A Global Network: The International Communist Conspiracy

In the 1920s, the Soviet Union developed global ambitions. It sought to undermine and destabilize governments around the globe, and hoped then to assume control of those countries.

It endeavored to achieve these imperialistic dreams by infiltrating both governments and other social institutions with undercover operatives. Once in place, these “moles” could both smuggle secrets back to Moscow, and steer policy of other countries in ways which would benefit the USSR.

Spies from various Soviet intelligence agencies were active in England, China, Mexico, and dozens of other nations. As historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Further confirmed by the recent revelations is something known before but in frequent need of stressing. Communist operatives in the United States were linked in multiple ways not only to their Moscow bosses but to Reds in other countries, all parts of a far-flung global apparatus. The most conspicuous of these ties were to the Cambridge University Communist cell of England, which produced such notorious Soviet agents as Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess. There were, in addition, North American members of this ring who attended Cambridge in the 1930s and then returned to pursue official duties on this side of the ocean. Such pro-Red operatives as Philby, Burgess, and Donald Maclean would later be dispatched to Washington by Whitehall to liaise with U.S. officials. American and British security problems accordingly crisscrossed and interacted at many places.

One example of such activity was a spy ring of Soviet agents in England and the United States who were used to influence policy regarding China. These agents, native-born Britons and Americans, nudged decisionmakers in Washington and London to reduce their support for Chiang Kai-shek, which in turn allowed Mao to overthrow China’s government and install a communist dictatorship.

The USSR Steers Policy

During 1920s, America’s attention was captured by the technological advancements and booming economy which raised incomes for citizens in all income brackets: blue collar workers, farmers, and business leaders.

During the 1930s, America’s attention was captured by the misery of the Great Depression, caused by government efforts which turned what would have been a momentary downturn into an enduring economic catastrophe.

During both decades, few people were aware of a steady effort by the USSR to plant operatives in various social and governmental institutions inside the United States. These “moles” worked for various Soviet intelligence agencies, and constituted a huge, if largely undetected, threat to millions of lives.

These spies were coordinated, in part, by the Communist Party (CPUSA), which was not merely a political party espousing various policies and candidates, but was rather a terrorist organization, espousing an explicitly “violent” overthrow of the U.S. government. The CPUSA’s documents specifically used the word ‘violent’ in its call for revolution.

These Soviet agents stole government secrets and sent them to Moscow. They also influenced American policy decisions, as historian Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

In sum, as shown by a now substantial mass of data, a powerful and devious enemy had by the middle 1940s succeeded in planting myriad secret agents and sympathizers in offices of the U.S. government (and other posts of influence) where they were able to serve the cause of Moscow and betray America’s national interests. The American people were blissfully ignorant of this danger, while a sizable number of high officials were either indifferent to the problem or in some cases complicit with it. A more alarming scenario for the safety and security of the nation would be hard to imagine.

One Soviet agent, Alger Hiss, had worked his way up to an influential role in the State Department, and had regular face-to-face meetings with President Roosevelt.

FDR, whose health was failing, relied increasingly on various advisors, who essentially made many of his policy decisions for him. Alger Hiss, a Soviet operative, was directing policy. American diplomacy in the mid-1940s sometimes favored the interests of the USSR over the security of the United States.

Soviet Moles Influence U.S. Policy

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet Union and its various intelligence agencies places numerous “moles” into “deep cover” inside various institutions, both governmental and non-governmental, in the United States.

These agents had various functions: some gathered intelligence by stealing classified documents; others influenced U.S. policy makers to skew diplomatic decisions to the advantage of the USSR; and some actually prepared for an overthrow of the U.S. government.

Such spies were coordinated, in part, through the Communist Party, which was in fact not a political party, not interested in merely advocating policies and candidates, but which was actually a terrorist organization, explicitly advocating a “violent” revolution in North America. As historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write,

In due course many such pro-Soviet operatives rose to fairly high positions, which made their allegiance to Moscow even more problematic. The best known of these apparatchiks was Alger Hiss, who became a significant figure in the U.S. State Department in the war years and would play a critical role in planning for the postwar era. And while Hiss is the most remembered of Moscow’s undercover agents, he was merely one of many. As the records prove, there were dozens of others like him at the State Department, White House, Treasury, Commerce, the wartime agencies, and other official venues.

By 1943, President Roosevelt’s failing health caused him to be increasingly reliant on assistants, instead of formulating his own policy decisions by himself.

Documents declassified after the end of the Cold War verify that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent. Hiss was one of FDR’s trusted advisors, having considerable influence on Roosevelt’s policies during face-to-face meetings with the president.

Milkweed Saves Lives

During WW2, floatation devices were crucial to saving the lives of sailors whose ships had sunk, and saving the lives of airmen who’d bailed out or crashed at sea.

The principle is simple. Give the sailors and airmen something that floats. But finding a substance that doesn’t become waterlogged is crucial. Many substances float for a while, but lifejackets need to float for hours and even days.

Milkweed is a plant regarded as a nuisance by gardeners and farmers. entomologists prize it for its ability to attract butterflies, but it true value became apparent in the early 1940s, when demand for lifejackets rose sharply.

Historian Gerald Wykes recounts how Michigan provided large amounts of milkweed for the nation’s warriors:

Late in World War II, the common milkweed was often the only thing that kept a downed aviator or soaking-wet sailor from slipping beneath the waves. The plant’s floss was used as the all-important filler for flotation devices.

Among many lives saved at sea by such flotation devices were those of President George H.W. Bush, who survived his aircraft’s crash in an inflatable raft, and Louis “Louie” Zamperini, whose raft drifted over 2,000 miles during 43 days after his airplane crashed.

More Than a Difference of Opinion

Starting around the time of WW1, and lasting until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989/1991, there were small but significant numbers of pro-Soviet individuals in the United States.

American society, in accord with its nature, wanted to extend tolerance to those whose political opinions were outside the mainstream. The United States articulated, after all, freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Bill of Rights.

But it soon became clear that this was no mere difference of opinion. Those who sympathized with the international communist conspiracy were not simply expressing a political point of view: they were terrorists.

The Communist Party in the United States (CPUSA) was not interested in the political process, nor was it engaged in attempting to persuade the voters about its ideology. Instead, it was engaged in espionage.

As part of the Soviet spy network, the CPUSA worked both to smuggle secrets out of the U.S. government and send them back to Moscow, and to infiltrate the ranks of advisors and appointees within the government and thereby nudge U.S. foreign policy away from the interests of ordinary American citizens and toward the interests of the USSR.

Soviet operatives worked their way into very sensitive positions in the federal government. Communists like Alger Hiss were advisors at the highest levels, meeting face-to-face with the president and shaping major diplomatic decisions.

Alger Hiss was a confidant to President Roosevelt. Under Hiss’s guidance, or misguidance, FDR allowed Stalin to ravage large parts of eastern Europe, and paved the way for Mao to bully Chiang Kai-shek out of China.

The CPUSA was even prepared for violence, and asserted in its written materials that it sought a “violent” revolution inside the United States.

Pro-Communists inside the United States were not merely people with alternative opinions. They were actively engaged in supporting Stalin’s murderous drive for world domination, as historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

As the record further shows, Communists and fellow travelers on official rosters in case after case were agents of the Soviet Union, plighting their troth to Moscow and striving to promote the cause of the dictator Stalin. This is of course contrary to the notion that American Reds were simply idealistic do-gooders, perhaps a bit misguided but devoted to peace and social justice, and thus shouldn’t have been ousted from government jobs just because of their opinions. In countless instances, we know that domestic Communists in official posts were actively working on behalf of Russia, and thus were the minions of a hostile foreign power.

Stalin explicitly sought to overthrow the western-style democracies in Europe, South America, and North America. His effort to bring the world under totalitarian subjugation relied on various factors, one of which was an extensive Soviet espionage network inside the United States.

Soviet Spy Ring Bigger Than First Suspected

The massive amount of data which historians have found concerning Cold War espionage has led to a reappraisal of the extent to which the Soviet spy network infiltrated the United States.

Shocking cases, like the fact that Soviet operative Alger Hiss infiltrated the State Department in the 1930s, and was advising President Roosevelt in face-to-face meetings, are merely the tip of the iceberg.

The international communist conspiracy operated an extensive spy network inside both social institutions and government agencies.

Millions of pages of formerly secret documents are now available to scholars. Researching the dark underworld of Soviet espionage inside the United States, historians Stan Evans and Herb Romerstein write:

Looking at this considerable body of data, and matching one set of materials with another, we can draw certain definite conclusions about the scope of Soviet-Communist activity in the United States and other target nations. First and foremost, it’s evident from now-available records that Communist penetration of our government — and our society in general — was, over a span of decades, massive. Hundreds of Soviet agents, Communist Party members, and fellow travelers were ensconced on official payrolls, beginning in the New Deal era then increasing rapidly during World War II, when the Soviets were our allies against the Nazis.

Under the influence of Alger Hiss, FDR made odd policy decisions, ceding millions of square miles - and millions of innocent lives - to Stalin’s expansionist imperialism.

Historians are now learning that, from the 1930s onward, the Soviets had an espionage network larger and more effective than researchers had previously imagined.

Historians Sort Cold War Data

When the Cold War ended, sometime between 1989 and 1991, historians went to work. Massive amounts of behind-the-scenes data became available.

Scholars would now be able to learn the secrets of the massive Soviet espionage network which had been active for decades inside the United States.

The narrative of the international communist conspiracy, and how it infiltrated various social institutions and government agencies, would be pieced together with data from a wide variety of sources.

Information became declassified from various Soviet intelligence agencies, like the KGB, once the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Private collections of papers from various former Soviet agents also became public.

Other sources included surveillance files from the FBI, and data from the U.S. Army’s Venona project. In late 1946, officers were able to break secret Soviet codes. Venona, begun in 1943, revealed extensive communist infiltration into various government offices.

Reviewing these various sources of Cold War data for researchers, historians Stan Evans and Herb Romerstein write:

To all of which there should be added — though this too is much neglected — a sizable trove of information about Red activity in the United States collected by committees of the Congress, based on the testimony of ex-Communist witnesses, the findings of staff investigators, and information from intelligence agencies, security squads at the State Department, and other official bodies. Like the endeavors of the FBI, the work of the committees was often downgraded or ignored while the Cold War was in progress. As may be seen today in the light of the new disclosures, the hearings and reports of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and other panels of the Congress were (and are) a gold mine of useful information on Cold War issues.

Taken together, the bits of information formed a verifiable idea of the Soviet espionage network inside the United States. The first Venona decrypts revealed that communist spies had infiltrated the Manhattan Project and the facilities at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Spies were also shown to be in several different offices within the federal government, including the State Department and the Treasury Department.

In total, Soviet infiltration and subversion inside the United States was more extensive than scholars had previously suspected.