PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
Wow! I seem to have hit a nerve in a post about Franklin Roosevelt's co-President, Harry Hopkins!
My new pal, Smugly Backside,...something like that...... was enraged, just because, in showing that FDR was held in thrall by Stalin....and Hopkins was actually an agent of Stalin's.
So Smugly wrote this:
"Harry Hopkins was a true patriot who labored through the period in question sick with cancer but tirelessly for America and the World. He actually worked himself to death for America. You and your sniveling yapping back-stabbing ilk are not fit to lick his boots."
As I am not really that good at boot-licking, I suppose I should remediate Smugly, and show that Hopkins was a Soviet spy, an agent of the psychopath, Joseph Stalin.
Let's investigate the charge.
It's very difficult to get feeling for Harry Hopkins, he manages to do well what really good spies do: remain unnoticed. But there is scholarship on Hopkins....and you can draw your own conclusions.
1. First...who was Hopkins?
Life magazine ran a spread on Hopkins on September 22, 1941, calling his a one-man cabinet to Roosevelt. In fact, he lived at the White House, in the Lincoln Bedroom, from May 1940 to December 1943. LIFE - Google Books, p. 93.
Background? A social worker who flattered his way into Roosevelt's confidence.
a. "As boss of the Lend-Lease program, his control of the destiny of empire is second only to Mr. Roosevelt's own....In the kind of personalized one-man government that war has made of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that man has the greatest influence who has easiest access to the Chief-of-State's ear." Ibid.
2. Harry Hopkins,- FDR's alter ego, co-president, or Rasputin, "...the closest and most influential adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, was a Soviet agent." and “the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States.”
The Treachery Of Harry Hopkins
3. "The leading evidence that Hopkins was a spy for Joseph Stalin is presented by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel in their 2000 book, "The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitor."
a. Their evidence is, first, that Soviet KGB defector, Oleg Gordievsky, said that Hopkins was in regular communication with top Soviet covert operative, Iskhak Akhmerov, in New York City. This was more than just a "back channel" for communication between Roosevelt and Stalin because Hopkins had existing back channels at the Soviet embassy that he used, and Akhmerov's identity as an operative was not supposed to be known to the U.S. government.
b.Second, the Venona project decrypts of Soviet communications with its spies, which came to light only in the 1990s, reveal a report on a Washington discussion between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill by an "agent 19." Only Harry Hopkins among suspected Soviet agents would have been privy to that conversation.
c. Third, former Communist Whittaker Chambers testified to Congress in 1948 about the formation of Communist "study groups" within the U.S. government from which espionage agents were recruited. One of those groups, led by Lee Pressman, was established within the Department of Agriculture in late 1933, and Hopkins was a member of that group.
d. Fourth, his policies were strongly pro-Soviet, particularly in his work as head of the Lend-Lease program."
http://www.dcdave.com/article5/110211.htm
As time went by, and Roosevelt became more and more ill, he relied on Hopkins to make the policy decisions: each and every effort of Hopkins were designed for Stalin's benefit.
Almost as though Stalin was whispering in Hopkins' ear....
Coincidence?
4. "Now, corroborating and entirely independent evidence of HopkinsÂ’ likely treason has come to light in the pages of an obscure book by Emanuel M. Josephson. The title is "The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt," and while it does have a very intriguing chapter on FDRÂ’s demise, the main subject of the book is better captured by the subtitle, A History of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty, AmericaÂ’s Royal Family.
The following passage is on pp. 145-146:
a. 'In later years, Murray Garsson, the munitions manufacturer who was convicted for bribery and irregularities in connection with war contracts, reported that Harry Hopkins had been very helpful to him in securing and handling those contracts. In return for his help, Hopkins had demanded and received liberal payment for his influence. Garsson regularly paid HopkinsÂ’s numerous losses on bets on the horse races. But one form of payment demanded by Hopkins stood out as most odd, Garsson said.
b. Garsson maintained quarters at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington in connection with his war contracts. But he spent his weekends in New York with his family. Harry Hopkins demanded of Garsson that he permit him and his friends to use the quarters during the weekends, and that he defray the cost of refreshments and entertainment. Garsson permitted Hopkins and his guests to charge their expenses to his account.
c. In looking over his bills, Garsson noted the names of the persons who had signed the tabs charged to him. Among Harry HopkinsÂ’s associates who had signed tabs were Carl Aldo Marzani and the whole array of the members of what was later proved to be the Hal Ware (Communist) cell that operated in the Government. Garsson stated that he did not become aware of the fact that he was acting as involuntary host to HopkinsÂ’s Communist cell until after Marzani had been convicted and sent to jail for perjury in swearing in his State Department application that he was not, and never had been, a member of the Communist Party.
5. Josephson, who was hardly an admirer of Roosevelt and his New Deal, lacks references for his allegations, but many factors militate in favor of their basic accuracy. The strongest of these is that they dovetail perfectly with the other Soviet-agent charges against Hopkins and, coming much earlier, they could not have been influenced by them. In combination, the charges are much stronger than any one of them is alone. http://www.dcdave.com/article5/110211.htm
How am I doing so far?
Doesn't seem to me to fit with "Harry Hopkins was a true patriot who labored through the period in question sick with cancer but tirelessly for America...."
My new pal, Smugly Backside,...something like that...... was enraged, just because, in showing that FDR was held in thrall by Stalin....and Hopkins was actually an agent of Stalin's.
So Smugly wrote this:
"Harry Hopkins was a true patriot who labored through the period in question sick with cancer but tirelessly for America and the World. He actually worked himself to death for America. You and your sniveling yapping back-stabbing ilk are not fit to lick his boots."
As I am not really that good at boot-licking, I suppose I should remediate Smugly, and show that Hopkins was a Soviet spy, an agent of the psychopath, Joseph Stalin.
Let's investigate the charge.
It's very difficult to get feeling for Harry Hopkins, he manages to do well what really good spies do: remain unnoticed. But there is scholarship on Hopkins....and you can draw your own conclusions.
1. First...who was Hopkins?
Life magazine ran a spread on Hopkins on September 22, 1941, calling his a one-man cabinet to Roosevelt. In fact, he lived at the White House, in the Lincoln Bedroom, from May 1940 to December 1943. LIFE - Google Books, p. 93.
Background? A social worker who flattered his way into Roosevelt's confidence.
a. "As boss of the Lend-Lease program, his control of the destiny of empire is second only to Mr. Roosevelt's own....In the kind of personalized one-man government that war has made of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that man has the greatest influence who has easiest access to the Chief-of-State's ear." Ibid.
2. Harry Hopkins,- FDR's alter ego, co-president, or Rasputin, "...the closest and most influential adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, was a Soviet agent." and “the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States.”
The Treachery Of Harry Hopkins
3. "The leading evidence that Hopkins was a spy for Joseph Stalin is presented by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel in their 2000 book, "The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitor."
a. Their evidence is, first, that Soviet KGB defector, Oleg Gordievsky, said that Hopkins was in regular communication with top Soviet covert operative, Iskhak Akhmerov, in New York City. This was more than just a "back channel" for communication between Roosevelt and Stalin because Hopkins had existing back channels at the Soviet embassy that he used, and Akhmerov's identity as an operative was not supposed to be known to the U.S. government.
b.Second, the Venona project decrypts of Soviet communications with its spies, which came to light only in the 1990s, reveal a report on a Washington discussion between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill by an "agent 19." Only Harry Hopkins among suspected Soviet agents would have been privy to that conversation.
c. Third, former Communist Whittaker Chambers testified to Congress in 1948 about the formation of Communist "study groups" within the U.S. government from which espionage agents were recruited. One of those groups, led by Lee Pressman, was established within the Department of Agriculture in late 1933, and Hopkins was a member of that group.
d. Fourth, his policies were strongly pro-Soviet, particularly in his work as head of the Lend-Lease program."
http://www.dcdave.com/article5/110211.htm
As time went by, and Roosevelt became more and more ill, he relied on Hopkins to make the policy decisions: each and every effort of Hopkins were designed for Stalin's benefit.
Almost as though Stalin was whispering in Hopkins' ear....
Coincidence?
4. "Now, corroborating and entirely independent evidence of HopkinsÂ’ likely treason has come to light in the pages of an obscure book by Emanuel M. Josephson. The title is "The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt," and while it does have a very intriguing chapter on FDRÂ’s demise, the main subject of the book is better captured by the subtitle, A History of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty, AmericaÂ’s Royal Family.
The following passage is on pp. 145-146:
a. 'In later years, Murray Garsson, the munitions manufacturer who was convicted for bribery and irregularities in connection with war contracts, reported that Harry Hopkins had been very helpful to him in securing and handling those contracts. In return for his help, Hopkins had demanded and received liberal payment for his influence. Garsson regularly paid HopkinsÂ’s numerous losses on bets on the horse races. But one form of payment demanded by Hopkins stood out as most odd, Garsson said.
b. Garsson maintained quarters at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington in connection with his war contracts. But he spent his weekends in New York with his family. Harry Hopkins demanded of Garsson that he permit him and his friends to use the quarters during the weekends, and that he defray the cost of refreshments and entertainment. Garsson permitted Hopkins and his guests to charge their expenses to his account.
c. In looking over his bills, Garsson noted the names of the persons who had signed the tabs charged to him. Among Harry HopkinsÂ’s associates who had signed tabs were Carl Aldo Marzani and the whole array of the members of what was later proved to be the Hal Ware (Communist) cell that operated in the Government. Garsson stated that he did not become aware of the fact that he was acting as involuntary host to HopkinsÂ’s Communist cell until after Marzani had been convicted and sent to jail for perjury in swearing in his State Department application that he was not, and never had been, a member of the Communist Party.
5. Josephson, who was hardly an admirer of Roosevelt and his New Deal, lacks references for his allegations, but many factors militate in favor of their basic accuracy. The strongest of these is that they dovetail perfectly with the other Soviet-agent charges against Hopkins and, coming much earlier, they could not have been influenced by them. In combination, the charges are much stronger than any one of them is alone. http://www.dcdave.com/article5/110211.htm
How am I doing so far?
Doesn't seem to me to fit with "Harry Hopkins was a true patriot who labored through the period in question sick with cancer but tirelessly for America...."
