Immersed In Red Page 7

  In an article he published for The Communist, in 1938, Ross quoted Earl Browder, head of the CPUSA. “We should constantly study our Party documents, and not leave them to gather dust on our shelves. We are the bearers of American culture and civilization and we must use every hour to qualify ourselves for that noble and historic role.”

  In 1939, at the tail end of Stalin’s Great Terror, he and Janet moved to Moscow, where Nat was awarded a prestigious and important position in the Communist International (Comintern). The Comintern, in the words of J. Peters, head of the communist underground, “…is the international organization of Communist Parties in all the countries of the world and the World Congress was composed of delegates from all parties … and is the highest authority of the Communist Party Organization.”

  The Voorhis Act, passed by Congress in 1940, required political organizations controlled by foreign powers to register with the Justice Department. The CPUSA, being directed by the Soviet Comintern, was forced to officially relinquish that tie. However, Nat Ross’s secret report to the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern guaranteed everything would stay the same: “Despite the current law … the entire party membership … will be drawn still more closely together, under the banner of the Communist International.”

  I recall hearing from Orville about one of the Ross’s experiences in Russia, traveling through war-ravaged areas immediately after the Battle of Stalingrad, passing frozen bodies stacked like cordwood on the sides of the roads, and their sleeping in a shelter formed with frozen bodies packed over with snow to form the walls.

  While living in Moscow, Janet was the communist Daily Worker correspondent. She used the pen name Janet Weaver in her articles. Her brother, Don West, also assumed the pen name Jim Weaver for much of his work. As with Pete Seeger’s singing group, both Janet and Don incorporated the name Weaver as a paean to Hauptmann’s play.

  Janet Ross had access to journalists and American embassy diplomats. She became one of the principal informers to the Soviets during the war years of 1941– 43, and her sensitive reports were sent by George Dimitrov, head of the Comintern, directly to Foreign Minister Molotov and the NKVD. Dimitrov referred to her as, “Our American correspondent, comrade Janet Ross.” She was a devoted Stalinist and considered by the communists as a “Soviet patriot.” Her duplicity is recorded in Herbert Romerstein’s book, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors.

  Janet was also involved with political theater in Minnesota, which had its roots in Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and was fueled by a new generation of American playwrights brought together by leftist political activists. The most important leftist group was the Theater Union Players, consisting of members of the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Communist Party.

  In his interview, Orville recalled something his dear friend Janet had said the day before at a reunion of old political friends in California. She remarked, “They [the communist left] had a sense of doing something really meaningful for people.”

  It is almost impossible to wrap one’s mind around the true meaning of Janet’s statement. The Ross’s were engulfed in Soviet policies with the sworn purpose of dominating the world, and they were ready to give up their lives for it. So “doing something really meaningful” meant bringing down the government by any methods required and replacing it with their ideal, the reality of which amounted to one of the most horrifying regimes in the annals of mankind. Their imperiousness was evident in their embracing the lofty self-assessment that they were the “bearers of American culture and civilization,” for which they gave Stalin and the Soviets their all. That was their “noble and historic role” and they did “use every hour to qualify” themselves for their designated tasks. In the end, they felt no remorse for their actions.

  Roger S. Rutchick was not only a close friend, but was our family attorney. FBI files indicate that Rutchick was a key figure in the American Communist Party (CPUSA). My mother claimed that, regarding political issues, Rutchick was the “brains of the outfit.” I found this comment a bit ironic, as it seemed to undercut Orville’s own self-image and position of authority as one of the three chief strategists of the Farmer-Labor Party. Born in Poland, and six years Orville’s senior, Rutchick attended Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1933 he was appointed Assistant State Attorney General. From 1936–38 he was Gov. Elmer Benson’s secretary, and used his position to cover for and protect internal communist activities.

  When we relocated to California, Rutchick was left in charge of shipping much of the family’s furniture to our new location. A dispute arose when Rutchick held back some of it for himself; he claimed it was payment for past work performed for Orville.

  John “Johnnie” Jacobson was a political ally and another member of Orville’s close inner circle. He worked under Orville as the assistant director of personnel at the Highway Department in Minnesota, and the two became long-term friends. Orville referred to Johnny as a “born teacher.” My remembrance of him in my early youth was as a friendly, good-natured man, and we looked forward to his company.

  It is stated in the Vassiliev Notebook, however, that Jacobson, like Orville, was a secret member of the Communist Party. He was also the regional director and national representative of the CIO Political Action Committee (PAC). In Orville’s interviews, he recalled an FBI agent interviewing him about Jacobson’s communist activities, apparently not having been briefed about whom he was talking to.

  Elmer Benson: Another key figure in Orville’s life, and in a sense a political mentor, was former Minnesota governor, Elmer Benson, who took office in 1936 upon the death of leftist Democratic Governor Floyd B. Olson. Benson continued the liberal policies of the prior governor, but went even further to the left and lost badly to liberal Republican Harold Stassen in the 1938 gubernatorial elections. Benson described himself as being a “radical,” an “unreconstructed leftist radical,” and an “early socialist sympathizer.” He was an “ardent foe of capitalism” and offered strident support of communists, and Joseph Stalin in particular, up until his death in 1985. Benson was quoted in an interview two years before he died saying, “Stalin did some things that were pretty rough. But maybe, just maybe, if he hadn’t done it, maybe the nation would have been taken over by the worst enemies of mankind—the Nazis.” This was dubious justification, to say the least.

  Benson was a political enigma of sorts. According to John Earl Haynes, who has written extensively on the subject, “There is nothing in Benson’s public statements or his private papers that show any significant interest in Marxism-Leninism.” However, “from 1936 onward Benson was one of the CPUSA’s most steadfast high-profile political allies. What stands out most in his papers and rhetoric is his loathing and hatred for big corporations and big finance. And perhaps this was his tie to communism.”

  Prior to US involvement in World War II, Benson was an outspoken opponent of our support of Great Britain against Hitler’s Germany. This position directly resulted from the secret August 1939, German/Russian non-aggression agreement (Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact) which guaranteed that neither country would ally with or aid an enemy of the other country. It also included the secret protocol that divided the territories of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. The Germans broke the short-lived pact by invading Russia on June 22, 1941. Benson abruptly reversed course and was now a re-born anti-Nazi and proponent of Roosevelt’s support of Great Britain. He never fully explained his change of heart, but it was clear that his pro-Russian sympathies governed his positions, as it did for Orville and other die-hard Stalinists. Initially, the German/Russian pact’s very existence was denied as western fabrication. Later, with evidence that was impossible to repudiate, the pact was characterized in a positive light as a brilliant ploy by Stalin to gain time for war preparation.

  As mentioned, Orville served as Benson’s director of personnel for the Highway Department, bu
t his self-described clandestine purpose was conducting behind-the-scenes activities involving labor organizing. In addition, both men were intimately involved with the 1948 Henry Wallace campaign. Benson’s role during that time was as the National codirector of the Progressive Party and he was also instrumental in the merger of the Democratic and Farmer Labor parties.

  Benson’s ardent anticapitalistic rhetoric and political posture was not on display in his personal financial dealings, where he operated as an unmitigated capitalist. After he left office, he organized a group of wealthy investors who, with the information gleaned from his former role as commissioner of banking in Minnesota, bought up the best of bank-owned prime farmlands, forfeited by bankrupt farmers, at extremely low prices. He accumulated significant wealth from these dealings.

  From my perspective, accumulated from years of conversations with Orville, I’d always assumed that Benson was, in fact, a communist, albeit secretly. His support of the communists was unwavering, and he even elevated secret communists like Orville to positions within his administration. (It was not, however, a secret to Benson.) During speeches, Benson bragged about the thick file the FBI had compiled regarding his political activities; it was his badge of honor. Considering all of the adulation heaped on him by Orville and my mother through the years, and our periodic pilgrimages to the Benson farm, if Benson were not an official communist, he was as close as anybody could be without applying the label; and, as has been shown here, Orville simply did not have noncommunist friends.

  In recalling Benson, Orville felt that his abrasive confrontational nature had not allowed him to achieve the long-term leftist political goals that they were fighting for. As a result, he was soundly defeated by liberal Republican, Harold Stassen, in the 1938 elections. Had Benson been more inscrutable in his dealings, Orville surmised, he could have been far more politically effective.

  Frederick “Blackie” Myers: Myers, a dedicated communist, was heavily involved with Harry Bridges and the International Longshoreman’s Association battles on the docks in the 1930s and 40s. He was a vice president and one of the principal organizers of the National Maritime Union (NMU), which was founded in 1937. He also served on the National Committee of the Communist Party (CPUSA) and openly declared his membership.

  On a fairly regular basis, we visited the Blackie and Beth Myers family in the San Francisco area. On one such trip sometime in the mid-50s, I remember my mother and Orville giving them money to buy shoes for their family. Myers was known to be perpetually broke, partially due to his penchant for alcohol. I recall my mother not being happy with the arrangement because it created a hardship for our own family.

  Charles “Charlie” (Krivitsky) Kramer also moved to California from Washington, DC, in the early 50s, with his wife, Mildred. He was one of Orville’s closest political allies. I recall many weekends spent with Kramer and his family, including events at the Unitarian Church. We also often visited their home in the West Hollywood area. They, in turn, would visit us at our home in Westwood, and later at our home in Sherman Oaks for summer pool parties.

  Evidence of Kramer’s membership in the Communist Party USA and his contacts with known Soviet agents comes from several sources: the direct testimony of Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, Lee Pressman, and Nathaniel Weyl; the Venona decrypts; the Vassiliev Notebooks, and the Moscow archives of the SVR (Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service that replaced the KGB).

  Kramer also wrote a biography at the NKGB’s (Soviet state security agency later folded into the NKVD) request in 1944, which is included in the Vassiliev transcripts, where he described doing Communist Party work beginning around 1928, and officially joining the Communist Party in 1930. Mildred, joined the party in 1934 after serving for several years as a courier. In addition, Hope Hale Davis in her book, Great Day Coming, Memoirs of the 1930s, describes attending her first Communist Party meeting at the Kramer’s apartment, which was led by Kramer and Victor Perlo:

  Charles explained that “we would try to limit our knowledge of other members, in case of interrogation, possible torture.” Kramer explained that as members they were expected to contribute money to the CPUSA. “Basically that would be ten percent of our salary.”

  Kramer worked for far-leftist Florida senator, Claude “Red” Pepper; was a member of the National Labor Relations Board; and held other positions within the FDR administration. He was also identified as an NKGB source in several World War II intelligence cables that were partially decrypted in the course of the Venona operation, and released in 1995–96.

  He appeared under three cover names, “Plumb,” “Lot,” and “Mole.” The last identification was confirmed in notes on the “Mole” file made in the early 1990s by Vassiliev. In addition, Kramer was identified as a member of the Perlo and Ware espionage groups. According to the Soviet archives, Charles Kramer was instructed to try and recruit Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan atomic bomb project, as a spy, but reported back to his Soviet handlers that Oppenheimer was a “liberal” and not a communist.

  On May 6, 1953, when Kramer was called to testify before a Senate subcommittee on the judiciary regarding “Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments” in relation to the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws, he refused to answer any questions about his communist background.

  I never met the Marxist economist, Victor Perlo, but since Orville worked closely with him in the Progressive Party campaign, and many of our family friends were involved with both the Perlo and Ware Espionage Groups, I am including both histories.

  Victor Perlo was born in 1912, the son of Jewish parents who had emigrated from Russia. In 1933, he joined the Communist Party while a student at Columbia and remained true to his ideology for life. At 25 years old, he went to work at the liberal think tank, the Brookings Institute. He was a contributor to the communist press under pseudonyms, and secretly assisted I. F. Stone in gathering information for exposés. He headed the Perlo espionage group of agents in the US, which included a Senate staff director. The ring supplied the Soviet Union with economic, political and military intelligence, including data about US aircraft production. He infiltrated the US Department of Commerce where he prepared economic data for the Secretary of Commerce, Harry Hopkins, who was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s closest advisors. Records in the KGB Archives, based on examination by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev in Haunted Woods, describes the extensive data passed on to the Soviets.

  At the Division of Monetary Research, Perlo served with Harry Dexter White, Frank Coe, a member of the Silvermaster espionage group who fled to China to join Sol Adler and other American expatriates in the early 50s, and Harold Glasser. The Russian archives have irrefutably identified White, Coe and Glasser as Soviet agents; and Harry Hopkins, if not an agent, was a fellow traveler and devoted friend of Soviet Russia. In 1948, Perlo obtained a position as an economist for the Progressive Party and was instrumental in developing the party platform.

  Spartacus Educational reported that Victor Perlo divorced his wife, Katherine in 1943. In April 1944, she sent a letter to President Roosevelt naming her husband and several members of his group that included Orville’s close friends, Harold Glasser, John Abt, Nathan Witt, and Charles Kramer, as Soviet spies. Unfortunately, they escaped FBI arrest which would likely have curtailed their espionage activities. The anti-communist historian, Kathryn S. Olmsted, has argued, “Possibly the FBI discounted the tale of what they considered coming from an unstable, vengeful ex-wife.” Perlo died in 1999, a devout Stalinist/Marxist to the end. After being fingered by Elizabeth Bentley in 1947 as head of the espionage group, Perlo plead the Fifth the following year before the HCUAA, and again in 1953, before the Senate Committee on Internal Security.

  Harold Ware, the son of Ella Reeve “Mother” Bloor, one of the earliest members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), was educated in communism from youth and spent many years in the Soviet Union. He also fell in love with farming at a young age
. He later used his expertise, and his and his wife Cris’s association with the Quaker Society of Friends of the Soviet Union to arrange equipment, expertise, and manpower (including themselves) to be shipped to the Soviet Union for use in the development of communal farming during the years of the Soviet famine (1946–47).

  He returned to the US with funding from the Comintern to finance Communist Party organizing among the farmers. A member of the Communist Party from the early 20s, he attended the Lenin School in Moscow, an institute for the study of sabotage, revolutionary organization, and espionage. When he returned to the US, he wrote secret reports about US food production that were sent to the Comintern, receiving praise from Lenin himself. In the 1930s, Ware worked for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) department of the federal government and helped set up the Washington Soviet underground apparatus under J. Peters that included some of Orville’s close associates, including Charles Kramer, and the attorneys for the AAA, Lee Pressman and John Abt, who had a great influence on US policy at several levels.

  The Ware Espionage Group was a secret arm of CPUSA, and was also an adjunct of the Soviet NKVD. By 1934, a year before Harold was killed in an automobile accident, the Ware group had about seventy-five members and was divided into about eight cells, one of them headed by Charles Kramer and Victor Perlo. They were first recruited into Marxist study groups and then into the CPUSA. Besides Kramer, Pressman, Abt, and Perlo, other prominent, verified communists associated with the group included Alger and Donald Hiss, George Silverman, Marion Bachrach, Nathanial Witt, Nathanial Weyl, and Harry Dexter White who became FDR’s director of the Division of Monetary Research in the United States Department of the Treasury.