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Nothingnew: One more point. Again, unlike yourself, I used the FOIA to request the FBI investigative files on almost all the people discussed by Welch in The Politician.

With one exception (Phillip Jessup), the FBI files DO NOT support Welch’s conclusions.

Furthermore, The Politician is nothing more than Welch’s personal opinion—sort of like saying strawberry is the best flavor of ice cream and expecting someone to “disprove” that contention.

You will notice a common denominator in almost all conspiracy narratives. The author of the conspiracy narrative almost never has any personal contact with the persons they write about (i.e. no correspondence, no emails, no phone calls). In addition, conspiracy authors almost never have any personal contact with people who were friends, acquaintances, business partners, co-workers, etc with the persons written about.

So you have a very unique situation where an author makes ultimate final conclusions about the beliefs and motives of persons whom they have never met and never questioned; usually such authors do not even do research into college and university archives which have important primary source documents which pertain to the subject matter they are writing about.

The reason for this omission is obvious: conspiracy authors rely entirely on the workings of their own mind. There is no fact-checking mechanism in place to prevent wrong information, mistaken interpretations, or defective judgments from entering their writing. That is the case with Welch’s book-length “private letter”. I have copies of letters written by friends of Welch which pointed out factual errors in his unpublished manuscript but he never bothered to correct those errors when The Politician was first published in 1963.

More importantly, Robert Welch (and the JBS) explicitly stated that they had total confidence in the knowledge, integrity, and patriotism of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. [I have copies of private letters to Hoover written by Welch and other JBS officials along with Hoover’s replies.]

Significantly, the FBI falsified virtually every assertion and conclusion which Welch and the JBS made. Particularly important are FBI files on the CPUSA which often contain verbatim transcripts of secret, closed Communist Party meetings and copies of confidential CPUSA documents which the FBI obtained from its two most important moles inside the CPUSA (Morris and Jack Childs). It is clear from FBI files that Welch and the Birch Society were totally ignorant about the actual tactics, strategy, objectives, and achievements of the Communist movement in the U.S.

As I mentioned in a previous message, the conclusion of the FBI was diametrically opposite to the conclusion espoused by the JBS.

I quote Hoover’s comment again for your consideration:

“The Communist Party in this country has attempted to infiltrate and subvert every segment of our society, but its continuing efforts have not achieved success of any substance. Too many self-styled experts on communism, without valid credentials and without any access whatsoever to classified factual data regarding the inner workings of the conspiracy, have engaged in rumor-mongering and hurling false and wholly unsubstantiated allegations against persons whose views differ from their own. This is dangerous business. It is divisive and unintelligent, and makes more difficult the task of the professional investigator.”

During his Warren Commission testimony, Hoover was asked a question about an article published by the Birch Society in its magazine at that time, American Opinion. Hoover chose to ignore the specific question so that he could make a larger point, as follows:

“I have read that piece. My comment on it is this in general: I think the extreme right is just as much a danger to the freedom of this country as the extreme left. There are groups, organizations, and individuals on the extreme right who make these very violent statements, allegations that General Eisenhower was a Communist, disparaging references to the Chief Justice and at the other end of the spectrum you have these leftists who make wild statements charging almost anybody with being a Fascist or belonging to some of these so-called extreme right societies.”

“Now, I have felt, and I have said publicly in speeches, that they are just as much a danger, at either end of the spectrum. They don’t deal with facts. Anybody who will allege that General Eisenhower was a Communist agent, has something wrong with him. A lot of people read such allegations because I get some of the weirdest letters wanting to know whether we have inquired to find out whether that is true. I have known General Eisenhower quite well myself and I have found him to be a sound, level-headed man.” (Warren Commission, Volume V, page 101)