This stance, for good or ill, was markedly different from that of Taber and Stefan, who argued with considerable force that where any reasonable doubts existed they should be resolved the other way around—which could readily be done under the McCarran rider. Even more to the present point were the comments these lawmakers made about the Lee list cases. Compare with the Tydings treatment, for example, the actual views of Chairman Taber: “I would say this to you, that it makes me disturbed as to whether we have any representation of the United States in the State Department. I would feel that if you are going to have anybody employed in the State Department the question of loyalty should be absolutely clear and that we should have people who are representing the United States and whose interest is first the United States.”6 (Emphasis added.)
In similar vein were the remarks of Stefan, who conducted most of the interrogation. No more than Chairman Taber did he suggest that he was satisfied with security goings-on at State, ready to “clear” it and its employees, or viewed the Lee list with indifference. Instead, he said precisely the reverse, as follows: “I am just a man from the prairies of Nebraska, just asking you why it is that these people are on the payroll when the people of the United States are trying to get behind the government to fight communism in this country and all over Europe. And here we find them employed in the State Department.”7 (Emphasis added.)
Nor, contra Tydings, did House Appropriations neglect to file a report about the matter. A few weeks after this hearing, the full panel submitted a report to Congress that, inter alia, discussed the Lee list. This report informs us: “Files on the prospective employees were active, and the individuals at the time of investigation were being considered for employment, even though information of record pointed to their being poor risks. The committee does not feel that the department has been as diligent as it might have been in the selection of its personnel…and has not sufficiently exercised the prerogative given it under the so-called McCarran rider…It would seem to the committee that any doubt in connection with the employment of personnel in the Department of State should be resolved in favor of the United States…”8
While this unanimous (hence bipartisan) report was more gently phrased than the views of the committee leaders, in no sense did it amount to clearance of, contentment with, or indifference toward security practice at State. Moreover, Chairman Taber left no doubt whatever as to his continuing intense displeasure when he and Stefan presented their findings to the House in early March. Here are some Taber comments, geared directly to the Lee list, that suggest the measure of his satisfaction:
“…The hearings which were held upon the State Department appropriations bill demonstrated beyond any question that the first thing for the United States to do is clean up the State Department and get rid of those whose incompetency or disloyalty is a menace to the United States…The investigations of the Appropriations committee indicated a very large number of Communists on the rolls of the State Department…they have employed people whose record according to their own files is not such that any loyal American could trust them.”9 (Emphasis added.)
Finally, to this grim assessment of the Lee list cases Taber added some further thoughts about the State Department officials who appeared before him, specifically Hamilton Robinson, the Director of Controls, who had chief responsibility for such matters. The depth of the chairman’s contentment may be judged from these assertions:
A thorough reading of his [Robinson’s] testimony before this committee would indicate total incompetence to do the job…. There can be no excuse for the failure of the State Department to clean house—to get rid of the incompetents and those about whom there is any question of loyalty…. After listening for 1½ hours to the developments of the way the State Department has handled its security operations and to Mr. Robinson’s answers…I was compelled to say: The testimony that I have heard here makes me wonder whether the United States has any representation in the State Department. I regret to say that nothing has happened to change my opinion.10
Thus the House committee that compiled the Lee list, reviewed its contents, and allegedly “cleared” the State Department on this basis; the reader may wish to go back and scan the not-to-worry description of these topics above related and ask who has been misrepresenting what. The contention of the State Department, Senator Tydings, and our historians that the list was viewed as no big deal, that Congress was “satisfied” with security goings-on at State, and that there was no security problem that required addressing, were the exact reverse of what developed from these hearings.
THIS particular inversion of the record is so raw it might seem impossible to top it; however, the liberties taken with the work of a second House committee, also invoked by Tydings, were in some respects still more bizarre than those that shaped the withering comments of Taber and Stefan into bland approval.
This was a House Expenditures subcommittee chaired by Rep. Edgar Chenoweth (R-Colo.) that held hearings on the Lee list cases on March 10 and 12, 1948. In the Tydings version, these hearings likewise showed how pleased Republicans of the 80th Congress were with the security shop at State—though Tydings supplied no evidence to support this. “It is unnecessary,” his wrap-up averred, “to relate in this report the results of their investigation and the trend of examination by the subcommittee members which indicated their satisfaction.”11
It was indeed “unnecessary” to give such details—at least from the standpoint of Tydings. He and his allies at State in fact had plentiful reason not to recall the chill specifics of these hearings. If we consult the astonishing record of these sessions, we find Chairman Chenoweth, Rep. Fred Busbey (R-Ill.), Rep. Walter Judd (R-Minn.) and others grilling Messrs. Peurifoy and Robinson about the Lee list. Again, the difference in perspective is striking. The State Department witnesses hem and haw about the cases, stress the need for compelling evidence, the difficulty of making judgments. The GOPers as frequently insist that dubious loyalty cases be resolved in favor of security interests, no two ways about it.
To this point, the doings of the Chenoweth panel closely tracked the Taber-Stefan sessions. There was, however, a startling and well-nigh incredible difference, brought out by Busbey. It was Busbey who had sparked these hearings to begin with, publicly saying Hamilton Robinson was totally unfit for the post he held and should be ousted (still more of that GOP contentment). The Illinois solon backed this up by questioning Robinson on the case of Robert Miller. Miller was one of the main suspects on the Lee list—called “the greatest security risk” ever in the department by the House investigators, named by Bentley as a member of her spy ring, and found by the FBI to be in close contact with the Silvermaster combine.
Why, at this juncture, the Busbey focus on Robert Miller? The answer, brought out at the hearing, was that Miller was a friend and kinsman to none other than the gentleman on the stand, the State Department security chief, Hamilton Robinson. As Busbey developed in some detail, Robinson and Miller were not only second cousins but had been extremely chummy. Miller had been best man at Robinson’s wedding, they had been friends since the 1930s, their families traded visits and Christmas presents, the relationship had long persisted.
Busbey’s point in bringing this up wasn’t that Robinson himself was suspect (though the congressman plainly had his doubts), but rather that this State Department security czar should have known Robert Miller for all these years and had not the faintest inkling that his longtime pal was, just possibly, subversive. (This despite the fact that Miller had gone off to Moscow in the 1930s and married Jenny Levy of the Moscow Daily News, a Soviet propaganda organ.) As Busbey summed up his position, “I would say that anyone that naïve should not be the Director of the Office of Controls…”12
Whether or not Busbey was correct in this regard, it does seem a trifle odd that the person chosen by the Marshall-Acheson State Department to handle matters like the Lee list should be a boon companion of “the greatest security risk” it had to offer, in the vi
ew of its compilers. Nor was that the total story. It turned out also that Robinson was less than candid about his links to Miller. In fending off Busbey’s questions, for instance, he described his connection to this Bentley-identified Soviet agent as a “silly kind of thing” that was long since over.
“Since I have been director of the Office of Controls,” said Robinson, “I have had absolutely nothing to do with this man.” He added that, after Miller came back from Russia, they had seen very little of each other. “I saw something of him the first year he was back, 1939, 1940, and since I have been in Washington since the fall of 1940, I have seen very little of him….I think I have had lunch with him a couple of times before I took this job and after he left the department….”13
From these remarks the casual listener at the time—or reader now—could hardly help concluding that Robinson’s connections to Miller were ancient history. The ever-vigilant FBI, however, knew the story was quite different. Thanks to its surveillance, the Bureau knew the Miller-Robinson contacts had continued right up to the very eve of Robinson’s elevation to the supersensitive job he now held, which occurred on February 13, 1947. The hairsbreadth nature of the timing is apparent from the surveillance records:
“On February 10, 1947, Bob Miller contacted Hamilton Robinson at the State Department. However, Robinson was not in but subsequently called Miller and advised him the guy he was going to talk to [about] Bob wasn’t around the State Department any more. They made arrangements for a luncheon on February 12, 1947, and Miller is to meet Robinson at his office in the State Department.” And: “A physical surveillance on February 12, 1947, reflects that Miller entered the office of Hamilton Robinson in room 182 of the State Department building and subsequently left with Robinson at 12:35 P.M. They proceeded by cab to Wearley’s Sea Food Restaurant at 418 12th St. N.W. At 2:05 P.M., Miller and Robinson left Wearley’s and returned to the State Department, where they departed [sic—parted].”14
Thus, Robinson’s statement that he hadn’t had any dealings with Miller since assuming the office of Director of Controls may have been technically correct, but in substance couldn’t have been more misleading. In fact, Robinson had met with Miller for an obviously extended talk on the very day before Robinson assumed his new job—a job he knew he was going to get for at least a week before this. Not exactly ancient history, and not exactly candor from the witness.
Almost as bad as this obfuscation was Robinson’s testimony on the ominous background and high-risk security status of Miller. In fact, both he and Peurifoy professed an almost total lack of awareness as to why Miller had left the State Department. This was brought out in committee questioning when Representative Karsten of Missouri asked: “Did you find out why this fellow Miller left the department?” The colloquy then went as follows:
BUSBEY: You can find out from him [Robinson]; ask him.
ROBINSON: Not from me, I was not there.
PEURIFOY: I was not in this position at the time but I understand he resigned.
BUSBEY: As a matter of fact, Mr. Peurifoy, the man had been under investigation for quite a time before he was permitted to resign, was he not?
PEURIFOY: I will have to check the record. I did not occupy my position at that time.
BUSBEY: And that he was just one of the security risks allowed to resign that should have been fired before he was allowed to resign. Now did you know any of his connections with any Communists or any Communist front organizations?
ROBINSON: Not a one. I did not know any of his friends.15
These Robinson-Peurifoy answers were both disingenuous and absurd—not quite the kind of answers one likes to have from security officials being questioned about a suspected espionage agent. At this point, the duo had been in charge of the security shop at State for over a year, with full access to its files, and could not conceivably not have known that Miller had been forced out of the department on the basis of intel from the FBI that he was connected to a Soviet spy ring. (As seen in the Bannerman memo on Miller, the whole thing was spelled out in State’s own records—information Busbey plainly had in his possession.)
Likewise, Hamilton Robinson had plenty of reason to know, not only the story on Robert Miller, but also that on Miller’s friends and contacts. Robinson had been briefed precisely on this point by Sam Klaus in 1947, shortly after the changeover in the security office. Specifically, Klaus had raised with Robinson the cases of Florence Levy (herself distantly related to Robinson by virtue of her kinship to Miller), Rowena Rommel, and Minter Wood. Robinson thus had ample cause to know about the Miller network at State from this point forward, even if he knew nothing about it beforehand. His answer to Busbey was an obvious stonewall.
John Peurifoy’s testimony was in some ways even worse. Asked why Miller had left the department, Peurifoy professed not to know much about it, since he hadn’t been in his current position at the time. Apart from the inherent implausibility of Peurifoy’s not knowing the facts on one of the most notorious cases in the history of the division, there were those FBI surveillance records that once more told a different story. These show that, like his colleague, Peurifoy was stonewalling the committee.
Thus, in early December of 1946, the Bureau monitored a call between Miller and Rowena Rommel, which among other things disclosed that: “Rowena said that she had talked to Jack Peurifoy yesterday…[and] that Peurifoy was quite annoyed and startled and asked about Miller.” The next day, December 8, the FBI tapped a conversation between Miller and Peurifoy himself, wherein “they discussed Miller’s resignation which Miller said was effective Friday, the 13th. From the gist of the conversation it appears that Peurifoy is trying to help Miller in this matter and advised him that he would see his boss and that Miller should come to see him in a few days.”16
So Peurifoy’s supposed ignorance of the Miller case was also feigned, and indicative of all too many responses supplied to Congress about security cases at State, some arguably as bad as Miller. It was for Congress (and the FBI) a disconcerting picture. Quite apart from the wiretap data, enough was brought out in this combustible hearing to show the Robinson-Miller nexus, which was a shocker in itself, and the unwillingness of State Department spokesmen to level with Congress about an identified Moscow agent who had been serving on their payroll. All of which was blandly ignored by Tydings—though his report invoked the very hearing that produced it.
IF THE reader will bear with me, there is, regrettably, even more: yet another committee of Congress Tydings cited to prove there was no security mess at State and that Joe McCarthy was a liar. This was the Senate Committee on Appropriations, which in the period 1947–48 questioned Gen. George C. Marshall, then Secretary of State, about security problems in the department. According to Tydings and the State Department, this was the third of the four Republican panels so satisfied with the security shop at State that they declined to file reports about it.
Unluckily for Tydings, Sen. Homer Ferguson had been a member of this very committee (and still was), and had also chaired another panel of the 80th Congress that inquired into security problems of the era—the affair of William Remington, discussed in Chapter 24. With the benefit of this background, Ferguson deftly nailed the Tydings assertion about committees of that Congress as an “untruth” and proceeded to document this before the Senate.
In June of 1947, Ferguson recalled, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee had talked with Marshall about the security drill at State and expressed their grave concerns about it. Members of the panel at this time had also given direct to Marshall a detailed and vigorous report about security conditions then prevailing. Again, far from voicing “satisfaction,” this report expressed utmost alarm about the subject, backed with numerous specifics. Ferguson put excerpts from this into the Record, and they make electrifying reading now, as they surely must have then:
“It becomes necessary due to the gravity of the situation to call your attention to a condition that has developed and still flourishes in
the State Department under the direction of Dean Acheson [then Under Secretary to Marshall]. It is evident that there is a deliberate, calculated program being carried on not only to protect Communist personnel in high places, but to reduce security and intelligence protection to a nullity…
“On file in the department is a copy of a preliminary report of the FBI on Soviet espionage activities in the United States, which involves a large number of State Department personnel, some in high official positions. The report has been challenged and ignored by those charged with the responsibility of administering the department with the apparent tacit approval of Mr. Acheson…Voluminous files are on hand in the department proving the connections of the State Department employees and officials with this espionage ring.”*177
As to the Tydings statement that no committee of the 80th Congress had so much as named a single State Department employee as disloyal, Ferguson nailed this as buncombe also. While forbearing to identify them in the Record, the Michigan senator noted that nine officials of the department had been specifically named in this report and that under pressure from Congress some of these had been removed. He then resumed reading from the report:
“[These nine] are only a few of the hundreds now employed in varying capacities who are protected and allowed to remain despite the fact that their presence is an obvious hazard to national security. They are blocked by one man in the State Department, a protégé of Acheson, named [blank]…who is also the chief instrument in the subverting of the over-all security program. This deplorable condition exists all the way up and down the line. Assistant Secretary of State [Spruille] Braden has also surrounded himself with men like [blank] and [blank], who has a notorious international reputation.*178 The network also extends into the office of Assistant Secretary [William] Benton.”†179 17
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