PBS Lies for FDR over Allegations
by Whittaker Chambers
To comment on this article go to BÕManÕs Revolt.
ItÕs
never too late to learn something new.
The following article, posted in January of 2006, shows the genesis of
my discoveries about the massive infiltration of the Franklin Roosevelt
government by agents of the Soviet Union.
Having
already written the first three parts of ÒWho Killed James Forrestal?Ó I was already a good deal further up the learning curve on 20th
century history than the average person, but I didnÕt know how little I knew
until I followed up on the recommendation of an online contact and read Witness by Whittaker Chambers. The research sparked by Witness then led
to my ÒFDR Winked as Soviet EspionageÓ and a number of other articles.
One
intriguing discovery I have made is that the generally leftist Public
Broadcasting System is not alone in covering up Franklin RooseveltÕs apparent
treason. From the 2013 addendum to
the ÒFDR WinkedÓ article one can see that a number of prominent putative
conservative anti-communists have lied for Roosevelt—though not for Alger
Hiss—in exactly the same way that PBS has.
David
Martin
September
5, 2014
Below is an exchange that I had on alt.history on Usenet during the first week of January 2006.
I would like to express my appreciation to Mr. Robert Cohen for responding to
my repeated postings. His responses prompted me to do additional research
and led me to the discovery, recounted in entry #7 below, that the Public
Broadcasting System has written apparent untruths that would tend to absolve
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of responsibility for protecting a Soviet
spy ring that operated in the highest reaches of his administration for many
years.
1.
DC Dave
Jan 1, 10:15
am
Subject: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
I have just finished
reading Whittaker Chambers' 1952 memoir,
Witness, for the
first time, and here are a few of my observations:
The book certainly
establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that Alger
Hiss, Harry
Dexter White, and company were active Communists dealing
with very
important matters in the upper reaches of the U.S.
government. I
think that I already knew that from my general reading,
and I
believe that that is now pretty much the consensus of
accepted
history as it is taught in our colleges, although it might
be
downplayed and glossed over for the most part. What is
particularly
glossed over is that these people were simply
traitorous espionage
agents little different from the Rosenbergs or Kim Philby.
What I did not know at
all, and what I consider to be the really big
news of the book, was
that Whittaker Chambers had gone to Franklin
Roosevelt's internal
security chief, Adolph Berle, some eight
years
before he appeared before the House committee that Richard
Nixon was on
and had told him pretty much the same story at that
time. Amazingly,
FDR had blown the whole thing off, and, clearly,
nothing would have
ever been done had it been left up to the
Democratically controlled
executive branch of the government. I get
the distinct impression that
FDR's brush-off was not a consequence
of his simply not believing
Chambers. It appears that the FBI
already had some strong indications
of the ongoing treason and had
relayed it to Berle. Rather, it
appears
that Roosevelt acted with malice aforethought, and was thus
complicit
in the treason.
I think that
this revelation in the book has been little publicized for
fairly
obvious reasons. It raises fundamental questions as to who has
been
running our government and to what ends. It also makes
the
observation of James Forrestal to newly-elected Senator
Joseph
McCarthy, as quoted in Cornell Simpson's, The Death
of James Forrestal, look
all the better:
"Consistency never
has been a mark of stupidity. If the diplomats who
have mishandled
our relations with Russia were merely stupid, they
would
occasionally make a mistake in our favor."
Also, I learned a lot in Witness
about the means by which the
Communists compartmentalized their
covert operations, as all good
covert operations must. Chambers'
window upon the penetration of
the country by the Communists,
therefore, was very limited. The
likelihood that there were other
spy nests within the government or
other power nodes in the country
that Chambers would have had no way of
knowing about is probably pretty
high. One must wonder whatever
became of them.
As worldly-wise as
Chambers had become from all his experiences, he
seems curiously
na•ve in some ways, though. It is not just the press
and the
historians who have made too little of FDR's guilty knowledge
of treason
at his elbow, Chambers, himself seems to make too little of
it in
his book. Toward the end he sings the praises of the FBI when
they
are finally put to work on his side and against Hiss and
company.
He appears to have forgotten that they, whose job it is to
prevent such
things, were nowhere to be found when the Hiss crowd,
and who knows how
many others, were carrying out there treason for
many years after Chambers
had made FDR aware of it.
Maybe it can be blamed on
his editors, but Chambers seems not to have
come away from his
experience questioning who really rules us
and for
what purpose. Turning to religion, as he does, may
be the right thing
to do, but he treats it almost as an end in
itself in dealing with our
political landscape. It might provide
you with a pretty good compass,
but you're still going to need a
map.
2.
Robert Cohen
Jan 1, 4:18 pm
re:
Whittaker Chambers
I read the Amazon
write-ups about WITNESS to
refresh my history of the era, which
always interests me.
I had off 'n
on
subscribed to NATIONAL REVIEW in the 1970s and 1980s, and Wm F.
Buckley, Jr. is very pro--Chambers,
continually defending him against
Hiss and the
Democrats/left-liberals.
FDR was not
uncontroversial nor was HST. They were both the bug-a-boos
of the
right of 1930s, 1940s and 1950s:
"FDR has the syph, and Truman is part of the Pendergast
machine."
The nasty, damning charges
of being pro-Communist against Democrats are standard
operating
accusations; and also the implications of the fairly
recent release of Verona papers of the KGB
do not let Hiss, the Rosenbergs nor FDR's assistant
Harry Dexter White off the hook.
Pat Buchanan is also
recently defending American Firsters' pov: The
U.S. should've been neutral, and let
the NAZIs win (or whatever)
is his inference. Am I mis-stating Buchanan's book--I did not read
it,
only excerpts and reviews.
No matter the instigation
of the Churchillian
"Cold War,"
the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, the Democrats & even
moderate
President Eisenhower will forever be accused by the
American right of
pandering/consorting/soft-dealing with the
Commies: The U.S. shoulda
defeated/nuked
'em early-on, the
right apparently
holds:
The Right still says: The
"Democrats lost China."
I suppose that some
Democrats, some GOP moderates and
left-liberalism will thus be
forever suspect in the rightwing's
perception.
3.
DC Dave
Jan 1, 10:54
pm
Subject: Re: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
I'm trying to look past
the left vs. right aspects of this episode.
Whittaker Chambers, a
defector from the Communist underground, brought
to Roosevelt very
solid evidence that he was surrounded by a nest
of
spies for Stalin's Soviet Union, and FDR, through Adolph Berle, blew
him off. When you add that to the
known facts about FDR's extremely
pro-Soviet foreign policy what
you get is a very strong inference that
Roosevelt, himself, was
guilty of treason.
I am writing this as a
born and raised Democrat whose father was such a
Roosevelt admirer that
he named his youngest son Franklin D. My
father's heart might have
been in the right place, but like most people
he didn't read very
much and what he read he did not read critically,
and also, like
most people, he tended to think tribally in "us" vs.
"them"
terms. As I recall, there was never any doubt in his mind
that
Alger Hiss was innocent, because Hiss was one of
"us."
4.
Robert Cohen
Jan 2, 9:53
am
Subject: Re: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
I skimmed thru this
article about FDR: It's fascinating--especially if
true (w/o
substantial distortion).
The author holds: FDR
wasn't naive about intelligence/spying. FDR was
very much
interested in intelligence from the onset of his
governmental-political
career.
If/when I find something that
exculpates/indicts FDR regarding
allegation/idea of an
"agent/spy of USSR," I'll throw it at ya
for
comment/rebuttal.
Meanwhile, the
article:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stafford-roosevelt.html
5.
DC Dave
Jan 2, 11:14
am
Subject: Re: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
The New York Times article referenced here agrees completely with
the
charge made by Chambers in Witness. Here is the key NY Times quote:
Ironically,
Soviet espionage was already at work in America. But
Roosevelt,
like most others, misunderstood the threat. This was seen in
the
case of Whitaker Chambers.
A
journalist, Chambers was a courier and contact in Washington
for
Soviet intelligence. In 1938 he recanted his allegiance to
Moscow, and
after hiding for several months to escape Stalin's
assassins re-emerged
as a writer for Time magazine. Shocked by the
brutal cynicism of
Stalin's pact with Hitler in August 1939, he
told his story to Adolf
Berle,
Roosevelt's international security adviser in the State
Department,
and also pointed the finger at more than thirty Communist
agents at
work in the federal government, including the senior
State
Department official Alger Hiss. Berle
told neither his department nor
the FBI, but did, according to one
source, pass the intelligence on to
Roosevelt. But the President
merely `scoffed at the charge'. He was
incredulous that there could
be a Soviet espionage ring in
his
administration; to him Communists were blue-collar trade
union
militants, not suave representatives of the east coast
establishment.
Gentlemen like Hiss could simply not be traitors. As
a result, no
counter-intelligence programme
for identifying Communist agents in the
federal government was put
in place.
Whatever his motivation,
FDR would have to be regarded as criminally
negligent, at the very
least, in his disregard of the report by
Chambers. I think that it
was worse than negligence, and the fact that
so little is made of
this reaction by Roosevelt in the
secret-power-protecting press and
the toady history establishment
strengthens my
suspicion.
The fact that The New York Times, itself, would go
along with Chambers'
version of the story on this initial stifling
of any proper Soviet spy
investigation by FDR is significant. This
is the newspaper that gave
us the extraordinarily influential
Stalin propagandist, Walter Duranty,
after
all. It is
completely
in character that The Times would
make excuses for Roosevelt
for what appears to me to be complicity
in treason, rather than holding
him to account.
6.
Robert Cohen
Jan 2, 4:55
pm
Subject: Re: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
As I understand the
accusation:
The NY TIMES reported that Berle,
FDR's intelligence assistant,
informed FDR that 30 Soviet agents
were then operating/participating in
his administration according
to informant Whittaker Chambers circa
1939.
FDR
reportedly scoffs.
My questions:
Did Berle tell/refer-to FBI/U.S. military of Chambers'
information (?).
Whose word/testimony are we supposed to trust as
the source of the
accusation: Berle?
Chambers? J.E. Hoover? Stimson?/Knox?
Is it possible Chambers lies/exaggerates/distorts
about his
conversation(s) with Berle?
Chambers' treason/espionage accusation against
Alger Hiss circa 1948 is
seemingly true;
while the scoff-conversation/administration-inaction
has never been
verified/proven (?).
7.
DC Dave
Jan 3, 9:29
pm
Subject: Re: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
First, let's look again at
what the generally leftist, FDR-defending
New York Times said in that article you found:
Berle told neither his department nor the FBI, but did,
according to
one source, pass the intelligence on to Roosevelt. But
the President
merely `scoffed at the charge'. He was incredulous
that there could be
a Soviet espionage ring in his administration;
to him Communists were
blue-collar trade union militants, not suave
representatives of the
east coast establishment. Gentlemen like
Hiss could simply not be
traitors. As a result, no
counter-intelligence programme
for
identifying Communist agents in the federal government was put
in
place.
They say, "according to
one source," and they put "scoffed at the
charge,"
in quotes as though they are quoting that source directly.
That
source is clearly not Chambers' book, Witness, because Witness
doesn't
use those words. Here's the Witness quote:
But
nothing at all happened. Weeks passed into months. I went about
my
work at Time. Then, one day, I am no
longer certain just when, I
met a dejected [Isaac Don] Levine.
(Levine had been present at the
Berle
meeting. ed.) Adolf Berle,
said Levine, had taken my information
to the President at once. The
President had laughed. When Berle
was
insistent, he had been told in words which
it is necessary to
paraphrase, to 'go jump in a lake.'
Next we have Francis P. Sempa writing at
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_07-09/sempa_chambers/sempa_chambers.html
Two years
after his break with communism, Chambers attempted to warn
the
Roosevelt Administration about communist infiltration of
the
government (the same information that he revealed to HUAC in
1948).
Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle
' brought Chambers'
information directly to Roosevelt, but the
president refused to believe
it. FDR's response to Chambers'
information typified his
administration's lax attitude about the
threat of communist subversion.
Then there's the 1997 Sam Tanenhaus biography
of Chambers, on pages
203 and
204:
Nothing
had come, after all, of his meeting with Berle in
1939.
It was
not Berle's fault. The official had taken Chambers's story to
the White House, to no
effect. And Don Levine had made every effort to
reach the
president, telling the Chambers story to every contact he
knew. One
of Levine's recruits, columnist Walter Winchell, had gone
directly
to FDR but had been rebuffed. "I don't want to hear
another
thing about it!" Roosevelt had said angrily, jabbing a
finger at the
columnist. "It isn't true."
I think that leaves little
doubt as to where the blame lies for the
treasonous failure to get
this nest of spies out of the government.
But wouldn't you know, the usual suspects are still covering up
for
FDR. Check out what the Public Broadcasting System has to say
on its
oh-so-authoritative NOVA site:
In the
late 1930s Hiss was a key State Department official during
the
formative years of the United Nations. He eventually served
as
Secretary General at the 1945 San Francisco meeting at which the
U.N.
was founded. In 1939, however, Whitaker Chambers, a former
member of
the U.S. Communist Party, told Assistant Secretary of
State Adolf Berle
that Hiss was a
communist. Berle, under whom Hiss worked, scoffed
at
the charge.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html
There's nary a hint in
their article of the sorry role played by
their
fair-haired hero in the Oval Office. They have a feedback tab
on their
site and I have asked them for the source of their
information, but I
don't think that we should hold our breath for a
response. It's too
bad that quite a few people actually believe
what they see on Public
Television.
8.
Robert Cohen
Jan 4, 9:46
am
Subject: Re: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
I must hereby concede the
D.C. Dave point/Chambers' criticism against
FDR/the FDR
Administration, as it seems valid, substantive, and has
been
subsequently very consequential.
Momentous history is, as I
perceive it:
FDR was
attacked by both the Right and the Left throughout his 4 terms.
The Depression years held
potential for an extreme change of
government, whether of a Huey
Kingfish Long and/or of a Father Coughlin
and/or of a Norman Thomas
and/or of an Earl Browder, et al.
An "anti
mentality" had knocked-out the Catholic NY Governor Al
Smith's
presidential Democrat candidacy circa
1928.
Our country's politics
reflects our overall society's accords/discords/dynamics:
There are 4 or 5 Catholics
serving today on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Literary, intellectual,
academic, and artistic types were joiners of
idealistic &
leftist causes, including Communist influenced groups or
front
groups.
It seemingly was normative
in the 1930 U.S. to be associated with Communists.
Stalin's USSR took
advantage of the situation, and implanted agents/spies.
There were many
sympathizers who weren't conscious KGB "spies.
"
Perhaps
FDR was indeed naive and overly defensive, despite that he did
know
much about intelligence/spy machinations as the NYT article
reports.
Ernest Hemingway and The
Abraham Lincoln Brigarde
were
pro-left/republicans in the Spanish Civil War, late
1930s.
Alger Hiss is said to be
the epitome of the
intellectual-internationalist-idealistic
crust.
Robert J. Oppenheimer MAY
too have been a spy, as were some other atomic
bomb
spies.
Ezra Pound took the
Rightist side and broadcast Axis propaganda from
fascist Italy
during the war.
Reality/history/politics is dynamic and
complicated.
9.
DC Dave
Jan 5, 8:47
pm
Let's put a couple more
nails in the FDR coffin. This is from the
2000 book by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets, Exposing
Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors:
Whittaker
Chambers reported to the FBI an odd story about [key
Roosevelt
aide] Niles that he had heard from a fellow Soviet agent
named John
Hermann in 1934 or 1935. A Soviet agent named Silverman (not
George
Silverman) was living in the next building from Alger Hiss.
This
Silverman apparently had an obviously homosexual affair with
David
Niles. Silverman had told Niles of the work of the
underground
apparatus in Washington, and Niles later threatened to
expose the
activities of the Communist group unless Silverman left
his wife. To
solve the problem, J. Peters, the head of the American
Communist
underground, ordered Hermann and Harold Ware to get
Silverman to leave
Washington, D. C. immediately. (pp. 180-181)
And this is from the 1966
book by Cornell Simpson, The Death of James
Forrestal.
The
mysterious Niles, who had an office in the White House,
operated
very secretively; however when various Fifth Amendment
Communists were
asked by congressional committees if they knew
Niles, they refused to
answer on the grounds that if they did so
they might incriminate
themselves. (p. 90)
Now I guess
it's possible that Niles kept all the information he had on
the
communist infiltration of their administration away from
Roosevelt,
but he was a very close adviser to the President. More
than likely,
when Adolf Berle relayed
Chambers' charges to the President in 1939, he
was telling him
something that he already knew.
10. Robert
Cohen
Jan 6, 11:02
am
Subject: Re: Whittaker
Chambers' Witness
re: an
indirect comment that is relevant
The embarrassing sexual,
homosexual, lesbian & gay phenomena figure-in
these
reports/incidents/anecdotes of blackmail/intimidation/spying;
and
the phenomena have been costly surely more than anybody can really
know/calculate.
For an obvious/publicized
instance:
Immediately prior to the
Iraq (mis)advenrture, 2003(?), a number (5?)
gay
American translators was cashiered-out/fired from the U.S.
military
by way of the "don't ask, don't tell"
flimsiness, whether
Constitutional, moral, or whatever it's
policy/reality.
Hmmmmmmm: There
has been a decidedly lack of good/accurate intelligence
about
Iraq.
Draw one's own conclusions
about The Human Comedy/The Human Tragedy/The
Human Absurdity of
reality.
Rumor I read in NATIONAL
REVIEW years ago: Hiss-Chambers allegedly also
had a sexual
affair/encounter in 1930s.
END EXCHANGE
The Public Broadcasting System is actually worse on
this subject than I have characterized them in entry #7 above. Here is
how they begin their short Alger Hiss profile, which is part of a larger piece
on notorious spies:
"Though Alger Hiss, a U.S. State Department
official, was accused of spying for the Soviet Union and imprisoned, he was
never convicted of espionage per se. Throughout his life, Hiss denied
any involvement in espionage, and many historians have for years remained
polarized on the question of Hiss's spying; some believe that declassified
documents prove he did spy for the Soviets, and some still see these
allegations as groundless."
Indeed, it is possible to find, even at this late
date, a few extreme left-wing ideologues, or people pretending to be such in
order to mislead the public and keep it divided, who will argue that Hiss was
innocent. On this subject they have lost the ability to polarize anyone
who has taken any time at all to look into the matter. The battle over
this question is essentially over. Alger Hiss, with the assistance of
Whittaker Chambers, spied on the United States for the Soviet Union.
Chambers broke with the Communists and tried very hard to get Hiss, whom he
called his best friend in the party, to break with them as well, but Hiss
continued as a covert operative.
So why is PBS still covering up for Alger Hiss,
and, more importantly, why is it telling lies to protect Franklin
Roosevelt?
Oh, by the way, as of this writing, PBS has not
responded to my request for the source of their allegation that Adolf Berle scoffed at the claims of Whittaker Chambers.
David Martin
January 29, 2006
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