VII. World Revolutionary War

VII. World RevolutionaryWar "Tl.HE legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace," said General Sherman. The object of World War II, as the revolu tionists in Washington saw it, was world revolution in the image of the Soviet Union. American Communists, working under the direct supervi sion of shadowy agents of the Kremlin, sat in the centers of power of the United States government, where they were in a position to subvert both domestic and foreign policies. They held influential positions in the White House, the State De partment, the Treasury Department, the War Department, the Office of Strategic Services, the War Production Board, the Board of Economic Warfare, the Office of Price Administra tion, the Office of War Information, and many other govern ment agencies. They had access to every top secret government document with the possible exception of some which never left the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Espionage for the Soviet Union, however, was a secondary consideration.

Their primary purpose was to influence government policies to ward the creation of a Soviet America and a Soviet world. The work of these undercover Kremlin agents was facilitated by the prevailing attitude of the highest New Deal officials, who exalted the Soviet system as a new and superior form of "de mocracy" which should serve as a model for reforms in the United States. Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State, recalls in Where Are We Heading that Roosevelt himself be lieved the American and Soviet systems would undergo modi fications until all but about twenty per cent of the difference between them would be eliminated. In short, he believed the WORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 95 United States would go forty per cent communist and the Soviet Union forty per cent free. Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's alter ego, was the most powerful individual in the. government because of his singular, almost hypnotic influence upon the President. He was the ultimate arbiter of everything from domestic politics to the grand strat egy of the war. He was the grand panjandrum of the wartime New Deal.

Even before the United States formally entered the war Hop kins made it clear that he regarded the struggle as a world revo lution. In an article published in the A merican Magazine in July, 1941, he wrote: "This is not only a fight for freedom of speech, religion and assembly. It is a fight for economic free dom for the people of the world, a fight to fulfill in this genera tion all that our fathers fought and strove for in the last 200 years. . . . When a democratic victory is won, then the great wealth of the world must be shared with all people." (Since Hopkins wrote that article the United States has "shared" about 100 billion dollars of its wealth with other nations in the form of lend-lease and postwar aid.) The diaries of the late James Forrestal contain an illuminat ing account of some remarks by Hopkins at a dinner given by Lord and Lady Halifax at the British embassy on June 29, 1945. Forrestal, who was present, wrote in his diary: "Hopkins said that he thought the world was now definitely swinging toward the left, that we were in the middle of the revolution and that it would be unwise to try to oppose it. I re plied that it was not inconceivable that the real reactionaries in world politics would be those who now call themselves revo lutionaries, because the dynamics of their philosophy all tended toward the concentration of power in the state, with the inevi table result of exploitation of the cornman man by the masses, or rather, by those who in such a system apply power over the masses....

"Hopkins· said that England must inevitably go socialist and that Churchill did not want the things for England that the Labor people wanted-federal housing, slum elimination, own96 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION ership of industries, etc. I asked Hopkins how any country such as England could go communistic-I said England had been able to exist and subsist because she was a trading nation and that a capitalistic system was essential to the existence of Eng land .... I said that such a nation could only become commu nistic if we, the United States, underwrote the transaction. . . . "Hopkins obviously did not want to pursue this conversation too far, because, I suspect, he did not want to be driven to the position that he was advocating either revolution or Commu nism for this country .... " In April, 1952, Colonel Igor Bogolepov, former counselor of the Soviet Foreign Office, who escaped from Russia and came to the United States after the war, told the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee a remarkable story about Hopkins and lend-lease aid to the Bolsheviks. Bogolepov testified that in July, 1941, the Kremlin learned that Roosevelt was sending Hopkins to Moscow for lend-lease negotiations with Stalin.

Constantine Oumansky, the Soviet ambassador in Washington, was ordered to find out everything he .could about Hopkins, especially his attitude toward the Soviet Union, and also to get all possible information about concessions that Roosevelt would demand in return for lend-lease assistance. Meanwhile, Stalin appointed a committee, headed by V. M. Molotov, the foreign minister, to prepare a list of "maximum" concessions that would be granted by Moscow in the expected bargaining with Hop kins. Bogolepov was a member of this committee of high rank ing Soviet officials. The Soviet government was prepared, if necessary, to: (1) permit strict American inspection of the use of lend-lease materials; (2) admit American military observers into the Soviet lines; (3) grant mining concessions for manga nese ore, which the United States imports for its steel industry; (4) invite American capital to participate in the development of Siberia's resources; (6) give a solemn pledge to maintain freedom of speech, freedom of political parties, and freedom of religion. Of course these pledges would have been worthless after the·war, but so long as the Bolsheviks were getting lendWORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 97 lease assistance, the United States could have,held them to their contract. Before Hopkins reached Moscow, however, Molotov gleefully told his colleagues that their recommendations would be shelved. He said the Soviet government had learned from "a certain man at the very highest level of the Roosevelt admin istration" that "Mr. Hopkins will demand no concessions what ever."

"His desire is to ask nothing and to give everything," Molotov added. "What he wants is to keep us in the fight-and. that is all. Mr. Hopkins is completely on our side and may be trusted absolutely." Bogolepov said he was led to believe that Moscow's infor mant was a spy either in the White House or the State Depart ment, but he did not learn his name. In October, 1941, Averell Harriman headed a second lend lease mission to Moscow. At Hopkins' request, according to Robert E. Sherwood's book, Roosevelt and Hopkins, Harriman left Colonel Philip Faymonville in Moscow to act as represent ative there for lend-lease. Sherwood reports that this appoint ment led to a controversy in the War Department, because Faymonville "was one regular army officer who was sympa thetic to the Russians." However, when General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, received a memorandum from an un disclosed source declaring that competent men who had served with Faymonville had serious doubts about his judgment and his impartiality respecting the Soviet Union, he merely sent it to Hopkins without comment.

Faymonville, who became a brigadier general before he re tired, had not changed his opinion of Communist Russia as late as February 18, 1949, when the People's Daily World, an official communist organ on the west coast, published a ful some report on his views and activities. In his paean to the Bolshevik tyranny he declared that "there is no such thing in the Soviet Union as hostility to other nations, or a desire for their conquest." As commissar of lend-lease Hopkins sent the Russians many 98 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION tons of secret written and photographic data about American military and industrial installations, including atomic energy plants. He even sent them generous samples of Uranium 235, the rare fissionable material which occurs in natural uranium at the ratio of only one part to 140. Major G. R. Jordan, who commanded a ferry base at Great Falls, Montana, where the Russians took possession of lend-lease planes, told the House Un-American Activities Committee in December, 1949, that one consignment of blueprints was accompanied by a note on White House stationery, bearing Hopkins' printed name and initialed, "H. H." It said: "Had a hell of a time getting these away from Groves." Major General Leslie Groves was war time chief of the atomic project.

Jordan said some Russians listed as many as fifty suitcases as personal luggage. He searched the bags and reported what he found to his superiors in Washington, but their only re sponse was to transfer him to a post where he could not make trouble. Elizabeth Bentley, a former operative of the Soviet under ground, is a major source of information about communist activities in the government during the war. Miss Bentley, who received a B.A. degree from Vassar College, an M.A. from Columbia, and studied a year at a university in Florence, Italy, joined the Communist Party in March, 1935. In 1938, she began working for Jacob Golos, a representative of the Soviet NKVD (secret police), who also was a member of the three man control commission of the American Communist Party. When Golos died in 1943, Miss Bentley succeeded him as liaison between various underground apparatuses and her su periors in the Kremlin's service. In November, 1945, she re nounced communism and told the FBI everything she knew about the Soviet underground.

Miss Bentley has testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate Subcommittee on In ternal Security. Her story is succinctly told in an excerpt from an FBI report, dated November 25, 1945, which was placed WORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 99 in the record of the Internal Security Subcommittee on April 14, 1953. According to this report, Miss Bentley named more than eighty individuals who were connected with Soviet es pionage work in New York and Washington. Of this number, thirty-seven were employes of the United States government. Miss Bentley told the FBI that "each of these individuals probably obtained information from others either casually, or through actual recruiting" without her knowledge. Late in 1944, Miss Bentley said, the various espionage groups under her direction were turned over to the direct con trol of Soviet representatives at their insistence. She was.able to identify only one of them. Of him the FBI report states: "This Soviet representative, who has used the cover name 'AI,' has been identified as Anatole Gromov, first secretary of the Soviet embassy, Washington, D. C., who since his arrival in the United States on September 15, 1944, has been suspected by this bureau to be the successor in NKVD activities of Vassili , Zubelin, former second secretary of the Soviet embassy, who was recalled to the Soviet (Union) in July, 1944. Zubelin was the reported head of all NKVD activity in North America."

The head of the most important Soviet apparatus under Miss Bentley's direction, according to the FBI report,. was Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, who was transferred from the Farm Security Administration to the Board of Economic Warfare in 1942. Members of this group included: Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Lauchlin Currie, admin istrative assistant to President Roosevelt; Michael Greenberg, assistant to Currie in the White House; William L. Ullman, a Treasury Department official who later became a major in the air forces, stationed at the Pentagon, where he obtained copies of top secret war plans for the Kremlin; Abraham George Silverman, a civilian employe of the War Department; William Taylor, another Treasury Department official, and several less er government employes. The head of the next most important group under Miss Bent ley's direction was Victor Perlo in the War Production Board.

Members of this group were introduced to Miss Bentley early 100 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION in 1944 at the New York apartment of John Abt, general coun sel of the CIa Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and a veteran of the old Harold Ware communist cell in the govern ment. Members of the group included Charles Kramer, an in vestigator for the Kilgore Subcommittee of the Senate; Henry Magdoff, of the War Production Board, Edward Fitzgerald, who moved from the Trea'sury Department to the War Produc tion Board; Donald Wheeler, of the Office of Strategic Services; Mary Price, secretary to Walter Lippman, the New York Her ald-Tribune columnist, and later employed by the CIa United Office and Professional Workers of America; Major Duncan Lee, who went from William J. Donovan's New York law firm . to the OSS, which was headed by Donovan; Sol Leshinsky, of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; George Perozich, also of the UNRRA, and various minor government employes.

Miss Bentley said she had been informed that Alger Hiss of the State Department had separated Harold Glasser, a Treasury Department official, and two or three other members from the Perlo group and turned them over to the direct con trol of Soviet representatives in this country. Less important agents with whom Miss Bentley maintained contact but who were not members of particular groups in cluded Robert T. Miller III, of the State Department; Maurice Halperin, of the ass; Julius J. Joseph, of the ass; Helen Tenney, of the ass; Williard Park and Bernard Redmont, of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs; and William Remington, of the War Production Board. The influence of these Soviet agents with the highest New Deal officials was so great that they could move from one strategic place to another or transfer their friends at will, and successfully defy efforts of the government intelligence services to remove them from so-called sensitive positions. The experi ence of Silvermaster is an example. Early in 1942, Miss Bent ley persuaded him to move from Farm Security to the Board of Economic Warware, in charge of the Middle East Division, because she thought he would be more useful there. On June WORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 101 3, 1942, Major General George V. Strong, head of military intelligence, wrote a memorandum to William T. Stone, Silver master's immediate superior in the BEW, stating that the Office of Naval Intelligence, the FBI, and various police agencies on the west coast had reports showing conclusively that he was disloyal. General Strong recommended Silvermaster's removal.

Miss Bentley testified that she went to Currie in the White House and that Currie persuaded Robert P. Patterson, Under secretary of War, that an injustice was being done to Silver master. On July 3, 1942, Patterson wrote the following letter to Milo Perkins, executive director of the BEW: "Dear Mr. Perkins: "I have personally made an examination of the case and have discussed it with Major General G. V. Strong, G-2. I am fully satis fied that the facts do not warrant anything derogatory to Mr. Silver master's character or loyalty to the United States and that the charges in the report of June 3 (from General Strong) are unfounded. "I request that the copy of the report of June 3 in your files be returned to the War Department." Testifying about this incident before the House Committee on Un-American Activities on August 4, 1948, Silvermaster declared that neither Currie nor Patterson asked him· whether he was a Communist. On April 16, 1953, this Russian-born revolutionist appeared before the Senate Internal Security Sub committee. Counsel Robert Morris asked: "As of this moment are you engaged in active sabotage or espionage against the government of the United States?"

"I refuse to answer this question under the privilege," he said. When Miss Bentley testified before the Senate subcommittee on August 14, 1951, she was asked what avenues she had for moving communist agents from one strategic position to an other. "I would say that two of our best ones were Harry Dexter White and Lauchlin Currie," she replied. "They had an im102 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION mense amount of influence and knew people and their word would be accepted when they recommended someone." She said Currie passed secret information to her, including a report that the United States was about to break the Soviet code. Asked whether Currie was a "full fledged member of the Silvermaster group," she replied: "Definitely." Miss Bentley continued: "It was my understanding he (Cur rie) was going to be reassigned when I left the group in Sep tember, I think it was, 1944. My Soviet contact told me that they did not believe in having such large groups for security reasons because if someone turns sour they know too much; that he intended to put White directly in contact with a Soviet superior and Lauchlin Currie also in direct contact with a So viet agent, and possibly with some of the smaller fry he could put two or three in one group. But he definitely mentioned putting White and Currie in direct contact."

Miss Bentley testified that White, who had worked for Whit taker Chambers in the Soviet espionage service before the war, gave her many copies of secret government documents. All of them were labeled "Harry," because Soviet agents like to know who is providing what, she said. "Many, many times those documents were photographed in the Silvermasters' cellar because they couldn't be spared," Miss Bentley declared. Miss Bentley testified as follows about the Morgenthau plan for Germany: Senator Eastland: "Did you know who drew that plan?" Miss Bentlcy: "Due to Mr. White's influence, to push the devastation of Germany, because that was what the Russians wanted." Senator Ferguson: "That was what the Communists want ed?" Miss Bentley: "Definitely Moscow wanted them completely razed because then they would be of no help to the allies." Mr. Morris: "You say that Harry Dexter White worked on that?"

Miss Bentley: "And on our instructions he pushed hard."

WORLD.REVOLUTIONARY WAR 103 Senator Eastland: "What you say is that it was a Communist plot to destroy Germany and weaken her to where she could not help us?" M iss Bentley: "That is correct. She could no longer be a barrier to protect the western world." Senator Eastland: "And that Mr. Morgenthau, who was sec retary of the treasury of the United States, was used by the Communists to promote that plot?" Miss Bentley: "I'm afraid so; yes." Senator Ferguson: "So you have conscious and unconscious agents?" Miss Bentley: "Of course. The way the whole principle works is like dropping a pebble into a pond and the ripples spread out, and that is the way we .work." Miss Bentley said White conceived and executed a plan which gave her access not only to all information in the Treas ury Department but also secret reports from at least seven or eight other government agencies. She testified that White per suaded the obedient Morgenthau to propose an information trading arrangement to the other government agencies. They agreed and in exchange for secret and confidential reports from the treasury they sent over all their own classified material, which passed over White's desk.

Harold Glasser, now employed by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in New York, was questioned by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on April 14, 1953. His duties in the Treasury Department during the war were "to advise the Secretary of the Treasury on foreign finan cial and economic matters that came before the Treasury De partment." He refused to answer any questions about commu nist connections or espionage for the Soviet Union. Glasser said he was the Treasury Department's financial ex pert in the organization of UNRRA, which was headed first by former Governor (now Senator) Herbert H. Lehman. of New York and later by the late Fiorello La Guardia, former mayor of New York City..When asked whether he had anything 104 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION to do with determining the amount of money the United States should contribute to UNRRA, Glasser said he was one of a group of people who made recommendations to the higher echelons of government. Glasser was asked to name some of the others, and the questioning continued as follows: Glasser: "Well, the man in the State Department who had the top governmental responsibility below the secretary level was then assistant secretary, I believe, Dean Acheson."

Senator Watkins: "Was Harry Dexter White a member of it?" Glasser: "I refuse to answer that question on the ground it may tend to incriminate me." Senator Jenner (Chairman): "Who was your immediate su perior in this group?" Glasser: "I refuse to answer that question on the ground it may tend to incriminate me." Senator Jenner: "Did you have conferences with Dean Ache son?" Glasser: "Yes, sir. 1 couldn't calculate the number, but 1 don't believe they were ever alone with Dean Acheson. 1 had conferences as a member of a group." Senator Jenner: "Was Alger Hiss ever present when you had a conference?" Glasser: "I refuse to answer that question on the ground it may tend to incriminate me." Senator Watkins asked whether it was the Treasury Depart ment's policy "to have most of these goods and wares and other things ... go to the so-called communist bloc of nations." Glasser said the State Department had primary responsibility for political decisions. One of the primary responsibilities of the Treasury Department, he said, was to make a determina tion as to whether countries seeking UNRRA aid were able to pay for such assistance. Senator Watkins asked whether the Treasury Department ever determined that the Soviet Union could or could not pay for the large-scale assistance it re ceived under the UNRRA program. After consulting his counWORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 105 sel, Glasser replied: "I refuse to answer that question, sir, on the ground that it may tend to incriminate me."

Glasser was asked by the committee counsel, Morris, whether he knew anything about the arrangement whereby the Treas ury Department turned over printing plates for American oc cupation currency to the Russians in Germany. The Russians printed several hundred million dollars worth of this currency, which had to be' redeemed by the United States at the expense of the taxpayers. After consulting his counsel, Glasser refused to answer under the privilege against self-incrimination. Before dismissing Glasser, Morris read into the record a let ter of recommendation from Dean Acheson, dated December 23, 1947, to H. L. Lourie, executive director of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, Inc., 165 West 46th Street, New York City. Acheson wrote that he and Glasser had "worked together" over a seven-year period and that he had been impressed by Glasser's "technical competence and his ability to work under the strain of long hours and difficult negotiations. . . ." He rec ommended Glasser as "a first rate economist."

In retrospect, the ascendancy of the Communists in the Roosevelt administration during the war seems incredible. Aided by the direct intervention of· the White House, they sabotaged the security system of the War and Navy Depart ments, received commissions in the army and navy, and were admitted to the most secret activities of the armed forces. Major Hamilton Long, of New York, an air force combat intelligence officer in World War II, has told the amazing story of the communist grip on the War and Navy Departments in his fully documented pamphlet, America's Tragedy-Today. Com mander Floyd G. Caskey, wartime head of the communist sec tion of the navy's counter-intelligence service, known as the "Red desk," told Major Long that his files contained 100,000 cards on known and suspected Communists and fellow travel e(s when he left late in 1943 to attend an advanced intelligence 106 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION school. When he returned in the spring of 1944 the cards had been destroyed. His assistant, a lieutenant commander who had been left in charge, reported that he had received orders from "higher authority" to destroy the cards.

On May 18, 1944, Senator Bridges (R., N. H.), a member of the Military Affairs Committee, learned that the War Depart ment had ordered the destruction of all records of subversive activities. The next day he went to see Secretary Stimson, who called in General Marshall, Chief of Staff; Lt. General Mc Narney, Deputy Chief of Staff, and others. When Stimson de manded information about the order, Marshall angrily pro tested that he was too busy running a war to bother about such matters. McNarney was evasive and belligerent. He challenged the constitutional authority of Senator Bridges (that is, of Congress) to question him. His arrogance finally subsided when Bridges said to him: "I could forgive an officer who makes a mistake and loses a battle, but an officer who betrays his country's security should be taken out and shot." McNarney admitted that his office had issued the order on "higher au thority." Since Marshall and Stimson had denied any knowl edge of the order, the only other higher authority was the White House.

Although Marshall urged Bridges not to demand a Senate investigation, saying it would bring the army into disrepute, the senator reported to his colleagues and a Military Affairs Subcommittee held closed hearings on the matter. The inquiry was dropped when Stimson on May 27, 1944, wrote a letter promising that no subversive activity files would be destroyed. Despite this promise, some files were destroyed. In October, 1946, Colonel Charles A. Drake testified before the House Military Affairs Committee that he was in charge of a crew of eighteen officers and forty to sixty WACs who worked on a destruction program. The work was suddenly stopped in Au gust, 1945, when General Clark, deputy chief of military in telligence, learned about it and protested that there would be "hell to pay" because it violated Stimson's agreement with the Senate.

WORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 107 A War Department directive of December '3D, 1944, stated: "No action will he taken ... that is predicated on membership in or adherence to the doctrines of the Communist Party unless there is a specific finding that the individual involved has a loyalty to the Communist Party which overrides his loyalty to the United States." Since it was impossible to prove such a superior loyalty if the subject denied it, tbis order made Com munists eligible for commissions and for admission to intelli gence, r(\dar, cryptographic, and other schools and duties so secret that military personnel assigned to them could not tell their wives what they were doing. The directive clearly violated the Hatch Act, which pro hibited the payment of government compensation to Commu nists. The House Military Affairs Committee investigated the granting of commissions to Communists in February, 1945.

John J. McCloy, a Wall Street lawyer, whom Stimson had brought to Washington as Assistant Secretary of War on Jus tice Frankfurter's recommendation, was asked whether a Com munist should be given a commission if it should be determined that he was 51 per cent loyal to the United States and 49 per cent loyal to the Communist Party (that is, the Soviet Union). He said: "In the determination of such cases you might get down to a fine point. We try to be sensible about it." McCloy advanced the incredible argument that the "dissolution" of the Communist Party, as announced in January, 1944, by Earl Browder, had made it "impossible any longer to identify actual Communists in this country through current membership in the Communist party." McCloy denied knowledge that any actual Communists had been commissioned, and was promptly rebuked by Browder, who wrote in The Daily Worker: "Of course there are Communists holding commissions in the United States army." At a subsequent inquiry, in July, 1945, the House Military Affairs Committee learned that a War De partmentboard headed by Gen. Craig had rejectedapplica tions for commissions for nine Communists and that McCloy and McNamey had overruled the board.

Undersecretary Patterson was asked at a press conference 108 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION in July, 1945, whether former membership in the Communist Party would bar an individual from receiving a commission. He replied: "I don't think it should, do you?" How the Communists, aided by the White House, ousted two admirals because they tried to remove communist radio operators from merchant ships is related in Major Long's pam phlet in the words of Admiral Staton, one of the victims. Staton was chairman of a navy board appointed to remove subversive radio operators from merchant ships, under a new law. The board first removed certain Japanese, German and Italian op erators of questionable loyalty, and encountered no difficulty. Next it moved against members of the communist-dominated American Communications Association, who were listed un der the heading, "Un-American Activities." Admiral Staton reports that the word Communist was regarded as political dynamite. One of those removed had boasted that Stalin had a Communist on every American ship and could immediately learn its location by sending out a radio signal. Soon after the board began removing Communists, a delegation from the union demanded their reinstatement and threatened that other wise "two admirals will be out of a job." This referred to Staton and Admiral Hooper, the navy's distinguished electronics ex pert, who was responsible for the security of communications at sea.

On March 19, 1942, an extraordinary meeting was held in the office of Secretary Knox. The official minutes, supplied by Admiral Staton, show that Admiral Hooper emphasized the danger of communist cells in the transportation and communi cations industries. He said they should be destroyed, despite our "temporary military alliance with the USSR," because a change in the international political situation might come at any time. Knox said he held no brief for the Communists, but that President Roosevelt had told him that the United States, being an ally of the Soviet Union, must not oppose the activi ties of the Communist Party. He said the President had ruled specifically that communist radio operators must not be reWORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 109 moved from ships. Knox said he regarded this as an order from the commander-in-chief and that he expected it to be obeyed without mental reservations. Ralph A. Bard, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, supported Knox. When Staton after the conference suggested that Bard and Knox ought "to go to the President and get him to change his mind," Bard curtly replied: "The President has more information ~han you have." Later, on Knox's orders, Staton was placed on the inactive list and Hooper was retired for "disability."

In 1943, when the Cox Committee of the House was inves tigating the FCC and related matters, Staton and Hooper were ordered not to testify. Adlai Stevenson, then Knox's assistant, called Staton on the telephone and said the White House had ordered him to refuse to obey a House subpoena. It can be said in defense of all these War and Navy Depart ment officialsthat they merely carried out White House orders. However, that defense was pleaded in vain by the Germans who were tried at Nuernberg. The War and Navy Department officials might have protested or resigned, but rather than de prive themselves of the opportunity to bask in the refulgence of Washington officialdom in wartime, they silently sheltered a fifth column in the topmost control centers of the nation's armed forces. The War Department's Information and Education Division sent out so-called "Orientation Fact Sheets," for use in the in doctrination of all army personnel, which denounced .critics of the Soviet Union as "Fascists" and glorified the Stalin tyran ny as a "peace-loving democracy" with a constitution superior in some respects to that of the United States. As a combat in telligence officer in the Air Forces, one of my duties was to give orientation talks to the troops, and I received these "fact sheets" from the War Department. I never used them, and if I had there would have been justifiable insubordination if not a riot. Fortunately the American soldiers had too much gump tion to be deceived by the War Department's communist propa ganda. They were more discerning in this respect than Frederick 110 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION Osborn, who became a major general as director of the War Department's Information and Education Division and later represented the United States in atomic energy negotiations with the Russians at the United Nations.

The Board of Economic Warfare, created to control the export and import of essential raw materials and deprive the Axis powers of such supplies by "preclusive" buying in foreign countries, was headed by Henry Wallace, the Vice President. Wallace was the candidate of the Communists, on the Progres sive Party ticket, for president in 1948. He was a disciple of Nicholas Constantin Roerich, a grotesque, white-bearded Rus sian who was pleased to be addressed as "Guru," meaning teacher or spiritual leader. Westbrook Pegler, the newspaper columnist, has in his possession a batch of letters to Roerich, written on Department of Agriculture stationery when Wal lace was secretary and purporting to be signed by Wallace. The letters can only be described as imbecilic. Wallace has ignored Pegler's repeated challenges to affirm or deny their authenticity. Another member of the fantastic Roerich cult was Louis L.

Horch, a wealthy New York broker, who raised the money to erect the Roerich Museum at 105th Street and Riverside Drive in New York City, which Pegler calls Roerich's Lamasery or Joss House. Horch was an official of the Department of Agri culture under Wallace, and in 1942 he joined Wallace in the BEW. The executive director of the BEW, Milo Perkins, also came from the Department of Agriculture. Perkins, a former theosophist preacher and burlap bag manufacturer in Houston, Texas, wrote a piece for The Nation in 1934, advocating a thirty-hour week and a twenty-five per cent wage boost for everybody. Fervidly, he cried: "Grab the Torch! Men of Means, Grab the Torch!" Perkins sold himself to Wallace, a fellow mystic, by writing a letter declaring that "from child hood I have wanted to live in a world I could lift."l The chief economist of the BEW was "Dr." Maurice Parma 1. John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth.

WORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 111 lee, who was born in Constantinople and had written a book titled Bolshevism, Fascism and the Liberal Democratic State, in which he said: "The high technological development in the United States renders it feasible to introduce a planned social economy much more rapidly than has been the case in the U.S.S.R.... The superficial paraphernalia of capitalism can be dispensedwith more quicklythan in the SovietUnion." He also had written a book called Nudism in Modern Life, in which he advocated revival of the cult of the ancient gymno... sophists of India, who went naked and devoted themselves to meditation. Nudism should be practiced "wherever feasible in office, workshop or factory," he wrote. When the House Committee on Un-American Activities ex posed Parmalee's aberrations, he was eased out of the BEW and into another New Deal agency, in the customary manner of bureaucracy. And the character who was brought in to re..

place him as chief economist of the BEW was "Dr." John Bovingdon, whose credentials were thus described on Febru ary 7, 1935, by The Western Worker, a communist organ: "John Bovingdon, former director of the International Theater in Moscow and well known as a dancer, having recently re turned from the Soviet Union, will give a lecture and dance program in Jenny Lind Hall. . . . The affair is being arranged by the Friends of Soviet Russia under whose auspices Boving don is touring this country." Representative Dies, chairman of the Un-American Activi ties Committee, also exposed Bovingdon. He gave Wallace a list of thirty-five Communists on the BEW payroll. The only thanks he got was a statement by Wallace that it would be better for the "morale" of the BEW if Dies were on Hitler's payroll. A feud between Wallace and Jesse Jones, head of the Re construction Finance Corporation, which put up the mOJ.?-ey for the BEW, finallybecamesuch a publicscandalthat Rodse velt, in 1944, was compelled to abolish the BEW and set up a new alphabetical agency, the FEA (Foreign Economic Ad ministration), under Leo Crowley.

112 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION The Office of War Information, under Elmer Davis, prob ably had a higher percentage of Communists on the payroll than any other war agency, although the competition for that dishonor was great. Davis, a radio "news analyst" before and after the war, was and is one of the leading anti-anti-Commu nists in the United States. He protects himself by occasionally attacking Soviet policies, but he serves the forces of subversion by maintaining that "McCarthyism" is a greater menace to this country than communism. Owen Lattimore was deputy director of the OWl for Pacific operations and Joseph F. Barnes, foreign news editor of the New York Herald-Tribune before and after the war, was deputy director for overseas operations. Both Lattimore and Barnes were leaders in the communist-dominated Institute of Pacific Relations. Alexander Barmine, who was a brigadier general in the Soviet intelligence service before he escaped from Rus sia and became an American citizen, testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that his superiors in Moscow told him that Lattimore and Barnes were "our men." Hede Massing, a former Soviet agent, testified that she knew Zubelin, mentioned earlier in this chapter, in Washington and Moscow, and that in Moscow in 1937 he took her to a closely-guarded tennis court, reserved for officers of the NKVD. She said she saw Barnes playing on one of the courts and mentioned to Zu belin that it was dangerous for them to be seen there together by an American newspaperman. Zubelin replied: "Barnes? Oh, you needn't worry about Barnes." The subc,ommittee's record contains an exhibit headed, "Memorandum of Informal Con versation at the Communist Academy, Volkhonka 14, Mos cow, May 26, 1934," which states that the following were present: "Voitinsky, Abramson, Barnes, Carter." Barnes and Edward C. Carter were American IPR officials, the others were Russians. Colonel Bogolepov testified that the Russians used the IPR as an arm of their military intelligence.

Archibald MacLeish was the director of the Office of Facts and Figures, which preceded the OWl, and was assistant di rector of the OWl before he went to the State Department as WORLD REVOLUTIONARY WAR 113 assistant secretary. This precious spirit went away to France to live and write poetry in 1923 because life in the United States was too vulgar for his ethereal nature, but he returned in 1930, when the Marxists were beginning to talk boldly about making America over. On June 8, 1937, the communist Daily Worker of New York reported his election as vice president of the League of American Writers, successor to the League of Revolutionary Writers. Earl Browder, guest speaker at the meeting, was introduced by MacLeish. Wrote the Daily Worker reporter: "It was a genuine people's front meeting, and at such a meeting it was significant and proper that Browder spoke as a Communist. By doing so he gave a tone and necessary sense of .direction the meeting might not otherwise have had."

The OWl had·a payroll of more than 5,500 and spent $3, 000,000 a month. It was loaded with draft dodgers, red revo lutionists, and a scum of European refugees who pretended to sell America to the world but made it their business to sell Communist Russia to America. The inconceivably alien and un-American character of its personnel was shown by a pub lication it prepared for distribution in the Soviet Union, called America 11lustrated.·This treatise, written in Russian,described eight Middle Western states as a "bleak, drought-stricken, semi desert." Industry in that remote region, centering around Chi cago, was said to be "almost non-existent." It declared that these eight states, with prairie lands covering almost one quar ter of the United States, supported only one twentieth of the population. "The people in it are mostly farmers," it added. "Raw materials and fabricated goods must be imported from other states."

The war gave the revolutionists a vision of the Marxist Leninist promised land: government taxing and spending on a scale hitherto undreamed of; absolute government control of the national economy; unquestioning obedience, motivated by patriotism, to national authority; exaltation of the Soviet Union as a glorious ally and exemplar for a postwar America.