McCarthy staffers would gather considerable evidence on all this, including information on alleged penetration of the intelligence unit and the nature of the in-house struggle over what to do about it. One thing they discovered was that the flap at SCIA had rebounded strongly against the ten accusers. The group had been told by top officials to back off, stop pressing their complaints, and otherwise keep quiet about the subject. Singled out for special admonition was Colonel Allen, who received a letter of reprimand from Chief Signal Officer Gen. George C. Back, accusing Allen of stirring up trouble by supporting “the disruptive group” that brought the lax security charges and being “disloyal” to his superiors.3
While this internecine conflict was unfolding, and then mysteriously vanishing from public view, a parallel and ultimately more famous battle was under way up the road at the Monmouth complex in New Jersey. Here, too, the committee would discover, there had been allegations of serious security trouble, suspicious characters on the scene, and inadequate safeguards for the nation’s secrets. As with the SCIA, there had also been fierce disagreements between opposing forces in the Army as to what to say and do about security problems that were complained of. There would be consequences as well for those who pressed such issues in too vigorous fashion.
THE installation called Fort Monmouth was in fact a sprawling network of labs spread out among several New Jersey towns and other Northeast locations, doing research on confidential military projects. Radar, missile defenses, antiaircraft systems, and other devices involving advanced electronics were all on the agenda. There were four main research labs, the one most often mentioned in the McCarthy hearings called Evans Signal. In addition, there were half a dozen or so commercial scientific outfits—including the Federal Telecommunications Laboratory (FTL), RCA, General Electric, and other defense suppliers—who subcontracted technical projects for the Army. It was a far-flung, high-tech affair, all supposedly quite secret.
Investigations by the McCarthy panel were often geared to past endeavors of McCarthy and his staffers, and the Monmouth probe was no exception. In this case, the experience was Cohn’s. During his five-plus years at Justice, he had been involved in prosecuting several high-profile antisubversive cases. The most famous of these was the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of conspiracy to commit atomic espionage, found guilty, and sentenced to death. Against that somber backdrop, Cohn would predictably take notice when word reached him of security ills at Monmouth. The installation had been a scene of action in the 1940s for Julius Rosenberg, then a Signal Corps inspector, and to a lesser extent for his convicted coconspirator, Morton Sobell, and two other accused members of the spy ring, Joel Barr and Al Sarant.
The McCarthy investigation would eventually gather extensive evidence on the Rosenberg-Sobell aspect of the case, plus many other specific data about security problems at the complex. However, by far the most comprehensive overview of the security scene at Monmouth would be provided—after some initial hesitation—by Captain Benjamin Sheehan, a G-2 counterintelligence specialist from First Army headquarters in New York.*272
Contrary to accepted versions of the story, the Sheehan information wasn’t old-hat material but stuff of fairly recent vintage. As suggested by the two-and-a-quarter-page memo passed to McCarthy, security affairs at Monmouth had been of pressing interest to the Army itself in the early days of 1951. According to the Sheehan data, this interest had thereafter escalated sharply, leading to a whole series of internal Army investigations. These included probes of personnel and security practice at Monmouth proper, plus a special sub-investigation at the Federal Telecommunications Lab, the Signal Corps subcontractor of most concern to Army gumshoes.
In November of 1951, according to Sheehan, G-2 at the Pentagon had become sufficiently concerned about the security situation at Monmouth to order a preliminary investigation by officials at the complex. The results of this initial survey brought Sheehan himself into the picture as head of a five-man counterintelligence squad sent down from G-2 of the First Army. The Sheehan probe commenced in February of 1952—about the time the SCIA investigation was shutting down and roughly a year before McCarthy got his alert about security goings-on at Monmouth.
In the course of its investigation, the First Army squad discovered what Sheehan described as “an extremely critical situation” at Monmouth and was on the trail of “a parallel situation at the FTL.” The G-2 inquest, per Sheehan, revealed a “serious security problem at Fort Monmouth arising from the presence of an immensely large number of employees of questionable loyalty working there…” Making matters worse, the G-2 investigators discovered a worrisome history of laxness in handling confidential papers—the two problems together presenting a security challenge of huge dimensions.
“Shortly after we began the investigation,” said Sheehan, “it became apparent that highly classified documents pertaining to our nation’s latest defensive and offensive secrets were being treated as personal property by many of the technical personnel employed there, and that they were having these documents indiscriminately reproduced and that they were taking them home with them.” Sheehan and Co. accordingly recommended that immediate steps be taken “to neutralize the effectiveness of suspect individuals” and that stringent measures be adopted to crack down on the handling of official papers.4
Again contra some later versions of the matter, Sheehan and others in the Army explicitly viewed the Monmouth probe as an espionage investigation. Thus, a First Army G-2 disposition form of June 2, 1952, contained the stipulation: “Examine into indications of an espionage ring at Fort Monmouth, and between FTL and Monmouth employees,” while an August 1952 report by the Sheehan team bore the subheading “Indications of Espionage.” Subsequently, said Sheehan, when the Monmouth data were relayed to Pentagon higher-ups, “the Army accepted our report as one of espionage, and completely concurred.” One top G-2 official, he added, “agreed that the situation had a very definite appearance of espionage” and said “our latest Signal Corps developments were appearing in the hands of the North Korean Communists.”5
This series of internal probes culminated in the latter months of 1952, when Sheehan and Co. would formally present their findings to their superiors in the Army. But thereafter, as with the SCIA investigation, the Monmouth probe would grind to an abrupt and puzzling halt. “We had finally gotten the word to the Pentagon,” said Sheehan, “and there our investigation to all intents and purposes died.” He added that he was told to lay off the inquiry and was subject to reprimand when he continued to push it—this, too, resembling the probe at the SCIA and the fate of Colonel Allen.6
There matters rested in early 1953 when McCarthy got his heads-up on Monmouth and tasked his committee with following up on leads pertaining to the Signal Corps and its components. According to the Army records, McCarthy had shown interest in Monmouth by the first of April, but the VOA and USIS investigations then in progress meant the Signal Corps inquiry wouldn’t get rolling until the summer. Executive hearings of peripheral nature would begin in August, followed by more substantial efforts in September, October, and November, with public hearings starting in December. It would prove to be a long haul and a formidable undertaking: some 200 potential witness interviews, 126 people heard in executive sessions, 39 of these in public hearings.
On the main points at issue, the McCarthy probe would confirm and amplify the findings of Captain Sheehan: Monmouth had long been an information sieve and security debacle in the making, and in many respects continued to be such when the McCarthy investigation started. Among other revelations, the probers found the complex and related installations were chockablock with security suspects, some of the most flagrant nature. The probers also found, as had Sheehan, a long history of laxness in handling official papers.
The McCarthy investigators discovered a number of other things as well. One was that the Communist Party had established a special unit in the vicinity of the research setup, called the Shore Club, which inclu
ded former Monmouth employees among its members and which, according to extensive testimony, had as its object ferreting information out of Monmouth. Another was that numerous security suspects were indeed ensconced among Monmouth’s suppliers, most notably the Federal Telecommunications Lab, prime target of the Sheehan inquest. Yet another was the seemingly laid-back attitude toward these matters in the higher reaches of the Army.7
A poster boy for all these troubles was one Aaron Coleman, who held an important job at Monmouth dealing with radar defenses. Coleman had been a schoolmate of Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell at the College of the City of New York, and in contact with Sobell up through the latter 1940s. He also admitted having attended a Young Communist League meeting with Rosenberg when they were students at City College. In this connection, ex-Communist Nathan Sussman, a CCNY alum, would testify that he, Coleman, Rosenberg, Sobell, Al Sarant, and Joel Barr had all been members of the YCL together. (Coleman would deny this, as he would deny Rosenberg’s testimony at his espionage trial that Rosenberg and Coleman had been in contact at Fort Monmouth.)8
Coleman was also one of those at Monmouth who had a habit of taking documents from the office. In 1946, security agents at the post had become suspicious of his actions and searched his lodgings. There they found more than forty official papers, some of highly confidential nature. Suggestive of security standards then prevailing, he had received for this breach a ten-day suspension. When the McCarthy hearings opened, Coleman was still working at the post, and while this was on a security-restricted basis, he had full access to other workers with clearance and was hobnobbing with them freely.
Indicative of security attitudes at certain higher levels of the Army was the case of Coleman’s roommate, one Jack Okun. Okun had been suspended from Monmouth on loyalty grounds in 1949, which meant someone spotted by the authorities as a loyalty risk had had access to the data Coleman kept in his apartment. Okun had, however, successfully appealed his case and been reinstated by the Loyalty Review Board in the Pentagon, then permitted to resign.9 This was but one of many such security reversals that would draw the notice of McCarthy and his staffers.
Of similar implication was the case of Barry Bernstein, a top science official at Evans Signal, holding a sensitive job with secret clearance. The committee discovered that in 1951 Bernstein had been brought up on security charges, accused of pro-Red leanings and outside activities of kindred spirit that in the view of Monmouth officials made him a security risk. Granted a hearing by the First Army security board, Bernstein had been suspended from his duties. But when he appealed to the Pentagon board, the adverse ruling was overturned and he, too, was reinstated. However, unlike Jack Okun, Bernstein didn’t resign. He was still holding down his job at Monmouth when the McCarthy hearings started.*273 10
A third such in-and-out security case was Samuel Snyder, who had worked for the Signal Corps up through the latter months of 1952. Snyder, too, had gone through the strange revolving door of Pentagon security practice: suspended by the regional board of the First Army, reinstated by the Pentagon board, then permitted to resign. The favorable ruling at the Pentagon level was the more puzzling in view of information developed in the McCarthy hearings. Snyder, it turned out, had previously been in close and continuing contact with Eleanor Nelson, an identified Communist Party functionary (so named, e.g., by Whittaker Chambers). And when asked about his links to Nelson, Snyder refused to answer.
Some of the colloquy on this went as follows:
QUESTION: Did you attend Communist meetings with Eleanor Nelson?
ANSWER: I plead the Fifth Amendment on that…
QUESTION: Did they [the Pentagon review Board] ask about your attendance at Communist meetings?
ANSWER: I decline to answer that for the reasons I gave before….
How this nonjuring witness had been given a clean bill of health by Pentagon reviewers was one of many security mysteries that swirled around Fort Monmouth.11
Similar questions arose regarding the Rosenberg-Sobell connection. As the hearings showed, there were numerous members of this group on the scene at Monmouth in the early 1950s, above and beyond the case of Aaron Coleman. One such was Joseph Levitsky, who had worked for the Signal Corps and thereafter at the Federal Telecommunications Lab handling classified Army projects, and had used Rosenberg as a reference in applying for this position. That background wasn’t too reassuring as to his security status, but would get less so as Levitsky took the Fifth when asked if he and Rosenberg had been Communist Party members together. He would give a series of like responses about possible involvement in spying:
McCARTHY: Were you a member of the Communist conspiracy while you were handling classified material for the government?
LEVITSKY: I decline to answer for the reasons previously given….
COHN: Did you ask persons who were employed at Fort Monmouth, in the Signal Corps, to commit espionage?
LEVITSKY: I decline for the same reasons….
COHN: Since you left the Telecommunications Laboratory, have you asked any persons working at Fort Monmouth to commit espionage?
LEVITSKY: I decline for the same reasons.12
The Federal Telecommunications Lab had been a particular focus of concern for the G-2 security squad, and the gravity of the situation there would be confirmed by the McCarthy inquest. A pivotal figure in the doings of the FTL was labor official Harry Hyman, employed at the lab until 1951, thereafter with the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians, a Communist-dominated union active among the Monmouth workers. Identified face-to-face as a Communist agent by ex-Reds Lester Ackerman and John Saunders, Hyman refused to answer. His exchanges with McCarthy suggested the “union activities” of this labor leader weren’t confined to hours and wages:
McCARTHY: Have you ever discussed the subject of espionage with any members of the Communist Party?
HYMAN: I decline to answer for the reasons previously given….
McCARTHY: Have you ever turned government secrets over to anyone known to you to be an espionage agent?…
HYMAN: I decline to answer on the same grounds.
McCARTHY: Did you make 76 calls to the Federal Telecommunications Laboratory at Lodi, New Jersey between January 24, 1952, and October 21, 1953, for the purpose of getting classified information and for the purpose of then turning that over to an espionage agent or agents?
HYMAN: I decline to answer on the same grounds.13
Still another conspicuous security suspect at FTL was Ruth Levine, who had worked at the lab for a decade, advancing to a high position with top-secret clearance, and was so employed when the McCarthy sessions started. Like Levitsky, she was one of those allegedly linked to Harry Hyman; Saunders and other witnesses in fact testified that she was a member of a Communist cell at this secret installation. Asked if she had been a CP member, attended party meetings, or engaged in spying, Levine too refused to answer:
COHN: During that period of time [while employed at FTL] did you engage in conspiracy to commit espionage with a man named Harry Hyman?
LEVINE: I decline to answer on the grounds of the fourth and fifth amendments.
COHN: Did you participate in underground meetings of the Communist Party with Harry Hyman in his home?
LEVINE: I decline to answer on the grounds of the fourth and fifth amendments.
COHN: On the date that you were granted top-secret clearance, which was March 29, 1950, were you a member of the Communist Party?
LEVINE: I decline to answer on the grounds of the fourth and fifth amendments.*274 14
To one of McCarthy’s suspicious nature, so many refusals to answer questions on such topics suggested there had been espionage going on at the FTL and other parts of the Monmouth complex, and that problems of this sort were very much a present danger. In this, too, his conclusions would track with those of Captain Sheehan (though Sheehan never got a chance to tell his story in public). And there were other aspects of the McCarthy inquest that tended t
o confirm this verdict.
As the Monmouth probe unfolded, it found eerie similarities between the security picture at the post and previous wrangles on such issues. A main disclosure of the Amerasia case had been the vast hemorrhaging of confidential papers that wound up in the offices of this pro-Red publication. Revelations from other security probes suggested that looting of secret government data was a fairly common practice. There is no way of knowing how many U.S. secrets had been funneled to Moscow by Hiss at the State Department, White and the Silvermaster Treasury combine, or moles in the atom project, but the number was by most assessments in the several thousands.
Estimates of possible security damage at Monmouth were at this same stratospheric level. Literally thousands of official papers, it seems, had gone missing from the complex. Captain Sheehan would, for instance, tell McCarthy staffers of a case in which a Monmouth employee had signed out at one time or another for more than 2,700 documents (not a typo). Security officials tried to retrieve these, said Sheehan, but after thorough investigation, two-thirds of this enormous total was still missing. Sheehan added that, when the employee was brought up on security charges, this rather fantastic datum was omitted from the hearing record on orders from the higher regions.
Other estimates of secret data pilfered or copied and supplied to outside parties from the Monmouth complex were often in this same prodigious range. Such was, for instance, the post-McCarthy testimony of a defecting Soviet scientist named Andrivye (not his real name). Andrivye told congressional probers that in the 1940s secret U.S. materials involving radar had turned up in Russia in vast amounts, and that literally “thousands” of these had been identified on their face as having come from Monmouth. He remembered two sources especially, he said, “because I saw them quite often on the documents…One was from Fort Monmouth, and the other was RCA…”*275 15
That such problems stemming from the security stupor of World War II continued in the 1950s was indicated by other information uncovered in the Monmouth sessions. In pursuing the trail to Moscow, McCarthy came up with a further startling revelation: a report from Air Force intelligence concerning an East German defector who said he had seen secret Monmouth data in 1950 while working with the Russians in Europe. His comments were recorded in a nineteen-page Air Force document that, as such items often did, wound up in the possession of McCarthy.
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