To all of these people (along the Russian frontier from Korea to Manchuria, past Mongolia, Sinkiang and Afghanistan and Iran, all the way to Turkey), the Russians and the Soviet Union have a great power of attraction. In their eyes—rather doubtfully in the eyes of the older generation, more clearly in the eyes of the younger generation—the Soviet Union stands for strategic security, economic prosperity, technological progress, miraculous medicine, free education, equality of opportunity, and democracy, a powerful combination.4
It couldn’t get more fawning than that, though the Moscow worship was phrased as the humble view of Asians gazing with awestruck wonder across the steppes at the marvels wrought by Stalin. This was a favored Lattimore tactic, used often in his writings, in which the pro-Red message was presented as the innermost thought of large groups of people whose minds he was adept at reading. The virtually identical treatment appears, for instance, in the second of his Asia volumes, which tells us that “among Russia’s neighbors in Asia, the progress of the Soviet republics of Asia from about 1925 to 1941 inspired awe and wonder.”5
Lattimore used the same technique in dealing with the Reds of China, where the anonymous masses smitten with the Communist program weren’t people in other countries but China’s own ubiquitous peasants. They were, he said, much taken with the “democracy,” “self-government,” and other reforms enacted by the Reds, along with the tangible economic benefits resulting from the Yenan system. The peasants loved all the good things provided by the comrades and thus flocked naturally to their banner. So it wasn’t Lattimore who admired the Reds, you see; it was the peasants. Like his friend John Service, Lattimore was just “reporting.”
In using the term “democracy” to describe the doings of Moscow and the Red Chinese, Lattimore conceded that these practices weren’t quite what we in the United States considered democratic—but then dismissed this as being of no importance. “The fact that the Soviet Union also stands for democracy,” he wrote, “is not to be overlooked. It stands for democracy because it stands for all the other things,” though this wasn’t exactly in keeping with our notions. “The fact is,” he explained, “that for most of the people in the world today what constitutes democracy in theory is more or less irrelevant. What moves people to act…is the difference between what is more democratic and less democratic in practice.”6
Words like “dictatorship” and “imperialism” do appear in Lattimore’s writings—in their usual meanings—but always applied to anti-Communist forces, never to the USSR or Yenan comrades. If places such as Outer Mongolia or the nations of Eastern Europe got dragooned into the Soviet empire, that was merely further proof of Moscow’s “power of attraction.” “In Asia,” Lattimore wrote, “the most important example of the Soviet power of attraction beyond Soviet frontiers is in Outer Mongolia. It is here that we would look for evidence of the kind of attraction that Russia might offer to Korea. Outer Mongolia might be called a satellite of Russia in the good sense; that is to say, the Mongols have gravitated into the Russian orbit of their own accord.”7
In similar vein, said the professor, peasants in the USSR herded into collective farms found this more appealing than the previous system of private ownership, which had oppressed them. “More and more Soviet peasants in the Ukraine, Siberia, and Soviet Asia,” he wrote, “have come to feel that their individual shares in collective farms represent a kind of ownership more valuable to them than the old private ownership under which they were unable to own or even hire machines.”8 Again, the author’s mind-reading powers, applied to anonymous, distant masses, were uncanny. (No mention in this discussion, perhaps because of space constraints, of the millions starved to death in Moscow’s various man-made famines.)
As these quotes suggest, Lattimore seldom met a Red atrocity he didn’t like, or couldn’t find an excuse for. Among the more ghastly examples was his comment on the purge trials and acts of murder with which Stalin scourged his party and his country in the latter 1930s. These events shocked many liberals in the West, including the venerable John Dewey, but didn’t faze Lattimore in the slightest. On the contrary, he found them not only undismaying but beneficial. Based on his reading about the Stalin purges, he said, it appeared “a great many abuses have been discovered and rectified.” He added that “habitual rectification can hardly do anything but give the ordinary citizen more courage to protest, loudly, whenever in the future he finds himself being victimized by ‘someone in the party’ or ‘someone in the government.’ That sounds to me like democracy.”9
Describing this saturnalia of torture and mass murder as “habitual rectification” and the outcome as “democracy” pretty well summed up the Lattimore method. He had similar honeyed words for Stalin’s gulag and slave labor camps, most notably in an article for the National Geographic after his 1944 trip with Vice President Wallace and John Vincent to the USSR and China. One of the stops along the way was the infamous Magadan-Kolyma gold-mining complex in Siberia, generally considered by students of such matters to have been the deadliest in the Soviet system.
Lattimore, however, found the Kolyma death camp a wonderful place to visit. Among the items that impressed him was the presence at this slave labor complex of “a first class orchestra and light-opera company,” plus “a fine ballet group” on tour there. “As one American remarked,” he wrote, “high grade entertainment just naturally seems to go with gold, and so does high-powered executive ability.” The executive in question was the warden of this huge prison, a General Mishikov, described by survivors of the camp as a particularly odious tyrant. The Lattimore view, as might be guessed, was different. Mishikov, said the professor, “had just been decorated with the order of hero of the Soviet Union for his extraordinary achievement. Both he and his wife have a trained and sensitive interest in art and music and also a deep sense of civic responsibility.”
Finally, to top off the whole delightful outing, the Lattimore party found at the Kolyma mines, “instead of the sin, gin and brawling of an old-fashioned gold rush, extensive greenhouses growing tomatoes, cucumbers and melons to make sure the hardy miners get enough vitamins.” This rendering of a Siberian slave camp as a sort of art colony cum health spa run by cultured esthetes suggests Lattimore was no piker in these matters but ranked with the most abject of Soviet hacks as an apologist for Stalin.*221 10
Lattimore not only wrote such things himself but counseled others on how to do it. “I think you are pretty cagey,” he told Edward Carter, “in turning over so much of the China section of the inquiry to Asiaticus, Han Seng and Chi. They will bring out the absolutely essential radical aspects, but can be depended on to do it with the right touch.”11 The meaning of this was fairly clear, as Asiaticus, Chi, and Chen Han Seng were all veteran Moscow agents, as shown by a voluminous record. (Chen and Chi, already met with, were especially thick with the professor, both at the IPR and elsewhere.)
A further comment addressed to Carter pushed the Lattimore tactic of scoring propaganda points from cover, minimizing direct exposure. “For China,” Lattimore wrote, “my hunch is that it will pay to keep behind the official Chinese Communist position, far enough not to be covered by the same label—but enough ahead of the active Chinese liberals to be noticeable…For the USSR—back their international policy in general, but without using their slogans and above all without giving them or anyone else an impression of subservience…”12
The subservience Lattimore didn’t want to show in public would be more obvious in private confabs with the Moscow bosses. Among the documents obtained by the FBI and McCarran panel were minutes of meetings in 1936 between Kremlin bigwigs and a delegation from IPR, including Lattimore and Carter. In these sessions, the Soviets complained that Pacific Affairs had run an article by the anti-Communist William Henry Chamberlin, and another by the Trotskyite Harold Isaacs—both anathema to Kremlin censors. In response to this tongue-lashing, the IPR spokesmen apologized profusely. “The Isaacs and Chamberlin articles,” said Carter, “were great mist
akes and would not be repeated in the future.” Lattimore’s mea culpa was that “he had not realized Chamberlin’s position, but as soon as he learned of the Soviet opinion about Chamberlin, he canceled an article on the Soviet press which he had asked from Chamberlin.”*222 13
Still other such instances from Lattimore’s writings might be cited, but these are perhaps enough to suggest the drift of his opinions, his toadying to Moscow, and the rhetorical tactics used to do it. Looking at the total picture, the McCarran committee would conclude that Lattimore was one of a sizable group at IPR who “sought to influence the American public by means of pro-Communist or pro-Soviet content” in their writings, and that “Owen Lattimore, from some time in the 1930s, was a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy.”14 Data that have come to light in succeeding years do much to confirm this verdict and precious little to refute it.
But was he an espionage agent? McCarthy has taken considerable heat for saying he was, then backing off from this assertion. According to the Tydings panel, this was an absurd suggestion, implausible on its face as well as being a scandalous libel. As in other cases cited, the main evidence invoked by Tydings was intel from the FBI—an extensive Lattimore file assembled by the Bureau, a summary of which was read in camera to members of the panel. With the professor on the stand before him, Tydings said this file cleared Lattimore entirely. “[T]here was nothing in that file,” said the chairman, “to show that you were a Communist or had ever been a Communist, or that you were in any way connected with any espionage information or charges, so that the FBI file puts you completely, up to this moment, in the clear.”15
This seemed fairly conclusive, but Tydings would go still further, indicating that FBI Director Hoover concurred in his assessment. Hoover himself, said Tydings, had prepared the summary and was present when it was read, and it was “the universal opinion” of everyone in the room—this phrase in context including Hoover—that the professor was clean as a whistle. So the episode was reported at the time, and so it is recorded in several bios of McCarthy and histories of the era.
However, as has been noted, Tydings had a disconcerting habit of saying things about clearances from the FBI, the contents of security files, and the views of Hoover that turned out on further inquiry to be in error. The Lattimore case was of this nature, only more so. We know this because we have at least part of the file in question, not merely a summary of it as parsed by Tydings. This shows Tydings was again playing fast and loose with facts of record, and especially with the views of Hoover.
On the latter point, indeed, the distortion was so flagrant Peyton Ford of Justice, himself involved in the Amerasia “airtight” debacle, felt constrained to comment. According to an April 1950 memo from Lou Nichols of the FBI, Ford “said he couldn’t understand what had come over Senator Tydings, as he recalled very distinctly that the Director had been asked the question as to how he would regard Lattimore’s loyalty, and the Director stated if he were on the Loyalty Board he would question it; further the Director had also regarded Lattimore as a security risk and would not have hired him at the Bureau; he [Ford] couldn’t understand what Tydings was talking about.”16 (Emphasis added.)*223
So once more Tydings had invoked the FBI as a means of discrediting McCarthy and once more the Bureau records show this was a deception. The Tydings statement as to the contents of the file on Lattimore’s views and actions was no better. Noteworthy in this regard was the Tydings comment that there was “nothing in that file” to indicate Lattimore was, “or ever had been, a Communist.” Considering what’s actually in the records, this was an amazing statement, as it’s impossible to read the file without encountering a flat refutation of it. Thus section 1, page 1, tells us that, as of May 16, 1941 (during the Hitler-Stalin pact), Lattimore, like Robert Oppenheimer, was on the Bureau’s “custodial detention” list, and that his “nationalistic tendency” was described as “Communist.”17 (See Chapter 30.) As this is the very first item in the professor’s FBI rap sheet, it’s difficult to miss it.
As to why Lattimore was so regarded there is much else in the Bureau archive of kindred nature. The files are replete with data about his links to Communists and Soviet agents, allegations that he stacked the Pacific office of OWI with pro-Red staffers, that he belonged to Communist Party fronts, that his writings were pro-Soviet propaganda. Again, it’s hard to imagine any halfway accurate précis of the file that could have omitted all these items. Whether such charges were valid is perhaps—to stretch the point in Lattimore’s favor—a debatable question. That such charges appear repeatedly in the Lattimore file quite obviously isn’t.
However, the pending issue isn’t Communist affiliation per se, but the matter of spying, and the supposedly preposterous nature of the charge that Lattimore was an espionage agent. In fact, the FBI file contains numerous allegations that Lattimore was both a Communist (though possibly not holding a party card, as clandestine operatives usually didn’t) and an espionage agent. And while passages on this are frequently redacted, they leave no doubt the charges were taken seriously by the FBI and were being pursued with vigor.
There is, for instance, the conspicuous fact that most entries in the Bureau’s file on the professor are captioned. “Owen Lattimore, Espionage—R.” This meant Lattimore was specifically the subject of an espionage investigation, and the “R” in the heading stands for “Russian.” As this rubric appears throughout the Bureau’s records on the case, it’s again hard to see how anyone reviewing the file, or any adequate distillation, could fail to catch it.
There were several charges of this sort, but the one that seems to have triggered the Bureau’s active interest occurred in December 1948, when it was running down leads in the Hiss-Chambers case. As part of this inquiry, Hoover’s men interviewed Alexander Barmine, the former Soviet intelligence officer who would later draw the notice of McCarthy. In this interview, the file relates, “information [was] received from Barmine in which he stated that General Berzin of the Red Army intelligence at one time identified Lattimore to him as a Russian agent.” The general, said Barmine, had wanted him to set up a commercial cover for Soviet espionage in China:
HARD TO MISS
This May 1941 FBI custodial detention notice for Owen Lattimore, describing the professor’s “nationalistic tendency” as “Communist,” appears on page one, section one, of the Bureau’s Lattimore file as reflected in the FOIA records.
Source: FBI Owen Lattimore file
Informant recalls that Berzin then told him…“we have the organization there already”…Berzin said the organization was called “the Institute of Pacific Relations” and it was the basis for our network in China…At the time Berzin mentioned the fact that the two most promising and brilliant young men that the Soviet military intelligence had in the IPR were Owen Lattimore and Joseph Barnes.18
When these Barmine statements made their way to Hoover, he told the Baltimore office of the FBI to get on the case forthwith. “It is…noted,” said the Director, “that Lattimore was involved in the Philip Jaffe [Amerasia] investigation and was a known contact of several subjects in the Gregory case…In view of the many allegations concerning the subject…it is believed that a thorough and complete investigation should be conducted concerning Lattimore and should be directed at ascertaining whether or not he is or has been in the past engaged in espionage activities…The files of the Bureau will be reviewed and you will be furnished with pertinent information concerning his espionage connections.”19
Subsequent entries refer to still other such allegations, from sources other than Barmine. While so heavily redacted it’s hard to assess the statements or glean details, they give some idea of what the additional charges were based on. On June 22, 1949, Hoover sent a memo to the CIA saying “various informants have identified Lattimore as a possible espionage agent,” but with further details deleted. However, at the conclusion of the memo, there is reference to a charge that Lattimore, “while acting as an adviser t
o Chiang Kai-shek, was divulging information to the Russians.”20
This comment is fleshed out in a Bureau summary of September 1949, which says: “Allegations made by informants unsubstantiated to date linking Owen Lattimore with Soviet espionage. He was suspected of engaging in espionage for a foreign power while in Shanghai, China, in 1927. Sometime prior to 1938 [blacked out] named as working for the Russians in China.” On September 16, Hoover sent another memo to the CIA asking help with foreign aspects of the case. After many deletions of specifics, this concluded by asking the CIA “if through your sources additional information regarding the allegations could be ascertained as well as any other information which would indicate Lattimore’s connections with the Soviets while in China.”21
Filling in some blanks is a Truman Justice summary of the case that wound up in the clutches of McCarthy. One of the things this makes clear is that at least some of the charges of Lattimore subversion against the Chiang Kai-shek regime came from that regime itself. In this memo, an FBI contact identified as “Bureau source T-1” (a high official of a foreign government stationed in the United States) relayed what he said were the views of Chiang. This source “advised the Bureau that in May or June 1948, he had lunched with Generalissimo Chiang Kai shek…at which time Chiang said he had no evidence Owen Lattimore was a Communist. However, he (Chiang) had been advised by Tai-li, his director of Chinese military intelligence, that in 1941 while adviser to Chiang Lattimore had been sending coded messages to Yenan from Chungking.”22
Another intriguing item in this memo brought the matter closer to home. This was a message from the previously noted Soviet agent Chen Han-Seng, a Lattimore contact at both Johns Hopkins University and the IPR and an alumnus of the Sorge spy ring. On January 10, 1948, Chen wrote from Baltimore to Edward Carter, enclosing a six-page memorandum titled “Troops Under Chiang Kai-shek (January 1948).” Chen’s cover note to Carter stated: “At the request of Owen L. I have compiled from very confidential sources a list of troops under the Nanking [Chiang Kai-shek] government. The first top copy went to Owen, as it would be useful for his reference. I take the pleasure of forwarding this carbon copy in the hope that it might also be of some interest to you and your office.”*224 23
Blacklisted By History Page 49