thrill of secretive work, personal weaknesses, blackmail, feelings of
spite against America because of an imagined wrong, a hope to assist
relatives in communist countries. Very important, however, is ideological
motivation, an attraction to the theory of communism and/or misguided
admiration for Soviet rule in Russia.
Let’s examine more closely this ideological motivation since it is
playing such a major role today. We can distinguish two major categories:
1. _Non-Party ideological motivation_: that is, a feeling for or
acceptance of the alleged principles of communism. In prior years many
thousands were hoodwinked into believing, because of propaganda, that
Russia represented a new “era” in humanity, that anti-Semitism was being
abolished, that injustices were being rectified, that the problems of
hunger, poverty, and racial discrimination were being solved. Among the
reasons Harry Gold, who was never a Party member, gave for entering
Russian espionage were:
A genuine desire to help the people of the Soviet Union to be
able to enjoy some of the better things of life.... Here, too,
in the person of the Soviet Union was the one bulwark against
the further encroachment of that monstrosity, Fascism....
Anything that was against anti-Semitism I was for, and so
the chance to help strengthen the Soviet Union seemed like a
wonderful opportunity.
2. _Party ideological motivation_: the conditioning of thousands of
members and sympathizers in the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, schooling
them in loyalty to Moscow. Every Party member, through his training, is
a potential communist espionage or sabotage agent. Julius Rosenberg,
a fanatical Party member, actually volunteered his services. David
Greenglass, Rosenberg’s brother-in-law, was also an ardent communist.
Walking along Highway 66 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1944, his wife,
Ruth, who had just come from New York City, told David that Julius
wanted him to furnish information about his work at Los Alamos, where
the atom bomb was being prepared. (David was assigned there as an army
technician.) At first David said no—but his ideological motivation as a
communist reversed his decision, and he agreed. He was to do great damage
to America by furnishing the Russians, through Rosenberg, with valuable
information about our greatest weapon.
Then there are other methods of motivating agents:
1. _Threat of exposure and blackmail._ Agents are given money (sometimes
even against their will). Usually the amount is small, but a receipt is
obtained, thus compromising their independence. Or they are made to sign
papers, reports, or documents. If the initial ideological enthusiasm
wears off, as it probably will, the agent is trapped. Even if he so
desires, he cannot break away.
2. _Use of hostages._ Once they have control over relatives and loved
ones the Soviets do not hesitate to let it be known that unless their
victim does their bidding a whole family will be liquidated.
Today the Party, with its thousands of members, represents a vast
reservoir of potential espionage agents. Moreover, its vast propaganda
and ideological program is daily saturating their hearts, minds, and
souls with a sympathetic acceptance of communism. To be a Party member
does not automatically mean being an espionage agent, but it makes the
member potential spy material, if the request for aid to Russia ever
comes. This is a tremendous and present danger to our security.
The United States is strategic spy target Number One for the Soviets.
Every effort is being made to penetrate our defenses. The Soviets
are interested in literally everything. Any person who believes that
espionage means securing only military information is unacquainted
with the nature of twentieth-century spying. An army manual, security
regulations of a government building, the “political” views of a
clerk in an industrial firm, incidents in the life of a prominent
person which might be used for blackmail—these and many more are prize
espionage targets. Soviet espionage is both mass (seeking information
at random) and specific (trying to obtain a certain blueprint or
military operational plan); open (gathering public source items, such
as newspapers, magazines, maps, navigational charts, patents, aerial
photographs, technical journals) and undercover (use of illegal means to
steal information).
Here are some major “areas of interest” of Soviet espionage in the United
States:
1. Scientific research and development, with particular
attention to atomic energy, missiles, radar defense,
electronics, and aeronautics.
2. The strength, deployment, training methods, strategy, and
tactics of the armed forces of the United States, together with
ordnance, weapons, and military equipment.
3. The intelligence and counterintelligence agencies of the
United States, possibilities for penetration.
4. International relations of the United States.
5. Weaknesses in American public and private life that can be
exploited for intelligence and propaganda purposes.
6. Anti-Soviet political opposition groups, refugees from the
Soviet Union and satellite countries, and nationality groups in
the United States.
The world of Soviet espionage, like the communist underground, is bleak
and dreary. An individual may work for years and know his superior only
as “Bill” or “Henry.” His rewards: a smile, a promise, or a token award.
Harry Gold, who gave a lifetime to the Soviets, was awarded the Order of
the Red Star, which, among other things, gave him the privilege of free
trolley rides in Moscow. To those hoping to get money, the promise is
always big, but results are meager. Here are Gold’s own words:
... the difficulty in raising money for ... trips; the weary
hours of waiting on street corners in strange towns where I had
no business to be and the killing of time in cheap movies; and
the lies I had to tell at home and to my friends to explain my
supposed whereabouts (Mom was certain that I was carrying on
a series of clandestine love affairs).... It was drudgery ...
anyone who had an idea this work was glamorous and exciting was
very wrong indeed—nothing could have been more dreary.
Life is disciplined to the final detail. The individual is a cog in
a vast, inhuman, demanding machine. Klaus Fuchs, for example, while
committing espionage in New York, asked permission from the Soviets
for his sister in Massachusetts to stay with him. A petty detail but,
disciplined agent that he was, he got the necessary approval.
The pressure is terrific, with the Soviet principals always wanting
more and more. “If you were in Russia,” one Soviet superior barked at a
sub-agent who had done something wrong, “you would suffer the same fate
as the traitors in the Moscow trials,” referring to the purges of the
1930’s. Everything is geared to promote Russian interests. If the agent
fails, there are threats of dire consequences.
Espionage’s twin partner is sabotage. In 1917 and after, sabotage played
an important part in the Bolshevik rise to power. Revolution for the
communists is a “science,” of which sabotage is an important element. Not
to use it, according to communist tactics, is to hinder victory.
The Communist Party, USA, has not reached the point where preparations
for sabotage are vital to its future plans. Its small numbers, fear of
FBI penetration of its inner discussions, and the existence of federal
laws against sabotage and insurrection militate against such plans. So
far the communists have carefully refrained from any show of terrorism.
Any such act, even random sorties, the communists realize, would cause
more harm to the Party by counter prosecutive action than any damage
achieved by violence. Moreover, basic communist revolutionary tactics
dictate against any such sabotage attempts until the eve of hostilities,
which we pray and hope will never come. According to communist teaching,
the comrades should not “tip their hands” until the “time is ripe.” At
a time when the Party was more open and truthful in proclaiming its
objectives and tactics, Party organizers were instructed, “To raise the
slogan of an armed demonstration without any anticipation of a speedy
transformation into an armed revolt, and before the preconditions for a
successful revolt exist, is to be guilty of playing with revolution.”
Never must we forget, however, that even though acts of sabotage are not
now part of the Party’s program, they may become so in the future. In
fact, the communist underground provides a cover to commit sabotage when
it will serve the communist cause.
As part of the Party’s underground the communists are pursuing a program
called _colonization_, designed to place concealed members in strategic
positions in basic industries and defense facilities. Colonization is
part of the Party’s industrial concentration program, which aims at
increasing communist influence in industry and labor. This always has
a high Party priority. Basic industry is a commonly used Party term,
which one communist manual has defined as those industries “upon which
the whole economic system depends.” Hence to have a Party member in a
steel plant would be more advantageous to the communists than one in a
corncob-pipe factory. This technique is also often called “A Party Rooted
Among the Workers.”
In event of an emergency these colonizers, because of their key positions
and concealed capacities, would be able to commit sabotage. A trained
communist, by a flip of a switch, the pull of a lever, or the release
of death-generating germs, could disrupt the work of thousands. One
publication described the Party’s objective:
In order to overthrow the capitalist system, the working class
must control the key positions in the capitalist system. These
are not the state and federal capitals, public buildings, or
residential neighborhoods, but the heart of the capitalist
system—the shops, mines, mills and factories.
Moreover, the location of communist members in key industrial facilities
places the Party in a position, if it desires, to promote strikes and
slowdowns, which can be used as forms of sabotage. These tactics are
vital, in communist thinking, to create “revolutionary situations”
preparatory to the seizure of power.
Colonizers do not participate in open Party activities. Often they come
from other areas of the country, even giving up their chosen professions.
Sometimes a man and wife (a colonizer couple) will be sent into this
phase of underground operations. The emphasis is on young people—those
in their twenties and thirties. Operating under aliases, they attempt to
work their way into more strategic industrial positions. These colonizers
represent a deadly communist underground weapon. They are “sleepers” who,
upon Party instructions, may one day rise up against our nation.
Another potential danger arises from previous sabotage training of
Party members. Some, as we have seen, attended Moscow’s Lenin School.
There they learned, among other things, the techniques of guerrilla
warfare, how to make sabotage devices and organize civilian resistance.
Others served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.
According to William Z. Foster, 15,000 Party members saw duty with
American military forces during World War II. The Party realizes that the
enrollment of members in the armed forces provides military experience
which, in a time of revolutionary crisis, could be utilized to communist
advantage—at “capitalist” expense.
All the time, while the Party is attacking free government, both
above-ground and underground, it seeks complete license to pursue its
schemes. Any opposition by the government is labeled “persecution,” “Red
baiting,” or “thought control.”
For this reason communists grasp every opportunity to discredit, weaken,
and vilify the institutions enforcing law and order. As long as the
American judicial system is strong and realistically recognizes the
threat of subversion to our constitutional republic, their efforts will
be hampered. They know that.
Listen to these teachings. Are they calculated to instill respect for our
democratic heritage?
—_The law-enforcement officer_: “... a servant of the boss
class.... He is your enemy.”
—_The courts_: “... the workers must ... recognize the
capitalist court as a class enemy—as a weapon in the bosses’
hands....” “The worker must also understand that courts are not
impartial....”
At all times communists are told to try to make “bourgeois” courts look
weak and silly. If members are brought to trial, turn the courtroom into
a sounding board for communism. “... the aim should be to turn the trial
into an open tribunal for the spreading and propagating of Communist
ideas and aims.” “The class struggle goes on in the courtroom as well as
it does on the picket line, in the shops, and in the mines.”
That’s why every possible tactic is used inside the courtroom to
obstruct the orderly operation of justice. Outside, another attack is
coordinated: letter-writing campaigns, fund-raising drives, propaganda
leaflets, literature, all alleging that the communists on trial are
being “persecuted” and that American courts are “unfair,” “partial,” and
“undemocratic.”
Another weapon in the Party’s underground arsenal is the attempted
infiltration of our armed forces. “Illegal work is particularly necessary
in the army, the navy and police,” Lenin proclaimed. Another communist
writer adds, “The capitalist class has the army, navy and police at its
disposal precisely for the purpose of keeping the working class from
seizing power.”
Yet, in the final analysis, as the communists well know, force and
violence will be needed to bring about the revolution.
In fact this is exactly what Khrushchev had in mind when he told the
Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:
... Our enemies like to depict us Leninists as advocates of
violence always and everywhere. True, we recognize the need
for the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society
into socialist society. It is this that distinguishes the
revolutionary Marxists from the reformists, the opportunists.
There is no doubt that in a number of capitalist countries the
violent overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and
the sharp aggravation of class struggle connected with this are
inevitable....
Over 100 years ago Marx and Engels made this point perfectly clear in the
_Communist Manifesto_. “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and
aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Lenin was more
pointed:
As long as capitalism and socialism exist, we cannot live in
peace: in the end, one or the other will triumph—a funeral
dirge will be sung either over the Soviet Republic or over
world capitalism.
Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev reveals his own hypocrisy when, in
the same breath, he boasts that the communist world has no aggressive
intentions and then declares as he did in August, 1957, “We are Leninists
and are for peaceful cooperation.” Through the use of Aesopian language
he is seeking to induce the Western world to relax its guard until the
time when the communist world is ready to launch its offensive and hopes
to chant the “funeral dirge” over the free world.
How can loyal Americans resist this attack? I turn to this subject in the
concluding chapters.
22.
_What Can You Do?_
The responsible person who gains an understanding of communism knows that
such understanding should lead to the question: “But what can I do about
it?”
My answer is that we can do _a lot_.
1. First and most important is to make sure that we do not permit the
communists to fool us into becoming “innocent victims.” Our defense?
First, to know the answers to the “Five False Claims of Communism” given
in Chapter 7. Next, to know the ways to “spot” deceptive communist
fronts, listed at the end of Chapter 17.
2. Members of a trade union or any civic, fraternal, or social
organization can help by spotting, exposing, and opposing communist
efforts to infiltrate and capture that organization. How this can be done
is told in Chapter 16.
3. And, finally, there may well be occasions when everyone might have the
opportunity to help expose and prevent attempts at espionage, sabotage,
and other types of subversive activity.
“Yes,” one might say, “but I’m just a private citizen. Isn’t spy-hunting
a job for the FBI?”
Of course it is a job for the FBI, one given it by Presidential
directives, acts of Congress, and rulings of the Attorney General. But
the FBI can’t do it all alone. The FBI has jurisdiction over more than
140 violations of federal law, and in a country with over 170,000,000
inhabitants there are fewer than 6200 agents of the FBI. Hence, all
of these agents are not available for the investigation of subversive
activities. We need the help of _all_ loyal Americans.
Furthermore, in a democracy like ours, citizenship carries with it not
only _rights_ but _obligations_. One of these is to do _our_ part to
preserve, protect, and defend the United States against all enemies,
whether domestic or foreign. The President of the United States, for
example, in issuing directives giving the FBI the responsibility over
matters relating to espionage, sabotage, and subversive activities,
specifically called upon all patriotic citizens and individuals to assist
us.
Therefore, those individuals who place information they have regarding
the communist conspiracy into the proper hands are making a contribution
of great value to the security of their country.
“But,” one may say, “what can I do? I lead an ordinary life. I don’t know
any communists. So how can I be of any help?”
My answer to that is: You never know! Here is a case history of another
average American who thought he “didn’t know any communists.”
This incident might be called the Case of the Forgotten Rubbish.
It was on a Saturday. A man telephoned one of our field offices. “I’ve
been cleaning out my garage,” he said, “and I’ve found some old rubbish
there.”
“Yes,” said the special agent.
“I guess I’m crazy calling about this, but I thought you might be
interested. The stuff doesn’t belong to me. It was left here by some
roomers who moved a month or two ago. There’s a box with a lot of cards.”
“What kind of cards?”
“Don’t know,” the man answered. “I never saw any like them before. There
are no names on them. Have words like ‘club’ and ‘section’ and some
different colored tabs on them. Guess I should have burned them and
not....”
“We’re certainly glad you called,” the agent said. “Mind if we come to
see you?”
That telephone call enabled the FBI to secure the membership records of
a complete section of the Communist Party. Marked for destruction by the
section membership secretary, they had, by mistake, found their way into
the forgotten rubbish.
Now an alert, patriotic citizen had placed these records into the fight
against communism, helping to identify many of the most dangerous
subversives in his very own community.
In this way he, like many others who report information to the FBI, was
helping protect his own home, family, and nation.
Don’t think one must have evidence establishing the identity of a spy,
the hide-out of an underground Party leader, or the location of stolen
blueprints before he can report information. Many cases start with very
small clues, a scrap of paper, a photograph, an abandoned passport. Then,
bit by bit, the entire picture is developed by investigation.
Here are a few suggestions of what Americans can report to the FBI:
1. Any information about espionage, sabotage, and subversive
activities. The FBI is as close to every person as the nearest
telephone. See the front of any telephone book for the FBI’s
number.
2. Don’t worry if the information seems incomplete or trivial.
Many times a small bit of information might furnish the data we
are seeking.
3. Stick to the facts. The FBI is not interested in rumor or
idle gossip. Talebearing should always be avoided. The FBI is
not interested in what a person thinks but what he does to
undermine our national security.
4. Don’t try to do any investigating yourself. Security
investigations require great care and effort. The innocent must
be protected as well as the guilty identified. That is the job
for the professional investigator. Hysteria, witch hunts, and
vigilantes weaken our internal security.
5. Be alert. America’s best defense lies in the alertness of
its patriotic citizens.
As we have seen, identifying communists is not easy. They are trained in
deceit and trickery and use every form of camouflage and dishonesty to
advance their cause.
For this reason we must be absolutely certain that our fight is waged
with full regard for the historic liberties of this great nation. _This
is the fundamental premise of any attack against communism._
Too often I have seen cases where loyal and patriotic but misguided
Americans have thought they were “fighting communism” by slapping the
label of “Red” or “communist” on anybody who happened to be different
from them or to have ideas with which they did not agree.
Smears, character assassination, and the scattering of irresponsible
charges have no place in this nation. They create division, suspicion,
and distrust among loyal Americans—just what the communists want—and
hinder rather than aid the fight against communism.
Another thing. Time after time in this book I have mentioned that honest
dissent should not be confused with disloyalty. A man has a right to
think as he wishes: that’s the strength of our form of government.
Without free thought our society would decay. Just because a man’s
opinion is unpopular and represents a minority viewpoint or is different
he is not necessarily disloyal. Hence, one should have the facts before
accusing anyone of propagating the Party line.
One of the chief jobs of the FBI, fully as important as tracking down
spies, is to protect the civil rights of individuals.
In the FBI our objective in any investigation is to secure the facts
which will establish the truth or falsity of a complaint or allegation.
We do not evaluate nor do we make recommendations for a course of action
as to whether a man should be prosecuted, hired, or removed from a job.
The FBI is strictly a fact-gathering agency, responsible, in turn, to the
Attorney General, the President, the Congress, and, in the last analysis,
to the American people. The investigative and adjudicatory processes
simply do not belong in the same organization.
When the clouds of World War II began to lower, large segments of our
people became conscious for the first time that America was confronted
with an enemy from within. One of the disgraces of our era is that it was
ever necessary to question the loyalty of Americans. The record, however,
is clear: There were some who, using the protective cloak of the rights
of all Americans as a cover, sought to conceal traitorous and subversive
activities.
In carrying out our responsibilities we soon became very conscious of
the fact that each allegation and complaint had to be carefully checked.
There are literally thousands of people in this country who have been the
target of accusation and thousands whose loyalty could be established
only by investigation. Most have been grateful. Some have been resentful
that they were investigated at all; but we had a job to do, and it
was done with impartiality and a zealous regard for the rights and
reputation of the individuals involved. One of the happiest moments in
our day-to-day activities is when we can establish the innocence of a man
wrongfully accused.
Here are a few illustrations of the outcome of investigations which have
given us a feeling of satisfaction: