Marc Aronson
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“subversive activities in the United States” and “any matters referred to it by the Department of State”: Theoharis and Cox, 150–151; Gentry, 207; Powers, Secrecy and Power, 229.
The story of FDR’s request and Hoover’s response, as well as the matter of Hoover’s filing system, is covered in every recent biography.
“be handled quite confidentially . . . aware of this request”: quoted in Theoharis, Abuse of Power, 4. The result of a lifetime’s work reading and analyzing Hoover-era files from the FBI, this book by a master historian is necessary reading for any teacher who wants deeper understanding of the story I tell in this book.
“broad enough to cover any expansion” and “intelligence and counter-espionage work”: quoted in Theoharis and Cox, 176.
The story of Hoover’s efforts to please FDR by gathering information about Lindbergh and the anti-interventionists was news to me and made fascinating reading. It is summarized in Jeffreys-Jones, 126–127, and forms the heart of Douglas M. Charles’s J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists.
the FBI’s dance around the logbook rules on wiretapping: Charles, 50–51.
“appreciation” and “for the many interesting . . . have made to me”: ibid., 59.
“on every member of Congress . . . the Senate”: quoted in Theoharis and Cox, 308.
“black-bag job”: Gentry, 283. For a summary of illegal FBI interception activities, see Gentry, 281–283.
Do Not File: Charles, 52.
Hoover and the America First Committee: ibid., 62.
effects of his mother’s death on Hoover: Powers, Secrecy and Power, 259–260.
“Hoover’s capacity to feel deeply for other human beings”: Purvis, 61.
For a wonderful essay that explores the psychology of the “fellow travelers” in a Communist regime, see Tony Judt, “Captive Minds,” New York Review of Books, September 30, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/sep/30/captive-minds/.
Part Four: The Fighting War
Information on the forced famine in the Ukraine and the Battle of Stalingrad is easily available online. Scholars still debate whether Stalin’s aim was the deliberate mass murder of Ukrainians or whether his main goal was to industrialize, with the famine deaths a price he did not mind paying. Was he totally heartless or actually genocidal? Similarly, there are debates over whether the Holocaust was a unique case because Hitler’s aim was the eradication of one ethnic group, while Stalin was inflicting a brutal economic policy aimed at eliminating a class of relatively wealthy farmers. These are powerful and troubling questions motivated students can explore. I found this short essay particularly compelling: Timothy Snyder, “Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?” New York Review of Books, March 10, 2011, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/.
The story of Stalin’s crimes has only recently begun to be told in books for younger readers. Two 2011 novels, Ruta Sepetys’s Between Shades of Gray (New York: Philomel, 2011) and Eugene Yelchin’s Breaking Stalin’s Nose (New York: Holt, 2011), began to correct this absence. Both belong in any classroom that deals with twentieth-century history.
Chapter Ten: Great Injustice
“enemies of the working class” and “grind them down . . . without flagging”: quoted in Tzouliadis, 81.
“We shall annihilate . . . families and relatives”: ibid., 94.
Young Communists competed to expose enemies of the state: ibid., 82–83.
the fate of the Abolin family: ibid., 101.
Paul Robeson’s repertoire: The Odyssey of Paul Robeson, Omega Classics (OCD 3007), coproduced by Paul Robeson Jr., contains all these songs and more and is my personal favorite.
“We all knew . . . said a word” and “Sometimes great injustices . . . just cause”: quoted in Tzouliadis, 98.
Chapter Eleven: Hoover’s War
The Nazi sub story as Hoover wanted it told can be found in Whitehead, 202–203. For a telling of the events by the FBI today, see “George John Dasch and the Nazi Saboteurs,” at the FBI website, http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/nazi-saboteurs. Gentry, 288–289, has Dasch’s version.
“How old are you? . . . a good time”: quoted in Whitehead, 202.
“in their hearts . . . oozing away”: ibid., 203.
“Yesterday Napoleon called” and “seized the suitcase . . . on the desk”: quoted in Gentry, 289.
“FBI Captures . . . Landed by Subs”: ibid., 291.
“German, Italian, and Communist sympathies”: quoted in Powers, Broken, 173.
“I thought the army was getting a bit hysterical” and “one efficient method . . . consideration”: quoted in Powers, Secrecy and Power, 249.
“We must clean up democracy . . . from abroad”: ibid., 258.
“the Communist virus”: ibid., 261.
Part Five: The War of Shadows
Chapter Twelve: The Hope of the World
code-named Enormous: Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, 34. Alert readers will notice that Alexander Vassiliev is also the coauthor of Allen Weinstein’s The Haunted Wood. Vassiliev was a former KBG agent who brought out evidence of Soviet spying after the fall of Communism. Years later, he claimed that he had filled a notebook with more information but that the notebook had not been available to him when he worked on the first book.
Many aspects of this story raise concerns: Did he really keep the notebook back in the Soviet Union? We cannot check it against the now once again largely closed Russian files. How did he manage to get it out? Were his notes, if real, accurate? Even if the notes were real and accurate, since the Soviet files are closed, we have no way to check his information against other sources. We know from experience that secret agencies like the KGB and the FBI used deception even within their own internal filing systems.
So this is a book about which many reasonable questions may be asked. And yet, taken together with the Venona decryptions and the general body of evidence, the picture Vassiliev paints of more extensive Soviet spying, actively aided by the American Communist Party, is plausible. Interested researchers should consult this book but look to other sources, as well as online reviews and discussions, to evaluate what they find in it.
“the crime of the century,” quoted in Powers, Secrecy and Power, 303.
“how she felt . . . convictions go” and “replied without hesitation . . . deepest admiration”: quoted in Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, 105.
“proceed against other individuals” and “Proceedings against his wife . . . this matter”: quoted in Powers, Secrecy and Power, 303–304.
“worse than murder” and “Millions more . . . your treason”: ibid., 302.
“a tremendous crowd . . . screamed at us” and “silently faced . . . shrieked with joy”: quoted in Kaplan and Shapiro, 86.
the FBI in the media and popular culture: Powers, Secrecy and Power, 255.
Chapter Thirteen: Tailgunner Joe
“like a mongrel dog . . . bite your leg off”: Senator Paul Douglas quoted in Oshinsky, 15.
“The Democratic Christian world” and “The reason why we find . . . we can give”: quoted in Oshinsky, 108. Oshinsky’s book is the best serious biography of McCarthy by an established historian; anyone researching the senator should be aware of it as a reference. James Cross Giblin has made McCarthy’s story more accessible for young readers in his The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy (New York: Clarion, 2009). I was aware that he was working on that book as I began to write this one; I hope readers find our two quite different books a useful pair.
“as the only man who . . . inside one as well”: ibid., 7.
a list of 205 people: ibid., 109.
“The FBI kept Joe McCarthy . . . all we had”: quoted in Theoharis and Cox, 283, footnote 2.
the anti-homosexual strand in the period of the Red Scare: Johnson. This book is an important academic study that adds an otherwise missing dimension to our understanding of the period.
Ninety-one of
these employees lost their jobs: ibid., 17.
A national survey . . . at least one homosexual experience: “Prevalence of Homosexuality: Brief Summary of U.S. Studies,” The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction website, http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/resources/bib-homoprev.html.
“I have instructed . . . to defend himself”: quoted in Caute, 106. This book was recommended to me by a historian who recalled that it had given him a vivid sense of the Age of Fear McCarthy did so much to create. It is an excellent resource for the stories of lives harmed by the anti-Communist purges. The book is written to expose the damage caused by McCarthy and others, and you can feel the author’s anger. You might pair it with a book like Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev’s Spies, which focuses on the actual Soviet plots.
“fraud”: quoted in Oshinsky, 175.
“You will find out who . . . to do about it?”: ibid., 171.
Money secretly contributed by Texas oilmen covered the costs of distributing the doctored photo far and wide: Burrough, 223, footnote 1.
“You’re a real SOB. . . . dirty work”: Senator John Bricker quoted in Oshinsky, 132.
“dig out and destroy” and “It was a dirty, foul . . . next to them in church”: quoted in Caute, 48.
“Some people have told me . . . like gentlemen”: quoted in Oshinsky, 394–395.
“The American people are sick and tired . . . used to be in America” and “The right to criticize . . . thought control would have set in”: Margaret Chase, “Declaration of Conscience,” Margaret Chase Library website, Northwood University, http://www.mcslibrary.org/program/library/declaration.htm.
The Venona Project is discussed in any adult or academic book on Communism and/or anti-Communism in this period published since the mid-1990s. To see the actual coded messages and decryptions and learn more about the project, see “Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939–1957,” Central Intelligence Agency website, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939–1957/venona.htm. Scholars who have their doubts about the value of the Venona material point out that a person’s being named by a Soviet spy does not necessarily mean that that person actually helped the Communists.
“auxiliary service to Soviet intelligence”: Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, 548.
“perhaps the most significant intelligence loss in U.S. history”: quoted in Weiner, 158. This is a lengthy, detailed, but compelling book that any teacher or student interested in the CIA and spycraft must at least consult.
“There are today . . . death for society”: quoted in Theoharis and Cox, 257.
Part Six: The Age of Fear
Chapter Fourteen: Loyalty
“best and happiest years”: Attorney General William Rogers quoted in Powers, Secrecy and Power, 313.
Murchison’s covering of the almost $20,000 bill: Burrough, 227.
the ice-cream incident: Ungar, 272.
“is a former Marine . . . he so views me,” “attack subversives,” and “But sometimes a knock is a boost”: quoted in Gentry, 431.
“benign” and “barbaric”: quoted in Fast, 224. A friend told me that his father kept books on Marx covered with brown paper in this period. In fact if you ask anyone who lived in a left-leaning family at this time, they have similar stories. A sense of the fearfulness of the time can also be gained from Caute and from Kaplan and Shapiro.
By 1954, 52 percent of Americans . . . lose their citizenship: Caute, 215.
“you maintained in your library . . Marxism”: quoted in Caute, 280.
“handshake had to be firm . . . crucial handclasp,” “immaculate appearance,” and “complete control”: Felt and O’Connor, 1–2. This memoir was published at the end of Felt’s life for reasons that alert readers may have already picked up and others will learn at the end of this book. It gives a personal insider’s view of Hoover’s FBI by an agent who was loyal to the director but even more so to his sense of honor in service. For more on Hoover’s rules — official and unofficial — see Theoharis and Cox, 104.
“their clothing style . . . clumsy manners”: quoted in Weinstein and Vassiliev, 276.
“he was always talking about world peace” and “saw a map of Russia”: quoted in Caute, 215.
“he would never wear . . . not a capitalist”: ibid., 278. Caute’s book is a great source for examples of how the loyalty system turned fear, prejudice, gossip, and sometimes envy or greed into accusation.
But she chose to join her parents, who were teaching at a college in America: The college referred to is Black Mountain College, which made a home for many European artists escaping from the Nazis and was not at all sympathetic to McCarthyism. It no longer exists, but any student interested in researching a troubled yet fascinating school where European modern art met American idealism should look it up.
“They were afraid. Everyone was afraid” and “There were agents . . . Terrible”: quoted in Kaplan and Shapiro, 131.
“J. Edgar Hoover had sent . . . instructions of J. Edgar Hoover”: quoted in Fast, 288.
“Of course the fact that . . . doesn’t it?”: quoted in Caute, 168.
“My impression was . . . differed on that”: ibid., 278.
How to Spot a Communist: ibid., 296. The guide was withdrawn a week after it was published, but it clearly reflected the beliefs and prejudices that shaped decisions within the army.
“security risk”: ibid., 273. See also Johnson.
Of the 654 people who were forced to leave . . . to be homosexual: Timothy Naftali, “Alger Hiss and the Chambers’ Secrets,” paper given at NYU Center for the United States and the Cold War, Alger Hiss and History Conference, April 5, 2007.
“There can be no proof . . . susceptible to proof”: R. W. Scott McLeod, “American Political Democracy and the Problem of Personnel Security,” Department of State Bulletin, vol. 33, no. 849 (October 3, 1955), 572, Internet Archives website, http://www.archive.org/stream/departmentofstate3355unit/departmentofstate3355unit_djvu.txt.
The film Advise and Consent is discussed in Johnson, 135.
They would stage a seemingly compromising encounter: ibid., 111.
“much as the FBI . . . destroying itself”: Fast, 330.
Conservatives claimed that both the United States government and United Nations were filled with unmanly pencil pushers: Johnson, 90–97.
“his look of supreme . . . frightening”: Patricia Bosworth’s mother quoted in Bosworth, 240. This book provides an insightful woman’s view of Hoover.
“Don’t present me with the choice . . . to be an informer” and “It seems to me . . . this kind of choice”: “HUAC Hearings on Communist Infiltration of the Motion-Picture Industry, 1951–1952,” Digital History website, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/huac_infiltration2.cfm.
Parks’s powerful statement can be found in many histories of this period. Anyone interested in film history who wants to know more about the blacklist and its influence on Hollywood might begin by consulting Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner’s Blacklisted: The Film Lover’s Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and then watching some of the movies it discusses.
“I remember a sense of silence . . . hours and hours”: quoted in Caute, 513.
“a degradation ceremony”: Kazan, 447.
“the Party fellows get away with . . . contrary convictions”: ibid., 457.
“I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him”: quoted in Walter Goodman, 413.
“I was experiencing a bitterness . . . to humiliate himself?”: Miller, 334. For more about the Kazan-Miller story and how it relates to The Crucible, see the epilogue to my book Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials.
Chapter Fifteen: No Decency
“situation of fear” and the 10–1 ratio of calls: Oshinsky, 399, and Morgan, 477.
“Until this moment, Senator . . . your
recklessness”: quoted in Oshinsky, 462.
“Let us not assassinate . . . no sense of decency?”: ibid., 463. The 1964 documentary Point of Order (also issued as a book) is well worth seeing to get the full flavor of this intense moment.
“They know exactly where to throw . . . to commit murder”: ibid., 466.
In January 1954, half of Americans polled . . . 45 percent disliked him: ibid., 464.
“hate, fear, and suspicion” and “a handful of prodigiously wealthy men”: quoted in Burrough, 233.
Part Seven: The Land of Lies
Hoover and the Kennedy assassination: Powers, Secrecy and Power, 383–390.
A recent biography of Malcolm X: Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011).
the FBI settlement in the Hampton case: O’Reilly, 315.
Chapter Sixteen: The Specter
“Boy, come here”: quoted in Powers, Secrecy and Power, 411.
“colored parents are not . . . cleanliness of their children”: ibid., 330.
“the specter of racial intermarriage”: ibid., 329.
“the latest form of the eternal rebellion against authority”: ibid., 343.
Hoover had kept up and modified his secret list: Theoharis and Cox, 172; Powers, Secrecy and Power, 337–338; and Tim Weiner, “Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950,” New York Times, December 23, 2007.
COINTELPRO is discussed in all recent books on Hoover, the FBI, civil rights, and the confrontations of the 1960s, including Powers, Secrecy and Power; Powers, Broken; Gentry; and Theoharis and Cox.
“twenty-thousand words of horror and infamy” and “exploded with rage”: Fast, 350.
“arrogant whipper-snapper . . . money and power”: Roy Cohn describing Hoover’s view of RFK, quoted in Schlesinger, 112. I talk about this same period and confrontation from Bobby Kennedy’s point of view in my Up Close: Robert F. Kennedy. My understanding of Hoover has deepened and somewhat changed since I wrote that book, but the basic story remains the same.