Dupes

  Under Democrats and Republicans alike, America's comrades had failed to defeat the forces responsible for fighting the Communists, from Ho Chi Minh City to Peking to Pyongyang to Prague to Havana to Managua to Moscow. Now, their chosen vehicle—Barack Obama—had defeated a representative of those anti-Communist forces, John McCain. They had finally won—and with the legitimate support of Americans voters. Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to secure more than 50 percent of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (and Carter barely cleared 50 percent).

  Americans had finally chosen their guy. America's comrades had lost the Cold War, but they won this time.

  Dr. Quentin Young was one of the old comrades around to enjoy the victory. At eighty-five years old, he was still active as head of a group of physicians urging socialized medicine. Young stepped forward to hail the “remarkable and historic victory of Barack Obama and the mandate for change.” He was quoted at length by the late Herb Aptheker's surviving Political Affairs magazine, which wasted no time running articles on Young and his organization's call upon President-elect Obama “to establish a single, publicly financed [health care] system.” Young noted that Obama, as a state senator in Illinois, had supported a “single-payer universal healthcare system,” and that Obama had remarked, “First we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, we have to take back the House.” Now, said Young, “Tuesday's election has made all of these conditions happen.” Obama just needed to “do the right thing.”42

  Dr. Young was basking in the possibilities. He had helped launch this young man's political career thirteen years earlier in the living room of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Back then, the focus was on a mere seat in the Illinois State Senate. Now, behold, the young man was president of the United States.

  America had come a long way in the forty years since Young had testified before Congress about the radical uprising at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Now, in 2008, thanks to the election of Chicago's Obama, Young felt that socialism—certainly the socialization of America's health-care system—was at his fingertips. Young's eyes must have moistened as he observed the massive Obama victory rally in his own city. Americans had finally voted Quentin Young's way.

  In fact, Americans had voted CPUSA's way: the party could not contain its excitement over Obama's victory. The election of Barack Obama was the chance for a wish list to come true—a potential host of nationalizations, from the auto industry to financial services to health care, beginning with more modest steps like establishing the “public option” in health-care reform, plus massive government “stimulus” packages, more public-sector unionization and control, more redistribution of wealth, more collectivization. “All these—and many other things—are within our reach now!” celebrated Sam Webb in his keynote speech for the New York City banquet of People's Weekly World, the official newspaper of CPUSA, which reprinted the speech under the headline “A New Era Begins.” With the election of Obama, said Webb, “the impossible” had become “possible.”

  Speaking for his comrades at CPUSA, Webb thrilled that under President Obama, “We can dream again.”43

  “Hapless Sheep”?

  While CPUSA rejoiced in Obama's election, some former Soviet Communists, oddly enough, feared that America would experience a monumental shift to the left under the new president. No less than Pravda, the former Bolshevik mouthpiece, ran an article lamenting the death of American capitalism under President Obama. “It must be said,” regretted Pravda’s Stanislav Mishin, “that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheep.” That “final collapse,” said the pages of the chief party organ of the former USSR, “has come with the election of Barack Obama.”44

  A more measured assessment came from a surprising source: Manning Marable, the socialist professor from Columbia University who chairs Mark Rudd's new MDS, the adult successor organization to SDS. In December 2008 Marable wrote an astute analysis of the “four-legged stool” that elected Obama as president. Writing in the Socialist Review, Marable conceded that “a lot of the people working with him [Obama] are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists.” Yet, he cautioned fellow leftists, “Obama is not a Marxist.… He is a progressive liberal.” Marable said Obama was not even a socialist, but rather a Keynesian.45

  Many Americans, both moderates and conservatives, have been disturbed by the leftward course President Obama has set for America in the early years of his presidency. But that leftward shift, no matter how alarming to a broad sector of Americans—and to the former Soviet Union—is, indisputably, less radical than the violent “revolution” that the extremist Left was angling for some forty years ago. The fact that the old radicals have accepted Obama's “progressive” course shows that these comrades have learned the virtue of patience and the necessity of incrementalism—or “creeping socialism,” as Ronald Reagan called it.

  The American far Left seems to have taken to heart the observation attributed to the storied socialist Norman Thomas, who allegedly maintained that Americans would never “knowingly adopt” socialism, but “under the name of liberalism” would adopt every bit of the socialist program until the nation was one day socialist. Americans would arrive at that point “without ever knowing how it happened.”46

  A Century of Dupery

  The radical Left may have adopted a new, incrementalist approach, but that strategy does not diminish the critical role of the dupe. Quite the contrary: the extreme Left can never succeed in America, even incrementally, without nonextremists helping to spread and implement its far-left goals. Most liberals, traditional Democrats, and moderates and independents do not support the end goal of the communist or even socialist Left. But they can be prodded and persuaded to accept—sometimes unwittingly—many or most of the pivotal steps along the way to the socialist program.

  The trillion-dollar question with President Barack Obama is what he personally believes, where he really stands, and how much he is leading, or being led. Could he be manipulated by a narrow hard-left constituency that hopes to move him in a certain, centralized direction? We know his past associations. We know his voting record, which was further to the left than that of anyone else in the U.S. Senate.

  The vexing uncertainty for Americans is that if Obama is as far left as a group like Progressives for Obama, he cannot say so, just as those progressives could not advertise their true objectives during the 2008 election, because doing so would have been Obama's political undoing. Sadly, the American press corps simply did not care to ascertain the crucial answers during the 2008 campaign, and to this day hasn't shown interest in doing so. As we have seen, on the rare occasions when mainstream media outlets did bring up Obama's radical associations, it was usually to mock or attack the so-called McCarthyite fanatics who had the nerve to ask the uncomfortable questions.

  In the end, the actions of such liberals have the effect—again unwittingly—of continuing to cover for the goals of the extreme Left. Yet again, the soft Left is helping to conceal the hard Left, whether it realizes it or not. This is a familiar pattern, one we have witnessed in this country for close to a century. Whatever the reason for this protection—this time it is to shield Barack Obama's presidency—the result is the same: the Communists toiling behind the scenes never need to apologize, and often escape the exposure they merit.

  It is always the anti-Communists whom the liberals despise. The effect is that the bad guys on the Communist Left—who, again, were as bad to liberals as to conservatives—repeatedly get a pass, even long after they have departed this world. Even in death, many of them remain protected, their dirty work covered up—by a liberal press, by a liberal academia, by a liberal Hollywood, or by some other liberal group that refuses to acknowledge the obvious lessons of Cold War history.

  The most mordant irony for the liberals who lend this cover is
that while they laugh at the anti-Communists, they seem to have no idea that the loudest howls have always emanated from the Communists who take them as dupes: gullible fools to be used to advance the Communist cause. It is a time-honored tradition, and many genuine liberals have failed liberalism by filling the role of dupe again and again. It is always important to know who your friends are and who they are not.

  If liberals take just one message from this book, I hope it will be this: the Communists were never your friends. Until that lesson is learned, many well-intentioned liberals will continue to be used. And the long underappreciated role of the dupe will remain much more than a mere sideshow in history.

  Postscript

  BOGART AT THE WORKERS SCHOOL?

  This book was born as a response to the massive volume of documents recently declassified from archives in Moscow, throughout the former Communist bloc countries, and within the United States. To take only one notable example from among the treasure trove of information newly available to researchers, the Library of Congress's files from the Comintern Archives on CPUSA proved an essential source for this project. These archives—which represent only a portion of the full collection in Moscow—contain hundreds of reels of microfiche. Each reel I consulted took me a full day to read through. That is to say nothing of the lengthier rabbit trails of investigation to which these files led. Unexpected findings within the Library of Congress files took me to other archives, from FBI files to archives housed at New York University's Tamiment Library and beyond.

  One such surprise came as I was reviewing Reel 273, Delo 3512 of the Comintern Archives on CPUSA. While reviewing this material on microfiche, I came across an eye-opening series of 1934 documents apparently missed or dismissed by others. I, too, initially chose to bypass these documents, and revisited them only later as one particular name on one particular page haunted me: “Bogart.”

  This series of documents related to CPUSA's National Training School, more commonly known as the Workers School. These schools operated in a few large cities, such as Chicago—where the Communist-turned-conservative-intellectual Frank Meyer had directed a Workers School from 1938 to 1941—and New York City.1 The New York operation was the most active.

  As the lead sentence of the New York school's mission statement explained, the CPUSA Central Committee ran the Workers School to ensure that “the Party carry on its work for the winning of the majority of the American working class, for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Proletarian Dictatorship in the U.S.A.” The school endeavored to become “a permanent institution for training cadres for our Party.”

  Clearly, this was no small thing. The Workers School's letterhead, which listed the address as 35 East Twelfth Street—CPUSA's headquarters—boasted the very top names in the party: William Z. Foster, Max Bedacht, and Abe Markoff, among others. Earl Browder was invited to speak at the school. (See page 483.)

  The curriculum underscored the seriousness of the school's training. It required an intense 430 hours of preparation and featured courses ranging from “Study of the Communist Manifesto” to “Soviet Economy” to “War and Revolution” to “Strategy and Tactics.” One attendee, who testified before Congress in July 1953, said that at the Workers School, which he described as notably secretive, he was “trained to become a professional revolutionist.”2

  Reel 273, Delo 3512 in the Comintern Archives includes materials on the New York Workers School session that ran from January 9 to March 15, 1934. The summary report for the ten-week session stated that it was attended by thirty-six students, “90% of [whom] were native born, five of which were women and seven Negro comrades.” The students hailed from districts all over the country, but the vast majority lived in New York.

  Among those New Yorkers was someone called “Bogart.”

  Even in these internal documents, which were not to be published or distributed, the Workers School carefully concealed the identity of those who wanted to be concealed, or those deemed wise to conceal. Only about one-third of the names were given in full. Bogart's full name was concealed.

  The name appeared twice in the documents: on the district page and on an evaluation page. On the district page it appeared as “Bogart (E) Westinghouse (college) Sec. Org.” (See page 484.)

  Importantly, the “(E)” is not an initial for a first name. This we know because these parenthetical letters do not match the first names of the students when the full names appear in the evaluation section.

  The words “Westinghouse (college)” come in the space where each comrade's occupation is shown. (Other attendees included a metal worker, a miner, and a waitress.) This listing, then, implies that Bogart worked in some capacity at the Westinghouse company and also attended college. It is possible that “college” was a general category for Workers School students who were in and out of college. In fact, the intensity of the Workers School surely would have forced a currently enrolled college student to withdraw from the winter/spring semester.

  Finally, the abbreviation “Sec. Org.” means a section organizer for CPUSA.

  The only additional information on Bogart in these documents—which exist in microfiche at the Library of Congress's Comintern Archives and in original hard copy at Tamiment Library in New York (both of which I've examined)—is the evaluation section, titled “Characteristics of comrades N.T.S.” There, Bogart is described as “persistent,” “hard working,” and adhering to the “Party line.”

  That is all the Workers School records offer on this student.

  This, of course, begs the question: who was “Bogart”?

  Other Bogarts

  First let's consider the evidence that could perhaps disqualify Humphrey Bogart as the Bogart at the Workers School.

  I searched the New York City residence directory for 1933–34, as well as the New York City telephone directory for that same period. The residence directory is much longer, since many or even most residents did not have a telephone. “Bogart” was a fairly common name among New York City residents; the smaller phone directory lists thirty Bogarts, and the residence directory lists nearly a hundred. That is a lot of Bogarts, throwing wide open (it would seem) the possibilities for the Bogart at the Workers School.

  This is the best evidence against pinpointing Humphrey Bogart as the prime suspect. Further, I found a “J. Bogart” who appeared in the Communist Daily Worker the same year (1934) as the Bogart at the Communist Workers School, and who was, according to that Daily Worker listing, from New York City. On page 6 of the November 3, 1934, edition of the Daily Worker, J. Bogart is listed as a financial contributor to the Communist newspaper (making a very small donation, as in cents, not dollars). This Bogart also seems to be identified as a Communist Party member.3 Specifically, the person is shown as a member of “District 2 (New York City),” which is described as one of twenty-six districts from around the country.4

  The 1933–34 New York City residence directory lists six Bogarts with the first initial “J”: a Jacob Bogart, a Jennie, three Johns, and a Joseph. The shorter New York City telephone directory for that period lists only one “J.” Bogart: John Bogart, a lawyer who lived at 1450 Broadway.

  Who was this John Bogart? It might be the same John Bogart whose obituary ran in the New York Times on October 12, 1992. That Bogart, who lived in Manhattan until his final days, was, as the Times described him, a “longtime labor relations executive at New York City newspapers,” including at the Times. The obituary noted that he “began his career in 1934 at The New York Herald Tribune, where he was a reporter and editor and later promoted into management.”5 In other words, John Bogart began his career as a young reporter (he turned twenty-two in 1934) the same year that “J. Bogart” enrolled in the New York Workers School.

  More information based on media archives reveals the full name of this John Bogart to be John Abendroth Bogart. In April 1937 John Abendroth Bogart married Marjorie Goodell.6 After Marjorie's death in 1974, he married again, in October 1976.7 His new
wife, Jacqueline Branaman, a widow, was a 1947 graduate of Barnard, sister college to Columbia University, and in 1950–51 she served in Moscow as the secretary to the U.S. ambassador. She died in January 2008.8

  This John Bogart might, by a reasonable guess, be the same “J. Bogart” in the Daily Worker from November 3, 1934, although we cannot say for certain based on the information available.

  How About Humphrey Bogart?

  All of that is, to some degree, disconfirming evidence against claims that the Bogart at the Workers School was Humphrey Bogart.

  But can a case be made that the future Hollywood icon was the Bogart at the Workers School? Where was Humphrey Bogart in this period, and what was he doing?

  We know for certain that Bogart lived in New York City in early 1934, the time of the Workers School session. This is clear from many biographical accounts of Bogart's life, as well as from rare eyewitnesses who remain among the living.9 It turns out that the actor was struggling terribly at this point in his life, so much so that he and his wife, Mary, had moved in with his father, Dr. Belmont Bogart, who lived at 25 Prospect Place.