Last of the Cold War Spies (32 page)

Wallace’s political “bodyguard” of PCA communists included the black singer Paul Robeson, whose appearance with songs such as his political version of “Ol’ Man River” lifted audiences and helped raise money. Straight, along with the key progressive leaders, was encouraged as Wallace picked up delegates here and there in his efforts to separate the Democrats from their president. The atmosphere at gatherings was heady, but was it representative of a movement across the country? With each city visited, Straight realized that the PCA was preparing the candidate for the possibility of a third party. He would support it if Wallace had a chance of winning a presidential race from such a base. But there would be hurdles such as the legal difficulties of getting a third-party slate onto the electoral rolls, not to mention the short time left to build the necessary street-level organization. Straight knew that the U.S. communist movement was divided on the concept of a third party, which would be another factor inhibiting a thrust for the presidency. The older officials of the communist party opposed a third party because they feared they could not control it. By contrast the young undercover leaders were confident of their ability to manipulate mass movements—mainly in the key U.S. unions—with an aggressive political strategy.

The most prominent were Lee Pressman, general counsel of the CIO; John Abt, general of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers; and Harry Bridges, of the Longshoremen Union. They were confident that they could get strong support for Wallace among American workers.

Wallace continued to urge economic aid to Europe and to oppose “war preparations.” In his own words (or Straight’s), the purpose of the U.S. tour was to “liberalize the Democratic Party.” Wallace told the press that he did not know whether he would back Truman in 1948, but he often urged Truman to meet Stalin to settle American-Russian differences. The
New York Times
of June 1, 1947, was wise to the PCA plans. It noted that Wallace was “leaving in his wake . . . political rebellion that seeks its ends through the formation of a third party.”

At the end of the tour, Straight was more confident still about Wallace being tied to the Democratic Party, rather than outside it, in his presidential bid. He claimed that he discussed with Wallace how the communists had organized his support city by city across the country. Wallace was not concerned, and if Straight was worried, he did not express it to Wallace or in any
New Republic
editorial. His warnings were limited then to keeping “progressives”—the communists and the liberals—united.

Straight wrote with hindsight in his autobiography more than thirty years after the event that he and Wallace were like two ships passing in the night. Wallace, he felt, was heading for the land of illusions, from whence Straight had come. His own experience of communist collaboration, he said, suggested that they would destroy Wallace. But Straight could not share his experiences with him. Wallace looked upon collaboration with communists in and out of Russia as an appealing idea but was naive, Straight thought. Unlike Straight, the candidate knew nothing of the back alleys of the political world.
²⁵

In June 1947 Straight attended the second annual convention of the American Veterans Committee in Milwaukee, which had been infiltrated by communists in the spring of the previous year. The communists had previously directed their veteran members to infiltrate the more established American Legion group but with limited success. Moscow switched tactics, and the Communist Party directed 5,000 members into
the AVC, boosting its membership from 10,000 to 15,000. The communists then attempted to take over the leadership of the new group in its formative stage. Cord Meyer prepared for a new form of battle at the 1946 Des Moines convention.

“In spite of our lack of experience in this type of infighting,” he noted in his autobiography,
Facing Reality
, “we [were] determined to meet the threat . . . most of the time was devoted to the political struggle.”

The “we” was a solid “caucus” of anticommunists, including Oren Root (who had run Wendell Willkie’s campaign for the presidency), G. Mennen Williams (later governor of Michigan), Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., Robert Taylor, and Gus Tyler (of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union).
²⁶

This group had the ruling majority on the AVC National Planning Committee, which meant it controlled the national office and the raising of funds. In the following year, the slippery communist element, which Meyer said was difficult at times to pinpoint, attempted to build a record of militant activity.

“We were prepared for the fight [at Milwaukee in 1947],” he said. But the balance of political power at this convention was complicated by the emergence of a third group. It called itself “Build AVC Caucus,” and it was separate from the communist element.
²⁷
The new group was composed of “those who felt it was time to call a truce in the bitter factional fighting” and to concentrate on the AVC’s objectives.

“I had some friends in this third caucus,” Meyer said, “and tried to convince them that their compromise position could only work to the advantage of the communists by splitting the anticommunist vote.”
²⁸

Later, when Meyer was at the CIA, he learned that “a vocal member of this third force had been a controlled secret agent of the KGB, at that time, and that his strategy of splitting our ranks had been devised in Moscow.”
²⁹

In October 1996, Cord Meyer confirmed his accusation about Straight’s links in a Washington interview. Meyer told me: “His aim was to play the neutral objective role [between left and right factions], while all the time attempting to split the anticommunist vote. I dealt with him on enough occasions to understand his actions and motives.”
³⁰

The Wallace campaign lapsed during the summer months but came back to life in September 1947. Straight hired Lew Frank, a left-wing member of the AVC, to be Wallace’s minder. But he apparently couldn’t stop Wallace from Wallace as he addressed a full house at Madison Square Garden on September 11, a year after the speech that forced his resignation from government. He attacked Truman’s bipartisan foreign policy and the “war-with-Russia” hysteria. He appeared to be having a two-way bet by saying he would like to continue to work with liberals within the Democratic Party. But if it became a war party and attacked civil liberties, “then the people must have a new party of liberty and peace.”
³¹

In October 1947, Straight was reading the signals concerning the formation of this third political party organized by the undercover leaders in the U.S. Communist Party, including Pressman, Abt, and Bridges. In the meantime, the KGB wanted to weaken the United States by attacking the Marshall Plan.

Straight followed—through the press and his contacts—the meeting of the leaders of the Communist International controlled tightly by Stalin’s henchmen that was going on in Warsaw. The manifesto issued from this meeting denounced the United States for trying to “subjugate the world.” The Soviet spokesman, Andrei Zhdanov, maintained as he released the manifesto that “the greatest danger to the international working class is the underestimation of its own power.”

Straight took this to indicate that the Kremlin was directing a third party to fight the 1948 election. Stalin and company judged that the mood was right for a serious political push in the United States. Subsequent meetings with the coterie of advisers closest to Wallace showed that a third party announcement was imminent.
³²

In mid-December 1947, Straight suggested to Wallace that he should write an open letter to Stalin with ideas for terminating the Cold War. With the third party announcement pending, this could only serve to elevate the probable new presidential candidate. It was an effort to show that Wallace was a statesmen who could start peace negotiations, in contrast to the Truman administration. He and Straight drafted six key points, which covered disarmament; prevention of weapons exports;
resumption of unrestricted trade; the free movement of citizens “between and within” the two nations; the resumption of free exchange of scientific information; and establishment of a UN relief agency, such as UNRRA, which previously helped members of the Soviet bloc. Straight thought the letter was worth sending to Stalin immediately. There was always the possibility that he would reply. Wallace dithered and put the idea aside.

Late in December 1947 the PCA created that “new” third party, and Wallace agreed to be its candidate for the presidency. Straight saw this formation as compelling “all the undercover leaders of the Communist Party to emerge into the open, to challenge the leaders of the CIO, other union leaders, the liberals [Mrs. Roosevelt and many others], the Democrats in Congress whose seats were threatened, and the press.”

Wallace could not play this new official role and be editor of
The New
Republic
. Straight forced him to resign and become a “contributing editor” and then took over as editor himself, appointing long-term staffer Daniel Mebane to the hot seat as publisher.

On January 5, 1948, Straight warned his family of the beginning of the break from Wallace and what it would mean for the struggling
New
Republic
. Straight felt that he was damned by the communists if he didn’t support Wallace, and damned by the Democratic Party liberals if he did. In the end the downgrade of Wallace was a way of letting readers down gently so that the magazine might not lose them. Straight thought there would be a break between him and Wallace at some point on the issues. The watered-down Marshall Plan for aid to Western Europe, which Wallace opposed, would be one.

Straight later gave up on Wallace, who had surrounded himself with communists. The drifting candidate defended the Soviet Union on all issues, including the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, and its attack on the Marshall Plan. Instead of a new movement within the conventional Democratic Party system, Wallace was creating a bigger version of the Communist Party.

In the end, Wallace had chosen a path that would not allow him to take power, which was the crucial point. Communism could not take hold through conventional democratic means in the United States, which was not like Italy or France, or even the United Kingdom. The only way of getting someone like Wallace in power was to broaden his appeal. The communists’ overt capture of Wallace meant that Straight’s dream of being a king-maker behind President Henry A. Wallace was over. And
Stalin’s hopes of having someone pliable in the White House, and amenable to the Soviet Union on all issues, were similarly dead. The issue of Wallace joining the third party, Straight believed, also led to the beginning of the end of the Communist Party in the United States.

The ambition of undercover Communist Party leaders such as Pressman and his colleagues to influence the election had drawn communists into the open and exposed them. It weakened their position to a point where they would have insignificant influence. The blunder of forming the third party allowed CIO leaders, with the backing of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, to destroy the U.S. Communist Party in its only strong base, the CIO. The party was soon after banned in the United States, thus driving the remnants of the movement underground. The heady reaction that Straight had about communism and workers when he first returned to the United States in 1937 had a decade later come to a sudden end.