Immersed In Red Page 5
As special assistant to the deputy administrator of War Shipping, Orville received classified documents in the mornings and also spoke in detail about attending numerous meetings of the War Manpower Commission with top brass attending, including Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson; William “Frank” Knox, secretary of the navy (also Roosevelt’s vice president in 1936), James Forrestal, deputy secretary of the navy; Paul McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower Commission and War Production Manager of Sears Roebuck; Rear Admiral Emory S. Land; Admiral McCauley, and others. Orville’s job was to sit behind the brass where he overheard numerous conversations of the buildup of manpower for the Manhattan Project, recalling that it was all very secretive. He also heard much conversation about a military production plant not far from Detroit where they were building 50,000 planes, and also spoke of the military’s plans for the British to “take care of the North Atlantic” and “the Americans to handle the South Pacific,” machinations that Orville considered a devious ploy by the Americans to take over Britain’s commercial interests in the South American region.
I have many thoughts on Orville’s descriptions of his WWII years in his interviews. To my knowledge, he never had any medical issues with asthma or hay fever, no use of inhalers, no athletic restrictions, no prescriptions, and no breathing difficulties of any kind whatsoever. In his last years, his heavy smoking caused problems, but in his younger years any notion of breathing problems was a fabrication.
I am also suspicious of his claim of being offered a commission as a “lieutenant commander.” He stated that thirty-six was the upper limits of the draft and that “he couldn’t see the sense of running around in a uniform and being an officer in the navy and then continuing in the same job I had held previously.” But, this was not entirely accurate, as forty-five was the cut-off age for the draft, making his altruistic attitude ring hollow. With no naval experience, other than a two-week voyage as an ordinary seaman, no navigational or leadership experience on the open seas, and with a distinct fear of water, the offer seems incredible, not to mention that the position is equal to that of a major in the army. A more detailed description of a lieutenant commander’s duties makes it even more improbable: a “senior department officer or the executive officer (second-in-command) on many warships and smaller shore installations, or the commanding officer of a smaller ship/installation.” It is more likely this enhanced history was due to some guilt that he was able through connections to circumvent the fighting war, although he was never short of negative comments about others who did the same, particularly in the case of Hubert Humphrey.
But far more important than Orville’s enhanced personal military history is the fact that a man deeply entrenched in leftist politics, with a fast-growing FBI file, had access to valuable classified military information on a daily basis; was allowed to sit in on meetings with some of the highest figures in the navy discussing sensitive subjects that ranged from food and munitions shipments to our overseas military forces; was allowed to hear about the massive site in Michigan for building airplanes; and was present in meetings about secret deployment of allied naval forces in the Atlantic, as well as meetings discussing the enormous manpower and materiel increases for the Manhattan Project. The list of important subjects causes stupefaction when Orville’s political history is considered.
In 1946, Orville again traveled to California, where he visited a group of Hollywood writers (many of whom were later blacklisted), and gave a talk to raise money for continuation of leftist causes. Among the group were Orson Welles, Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Lester Cole, and others with whom he remained friendly for years. On that single visit he raised $15,000, an unbelievable sum in that era. He was also able to raise a similar amount from a private banker, which Orville used to found the Independent Voters of Minnesota. John Earl Haynes, in his book Dubious Alliance, cites Orville’s leftist political contributions. “Communists developed another useful link to Farmer-Labor activists through Orville Olson, a secret party member … The contacts and relationships developed by the two (i.e. John Jacobson), proved to be of enormous value to the Popular Front over the next decade. After WWII, Orville Olson and John Jacobson emerged as two of the Popular Front’s principal leaders. Olson and Jacobson also saw to it that Communists who worked diligently within the Farmer-Labor Association received a share of state patronage.”
He was now not only at the top echelon of the left-wing political activities in the state, but he was also knowledgeable and well connected at all levels of the labor movement both in Washington and around the country. He was also an expert on the political intricacies of the various ethnic populations of Minnesota, knowledge that was vital for the election process. He relished the political manipulation, the subterfuge, and the masterminding that his job required in order to widen the reach of communist undertakings.
In the 1948 elections, he was appointed executive secretary and Minnesota campaign manager for the campaign of Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate. Orville’s primary role was to plan and implement left-wing political strategy and activities and attempt to woo back progressive members of the Democratic Farmer-Labor coalition. He also ran for governor of Minnesota on the Progressive Party ticket in the same election, even if there was no chance of winning, as the ticket had to be filled. His campaign consisted of one fifteen-minute radio speech, as all of the campaign funds had to go to Wallace.
The results of the election were the losses of the Progressive candidates, marking a definite setback for the communist organization. The defeat would result in the development of new tactics to achieve their goals. This will be discussed later.
Orville’s extensive communist affiliations and sympathies were well known to family and friends when I was growing up, but not to the outside world, where he masqueraded as a “progressive” Democrat. When Henry Wallace asked him directly if he was a communist, Orville gave the evasive answer, “What do you think?” Wallace followed with, “Well, what about it?” Orville then responded, “Well, why don’t you make a judgment on what I’m doing instead of what I’m called.” Always the evader.
Orville’s entire thirteen-session political interview is a paean to leftist politics, the communist cause, left-wing labor relations, and the many friends and collaborators he worked with. I had heard this information in bits and pieces for years, but the interviews stitched together the sequence of his work history and positions in a neat and tidy fashion. He exulted in how hard the communists worked prior to elections, in the precincts, distributing leaflets, and doing door-to-door canvassing. Orville described the 30s and 40s as exciting years where they (like-minded communists and left-wingers) would have the opportunity and the capacity to “change a world that was driving toward war … and it was possible to build a new kind of world.”
The Soviet Comintern (Communist International): And how was this new kind of world going to come about and by whose direction? The US communist activity was, in fact, structured by the Soviet Communist International, or “Comintern,” (1919–1943), an organization started by Vladimir Lenin in order to direct the communist movement worldwide; subservience to Moscow was a major tenet. From 1922 forward, the existing American communist parties were forced to follow the party line from Moscow. This included infiltrating established institutions in the US to further the goals of Lenin—namely to destroy capitalism the world over and replace it with socialism/communism. In his book Defence of the Realm, The Authorized History of MI5, Christopher Andrews, stated that their objective was to fight “by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State.”
For the next three decades or so, Americans such as Orville joined in the secretive mission to undermine the US government; some through the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the Farmer-Labor Party, the Progressive Party, and many other leftist organizations th
at masked their real purpose. Some of these people worked overtly while others, like Orville, worked more secretly.
The 1921 Comintern (Communist International) Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of their Work, VIII, No. 53, spells out the secret methodologies for members:
For an illegal party, it is obviously of critical importance in all of its work to protect its members and bodies from discovery and not to expose them by, for example, membership, registration, careless dues collection or literature distribution. Therefore, it cannot use open forms of organization for conspiratorial purposes to the same degree as a legal party. But it can learn to do so to an increasing extent [emphasis added].
It is important to understand the communist interpretation of socialism as distinct from communism. Again, I refer to the Comintern Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of their Work, 1. General:
The communist Party should be the vanguard, the front-line troops of the proletariat, leading in all phases of its revolutionary class struggle and the subsequent transitional period toward the realization of socialism, the first stage of communist society [emphasis added].
Lenin also stated,
The goal of Socialism is Communism.
Joseph Stalin’s Report on the Work of the Central Committee to the 18th Congress of The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, March 10, 1939, outlined the program members were to follow in the transformation from socialism to communism in the Soviet sphere. He incorporated the need for a strong military, well-organized punitive and intelligence organs, vigilance against backsliding, and the importance of forceful propaganda in order to perfect Marxist principles; eradicate capitalist countries and convert them from “dictatorships of the bourgeoisie” to “dictatorships of the proletariat.” Five months after this proclamation was issued to the party leadership, Stalin entered into the Russian/ Nazi pact and its secret protocol to divide the territories of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet “spheres of influence.”
Orville was a staunch Stalin apologist to the bitter end with no equivocation. He subscribed to every jot and tittle of Stalin’s writings and utterances, and wholeheartedly supported the Nazi-Soviet pact.
Orville often bragged to me about how difficult it was for the US to pierce Russian intelligence, but how easy it was for the Russians to infiltrate ours. This was a source of continual amusement that he understood well; after all, he was intimately aware of the extensive labyrinth of communist espionage in which he and his friends were involved. He attributed this reality to the fact that all Marxists were smart intellectuals, committed to the righteous cause, while all CIA/FBI personnel were stupid, low-intelligence reactionaries who simply did not have the brains or the fortitude to compete against the stronger foe.
When Soviet archives were opened for a period in the mid-90s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the extent of the financial and ideological control of domestic communist groups by Moscow was revealed in documents that have been analyzed by British researchers and also US researchers at the US Library of Congress. The Vassiliev Notebooks were compiled by Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB intelligence officer and journalist, who smuggled them out of Russia. Among Vassiliev’s notes, Orville is named with a description of his being a “secret communist,” and “contact of Harold Glasser,” whose extensive underground activities will be described in a Part III. These Russian archives have since been closed to further access by Vladimir Putin.
* * *
CHAPTER 3
MOVE TO CALIFORNIA
After the failed elections of 1948, Orville took a job as a salesman for a Minneapolis garment manufacturer called “Outdorables.” He still wanted to stay involved in Minnesota politics, but the atmosphere was changing, and the hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUAA) were in full swing. Friends were urging him to come to California with the promise of employment with Prudential Upholstery Supply Co. in downtown Los Angeles, and my mother wanted the change as well. So in the fall of 1951, when I was nine years old, Orville reluctantly moved the family west.
One of my last memories before we left Minnesota was of the family having an impromptu celebration when President Truman fired Gen. Douglas McArthur. Despite their hatred for Truman, his dismissal of the outspoken anti-Russian, anti-communist general was roundly applauded. Regardless of my young age, my political indoctrination was already beginning, as I gleefully brought in the newspaper that carried the announcement. I had no understanding of the issues, of course, but the seeds were being planted.
Once in Los Angeles, we rented a home on the ocean strand in Hermosa Beach. During our brief stay there, I recall playing a few times on the sands with our neighbors, David and Ricky Nelson, sons of the iconic American Nelson family of Ozzie and Harriet fame.
A year later we settled in Westwood near the UCLA campus. This was my vision of Shangri-La—beautiful homes and nicely manicured yards, with the quaint college town with its Spanish architecture just a few blocks away. I developed lifelong friendships and enjoyed my outside world, I played Little League baseball, would go up to the old UCLA men’s gym and watch John Wooden, during his early UCLA career, coach his basketball team that in later years would become so successful. Wooden’s personality and Christian ethics were sniffed at in our home, yet he came to hold great personal meaning and substance for me; a man of unswerving principles who lived the life that he taught his players, and was an example to those who came in contact with him.
The Prudential years: In California, Orville and my mother also began a new chapter in their lives, while at the same time maintaining many of their former political friendships and associations. For the next 25 years or more, Orville was a sales manager for Prudential until his retirement in the late 1970s.
Orville was a tough, single-minded man, which was clearly on display in his work environment. As one of the salesmen working under him mentioned to me in later years, Orville was a “nasty prick.” He lived to rile people, to demonstrate to them his intellectual superiority. Orville told me several times that once a salesman built up his area and was doing well, he would lop off some of the area and turn it over to others who weren’t doing as well, or were newcomers. This was supposed to keep the salesman “hungry.” Orville enjoyed the angry reactions of the men, and in his interviews, he justified his actions. He also confided to me that he didn’t like it that the more successful salesmen were making a good deal more than he was. He had had offers to join with others in new ventures in the upholstery supply field, including one in particular which had allowed the participants to become quite wealthy, but Orville always refused. He was afraid to leave his steady job where the owners knew and accepted his radical political background. His fear was not necessarily irrational. I remember on more than one occasion seeing men sitting in cars on the street watching our house in West Los Angeles. On one occasion, in fact, I was approached by a couple of them, asking if my parents were at home; an unnerving experience for a young boy. They turned out to be FBI agents who were investigating Orville’s and my mother’s political involvement.
All of these things combined to keep Orville in a plodding and safe job, where he relished ridiculing his business-owner boss, whom he considered nothing more than an ignorant moron who stumbled into his money, and was raping the workers. It gave him much amusement to ridicule the gullible public and the callousness of American business when a less expensive fabric might stall on the market, but could be revitalized by a change of name, putting it in with a more expensive line and raising the price. The fact that the color, texture, or other aspects of the product might appeal more to a different segment of the public was not seen simply as a good business decision; it was the sign of capitalist greed and deception.
During his years with Prudential, he was proud of the fact that, as he described, “I became an employment agency for a lot of
left-wingers from New York, and particularly out of the maritime union.” One man he hired was Frank Carlson, District Organizer of the Communist Party in Los Angeles. In addition, he arranged for a Hollywood blacklisted writer, John Howard Lawson, to speak at an industry dinner for a fee of $50. Prior to this, Lawson had been the head of the Hollywood division of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and also served as the head of the Writer’s Guild. But his finances had been hit hard after being shunned by the movie industry due to his communist Sales Manager, Orville, at activity and refusal to testify before the Prudential Upholstery, c. 1956. Shotwell family archives HCUAA, for which he served a jail sentence. So now the former high-riding screenplay writer was grateful for the fee.
Orville also enjoyed giving books to his sales staff, whom he perceived as being politically uneducated. He claimed to have refrained from giving them “anything from the International Publisher, or other Communist Party literature.” Instead, he included books by Howard Fast, who, for some unknown reason, he figured was non-political. The truth was that Fast worked for the CPUSA newspaper, the Daily Worker, in the 50s, and also wrote for the communist Chicago Star, edited by Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama’s mentor. In fact, in 1953, for his service to the Soviet Union, Fast was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize by the Marxist/ communist presenter W. E. B. Du Bois, and responded with gushing gratitude.
End of the marriage: Orville’s and my mother’s marriage lasted twelve years, ending in 1961, following angry court confrontations and all manner of mutual back-and-forth accusations.
During their court-ordered separation, Orville was caught stalking my mother, following her when she went out in the evenings, and peering through our windows at all hours. I saw him many times driving back and forth in front of our home. A restraining order was obtained by my mother’s attorney and the stalking ceased. I testified against him in their divorce proceeding, as “mutual incompatibility” had not been adopted yet in California courts as a reason for divorce. I recounted to the judge how I once intervened in an altercation in our kitchen when a tipsy Orville moved toward my mother, threatening her with his fists. I’m certain I saved her from a beating by shoving him across the kitchen into the wall. He was a rough customer in an old-school fashion.