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Spies, Traitors, Agents of Influence, and Useful Idiots
The subversion of FDR’s government, as retold by a master.
Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of
Roosevelt’s Government
By M.
Stanton Evans and Herbert
Romerstein
(Threshold Editions, 294 pages,
$26)
There were giants in those days, and Stan Evans is still standing, a man of great wit and erudition, a fighting journalist whom several generations of young conservatives have gladly followed into ideological battle.
The wit was on full display at The American Spectator’s 2011 Robert L. Bartley Dinner, at which Evans accepted the Barbara Olson Award. He spoke of the similarities among Texas (where he was born), Indiana (where TAS was born), and Alabama, whose Sen. Jeff Sessions was in attendance. In those states, he said, unlike Washington, “Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms is not a bureau. It’s a way of life.”
Addressing his remarks to Congress, in the person of Rep. Paul Ryan, also in attendance, Evans urged repeal of Obama’s health care law, “in order to know what is not in it.” He pointed out that even Nancy Pelosi said she didn’t know what was in it (and no doubt still doesn’t). But with repeal, “whatever is in it, will not be in it.”
There were anecdotes involving Indiana state legislator Vernon Wormser, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Hillary Clinton’s vast right-wing conspiracy (of which we’re all proudly a part); an acknowledgment of Bob Tyrrell’s “persecution” of the Clintons; and an observation on the ideological aspects of aging: “I’ve always felt that anyone who has his head screwed on right should be conservative when he is young and, as he gets older, become more and more conservative.”
That, in a nutshell, is the road Stan Evans has taken. In 1955 he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, where he’d been an editor of the Yale Daily News. He went to work at the Freeman, was named editor of the Indianapolis News (where at 26 he was the nation’s youngest editor of a metropolitan daily), and became one of the earliest contributing editors of National Review, and an ally and friend-to-the-end of Bill Buckley, Bill Rusher, and Frank Meyer. (Many conservatives were upset when, after Frank Meyer’s death, George Will rather than Stan Evans was appointed NR’s books editor.) He was a frequent contributor to Human Events and to TAS, to which he also provided valuable advice and counsel, especially during the early Indiana years. He was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times news syndicate, founder and president of the National Journalism Center, and president of the American Conservative Union and the Philadelphia Society.
He was also one of those young conservatives, along with Lee Edwards, whom Bill Buckley and Marvin Liebman recruited to help with the founding of Young Americans for Freedom. Stan Evans drafted the Sharon Statement, and Lee Edwards became the first editor of New Guard.
Evans is author of nine books, among them the magisterial Blacklisted by History, a vindication of Senator Joseph McCarthy based on an intensive analysis of now-available FBI files and material from Soviet archives. In Stalin’s Secret Agents, he continues his examination of the depth and breadth of Soviet subversion, as revealed through primary sources and formerly secret documents.
His co-author, Herbert Romerstein (The Venona Secrets), a leading Cold War expert, served on the staff of several congressional committees, among them the House Intelligence Committee, and headed the USIA’s Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation from 1983 to 1989, when the extraordinarily nightmarish Soviet alternative universe finally imploded.
That implosion occurred in no small part because of the continued pressure, despite the best liberal attempts to thwart it, applied to Washington thinkers, legislators, and policy makers by outnumbered conservative spokesman, journalists, and patriots like Evans and Romerstein. The fact is that there was indeed a genuine international communist conspiracy, and the ultimate success of this conspiracy necessarily entailed neutralizing opposition from the United States. To this end, Joseph Stalin’s agents of influence infiltrated the federal government at the highest levels, one of their primary objectives being to shape our foreign policy in a manner favorable to the Soviet Union.
With FDR’s health and mental capacity steadily diminishing, these agents of influence, among them Harry Hopkins, one of FDR’s closest advisers who came to be known as the “Deputy President” (he actually lived in the White House), increasingly steered American foreign policy in pro-Soviet directions.
EVANS AND ROMERSTEIN focus on the Yalta Conference of early 1945, a meeting at which the big three—FDR, Churchill, and Stalin—decided the futures of nations like Poland and Yugoslavia in the post-WWII world. Two conflicting views about that future would set the tone of the talks. Winston Churchill believed that “the West urgently needed to shore up its defenses against the expansion of Soviet power,” while among those apparently speaking for FDR (the authors convincingly document the president’s mental deterioration, witnessed by a wide variety of reputable observers and casting doubt on his ability to think clearly), “the impending dominance of Soviet power in Europe was not something to be combated, deplored, or counterbalanced, but rather an outcome to be accommodated and assisted.”
Part of this view was no doubt an extraordinary misreading of Joseph Stalin by those, who, if they weren’t agents of influence, served effectively as useful idiots. The authors quote an assessment of Stalin written by Joseph Davies, our ambassador to Moscow: “He [Stalin] gives the impression of a strong mind which is composed and gentle. A child would like to sit on his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.” And FDR himself is quoted as having said to a somewhat startled cabinet “that as Stalin early on had studied for the priesthood, ‘something entered into his nature of the way in which a Christian gentleman should behave.’”
In much the same vein, the authors quote William Bullitt on FDR’s view of aid to Stalin. Said FDR: “I have just a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for world democracy and peace.” (Emphasis added by the authors.)
And that, at Yalta, is pretty much what happened. The authors go on to give an account of the dealings between FDR and Stalin, including FDR’s attempt to cut Winston Churchill out of the discussions so as not to upset Stalin, and some tasteless jokes told by FDR, including a highly offensive reference to the problems he and Stalin shared in dealing with Jews.
About the Author
John R. Coyne, Jr. a former White House speech-writer, is co-author with Linda Bridges of Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement (Wiley).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (35) | Leave a comment
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Doctor Right| 1.31.13 @ 8:04AM
Perhaps one day a dogged historian will write of our current President's unseemly devotion to Islamism, including the infiltration of our government by pro-Islamist individuals?
pogybait| 1.31.13 @ 9:08AM
Funny, now the big players have changed. So one begs to ask, will we be slowly lead into an Indonesian style Commu-sharia or commu-ria country. Will our wonderful leaders recognize this unprecedented wonderfulness as they dismantle every institution in blind spirit. Perhaps at that moment in history our dear leader be declared the mahdi and unite the Shia with Sunni-commuria making the rest of us fall in line once WE understand and know OUR place as dhimmis….?
Doctor Right| 1.31.13 @ 9:37AM
I hope he tries...
evie826| 3.25.13 @ 3:19PM
No-doubt about it, this really is the most financially rewarding Ive ever done. Make money with Google. I’m a full time student. I actually started six months/ago and almost straight away got me at least $80 per hour. I work through this link,, http://tw.gs/YbVcey
AlanAnti-RoveCheneyBrooks | 1.31.13 @ 9:54AM
Arnie,
I can't communicate with these gentlemen to tell them that madrassahs are as good as any schools in the West, and some are better. AS tries to blame liberals for our schools when it is the impossibility of Americans to work together on anything save for business.
AlanAnti-RoveCheneyBrooks | 1.31.13 @ 10:59AM
And all the author can talk about is how FDR was moribund 68 yrs. ago and all that jazz...
Tina B| 1.31.13 @ 8:16AM
All I know for sure is how one Eastern European, my Polish Dad, felt about Yalta and the loss of his country. It was lost to him because he knew if he went back, after serving in the Polish Army as a Captain, and his post-war escape to England, he would be imprisoned or worse by Stalin's goons. He despised Roosevelt forever after that conference. He understood what had been done to the Yugoslavs and the Poles. He nevertheless understood Americas inherent greatness and, after a stint in Australia under a contract as an engineer, got the heck out and sailed with his British wife and a now 4 year old precocious me, to the land of Golden Opportunity, now governed by the great General, Ike. He was suspicious of Communists in the American Government for most of his life, though, and mostly during the VietNam War protests which he hated and taught me to distrust as well. I still do, in fact.
I will search out both books spoken of here, and thanks, Mr. Coyness, for validating the suspicions of one Captain Teodor B. Kaczmarek, soldier, aerospace engineer, and wonderful Christian husband and father, by writing of this here in TAS.
That's why I hang here, with the good guys in the White hats, and learn.
PolishKnight| 1.31.13 @ 9:09AM
When childhood friends of mine posted on facebook that conservatives needed to, quote, "suck it up and outlaw private gun ownership for the sake of the children", I thought to myself of the story of my father-in-law who had to "steal" food from his own backyard because Stalin's soldiers were under orders to shoot anyone trying to eat even if it was their own food. Most of the soldiers, unlike leftist bureaucrats, had a heart and didn't shoot.
To this day, he has to shop for bread once a day even if the pantry is full.
Doctor Right| 1.31.13 @ 9:41AM
We need more people like your Dad, today.
My own paternal Grandmother was 100% Polish, born in the USA to Polish immigrants. She was a staunch Reaganite and loved John Paul II. I'm only sorry that she passed away in '87 and never got to see a free Poland.
CJW| 1.31.13 @ 5:41PM
Tina
You may like "The President (Reagan), the Pope (John Paul), and the Prime Minister (Thatcher). by John O'Sullivan.
Tina B| 2.1.13 @ 7:52AM
Jotting that down now. Thanks, CJ, and others as well.
MacWell™| 2.3.13 @ 3:49PM
I agree Tina, I go to all the other sites to get the news, but I come here to hear the wisdom.
Tina B| 1.31.13 @ 8:18AM
*Oops, Mr. Coyne. Curse you spellcheck keyboard.
Robbins Mitchell| 1.31.13 @ 8:53AM
Well,let's face it FDR got snookered good at Yalta....and ever since then American academe,the punditry,and the formal press, have all cooperated or colluded or conspired...take your pick....to masquerade or hide or erase that sordid and salient fact....time to clear out a few cobwebs about Yalta
Alan| 1.31.13 @ 9:26AM
The American Media loved Stalin, one of the greatest mass murderers in history and nothing has changed since then. When this whole thing is played out and put in context the mass media in this country will go down as the biggest procurers of treason of the whole bunch of leftist stooges.
sickofit5| 1.31.13 @ 11:33AM
You are right. The deliberately misled the american people when describing the famine and purges while praising statism. Sort of like what they are doing now. They really haven't change. The only difference is they can hide in plain site. There are no legitimate news agencies left, except for talk radio and Fox some of the time, to call them on it and you no longer have to hide the fact that you want to destroy this country.
Tina B| 2.1.13 @ 7:54AM
Sickening, isn't it? You're not alone, I'm sickofit2!
Anti-Statist| 1.31.13 @ 12:52PM
Walter Duranty of the New York Times won a Pulitzer for not reporting upon that which he observed in the USSR, but reported what the American left wanted to read. Including himself.
Controse| 2.2.13 @ 4:23PM
Doesn't it tell us all we need to know about the moral character of the modern journalistic culture that Walter Duranty has not been posthumously relieved of his Pulitzer with a withering excoriation explaining the decision? The Pulitzer is the prize every new honoree should decline until Walter Duranty is no longer a member of that cohort. It remains a prize without honor.
Tina B| 2.1.13 @ 7:52AM
Yes, Alan, and said well.
Doctor Right| 1.31.13 @ 9:44AM
Has anyone else ever wondered why it's OK for teens and 20-somethings to walk around with images of Che Guevara (a brutal assassin), Mao (a genocidal lunatic), or the Communist hammer & sickle on their t-shirts?
We'd send a child home from school, or suspend someone from University for wearing a t-shirt with a Swastika on it, or an image of Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, etc. And rightly so.
So why is it OK to wear clothes that celebrate communist killers?
Don't worry...I already know the answer.
cicero| 1.31.13 @ 10:14AM
Doctor, they get sent home for wearing shirts with "Merry Christmas" on them.
I can't understand why everyone is shocked that Roosevelt had Communists on his team at Yalta. When he came into office, his coterie of "bright young things" were all enamoured of the Soviet Union of the '20s and '30s. I believe their rallying cry was something to the effect of, "we have seen the future, and it is the Soviet Union". I recommend a read of Ms. Appl;ebaums, "The Forgotten Man". There was also a book written a couple of years ago about the factory workers who were lured to the Soviet Union during the depression (1923 to 1941 for the working class), to work in their new industrial empire. Once there, their passports were taken, and they were not allowed to leave. Even though our State Dept. and the President were well aware of what was happening, they did nothing. Many of those abandoned died in the Gulag. The Ruether brothers (of UAW fame) just managed to get out. That is why the UAW, in the '40s and '50s was so anti-communist.
You will not find the history of this taught in our schools today. The most popular text used in college survey courses today is Howard Ziin's "The Peoples' History of the United States". Zinn was the vice president of the Communist Party of the United States. And we wonder why we are going to hell in a handbasket?
Al Adab| 1.31.13 @ 11:14AM
Same old double standard. Leftists good, Rightists (although of course the Nazis were socialist) bad. Leftists seek to empower The People and care while bad rightists just want people to starve. Yada, yada yada.
MacWell™| 2.3.13 @ 4:09PM
cicero?
We all know the problem America is going through, but we don't, as of yet know how to fix it.
I hate to admit it but "we the people" are to blame.
We've remained the silent majority. We're too busy.
Ever notice how our education system started going down the toilet right after "we the people" remained silent and allowed one woman and nine, unelected, black robed men to throw God from my classroom?
Television, which when a new thing, was filled with great shows, not 24/7 infomercials. Married couples were shown in separate beds, now? anything goes, even in so-called prime time. Watching the tube today one would believe that half the population is gay and the other half are morons. Fathers, of course fall into the later. Real, involved fathers are never shown in a good light, usually in ridicule. Unless you watch the Hallmark™ channel, all you see is the networks pushing the envelope more and more. What happened to shows like Bishop Sheen, and I remember seeing Katharine Kulman speak on a show on regularly. There was something about her that, to this day, I remember feeling good just listening to her as a child. Television has so much potential for good, and yet the airwaves are whores to the highest bidder.
MarkJeff| 1.31.13 @ 10:25AM
And you can be sure similar things are going on in this current administration, which unlike FDR's, welcomes it!
Al Adab| 1.31.13 @ 11:12AM
Let me, for your consideration, posit a question. Whatever became of the agents (Herb Philbrick - I led three lives, comes to mind) of the Soviet Union who were in the U S when the wall came down and the USSR dissolved? A new TV show ( I know, its TV) titled The Americans about Soviet agents raises the question. Are those agents and double agents still in the country? Did they repatriate voluntarily? Did the U S know who they were (hardly secret if so) and deport them? We know many were here at the time, so what became of them?
Michele San Pietro| 1.31.13 @ 11:32AM
There's nothing new about that. Simple-minded and bad-faith Liberals like to lash out at "McCarthyism", but everybody knows Soviet infiltrations in high positions were real in those years, and U.S. authorities had every right to fight against them, at a time when Stalin and the other Communist tyrants eliminated millions of opponents. Excesses of McCarthyism must be condemned, certainly not the idea of fighing Communist infiltrations in itself. Every country has the right to protect itself and high treason is an extremely serious crime severely punished all over the world. I don't consider McCarthyism a model, but I won't scream blue murder for it, either. Anyway, to compare Stalinism with McCarthyism is like confusing a hurricane with a yawn.
PolishKnight| 1.31.13 @ 11:57AM
McCarthyism reminds me of the Valery Plame incident. Republicans did NOT out her. It was the left that did so via the media. They then witchhunted poor Scooter Libby and burned him at the stake because he didn't reveal to the FBI what a reporter had said to him. Their final narrative is that this proves that Libby outed Plame and was ordered to do so by Dick Cheney.
McCarthy is in the same boat: He sought to brought attention to security leaks and the left demanded he produce names. He produced them at their request and then they cried he was "witchhunting" them by producing names. In the meantime, it was during the Truman "buck stops here" administration that these spies got a foothold to begin with.
Keep in mind that just 10 years prior to McCarthy, FDR was locking up Japanese Americans in concentration camps.
Petronius| 1.31.13 @ 1:03PM
Presidents could care less about governing philosophy or the effects thereof. The only thing that matters to them is what the media and the low rent proles believe.
JohnTee| 1.31.13 @ 11:10PM
What's that they say about history repeating itself? "Those who weren't agents of influence, served as useful idiots." Looks like we've come full circle, but this time the agents of the Obama administration and the idiots who defend, cover for, and vote for them may have won.
Bob K| 1.31.13 @ 11:21PM
By the time of the Yalta Conference Russian Troops were in control of all of the Eastern European Countries and were only 40 miles from Berlin.
Stalin was negotiating from a position of strength and he knew it; he had several million troops in Eastern Europe. Churchill and Roosevelt were both aware of that but Roosevelt was too ill and did not have the stamina needed for long negotiations.
Britain was worn out from the war and the Americans were also ready to see it come to an end. Even without the deplorable communist infiltration of Roosevelt's Administration the United States could not have dictated the division of Europe at that time.
Controse| 2.2.13 @ 4:43PM
What you say is true. There was little FDR and Churchill could have done to prevent Stalin from having his way with eastern Europe. The immorality was FDR and Churchill leaving Yalta giving Stalin's occupation a seal of approval. A simple declaration that it MUST be a temporary occupation and that they would work tirelessly to restore self-determination to eastern Europe would have gone a long way toward changing history's verdict of their culpability.
Abu Ian| 2.1.13 @ 1:55AM
Those who want to educate themselves on this topic would be richly rewarded to read this book in conjunction with "Willing Accomplices" by Kent Clizbe, which provides excellent background on how the USSR positioned itself so successfully to attack US institutions. This history is factual and fascinating, as well as largely unknown to those of us who were schooled in a PC world.
Tina B| 2.1.13 @ 8:09AM
Ok, Abu, I am now on a hunt for this title. Thank you for your input. Although I was educated, somewhat, in a Catholic school in the 60s, I taught public school for a good while, almost half of my life. I was totally unaware of the lack of any teaching about the Truth of Communist takeovers in the classrooms of my good friends teaching Social Studies. The one society they never studied was the essentially Communist model. This is to my shame. I was able, in math classes I taught, to use the wisdom of my students from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, one from China, even Colombia, or certain Eastern European nations, to teach the others what it was like living under the likes of Castro and his ilk. They could make it come alive to other eighth graders who could think. I say this because many of my students could not engage in such deep conversations by the age of fourteen. But I tried. More than ANY of the social studies teachers I know, I tried. Nothing PC about Tina, never was.
obadiah| 2.3.13 @ 10:58PM
Assignments to vindicate Joe McCarthy and prove something happened at Yalta are singularly daunting. MSE has been turning out such screeds for right-wing appetites quite a while. Didn't he teach Louis L'Amour how to write?
I read about Joe McCarthy's firm belief that eating a quarter-pound of butter before drinking a fifth of whiskey prevented hangovers. Several pounds of butter a week no doubt contributed to his early demise. FDR hung on longer. (Churchill never suffered any ill effects.) By Yalta, however, Soviet dominance was a fait accompli and FDR's vitality and morbidity didn't make any difference.