A New Leader for a New Country: Presidents Make Precedents

The metamorphosis of eastern North America from British colony to independent sovereign nation lasted several decades. From the middle of the 18th century, especially after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the colonies grew more and more restless under the oppressive British government. The King and Parliament levied a series of ever-higher taxes, confiscating thereby the hard-earned property of those living in the colonies. Further, the British regulated many facets of commerce — both business within the colonies and trade between the colonies and the rest of the world. The British also violated the rights of the colonists in egregious ways: the freedom of speech was threatened and violated.

Over the third quarter of the century, tensions grew, outrage among the colonies grew, and British control and oppression grew, until April 1775, when the war started. The fighting ended in late 1782; a peace treaty was signed in 1783. The colonies were now the United States of America.

Moving away from British persecution was only one half of the process. Moving toward the creation of the new nation’s own government was the other half.

There are many examples of revolutions which succeeded in throwing off cruel governments, only to fail to have prepared a new government to step in and take over. This is why the French Revolution failed. This is why so many postcolonial nations have gained their independence and autonomy, and then become “failed states” or remain locked in a third-world condition.

Throughout the 1700s, the Americans had not only developed vindications for their desire to be independent and sovereign, but rather they had also explored the general principles and possible specific programs for a new government. Some of these concepts had been tested in the settings of the legislatures within the individual colonies. The heritage of the British Parliament also provided a legacy from which both general principles and specific practices could be drawn, possibly modified, and sometimes rejected.

The thinkers who prepared the way for the revolution of 1776, and who shepherded it for several decades afterward, had deep and broad educations. Some of them had traveled widely; others had experience from business, military, political, or agricultural endeavors. Among the many names which belong to this list are Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Patrick Henry. Thomas Jefferson was able to read Greek at an advanced level by his early teenage years. Benjamin Franklin explored nearly every field of human endeavor, making groundbreaking discoveries in physics, and developing a music instrument for which Mozart, Josef Haydn, and Beethoven, among others, composed works. Among the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, a working knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, and other languages was commonplace.

In June 1776, a committee began to write a document which would eventually become the Articles of Confederation. This paper would be a forerunner to the United States Constitution. All thirteen states ratified the finalized text of the Articles of Confederation by February 1781.

By September 1786, it was clear that the Articles of Confederation needed some adjustments. In the course of meetings to determine which changes were needed, starting in May 1787, the revisions were so significant that the document which emerged from these meetings in September 1787 was essentially an entirely new document, the U.S. Constitution.

The final product of the Constitutional Convention was designed to improve on the Articles of Confederation. It included insights from contemporary debates about government: discussions from the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu, and others. The last few centuries of the British experience shaped the document: the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Civil War, the tenure of Cromwell, the Stuart Restoration in 1660, and the British Bills of Rights of 1689. Given that the delegates at the convention had an extensive knowledge of history, the antecedents of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the political thoughts of medieval Scholasticism, are visible in the Constitution.

The Constitution displays a certain universality and timelessness, inasmuch as it draws upon the features of human nature. All people — regardless of the place or era in which they live, regardless of their language, culture, or religion — share certain basic characteristics because they are human beings. They all desire, e.g., peace, freedom, justice, and prosperity. The rare exceptions — the warmonger or the criminal — even have such properties, although hidden behind a mental or moral disease.

The document features various procedural complexities designed to slow the functioning of the government, and thereby avert any scenario in which the government would infringe upon the rights of the individual. The Constitution is a set of rules which the government must obey. The Constitution protects the people from the government.

The majority of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was opposed to slavery and sought its abolition. To create an instability which would eventually demand that attention be paid to the cause of abolition, the famous — or notorious — “three-fifths clause” was inserted into the text. They designed this text to destabilize the institution of slavery. This wording was not, as some suppose, devised to solidify slavery, but rather to undermine it.

Yet having an ethical and principled constitution was only the first step. Not only a structure of offices constitutes a system of government, but rather also the individuals who populate those offices.

The launch of the new federal administration would find its success not only in the equilibrium and justice established by the Constitution, but rather also in the character and quality of the human beings who would fill the various roles in the new structure.

It was in this respect that George Washington’s role became crucial, as historian Ron Chernow writes:

The battle royal over the Constitution exposed such glaring rifts in the country that America needed a first president of unimpeachable integrity who would embody the rich promise of the new republic. It had to be somebody of godlike stature who would seem to levitate above partisan politics, a symbol of national unity as well as a functioning chief executive. Everybody knew that George Washington alone could manage the paradoxical feat of being a politician above politics. Many people had agreed reluctantly to the new Constitution only because they assumed that Washington would lead the first government.

The procedural mechanisms of the legislature, of the executive, and of the judiciary are the skeleton of the system, but the humans in the offices are its flesh and blood. The styles of communication, the abilities to see which compromises are reasonable, and other interpersonal intangibles also partly determine whether an individual is successful in office.

George Washington possessed an ability to see talent and potential, even when it came in unlikely personalities, or was disguised behind immaturity. He also stuck unswervingly to his principles, ready to compromise on negotiables, but never conceding matters of integrity.

It was in this way that the improbably good working relationship between Washington and Alexander Hamilton arose, as Ron Chernow reports:

Perhaps the main reason that Washington and Hamilton functioned so well together was that both men longed to see the thirteen states welded into a single, respected American nation. At the close of the war, Washington had circulated a letter to the thirteen governors, outlining four things America would need to attain greatness: consolidation of the states under a strong federal government, timely payment of its debts, creation of an army and a navy, and harmony among its people. Hamilton would have written the identical list. The young treasury secretary gained incomparable power under Washington because the president approved of the agenda that he promoted with such tireless brilliance. Jefferson had it wrong when he charged that Hamilton manipulated Washington. On fundamental political matters, Washington was simply more attuned to Hamilton than he was to Jefferson. For that reason, Washington willingly served as the political shield that Alexander Hamilton needed as he became America’s most influential and controversial man.

Hamilton had both training and experience in the law. As part of the Constitutional Convention, he understood the document from the inside; he understood the competing viewpoints which had been mixed and welded into the text. He’d been one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays designed to explain the new Constitution to the people, and to persuade them to adopt it.

Had Alexander Hamilton lived two centuries later than he did, he may well have used phrases like “systems theory in political science” — or had such phrases applied to him. With no precedents to follow, he, along with Washington and the other members of the new government, had to implement the mechanisms of the Constitution for the first time. This first generation of elected and appointed officials had to grasp both theory and practice: they needed to be both thinkers and doers.

The dynamics among the first cabinet members were both personal and political. The concept of “cabinet” was not yet clearly defined. Washington met with Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, Jefferson as Secretary of State, and Henry Knox as Secretary of War. The Attorney General, Edmund Randoph, was only marginally associated with the cabinet, while the Vice President, John Adams, was largely kept out of it.

Hamilton was energetic, offering opinions on nearly every aspect of government. Ron Chernow describes Washington as “above the partisan fray” and “detached.” In this context, “partisan” does not refer to formally organized political parties, but informal alliances among various leaders: political parties had yet to be formally created. Washington “was gifted with superb judgment” and was “never a pliant tool in Hamilton’s hands.” Washington “often overrode his treasury secretary.”

In contrast to Hamilton, Washington “had learned to govern his emotions” and “was conciliatory, with an innate sense of decorum.” Although Washington worked well with Hamilton, he “could weigh all sides of an issue and coolly appraise the political repercussions.”

Washington and Hamilton counterbalanced and complemented each other. Hamilton was impulsive and sometimes deliberately provocative. Hamilton’s “excesses” and “rash decisions” ultimately cost him his life.

The Purposes of the Soviet Espionage Network inside the United States: More than Stealing Secrets

Ordinarily, when people think of spies, they picture spies as stealing secrets. That’s what spies do.

Yet spies do more than gather intelligence. They often plant falsehoods into the systems of the government against which they are working. They hope that the officials in that government will act on the basis of these fabrications.

Spies also work to insinuate themselves into circles of power, whether by gaining posts in a government, or by becoming confidants and eventually influencers in political organizations. In these situations, spies can not only gain access to secrets and plant fabrications, but they can also influence decision-makers in the government and eventually become decision-makers in the government: in the very government which they are attempting to destroy.

Finally, spies sometimes commit acts of violence: sabotage and assassination.

From the earliest days of Soviet Socialism, starting with the revolutions of 1917, Soviet operatives inside the United States functioned in all the ways discussed above. Concrete examples include Alger Hiss, who had a stellar government career. He served as a clerk for a Supreme Court justice, and went on to work in the Justice Department. He then was an assistant to a Senate committee. In 1936, Hiss began working at the State Department. He held an impressive and ever higher series of government posts until he retired from government work in late 1946. In the latter years of his career, Alger Hiss met frequently in face-to-face meetings with President Roosevelt, and became a trusted advisor to the president. Not only did Hiss meet frequently with Roosevelt in the White House, but he traveled with him to the Yalta conference in February 1945. In Yalta, a city on the Crimean Peninsula, Roosevelt met with Stalin and Winston Churchill to make decisions about the postwar reorganization of Europe. Hiss exerted significant influence over Roosevelt at the conference; indeed, Roosevelt sometimes merely did whatever Hiss told him to do.

Alger Hiss was also a paid spy working for the NKVD. The NKVD was a predecessor of the KGB. Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent.

Another specific example is Harry Dexter White. He worked in the Treasury Department from 1934 to 1946. He had decisive influence in the shaping of U.S. policies. He was a paid agent, working for the Soviet Socialists.

One tactic used by espionage agents is to find a naive and sympathetic individual who will be easily influenced. This individual will not be aware that he is being manipulated by sinister forces, yet will act in ways which support those forces. Soviet spies like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White did exactly this with Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

Morgenthau was the United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1934 to 1945 during the Roosevelt administration. Morgenthau formulated economic policy, both for the years of WW2 and projected for the postwar global economy. In this context, he is often cited as the author of the “Morgenthau Plan,” a policy proposal which would have devastated what little remained of the German economy and infrastructure at war’s end.

Not only would this policy have been an attempt to consign the German people, already suffering after a dozen years of Nazi oppression, permanently to a third-world status, but it would have also removed an important line of defense: in order to shield western Europe from a Soviet attack, West Germany needed to have a solid infrastructure and industrial base to support the thousands of Allied troops stationed there.

The plan called for Germany to be stripped of its industrial base and physical infrastructure, leaving the land “agricultural and pastoral.” Morgenthau’s personal motive may have been a sense of justice: Morgenthau felt that Germany needed to be punished for war crimes, and that Germany should not be given the opportunity to rebuild itself. Historians use the phrase “harsh peace” to describe Morgenthau’s approach. Morgenthau may have also thought that Germany should be kept weak, lest it start another war.

Whatever Morgenthau’s emotional motives may have been, the plan itself was shaped decisively by Harry Dexter White. As a Soviet operative, White saw that a weakened Germany would give the Soviet Socialists a better chance in any potential future invasion of western Europe. Harry Dexter White used Henry Morgenthau’s emotions to get Morgenthau to promote the plan.

Henry Morgenthau provided the unfocused emotion and bitter passion needed to sell the plan as justice. Harry Dexter White created the details of the plan, calculated to serve Stalin’s interests, leave western Europe vulnerable, and facilitate the enslavement of millions when the Soviet attack happened.

The Morgenthau Plan should have been titled the Harry Dexter White Plan.

At the same time, Alger Hiss was using his influence to persuade President Roosevelt that America could trust Stalin. Under Hiss’s influence, Roosevelt accepted Stalin’s promise, given with no guarantees, that the Soviet Socialists would allow free and fair elections in the countries of eastern Europe — the countries already, or soon to be, occupied by the Soviet army. Millions of people in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and elsewhere would be subjugated to the Soviet Socialist dictatorship because Alger Hiss persuaded President Roosevelt to grant Stalin’s wish.

Historians know with confidence that not only Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, but also dozens of other high-ranking officials inside the U.S. government, were Soviet agents. Although much of this was known, and some of it suspected, prior to 1995, it was in that year that the National Security Agency (NSA) declassified some documents from its Venona Project. These documents, dating from 1943 to 1980, were intercepted communications between individuals in the Soviet espionage network inside the United States. The NSA had to decrypt these messages, as they were written in code. These messages identified those officials inside the U.S. government who were working for the Soviet Socialists.

In 1952, Whittaker Chambers wrote about Soviet intelligence activity. He himself had been a Soviet agent. He knew firsthand the workings of the Soviet espionage network. But in 1952, the Venona papers had not yet been published, and so he lacked documentation for some of what he wrote. He would be vindicated 43 years later, when the Venona decryptions were declassified. In one of his books, Whittaker Chambers wrote:

In a situation with few parallels in history, the agents of an enemy power were in a position to do much more purloin documents. They were in a position to influence the nation’s foreign policy in the interest of the nation’s chief enemy, and not only on exceptional occasions, like Yalta (where Hiss’s role, while presumably important, is still ill-defined) or through the Morgenthau plan for the destruction of Germany (which is generally credited to White) but in what must have been the staggering sum of day to day decisions. That power to influence policy has always been the ultimate purpose of the Communist Party’s infiltration. It was much more dangerous, and, as events have proved, much more difficult to detect, than espionage, which beside it is trivial, though the two go hand in hand.

Chambers not only identifies Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, but points to the multiple tasks of the Soviet espionage network, i.e., that the agents did more than steal secrets.

Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein highlight the accuracy of the statements made by Chambers. This precision is even more remarkable, given that Chambers wrote before the declassification of the Venona decryptions.

Chambers was correct about the roles of Hiss and White, though now accessible records that prove the point weren’t open to inspection when he made this comment.

Evans and Romerstein also give credit to Chambers for pointing out that the Soviet espionage network did more than steal secrets: “As to the relative importance of policy influence compared to spying, Chambers” indicated that Soviet agents planted disinformation and influenced policy decisions to a nearly unimaginable extent. The president of the United States was sitting in the Oval Office, having friendly one-on-one policy discussions with a man who reported to the Kremlin.

Because Chambers had himself been a Soviet agent, his account of at least a segment of the spy network was authentic and detailed. Evans and Romerstein show that Chambers gave one of the most significant descriptions of the Soviet intelligence apparatus: “That sums up the matter about as well as it can be stated.”

Ultimately, the truth became manifest. Alger Hiss was sent to prison. Harry Dexter White’s Morgenthau Plan was rejected in favor of rebuilding Germany. The purposes of peace, justice, and freedom were served. That is good news.

Sadly, however, Hiss and White — and dozens of other Soviet spies operating inside the United States at the time — did substantial damage: they emboldened Stalin and his successors. They are at least partly responsible for the deaths in the Hungarian Uprising, the armed suppression of the Prague Spring, the Korean War, the Vietnam war, and other incidents around the globe.