Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

For several months in 1940, Brothman gave to Golos, both directly and through Golos’s mistress, Elizabeth Bentley, blueprints and descriptions of the chemical processes he had for sale. All of these were available to any prospective purchaser and had been written up and advertised by Brothman in the regular chemical journals, and many were his own inventions. When Brothman objected to talking to Golos or Miss Bentley on the ground that they knew no chemistry, Golos sent him another agent, a chemist, Harry Gold, who had been doing industrial research (which gradually developed into industrial espionage) for AMTORG for several years. Although Brothman got little or no business from the Russians, he hired Gold as a chemist in one of his laboratories in 1943. Four years later, after Gold, unknown to Brothman, had become an atomic spy contact with Fuchs, Brothman discussed with his secretary how Gold’s testimony before a grand jury might be given to prevent unfavorable inferences regarding Brothman’s contacts with Golos in 1940. In view of the changed American attitude toward such Russian contacts from 1940 to 1947, this is not, perhaps, a surprising reaction, but in the increasingly tense situation of 1950 it won Brothman a seven-year prison sentence for conspiring with his secretary to persuade Gold to commit perjury. (Gold was not tried either for the conspiracy or for perjury.)

The changed’ atmosphere of American public opinion from 1947 on was greatly intensified by the increasingly strained world conditions, and by the growing public knowledge of the nature of the Communist movement, its connections with Soviet Russia, and their joint conspiracy against the West. Much of this evidence came from ex-Communists, such as Elizabeth Bentley, Louis Budenz, Whittaker Chambers, John Lautner, and others. All of these undoubtedly were ex-Communists and, equally undoubtedly, revealed much valuable information about the Communist conspiracy and properly roused the American public to the danger of this conspiracy. But it is equally true that the first three names mentioned are known and remembered because they dramatized, distorted, and manipulated, (consciously or unconsciously) evidence for their own private purposes. This is particularly true of Elizabeth Bentley and Louis Budenz, both of whom exaggerated their previous roles in the Communist Party, were very ignorant of the real nature and significance of their own evidence (or of any evidence), knew very little that was not based on hearsay (often at second or third hand), and undoubtedly embroidered and manipulated their evidence for their private profit. Budenz, who was “managing editor” (really copy editor) of the Communist newspaper the Daily Worker from 1941 to 1945, carefully planned his withdrawal from the party to protect his own interests. His decision was made early in 1945; he arranged for a position on the faculty of Notre Dame University at the end of September, obtained his weekly pay in advance from the Daily Worker for the second week of October, left the paper and the party on October 11th, and joined the Notre Dame faculty two days later. In the next eight years, in addition to his salary, he received gross earnings of $70,000 as a professional ex-Communist lecturer and writer.

This is certainly legitimate, but it is obvious that Budenz, in order to retain his value in this specialized market, had to continue to produce new evidence if not new sensations. Much of this evidence, released over the years, became more remote from his personal knowledge or even from the facts. This is, for example, very clear in his efforts to show that American foreign policy in China was controlled, determined, or influenced by persons whom he called “Communists.”

Miss Bentley’s profiting from her role of ex-Communist was much less legitimate, as can be seen from one example. Early in 1950, when Miss Bentley’s position was, in money and reputation, precarious, and her eighteen months of successful notoriety as an informer seemed to be approaching eclipse, she signed a contract with Devin-Adair for an autobiography to be written with the editorial assistance of John Brunini, who would also share in the royalties. At the time a libel suit against Miss Bentley by William Remington whom she had called a “Communist” had been settled by an out-of-court payment of $9,000 to Remington on Miss Bentley’s behalf by the radio network and program sponsor for whom she had made the charges. John Brunini, who was to share the profits of Miss Bentley’s book, was foreman of the grand jury which indicted Remington for perjury a few weeks later (May 1950) for testifying he had not been a Communist. The evidence that he was, given before the grand jury headed by Brunini, came from Miss Bentley. Perjury, however, requires two witnesses. Brunini obtained the second witness by browbeating Mrs. Remington into a statement that her former husband had told her that he paid dues to the Communist Party. To obtain this corroboration from the former Mrs. Remington, Brunini threatened her with contempt proceedings, by making her believe, contrary to the truth, that the privilege against use of a wife’s evidence did not apply to her after her separation from Remington in January 1947. This disgraceful procedure, which eventually led to Remington’s conviction for perjury and to his death in prison by the hand of another prisoner, is indicative of Miss Bentley’s attitude toward truth. To cover up her financial relationship with Brunini when she was preparing to cooperate with him in the indictment of Remington, the book contract was redrawn, omitting Brunini’s name. This was done apparently as a consequence of statements of two employees of Devin-Adair who knew of the contract with Brunini’s name (one was the woman who typed it). A new contract was drawn which did not contain Brunini’s name, and the two employees left Devin-Adair’s employment. The book, published under the title Out of Bondage , in 1951, pretended to be Miss Bentley’s memoirs, but two years later, when an effort was made to use it against her in another judicial proceeding, she called it “fiction.”

In addition to the distorting influence of profit, the story of the Communist threat to the United States was also confused and manipulated for partisan motivations. When the wholesale revelations of ex-Communists began in 1947, the New Deal and its successor had been in the White House for more than fourteen years. The Republicans, especially the congressional delegations, were prepared to do almost anything to destroy the reputation of President Truman and the memory of Franklin Roosevelt in order to win the presidential election of 1948. They were offered a great opportunity to do so when the Republicans won control of both Houses of Congress in the congressional elections of 1946. This effort was spearheaded, in 1947 and 1948, by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, whose antics over previous years had already shown large-scale disregard of the rules of good procedure, fair treatment, and unbiased investigation.

The HUAC in 1947-1948 had nine members of which the chief were J. Parnell Thomas, of New Jersey (Chairman); Karl E. Mundt, of South Dakota; and Richard M. Nixon, of California, on the Republican side, and four southern democrats, led by John S. Wood, of Georgia, and John E. Rankin, of Mississippi, on the Democratic side. The value of the publicity gained by the committee in these two years may be judged from the fact that it carried both Mundt and Nixon to the Senate in 1948 and 1950 and the latter to the Vice-Presidency and close to the Presidency itself in 1952 and 1960. There can be no doubt that the Republican members of the Committee realized the value of the publicity to be gained by membership on it and that their actions were consistently aimed more at partisan advantage for themselves and the discrediting of previous Democratic incumbents in the White House than they were directed to ascertaining the nature and functioning of the Communist conspiracy in the United States. Other legislative committees occasionally copied these tactics. It was this partisan, rather than investigatory, bias in the behavior of such committees which reduced so much of this investigation of Communism into personal vendettas such as those between Hiss and Chambers, between Remington and Bentley, and between Lattimore and Budenz. In these battles of personalities, charges and countercharges flew about so freely at hearings, in the press, over the airwaves, and occasionally in judicial proceedings, that the truth cannot now be ascertained. There can be no doubt that falsehood and even perjury were to be found on both sides. What is equally regrettable is that numerous other accused Communists, both in government and out, whose names were given to these committees on the same basis, and sometimes in the same breath, as Hiss, Remington, or Lattimore were almost totally ignored and lost in the personal controversies aroused over these three, largely because of the partisan handling of the investigatory committees.