How the Cold War Began

by Amy Knight

  HUAC did not close its file on Steinberg. Its investigators were directed to continue searching for evidence against him. With Steinberg devoting all his time to his academic research, there was not much to go on but recycled versions of past episodes. In July 1950, a resourceful researcher for HUAC reported that a “reliable and confidential source” advised that Steinberg was closely connected with the Canadian spy ring: “He worked directly under the deputy chief of Red Army Intelligence in Canada, one Milshstein, alias Milsky.”49 Of course this was not true, because Mil'shtein was stationed in Moscow and had only once made a visit to Canada – in the summer of 1944 (after which he had asked, as we know, for Gouzenko's recall). Presumably HUAC's source was relying on information that had trickled down from some of Gouzenko's published articles, which were appearing with increasing frequency.

  The investigator went on to report an even more unlikely claim: “Steinberg is believed to have broken into the Map Room of the Navy Department while employed there, which room was allegedly locked with three keys. Some of the maps contained in this room were stolen at the time of this entry. Later, the Map Room of the United States Army was broken into in the same manner and, although no one was apprehended, Steinberg was under suspicion.”50

  Not surprisingly, Steinberg's promising career at the Mayo Clinic came to a premature end, in 1952. He was forced to move on, this time to the Children's Hospital in Boston, where he worked at the Children's Cancer Research Foundation, exploring, among other things, the genetic causes of childhood leukemia. By this time, Steinberg had published twenty scholarly articles and was a leading figure in genetic research, a field with crucial implications for human health. But the heat was on from the anti-communists in Washington, where scientists, no matter what their specialties and what their accomplishments, were highly suspect if they had ever inclined left in politics.

  In 1953, eight years after the spy case erupted in Canada, there was a new outburst of publicity around Steinberg when the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) decided to interview him. Like huac, its House of Representatives counterpart, SISS was an infamous inquisitorial body whose sole purpose was to ferret out communist subversives in the United States. It was established in 1949 as a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary by Senator Pat McCarran, at the time head of the Judiciary Committee. McCarran, who has been called “one of the great monsters of American public life,” was a democrat from Nevada who deserted from Roosevelt's New Deal and became a vocal opponent of the policies of his own party. A racist, anti-Semite, and rabid anticommunist, McCarran managed to acquire tremendous power in Washington.51 When the Republicans gained a majority in the Senate in 1952, Senator William Jenner assumed the chairmanship of SISS, but McCarran remained a key figure in its investigations.

  SISS first initiated an exhaustive examination of Steinberg's past – which included going back to his stint in naval research in 1944–45 and making inquiries among his superiors at the time – and then interviewed him in October 1953 in New York City.52 The interview, attended by Senator Jenner, was short and straightforward. The SISS counsel, Jay Sourwine, was not prosecutorial, but politely asked the pro forma questions with which Steinberg was now familiar. Steinberg reasserted that he knew Raymond Boyer well, but had no idea he was passing information to the Soviets. He said that Gouzenko's testimony about him was untrue and that he never knew a woman named Freda Linton. When they got to Fred Rose, the exchange became almost jocular:

  Sourwine: You said you remembered meeting a man named Rose at a cocktail party?

  Steinberg: Yes.

  Sourwine: What was his first name?

  Steinberg: Fred . . . Fred Rose was a very short man who wore a suit, was as wide as he was tall, and was very voluble. He was somewhat of a social lion at the time, being known as a Communist and outstanding personality.

  Sourwine: You mean to imply that you remembered him because he was a sort of Mr. Five by Five?

  Steinberg: That is right. He was short, stocky, he was so different from all the rest of the people there, all the rest of them being academic people and Rose being anything but academic.

  In the back of his mind, Steinberg probably realized that this seemingly innocent cocktail party, where words flowed freely with the loosening effects of a couple of drinks, had helped seal his fate.

  Steinberg might have felt uneasy when he was asked, “Did anyone ask you to join a Soviet Intelligence ring?” Steinberg was telling the truth when he answered no. “Sorvin's man” from the GRU who had contacted him in Washington did not ask him to join a group of spies. But he had asked Steinberg for secret information, and that was something Steinberg probably preferred to forget.

  After the closed hearing, the subcommittee's chief investigator, Robert Morris, pulled a typical SISS trick. He told the press about a “Mr. X,” who, he said, may have transmitted details of the proximity fuse to Alan Nunn May. Morris described “Mr. X” in enough detail to make it clear he was referring to Steinberg. On December 1, 1953, more damning news appeared, when SISS released portions of the November 1945 secret FBI memorandum that related to Gouzenko's revelations. They included the complete FBI statements about “X,” a “native-born American citizen who has specialized in the field of zoology” and was “turned over” to Red Army Intelligence in the United States after leaving McGill University. Steinberg felt compelled to write a letter to the head of the Children's Cancer Research Center, explaining how he had become the center of spy accusations and proclaiming his innocence.53

  The publicity brought new troubles for Steinberg. In late 1953, he and his wife were preparing to purchase a home in Belmont, Massachusetts, when their prospective neighbors started making anonymous telephone calls to them, threatening “dire consequences” if they moved in. The Steinbergs gave up the house. Then came a worse blow: the National Institutes of Health, through the Public Health Service, canceled Steinberg's research grants. Steinberg appealed for help to Dr. Charles Mayo, the head of the Mayo Clinic, who had political connections in Washington. “Failure to change this action,” Steinberg wrote to Mayo, “may very well mean the end of my career with the stigma of spy and communist attached to my name.” Mayo talked to some senators in Washington about the matter, but with no result.54

  Steinberg was not the only scientist to have his research funding taken away. The decision to cancel Steinberg's grants reflected a new policy of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare that denied funding for medical research to persons who the Department determined had engaged in subversive activities or whose loyalty to the United States was in doubt. Thirty scientists, including the renowned biochemist Linus Pauling, had their grants for medical research revoked.55 In April 1954 Steinberg wrote to Oveta Hobby, who headed the Department, requesting that she reconsider his case: “The action of your department has in effect convicted me of very serious charges without a hearing and I may add without even notifying me of the charges or conclusions.”56 Mrs. Hobby never responded to Steinberg's letter.

  Steinberg also appealed to Senator Jenner, who had traveled to Canada with Senator McCarran to interview Gouzenko in January 1954 with the stated purpose of finding out more information about Steinberg. Noting that the publicity arising from the committee's investigation had caused him to lose his funding for research, Steinberg asked Jenner to release the results of the investigation: “I know that it is not your wish to have innocent, cooperative witnesses suffer because of unfortunate publicity resulting from testifying before your committee. That is why I am writing to you to ask that you issue a report concerning my testimony before your committee and your findings resulting from your interview with Igor Gouzenko and any other investigations you may have made concerning me.”57

  Steinberg never received an answer. That is the way things worked with the congressional committees who were hunting for spies. Gouzenko's lengthy testimony, taken on January 4, 1954, was kept a secret, declassified only many years later.58 It had been nine years
since Gouzenko defected, and despite his intelligence his memory was not perfect. Gouzenko had originally stated that Steinberg was “handed over” to the GRU in Washington by Freda Linton, on behalf of Fred Rose. But when questioned by SISS, Gouzenko was not so sure:

  Q: Did you know anything of Freda Linton's contacts in the United States?

  A: No, I don't know, but I know about her further that she was in the United States, but this was after I left.

  Q: She went to the United States to hand Steinberg over to Saraev's man, didn't she? [in the earlier reports the GRU agent was named Sorvin]

  A: It is possible that she was Fred Rose's man. I don't think she was Sam Carr's man. I think she was Fred Rose's contact.

  Q: You are saying you have no knowledge of any contacts she may have had in the United States.

  A: No, not to my knowledge.

  Q: Are you saying also that you don't know whether she was the one who handed over Steinberg to Saraev's apparatus?

  A: No, not to my knowledge.

  Q: I want to know if there is anything you can add to what you have already told in detail that will help clinch the truth of what you said about Steinberg?

  A: Yes. First of all I say what I said was in documents which I took with me. In other words, not just what I said. The second is that he was I would say in the one stage reluctant . . . in other words I would say he was just scared, but the point is he was contacting agents . . . so far as my knowledge I don't know whether he gave that information that they required from him or not because I believe he was transferred to the Soviet agents working in the United States.

  Q: Can you tell us whether there was more than one message passed in reference to Steinberg?

  A: There were several telegrams and there were references to him going to – I’m not sure, but anyway in his answer to the contact man he was referring . . . to his ability as a scientist and the value of him, yet stressing the point that he was afraid. That is what I remember definitely, that he was afraid and that he was trying to find some kind of excuse. In other words, in the first stage he was not very much pleased at the approach done by Fred Rose's man, yet he was not doing anything in the way of going to the authorities and tell them that he was contacted.

  Q: You are talking about a series of messages all at the same time with regard to Steinberg . . .

  A: Yes, approximately I would say within two months.

  Q: Were there any messages about Steinberg at any other time?

  A: No, he came up at one particular time and then more or less disappeared from our telegrams . . .

  Q: You don't know whether he agreed to work?

  A: I only knew that the telegram stressed the point that he was afraid, and that he was worked with caution, more caution than with others . . .

  Q: Do you have any information concerning who the individual was who furnished information about the United States Navy's proximity fuse to Dr. Alan Nunn May?

  A: No. . . .

  Q: It has been reported that you have expressed the opinion that that information came to Dr. Alan Nunn May from Steinberg. Do you remember ever expressing that opinion?

  A; No, I don't remember that. I think it is wrong. I don't believe I ever mentioned that particularly.

  Q: Could it have come to Alan Nunn May from Steinberg? Would he have any contact with Steinberg?

  A: No, that I doubt very much because Steinberg was a new agent. Alan May was old and valuable. I don't think they would put them together.

  Gouzenko in effect recanted his claims about Steinberg being handed over to the GRU in the United States by Freda Linton. And he told the subcommittee of the telegram from Moscow to Ottawa, the telegram never mentioned by the Royal Commission or the FBI, which said that Steinberg had backed off when approached by the GRU, claiming he was going away and that their request for information was not a good idea. Gouzenko also said that it was highly unlikely that Steinberg would have passed information to Alan Nunn May.

  But none of what Gouzenko said about Steinberg in 1954, which came close to exonerating him, was ever mentioned publicly by SISS. Steinberg continued to be plagued by accusations that he was a spy. In 1956, despite his growing prominence in the field of genetics, he was forced to give up his position at the Cancer Research Center. Luckily, he was able to get an academic job, at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, and by 1958 was receiving research grants again. In 1964 he was elected president of the American Society of Human Genetics, and by the time he retired from teaching, he had close to two hundred scholarly publications to his credit. But the stigma of the spy label never left him. He had continual problems getting his passport renewed and was on several occasions blacklisted by the U.S. government from participating in certain research projects or government-sponsored conferences.

  When asked in 2002 whether his political loyalty would have been questioned if Gouzenko had not made his allegations, Steinberg replied, “I don't think I would have been pestered at all. The Canadian government did a damn stupid thing.”59 Of course it was Steinberg's own government, the FBI, and the anti-communist lobby on Capitol Hill, that distorted Gouzenko's allegations about him and kept them alive for years afterward. Indeed, Steinberg's case illustrates in no uncertain terms the extent to which Cold War anti-communism in America was driven by political agendas rather than genuine security concerns. Steinberg was only one of many American scientists and scholars in other fields who were persecuted in this way.

  The Gouzenko affair set the climate for persecution on such a broad scale because it led to new procedures for security screening and loyalty review in both Canada and the United States. The Canadians were much more restrained in using these procedures and thus luckily never experienced their own version of the McCarthy era, but their scientific community suffered nonetheless. A number of Canadian scientists were blacklisted and denied the security clearances necessary for government contracts on the basis of past association with left-wing groups, such as the Canadian Association of Scientific Workers. Even more insidious was the way in which American McCarthyism crept across the border, as the practice of guilt by association and naming names began to draw Canadians into the web of spy allegations woven in the committee rooms of Capitol Hill and the FBI offices twelve blocks away. In the case of one prominent Canadian, this would eventually have deadly consequences.

  Chapter 8

  THE SOUTH AGAINST THE NORTH

  In trying to deal with the menace of communism we must be careful we don't throw away the baby freedom with the dirty bath-water, communism.

  Lester Pearson

  After its initial draconian response to Gouzenko's allegations, the Liberal government in Canada, which would remain in power until 1957, avoided the more extreme anticommunist measures adopted in the United States. In response to the spy case, the Canadian government had established security screening in the civil service and in immigration procedures. It also strengthened laws against treason and sedition. But the Communist Party was not outlawed as it was in the United States, where party leaders were prosecuted under the Alien Registration Act. The view in Ottawa was that such a measure would simply drive the communists underground. And the Liberal government refused to introduce legislation like the American Taft-Hartley law, which not only restricted the ability of trade unions to declare strikes, but also required union leaders to affirm that they were not communists.1

  The aftermath of the Gouzenko affair was very different in the United States. The espionage case marked the beginning of a red scare in America that by the early fifties would engulf the country and lead to sweeping anti-communist measures that threatened civil liberties as never before. As one Canadian historian expressed it, “The contrast with south of the border was striking. Canada, under the guidance of its Liberal elite, seemed to be reaffirming faith in free institutions just as the Americans were rushing to enact illiberal measures.”2

  What accounted for these differences in approach to the threat of Soviet espionage and
communist subversion? It was basically a matter of politics. In Canada, the Liberal Party, led by Mackenzie King until his retirement in 1948, and then by King's former minister of justice, Louis St. Laurent, was throughout this period still so firmly entrenched in power that it could afford to resist pressures from the Conservative Opposition to employ more repressive policies against the communists. Truman's Democratic administration, lasting until Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in 1952, had found it much more difficult to ignore the demands for a clampdown on communists. As one of Truman's advisers put it, “The President didn't attach fundamental importance to the so-called Communist scare. He thought it was a lot of baloney. But political pressures were such that he had to recognize it.”3 Even Eisenhower found it difficult to resist the clamoring of red hunters like Pat McCarran and Joseph McCarthy, until finally they went too far and there was a backlash that resulted in McCarthy's censure by his Senate colleagues in June 1954.

  However deep his concerns about overreaction to the espionage threat, Truman did little to stem the tide of anti-communism that arose in Washington after the arrests in Canada in February 1946. In July 1946, two days after the Royal Commission issued its sensational report on espionage, U.S. attorney general Tom Clark had urged President Truman to renew and strengthen the authorization for the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance “on persons suspected of subversive activities.” Truman agreed, even if reluctantly. In March 1947, he signed Executive Order 9835, establishing a program whereby all federal employees would be subject to loyalty investigations that screened out those who had been members of a broad list of “subversive” organizations. (This screening also affected scholars like Arthur Steinberg whose research depended on funds from government- sponsored programs.) Within the next four years, over three million government employees would be investigated, at huge expense. Although there were a few dismissals, the investigations revealed no evidence of espionage.