Category Archives: Communism

Witness

Posted on by

by Whittaker Chambers
Originally published in 1952; reprinted in 2001 by Regnery Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 0-89526-789

This 800 page small print book is regarded as reference material about the dangers of liberalism by conservatives. I assure you I can’t sort out all the key points in a short review, but I’ll give it a try.  The book chronicles the life of Jay Vivian Chambers (who, after a lifetime of embarrassment about what his parents had named him, changed his name to the one listed as the author above).    Chambers grew up in a destructively dysfunctional family and turned to Communism out of despair over world events.  He was the courier for an active espionage network in the government for several years, and began to doubt the validity of communism after word began to spread about the extent of the Soviet purges.  He decided he had to leave the party after Stalin signed a mutual defense pact with Hitler.  He initially went into hiding, remembering the Communist saying, “Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes and artist to commit a good natural death.”  He went to Adolph Berle of the FBI in 1939 and told him about his association with the Communists and named several of his associates.  He omitted discussion of espionage.  (Berle’s notes on the meeting begin on page 466.)  Berle briefed FDR on the information, who laughed at him.  When Berle became insistent about the information,   FDR told him to “go fly a kite,” only in less polite language.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which included a young Richard M. Nixon, called Chambers to testify nine years later.  Chambers had been accepted into the Communist party by Ben Mandel, who was the research director for HUAC when he was called to testify.  His testimony accurately repeated the allegations he had filed previously with the FBI, and mentioned (once again) that Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official in the then Truman administration, was part of his spy ring.  That allegation ignited a storm of publicity and controversy.  Hiss denied the charges (and maintained his innocence until his death in 1996).  There followed years of investigations, including two Grand Jury trials, and the eventual perjury conviction of Alger Hiss. Continue reading →

The Sugar King of Havana

Posted on by

Subtitled, The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba’s Last Tycoon
by John Paul Rathbone

This is a great book!  It elegantly intertwines the fascinating biography of Julio Lobo and his rise to be the most powerful sugar broker in the world with Cuban history. Much of the history is of revolutionary events, including Castro’s revolution and the close association of Cuba with the United States.  The author’s mother was a friend of Lobo’s daughters, and I think that allows richness to the book that is possible because of the personal connections.

I intend to begin with an overview, which is mostly quoted from the flap of the book, followed by  selected snippets with page numbers for reference.

Overview—The legendary wealth of sugar magnate Julio Lobo and his reign as the most powerful force in world sugar markets ended 18 months after Castro marched into Havana.  Lobo was born in 1898, the year of Cuba’s independence, and he had “…an extraordinary life that mirrored, in almost lurid Technicolor, the many rises and final fall of the Cuban Republic.”  Lobo not only often had the world sugar market cornered, he also had the largest collection of Napoleonica outside of France, faced a firing squad only to be pardoned at the last moment, survived a gangland shooting, and cavorted with numerous movie stars and several mistresses.  He described himself as being a good son, good brother, and good father, but correctly did not mention that he was a good husband. Continue reading →

Venona, Decoding Soviet Espionage in America

Posted on by

by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan persuaded the American intelligence community to declassify the Venona Project in 1995, which was more than forty years after the Soviets learned that the project had uncovered their massive espionage penetration of every sensitive department of the United States government.    The project began because Colonel Carter Clark did not trust Joseph Stalin.  In February 1943 he ordered the Signal Intelligence Service, the Army’s elite code breakers, to attempt to decode cables between Soviet diplomats in the United States and Moscow.  The cables were virtually impossible to decode as long as they were sent using a complex two-part ciphering system.  However, about 1700 cables, or a bit over one percent of the total were sent in which the “one time pad” had been reused, and that allowed at least partial decoding.  “The deciphered cables of the Venona Project identify 349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies.”  About 200 were never identified except by code name, which means that those people remained in their government and military positions unimpeded in their activities.

The Soviets learned about the Venona project from a high level official in the Roosevelt administration within a year and a half of its origin.  Ironically, the first cables weren’t successfully decoded until 1946, which was after the Soviets learned of Venona and had corrected the mistake of reusing the one time pads. Continue reading →