching film was obtained from the International Labor Defense, an organization created by the Comintern in the United States, as in all countries, as the legal and political defense arm of Communist "class war fighters."

Kramer's boss, and the boss of the staff generally, was its counsel, John Abt. It was in Abt's apartment on Central Park West, New York, that Elizabeth Bentley said she first met the key members of the Victor Perlo cell. None of those whom she named, including Abt, however, have been willing to reply to questions concerning that meeting. Abt was identified by Chambers and Nathaniel Weyl as a member of the original Ware cell in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. After Ware's death, first Nathan Witt and then Abt are said to have succeeded Ware as the cell's leader. John Abt took over more than the cell from Harold Ware. As we have had earlier occasion to note, he married Ware's widow, Jessica, who for many years has been the editor of the pro-Soviet propaganda magazine, formerly Soviet Russia Today, now New World Review.

Abt is a lawyer well trained by Harvard, and he is a slippery man to deal with in committee hearings. In the approved Communist tradition he uses the committee room as a forum from which to propagandize "to the masses." But in the end he falls back exactly as do the others on the plea of self-incrimination.

I see John Abt every now and then. He has a cottage back in the woods a couple of miles from where we live in the foothills of the Berkshires. He and his wife, and often friends or, shall we say, business associates, come out for part of the summer and for weekends away from his city work of representing Communists and Communist-controlled organizations. On Sunday mornings, now and then, he can be seen—with his black mustache and his head almost bald now—bouncing along in his open jeep, on his way to get the Sunday papers from the village. At the general store they know about the Abts, and gossip a bit about them. Nearly everyone "charges" in our village, but the Abts—Mrs. Abt, actually—always pays in cash, from, they say, a large roll of bills. The butcher remembers them because guests come on the evening train to stay with them, and they go in for roasts. There is some gossip also about those guests, who seem to be in some way not what folks are used to in so small and old a New England village.

# CHAPTER 14

# THE ATOM IN THE WEB

THE FACT THAT the web of subversion has ensnared the American atomic project has been made known to the world through the public trial and conviction of Allan Nunn May, Klaus Fuchs, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Harry Gold, David Greenglass and Morton Sobell, and by the disappearance, presumably behind the Iron Curtain, of Bruno Pontecorvo. These trials have proved that many of the atomic secrets have been communicated to Soviet representatives by scientists or technicians working within the project. The testimony at the trials has also shown, as the trial judges have remarked from the bench, that the cases which have reached court represent only a small proportion of the total atomic espionage that has taken place.

The Communist penetration of the atomic project began, in a sense, before the project existed. Basing themselves on a correct estimate of the role of science and technology in our century's power struggle, the Communists long ago took steps to win over scientists, technicians and technical workers. In the United States and throughout the world, they founded or joined appropriate associations and unions, such as the Association of Scientific Workers, the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union, etc.

tions. Under the modified McMahon Bill (1946), the Manhattan District was replaced by the civilian Atomic Energy Commission

The fissionable materials for atomic weapons are made at the Oak Ridge (Tennessee) and Hanford (Washington) plants. The final assembly of the weapons and their triggering mechanisms takes place at the Los Alamos (New Mexico) installation. For administrative purposes, Los Alamos was set up as a branch of the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory.

Several others who were admittedly Communists while at Berkeley-Robert R. Davis, David Hawkins, Frank Oppenheimer (brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer) and Philip Morrison, for example—have testified with one or another degree of frankness. Steve Nelson, who succeeded Crouch as Alameda County organizer, is now in jail. Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, Bernadette Doyle and Ken Max Manfred (formerly Friedman) have refused to answer questions concerning their identification as local Party organizers. Others such as David Joseph Bohm and Irving David Fox, have declined to state whether they were Party members while engaged in classified research at the Radiation Laboratory.

It has been established that from some time prior to 1940 there was a large and active Communist membership on the Berkeley campus and specifically in the Radiation Laboratory. As the atomic project developed, the number of graduate students, scientists and technicians working in the labo-

ratory rapidly expanded. The laboratory became part of the Manhattan District. Persons went from it not only to Los Alamos but to Oak Ridge, Hanford, the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, and throughout the project.

During the Spanish Civil War, Nelson was a lieutenant-colonel in the Communist-run Abraham Lincoln Brigade, in which hundreds of young Americans served, many of them unaware that it was an instrument of the Soviet secret police. An Un-American Activities Committee "Report on Atomic Espionage" dated September 29, 1949, states: "Since 1938, Steve Nelson has been a national figure in the Communist Party, as well as a leading functionary in the Moscow-controlled Communist underground."

The report continues:

Steve Nelson was so important to the Communist movement and had gained such favor with his superiors that in 1940 he was assigned as organizer for the party in the bay area at the port of San Francisco, Calif. He was also given the underground assignment to gather information regarding the development of the atomic bomb. This assignment was facilitated by Steve Nelson's having met a woman in Spain who had gone to Spain in 1937 to meet her husband, also a volunteer of the International Brigade. Upon arrival in Spain, this woman was informed that her husband has \[had?\] been killed, and she was befriended by Steve Nelson. This woman, upon her return to the United States, moved to Berkeley, Calif.,

where she became acquainted with and married one of the leading physicists engaged in the development of the atomic bomb.

The woman here referred to was Mrs. Katherine Puening Harrison, and the physicist, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, wartime head of Los Alamos and at present chief of the government's advisory committee on atomic energy. Further testimony described how Nelson approached the Oppenheimers through a third person at the university, and how they rejected his proposals: "An investigation of the aforementioned scientist disclosed that neither he nor his wife engaged in any subversive activities and that their loyalty has never been questioned by the government."

This rebuff did not interfere with Nelson's activities in the area. These continued in liaison with Vassili Zubilin, cover name "Cooper," who had formerly been a secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

Dr. Oppenheimer's brother, Dr. Frank Friedman Oppenheimer, also a physicist, proved more receptive to the Communist approaches that were being made throughout the Bay region. After having publicly and indignantly denied, in 1947, a newspaper story that he had been a Communist Party member, he admitted under oath in 1949 that this was true.

Mr. Moulder. You withdrew from the Communist Party?

Dr. OPPENHEIMER. Yes.

Mr. Moulder. What steps do you take to do that?

Dr. Oppenheimer. You just leave. At least, I did. You just don't go to any more meetings or pay any more dues.

This was a sympathetic attitude for Dr. Oppenheimer to have taken—provided, of course, he was quite certain that none of this batch of friends was among those Communists of the atomic project who were transmitting secrets that may prove worth some millions of American lives. One wonders just how Dr. Oppenheimer feels so certain on this point. Still, since he will not tell us who the friends are, we will have to take his word for it.

Mr. Morris. And when did you discontinue your membership in the Communist Party?

Mr. HAWKINS. I discontinued it in early 1943.

Mr. Morris. In what month?

Mr. HAWKINS. I'm not exactly sure of the time, because there was no definite single act of termination. I simply left; but I believe that it was in March of that year.

Mr. Morris. In other words, it was no definite break

on your part with the Communists?

It can, however, be definitely dated as May, 1943, when Mr. Hawkins went to Los Alamos. He held various administrative jobs there, and ended as official historian of the whole business:

Mr. Morris. And you've had access to classified infor-

Mr. HAWKINS. Yes, indeed.

Since the war, Dr. Hawkins has been a professor at the University of Colorado. When the Internal Security Subcommittee questioned him in May, 1953, he was doing some advanced study and part-time teaching at Harvard. His past experiences do not seem to have soured him with causes and organizations favored by the Communists. In 1950 he was a sponsor of a meeting held by the Civil Rights Congress, which as far back as 1947 was officially cited by the Attorney General as subversive. He was also—in "1949, maybe 1950"—connected with the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, the organization that sponsored the famous "Waldorf" peace meeting of 1950, condemned by the State Department as Communist-controlled.

In Dr. Hawkins' history of Los Alamos it may be presumed that Dr. Philip Morrison figured prominently. Philip Morrison is a very important physicist, intimately connected with the development of the atomic bomb. He has himself sketched his role:

I served as a physicist and group leader in the Metallurgical Laboratory until sometime in the spring or early summer of 1944, when I was invited to join the E. I. Dupont de Nemours Laboratory, who were at that time constructing and engineering the large plants of Stanford \[Hanford?\] from the designs which we in the metallurgical laboratory had prepared. I worked for a short time. Instead of going to the Northwest, though . . . I was asked by the Army to take part as technical aid to a positive intelligence program then being organized to study the nature of the supposed German efforts in this field, and I did not go to the Northwest because I needed easier access to Washington, D.C.

In the late summer of 1944... I was released from the office of General Groves and went then to the University of California laboratory in New Mexico \[i.e., Los Alamos\]... and I worked there until after the test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico.

Immediately after the test, I flew to the Pacific. . . . I was one of a small group of experts who assembled, tested, and mounted the bombs that were used for combat.

Dr. Morrison admitted that he had formerly been a Communist. Fortunately for the rest of us, he too (he said) got out of the Party before he got into the Manhattan District. Like his friends, he was vague about details, especially of timing.

Mr. Morris. Now, Dr. Morrison, have you been a member of the Berkeley Campus section of the Communist Party?

Dr. Morrison. I joined the Young Communist League when I was about 18, and when I was about 21, I did become a member of the Communist Party in Berkeley. I don't remember precisely which branch.

Mr. Morris. That was in the years 1939 and 1940? Dr. Morrison. Or perhaps a little before.

His departure from the Party did not lead Dr. Morrison into political lethargy. Under committee questioning, and the silent witness of documents, he acknowledged his active association with such Communist fronts as American Peace Crusade, Soviet Russia Today, the Civil Rights Congress, and the "campaign on behalf of Alexander Trachtenberg, convicted Communist under the Smith Act." Nor do these activities belong to Dr. Morrison's distant past. The report on "Interlocking Subversion" (1953) notes: "Professor Philip Morrison . . . is currently a leader of the Communist-controlled American Peace Crusade." The report on "Subversive Influence in the Educational Process" summarized as follows:

Professor Morrison acknowledged that he had been a member of the Young Communist League and the Communist Party in California in about 1939 prior to becoming associated with the atomic bomb project. In fact, he was such a trained Communist that he delivered for his Communist unit a series of lectures on Leninism....

Robert R. Davis was another of those who joined the Party at Berkeley. He testified that he was recruited by Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, and that he and his wife, who also joined, were motivated by curiosity. This was "probably January or February of 1943." At the beginning of April, 1943, he was transferred to Los Alamos, but before leaving he and his wife destroyed their Party cards. "It was not a matter of breaking with the Party; I never felt associated with the Party."

Kenneth May, who was himself a University of California teacher when he became an active Communist official in the Berkeley campus branch and the Alameda County organization, never went to Los Alamos. However, he had some of the same problems in connection with his change of scene to Army life. He has testified at greater length than any of the others, without objecting to any questions that were put to him.

I joined the Communist Party in 1936 and severed my connections with it in 1942....

When I entered the service I withdrew from the Party and have been independent of it ever since.

Mr. VELDE. Just how did you withdraw from the Party?

Dr. May. Well, no formal withdrawal was necessary, because when I was drafted into the Army, everybody who went into the Army was sort of disconnected from the Party, or given a sort of leave from the Party, so I never made a formal resignation. . . .

Mr. VELDE. The Communist Party gave you leave while you were in the Army?

Dr. May. Technically I suppose that was the case.

Mr. Velde. Was that a formal matter or understanding?

Colonel Ismail Ege testified concerning a man who has often used the name "Arthur Adams." 63

Adams was illegal agent, or illegal resident, correctly speaking, of the Fourth Section. . . . He was head of one network, having his contact with legal network through cutout. . . . Adams was born in some Scandinavian country, Sweden or Norway. He was all \[old?\] Bolshevik working for the Comintern. He was a friend of Lenin and . . . engineer. \[He came to the United States several times during the late '20's and the '30's, ostensibly for business purposes.\] Now, somewhere in the late '30's, according to his file, he was sent illegally to the U.S. . . . He was sent . . . through Canada by a false passport and when I was chief of the Fourth Section Adams was operating in the United States, having a contact with AMTORG foreign chief engineer Korovin.

During the war this same Electronics Corporation performed secret government contracts amounting to some \\$6,000,000, and for a while was the only contractor producing certain highly secret radar items.

The House committee report continues the story:

During the war period Adams was discovered to be actively engaged in espionage activities for the Soviet Government. Those activities included the securing of information with respect to the developments that were being made in the United States in connection with nuclear fission. . . .

He experienced considerable success in securing data that he desired, for when his room and his effects were secretly searched in 1944 by Government agents, he was found to have in his possession highly secret information regarding the atomic bomb plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., as well as other vital information regarding the development of atomic energy in other countries.

Adams, the report states, "was in physical contact with Clarence Hiskey, an atomic scientist assigned to the Manhattan project." Clarence Francis Hiskey, born Szczechowski in Milwaukee, was educated at the University of Wisconsin, where he also met and married his first wife, Marcia Sand. A 1945 military intelligence report states: "Hiskey was active

in Communist movements while attending graduate school at the university. . . . Allegedly Marcia, subject's wife, was a Communist."

He obtained a reserve commission in the Chemical Warfare Service, and worked for a while in Knoxville, at the University of Tennessee and later at TVA. Paul Crouch, who was Communist organizer in that region at that time, has testified that he knew Hiskey as an active Party member.

In April, 1944, Hiskey was called to active duty in the Army. This was contrary to normal policy in the case of an able scientist engaged in such work. It was explained by an official of the Manhattan District in subsequent testimony: "We were convinced that he was a subversive agent." This official added somewhat plaintively: "Now, the question was what to do with Hiskey. We had trouble with scientists when we tried to move one." So the easiest solution, granted his reserve commission, was to call him up and to ship him north—to White Horse, Yukon Territory. "While at this station, a search of Clarence Hiskey's effects by security officers disclosed that he had in his effects a personal notebook which contained notes that he had made while working on the atomic bomb project at Chicago, Ill., relative to the development of several components of the bomb."

When Hiskey was called to active duty, he had little time to waste in settling his civilian affairs. "The day after that on which Hiskey was called to active duty in the Army, Arthur Adams arrived in Chicago from New York and imme-

John Hitchcock Chapin, the colleague, agreed to take over contact with Arthur Adams. In order to make sure of the mutual identification, Chapin gave Hiskey a key which Hiskey was to give to Adams and by which Adams would introduce himself to Chapin. "I was told that Arthur Adams was a Russian agent," Chapin was subsequently to testify.

John Chapin has testified in what the committee felt to be a cooperative and sincere manner. He said that Adams wanted atomic information from him, but that he got cold feet and in the end did not furnish any.

Hiskey has refused on the ground of self-incrimination to testify concerning any of these matters. In 1949, when he appeared before the House committee, he was comfortably installed as a chemistry teacher at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In 1952, when he was called before the Internal Security Subcommittee, he was still teaching there.

lieves that this has probably been done inside the United States, and that these bombs, triggered for use at a time to be decided, are probably now in place in suitable American locations.

The evidence and analysis by which Medford Evans reaches this conclusion have been largely ignored in public, but they have not been seriously refuted.

# CHAPTER 15

# SLEEPER APPARATUS

The Communist conspiracy, although larger, more absolute and more successful than any other, is not the only underground, of course. Various kinds of conspiracy—of secret, clandestine, underground association—have always existed in business, ordinary politics, and crime. Espionage, subversion, sabotage and terror are in general assigned to underground organizations. The Communists, although, pre-eminent, are not alone in their addiction to such pursuits.

Over the years, the lessons of experience have become incorporated in certain working rules for conspiratorial, "underground" operations. The purpose of most of these is to preserve secrecy, which is of the essence of the underground. The rules aim to prevent detection, and at the same time to guarantee that the whole structure will not be endangered if one member or one action does nevertheless get detected. The Communists, while adding new technical discoveries of their own, do not neglect the traditional rules.

In understanding the Communist underground, three of the rules are of particular importance.

(1) Decentralization. The ultimate control ("command")

of the entire international underground is centralized in the Soviet headquarters. Operationally, however, the underground is broken up into a maze of comparatively small groups. Each of these is relatively independent. Ordinarily an operating unit has only a single link with the higher apparatus, and this is not direct but through one or more "cutouts." A courier such as Elizabeth Bentley or Whittaker Chambers links an active cell to a more direct agent of the Soviet apparatus, such as Anatol Gromov or Jacob Golos. He is probably using a diplomatic, commercial or journalistic job as "cover," and is in turn linked to a higher level cell.

In addition, there is sometimes a horizontal link, through a single individual, with another group or cell on the same level. The Bentley testimony suggests that Irving Kaplan linked the Silvermaster and Perlo cells horizontally.

The rule of decentralization means that so long as the center survives it is never possible to uncover much of the total network at once. Apart from a blow at the center, no single stroke can do the underground more than minor damage. The detection and destruction of the underground are necessarily a slow, wearisome job.

(2) No records. A well-run conspiracy tries to keep its records, even at the center, to a minimum. The rule for activists—field agents—is that there should be no records or documents whatever: literally none.

For persons fortunate enough to have had no experience of underground life this rule is difficult to grasp. Lawyers, detectives and judges are puzzled and troubled by the lack of "material proof." Even Congressmen with some years of service on the investigating committees keep asking about "Party cards," membership lists, receipts, copies of documents allegedly transmitted, and so on.

But generally speaking, when correct technique is faithfully followed, there are no documents and no other "material" evidence of any kind. In testifying on these points before the Internal Security Subcommittee, Whittaker Chambers

observed: "So far as I know, no one signs any recruitment blanks." 64 Mr. J. G. Sourwine, of Committee counsel, asked:

Miss Bentley. Definitely. I took every possible pre-

Mr. Sourwine. Can you expand at all on the subject of whether there would be any likelihood of being able to get documentary evidence of the fact that an active underground agent is in fact such an agent?

Hede Massing, for many years a professional agent of the Soviet apparatus, stated:

Herbert Philbrick was for many years simultaneously an agent in two undergrounds—that of the FBI and, under FBI direction, that of the Communists. He testified that he could not have proved himself either the one or the other by any documents.

Mr. Sourwine. Mr. Philbrick, while you were operating as an underground agent was there in existence, so far as you know, documentary evidence of that fact?

Mr. PHILBRICK. I don't believe there was any at all, sir. Of course, I operated in a dual capacity. . . . So far as the

Communist Party was concerned, in 1947, when I was ordered by the Party to go into the real underground section of the Party, I was also at the same time ordered to destroy any and all documentary evidence. I was ordered, for example, to destroy a Party card if I held one and never to carry one again. . . .

And yet I was becoming more of a Party member than I had ever been before.

But what it means is that the Russian bosses and the Communist Party realize that they have not only an underground organization but an illegal operation, and therefore they use this, it seems to me, to make it impossible or try to make it impossible to legally prove that any of these people are Party members. They all carry no cards and they operate as though they are not legally Party members, when actually of course they are.

Mr. Sourwine. Sir, from what you can speak of your knowledge of underground activities, what can you tell us of the likelihood that an active undercover agent could be proven to be such by documentary evidence?

Mr. HILLENKOETTER. Well, the only way you could ever prove he was an agent by documentary evidence is that he would be very stupid. He would certainly not be worthwhile having if he had any documentary evidence. The first thing would be to do away with all documentary evidence. . . .

Mr. Sourwine. Perhaps you can tell the Committee . . . whether the CIA does or does not take care to avoid the very existence of documentary evidence with regard to underground agents and their identities.

Mr. HILLENKOETTER. I can't answer for that now, I am no longer there. But they certainly did when I was there.

When he retained some papers and films—part of which eventually emerged from the pumpkin—Whittaker Chambers was deliberately, and at grave personal risk, violating this primary rule. "In the normal course of events," Miss Bentley has explained, "everything that I took in was automatically handed over to the Soviet superior within a matter of 24 to 48 hours. Nothing was left behind."

Miss Bentley. No, sir. . . . And they were so fussy about this whole matter that when they sent me a type-written sheet of instructions I had to read it and burn it in front of the person who gave it to me, because they didn't want me found with that in my handbag in case I got careless.

Mr. Sourwine. In normal course, would you say it was possible for a CIA agent to take instructions over a period of months from a superior who was actually his superior and yet be unable to show or to testify that he ever saw any evidence that the man was, in fact, an employee and his superior?

Admiral HILLENKOETTER. It would be very easy; yes, sir.

Mr. Sourwine. As a matter of fact, that would be the natural course, wouldn't it?

Admiral HILLENKOETTER. The normal thing to do; yes, indeed.

Mr. Sourwine. These people are introduced one to another, and they accept the authority or take the in-

structions or perform the duties on the basis of the oral introductions; do they not?

Admiral HILLENKOETTER. That is right; yes. Mr. Sourwine. They don't show credentials Admiral HILLENKOETTER. No, sir.

(3) Cover. A member of the underground is supposed to "cover" everything that he does. As a member of the underground he has a cover name (or names)—Helen, Cooper, Boris, Carl, whatever it may be, or simply, as with Philbrick, a conventional name like Arthur Trowbridge. He covers his underground activities by an ordinary occupation: diplomat, businessman, lawyer, newspaper correspondent, government official. "If he is an agent, say," Admiral Hillenkoetter explained, "acting as an insurance man, he must know insurance, he must have all of the credentials of insurance. If he fails to have that, he is no good as an agent." For various purposes of liaison, photography, communication, he will need cover addresses, cover telephone numbers, shops or offices, and cover reasons for meeting or travel—like Harold Ware's Farm Research, Inc.; the Dupont Circle violin studio that figures in Chambers' story; Rogov's assignment as a traveling Tass correspondent; the Silvermaster group's volley ball game on Sunday mornings.

For the most part, non-Soviet members of the Communist underground are recruited through appeal to ideological motives. They first join the underground, or slip into it, because they believe in Communism and in "the Soviet experiment." Money seldom has much to do with it, at least at the beginning. (After they are in, it becomes exceedingly difficult to get out, no matter what happens to the original belief.)

Its ideological appeal to many persons of our century gives the Communist underground an immense recruiting reservoir, and a hold over its people that is probably not equaled by any other underground. At the same time it is a potential vulnerability. The Communist ideology is an intricate total faith that affects all of thought and feeling. It is not easy to conceal such a faith. Communist underground agents are therefore more likely than purely mercenary or less fanatic agents to betray themselves ideologically, in words or in writings. To an investigator thoroughly familiar with Communism this offers a mode of detection that up to now has been very little used.

It should not be imagined that the ideological cover adopted by the underground Communists always takes the form of "socialist," "progressive," "left" or "liberal" ideas and language. This is perhaps the easiest and most natural cover, but something quite different, even opposite, is also used on occasion. There are many known cases where Communist agents have disguised themselves as extreme nationalists. There is known to be a secret Soviet training school for agent-"priests." In fact all types of religious ministry, East and West, are being used as cover. During 1953 a cell of Communist agents, which included a senior officer, was discovered in the New York City Police force. Miss Bentley has commented on this problem:

The habit of using a cover language becomes so ingrained that it is usually not dropped even when the inhabitants of the underground are communicating among themselves. Some persons, even some investigators, imagine that all would be known if only a private letter between two "agents" could be found, a confidential talk overheard, a telephone conversation recorded. Sometimes so. But often the text would reveal nothing, unless it could be fitted into the general pattern.

"Uncle George visited us last week, and he was furious that the children had lost the bathtub toys he sent for their birthday." How are we to prove in court whether it really was Uncle George, the toys and the children; or perhaps the Soviet contact, furious because the promised information on the atomic submarine had not been transmitted? "There's too much of a crowd nowadays at the Biltmore. Let's meet tomorrow at the St. Regis." Does that mean: "The Grand Central Station information booth is under FBI surveillance. Let's meet today at St. Patrick's Cathedral."? "We're starting a small news syndicate, and we wonder whether when you get settled in Calcutta you can send us a weekly piece. You can arrange the details with Bill Mercer who's been representing us there up to now." Is it really a news syndicate about which X was talking or telephoning or writing to Y?

Because of such rules as these, the methods of uncovering the underground are severely restricted. Documents can be obtained only by unusual luck, when an underground member breaks the rule (through carelessness, out of curiosity, or as a preparation for desertion) or when an investigator just happens to come upon them, as with the notebook found in Clarence Hiskey's Yukon bedroom or the sight of Judy Coplon passing her notes to her Soviet consul. More usually, assured detection comes only when an individual deserts the underground, or when the underground is itself penetrated by a counterintelligence agent. To some things such individuals can testify directly. With the help of general knowledge concerning the Communist enterprise, the scraps of information that each supplies can slowly be fitted into an expanding pattern.

Let it be noted that we can uncover only the past of the underground. This could not be otherwise. Secrecy is of the essence of the underground. When the underground is no longer secret, to that extent it no longer exists. We can know in a general way that the underground continues to exist and function in the present, but its specific present operations are, and by the nature of the case must be, publicly unknown.

This is in part what accounts for the common error of supposing that the web of subversion, though it may have existed some years back, has been cleaned up "by now"—whenever "now" happens to be. This same error about Communism has been made time and time again in nearly every nation. It is usually propagated by the same people who begin by saying that Communism is a powerless sect, and the underground an hallucination. The next stage is to "recognize" that Communism made some headway in the past, but is at present subsiding or vanished.

What has happened is that several advanced and exposed echelons have been wiped out—or, rather, dislodged. Actually, a number of the now exposed cells and individuals were only half-underground anyway. Such was the climate in which they were working that they did not need to take many

Many of the persons who protected—and continue to protect—the web dwellers, and many sympathizers and dupes of various degree, of course remain untouched in government. From the point of view of effect on national policy, though not of espionage, they sometimes do as much harm as the real underground. But disregarding these, who are outside this book's limits, there is no reason to believe that we have got rid of the web of subversion in government agencies. Every indication is to the contrary. To borrow a figure used by Medford Evans: from the fact that fishermen have caught a good many fish in it, you don't conclude that a lake is empty.

The underground that remains, and perhaps even expands, is more deeply buried, and will be still harder to uproot. We would be as foolish as the loyal citizens of pre-Communist Czechoslovakia to assume that it doesn't exist.

By no means all of our identified underground Communist and Fifth Amendment cases left the agencies by 1947 or earlier. More than two dozen of the UN contingent were on the job in late 1952, and some still are. Frank Coe was still administrative chief of the International Monetary Fund in November, 1952. Harry Ober, we saw, resigned from the Department of Labor on the very day of 1953 that he was subpoenaed. In August, 1953, Edward M. Rothschild was still working for the Government Printing Office. During the 1952 election campaign, General Walter Bedell Smith startled the public by expressing his belief that there were Communist agents inside the Central Intelligence Agency, of which he was then director. He would have been naïve and derelict to have thought otherwise. During 1953, the administration was compelled to fire more than two thousand employees as "security risks," a considerable percentage of them under suspicion or proof of collaboration with the underground.

The testimony of those who have themselves been part of the underground indicates that in all probability there are two different types of cell, or network, that continue to exist within the government agencies, as elsewhere. One type consists of active cells, now quite thoroughly concealed and "covered," that are currently engaged in espionage, subversion and even, where called for, sabotage, diversion and terror.

The other consists of units of the "sleeper apparatus." These are the tactical and strategic reserves. Their members are, for the present, entirely inactive. They have no present orders except to keep hidden, and to entrench themselves as firmly as possible at key points in the governmental structure. They are a force "in being," ready to begin action when the orders come, in the crisis of war or revolution.

# CHAPTER 16

# HOW MUCH DAMAGE?

THE RESPONSE of one section of American public opinion to disclosures concerning the underground swings through a regular cycle. At first the disclosures are denounced as lies, slanders and fantasies. Then, as the evidence mounts, they are dismissed as unimportant, either (a) because it happened long ago and "there is no use raking over old coals" or (b) because it didn't amount to anything anyway, even if true. We have found no reason to believe that the underground has ceased functioning. Let us now try to assess the damage.

The underground operations may be subdivided into: espionage; political-psychological subversion; physical action such as sabotage, diversion (theft) and terror.

In the third category we have noted the possibility that fissionable materials have been diverted from the atomic installations, and the fact that records have been stolen (rather than merely removed for copying and communication). Various investigations, including the Canadian Royal Commission enquiry, have indicated that technical devices, including proximity fuses, bomb sights, radar, antisubmarine instruments, etc., have been physically taken. The nongovernmental sections of the underground have carried out sabotage and terroristic acts, including assassination, on U. S. territory, but up to the present no public investigation or trial has dealt with possible sabotage and terror by the underground in government.

While investigating the magazine Amerasia, the OSS made a secret raid on its offices. The FBI also raided the office of one of the Amerasia editors, Philip Jaffe. On both occasions large numbers of unauthorized and "classified" government documents were found. These were, of course, only what happened to be on hand at those particular moments. The total number transmitted to Amerasia must have been scores of times the number found.

Mr. Frank Bielaski, who led the OSS raid, has testified as follows:

They were not documents that were primarily of literary value. . . . All those that I saw, also, were marked with a paragraph, I can read it exactly to you, I wrote it down in a memorandum, but it was to the effect that "The possession of these documents by an unauthorized person constituted a violation of the Espionage Act," and it quoted the paragraph, and so forth, of the act. . . .

One all of us can remember because it startled us. It was a lengthy document detailing the location of units of the Nationalist Army of China, their strength, how they were armed, where they were located....

Of my knowledge, the total number of documents involved exceeds a thousand—there is 400 that we saw, and I think the FBI seized 467 in Jaffe's office later.

Mr. BIELASKI. Different ones, and 280—some that they seized in Larsen's apartment, here in Washington.

Senator Lodge, in his minority report on the Amerasia case, gave the total as 1,800. One was classified "Very Secret For Eyes Only." There was a "Very Secret" memorandum to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and another on the Chinese Order of Battle. Among the "Top Secret" documents were: a report on the Japanese Air Force; a report on Japanese resources; a Naval Intelligence report on the organization of Japanese naval forces. There were classified reports on seaplane anchorages in Japan, Formosa and Korea, and on the Chinese Air Force, the location of American submarines, the operational plan of Naval counterintelligence.

Whittaker Chambers produced microfilms of many pages of confidential and secret documents. These were only a sampling of what he carried on a single courier journey among the scores that he made. As in the case of any espionage harvest, some of them are trivial. This is always so. Real espionage, as distinguished from fictional espionage, depends on a winnowing of routine and mass results, not on spectacular strikes. One of the great espionage coups of the last war came as the result of gaining access to the litter from a Japanese Foreign Office wastebasket, of which 99.9 per cent was worthless. But among the "pumpkin papers" not all were straw. Sumner Welles, Under-Secretary of State at the time of their theft, was questioned.

Mr. HÉBERT. And at that time would their release to the public, or their release to unauthorized hands, be prejudicial to the best interests of the Nation?

Mr. Welles. In the highest degree prejudicial and in the highest degree dangerous to the Nation's interest. 65

Alger Hiss, as Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, and Harry White, as an assistant secretary, were in a position to be acquainted with virtually all classified information that reached their respective departments. Since these departments were State and Treasury, that means almost all information that reached the government.

The underground economists have been so located as to possess access to most information concerning American industry. Throughout the structure of the government, the rank and file of the web of subversion has been in touch with almost anything that Moscow might want to know.

For some sections of the government underground, espionage has been a minor activity or altogether absent. The primary or even exclusive objective has been politico-psychological subversion. By "subversion" I here mean: influencing, or attempting to influence, actions and policies of the United States government in such a way as to injure United States interests and to serve Soviet (or international Communist) interests.

There is a special difficulty in estimating the damage, past or still to come, from underground subversion. The normal tactical rule of the Communists is to swim, so far as possible, with the current rather than directly against it. They do not pull policies out of a hat, but put their money on that one already present which they feel to be most nearly in accord with their aims. They do not so much try to create conflicts within a nation as to exploit and deepen conflicts that already exist quite apart from Communism.

In accounting for the net result it is impossible to state an exact mathematical proportion between the specific influence of Communism and that of other forces. Often we can say no more than that Communist intervention made the result "more certain."

Let me illustrate this difficulty in the case of U. S. policy toward China. It is universally agreed that the Communist conquest of mainland China has done major damage to U. S. interests to the benefit of Soviet and international Communist interests. It is all but universally agreed that the United States made mistakes in its policy toward China, and that some of these mistakes helped the Communists. It is certain that the web of subversion was at all times working toward Communist victory in China, and was advocating from its own standpoint those American "mistakes" that helped the Communists.

But it is not agreed whether China could have been "saved," even with a correct American policy. Nor is there agreement as to the relative weight of Communist influence in producing the wrong policy that was in fact followed. There were non-Communist Americans who honestly believed many of the same things that Communists believed about China, and who, though for quite different reasons, were honestly in favor of some of the same policy measures.

At the end of its year-long inquiry into the Institute of Pacific Relations, the Internal Security Subcommittee concluded that the web of subversion had succeeded in affecting United States opinion and policy in ways "favorable to the Chinese Communists," and in "keeping United States policy on a course favorable to Communist objectives in China." 66 I agree with this conclusion. I do not think that the Communist victory in China was "inevitable." I believe that it would not have occurred without a breakdown in U. S. policy, and that this breakdown could have been avoided—at least sufficiently—if not for the influence of the web of subversion. This conclusion seems to me established by the evidence, but I know that there are reasonable and informed men who will disagree with me.

There is a similar problem in connection with wartime policy toward Tito. When we entered the war there were two distinct anti-Nazi resistance groups in Yugoslavia: an anti-Communist group headed by Mihailovitch, and a Communist group headed by Tito. After hesitation and an attempt at straddling, we chose Tito, and thereby lost all chance to resist the Communist advance into the Balkans right up to the Adriatic.

Communist ideas and influences, including some very general conceptions about the nature of the war, that also led toward Tito.

At the very least we can say that the activity of the underground made the loss of China and the desertion of Mihailovitch "more certain." If not the deciding factor, it was one among the set of deciding factors. And it would be hard to overstate the long-term damage from these two disastrous events.

The political and strategic restrictions that we accepted in fighting the Korean war were also, in my opinion, disastrous. I share the opinion of Generals MacArthur and Van Fleet that the Korean war could have been won, and that winning it would not have led to generalized world conflict. As it is, we shall pay the cost of not winning it for many decades to come. The restrictions were equivalent to an abandonment of the objective of victory, and the web of subversion did all that it could to keep them from being lifted. Nevertheless, in this case I do not think that the activities of the web were a decisive factor. The influence of our allies and the indecisiveness of our own leaders account for the negative policy here, not the machinations of our enemy.

The web of subversion has not been on the winning side in all of its campaigns, of course. After all, the nation is still standing. Our country is at its roots so strong and healthy that it can take a lot of punishment, and survive even colossal mistakes. The underground has worked hard for the diplomatic recognition of Communist China and the liquidation of the Formosa Nationalist regime, but has so far failed to get either. The underground wanted Korea to be altogether ditched, and worked systematically for several years to that end. A massive Communist campaign against our intervention in the Greek civil war was a total failure. In the Rosenberg case, as in the trials of the domestic Communist leaders, the law has taken its due course. Indo-China is being aided, Spain has been recognized. Each of these

stances represents a defeat for the underground, though defeat only in single battles of a long and continuing war.

In contrast, the units of the underground provided the political cover on the American flank for the Soviet Empire's triumphant swallowing of eastern Europe; for the unimpeded Communist conquest of the bulk of the Italian and French trade union movements; for the liquidation, under slogans of reprisal against "collaborationists," of tens of thousands of Europe's anti-Communists; for the forced return eastward of hundreds of thousands of anti-Communist war prisoners, refugees and deserters. The underground can take legitimate pride in its clever manipulation of American "anti-colonial" attitudes in connection with Indonesia, the Middle East and North Africa; its contribution to our continuing paralysis in the face of Guatemala's creeping subjection to Communist rule; its sly use of our genuine concern for civil liberties as a protective shield for its own treachery; its skilful support of the Communist drive into the domestic labor movement; its considerable share in the embittering of relations with our principal allies; and the brain pounding on scientists and policy makers as a result of which the political advantages that could have come to the United States from overwhelming atomic superiority have been so largely sterilized.

If we now add the damage from subversion to that from espionage, what sum do we get? The White House, when rejecting the Rosenbergs' plea for clemency, followed Judge Kaufman in estimating the possible future damage from that single espionage action at ten million lives. Have the pleaders of the Fifth Amendment ever faced the probable total?

# CHAPTER 17

# WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

I HAVE INTENDED this book to be an orderly review of the recorded facts concerning the web of governmental subversion, and nothing more. The problem of the cause and cure of modern subversion, and the still more general philosophical issues to which subversion is related, are outside of my present range. Nevertheless, the facts of subversion inevitably lead responsible citizens who become acquainted with them to reflect on their meaning. When the possible, even probable, consequences of Communist subversion are once realized, we can scarcely avoid pondering what we as a nation can do to remove or at least minimize so absolute a threat to our freedom and survival.

Of course, a good deal has been done during recent years. Although the threat remains, it is now widely recognized instead of being ignored or coddled. Hundreds of web dwellers have been rooted out of the government agencies, and a few of them have been put in jail. Measures taken against other sections of the Communist conspiracy serve to weaken the cover and support of the governmental underground. There is little doubt that today, as compared to a decade or two decades ago, the underground has a harder job to penetrate the governmental structure and to operate successfully within it.

The methods of investigation, legal action and exposure that have brought this improvement in our defenses will con-

(1) Law. It is quite generally agreed that some changes in the law are needed in order to enable us to combat underground subversion more successfully. This is not surprising. Nothing exactly like the Communist enterprise has ever existed before. Laws that were placed on the books before it came into being can hardly be expected to handle all of the unprecedented problems that Communism brings.

It seems to be desirable to alter the statute of limitations with respect to some of the criminal acts that are frequently encountered within the web. Most of the underground Communists, for example, commit perjuries in swearing to their applications for government jobs or job transfers. We have seen why such actions can seldom be discovered until some time after they have occurred. By then the prevailing statute of limitations often prohibits prosecution. This is the case also with some of the other acts, including (under certain circumstances) the transmission of confidential data to unauthorized persons. It is therefore argued that if the law is to be able to reach the members of the underground, whether as admonition or as punishment, then the statute of limitations must be altered so as to permit prosecution for the typical crimes during a longer period after their commission.

Clearer, more relevant legal definitions of "political conspiracy," "espionage," and "subversion" are needed. The members of the Communist conspiracy are not just agents hired for money or wild-eyed nihilists making bombs that

they plan to throw in Wall Street windows. The Communist underground is a conspiratorial association cemented by an intricate ideology as well as by the most subtle organizational devices. The law needs an objective definition that will enable us to recognize the conspiracy when and where it exists, as well as to declare who is part of it and—not less important—who is not.

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that a well-run underground conspiracy cannot be brought to light unless the investigating agencies themselves make use of certain underground methods. You can't breathe below the surface of the sea without the help of a diving helmet. You can't find out very much about an underground organization unless you have some way of making observations in the perpetual darkness of the underground world. This means that you have to have secret agents of your own inside the ranks of the underground, secretly win over some of its people to your side, or find a secret mechanical means for observing what its members say and do. Such mechanical means include the wire tapping of telephone conversations, and other methods of secretly recording or photographing the actions of presumed conspirators.

Evidence obtained by wire tapping and by some analogous technical methods has not been admissible in our federal courts. This was the reason why the conviction of Judy Coplon was upset on appeal, and why a number of cases involving the underground have not been brought to trial.

It is understandable that we as a nation hesitate about this sort of evidence. We feel wire tapping to be an invasion of private life, and we might feel still more disturbed by some of the electronic recording devices now available. The Depart-

The most trying and obvious of all the legal problems is the Fifth Amendment plea. No one who attends a few sessions of committee hearings or merely reads a volume of testimony doubts that the Fifth Amendment is being distorted and abused. The amendment provides that in connection with a crime a man shall not be compelled to testify against himself. It does not permit him to refuse at his own choosing to testify against others, or on matters of fact that are of proper interest to a court, jury or authorized investigating body. Such an interpretation, which is the implied premise of the Fifth Amendment pleaders and some of their attorneys, would lead to a complete breakdown in law enforcement. Nobody would any longer have to testify to anything.

Many of the witnesses would seem to be guilty of contempt for at least some of their refusals to answer, even on the basis of the present laws and judicial tradition. The investigating committees and the Department of Justice have come to agree on a further legal remedy for this use of the Fifth Amendment to thwart instead of to serve justice.

It is known that several former members of the under-

There are those who believe that we should go further and restrict or even abolish the privilege against self-incrimination. Judge Samuel Seabury, for example, in an address delivered to the American Law Institute, reminded his audience that this particular privilege does not have its origin in the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights or any other of the great charters of English liberty. The Supreme Court has held that it is not one of the basic, fundamental rights that must be considered incapable of change. In the case of *Palko* v. *Connecticut*, the Supreme Court said in a decision written by Judge Cardozo and agreed to by Judges Hughes, Stone, Brandeis, Roberts and Black:

Indeed, today as in the past there are students of our penal system who look upon the immunity \[from self-incrimination\] as a mischief rather than a benefit, and who would limit its scope, or destroy it altogether. No doubt there would remain the need to give protection against torture, physical or mental. Justice, however, would not perish if the accused were subject to a duty to respond to orderly inquiry.

Apart from any future modification of the privilege, it is becoming widely accepted that resort to the plea of self-incrimination is sufficient reason to discharge any person from public employment or from other jobs where loyalty, security and reliability are qualifications. During 1953 the administration so ruled with respect to jobs in the federal government. An amendment to the New York City charter

explicitly requires that any city employee who appears before "any court or judge, any legislative committee . . . \[and\] shall refuse to testify or to answer any question \[of public interest\] . . . on the ground that his answer would tend to incriminate him" shall forfeit his employment. This statute has been held by the courts to be constitutional. A logical and reasonable further step would be to require, as a condition of public employment, the signing of a waiver of immunity with respect to any question related to that employment.

- 2. We feel that it is essential that the legislation be effective. Too often a cursory study of this problem leads people to believe that the answer is very simple; that all we have to do is to outlaw the Communist Party, or pass a law requiring that its members register, and that the problem will solve itself. This is not the case. The Communist Party in its operations presents a problem which is something new under the sun. It changes its spots, its tactics, and strategy without conscience, and ordinary legal techniques are inadequate to cope with it.
- (2) Motive. There are many individuals who in the past collaborated with the web of subversion, but no longer do

If a substantial number of these persons should tell what they know, the nation would immensely benefit. The underground could be cleaned altogether out of some sectors. Some of its key leaders unquestionably could be spotted. What is at stake here is the future, not the past. As chairman of the Internal Security Subcommittee, Senator Jenner made this comment at the beginning of the inquiry into interlocking subversion:

The Subcommittee expects that these hearings will aid it in recommending legislation to prevent further infiltration, and to discover methods and individuals that the Communist International organization may still be employing today.

The Subcommittee undertakes this investigation primarily with the view to preventing further infiltration and not to hold up to the pillory past misdeeds. But the past is prologue. The Subcommittee hopes that all persons with knowledge of this penetration will assist the Subcommittee in its purpose.

For more ordinary people we do not seem to be offering enough either of punishment or of reward. As a rule there is not much penalty for belonging to the underground, or for

Let's think of it for a moment as a humdrum practical matter. A man has to make a living. This is a point that the Communist enterprise remembers. If a web dweller loses his government post, he is given a job in a Party-controlled front, union, cover business, "congress," or newspaper. If he is a lawyer or economist or statistician, Party institutions hire him as a consultant. In short, he can still draw a pay check. We have seen many such instances in these pages.

The professional investigators believe that this job situation is one of the principal means by which the Party maintains its hold on lukewarm collaborators. The investigators are sure that some, perhaps many, would be ready to break and to tell the truth if they knew that subsequently they would be able to make a living.

few persons in this country (outside the web) who had this knowledge. It is only natural, therefore, that until recently there was little effective counteraction.

There is no possible ground for suggesting that Presidents Roosevelt and Truman—or their Republican appointees such as Frank Knox, John McCloy, William J. Donovan and Robert Patterson—were in the smallest degree disloyal. However, it is certain that they, and most of us, have been ignorant of what needs to be known about the Communist enterprise. Our knowledge has been growing, and as it grows our action has been becoming more effective. Neither knowledge nor action is yet adequate.

In order to defend the nation against the web of subversion, we need the kind of knowledge that is gained by the professional work of trained investigators: in particular, by the FBI. Prior to 1940 the FBI was not authorized or financed to go very far in the investigation of the Communist enterprise. Since then its record is remarkably good. The FBI deserves, and receives, the country's approval. At the same time, the function of the FBI is strictly, and properly, limited. The FBI does not make policy; it does not hire and fire; ordinarily it does not even make recommendations.

In furthering public knowledge as well as in expressing the public demand for counteraction, the congressional investigations play a conspicuous and indispensable role. A considerable literature on Communism and the Soviet Union, produced by competent scholars and objective journalists instead of by fellow travelers, is now being published. Schools and colleges are beginning to offer serious courses of study in Communism and Soviet history. The knowledge gained from all of these sources helps build national resistance to the web of subversion.

(4) Attitude. The underground is a secret plant that flourishes only in darkness. It withers when exposed to daytime and the open air. But to find and uproot it is a long and wearisome task. The search will falter unless it is sustained by favoring, or at least not opposing, winds of public attitude and feeling.

It is a paradoxical but undoubted fact that the attitude of a portion of the American public, including persons who themselves are in no way compromised with Communism, has been of a kind to obstruct rather than to aid the effort to uncover and destroy the web of subversion. This is plainly expressed in the case of not a few persons, including some of great prominence, who have publicly shown themselves to feel far more bitter against those who have exposed members of the underground than they do against the underground itself.

Part of the explanation for such attitudes is to be traced to the unrealized influence of the Communists, who are wonderfully clever with their semantic and emotional protective screens. The Communists succeed in making many non-Communists feel that somehow they are "accomplices" in what has been done. The non-Communists are trapped into believing that it is "a generation" or "the New Deal" or "liberalism" that is on trial, not the Communist underground and its individual members—Alger Hiss, William Remington, Judy Coplon, Carlo Marzani, Julius Rosenberg, David Greenglass, and whoever it will be tomorrow. And of course some of the non-Communists were in truth duped into aiding the underground. This awkward part of their past sometimes makes them unenthusiastic about exposures that might well prove embarrassing to them, or to the group, party or faction to which they adhere. More gen-

erally, these negative attitudes reflect ignorance, and a misapplication of what are thought to be liberal and progressive principles.

In this as in so many fields, the Communists have succeeded in corrupting our vocabulary. Herbert Philbrick, Angela Calomiris, Matthew Cvetic, Mary Stalcup Markward and several dozen others like them are and have always been loyal and courageous citizens of their country. At the request of their government, they volunteered for a duty full of danger and most arduous: they entered the camp of the enemy, and there, on his territory, within the ranks of his secret army, they served for many years. It is incredible that they can be thought of as "stool pigeons."

In most cases, it is surely inappropriate to term those who break away from Communism "informers," with all the unsavory connotation of that word's history. The Communist enterprise is neither a loyal company of Robin Hoods nor a cheap gang of petty crooks. Although it is a ruthless power apparatus, for the man who joins seriously it is also the great heresy of our age. He who, having really been a Communist, succeeds in tearing his soul away from Communism is more likely to be a witness to the truth than an "informer." We are rightly suspicious of easy turncoats. There is no reason to ring all the bells every time a Party member checks out. But in at least some cases the relevant attitude would seem to be that not of a crime movie but of the Bible. Do we not rightly rejoice at the strayed lamb who has been found, at the one who has repented more than at the ninety and nine who have never sinned?

Negative public attitudes protect the web of subversion by obscuring its true nature, by providing the web dwellers with a "moral" self-justification, and by undermining any concerted attempt to expose and destroy the web. I have often observed how directly such negative attitudes can obstruct the painstaking work of professional investigation. Let me cite two instances.

Talking to him, I discovered that he possessed first-hand information concerning a critical and still operating section of the American web of subversion. It seemed likely that this information, properly developed, would help make it possible to uncover and sterilize that section of the web. He stated his willingness to talk to the proper authorities, if suitable conditions could be arranged.

When I next returned to Europe, I knew that this had gone on for some months. I was curious, and I looked him up to ask him what the trouble was. He told me that he had decided not to give any further information, and not to communicate formally even what he had already discussed casually with a number of persons, including myself. He is a person whose adult life had always been dominated by political ideas, and his reason now was political. He was not, he told me, going to help the McCarrans, Un-American Activities Committees and FBIs establish fascism, and hound liberals to death.

A second example. One noon, while we were living in Washington not long ago, a man telephoned whom I used to know fairly well but had not seen for some years. He seemed disturbed, and asked urgently if he could see me. I invited him over for lunch.

In the late '30's and early '40's he had been a Communist. He had not been an active or leading Party member, but he worked for several years in an office which (though he did not fully realize it) was a key spot in one of the most important sections of the web of subversion. The information that he possessed, largely unwittingly, might prove invaluable in unravelling certain strands. I knew that before the end of the war he had broken completely with the Communists. Since then he had stayed away from anything political, and had tried to live as a normal citizen with a job, a wife and three children.

At lunch he told us why he was in Washington. One of the congressional investigations had turned up his name. He had been asked to come down. That morning he had been questioned in executive session. As he told us about it, it became clear that he had testified frankly only about trifles. Concerning the important points, he had evaded, distorted or directly lied. But why? I knew that he no longer had any sympathy whatever for the Communists, and that in his own mind he looked on them as enemies to be fought.

The answer was not long in emerging. He lived in a suburban area where his neighbors and friends regarded themselves as "liberal," and where the test of liberalism was to denounce as hysteria, witch hunting and smoke screen all attempts to uncover the web of subversion. They considered persons who testified freely before the committees to be "paid informers," "renegades," "reactionaries" and "stool pigeons." Not only was our friend under the long-term pressure of this ideological atmosphere. He was afraid that he and his family would be socially ostracized if it became known that he had "cooperated" with one of the investigations.

I argued with him for several hours. I told him that the committee staff, from its long experience, understood perfectly such situations as his own, and that they would allow for it in a loyal, responsible manner. If he could show them good reason why he should not testify in public, they would not compel him to do so, unless it proved unavoidable. In any case, they would take his personal difficulties into account, and would certainly not try to "trick" him, provided they felt that he on his side was loyal and honest. I tried to explain the fallacies in the attitude of his liberal friends, and how they had fallen into a Communist-baited trap.

I pointed out further that the staff unquestionably knew that he had lied. In shielding those whom he regarded in his heart as deadly enemies, he had merely made himself subject to compulsory appearance before a public session where he would be considered a hostile witness.

I urged him to return immediately to the committee office, talk things over with the staff, and ask to be allowed to correct and complete his morning's testimony. The ending here is happy. He did so, and he telephoned from the station that evening, just before taking his train back home. The strain and trouble were gone from his voice. He had found the staff cooperative, friendly and understanding. His personal difficulties, when he explained them, were at once appreciated and respected. As it turned out later, he did not have to give public testimony. The net result, indeed, is that this episode really completed his break with Communism, which he finds to be at last fading into a no longer burdensome past.

(5) Resolution. Realistic changes in the law, alert professional counteraction, the increase of public knowledge, the sensible treatment of former web dwellers, and the spread of appropriate public attitudes—these in combination can do much to clean out the web of subversion and to block its further spread. So long as the source of the web remains untouched and unchanged, neither these nor any other methods will entirely destroy it. New threads will be spun, new patterns devised.

# REFERENCES

EXCEPT FOR MATTERS of general knowledge, all statements concerning individuals have been based on official hearings or reports of congressional committees and subcommittees. I have drawn principally on the documentation of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC); the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Senate's Committee on the Judiciary—usually known as the Internal Security Subcommittee (ISS); the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate's Committee on Government Operations (PSI); and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.

#### CITA DTTD 1

#### THE SENATE CALICIES DOOM

1. The material of this chapter, and all quotations, are taken from direct observation and from ISS, Hearings on *Interlocking Subversion* in Government Departments, 1953 (hereinafter cited as Subversion), pp. 241-326.

#### CHAPTER 2

#### SPIDERS OR FLIES?

- ISS, Hearings on Activities of United States Citizens Employed by the United Nations, 1952 (hereinafter cited as UN), pp. 127-40.

    - 4. Ibid., pp. 150-66. See also Report on UN, 1953, p. 8.
- 5. ISS, Hearings on the Institute of Pacific Relations, 1951-2 (hereinafter cited as IPR), pp. 227-8.
- 6. ISS, Report on Subversion, 1953, p. 23.
- 7. The Report of the Royal Commission, 1946, pp. 45 & 77.

#### CHAPTER 3

## TWO TRUTH TELLERS

- 8. The basic initial testimony of Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers is included in HUAC, Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government, 1948 (hereinafter cited as Espionage), pp. 503-86, 687-92, 725-32, 810-17, 1078-1110, 1176-1206, 1255-66. This testimony has been repeated and expanded in other Hearings before HUAC, ISS, and in various trials, including the trial of Alger Hiss. Much of its substance is also to be found in Elizabeth Bentley's book, Out of Bondage (Devin-Adair, 1951), and in Whittaker Chambers' Witness. 
        - 9. HUAC, Interim Report on Espionage, 1948, pp. 5-7.

## CHAPTER 4

## THREE WEB DWELLERS

(See in general the same references as for Chapter 3.)

- 10. The section on Harold Glasser makes use of ISS, Subversion, pp. 53-100; ISS, Report on Subversion, pp. 6-7; ISS, IPR, pp. 441-2.
- 11. Apart from the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, the section on Henry H. Collins, Jr., is based on his own testimony: HUAC, *Espionage*, pp. 802-10; ISS, *Subversion*, pp. 2-52. The quotations from Whittaker Chambers' Witness are taken from these ISS Hearings.
- 12. Joyce Campbell's testimony is given in ISS, UN, pp. 200-8; Craig Vincent's, in ISS, Subversion, pp. 745-64.
- 13. Apart from the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, the section on Nathan Gregory Silvermaster is based on his own testimony: HUAC, *Espionage*, pp. 587-604; ISS, *Subversion*, pp. 101-76. See also ISS, Report on *Subversion*, pp. 2-4.

#### CHAPTER 5

#### THE SPINNING OF THE WEB

14. See PSI, Hearings on Security-Government Printing Office, 1953.

#### CHAPTER 6

## ON THE THRESHOLD

- - 16. Ibid., p. 83.
    - 17. See ISS, UN, pp. 307-16.
    - 18. Ibid., pp. 255-63.

## CHAPTER 7

#### THE RECEPTION HALLS

#### CHAPTER 8

# PHASE I: THE ECONOMIC AGENCIES (1983-40)

- 20. ISS, Report on Subversion, p. 20.
- 21. HUAC, Testimony of Lynne L. Prout, Hearing of Feb. 14, 1952.
- 23. This section on the National Labor Relations Board is based on HUAC, Espionage, pp. 818-35, 1028-35; HUAC, Infiltration, pp. 3417-52; ISS, Subversion, pp. 327-81; 545-604; 640-55; ISS, Report on Subversion, pp. 40-3.

#### CHAPTER 9

- 25. Ibid., pp. 50-7.
- 26. Ibid., pp. 2-21.
- 27. ISS, Subversion, pp. 383-459.
- 28. HUAC, Espionage, pp. 531-3, 778-800; also ISS, IPR, pp. 439, 4401-7.

30. This account of Duncan Lee is based on HUAC, Espionage, pp. 715-59; ISS, IPR, p. 413.

#### CHAPTER 10

# PHASE III: THE INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES (1944-

- 32. ISS, UN, pp. 3 & 6.
- 33. ISS, Hearings on Subversive Influence in the Educational Process, 1952-3 (hereinafter cited as Education), pp. 817-22. 
        - 34. ISS, *IPR,* pp. 2791-94
        - 35. Ibid., pp. 4159-289; Report on IPR, p. 151.
        - 36. HUAC, Infiltration, pp. 1649-84.
        - 37. ISS, Report on Subversion, p. 2.
        - 38. See ISS, UN, passim; also Report on UN, 1953, pp. 4-6.
        - 39. On Ruth Rifkin, see HUAC, Infiltration, pp. 3345-66.
        - 40. HUAC, Espionage, pp. 915-28.

#### CHAPTER 11

#### STATE AND TREASURY

- 41. ISS, *IPR*, pp. 755-73
- 42. ISS, UN, pp. 166-70
- 43. Ibid., pp. 50-7.
- 44. ISS, Education, pp. 664-75.
- 45. Ibid., pp. 721-38.
- 46. ISS, IPR, pp. 235-7.
- 47. ISS, Subversion, pp. 799-822.
- - 50. HUAC, Espionage, p. 511.
    - 51. ISS, IPR, pp. 419-20.
    - 52. HUAC, Espionage, p. 574.
    - 53. ISS, IPR, 491-2.

#### CHAPTER 12

## WHITE HOUSE AND PENTAGON

- 54. ISS, Report on IPR, p. 224.
- 55. On Michael Greenberg, see ISS, *IPR*, pp. 281-2, 345, 413-7; Report on *IPR*, pp. 71 & 97; HUAC, *Espionage*, p. 534.
- 56. Lauchlin Currie's testimony before the Un-American Activities Committee is printed in HUAC, Espionage, pp. 851-77. See also *ibid.*, pp. 519, 534, 552-3, 619; ISS, IPR, p. 419; IPR and Report on IPR, passim (cf. "Currie, Lauchlin" in indices).
- 57. William Ludwig Ullmann's testimony is given in HUAC, Espionage, pp. 761-78. See also testimony by Robert Stripling and Elizabeth Bentley in that same source, and ISS, Report on Subversion. 
        - 58. HUAC, Espionage, pp. 835-50.
        - 59. ISS, Report on Subversion, p. 38.

## CHAPTER 13

## THE CAPITOL

- 61. This chapter is based on the following sources:
- (a) For John Abt: HUAC, Espionage, pp. 1015-22; ISS, Subversion, pp. 640-55.
- (b) For Henry H. Collins, Jr.: HUAC, *ibid.*, pp. 802-10; ISS, *ibid.*, pp. 1-52. 
    - (c) For Charles Flato: ISS, ibid., pp. 487-544.
- (d) For Sonia Gold: HUAC, *ibid.*, pp. 912-15; Statement of Attorney General Brownell to ISS, New York *Times*, Nov. 18, 1953. 
    - (e) For Alger Hiss: HUAC, ibid., pp. 642-59
- (f) For Charles Kramer: HUAC, *ibid.*, pp. 818-35; ISS, *ibid.*, pp. 327-81.

    - (g) For Harry Magdoff: ISS, ibid., pp. 286-326.
    - (h) For Margaret Bennett Porter: ISS, ibid., pp. 725-45.
    - (i) For Allan Rosenberg: HUAC, Infiltration, pp. 3417-52.
    - (k) For Alfred J. Van Tassel: ISS, UN, pp. 2-21.
    - (J) For Frederick Palmer Weber: ISS, Subversion, pp. 177-201.

#### CHAPTER 14

## THE ATOM IN THE WER

---

#### CHAPTER 15

## SLEEPER APPARATUS

64. In this chapter I make use of the "round table" session held by ISS, May 29, 1952 (see *IPR*, pp. 4775-804). Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers, Hede Massing, Herbert Philbrick and Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter participated as sworn witnesses.

#### CHAPTER 16

#### HOW MUCH DAMAGE?

65. The quotations used in this section have been taken from ISS, Report on Subversion, pp. 15-20.
66. ISS, Report on IPR, p. 225.

# **INDEX**

Abt, John, 6, 7, 36, 50, 67, 70, 73, 84, 88, 100-01, 133, 181, 186-87

Acheson, Dean, 50, 93

Adams, Arthur, 198-99, 200-01

Adler, Solomon, 37, 47, 72, 78, 88, 133, 148-49

Akhmedoff, Ismail Gusseynovich (Colonel Ege), 67-68, 174, 198, 217

Alpher, Rose, 90

Bancroft, Frank Carter, 136
Bannerman, R. L., 117
Barkley, Alben, 94
Barnes, Joseph, 29, 78, 79, 118, 164
Barrows, Alice Prentice, 69 fn.
Bassie, Veet, 94
Bazer, Irving, 55
Bazer, Julia Older, 100, 118, 136
Bentley, Elizabeth Terrill, 13, 18, 19, 22, 32-35, 36, 38-40, 41, 44-45, 46-47, 50, 58-60, 62, 65, 74, 80, 85, 107, 115, 117, 121-23, 124, 131, 133, 148, 149, 152, 153-54, 162, 166-67, 170-72, 186, 204, 205, 207, 209-10, 216
Beria, Lavrenti, 19
Berle, Adolf A., 32, 133, 174
Bernstein, Colonel, 92
Berzin, General, 19
Bielaski, Frank, 215-16
Bisson, T. A., 127

Bohn, David Joseph, 190
Bransten, Richard, 115
Bridges, Harry, 102, 104-05
Browder, Earl, 19, 42, 165, 170
Brownell, Herbert, 6, 40 fn., 132, 155, 181 fn.
Budenz, Louis, 42
Burster, Norman, 37
Bykov, Boris, 19, 41, 50, 51, 53, 144

Calomiris, Angela, 42, 232
Campbell, Joyce, 56-57
Cardozo, Benjamin M., 226
Carlson, Evans F., 78
Carter, Edward C., 164, 165
Chambers, David Whittaker, 18, 19, 20, 21, 32-33, 35-36, 40-41, 43-44, 45, 50, 53, 65, 67, 69, 80, 85-86, 94, 133, 149, 153, 154-55, 157, 167, 174, 181, 186, 204-05, 207, 216
Chapin, John Hitchcock, 201
Chiang Kai-shek, 18, 109, 159, 164
Churchill, Winston, 152, 160
Coe, Charles J., 70, 133, 135
Coe, Frank V., 37, 40 fn., 49, 50, 73, 74, 78, 88, 93, 113, 115, 128, 132-35, 149, 150, 156, 157, 170, 212
Collins, Henry H., Jr., 37, 52-58, 64, 72, 73, 84, 100, 112, 116, 142, 181, 182, 184
Coplon, Judy, 210, 231
Cousins, Norman, 8, 9
Crouch, Paul, 160, 100, 200

Currie, Lauchlin, 29, 37, 40 fn., 45, 62, 63, 74, 78, 80, 88, 93, 115, 133, 156, 157, 161, 162-69 Cvetic, Matthew, 42, 232

Fahy, Jack, 116
Fairbank, John K., 78, 79, 120, 164
Fajans, Irving, 119
Fall, Albert B., 24
Faxon, George R., 80, 173
Ferguson, Homer, 88, 90, 155, 166
173
Field, Frederick V., 164
Field, Noel, 120, 121, 143, 145
Fitzgerald, Edward J., 4-9, 12, 13
14, 25, 26-27, 38, 50, 74, 85, 88
110, 111, 133
Flato, Charles, 73, 74, 85, 181
Fowler, Henry, 93
Fox, Irving David, 190
Friedman, Julian R., 78, 79, 141-44

Fuchs, Klaus, 188, 213 Funn, Dorothy K., 129

Halperin, Maurice, 39, 50, 74, 80, 119, 120, 142-43 Harriman, Averell, 8, 14 Harris, Jack Sargeant, 119, 120 Harrison, Katherine Puening, 192 Hawkins, David, 190, 192-94 Hazard, John N., 163 Hébert, F. Edward, 45, 156-57, 216 Hendrickson, Robert C., 49 Herbert, Sir Edwin, 25

Kagen, Helen, 113, 136
Kaplan, Irving, 7, 27, 38-39, 40, 50, 73, 74, 80, 85, 87, 91-94, 101, 110, 115, 128, 133, 136, 149, 204
Kaufman, Irving Robert, 213, 221
Keeney, Mary J., 78, 115, 142
Keeney, Philip O., 79, 115, 119, 127
Kilgore, Harley, 182
Knox, Frank, 230
Kramer (Krevitsky), Charles, 6, 37, 38, 39, 47, 50, 73, 74, 84, 93, 100, 107, 113, 133, 181, 182, 184, 186
Krivitsky, Walter, 158
Kunzig, Robert L., 176-78

LaFollette, Robert M., Jr., 181, 185 LaGuardia, Fiorello, 48, 87 Landau, Herman, 174-75 Lange, Oscar, 184

McDowell, John, 44
Miller, Robert T., 39, 40 fn., 115
116-17, 123, 156
Minor, Robert, 165
Mins, Leonard, 119, 120
Minton, Bruce, 115
Mitchell, George, 60
Mitchell, William D., 25
Molotov, V. M., 68, 219
Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 71, 93
150, 151, 152, 159
Morris, Robert, 4, 5, 6-7, 8-9, 22, 27
48, 49, 50-52, 57-58, 61, 64, 105
106, 111, 112-14, 117, 123, 130-31
141, 142, 143-44, 154, 162, 174
194, 196, 207
Morrison, Philip, 190, 195-97
Mundt, Karl E., 34, 134
Murray, James E., 182

Nelson, Donald, 26 Nelson, Steve, 56, 190, 191-94 Niles, David K., 160 Nixon, Richard, 44, 85-86 Nixon, Russell Arthur, 80, 92, 93 128-29

Panuch, J. Anthony, 146
Park, William Z., 39, 115
Patterson, Robert, 62, 63, 71, 230
Pepper, Claude, 182
Perazich, George, 27, 74, 88, 89, 93, 130

Perlo, Victor, 6, 26, 37, 38, 47, 50, 72, 73, 80, 84, 88, 93, 100, 105, 107, 112-14, 133, 148

Peters, J., 19, 21, 35, 50, 51

Philbrick, Herbert, 42, 205-06, 208, 232

Phillips, James B., 66

Pontecorvo, Bruno, 188

Porter, Margaret Bennett, 80, 84, 99, 181

Pressman, Lee, 37, 42, 69-70, 78, 84, 88, 93, 100, 105, 156, 157

Price, Mary, 121, 123, 124

Prout, Lynne L., 100

Redmont, Bernard, 115
Reeve, Carl, 70
Remes, Andrew, 176, 177
Remington, William, 8, 101, 112, 113, 231
Reno, Vincent, 174
Rifkin, Ruth, 80, 130, 131-32
Rockefeller, Nelson, 115, 116
Rogov, Vladimir, 165
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 160
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 32, 62, 72, 79, 97, 104, 152, 159, 160, 161, 163, 230
Rosenberg, Allan, 38, 50, 73, 80, 88, 107, 115, 133, 181
Rosenberg, Ethel, 188
Rosenberg, Julius, 18, 66, 73, 175, 188, 231
Rothschild, Edward M., 66, 212

Tarn, Adam, 118
Tavenner, Frank, 131
Taylor, William, 38, 40 fn., 50
Tchernavin, Tatiana, 184-85
Tenney, Helen B., 39, 74, 119, 131
Tito, Marshal, 18, 56, 219-20
Tolan, John H., 182
Trachtenberg, Alexander, 196
Truman, Harry S., 132, 230

Ullmann, William Ludwig, 34, 38, 50, 55, 58, 63, 73, 74, 93, 100, 116, 183, 148, 167, 170-72

Van Fleet, James A., 220
Van Tassel, Alfred J., 73, 85, 88, 112, 126, 136, 182
Velde, Harold H., 197
Veldekams, Paul, 26
Vincent, Craig, 56-57, 80
Vincent, Jennie, 57
Vincent, John Carter, 78, 79, 140-41, 163
Vincent, Merle, 57
Vinson, Fred, 150
Vishinsky, A., 17
Voitinski, G. N., 77
Volkov, Anatol, 167

Wilkerson, Doxey, 113
Wilson, Charles, 48
Witt, Nathan, 36, 67, 84, 103-04
107, 149, 165, 186
Wittfogel, Karl, 162
Woikin, Emma, 30
Wolfe, Marshall James, 116
Wolff, Milton, 119, 120
Wuchinich George, 110, 180

Yagoda, Henry, 19, 158 Yezhov, Nikolai I., 19

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- Parent: [The Web of Subversion - UNDERGROUND NETWORKS IN THE U. S. GOVERNMENT (1954) by James Burnham](https://samisdat.in/books/the-web-of-subversion-1954.md)