The communists greatly benefited from the election of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. It was Roosevelt who opened diplomatic relations with Moscow, even as he welcomed “progressives” into government. Prior to his inauguration, Roosevelt was warned by his predecessor, President Herbert Hoover, about two ongoing Soviet conspiracies: a massive Soviet counterfeiting operation that threatened the U.S. dollar; and an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government by mobilizing angry veterans through the “Bonus Army.”
Hoover’s warnings were ignored by Roosevelt, who saw nothing wrong with communism. Evans and Romerstein have pointed out that Roosevelt’s recognition of the Soviet Union gave an aura of legitimacy to the communists, helping them to “create formidable networks of apparatchiks on American soil.”
In 1938, a special House Committee on Un-American Activities was appointed under the chairmanship of Rep. Martin Dies (D-Texas). When the Committee sought to investigate communist involvement with an important labor union, the White House summoned Dies to a meeting with the president.
Arriving at the White House, Dies found Roosevelt chatting with Sen. John Sheppard (D-Texas). After Dies entered, Roosevelt turned to Sheppard and said, “Senator, what are we going to do about Martin?” The senator was confused by the question, so Roosevelt clarified: “You know, all this business about investigating communists is a serious mistake.” Roosevelt then told Dies he didn’t want any investigations of that kind.
The communist infiltration that began in the 1930s accelerated after the United States allied itself with Stalin in World War II. FBI and congressional investigations show that many hundreds of Soviet agents and Communist Party members worked for the U.S. government during the war.
“In due course, many such pro-Soviet operatives rose to fairly high positions,” wrote Evans and Romerstein, “which made their allegiance to Moscow even more problematic.”
Under Roosevelt’s leadership, communist subversion was bound to thrive. By 1939, the communists had established at least four important “cells” inside the U.S. government. According to Hoover, “These Communist informers gained strategic positions in the armed services, in almost every civil department, on the staffs of some Congressional committees and even had access to the White House.”
Hoover called it “an onslaught” against the American people. There is detailed information about that because four communist agents came forward as witnesses. These were, in order of importance, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, Louis Budenz, and Hede Massing.
Not surprisingly, when some of this testimony became public in 1948, the U.S. government attempted a coverup. Rather than expelling communist agents from sensitive government jobs, the Truman administration wanted to prosecute Chambers for perjury. Meanwhile, Bentley’s testimony, which was given to a grand jury over a period of several months, resulted in not a single indictment. The Justice Department (DOJ), then as now, was more inclined to protect communist subversives than prosecute them.
There is no better example of DOJ malfeasance than the Amerasia scandal, which began in 1945. To tell the story briefly, it came to the FBI’s attention that a pro-communist magazine, Amerasia, had quoted material from classified government documents—specifically, from a secret OSS memo.
The subsequent FBI probe discovered that a State Department official, John Stewart Service, was supplying the magazine with confidential information. When the FBI moved in to arrest three of those involved, investigators discovered more than 1,000 government documents at Amerasia’s offices.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the case was “airtight,” but the DOJ, contrary to the evidence, took a different view. According to FBI records, two White House officials and several persons at the DOJ manipulated a grand jury to “fix” the case.
Grand jury tampering is a serious crime, and Hoover was undoubtedly alarmed. In 1965, Budenz would explain that Hoover was destined to become irrelevant, that vigilance against communism had become unacceptable to the establishment. Therefore, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.) was made to be an example. Who then would be brave enough to stand against the Washington “swamp?”
Once the communists entered the government, it was too late to fix the problem by normal, parliamentary means. An honest person in government isn’t on a level playing field with a communist in government; the communist has no moral strictures or scruples, and can destroy you with the very power of the office at his disposal. An honest man wouldn’t think to abuse his office in this manner.
To make matters worse, the “watchdog” media is no watchdog at all. Communists have infiltrated newspapers and the major television networks, and if someone were to try to blow the whistle on communist subversion today, they would be denounced as a “McCarthyist.”
The media, to some extent, has twisted the public mind. The lies that have been told with regard to communism and anti-communism are too many to count. The cynical calculation behind these falsehoods is rooted in past success. The communists have fooled the public again and again. Who can stop them?
We want to feel good about our situation, but we ought to feel the sting of shame. We are tempted, day after day, to falsify and evade. The “big lie” of our time, of course, is the lie of communism; or rather, the many pleasing falsifications that communism promotes. We stand at the brink of an abyss.
President Donald Trump is under siege. To understand the why of it, we must first understand the history of communist subversion: The deep state is the communist fifth column, and the communist fifth column is the deep state.
