All of this, however, was eyewash. In fact, the citation of the American Russian Institute by the House Committee in Appendix IX was of the institute headquartered in New York—the very group to which Jessup had lent his name in sponsoring the dinners. Further, the American Russian Institute of New York was explicitly cited as a Communist front by Attorney General Clark in a letter to the Loyalty Review Board made public on April 27, 1949.5 This was two years before Jessup suggested to the Sparkman panel that this particular group had not been so listed.
In addition, on further analysis of the records, it turned out the California citation of the supposedly separate institute out west was lifted, verbatim, from the language of Appendix IX on the allegedly innocent New York unit. So far as the California committee was concerned, that is, the two institutes were essentially one—two branches of a single pro-Red operation. In short, there was no question whatever about the citation of the group to which Jessup had been connected, though, he, Sparkman, and Fulbright did all they could to talk around this.6
• The American Law Students Association. McCarthy pointed out that this group was listed in Appendix IX as one of several “miscellaneous Communist and Communist-front organizations,” and that this listing said its material bore the “union label 209” (the only group in this particular lineup for which this was stated). This was the well-known icon of the Communist Party print shop called Prompt Press.7 McCarthy further said the American Law Students Association had been connected with a Communist-dominated group already noted, the American Youth Congress—as testified to by the former executive secretary of the AYC, William Hinckley.
This reference occurred in 1939 hearings of the House Committee when Hinckley submitted a list of “the national organizations that have participated in cooperation with the American Youth Congress…[including] the American Law Students Association….” Read into the records of the House Committee at that time by J. B. Matthews were the identities of nine student groups said to be affiliated with the United States Student Peace Conference, yet another front operation, these including “American Law Students Association, American Student Union, [and] American Youth Congress…”8
From these citations it appeared the American Law Students Association had indeed been closely linked with the complex of “youth” outfits revolving around the notorious AYC. By the same token, there was no question that Jessup had been on the faculty advisory board of the Law Students Association at Columbia, as shown by the letterhead of the group. Jessup conceded this but tried to deflect attention to the question of whether the ALSA was somehow organically connected to the AYC (it wasn’t) or had been cited on the Attorney General’s list (it hadn’t). Those secondary arguments need not detain us, however, as the ALSA was clearly listed in Appendix IX, precisely as McCarthy contended.
• China Aid Council. This was yet another conspicuous front (discussed in Chapter 28), a spin-off from the American League for Peace and Democracy and itself cited in Appendix IX and other publications of the House Committee. Its character may be judged from the fact that its directors at various times included such now-familiar pro-Moscow apparatchiks as Chi Chao-ting and his kinsman Philip Jaffe, along with Mrs. Edward Carter, wife of the IPR general secretary (who doubled as head of the American Russian Institute), and that its executive director was Mildred Price, named by both Elizabeth Bentley and Louis Budenz as a Communist agent.9
As McCarthy discussed at some length before the Sparkman panel, the sponsor in the case of China Aid was Mrs. Philip Jessup, not an unusual arrangement in such matters (e.g., Mrs. Edward Carter). And while acknowledging that Jessup wasn’t accountable for the actions of his wife, McCarthy further observed that Jessup had confirmed his own connection with this egregious front when testifying in the trial of Alger Hiss, to wit: “I have never been a member of it. I have had some association with it…I don’t remember specific contacts. I remember that we had questions of common interest about arranging meetings, publications, things of that kind, but I have no recollection of detail on it.”10 (Emphasis added.)
These comments referred to Jessup’s activity with IPR, which indeed had numerous overlapping interests with the Council and many overlapping personnel, including Jaffe, Chi Chao-ting, and Frederick Field. In fact, as the McCarran panel observed, China Aid and IPR were both strands in the closely interwoven web of groups, including Field’s and Jaffe’s Amerasia, in which the same people would repeatedly surface, promoting the Communist cause in China.
• Institute of Pacific Relations. Jessup’s IPR connection was by far the most significant such activity on his record. As noted, he wasn’t a mere member, dinner sponsor, or letterhead adviser, but a major operative and moving spirit. As for the subversive label, the IPR hadn’t been cited by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but its American Council had been so named by the California panel, and it was this citation that was mentioned by McCarthy.
As Jessup and his supporters could hardly deny his affiliation with IPR, much of their argument concerned the question of whether the California legislative committee had withdrawn its citation of the American Council. The answer to this was a bit cloudy but also not of great importance. In 1948, the new IPR executive director, Clayton Lane, was trying to change the image of the group and live down its previous reputation and had protested to the California panel in this connection. The committee wished Lane well in his cleanup endeavor, said perhaps the IPR wasn’t technically a front—describing it rather as “Communist-dominated”—and noted that the panel had “in its files a large amount of documentation on the existence of Stalinist activity and the participation by known Communists in the institute’s affairs in the past.”11
This response from the California committee did little to bail out Jessup, as the “Stalinist” past referred to was precisely the time he, Carter, Lattimore, and Field were wielding dominant power at IPR. Of course, even more significant than the matter of citation by the California panel was the substantive character of the IPR. As already seen, the McCarran committee would find, after exhaustive investigation, that “the IPR was a vehicle used by the Communists to orientate American Far-Eastern policy toward Communist objectives.” That conclusion by a U.S. Senate panel is obviously more on point than the technical issue of citation by a state committee in Sacramento.
To judge by the hearing record, Jessup’s verbal gymnastics on all this weren’t impressive to moderate Democrat Gillette or moderate GOPer Smith, one or the other of whose votes the ambassador sorely needed. At one juncture, when Jessup claimed to have “disposed of three organizations to which Senator McCarthy referred,” Gillette responded, “The statement that the score is 3 to 0 is deceptive.” New Jersey’s Smith would allude to “these other organizations that you attempted to explain away.” Referring to Jessup’s having lent his name to the dinners of the American Russian Institute, allegedly without knowing much about it, Gillette asked, “Is that a custom of yours, to authorize the use of your name in connection with organizations that you know nothing about, their purpose, or their policy?”12
While Jessup’s performance on these issues didn’t do much to aid his cause, more substantial problems would develop on another IPR-related topic: his relationship with Frederick Field, longtime wheelhorse of the IPR, flamingly obvious Communist, and zealous Moscow apparatchik. Though Field was a “secret” Communist back then, and would admit it only some years later, it really wasn’t much of a secret, as his Communist sympathies were notorious in the late 1930s and early ’40s. This was also, as it happened, the period at which Field was working in the closest harmony with Jessup and earning lavish kudos from his colleague for his invaluable services to the IPR and its Far East mission.
A telltale episode, and a critical test for Jessup and others at the IPR, occurred in 1940 when Field announced he was giving up his post at the Institute to become executive head of the American Peace Mobilization. As seen, this was one of the most blatant front groups ever, created d
uring the Hitler-Stalin pact to agitate against American aid to Britain in its death struggle with the Nazis, then allied with Moscow. Among its projects, in which Field would play a leading role, were calling President Roosevelt a warmonger for his efforts to help the British and picketing the White House with posters saying, “The Yanks Are Not Coming.” All this ceased instantly on June 22, 1941, after Hitler invaded Russia, at which point Field and the APM ditched their peace signs and came out for U.S. involvement in the war against the Nazis. It couldn’t get more obvious than that.
This background was intensely relevant to Jessup, who had not only worked closely with Field at the IPR but wished him a fervent bon voyage when he went off to run his Moscow-sponsored “peace” charade, and stood ready to welcome him back with open arms once that duty was completed. From the perspective of Jessup and the IPR, the only problem with Field’s taking the job at APM was that they were losing a top-notch staffer. Their high regard for Field and urgent desire to have him back at the IPR were expressed in this panegyric:
Throughout his connection with the Institute, he [Field] has been most scrupulous and exacting in maintaining the highest objective standards for his own IPR writing and that of his colleagues. He has combined personal modesty with the capacity to inspire high achievement on the part of others. He has been noted for practical wisdom in counsel and amazing energy in action. The Board of Trustees desire that the officers assure Mr. Field that his job on the American Council staff will be awaiting him when he completes his present work.13
What this said, in so many words, was that once the Soviet agent Field finished “his present work” as a public stooge for Moscow, he would be most welcome to return to his old IPR haunts and colleagues. This was Jessup’s personal view as well, as he made clear in a concurrent statement. Jessup said he couldn’t “acquiesce in Field’s complete separation from the direction of the affairs of the American Council,” and expressed the hope that “when his new task was completed, it would be possible for him to go back to active leadership in the work of the IPR.”14
Field’s Peace Mobilization stint was followed by the aborted effort of Owen Lattimore and Lauchlin Currie (both closely linked to IPR) to get him a military intelligence job, perhaps not the ideal place, from a U.S. perspective, to have a Soviet agent. Thereafter, Field would take up a career of even more open Red agitation, including writing a regular column for the Daily Worker and articles for the Communist New Masses. These ventures, combined with his public flip-flopping at the APM, could leave no doubt, even in the minds of the most obtuse, that he was a Communist and Soviet flunky.
Questioned about all this by the Sparkman panel, Jessup said that only when the APM business developed did he have doubts about Field’s sincerity and that the light began to dawn that something was amiss with his valued colleague. He was, said Jessup, “no longer able to believe…that Field had been sincere in his noninterventionist attitude, an attitude with which I agreed.*229 That was the first time I suspected Field of being completely insincere and following the Communist Party line.” So, though Jessup had been misled before this, the APM gyrations had opened his eyes to the unhappy truth about his sidekick.15
However, this new awareness didn’t at all affect Jessup’s desire to have Field back at the IPR, where the welcome mat was indeed rolled out exactly as had been promised. Field would, for instance, be placed on the IPR nominating committee for 1941 and elected and reelected as a trustee of the Institute until 1947. Jessup and others at IPR also continued to give Field key assignments, as in planning the 1942 conference at Mont Tremblant in Canada. A Jessup letter of November 30, 1942, recommended a list of thirty people as possible members of the IPR secretariat at this conclave. Among those included on this list was Field. Thereafter, Jessup again recommended Field for appointment to the secretariat at the IPR Hot Springs Conference in 1944.
These continued Jessup ties to and reliance on Field were flabbergasting to Senator Brewster, as was brought out vividly in the hearings. Brought out as well was Jessup’s matter-of-fact, completely unapologetic outlook about this linkage:
BREWSTER: The thing that puzzles me, Dr. Jessup, is that here, 2 years after you concluded that Mr. Field was certainly following a line very different from yours…when he followed the Communist reversal [on the Hitler-Stalin pact]—you were recommending him as a delegate. Now, how do you explain that?
JESSUP: I explain it, sir, by the fact that Field was still in the organization and was still a trustee and was still active in the organization.
BREWSTER: Although you then knew that he was apparently following the Communist line?
JESSUP: That is correct, sir.
And again:
BREWSTER: Is it not true that at the time of the switch you knew he was not sincere and was not following the principles you believed and was reverting to the Communist line?
JESSUP: Yes, sir.
BREWSTER: And yet for 3 to 5 years thereafter he continued not only intimate relation to the Institute, but here you recommended he be a delegate. That was entirely your own action. You recommended one whom you had every reason to believe had strong Communist inclinations for so responsible an association.
JESSUP: That is correct, sir.16
So whatever one thinks about the charge that Jessup had “an unusual affinity for Communist causes,” he definitely had an affinity for the egregious Communist and Moscow agent Field. Nor, in Jessup’s recommendations for conference attendees, was Field a very great exception. When the McCarran committee took a closer look at the list of thirty possible conferees Jessup suggested for Mont Tremblant, it found exactly one-third had been named under oath as Communists or Soviet agents. As McCarran counsel Robert Morris explained it:
In reply to [Senator Ferguson’s] question about the 10 people who have been identified as part of the Communist organization on that list recommended by Mr. Jessup…we have testimony that Benjamin Kizer was a member of the Communist Party; testimony that Lauchlin Currie was associated with an espionage ring…John Carter Vincent has been identified as a member; Harry Dexter White as a member of an espionage ring; Owen Lattimore as a member of the Communist organization; Len de Caux as a member of the Communist Party; Alger Hiss as a member of the Communist Party; Joseph Barnes as a member of the Communist Party; Frederick V. Field as a member of the Communist Party; and V. Frank Coe as a member of the Communist Party.17
So, to put the larger situation in a nutshell: Jessup’s links to Field on the one hand, and to Dean Acheson on the other, meant someone in close and continuing harmony with a notorious Moscow agent had been counseling America’s Secretary of State on matters of the highest import. Functionally considered, Jessup was an interface between the nation’s diplomat-in-chief and a hard-core operative of the KGB, again probably not the best of security setups. These links became the more significant given Jessup’s responsibilities for China, also a specialty of Field as the Communist Party’s commissar for affairs of Asia, as testified by both Louis Budenz and Elizabeth Bentley.
That Jessup was a main fulcrum between IPR and the policy-making drill at State was further apparent in the three-day department policy confab of October 1949. This Jessup had well salted with IPR personnel, conspicuously including Owen Lattimore and Lawrence Rosinger, both later identified under oath as agents of the Soviet interest. Some of the most damaging information about this conference was provided by former governor Harold Stassen, at the time of the proceedings president of the University of Pennsylvania.
In the McCarran hearings, which ran contemporaneously with the Sparkman sessions, Stassen testified about this State Department meeting. The governor had attended as a conferee but said he found himself a dissident minority spokesman, opposed by the likes of Lattimore and Rosinger, whom he identified as leaders of the dominant faction. He said the Lattimore-Rosinger group had pushed a comprehensive program, the main elements of which included:
That the United States should recognize the Communist P
eoples Republic government under the leadership of Mao tse-tung at an early date…That it should be United States policy to turn Formosa over to the Chinese Communist government…That the United States should not approve of the blockade of the Communist Chinese coast by the Chinese Nationalists…and should send economic aid to the areas of China under Communist control. That no aid should be sent to the non-Communist guerrillas in the South of China, nor to the Chiang Kai-shek forces, and military supplies on route to them should be cut off.18
Stassen also said he strongly protested to Chairman Jessup about the trend of this discussion. “I pleaded with him,” said Stassen, “not to implement the Lattimore policy…He said that the greater logic lay with the Lattimore group.” All of this would be vehemently denied by Jessup and the State Department, which claimed it had no plans to do the things Stassen said were thus promoted. (In fact, as shall be shown, it planned to do not only all of this but a good deal more.)
In further interplay between the McCarran and Sparkman hearings, other witnesses would confirm the Stassen comment on Jessup and the question of recognizing Beijing. Gen. Louis Fortier of MacArthur’s staff told McCarran he had a discussion with Jessup in early 1950, when the latter was sent by Acheson on a fact-finding trip to Formosa and Japan. In their conversation, said Fortier, Jessup indicated an early intention of the U.S. government to recognize Red China—which the State Department and Jessup would vigorously deny. Senator Smith, in the Sparkman hearings, recalled that he had a similar talk with Jessup, from which he got the identical message.
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