Ultimately, Hiss would be convicted of lying about these matters and wind up in a federal prison, so the vindication of Chambers couldn’t have been much more conclusive. None of this, however, impressed the alleged security hawk, Harry Truman. As late as 1956, he engaged in the following exchanges in a TV interview reprinted by U.S. News & World Report. Question: “Mr. President, is it true that you characterized Richard Nixon’s investigation into the Alger Hiss case as a ‘red herring’?” Answer: “No, but it was. I never characterized it that way but that’s exactly what it was.” Question: “Do you think that he [Hiss] was a Communist spy?” Answer: “No, I do not.”16
OPPENHEIMER, White, and Hiss were three of the most famous spy suspects ever, and none did any credit to security standards at the Truman White House. All of them, however, were handled outside the boundaries of the President’s loyalty program. White and Hiss left the government before the program started, and Oppenheimer would be dealt with through other channels. So it’s conceivable that, when the loyalty system was adopted, the administration set off on a different path and thereafter took a harder line than that suggested in these cases. Conceivable—but not what happened. In all too many instances, the same mind-set and same results persisted.
One reason for this outcome was the way the Truman program was structured. Despite its allegedly draconian features, the system contained a host of flaws that made it extremely porous. Among these, ironically, was the “loyalty” requirement itself—stipulating that federal employees be vetted only on this basis. This proved to be a protean concept that gave rise to endless troubles. Closely linked with these was the original Truman order (later changed) that such judgments be based on “reasonable grounds” instead of “reasonable doubt,” the rule that in theory obtained before this. Together these Truman notions created a twilight zone of fog and hesitation that resulted in the clearance of many suspects. Following are a few examples.
Edward U. Condon
Had Robert Oppenheimer not existed, Dr. Condon might well be rated the scariest security risk in Cold War history. His case exhibited to the fullest the loopholes in the Truman program and the manner in which its supposedly drastic nature became debilitating weakness.
Condon was another nuclear physicist with odd connections, and also with exotic views about security measures and U.S. relations with the Communist bloc of countries. He had served briefly with the wartime atomic setup but lasted for only about six weeks before he and the project managers parted ways. General Groves, who considered Oppenheimer an acceptable risk, did not so consider Condon. Being judged a bigger security problem than Robert Oppenheimer obviously took a bit of doing (though there were some others who shared this dubious distinction).
As to the Soviet Union and East-West relations, Condon not only adopted the prevalent outlook of the war but carried this to utmost limits and persisted with such notions well after the war was over. He had a worrisome habit of hanging out with East bloc officials, including Polish, Czech, and Bulgarian embassy staffers, subsequent to the Communist takeover of these countries. (Chief among these contacts was one Ignace Zlotowski, a Polish embassy figure named by a defecting Red official as an atomic espionage agent.)17
Condon’s familiars on the home front were of like nature. He and his wife were friends of the Bentley-identified Soviet agent Gregory Silvermaster and of Silvermaster’s housemate, Ludwig Ullman. Another such Condon sidekick was John Marsalka—a member of the Silvermaster circle—discharged from the State Department in the 1930s “due to doubts about his loyalty to the United States,” to quote congressional findings on the subject.18 Still another Condon buddy was Edwin Smith, identified as a CP member (taking the Fifth Amendment when asked about this) and an official of the National Council of American Soviet Friendship, an oft-cited front group. (Condon himself was active in the science committee of this outfit.)
This sampling of the Condon vita is perhaps sufficient to suggest why Army security types voiced strong objections in 1945 when he wanted to take off on a trip to Russia and had his passport lifted. Yet, despite this well-documented record, the Truman administration that same year appointed him director of the National Bureau of Standards in the Commerce Department, then kept him at this post, over the protests of Congress, for the next six years. The job had major security implications in that the Standards Bureau dealt with all kinds of classified material, including data on nuclear weapons, radar systems, and guided missiles.19
A good deal of this background was known to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which in early 1948 compiled a report on Condon, calling him one of the “weakest links” in the atomic security chain. The committee discovered also that the FBI had filed its own report on Condon, and House members tried to obtain this as part of their inquiry. As seen, the administration flatly refused to provide this report to Congress.
As to the workings of the loyalty program, the Condon case was bleakly revealing. The Commerce Department was apprised of the negative data on Condon in 1946 and became formally cognizant of the problem with delivery of the FBI report about him in the spring of 1947. Thereafter, the department had the case before it for approximately ten months—a period in which Condon enjoyed continuing access to classified data. Finally, in early 1948, the department held a loyalty hearing on the case, which, to the dismay of Congress, resulted in his clearance.
As brought out in House committee hearings, this surreal result was arrived at by dismissing from consideration Condon’s linkages to East Bloc officials, Silvermaster and Marsalka, and other similar intel. The reason for ignoring all this information, said the chairman of the Commerce hearing board, was that it concerned “security,” whereas the board looked only at the “loyalty” issue. And the board members didn’t think they had “reasonable grounds” for finding Condon was disloyal. As the hearing chairman explained, an adverse ruling on this basis was tantamount to a verdict of treason and the board was loath to make this judgment.20
So Condon would stay on at the Bureau of Standards, despite the outcries of Congress, until September of 1951. The case clearly illustrated the problems inherent in the elastic, subjective “loyalty” standard decreed by Truman. That aspect, and the secrecy issue, had obvious tie-ins to the later battles of Joe McCarthy. And there was another tie-in also. The head of the Commerce hearing board that cleared Condon, and who gave the reasons for this clearance, was the already met with Adrian Fisher. By the time of McCarthy’s set-to with the State Department, Fisher had moved from Commerce to the AEC and thence to Foggy Bottom, where he was active in the effort to discredit McCarthy and provide back-channel data to Senator Tydings in seeking that objective.
Solomon Adler
As has been well noted, the most explosive security scandal of the Truman era was the Amerasia case, replete with cover-up, perjury, and grand-jury rigging by a coterie of top officials. Among its many peculiar features, the case provides a suggestive study of the Truman loyalty program in action.
Like countless other security problems, the Amerasia scandal had its origins under FDR but would come to public notice under Truman. The case surfaced in the spring of 1945, when Truman had just succeeded to the White House, so his knowledge of it would have been zero at the outset. Also, we’re informed that when he first heard about the matter, he ordered a thoroughgoing investigation, which accorded with his hawkish Cold War image.
However, within a few weeks of this brave beginning, everything was thrown into reverse and the case was fixed and buried. All this manipulation happened on Truman’s watch and was thus done by people subordinate to him, none of whom so far as we know suffered any official sanctions, and several of whom were in fact promoted. And as the wiretaps that revealed the cover-up were ordained by Truman, it’s hard to believe he didn’t learn about the fix, especially in its later phases.
Be that as it may, the relevant point for now is the way suspects in the case would fare under the loyalty program of 1947. Chief among these w
as John Service, the handling of whose case was so singular and important it requires a discussion of its own (see Chapter 27). Suffice it to note that, despite the FBI’s extensive data on Service, he was repeatedly cleared by the State Department’s see-no-evil loyalty screeners. Also instructive, though getting less attention, was the case of his Chungking roommate, the veteran Soviet agent Adler.
By the time the Truman loyalty program came on line, the FBI had copious intel on Adler. The Bureau knew from microphone surveillance about Service’s links to Adler and their activities in China—including some knowledge of their third housemate, Chi Chao-ting. Hoover’s men also had good reason to know Adler was a Communist apparatchik, named as such by Chambers and then again by Bentley. The Bureau likewise had cause to know that Adler was one of a sizable group of Soviet agents battening on the Treasury payroll.
Accordingly, in the period 1945–48, the FBI supplied to Justice, Treasury, and the White House a steady stream of reports in which Adler was featured (see Chapter 25). Again, however, these memos didn’t make much of a dent with the Truman security screeners. In fact, despite all the Bureau information, Adler, after a department loyalty hearing, would continue with his Treasury duties.21
Adler thus, like Service, had several years of official employment remaining following Amerasia/Bentley. During this span, he not only stayed on at Treasury but received promotions, pay increases, and key assignments. In 1946, he was a consultant to Gen. George C. Marshall’s mission to China; in 1947, he was tasked with providing background data on China to Gen. Albert Wedemeyer, U.S. commander in the region; and from December 1947 until February 1948, he consulted with the State Department on questions of technical/financial aid to Chiang Kai-shek.22 Given his status as Soviet agent and previous efforts to throttle Chiang, it isn’t hard to guess what kind of counsel Adler would have provided in these assignments.
WARNINGS ON ADLER
As this FBI chart reveals, the Bureau sent high-level government officials a steady stream of reports on Communist apparatchik Solomon Adler.
Source: J. Edgar Hoover confidential files
It wasn’t until May of 1950, at the peak of the McCarthy uproar, that Adler thought it prudent to leave the Treasury and go back to his native England—not forgetting to put in for back pay and accumulated leave time. Thereafter, he absconded to his real homeland of Communist China, where he lived out his days as an employee of the Red regime he helped midwife to power.
William Remington
The merits of a loyalty system that couldn’t flush out the likes of Solomon Adler or Edward Condon don’t require much comment. Equally suggestive was the case of William Remington, who for the better part of a decade moved with acrobatic ease from one official billet to another, first under Roosevelt, then under Truman. This occurred despite the fact that Remington, like Adler and so many others, was named in November of 1945 by Bentley as a member of her spy combine.
In the dragnet investigation that followed, the FBI sent out a vast number of reports on Remington to agencies where he worked, the Attorney General, and the White House. In fact, no other target of the probe was the subject of so many reports to top officials. According to Bureau records, the FBI supplied federal agencies no fewer than forty-five memos, written alerts, and oral communications in which the Remington case was mentioned.
The good news was that, on the military side of things, the security data prompted the Office of Naval Intelligence to seek Remington’s dismissal as a reserve officer in the Navy. On the civilian side, however, it was Service-Adler redux, as Remington enjoyed an effortless rise to ever more responsible postings. Over the next few years, he was appointed as an economist for the War Conversion and Stabilization Board (1946), served on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisors for the White House (1947), and became chief of the Export Control division at Commerce (1948). The last had serious Cold War implications, as it involved supervision of export-control licenses to the USSR and the Communist bloc in general.
Once more, security intel from the FBI meant little—Commerce officials being totally unaware of the Bureau data or dismissing the case as being of small importance. Among the more amazing revelations was the testimony of Thomas Blaisdell, Remington’s chief in several jobs and main sponsor for the export position. Asked by Sen. Homer Ferguson in Senate hearings on the case if he had thought it necessary to check Remington’s security status before recommending him for this post, Blaisdell blandly said he hadn’t since that wasn’t his responsibility.23
Other Commerce officials would testify that they knew nothing about FBI reports on Remington, that they assumed he was all right because he worked for the CEA, and that their files showed nothing derogatory on him.24 These comments were amplified by leaked suggestions from Commerce higher-ups—mirroring the Harry Dexter White case—that the FBI had been remiss in not advising them about the problem. Again, the records of the Bureau showed these buck-passing efforts were in error.
Remington also supplied a further twist in the escalating secrecy battle between Congress and the White House, and his case would shed some light on file-stripping charges of the McCarthy era. Ferguson and his colleagues called for the Commerce security file on Remington, which was in fact delivered. When it arrived, however, it had been picked clean of relevant data. Commerce spokesman Matthew Hale told the lawmakers this weeding had been done in compliance with the Truman secrecy order of March 1948.25
The denouement of the case, as far as the loyalty program figured in it, was more astounding yet. In 1949, despite the FBI reports, Remington’s separation from the Navy, and a belated disapproval by Commerce, the Seth Richardson LRB cleared him on loyalty charges and returned him to his duties. The rationale for this was that even if Remington had provided data for the Soviets as alleged by Bentley, he did so during World War II, when Moscow was our ally. There was no evidence, said the board, that he was delivering data in 1949—thus indicating an adverse finding had to be based on tangible, real-time proof of disloyal conduct in the present.26
Like Hiss, Remington would later be convicted in federal court for lying about his Red connections, which meant the Truman loyalty program had been incapable of discharging a flagrant risk found guilty by a jury. Along with Oppenheimer, Condon, Service, and Adler—all holding down significant federal posts in 1950—the Remington case made it clear that the alleged security crackdown under Truman was a myth. And if the Truman screeners could let these sharks slip through the netting, how likely were they to catch the minnows?
CHAPTER 25
A Book of Martyrs
BECAUSE so many of the original McCarthy suspects presented to the Senate were handled on an anonymous basis, judging the merits of the cases has always been a difficult business. So difficult, as has been seen, that most writers on the subject have simply accepted the comments of the Tydings panel and the State Department about the fraudulence of McCarthy’s charges, then applied these exculpatory statements back to any particular cases that happened to surface.
Of course, the proper way to do it is the other way around: Get the identities of the suspects, see what’s available on them in security records, then draw our own conclusions. However, as the names submitted by McCarthy disappeared from the Tydings subcommittee archive and weren’t otherwise part of the official record, nobody outside looking in could know who all the cases were, so backtracking in this manner was precluded. McCarthy would from time to time make some names public, and some would be made known through other channels. But these identifications concerned perhaps only a third of the total caseload, leaving an enormous gap in the historical record.
Now, however, we do have the names of these original McCarthy cases and can check them out from various angles. An earlier chapter considered certain of his suspects, identified in his initial speeches and some other statements, who would later show up in Venona. But this too was only a fraction of the total caseload, geared strictly to the Venona decrypts. More extensive by far are
the records of the FBI, where the names of McCarthy cases abound, while still others would surface in later investigations of the Congress. If we consult these sources, we can find out something about the initial McCarthy suspects, including a fair number of those who vanished from the Tydings record, and what McCarthy knew about them.
E. J. Askwith
Edna Jerry Askwith takes pride of place in this discussion for alphabetical reasons, deriving from her surname. This also put her at the head of the line in McCarthy’s supplementary list of potential cases given Tydings on March 14,1950. This is the list, it may be recalled, that Tydings, the State Department, and most chronicles of the era have treated as nonexistent, thus assuring that Ms. Askwith’s name, and case, have been lost to history.
She was one of McCarthy’s cases nonetheless, and also one of the FBI’s. Professionally, she was a staffer in the State Department office called the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, a target-rich division that at various times included Robert Miller, Bernard Redmont, Joseph Gregg, Willard Park, Philip Raine, Dwight Mallon, and John T. Fishburn. (Of these, Miller, Gregg, Park, and Redmont were all original Bentley suspects.) Askwith was also in contact with the Mary Jane Keeney crowd, which included David Wahl, Helen Scott, Alix Reuther, and Samuel Krafsur of the Soviet news agency TASS, among a host of others. As the Miller and Keeney groups both pop up repeatedly in Bureau records, so does Jerry Askwith.
Thus, we find in the Gregory/Bentley file that in 1949 the FBI was conducting a background check on Askwith, in which Dwight Mallon stated that he was her superior at State, gave her a favorable reference, and claimed she wasn’t connected to the more dubious characters in the unit. He was aware, he said, “of the fact that persons with whom she was associated in the CIAA were subsequently questioned as to their loyalty but Mallon felt that Miss Askwith’s associations with persons such as Bernard Redmont and Robert Miller did not extend beyond a normal office relationship.”1
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