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The ACLU has gone through periods when it was more and less communist/socialist in its national leadership. Its roots lay in the WWI antiwar movement, and during that period (before it was called the ACLU), the nucleus of the ACLU worked closely with the US arm of Lenin's international organization, in cooperation with Germany's espionage/sabotage apparatus. In this context it sowed the seeds of what became CPUSA, and CPUSA and the ACLU were closely intertwined throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. A close relationship with CPUSA continued until the late 1930s, about the time of the Soviet purge trials (which along with the Nazi-Soviet alliance alienated many American leftists from CPUSA). At this time the ACLU's Morris Ernst secretly became an informer for the FBI and agreed to promote the internal purge of CPUSA elements mentioned previously in the thread. From about this time until the Vietnam War, the ACLU was less influenced by CPUSA, though some pockets of CPUSA influence remained in elements linked to more radical civil liberties groups like the NLG. The NLG element regained a foothold during the course of the 1960s, though an element tied to William Kunstler and the Center for Constitutional Rights, and has gained increasing influence in the organization since the Vietnam War. I have seen some recent indications of conservative attempts to counter this trend by encouraging cooperation between the ACLU and less radical civil liberties groups, but there is certainly a strong element of the ACLU that remains aligned with the CCR and similar groups.