IX. Truman, Traitors, and Red Herrings

IX. Truman, Traitors, and Red Herrings I T IS A TRAGIC paradox of our history that Harry Truman. a son of the Missouri...Kansas border country whose antecedents were as American as hog jowls and black-eyed peas, was the President of the United States who denounced the Hiss case as a "red herring" and tolerated in his Cabinet such abettors of world communism as George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson. Washington spoiled Truman. The ideological city slickers deluded him "as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety." According to The Man of Independence, an authorized Tru man biography by Jonathan Daniels, it was Max Lowenthal, a crafty southpaw government lawyer, who first corrupted Tru man's mind with Marxist prejudices against railroads, insur ance companies, and "big business" generally. Lowenthal was counsel to a Senate Interstate Commerce Subcommittee, head ed by Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D., Mont.) which began an inquiry into railway finances in 1936. Truman, an eager member of the subcommittee, fell under Lowenthal's spell.

When Lowenthal proposed to take him to see Justice Louis D. Brandeis, the country boy said he was "not used to meeting people like that," but he went· anyway and became a disciple of "the great liberal," who held f.orth on the evils of the Ameri can economic system in his apartment on California Street. Lowenthal also enlisted the support of the railway labor unions for Truman's nomination for vice president in 1944. New Deal insiders knew that the vice presidential candidate would succeed the ailing Roosevelt. A report of the Senate In... ternal Security Subcommittee, dated August 24, 1953, declares that "several witnesses before our subcommittee refused to ac1.38 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION knowledge [Lowenthal] as an associate on grounds that it might incriminate them" and that a book by Lowenthal, at tacking the FBI, was favorably reviewed by the communist magazine Political Affairs, under the heading: "J. Edgar Hoover's American Gestapo." When questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee on September 15, 1950, Lowenthal denied that he had ever been a Communist.

Truman progressed so well under left-wing tutelage in Wash ington that in 1948, after his election, he received this salute from Junior Schlesinger: "The conceptions of the intellectual are at last beginning to catch up with the instincts of the Demo cratic politician." On January 27, 1950, Representative Nixon of California, now Vice President of the United States, made a speech in the House in which he quoted directly from a secret FBI memo randum on Soviet espionage in the United States, dated Novem ber 25, 1945. Nixon said this document was "circulated among several key government departments and was made available to the President" in November, 1945. The report was placed in the record of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on Apri114, 1953. It stated: "Igor Gouzenko, former code clerk in the office of Col. Nikolai Zabotin, Soviet military attache, Ottawa, Canada, when interviewed by a representative of this bureau and officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, stated that. he had been informed by Lieutenant Kulakov in the office of the Soviet military attache that the Soviets had an agent in the United States in May, 1945, who was an assistant to the then Secre tary of State, Edward R. Stettinius."

The document also contained a detailed report of Miss Bent ley's statements to the FBI, identifying thirty-seven govern ment officialsand employes as members of the Soviet espionage service. Among these were Alger Hiss, head of the Office of United Nations Affairs in the State Department; Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and Lauchlin Cur rie, administrative assistant to the President. The report quoted TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 139 Miss Bentley as stating that she had been told by members of the Perlo group, one of the spy rings under her direction, that Hiss had taken Harold Glasser, a treasury department official, and two or three others away from the Perlo group and turned them over "to direct control by the Soviet authorities in this country." This FBI report is one of the most significant documents in recent American history. It shows that as early as November, 1945, Truman had received evidence from the FBI that Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and many other officials of his ad ministration were Soviet spies. As the Internal Security Sub committee reported on August 24, 1953, "these people stayed in their jobs, received promotions, and influenced policy for several years after impressive information had been mar shalled." In January, 1946, Truman promoted White to the office of United States executive director of the International Monetary Fund. In the same month, Hiss went to London as senior adviser to the American delegation to the first session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The FBI report also shows that the FBI, prior to November 25, 1945, had examined Gouzenko, and therefore had all the evidence he turned over to Canadian authorities regarding Americans involved in the Soviet spy ring in Canada. A United Press dispatch from Ottawa, dated June 29, 1953, attributed to Canadian officials the information that one hundred and sixty-three Americans were named in a notebook of one of the suspects arrested in the spy investigation. The names of these Americans were turned over to United States authori ties. The United Press report said the notebook contained the name of Klaus Fuchs, the naturalized British physicist who was sentenced to fourteen years in prison in 1950, after he had confessed that he spied for the Russians while working on the American atomic project. Alan Nunn May, another British scientist, was implicated by other members of the Canadian spy ring and sentenced to ten years in prison by a British court in 1946. Fuchs, May, and David Greenglass, a United States 140 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION army sergeant who worked as a machinist on the atomic bomb, were the principal sources of information obtained by the So viet atomic spy ring. Leaders in the spy ring included Harry Gold, an American biochemist, who was sentenced to thirty years in prison in 1950, and the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, who were executed in 1953.

If the information obtained in the Canadian investigation in 1945 had been acted upon by American authorities immedi ately, members of the spy ring who were arrested in 1950 might have been rounded up five years earlier, in time to prevent the transmission of at least some of their atomic information to the Russians. Fuchs did not leave the United States until 1946, and he made a second visit to this country in 1947. Moreover, he continued to spy for the Russians, giving them information he had acquired in the United States, after he became head of the theoretical physics division of Britain's atomic project at Harwell. In June, 1953, Senator McCarthy announced that his inves tigating committee might call former President Truman and ask him whether the list of names of Americans involved in the Canadian spy investigation was turned over to the FBI. McCarthy later said he had been authoritatively advised that Truman withheld no information from the FBI and therefore would not call him to testify. This was not the point of the Canadian spy ring scandal. The point was that the FBI had the information and was not permitted to arrest the suspects.

On February 29, 1946, Constantine Brown, the able diplo matic correspondent of the Washington Star, reported that Americans were named in the Canadian spy investigation, that FBI Director Hoover wanted to arrest them, and that the State Department had prevented such action on the ground that it would prejudice relations with the Soviet Union. On April 18, 1946, Representative Dondero made the same charge in the House and said Hoover was the source of his information. "I discussed this matter with J. Edgar Hoover for one hOUf,"

TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 141 Dondero said. "The President authorized these arrests to be made, and the arrests were forbidden by the State Department." Congressional demands .for action against American mem bers of the spy ring became so insistent that State Secretary Byrnes was called before the Joint Committee on Atomic En ergy. Members of this committee said Byrnes blandly assured them, at a closed session, that no Americans were involvedin the Canadian spy inquiry. When the report of the Canadian Royal Commission which conducted the secret inquiry was made public in the summer of 1946, it named several Americans who were involved in es pionage for the Russians. "It is not within our province to in vestigate spying activities in other countries, but some of the activities carried on in Canada were so linked with what hap pened elsewhere that we feel bound to mention them in this report," the commission said.

One of those mentioned was Arthur Steinberg, an American scientist. The report stated that Fred Rose, a former commu... nist member of the Canadian Parliament and a leader of the spy ring, sent an emissary to Washington to enlist Steinberg for espionage work. Steinberg's name was found in a notebook of Lieutenant Colonel Peter S. Motinov, assistant Soviet military attache in· Ottawa. Gouzenko testified that Colonel Zabotin, the Soviet military attache, reported in telegrams to Moscow that Steinberg had been "handed over," that is, introduced, to the Soviet military intelligence in Washington. Steinberg worked for a time in Canada and became a friend of Professor Raymond Boyer of McGill University, a member of the spy ring. Later Steinberg worked for about two years, from June, 1944, to June, 1946, in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington. On August 26, 1946, when this writer asked the navy what his duties had been, the reply was that his work was so secret it still could not be discussed.

In 1951,the Joint CongressionalCommitteeon AtomicEn ergy reported that the failure to arrest Arthur Adams, a Soviet master spy who escaped from the country in 1945, was due to 142 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION "government policy in existence at that time, the full details of which are unknown to this committee because it has not had access to the records." The prevailing attitude in Washington at this time was that friendly relations with the Russians must be preserved at any price, even at the cost of providing a privileged sanctuary in the government for American traitors who were spying for the Kremlin. Even the late James Forrestal, who was one of the few officials in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations with the courage to express doubt that Stalin could be trusted, was afraid that the FBI, by acting precipitately against the spies in the notorious A merasia case, would offend the Russians. On May 28, 1945, Forrestal noted in his diary that the Justice De partment wanted to arrest Lieutenant Andrew Roth, a naval intelligence officer who was involved in the A merasia case. The FBI wanted to act speedily, before the evidence could be de stroyed.

Forrestal was fully aware that it was a case of espionage, for he wrote in his diary that Roth had been supplying secret docu ments to Philip Jaffe, editor of the magazine A merasia, who "has had intimate relationship with the Russian consul in New York." Yet Forrestal wrote: "I pointed out that the inevitable consequence of such action now would be to greatly embarrass the President in his current negotiations with Stalin, because of the anti-Russian play-up the incident would receive out of proportion to its importance. I asked Capt. Vardaman [naval aide to the President] to see to it that the President was in formed in this matter and I then called Mr. Edgar Hoover and suggested that he advise Mr. Tom Clark [Assistant At torney General in charge of the Criminal Division] and have him also see that the President is in full information of all the facts in the matter as well as their implications."

The A merasia case is one of the most incredible chapters in the whole story of Truman's wretched administration. Frank Bielaski, who was director of investigations for the ass dur ing the war, presented the facts' of the case to a Senate Foreign TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 143 Relations Subcommittee in 1950. The magazine was directed by Jaffe and Frederick Vanderbilt Field. Both were officials of the communist-dominated Institute of Pacific Relations and both were identified in sworn testimony before the Senate In ternal Security Subcommittee as members of the Communist Party. Bielaski went to work on the case when Amerasia ap peared with an article containing language taken verbatim from a secret OSS report. Visiting the New York officesof the magazine at night, Bielaski was astounded to find stacks of government documents, most of them marked "secret" or "top secret." One of the documents bore the notation "A Bomb,"

but that meant nothing to Bielaski at the time. He thought it meant simply "a bomb." The case was referred to the FBI, which put seventy-five agents to work on it. The FBI found that documents were flowing from the State Department to Amerasia and back. Some of the documents originated in the army and navy intelligence offices and in the OSS, but they all appeared to be funneled through the State Department to Amerasia. Lieutenant Roth, who had worked for Amerasia before he got his commission in naval intelligence, was as signed to the State Department as a liaison officer. After a two month investigation, the FBI arrested Jaffe, Roth, Kate Louise Mitchell, assistant editor of the magazine; John Stewart Serv ice, a State Department foreign service officer; Emanuel Lar sen, a State Department employe, and Mark Gayn, a corre spondent for Marshall Field's PM and Chicago Sun. A grand jury indicted Jaffe, Larsen, and Roth. The Justice Department made no effort to obtain indictments against Service, Mitchell, and Gayn. Service had been detected visiting Jaffe's hotel room and turning over documents to him with a warning that they were secret. Service admitted that he had made copies of his own secret documents and turned them over to Jaffe. Yet he was neither indicted nor dismissed from the State Department.

It was not until five years later, after he had been attackedby Senator McCarthy, that the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission forced the State Department to fire him as a security risk. Gayn said he got his material from Jaffe in 144 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION typewritten form and saw no government documents, but the FBI found his finger prints on original documents. Yet he was not indicted. Miss Mitchell was not indicted, although eighteen envelopes of secret documents were found on her desk. The case against Roth was dropped. The indictments of Jaffe and Larsen were dismissed and charges of simple larceny were substituted. On a quiet Saturday morning the prosecutor slipped into court and persuaded the judge to let Jaffe and Lar sen off with fines of $2,500 and $500 respectively, both of which Jaffe paid. The prosecutor, representing the defendants as "journalists," said it was merely a case of excessive zeal.

J. Anthony Panuch, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for administration, testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on June 25, 1953, that "Mr. Acheson and Mr. Hiss at the time that I was in the department were sympathetic to the soviet policy." This was in 1945 and 1946. Panuch was asked whether he became suspicious of Hiss, who was in charge of United Nations affairs. He -replied: "Mr. Chairman, one of the elements in my jurisdiction was the se curity operation in the department, and naturally we had a file on Alger Hiss, and the file showed a good deal of the matters that came out before the Un-American Activities Committee in 1948 and subsequently came out at the trial." Panuch told this writer that FBI Director Hoover departed from his usual practice and recommended Hiss' dismissal from the department in 1946. Normally the FBI merely carries out investigations and submits evidence, without making recom mendations. As early as July 22, 1946, the writer disclosed in a Washington dispatch to the Chicago Tribune that Hiss' dismissal had been recommended by the State Department's own Security Committee. Representative Jonkman (R., Mich.) had charged, on the floor of the House, that the Security Com mittee's report, which he had been permitted to examine con fidentially, recommended the dismissal of certain officials and employes on grounds ranging from "belonging to Communist front organizations and distributing Communist literature" to committing "overt acts on behalf of a Soviet espionage organTRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 145 ization." Although Jonkman did not disclose the names, the Tribune said it was learned that Hiss was among those who received an adverse report.

Hiss testified at his trial in 1949 that in the spring of 1946, shortly after his return from the first United Nations General Assembly session in London, Secretary Byrnes sent for him and told him that several members of Congress were preparing to make statements charging that he was a Communist. He said Byrnes told him the stories seemed to be coming from the FBI and suggested that Hiss would do well to go to the FBI and offer himself for a full inquiry. Hiss said he went to the FBI and offered "to make any statement upon any subject they suggested, and they had no specific one initially." Hiss went back to the State Department and told Byrnes the FBI had no quarrel with him. However, Byrnes was under in creasing pressure from Congress to get rid of Hiss. Acheson sent two emissaries to Panuch to find out how much evidence the department's own security officers had against Hiss and Panuch indicated that it was conclusive. It was obvious that something had to be done about Alger.

In the fall of 1946, Acheson learned that John Foster Dulles, his friend and fellow one-worlder, was about to be made chair man of the board of trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Edward G. Miller, then special assistant to Acheson and later Assistant Secretary of State, had worked for Dulles' New York law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, before taking a government job in 1941. Accordingly, Acheson sent Miller to ask Dulles if he couldn't take care of Hiss. Dulles knew Hiss, having been closely associated with him in United Nations conferences, and was favorably disposed to ward him as a candidate for president of the Carnegie Endow ment, a job which pays $20,000 a year. He consulted two emi nent evangelists of the cosmic New Order, James Reston of the New York Times and the late Bert Andrews of the New York Herald-Tribune, and they agreed that Hiss would be a superlative choice.1 Hiss announced his resignation from the 1. Witness, by Whittaker Chambers, Random House, p. 648.

146 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION State Department, effective at the end of 1946, and the Car negie trustees, acting on Dulles' recommendation, elected him president. Hiss had not taken office when Dulles received a letter from a Detroit lawyer, who offered to produce evidence that Hiss had a "provable Communist record." Dulles spurned the offer in a letter expressing contempt for "information which seems inconsistent with all that I personally know." Whatever Dulles may have thought about the lawyer's representations, it would seem that he was put on notice and at least should have consulted the FBI, but he did not do that. He consulted only Reston and Andrews. Despite all the information the State Department had about Hiss, including FBI reports dating back to November, 1945, State Secretary Marshall told a press conference on August 4, 1948, after Chambers had accused Hiss, that so far as he knew there was "nothing in the State Department records to indicate that Mr. Hiss was ever suspected of being a Communist." About the same time, Truman denounced the congressional inquiry as a "red herring," a charge which he subsequently repeated sev eral times.

In his book Witness, Chambers recalls the situation that fol lowed Truman's "red herring" remark: "I had been warned repeatedly that the brunt of official wrath was directed, not against Alger Hiss as a danger, but against me for venturing to testify to the danger. Moreover, the most articulate section of public opinion was bitterly aroused against me and persistent in its attacks .... The Communist Party did not need to move openly against me. It had only to sit back, to give a quiet turn here, to prompt my enemies there, to feed out information, some of it true and damaging, but most of it slanderous and false, to iterate that most potent of falsehoods: that nobody can believe an ex-Communist, and the powers hostile to me that the Hiss case had set in motion would do the rest." Members of the House Un-American Activities Committee warned Chambers that the Justice Department was threatening to indict him for perjury. The committee itself was beset by doubts and fears that it had been the victim of an imposter.

TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 147 This would destroy not only its fight against the communist conspiracy but also the political careers of its members. In a state of "anxiety neurosis," as Chambers describes it, the com mittee was trying to find a graceful way to drop the case when Hiss proved his own undoing by suing Chambers for libel. Chambers produced the celebrated "pumpkin papers," the documentary evidence which forced the Justice Department to indict Hiss and convinced a jury, at his second trial, that he was guilty. On the day Hiss was sentenced to five years in prison, Acheson told reporters: "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss." Panuch was brought into the department by Byrnes, in Oc tober, 1945, to supervise the "coordination and integration" of the OSS, the OWl, the Foreign Economic Administration, the Office of Inter-American Affairs and the Office of Foreign Liquidation, all of which had been transferred to the depart ment under a reorganization scheme devised by the Budget Bureau. Panuch had the job of setting up a security system to screen more than four thousand new employes who were sched uled for permanent integration into the department. His inves tigators displayed considerable zeal and began flushing Reds out of the woodwork. In a letter to Representative Sabath (D., Ill.) on July 26, 1946, Byrnes said 285 officials and employes of the department had received unfavorable loyalty reports from the department's own Security Committee and that seventy-nine of these had been separated. Of those dismissed, forty were found to have "close connections with foreign governments or their organs," Byrnes.wrote.

On July 1,1946, the Appropriations Committee of the Sen ate attached an amendment by Senator McCarran (D., Nev.) to the State Department appropriation bill which was designed to make things easier for Panuch. This amendment, approved by Congress, authorized the Secretary of State to fire any employe in the interests of the government, without regard to civil service regulations. Secretary Byrnes, a former Supreme Court Justice, adopted a policy of resolving any reasonable doubt about an employe's 148 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION loyalty in favor of the government, but he insisted that there must be substantial evidence of disloyalty. That rule seemed fair enough to Panuch, but he sought to apply it in a manner that aroused the wrath of Acheson, the Undersecretary. Panuch recalls a conversation in which he told Acheson that proof of past membership in the Communist Party should create rea sonable doubt about an employe's loyalty. That, said Acheson, would be "thought control."

Nevertheless, Panuch went ahead with his plans and under took to make a test case of Carl Marzani, who had been a ser geant in the ass in charge of its presentation (graphic display) branch, and was doing the same work in the State Department. The department had reports showing that Marzani had been a Communist, with the party name of Tony Whales, in New York in 1941, that he signed a petition for Earl Browder as a candi date for Congress, that he campaigned against conscription during the existence of the Hitler-Stalin alliance, and that he advocated revolution. He had denied under oath to the Civil Service Commission, the FBI, and the ass that he ever had been a Communist, but he could not be prosecuted for perjury because of the statute of limitations. When questioned by Panuch, although not under oath, he again denied that he ever had been a Communist. Panuch dug up a statute declaring that willful concealment of communist activities or affiliations in applying for federal employment is a crime, punishable by im prisonment, and he resolved to test that statute in the courts.

Witnesses were found in New Yark who had known Marzani as a Communist and they so testified at his trial. He was con victed and sentenced to prison, but by that time Marshall was Secretary of State and Panuch was out of a job. Byrnes gave Truman his resignation in April, 1946, "on the advice of a physician," but it was agreed that he would stay on until after the impending peace conference in Paris. In January, 1947, while Byrnes was making preparations to at tend a foreign ministers' conference in Moscow the next month, Truman suddenly accepted the resignation and appointed Mar...

TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 149 shall Secretary of State. On January 23, shortly after Marshall had taken over, Acheson sent for Panuch and requested his resignation. Panuch told him he had already turned in his resig nation to Marshall, who had gone home. He went into Mar shall's office, took the resignation from his desk, and handed it to Acheson. It was a short "resign at your pleasure" letter. Acheson took it and handed Panuch a letter, signed by Mar... shall, accepting the resignation. Acheson had gone to Marshall and induced him to sign an acceptance of Panuch's resignation before he knew that Panuch had resigned. When Panuch left the State Department his loyalty program went out the window. In four years, from 1947 to 1951, not a single State Department employe was dismissed on loyalty grounds. In March, 1947, Truman announced a new loyalty program for the whole government. Superficially, it appeared to be a good program, for the FBI was assigned the responsibil ity of making all loyalty investigations. However, the FBI does not evaluate the evidence it submits to the government depart ments and agencies. That is their own responsibility. Further more, Truman's order abolished the "reasonable doubt" test first adopted by the Civil Service Commission in 1942 and reinstituted in the State Department by Panuch in 1946. This was the standard that reasonable doubt about an employe's loyalty should be resolved in favor of the government. The new standard provided for the dismissal of employes only if "present" disloyalty could be proved. Past membership in the Communist Party ceased to be ground for dismissal.Since Com munists are ordered by the party to deny membership, it was virtually impossible under the new standard to prove "present"

disloyalty even when former communist affiliations could be shown. Not until 1951, when Senator McCarthy had stirred up Congress and the country about subversives in the government, was the Acheson-Truman rule changed. Former Senator Hiram Binghamreplacedthe flabby Seth Richardson~s chairmanof the Loyalty Review Board. In April, 1951, Bingham persuaded Truman to restore the "reasonable doubt" standard of loyalty.

150 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION "By that time," Panuch recalls, "the damage had been done. China was lost to the Communists and American soldiers were dying in Korea." Under the Marshall-Acheson regime, early in 1947, Hamil ton Robinson was brought in to replace Frederick Lyon as director of controls. He was in charge of six divisions, includ ing investigations. Robinson had worked for Dulles' law firm for six years, and Dulles gave him a high recommendation. On March 25, 1948, Representative Busbey (R., 111.) made some illuminating comments in the House about Robinson's quali fications for the job. Robinson had been questioned extensively at a House committee hearing about State Department em ployes, whom Busbey identified only by numbers. The case of No. 5 was typical. Eight witnesses-six professors at Harvard and the University of California, a naval officer, and a fellow student-testified that No.5, as a student at the universities, frequently expressed communist sympathies and was regarded as a party member or a conscious fellow traveler. The evidence showed that No. 5 had been discharged from a naval school during the war "because it was found that he was an ardent student and advocate of the Communist doctrines." In apply ing for his government job, No. 5 said he had a Ph.D. degree from the University of California. This was fraudulent mis representation, for the university said he flunked his exam inations. Furthermore, a State Department official who had known No.5 in China testified that his work was "below par," and that he was a "mediocre, dull, and slow thinking individual." Another State Department official testified that No.5 was "weak as to ability, common sense, and public rela tions."

When Robinson was asked at the House committee hearing what he had to say about such evidence, he commented: "That case is interesting, Mr. Chairman, because there is not one iota of evidence indicating any overt act, any association he has had, anything that he has done whic,h would indicate that he TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 151 is actually working against or even associating with people who are working against our people." Apologists for Truman, Marshall, and Acheson deny that they served the cause of world communism. On the contrary, they assert, these officials initiated the so-called Truman doc trine, the Marshall plan and the North Atlantic. Treaty Organ ization, all elements of a policy of "containing" Soviet commu nism. Let us consider the facts. According to Daniels, in The Man of Independence, Tru man dates his break with Byrnes to the Moscow foreign minis ters' conference in December, 1945. At that conference Byrnes agreed that the Yalta pledge regarding the liberated and former Axis satellite countries of eastern Europe might be construed as providing merely for the nominal participation of two op position representatives in the interim governments which the Communists were setting up. There can be no question that Byrnes was deluded by the Russians. He knew little about for eign affairs, and his career as a senator was distinguished prin cipally by his propensity for making deals, his efforts to work out a "compromise," even on matters of the highest principle.

Yet Byrnes in Moscow merely recognized an existing situation. Something could have been done to save eastern Europe before the war ended, but it was too late when Byrnes went to Mos cow. The Yalta declaration itself was hollow. It provided mere ly that the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, "where in their judgment conditions require," would jointly assist the peoples of the eastern European countries to form interim gov ernments "broadly representative of all democratic elements." This gave the Russians a veto against any action that might be proposed. Truman called Byrnes an appeaser and said he "failed mis erably as Secretary of State." This was the same Truman who read and approveda world-shakingappeasementspeechwhich his Secretary of Commerce, Henry Wallace, delivered at Madi son Square Garden on September 12, 1946. Wallace, whom the Communists supported for president two years later, said: 152 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION "I am neither anti-British, nor pro-British-neither anti-Rus sian, nor pro-Russian. And just two days ago, when President Truman read these words, he said they represented the policy of his administration."

'Reporters who had seen the advance text asked Truman if his approval applied to the whole speech. He said it did. Byrnes, who was in Paris at the. peace conference, strongly intimated in a radio teletype conversation with Truman that he would resign if Wallace remained in the Cabinet. Truman thereupon fired Wallace for making a speech which Truman had approved. On March 12, 1947, Truman appeared before Congress and requested $400,000,000 for aid to Greece and Turkey. At the same time he announced a policy of aiding "free peoples every where against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes." He did not mention the Soviet Union by name but the reference was unmistakable. Although this program was acclaimed as a "doctrine," a new policy to "con tain" Soviet communism, what it amounted to was that the United States took over bankrupt Britain's commitments in the Near East. The antiCommunist label was pasted on to assuage anti-spending sentiment in Congress. Forrestal's diary reports that on February 27, Marshall showed Forrestal a memoran dum saying the British ambassador had called at the State Department that morning to inform the United States that Bri tain could no longer support Greece and Turkey. Winthrop Aldrich of the Chase Bank and Lewis Douglas, ambassador to Britain, were agitating for action to rescue the British empire.

Forrestal helped Clark Clifford, the President's speech writer, prepare a· memorandum stating the problem as a struggle for survival between the communist and noncommunist systems. Although the Greek-Turkish aid program was announced as an anticommunist project, the Marshall plan was not, de spite efforts of the Truman -Marshall-Acheson apologists to represent the two as parts of the same piece. Many Washing ton pundits trace the origin of the Marshall plan to a speech made by Acheson in Cleveland, Mississippi, on May 8, 1947.

TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 153 As Daniels reports, however, Truman himself .intended to de liver this speech but was unable to do so. Acheson, speaking for Truman, merely restated the so-called Truman doctrine. He declared that "free peoples who are seeking to preserve their independence and democratic institutions and human freedoms against totalitarian pressures, either internal or external,will receivetop priorityfor Americanreconstructionaid." An account of the genesis of the Marshall plan by Edward W. Barrett, former Assistant Secretary of State in charge of propaganda, indicates that there was consternation in the de partment about the anticommunist implications of the Truman doctrine. In his book Truth Is Our Weapon, Barrett declares that the Truman doctrine "backfired in many parts of the world," that the Greek· government had a reputation for cor ruption and oppression (this is what the Communists were saying), and that the United States seemed to be embarking on a program of imperialism in which small nations would be used as pawns in a gigantic contest with the Soviet Union. Bar rett reports that a new plan, without these "drawbacks," was evolved in "prolonged evening discussions" by a State Depart ment "crew," which was aided by Averell Harriman, then Sec retary of Commerce.

Speaking at Harvard University on June 5, 1947, Marshall said: "Our policy is directed not against any country or doc trine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.... Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States government." Marshall then invited the countries of Eu rope to get together and agree as to what help they would need from the United·States to "place Europe on its feet economi cally." He said the program should be a joint one, "agreed to by a number if not all European nations." At a press conference on June 12, he emphasized that the Soviet Union was included in his invitationto comeandgetit. On June 17, the procommu nist PM, now defunct, exulted: "Unlike the Truman doctrine, which explicitly and by definition excluded from aid any of the countries in Russia's sphere of influence, the Marshall doctrine 154 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION is careful to include even Russia itself as the possible recipient of aid. It is not accompanied, as the Truman doctrine was, by emotional anticommunist face making and name calling."

The Kremlin at first considered taking the United States up on Marshall's offer and sent Foreign Minister Molotov to the European conference in Paris. Later Moscow decided to stay out and sabotage the program, presumably on the theory that by maintaining pressure against western Europe it could force the United States to weaken itself by an endless expenditure of money and materials. In a "Dear Alger" letter to Hiss, dated Aug. 4, 1948, the late Robert P. Patterson, former Secretary of War, wrote: "This is just to say that the stories in the press this morning have not made the slightest dent in my trust and confidence in you. You and Clark Eichelberger started the organization of the Com mittee for the Marshall plan, which was certainly' 180 degrees from the 'party line.' " The Communists certainly opposed the Marshall plan pub licly, but their opposition was based upon tactical considera tions. The communist propaganda line accused the United States of seeking to enslave the western European countries by shutting off their trade with eastern Europe and reducing them to the status of American economic satellites. Such propaganda by no means proved that the Kremlin regarded the Marshall plan as inimical to its interests.

Earl Browder, former head of the American Communist Party, who still is in good standing with international commu nism, discusses the subject of American aid to Europe in· his pamphlet Keynes, Foster and Marx. He writes: "The net im pact of America upon Europe has.been for long, and increas ingly is, to drive her more rapidly to socialism, rather than to retard her [when Browder uses the term "socialism" he means communism]. . . . American power commands the tides of socialism to halt; but American action, by choking the inde pendent development of western European economy, reduces it to a level which multiplies the necessity of socialism.... Cut off from eastern Europe, the west declines and sinks into everTRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 155 deeper dependence upon America. Thus it is American policy which has faced. Europe with -the alternative: either toward European unity and socialism, or toward restoration of capital ism, with a split Europe, and America as boss. This gives the final and irresistible shove toward socialism to the west Euro pean masses-and the shove comes from America, not from Russia,"

Since this result obviously is what the Kremlin wants, we have a plausible explanation for Hiss's support of the Marshall plan. Of course the Marshall plan was presented to Congress as a program to strengthen the capacity of western Europe to resist communism. The experience of the Greek-Turkish aid pro gram had taught the State Department "crew" that Congress would underwrite foreign aid commitments involving outlays of billions of dollars if it could be persuaded that the purpose was to fight communism. Accordingly, George F. Kennan, chief of the State Department's policy planning staff, drafted a ponderous rationale for the Marshall plan, so recondite that any Congressman who presumed to question its authority would subject himself to ridicule as a simpleton. Kennan's opus, head ed"The Sources of Soviet Conduct," first appeared under a pseudonym, "Mr. X," in the July, 1947, issue of Foreign Af fairs, but he later brought it out under his own name as an appendix to his book, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950.

Kennan wrote: "In these circumstances, it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long range, patient, but firm and vigi lant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is impor tant to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward 'toughness' . . . the Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the western world is something that can be containedby the adroitand vigilantapplicationof counter force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and politi cal points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.

156 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION The Russians look forward to a duel of infinite duration, and they see that already they have-scored great successes." This is the containment policy. It is quite an order for a country with 160,000,000 people, 6.5 per cent of the world's population, less than 6 per cent of the world's total land area, and a national debt of 272 billion dollars, more than that of all the other nations in the world combined, a mortgage of $1,700 against every man, woman and child. It promises an "infinite duration" of Marshall plans, NATO's, Koreas, shift ing from point to point around the 25,000 mile periphery of the Soviet empire, with Moscow always dictating our strategy. Kennan later went to Moscow as ambassador, but the Rus sians declared him p~rsona non grata when he made some remarks at a stopover in Berlin which they regarded as un diplomatic. Reston of the New York Times and the Alsop brothers have fostered the myth that Kennan is a 100-octane genius. Let us consult the record and see just what he knows about "The Sources of Soviet Conduct."

In October, 1949, the State Department held a secret three day "round table" discussion on American policy toward China, and the Senate lnternal Security Subcommittee, with great dif ficulty' obtained a transcript of the proceedings two years later. One of the participants was Kennan. The gist of his argument was that the Soviet Union had no interest in China. He said: "Vast sections of the Soviet Union today need very much the same sort of development that China needs and the things they have to offer to the Soviet government in the way of manpower, and so forth, are also similar. I mean the Soviet government is in no great real shortage of manpower, which would be what China has to offer. . . . I remember Stalin one time snorting rather contemptuously and vigorously because one of our peo ple asked them what they were going to give to China when this was over and he said in effect, 'What the hell do you think we can give to China?' He said, 'We have a hundred cities of our own to build in the Soviet Far East. If anybody is going to give anything to the Far East, I think it's you.' And I think he was speaking quite sincerely."

TRUMAN, TRAITORS, AND RED HERRINGS 157 Kennan was asked what military role he thought the Rus sians would assign to the Chinese. He said he believed the Russians would allot the role of "provincial legionnaires" to the Chinese Communists but would not want them to become, "even if they could, a major military power." In less than four years after Kennan had expressed that opinion, these "provin ciallegionnaires," with Soviet weapons. and tactical advice, had fought the United States to a standstill in Korea. Testifying before the Internal Security Subcommittee on March 27, 1952, Professor David N. Rowe of Yale University recalled a conversation he had with Kennan early in 1949, when the Communists had not taken all the mainland. He said Kennan first told him China was not important because it never would be powerful. A little later, Kennan declared that "when the Chinese Communists get control of 450,000,000 people the Russians will never be able to control them."

Professor Rowe continued: "Now, if China is so weak that it doesn't count, this means that the Russians will be able to control them. If China becomes sufficientlystrong and gets con trol of 450,000,000 people, strong enough to control the Rus sians, keep the Russians from .controlling them, then you have to worry about China.... If any of my students ever presented me with anything that was so completely illogical as this I probably would flunk him, but I couldn't flunk Mr. Kennan." Kennan, with Einstein and other geniuses,is a lecturer at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. . From abject appeasement of the Soviet Union, even to the extent of sheltering American traitors, the Truman admin istration veered 180 degrees to a global policy of "containing" communism. But the shift was more apparent than real. The revolutionaries were using the communist menace as a pretext to spend the United States into collectivism. Meanwhile, they were actively promoting communism in Asia, as the next chap ter will show.