The Reality of Red Subversion
The Reality of Red Subversion
The Recent Confirmation of Soviet Espionage in America
STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI • SEPTEMBER 1, 2003
During the 1990s, the release of the Venona documents (see p. 49) by the U.S. government and the partial opening of the Soviet archives forced establishment minds to a reconsideration. Yes, Virginia, there really were Communist spies in the United States during the so-called “McCarthy era.” In fact, it now appears that even the slandered and smeared “red-baiters” of the period were unaware of just how far Soviet Communist subversion had penetrated. It must be added that even during the period of the so-called “witch hunt” there was more than enough evidence to prove the reality of Soviet Communist spying to any objective person. But, of course, if one is going to pass for an “educated,” “respectable” person, objective thinking must be eschewed—it’s simply not a Darwinian survival trait in modern America.
From Lenin onward Soviet Communist leaders have preached the necessity of underground activities, with foreign governments the key target for infiltration. The evidence for this from many countries is overwhelming. Communists in government engaged in espionage and acted to influence policy in a pro-Soviet direction. Many of the individuals engaged in these activities were Communist Party members; others were fellow travelers, who despite their lack of party discipline, sought to advance the interests of Soviet Communism.
Franklin Roosevelt’s diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933 provided the Soviets with their first opportunity for effective penetration of the U.S. government. With diplomatic recognition, Soviet intelligence could function under legal cover through its embassy and consulates. The liberal New Deal agencies provided a fertile field for the recruitment of Soviet spies. Many of those who staffed these agencies sympathized with the government planning of the Soviet “experiment” and with Soviet opposition to fascism. This sympathy for Communism increased during World War II, when the Soviets could be seen as comrades-in-arms. That the Soviet Union was combating the great evil of Nazism has often been used to explain (and to justify) the disproportionate number of subversives of Jewish ethnicity.
Soviet intelligence benefited immensely from the support of the Communist Party of the United States, many of whose members acted as agents. Thus during the 1930s and 1940s, Communist subversives, under direct Soviet control, came to permeate key agencies of the federal government: the Treasury and State departments, the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner to the CIA), and even the White House itself.
Soviet intelligence consisted of three separate organizations: the KGB (NKVD or NKGB—the leading state security organ),
[2] the GRU (military intelligence), and the U.S. Communist Party (technically, the Communist Party of the United States of America, or CPUSA), which was supervised by the Comintern (the Communist International, run by Stalin). The KGB and GRU ran parallel “legal” and “illegal” intelligence networks in the United States. “Legal” networks were run by intelligence officers working under legal, usually diplomatic, cover in “residencies” located clandestinely in Soviet diplomatic missions and other official organizations. “Illegal” networks, in contrast, were run by Soviet intelligence officers who used false identities and had no apparent connection to Soviet organizations.
President Roosevelt was oblivious to the danger of Soviet subversion. In 1939, Adolf A. Berle, Roosevelt’s assistant secretary of state and adviser on internal security, presented the President with a list of leading Soviet agents in the United States, including Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, after receiving this information from ex-Communist spy Whittaker Chambers. Roosevelt simply laughed this off as ridiculous.
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The manifestation of this madness is upon us.
It is YOU.
