As in the change of enlistment standards, developments with security records of the Army would track the experience of the Navy. In May 1944, a directive was issued by the Pentagon to dismantle the G-2 counterintelligence files of the Army and disperse them to the Archives. Questioned about this by Bridges and other members of the Senate, Secretary Stimson and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall professed not to know anything about it. However, Lt. Gen. Joseph McNarney, Marshall’s deputy, did know, and indicated the order had come from “higher authority”—which, given the stature of Stimson and Marshall, could only mean the White House.13
The removal and/or destruction of G-2 files would be confirmed in other inquests. General Bissell, at a later hearing, gave a less-than-reassuring picture of what had happened to these records. He told investigators, “there are thousands of them that cannot be located, have been destroyed, thousands of them,” explaining that “there goes on in any large intelligence organization a sorting out, a re-classification, and a destruction.” Bissell’s deputy, Col. Ivan Yeaton, enlarged on this description, dovetailing with the timeline on the Navy file removal. Yeaton said that on June 16, 1944, “the whole of G-2 was reorganized right in the middle of the war…. The records in every one of the branches were picked up and moved down to the basement.”14
As suggested by the Mandel interview, the file destruction issue was of compelling interest to the FBI as well as to the Congress. On December 31, 1943, FBI agent George Burton reported to Hoover assistant Mickey Ladd that “certain powerful interests within or near the War Department have undertaken an active program aimed at the dismemberment of the Counter-Intelligence Corps of G-2.” Burton had discussed this with Army officials who said “quite frankly that the reason counter-intelligence had been wrecked was that Harry Hopkins and the Secret Service had ordered it to be wrecked.”15
This seemed sufficiently fantastic, but the explanation given Burton was more so. Officers deploring the asserted wrecking order traced it to the case of Joseph Lash, a former leader of a leftward youth group called the American Student Union and a protégé of the President’s wife. When Lash faced conscription in 1942, Mrs. Roosevelt tried to get him a commission in the Navy but was unsuccessful. Instead, Lash was inducted into the Army and kept under G-2 surveillance. Unluckily for all concerned, this led G-2 to conclude that Lash and Mrs. Roosevelt were something more than political buddies, as they were allegedly recorded by a hidden microphone during a hotel-room tryst in Chicago.
According to the G-2 account, when President Roosevelt was advised of this and the recording was played for him, he blew his top and ordered a draconian crackdown. In particular, the FBI was told, Lash and all Army personnel who knew anything about the matter were to be subject to the direst sanctions (“sent to the South Pacific for action against the Japs until they were killed”).16 Since Lash’s security file was among those affected by the dismantling order, this bizarre back story appeared to fit the available facts as to why the files would be disposed of.
Years later, Joe Lash would track down the FBI reports on this and deny that such a scandalous thing had happened, and the few historians who refer to it dismiss it as either a smear by FBI Director Hoover or a fantasy concocted by G-2.17 Whatever the merit of such speculations, it’s unlikely this garish tale was the real reason for any dismantling of the records. There were too many other episodes in which Army intelligence files went missing, with no connection to Joe Lash.
An ominous case in point concerned the Katyn Forest massacre of the early war years, when thousands of captive Polish officers were slain in a part of Russia alternately controlled by the Germans and the Russians in fighting once the Hitler-Stalin pact was broken. When the fact of the murders was made public by the Nazis in April 1943, each despotism blamed the other. Since both were perfectly capable of such horrors, either might have done it.
The episode among other ill effects had somber implications for the Cold War future, as Moscow used a request for an independent Red Cross inquiry from the Polish government-in-exile in London as a pretext for breaking off relations, then switched recognition to a Soviet puppet. No such outside inquest would be sanctioned by the Kremlin of that era. However, Col. John Van Vliet, an American officer on the scene as a German POW, examined the bodies and related data and when he got home in 1945 filed a report about the murders. His verdict, borne out by later findings, was that the Soviets were the guilty parties.18*28
Subsequently, the Van Vliet report was marked “top secret,” kept under wraps, then disappeared entirely. A House committee chaired by Rep. Ray Madden (D-Ind.) looked into this grim affair and found that other reports reflecting badly on the Kremlin were likewise disposed of—for instance, dispatches from a Col. Henry Szymanski that criticized the Soviet role in Poland. As the Madden panel reported: “Evidence unearthed by this committee shows that Szymanski’s highly critical reports on Soviet Russia were buried in the basement of Army Intelligence (G-2) and subsequently moved to the dead file of that agency.”19
The Madden committee tried to discover who had done these things and at a minimum who had been handling such papers. Unfortunately for the historical record, the testimony on this point wasn’t in public session, and the transcript of the executive hearing itself has vanished from the National Archives. However, the report of the committee summed up the episode as follows:
More amazing to this committee is testimony of three high-ranking Army officers who were stationed in Army Intelligence (G-2)…testifying in executive session, all three agreed there was a pool of “pro-Soviet” civilian employees and some military in Army intelligence…who found explanations for almost anything the Soviet Union did. These same witnesses told of tremendous efforts exerted by this group to suppress anti-Soviet reports. The committee likewise learned that top-ranking Army officers who were too critical of the Soviets were by-passed in Army intelligence…20
THOUGH these are cases from military annals, civilian agencies were not, of course, exempt from similar hazards. The State Department, for evident reasons, would be a target of Soviet attentions, especially during World War II but also for some years before then. As noted by diplomat/historian George F. Kennan, the department in the latter 1930s had a knowledgeable Russian affairs division well versed in Soviet matters, which kept an extensive library and filing system and was famously skeptical on the bona fides of the Kremlin. One day, Kennan relates, an edict would come down as follows:
The entire shop…was to be liquidated, and its functions transferred to the Division of West European Affairs…. The beautiful library was to beturned over to the Library of Congress, to be dispersed there by file numbers among its other vast holdings and thus cease to exist as a library. The special files were to be destroyed…. I am surprised, in later years, that the McCarthyites and other right wingers of the early Fifties never got hold of the incident and made capital of it; for here, if ever, was a point at which there was indeed the smell of Soviet influence, or strongly pro-Soviet influence, somewhere in the higher reaches of the government.21
Other occurrences at State, involving not merely files but people, would give rise to like suspicions. Of particular note were instances in which the policy of the averted gaze toward members of the Communist Party was extended even further—to spies sent here from Moscow, spotted by the FBI, but shielded by some higher power. As with other problems cited, inclinations of this type were evident in the 1930s but increased by several magnitudes during the wartime fling with Stalin.
One such case arose in 1938, involving the Soviet agent Mikhail Gorin, surveilled obtaining confidential data from a civilian staffer of the U.S. Navy. The FBI nabbed both suspects, who were charged with espionage violations and convicted. The naval employee would serve four years in prison, but the Soviet agent would walk free, thanks to State Department intervention. According to the FBI’s account, the judge in the case, “on recommendation of the Department of State, and through the authorization of the Attorn
ey General, suspended the execution of Gorin’s original sentence and placed him on probation.”22
Even more troubling to the Bureau was the 1941 case of Soviet superspy Gaik Ovakimian. Having tracked his endeavors in behalf of Moscow, the FBI arrested him for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and thought it had him dead to rights. Again, however, the State Department stepped in to change things. The FBI memo about this says “arrangements were made by the Soviets with the United States State Department for the release of Gaik Ovakimian and his departure for the Soviet Union.” The somewhat doubtful reason given for this lenient treatment was that the Soviets would reciprocate by releasing six Americans held by Red officials.*29 23
The release of Ovakimian occurred in July of 1941, a month after Hitler invaded Russia, and may thus have been an early case of foreign policy realpolitik thwarting Bureau law enforcement. Thereafter, when the United States was a cobelligerent with the USSR, kid-glove handling of Soviet agents seems to have been the standard practice. Two instances of no-fault spying for the Kremlin, dating from the middle 1940s, were the cases of Soviet Purchasing Commission official Andrei Schevchenko and a legendary Moscow spy with the un-Russian name of Arthur Adams.
Testimony on these cases was given before the Senate in 1949 by former FBI agent Larry Kerley. Kerley read into the record a condensed and paraphrased version of a secret FBI wrap-up on Soviet activity in the U.S. In the course of this, he referred to Adams and Schevchenko and matter-of-factly told the Senate both had been set free, despite substantial proof of spying, because of State Department orders. “It was simply a matter of policy,” he said, “that none of Russia’s espionage agents were to be arrested.”24
A similar version of wartime practice was given by Bureau agent Robert Lamphere—later famous as the main FBI contact with the Army Security Agency in the Venona project. Concerning the Schevchenko case, Lamphere would comment: “Justice consulted with the State Department and the decision was made not to arrest Schevchenko but to allow him to leave the country. International repercussions were feared if we arrested and tried a Soviet national during wartime when Russia was our ally….”25
In contrast to the benign neglect or positive favor extended to these Kremlin agents was the stance of some in the U.S. government toward defectors from the Soviet Union. One spectacular case was that of “Jan Valtin” (Richard Krebs), a former Soviet double agent in Nazi Germany who in the 1930s defected to the West. Thereafter he wrote an exposé of both the Soviets and the Nazis titled Out of the Night, and in 1941 appeared before the Dies committee. The following year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested Valtin-Krebs, locked him up on Ellis Island, and started deportation proceedings against him. This action was supposedly based on offenses committed in the 1920s when he was a Soviet henchman (for which he had already been imprisoned). Thus, while current Soviet agents were allowed to go scot-free, this defecting former agent was to be severely punished.*30 26
Of like nature was the case of Victor Kravchenko, yet another defector from Moscow, who bolted from the Soviet Purchasing Commission’s U.S. office in 1944 and made his way to the FBI. Bureau intelligence reports feature a lot of information from Kravchenko, showing he was a valued source in early efforts to crack the Kremlin networks. He also would write a best-selling book, I Chose Freedom, exposing Soviet espionage and influence operations. Given all of which, an FBI memo from December of 1944 is of chilling import:
On Friday, December 22, Mr. Ugo Carusi, Executive Assistant to the Attorney General, advised…that Mr.[Edward] Stettinius and the State Department were putting the pressure on the Department of Justice to bring about the surrender of Victor Kravchenko to the Russians for return to Russia. Mr. Carusi stated that undoubtedly the pressure was also being put on the State Department by the Soviets…. Later that afternoon, Mr. Carusi advised that the Attorney General believed the Bureau should discreetly tip off Kravchenko to the fact that “the heat was on” and that he should flee and carefully hide himself so that he would not be found by government representatives.27
On the orders of Director Hoover, the FBI did get this warning to Kravchenko, who thus lived to convey his anti-Soviet message to the public. From which macabre goings-on it’s evident that the State Department of the era had some serious internal problems in dealings with our “noble ally.” Yet, strange as it may seem, State by and large was among the more conservative, anti-Communist, and security-conscious agencies of the war years. Elsewhere in the federal government, the situation was a good deal worse, with even more sinister implications for the Cold War future.
CHAPTER 7
The Way It Worked
GIVEN the pro-Moscow views and lax security practice of the war, it should hardly be surprising that a formidable crew of Reds, fellow travelers, and Soviet spies wound up on the federal payroll, well in excess of previous levels. It would have been miraculous if they hadn’t.
While many agencies were affected, the most seriously compromised were ad hoc wartime units thrown together in the early stages of the fighting. These included the Office of War Information (OWI), Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Board of Economic Warfare (BEW), and about a dozen others. Set up on an irregular basis, operating outside normal channels, often changing names and functions, these outfits scrambled to recruit personnel numbering in the thousands with little time, and apparently less desire, for anti-Red security vetting. Even more than the New Deal bureaus, they were custom-built for penetration and would thus figure prominently in security battles that developed later.
By all accounts, the two softest targets were the OWI, headed by broadcaster Elmer Davis and Hopkins crony/playwright Robert Sherwood, and the OSS, where “Wild Bill” Donovan held sway. (Running a close third was the Board of Economic Warfare, whose top officials variously included Vice President Henry Wallace and White House assistant/Soviet asset Lauchlin Currie.) Getting most of the contemporaneous attention was OWI, which being in the information business had a fairly visible profile and drew occasional fire from Congress.
The mission of OWI was supposed to be pro-American and pro-Allied propaganda, consisting of printed materials of all types, plus a multilingual shortwave service beamed at listeners overseas. This required a sizable staff that could deal in foreign-language broadcasts and printed matter, know something of the target nations, translate foreign statements, and so on. It was by its nature a heterogeneous, polyglot operation.
Spurring early criticism of OWI were reports that its productions, especially the foreign broadcasts, were tilted in the Soviet interest. This was a recurring theme in Congress but wasn’t limited to such circles. In the summer of 1943, Arthur Krock of the New York Times observed that the viewpoints aired in OWI’s foreign news and comment “have been closer to the Moscow than the Washington-London line.” In another article for the Times, Krock suggested that OWI reports on U.S. policy overseas were “seeking to re-shape it according to the personal and ideological views of Communists and fellow travelers in this country.”1
Similar charges were made by officials of the labor movement, who said OWI played up Red union causes and gave a distorted picture of American workplace issues. Spokesmen for both the AFL and CIO (then rival groups) said the OWI staffer named to handle labor matters had been employed by a Communist-dominated union and was recommended for his job at OWI by two identified Red agents. (This OWI employee was Travis Hedrick, who later worked for the Soviet news agency TASS and took the Fifth Amendment when asked if he had been a member of the Communist Party.)2
Joining in the chorus of complaint were representatives of European exile governments, who said OWI broadcasts to and about their homelands were laced with pro-Red propaganda. This was a matter of importance, as there would develop across the map of postwar Europe fierce struggles for political power between Communist and non-Communist forces. Broadcasts to these countries could be used to build up or tear down a given group or leader, according to the whim of those who produced
the programs, wrote the scripts, and delivered comment on the airwaves.
Still other wartime developments would bring the agency to the notice of the FBI, security experts such as Ben Mandel (who prepared a report about it for the House Committee on Un-American Activities), and some members of the Congress. Several staffers at OWI would surface in a top-secret Bureau probe of the early 1940s focused on the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, seedbed of the atom project.
Featured in this investigation were the American Communist Louise Bransten, her Russian paramour Gregori Kheifetz, and members of a Soviet spy ring based in San Francisco. In the course of this inquiry, the Bureau found that Bransten-Kheifetz had numerous official contacts, including a considerable group at OWI. Some references in FBI accounts dating from 1944–45 are as follows:
Robin Kinkead, an American citizen residing in San Francisco, was employed by the Office of War Information as a Foreign Propaganda analyst…. It is reported that Kinkead has been a contact of Gregori Kheifetz, Soviet vice consul and NKVD agent formerly stationed in San Francisco.
Philip Eugene Lilienthal, a resident of San Francisco, is a native-born citizen who during the war was employed in the Chinese Language Section, Radio Division, Office of War Information, in San Francisco. He is a known contact of Louise Bransten, the reported mistress of Gregori Kheifetz…
Joseph Fels Barnes…for some time during the war…was employed in the Office of War Information as Assistant Director of Overseas Operations in charge of Radio and Publications…. Confidential sources have advised that Barnes is a contact of both Louise Bransten and Haakon Chevalier [an identified Communist and member of the San Francisco network].
Charles Albert Page, a State Department employee who has recently been loaned to the motion picture and radio division of the Office of War Information, is a personal friend of Louise Bransten, and an associate of Gerhart Eisler, Otto Katz and Hans Eisler [all identified Comintern agents]…3
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