FILED, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Knoll, Erwin
But Not Forgotten The FBI and The Progressive BY ERWIN KNOLL On September 30, 1947, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sent a downright cordial letter to Morris...
...Before receiving that bland reply over the Director's signature, every correspondent was subjected to a careful search of the FBI's files...
...Ladd, did not specify what "aggressive steps" might be taken by the Bureau against an Ivy League law professor and a Midwest-based political magazine...
...But two documents in the H-Bomb-article file are worth mentioning...
...In the 1950s, the Bureau received many inquiries from citizens who wanted to know whether it was all right to read The Progressive, or who had come across an issue and wanted to call the FBI's attention to the dangerous contents...
...As if that were not enough, the FBI reported that Mayer "strongly criticized the American capitalist system and prophesied its eventual destruction through world revolution...
...I am sure you will not infer from my inability to be of assistance that we do or do not have in our files the information you desire...
...How could material from The Progressive's FBI files dating back to the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s possibly be "properly classified," as the FBI claims, in 1986...
...Rodell and The Progressive magazine in their places...
...The Progressive is regarded as a generally liberal paper and ex-Senator Robert M. LaFollette Jr., president of the Progressive Publishing Company, is regarded as a bitter enemy of the communists...
...Therefore, prosecution was not warranted...
...A March 6, 1961, FBI memo noted that he not only had unkind words for the Bureau but "has made numerous speeches and written many articles against racial segregation, against conscription of men into the Armed Forces, and against the use of arms as a means of settling disputes...
...Then, as now, we'd gladly have accepted the price of a subscription from the FBI...
...One can't be too careful...
...Despite the association of such blatantly subversive elements with the magazine, the FBI never attacked it in public...
...I wonder whether that question will occur to the person who, one day soon, will add to the files Pages 24 and 25 of the October 1986 issue of The Progressive...
...it should not be known that copies are being purchased by the bureau...
...And Erwin Knoll is the Editor of The Progressive...
...What's more, "he filed suit against the U.S...
...What "law-enforcement purposes" could possibly have been served by compiling dossiers on this magazine...
...I regret, therefore, that I am unable to comply with your request...
...Others are Government interagency memoranda on the H-Bomb case that have been so heavily inked out as to be incomprehensible...
...Why "discreetly...
...Magazine necessary to enable Internal Security Section to follow the articles of topical interest on political scene...
...in the interest of the national defense or foreign policy, for example, information involving intelligence sources or methods...
...Milton Mayer, one of the contributors, was a subject in a sedition case during the war...
...Every name and organization mentioned in that memo had a hand-penned asterisk above it, indicating that separate FBI dossiers on the individuals and groups had been consulted...
...It is suggested that a letter be sent to Rodell setting him straight on his charges...
...An internal memo attached in 1947 to the FBI's file copy of the Hoover letter stated: "There is no information in the files on Rubin or Isabel Bacon LaFollette, associate editor...
...about 400 pages more have been withheld altogether...
...That article, headed "What Should We Do About the Commies?," triggered an FBI inquiry summarized in a closely typed two-and-a-half-page internal memo, parts of which have been inked out in the copy released to me...
...groups which, for whatever motive, were opposed to the war against Germany and Japan...
...Whatever the Bureau had in mind, it apparently did not contemplate canceling its subscription...
...most of the others have lines, sentences, or entire paragraphs deleted...
...The other—the most recent document released to me—has both the sender's and receiver's names blacked out...
...In April 1952, The Progressive published his article "Was Alger Hiss Framed?," which touched off another flurry of Bureau activity...
...Referenced telephone call noted that DOE [the Department of Energy] has not satisfied certain requirements for the Department of Justice, Internal Security Section, Criminal Division, to demonstrate that classified information had been actually compromised, severely damaging national security...
...The Progressive contains articles disclosing contemporary, liberal political viewpoints...
...The September 1947 letter is the earliest document—and the last friendly one— in some 400 pages of FBI files on The Progressive that I obtained recently under the Freedom of Information Act...
...He emphatically stated he would go to prison before he would serve in the Armed Forces...
...One is an FBI memo dated September 15, 1983, which notes, "This case was placed in closed status per FBIHQ airtel, 1/13/81...
...In an article for Newsweek magazine, Hoover had urged Americans who wanted to "fight communists" to respect the law and the Constitution, and to "make democracy work with equal opportunity and the fullest enjoyment of every American's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
...James Wechsler, the editor of The New York Post...
...An early victim was Fred Rodell, a distinguished professor of law at Yale University and a frequent contributor to The Progressive m the 1940s and 1950s...
...I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you," Hoover wrote to Rubin, and he went on to assure the editor "that the FBI is strictly a fact-finding agency and that its actions to deal with the communists will follow a path of strict constitutionality, free from any taint whatever of totalitarian methods...
...Mayer, in particular, was viewed with dark suspicion by the guardians of America's internal security...
...on whose investigations the bulk of the witchhunt has been and will be based...
...According to the FBI's own summary, Rodell "was convinced that regardless of Hiss's innocence or guilt, his conviction was procured in large part by the use of highly suspect and very possibly manufactured evidence...
...It is dated March 21, 1984, and asks whether there is further need to keep the file on Howard Morland in the top-security "special file room," or whether it can be returned to the general files...
...Internal FBI memoranda dealt, for the most part, with authors of articles critical of the FBI...
...This FBI memo, which ran to a fourth single-spaced page, described Rodell's article as "an unwarranted and vicious attack on the Bureau," and concluded: "If it were not for the fact that the Hiss motion is presently pending before Judge Goddard, it is believed that we should take aggressive steps to put Mr...
...Whatever following Rodell and The Progressive might have would appear to be in an honest group in which considerable damage might be done if Rodell's article were permitted to pass unchallenged...
...Within only a few months, Rubin had changed his mind about the wholesome-ness of the FBI's methods, and Hoover had changed his mind about The Progressive...
...Aside from in-house responses to articles questioning the FBI's tactics and objectives and official replies to readers wondering whether it was all right to read The Progressive, the files released to me consist mostly of singularly uninformative materials pertaining to the Government's 1979 attempt to suppress Howard Morland's article, "The H-Bomb Secret...
...The Progressive apparently was isolationist on the one hand and quixotically anti-imperialist and, incredibly, socialist on the other, but it does not appear that it was influenced by the communists...
...We have filed an appeal against the FBI's refusal to release to us more than 400 pages which, according to the Bureau, include: 11 "information which is currently and properly classified...
...The memo, addressed to Director Hoover by an FBI official named D.W...
...Hoover signed off "with best wishes and kind regards...
...In 1972, after Hoover had ended his long tenure as FBI chief, Acting Director L. Patrick Gray III wrote to the special agent in charge of the New York City office, "You are authorized to renew discreetly a one-year subscription to The Progressive for use of Bureau...
...maintain in Special File Room...
...constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of another person, reveal the identity of a confidential source or reveal confidential information furnished only by the confidential source, [and] disclose investigative techniques and procedures, thereby impairing their future effectiveness...
...Internal memos dealt at length with The Progressive's editorial comments on the Bureau, and with references to the FBI by such writers as Washington civil liberties attorney Joseph L. Rauh Jr...
...When The Progressive published its famous expose of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in April 1954, Hoover couldn't wait for his copy to arrive through regular channels...
...As for the author of the offending article, the FBI's investigators concluded that Rodell "appears to be an exceedingly fuzzy-minded but nonetheless sincere liberal with some following among honest liberals...
...presumably, those who did not already have dossiers of their own in the Bureau's files immediately became objects of individual investigations...
...Many of the documents made available by the FBI are simply photocopies of articles that appeared on news service tickers, or that were published in newspapers and magazines (including The Progressive...
...The memo stated: "The contributors to the January 1948 issue of The Progressive constitute a curious group ranging from Cyrus Eaton, an industrialist, to James Wechsler, formerly of [the New York newspaper] PM, with Stuart Chase thrown in for good measure...
...Rubin had approvingly quoted Hoover's words in The Progressive, noting that they stood in sharp contrast to the "totalitarian approach" being taken by some other anticommunists in that opening phase of what was to become the Cold War abroad and the Witchhunt Era at home...
...Several years later, the FBI chief scribbled a note to his deputy, Clyde Tol-son: "Let me have memo on The Progressive & its staff of whelps...
...But Not Forgotten The FBI and The Progressive BY ERWIN KNOLL On September 30, 1947, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sent a downright cordial letter to Morris H. Rubin, the editor of The Progressive...
...The response, from the anonymous "Unit Chief, Terrorism Section," is, "Pis...
...Judging from the files released to me, most of the "articles of topical interest" that drew the FBI's attention were pieces critical of the FBI...
...The Progressive was widely read by the America Firsters and groups like the Independent Labor League and Peace Now...
...j ournalist William Worthy, and The Progressive's roving editor, Milton Mayer...
...he wired instructions to the special agent in charge of the Milwaukee office to "obtain four copies this issue and forward bureau attention crime records section...
...These constitute about half the pages I've received and, I suspect, at least half the pages that have been withheld...
...Continue to mark issues of magazine to attention of Research Section, Domestic Intelligence Division...
...In the January 1948 issue, barely four months after Hoover had dispatched his fan-letter to Rubin, Rodell referred to the FBI as a "potentially sinister secret police force...
...What is wholly missing from the files I've pored over is any hint that anyone connected with the FBI ever questioned the propriety, the legality, or even the usefulness of keeping detailed dossiers on individuals, organizations, and publications that had, by the FBI's own admission, committed no offense other than to dispute the policies and practices of the FBI and of the State that employs the Bureau as its thought police...
...Government to recover portion of income tax used to buy armaments of war in order not to compromise his position as a pacifist...
...H "investigatory records compiled for law-enforcement purposes, the disclosure of which would...
...Typically, Hoover responded with a form letter: "While I would like to be of assistance in connection with your inquiry, I must advise that the function of this Bureau as a fact-gathering agency does not extend to furnishing evaluations or comments concerning the character or integrity of any individual, organization, or publication...
...There are, unfortunately, no scandalous disclosures in the FBI's files on The Progressive—except for the scandalous disclosure that despite Hoover's professions of "strict constitutionality," the national police force preoccupied itself for almost four decades with the most detailed scrutiny of this political magazine...
...1 "materials related solely to the internal rules and practices of the FBI...
...Rodell proved to be incorrigible...
...The Hoover letter is also one of the few FBI documents released to me in its entirety...
...Since the matter is to be argued in court, it is not believed that we can take any action which will jeopardize the Government's case...
Vol. 50 • October 1986 • No. 10
