Dupes

  The Daily Worker especially liked Bogart's (and Lawson's) Action in the North Atlantic, which the newspaper called “magnificent.” But as another reviewer of the film, Bernard Dick, pointed out, Lawson had borrowed the structural outline for the movie, and many of the action scenes, from the 1925 Bolshevik propaganda film The Battleship Potemkin. Dick described Action in the North Atlantic as “Soviet propaganda at its most artful.”40

  Of course, that was because its writer, Lawson, was a master of Soviet propaganda, dedicated to Stalin. Bogart, in that sense, had been used. This wouldn't be the last time that Bogart was Lawson's dupe; a much more infamous episode would follow in October 1947, with the Committee for the First Amendment.

  The other Lawson-penned film that the Daily Worker recommended in its gushing profile of Bogart was Sahara. Here, too, Bernard Dick pointed out what the Daily Worker failed to inform readers: that Lawson borrowed from the Russian film The Thirteen, cobbling together “dialectic rendered as narrative.”41

  Now there was a movie that a Marxist-Leninist could enjoy.

  In sum, the Daily Worker hailed Humphrey Bogart for offering America a real movie “hero,” unlike previous “phonies” like Rudolph Valentino. Reporter David Platt finished his puff piece with this summation: “It is actors like Humphrey Bogart, in thoughtful films like Action in the North Atlantic and Sahara, who catch the public eye. After years of idolizing matinee idols with nothing more to offer than an interesting profile, it is gratifying to see the nation's filmgoers at last take to a movie hero, who has something important to say. It is a sign of America's awakening.”

  There he was: Humphrey Bogart, Daily Worker “hero,” “awakening” America with “something important to say.”

  Bogart's Moment of Truth

  So what does all of this ultimately mean about Humphrey Bogart's politics?

  First and foremost, I cannot report that Bogart was a supporter (or member) of the Communist Party or even a small “c” communist. Yet it would have been scholarly negligence not to investigate the issue and consider the question after encountering the winter 1934 Workers School records in the Comintern Archives on CPUSA.

  If Bogart had been a Communist or Communist sympathizer, it would shed entirely new light on his behavior in October 1947 as a member of the Committee for the First Amendment, particularly his public expressions of rage over being duped. It would also raise questions about his denial in 1940. That said, it would not necessarily mean that Bogart was lying to America when he said, in 1947, “I am not a Communist.” By that point in time, it seems safe to assume that he was not.

  Perhaps Bogart became involved in the Communist movement, and considered joining (or actually did join) the Communist Party, during the depths of the Great Depression, when he hit rock bottom—with his father bankrupt and dying, and his own career, marriage, and finances foundering. But even if that were the case, he clearly seems to have changed his politics over time, moving away from the far Left as he developed a fuller understanding of Communism. Such a political sojourn was not uncommon, as we have seen. It was a path traversed by many characters in this book, from William Bullitt and Paul Douglas to fellow actor Ronald Reagan.42

  If Humphrey Bogart had been an eager pupil at the Workers School in New York City in January 1934, he was no longer on the extreme Left by the late 1940s when he declared, “I detest Communism.” Like so many others, Bogart was on a journey in search of truth, which is a path that—for every human being—leads a world away from the Communist Party.

  Appendix A

  TED KENNEDY'S SECRET OVERTURE TO THE SOVIET UNION

  One former Soviet propaganda minister tasked with influencing Western visitors called Senator Ted Kennedy a “useful idiot”—indeed, an example of “monumental idiocy.” And the highly sensitive KGB document shown on the following pages (together with English translation) indicates just how useful Senator Kennedy could be to the Soviets in their campaign against Ronald Reagan and the United States.

  This May 14, 1983, memorandum, which the head of the KGB sent with “Special Importance” to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, discloses Kennedy's “confidential” offer to work together with the Kremlin to overcome President Reagan's “belligerence.”

  In other words, the Massachusetts senator—probably the leading Democratic politician in America at the time—proposed to work secretly with the Soviet dictator to undercut the president of the United States. Had Americans known of Kennedy's overture to the Soviets at the time, it would have been a scandal.

  Appendix B

  FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS'S FBI FILE

  Those who defend Frank Marshall Davis, mentor to a young Barack Obama in Hawaii, against charges of Communist sympathies typically do not take account of the documentary record. That record includes his regular column for the Communist newspaper the Honolulu Record, in which Davis unfailingly echoed the Moscow party line (see Chapter 13). It also includes Davis's FBI file, which runs more than six hundred pages and covers some nineteen years.

  Selections from that FBI file shown on the pages that follow indicate that Davis had Communist Party affiliations going back to 1931 and even joined the party.

  NOTES

  Introduction: The Overlooked Role of the Dupe

  1. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition, 1989) defines a dupe as a “deluded person,” one “who allows himself to be deceived or deluded; one who is misled by false representations or notions; a victim of deception.” Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary (retrieved January 2010) defines a dupe as “one that is easily deceived or cheated.”

  2. In his Farewell Address (September 19, 1796), Washington stated, “Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.” See W. B. Allen, ed., George Washington: A Collection (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1988), 524. Another example from the period was provided by Adam Smith, a Scottish “pen pal,” so to speak, of some of the founders (especially Benjamin Franklin); in his classic work The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith used the phrase “dupes of their own sophistry.” See Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, introduction by E. G. West (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969), 79.

  3. There remains dispute over whether Lenin actually used the famous phrase “useful idiots,” though he often employed language and expressions very similar—as will be seen later in this chapter. A number of sources challenge the authenticity of the “useful idiots” quotation. One of the better summaries can be found in William Safire, “On Language: Useful Idiots of the West,” New York Times, April 12, 1987. See also Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 76–77.

  4. A search for previous books on the subject of “dupes” yielded almost nothing. A February 2009 search of Amazon.com, Google Books, and Library of Congress for any books with the title or subject “Dupes” produced only two titles: one, a foreign book titled Dupes, was published in 1901 and obviously is unrelated to the focus here; another, titled 9 Spies, Traitors, and Dupes, was published in 1941, also pre–Cold War, and dealt with France. Later, I came across a 1952 book by Ralph de Toledano, titled Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats, which I reference later in this book.

  5. For any doubters, I can show this through email documentation. Of course, anyone familiar with the long, arduous process of writing a book of this length will know that this project clearly began long before the January 2009 inauguration of Obama. I turned in my initial draft manuscript to the publisher in November 2009.

  6. This is certainly the case for the cast of characters from the 1960s, such as Bill Ayers and Tom Hayden. Of course, others, like Frank Marshall Davis, got far more attention than I otherwise would have given them because of their clear relevance both to the theme of the book and to the life of Obama, the latter of which I lea
rned as the project evolved.

  7. Even when those current political figures are not themselves Marxists, or are no longer radicals, their influence during the Vietnam era is undeniable, was sometimes lasting, and, at the very least, is historically notable. They provide a contemporary link to some of the shadowy figures of the Cold War past. Each and every one of them is a different case, and I certainly do not want to paint them with a broad brush, as close study reveals major differences. One case not addressed in this book is that of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. As a young woman she worked with several Marxists at a law firm in San Francisco and closely studied the writings of non-Marxist radicals like Saul Alinsky, who offered the young Hillary a job, and who was the subject of Hillary's thesis as a college student at Wellesley. Secretary of State Clinton is precisely the kind of figure I'm referring to in the text. On these associations in Clinton's early life, see Paul Kengor, God and Hillary Clinton (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 18–19, 37–47.

  8. For more on this, see the Author's Note for a comment on motivations.

  9. Mona Charen, Useful Idiots (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2003). See the acknowledgments for a note on Mona Charen.

  10. Using the words “liberal” and “progressive” synonymously is problematic, though they usually refer to the same thing—certainly by those applying the terms. The distinctions have been blurred further with the recent reemergence of the word “progressive,” especially since the election of President Obama. Suddenly, liberals who have always called themselves “liberals” are now calling themselves “progressives,” and, likewise, their opponents are calling them such. Again, it is a complex matter. In this book, I tend to use the two words synonymously, fully cognizant of the risks.

  11. James Burnham, Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (New York: John Day Co., 1964), 208, 216.

  12. See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31: April–December 1920 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 291.

  13. See, among others, Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Courtois et al. put the figure at sixty-five million. The latest figure of more than seventy million deaths is recorded in Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (New York: Knopf, 2005).

  14. This is evident, for instance, in existing transcripts of meeting notes from CPUSA's central coordinating commission—basically, the personnel office—which reviewed applications for admission and readmission into the party. One might think that this desperate, ever-shrinking political party would take anyone willing to join. Not at all. I've read the minutes of these meeting notes, which are housed in the Comintern Archives on CPUSA at the Library of Congress. They are almost comical in their childish nastiness. A run-of-the-mill meeting would see every single application denied, with the final action in each case being to “expose” the applicant as, say, a “liar” or a “stool pigeon” in the next edition of the Daily Worker. These were generally not nice people. And they did not look nicely on liberals.

  15. I do not discuss Trilling in this book, but he is an excellent case in point. For an insightful analysis, see Michael Kimmage, The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

  16. Here I'm talking about political resemblance relating to the Soviet/Communist threat; obviously there are similarities on a host of other issues.

  17. These words are taken from the Public Presidential Papers of Kennedy, specifically the volumes for the years 1961 (page 341) and 1962 (page 723n). See also Martin Walker, The Cold War and the Making of the Modern World (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), 132; and Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 231n.

  18. “The Confusion of the West: An Analysis of Certain Aspects of Communist Political Warfare,” Remarks of Senator Thomas J. Dodd at the Conference on Soviet Political Warfare, Paris, France, December 1, 1960 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1961).

  19. M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (New York: Crown Forum, 2007), 9.

  20. This applies to the modern incarnation of The New Republic, given that TNR in the 1920s, for instance, was a disastrous example of the theme of this book.

  21. Harvard University Press, for example, published the seminal work The Black Book of Communism.

  22. See John J. Miller, “The Annals of Jonathan Brent,” National Review, May 22, 2006, 43–45.

  23. Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, 3–4.

  24. Malia in Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, xvii–xviii.

  25. Ibid., x.

  26. Ibid., x.

  27. The Black Book estimated 20 million deaths in the USSR, which is one of the lowest usually cited. Most accounts exceed 33 million, some twice that. Lee Edwards, citing the epic work on “democide” by political scientist R. J. Rummel, who draws on the research and accounts of the likes of Robert Conquest and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, estimates that Soviet governments were responsible for the death of 61.9 million of their own from 1917 to 1987. See, among others, Lee Edwards, ed., The Collapse of Communism (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1999), xiii. Moreover, the North Korea numbers in the Black Book total do not include the 2 to 3 million who died in the famine from 1995 to 1999, directly resulting from Communist policies. See the figures cited in Barbara Crossette, “Korean Famine Toll: More Than 2 Million,” New York Times, August 20, 1999.

  28. Yakovlev recorded the gruesome details in his work A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the period. Yakovlev's numbers are among the highest yet, but they come from a true authority who should know.

  29. The latest figures of more than 70 million deaths under Mao are recorded in Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (New York: Knopf, 2005).

  30. Crossette, “Korean Famine Toll: More Than 2 Million.”

  31. Aside from World War II deaths attributed to Hitler, most estimates are that he killed 6 to 10 million Jews, Slavs, gypsies, and various others he dubbed “misfits.”

  32. Among the worst of these, Pol Pot killed upwards of 2 to 3 million out of a Cambodian population of 5 to 7 million. In terms of percentage of population, Pot occupies the winner's circle as mankind's champion executioner. His Khmer Rouge achieved this over a mere four years. The manpower alone responsible for this enterprise is almost inconceivable. And yet Pot's yearly yield in the Killing Fields—500,000 to 750,000 per year—somehow manages to be lower than that of Communism as a whole.

  33. Even if one takes the highest estimates for the Spanish Inquisition (1481–1545)—figures that, according to the latest scholarship, are far too high—the total of 31,912 deaths means that fewer people were killed in sixty-four years than were felled in a single year under Lenin, and probably fewer than were killed weekly in Stalin's Great Purge of 1934–38. The Spanish Inquisition total factors to roughly 499 killed per year or about 42 per month—a fraction of Communism's 1.4 million yearly or 119,000 monthly during its massacre. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn cites a lower figure of 10 per month for the Inquisition. The source for 42 per month comes from the early authoritative work on the subject: J. A. Llorente, A Critical History of the Inquisition of Spain (1823), 575–83. As noted, the Llorente figures are now judged way too high. Solzhenitsyn's figures are published in his Alexander Solzhenitsyn Speaks to the West (London: Bodley Head, 1978), 17.

  34. See Kennan's classic “X” article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, July 1947.

  35. An April 2008 Gallup poll found President George W. Bush with the highest disapproval ratings in the history of Gallup's presidential polling. On this, see Paul Kengor, “George ‘Truman’ Bush,” May 9, 2008, posted at the website of the Center
for Vision & Values, www.visandvals.org.

  Chapter 1: World Revolution, the Comintern, and CPUSA

  1. Among other editions, see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Penguin, Signet Classics, 1998), 91. See also Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panne in Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism, 271–75.

  2. Quoted in Barry Lee Woolley, Adherents of Permanent Revolution: A History of the Fourth (Trotskyist) International (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999), 12–13.

  3. Richard Pipes, Communism: A History (New York: A Modern Library Chronicles Book, 2001), 49.