Posted on 05/17/2003 4:21:05 PM PDT by DPB101
On September 21, 1964, a student demonstration occurred on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Thereafter other and more serious demonstrations followed until it finally became necessary for the governor to summon officers to clear the administration building on the campus of more than 800 defiant students who had entered and staged a sit-in demonstration. Many arrests were made, the student rebellion received international publicity, and the image of a great cultural institution received irreparable damage.
It is the responsibility of this subcommittee to ascertain the causes of these disturbances and to report the extent to which they were inspired or influenced by subversive elements. We do this realizing that there is an unfortunate trend at present for the extreme right to see Communists everywhere, and for the extreme left to pretend that they no longer exist.
We have conducted investigations of subversive infiltration at the University of California and at other educational institutions throughout the state since 1941. From the inception of the most recent troubles at Berkeley we have had both overt and covert agents in the area who have provided us with a flow of information on a day-to-day basis. In addition we have obtained statements from university administrators, faculty members, Regents, and students; we have obtained all documents we believe material to the subject, we have studied the newspaper accounts, magazine articles, TV and radio programs that seemed important, and we have also obtained the publications issued by the Free Speech Movement . . .(snip)
History of Communism at Berkeley
A few years after the Communist Party was organized in the United States it divided the country into twenty districts, California, Arizona and Nevada originally being included in district number 13, with headquarters in San Francisco. The main office was moved from Grove Street to Haight Street and thence to 942 Market Street, and a few years ago Nevada was dropped out of the district and Hawaii substituted in its place because it occupied a greater strategic significance for Communist purposes.
The important thing to bear in mind is that the headquarters for the whole of California and adjacent territory has always been situated in San Francisco. The main propaganda outlet for the Communist Party is now at 1408 Market Street, and the major Communist educational institutions have always been operated from that city.
District 13 is no longer a formal organizational component of the party, but the top decisions are nonetheless made in San Francisco‚not in Los Angeles, and the party high command has always operated from the Bay Area.
As the Communist schools will play a prominent part in our description of infiltration at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, we should briefly set forth their history here by way of background. The first school was located at 675 Minna Street, and functioned under the name of Workers School. It continued operating at various places under this title, until for security reasons it changed its name to the Tom Mooney Labor School, and finally to the California Labor School, with branches in Oakland and Los Angeles. In the latter city the institution was eventually known as the People's Educational Center.
Changing the names of the Communist front organizations, youth organizations and Communist propaganda publications is an old Communist custom, and these changes of names and addresses for the Communist schools in San Francisco managed to fool some people of prominence who were persuaded to act as "education sponsors" under the mistaken assumption that the schools were being operated to provide an education for members of trade unions.
It soon became evident, even to these credulous supporters, that the trade unions were limited to those under Communist domination such as the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union; the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union (which has since emancipated itself from Communist control), the United Office and Professional Workers of America, the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America, the United Federal Workers of America (note: several AFSCME locals, a union of the previous two unions, endorsed the A.N.S.W.E.R. antiwar rallies this last year) and a host of others.
Of course, it was nice also to have large numbers of Communists on the public payroll so that the taxpayers would support them, not only when they performed their services for the state, or for the county or municipal governments in which they worked, but also while they were carrying on their Communist activities.
The SCMWA reached the height of its activity just before or shortly after the close of World War II, and during that era it was relatively simple to determine which government office was sympathetic to Communism by walking in and taking a look on the bulletin boards and the desks of the employees and noting the propaganda material issued by the United Federal Workers of America, the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, the United Office and Professional Workers of America, (this latter organization functioned in non-governmental positions,) and also by the number of copies of the People's World that were scattered about the office. . .(snip)
Since the publication of our last report Red China has opened an extensive propaganda outlet in San Francisco. It was first located at 292 Gough Street, and then moved to larger quarters at 2929 24th Street on July 1, 1964. It is known as "China Books and Periodicals," is well patronized, and is listed in Washington as an agency for a foreign government. When a united front is needed for a common cause, we see these dissident Communist factions collaborating. Thus when the Berkeley rebellion started we found a united front being formed with Trotskyites, Maoists, Socialists, and Moscow Communists joining forces with a wide variety of other groups . . .(snip)
The term "united front" came into usage after the Seventh World Comintern Congress. It simply means, in the Communist sense, that members of the party will attach themselves to some popular cause for which large groups of non-Communists have manifested a willingness to take some positive action. They will then espouse the same cause, weld the groups together, trim down the leadership to the point that it can be dominated by the Communist minority, and from that time they will control the mass movement and bend it to their own objectives. The principal objective is to whittle away opposition and transform the popular cause into a class struggle . . .(snip)
We have seen how the Communist Party originally established its headquarters on the Pacific Coast in San Francisco, developed its indoctrination and educational system in that city, established its faculty and student units at the Berkeley campus of the University of California and steadily built a strong base of operations in the Bay Area of California and particularly at the principal campus of the nation's largest university.
We have also traced the growth of various radical student organizations there‚ especially SLATE, and we have seen how this organization and other groups united to form a new Communist youth organization, the DuBois Clubs of America, with its national headquarters also situated is San Francisco.
It now remains to examine phase two of the Berkeley Rebellion, and we move a step closer to the outbreak of actual demonstrations in September, 1964.
This second phase consists in examining the international Communist situation immediately preceding the eruption of the rebellion and a determination of what the international party line was for Communist youth at that time. We shall reserve until later a discussion of the reasons that moved the Communist elements of the rebellion to select Berkeley as its most vulnerable target, the general attitude toward Communism on the Berkeley campus having been demonstrated by the erosion of its security measures, the opening of the campus to Communist propaganda speakers, and the easy tolerance of pro-Communist faculty members who made little effort to conceal their profound Marxian bias either from students or administration.
It is significant to note that there was a meeting in Moscow, September 16-24, 1964, of "A World Forum for Solidarity of Youth and Students..."
This convention was sponsored by the Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSR, the International Union of Students and the World Federation of Democratic Youth. We have already alluded to the two latter organizations as being the most important of the international Communist youth fronts, and at this particular meeting there were representatives from more than one hundred nations. The delegates from the United States consisted of four representatives from the DuBois Clubs and some students from the University of Wisconsin.
The United States National Student Association refused to participate in this Communist conclave, and the non-Communist Student Peace Union "... was flatly told that it could send no more than one delegate and would receive no financial assistance."
The main topic of the conference was an international drive to accelerate the recruiting of students, the unleashing of student demonstrations, and the establishment of an International Solidarity Fund to channel Soviet and other financial aid to national liberation movements and to provide technical and financial assistance to new nations. A "liberation movement" in Communist terms, means the subversive strategy used to accomplish the destruction of non-Communist institutions.
It is also significant to note that three prominent California activists were in the Soviet Union in September, 1964. They were Herbert Aptheker, Carl Bloice, and Dr. Carlton Goodlett. Aptheker is the father of Bettina Aptheker, who played a prominent role in both the DuBois Clubs and the student rebellion at Berkeley, and whose descriptions of the events of the past six months have been printed in several Communist publications.
Mr. Aptheker was for several years the editor-in-chief of Political Affairs, the monthly organ of the National Committee of the Communist Party of the United States. He has appeared on the Berkeley campus as a lecturer on several occasions, and is one of the most important Communists in the country. Carl Bloice attended the Moscow meeting as a delegate from the DuBois Club of San Francisco, and Dr. Carlton Goodlett will be remembered as the keynote speaker at the DuBois Club Convention in San Francisco. He also happened to be in Moscow in September of that year.
We may note in passing that Herbert Aptheker was scheduled to speak under the sponsorship of Youth for Peace and Socialism, Forerunner of the Youth Action Union, at Park Manor, 607 S. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, on May 3, 1962. He was, according to the handbill issued by the sponsoring organization, to speak on the Negro question, and he was accompanied at the meeting by Dorothy Healey, chairman of the Southern Division of the Communist Party of California.
The September meeting of the World Forum for Solidarity of Youth and Students had been preceded by a "preparatory meeting" in Moscow in April of that year. Consequently, at the April meeting a permanent secretariat of the World Youth Forum was established, and this secretariat. . .(snip)
The December report of the American Security Council, issued from Washington, reported on the establishment of the International Solidarity Fund, and described this international center for the financing of subversion throughout the world on the part of radical youth organizations as "A Fund for the Revolution." The Washington Report read as follows:
Moscow... decided to establish an unlimited global `solidarity fund' to finance Communist-led student agitations throughout the world. For 1965, one hundred million dollars of this fund have been earmarked for Latin America, including our Eastern Atlantic ocean bastion that also faces the Caribbean—Puerto Rico.
The first announced monies from this fund were employed in South Viet Nam in the month of November, 1964. Fifty thousand dollars were intended to produce the instability of the Saigon government and to promote the Viet Cong cause of `national liberation.'
Money was liberally poured into capitals throughout the Asian-African bloc and into the iron curtain countries to promote `hate America' riots because of the air-borne rescue operation in the Congo. That Communist maneuver proved successful because the air-borne forces were withdrawn, under the bombardment of the Moscow-Peking propaganda before all the hostages were rescued.
The outbreak of student agitation and lawlessness on the campus of the University of California was not isolated from this global Kremlin plan.
It followed the identical pattern of similar student agitation that has been the rule rather than the exception under Communist Party and Communist front direction in Latin America. Defiance of authority and demands for independent `political' activity on the campus, have characterized Communist-inspired disorder there.
The first public announcement of the establishment of this `solidarity fund' came to my attention in a dispatch published on November 13, 1964, in the official Communist Party daily El Siglo of Santiago, Chile. The dispatch was datelined from Moscow the previous day. It carried the by-line of Joaquin Gutierrez, a Costa Rican Communist who is married to a Chilean Communist. Gutierrez was listed in El Siglo as its correspondent in Moscow.
The El Siglo dispatch quoted Vladimir Yarovoy, vice-president of the Komsomol (Russia's Young Communist League), as the authority for the announcement of this `solidarity fund.' It was significant that Yarovoy chose November 12 to anounce the existence of this fund and used the vehicle of the official organ of the Communist Party in Chile for the purpose. It was the nineteenth anniversary of the founding of another arm of the International Communist apparatus, the World Federation of Democratic Youth.
The fund is to be employed to stimulate anti-American propaganda, organize demonstrations and riots against American embassies, consulates, United States information offices and libraries, and to attempt to undermine constituted authority wherever and when-every necessary. The plan, it has been learned, calls for the organizers to provoke the police to employ what the Communists charge is `brutality' to suppress the riots and to compel the military to employ identical tactics. This is designed to blacken the image of, and arouse sentiment against, the only forces that are equipped to forestall a Communist takeover . . .(snip)
. . .the new plan met with the gleeful approval of the Chinese Communist delegates who attended a secret high level planning meeting for that purpose during their visit to Moscow for the forty-seventh anniversary observance of the Russian Revolution . . .(snip)
There was no person during the entire history of the American Communist Party who played a more significant and successful role in organizing Communist youth throughout the country than Leon Wofsy. The first concerted effort to organize American students and indoctrinate them with Communism was made in 1931, according to Gilbert Green, who was then the national secretary of the Young Communist League . . .(snip)
Leon Wofsy made many trips to California in connection with his duties as national director for the young Communist movement in the United States. He lectured at Communist schools, to groups of important party members, to youth leaders, and the usual array of Communist front organizations. He has been a resident of California continuously since September of 1961, when he was employed as assistant research biologist at the University of California in San Diego at a salary of $9,500 a year.
Wofsy continued to work at the San Diego campus of the university until July of 1964, when he applied for a position on the Berkeley campus as an Associate Professor of Biology at a salary of $10,600 per year. He arrived at Berkeley in September of 1964, just in time for the commencement of the demonstrations.
Also working at the La Jolla campus of the university, at the Scripps Research Institute, was another scientist whose name will be familiar to the readers of these reports. He was Martin Kamen, the man who was an assistant to Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley during the research that led to the development of the atomic bomb, and who was followed by government agents and photographed passing classified information to a Soviet Vice-Consul in a San Francisco restaurant . . .(snip)
Target Berkeley
At this point we have completed explaining how the concentration of Communist strength was developed in the Bay Area. We must now consider the next phase of the Berkeley Rebellion, which will be an examination of the reasons why the Berkeley Campus was selected as a target for the mass demonstrations that started in September 1964.
It should be apparent by this time that the move against the Berkeley campus was not spontaneous. The position of the university in loco parentis to the students had been the central theme of the three major meetings described above: the National Organizing Conference in New York in 1963, the Socialist Convention in San Francisco in March 1964, and finally the June 1964 convention in San Francisco which gave birth to the DuBois Clubs of America.
All that remained to trigger the demonstrations was some incident‚ almost any incident would have served the purpose. That incident was provided on September 14, 1964, when Dean of Students Katherine A. Towle wrote the letter that set the entire Berkeley Rebellion in motion. It soon gathered momentum, formed a united front mass movement of protesting students and faculty members, intimidated the administration to the degree where it retreated to a point of no return and conceded virtually every major demand made by the students, produced a condition of anarchy on the Berkeley campus, and then proceeded to consolidate its position . . .(snip)
No one can seriously doubt that there were swarms of Communists throughout our wartime agencies. There was an unparalleled opportunity for infiltration, and the Communist apparatus seized it with alacrity. American employees in these agencies were concerned with winning the war. Communists were concerned not only with winning the war, but primarily with using the opportunity to further the interests of the Soviet Union and to promote the world revolution. The sordid story of Soviet espionage and Communist infiltration of our wartime agencies has been told by authorities too eminent to be disregarded or disbelieved. Thus the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency wrote in 1963:
"... the Soviets had over forty high-level agents in various departments and agencies in Washington during World War II. At least this number was uncovered; we do not know how many remained protected. Almost all of them, like the atomic spies, were persons of pro-Communist inclinations at the time. Many have since recanted."
During the trial of Joseph Weinberg for perjury in connection with espionage activities at the University of California, U.S. District Judge Alexander Holtzoff stated, in March 1953, that the testimony in the case disclosed "... an amazing and shocking situation existing in the crucial years 1939-1940 on the campus of a great university in which a large and active Communist underground was in operation." Judge Holtzoff was referring to the Berkeley Campus of the University of California.
There were tough, experienced Communists in the War Production Board, the Office of Price Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the War Manpower Commission, and many other of our federal agencies during this critical period. We listed many of them who were employed in sensitive positions in our 1959 report, page 171, et seq. During this era it was uncommon to find any of these offices in San Francisco devoid of propaganda materials distributed by party members, front organizations and fellow travelers. Many of these employees were regimented in the United Federal Workers of America and the United Public Workers of America, each of these Communist-controlled unions being headed by a party member.
We have stated time and again in these reports that no former Communist should be forever barred from employment in a government position or educational institution merely because he once made a mistake.
But we insist that the burden of proof that the individual has made a full and clean break from his subversive affiliations lies with him, and too often this free-wheeling tolerance toward Communism in general will impel a complete amateur in the field of intelligence to simply accept the statement‚ under oath or otherwise‚ of a former Communist to the effect that he has become disenchanted with the movement and is now pure. If such an individual refuses to cooperate with the F.B.I., and invokes the Fifth Amendment when asked to discuss his experiences in the Communist Party under oath, and who instead launches into a diatribe about redbaiting and invasion of his constitutional right of free political association, such an attitude should at least raise some doubt about the sincerity of his reformation. . .(snip)
We have already discussed the Communist School in San Francisco at considerable length. By this time there should be no doubt about the fact that every course in these schools, under whatever name it functioned, was under the complete control of the Communist Party. To believe for an instant that any such institution, created and operated by the Communist organization, would be permitted to function in any manner that would not promote Communism, is ridiculous.
The institution was attended by the members of Communist-dominated unions, such as the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union, the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, the United Cannery, Packing and Allied Workers of America, the United Office and Professional Workers of America, the United Federal Workers of America, members of the ultra-liberal element of the American Newspaper Guild, and a host of other similar unions in the Bay Area . . .(snip)
Since Fidel Castro won his revolution and Communized Cuba, that country has been the training center for the guerilla warfare tactics and the infiltration of terrorists throughout Latin American countries, and for generally exporting Communist warfare.
Through the Communist front organization, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which vanished quietly when President Kennedy's killer was disclosed as not being of the extreme right, but on the contrary a former activist in this front organization, American students were sent to Cuba for training.
After the Fair Play for Cuba Committee passed out of existence, students from this country continued their pilgrimages to Cuba despite the ban placed on such trips by the United States Department of State. These defiant young radicals included many students who thereafter took part in the Berkeley Rebellion . . .(snip)
On August 14, 1964, eighty-four students, having recently returned from their illegal trip to Cuba, stated through their spokesman, Charles Berrard, that there were eleven Negroes who made the tour and had banded themselves together in the new movement which they called the Black Liberation Front.
This statement carried no particular significance when it was made, but it packed a sensational meaning on February 16, 1965, when members of the Black Liberation Front were arrested by F.B.I. agents for plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument . . .(snip)
An entire volume could ,and should‚ be written about the effect of Castro Communism on the youth of America. President Kerr recognized the impact, very late, when he declared these highly indoctrinated Castroites to be at the heart of the Berkeley Rebellion. We also find that a former professor from the Berkeley Speech Department, Joseph P. Morray, was on hand in Cuba supporting the Castro regime during its early period, and returned to California in 1962 for the purpose of assisting in the direction of the Marxist school in San Francisco . . .(snip)
A great deal of nonsense has been written about these demonstrations, leaving the impression that all of the members of the Free Speech Movement were interested in freedom of speech; that there was no hard core of Communist leadership; and that there had been no real freedom of speech on the Berkeley campus. We have spent considerable space for the purpose of giving the background of the elements that united to form the Free Speech Movement, and we have taken pains to point out that there were hundreds of students who were originally attracted to the student demonstrations and protests prior to December 2, 1964, who were in no sense subversive but who had what they considered to be a perfectly logical and natural complaint against an inept administration, its confusion of rules and regulations, and the general atmosphere of administrative and political weakness that pervaded the Berkeley campus.
We also pointed out how the Youth Action Union, the DuBois Clubs, the Young Socialist Alliance, SLATE, the Socialists and Trotskyites, the Progressive Labor Movement, and other radical youth groups combined for the purpose of forming the original united front, and that after the Sproul Hall sit-in of December 2, 1964, a great many original adherents of the movement dropped away from it, leaving a highly-disciplined group of Communists and radicals in firm command . . .(snip)
. . . the united front was becoming a para-military sort of organization, and the control was being consolidated in the hands of a few leaders, more and more adults appeared on the campus at the demonstrations, some of them known members of the Communist Party, some, like Mort Scheer, leaders of the Communist element that followed the tough line of Red China; some were students who had been indoctrinated on clandestine trips to Cuba; and there were the usual large numbers of chronic supporters of Communist fronts who always lend their assistance to such movements.
After all, this was the greatest student rebellion in the history of the United States, and it occurred on the main campus of the country's largest educational institution. The classic united front organization that we described earlier had now become a tightly-disciplined, thoroughly organized, well-equipped movement. And it was about to stage the greatest demonstration of all, which was scheduled for December 2, 1964, with the invasion of beleaguered Sproul Hall . . .(snip)
Robert Treuhaft, counsel for the FSM delegates to the Robley Williams Committee, was observed at several of the student demonstrations and participated in this one‚ the most massive and defiant of all. He was also one of the first to be arrested. Treuhaft was a lecturer at the Communist School in San Francisco in 1947, and had worked as an Assistant Disputes Director for the War Labor Board and as a hearing Commissioner for the O.P.A.
He also has been active in virtually every Communist front organization in the Bay Area since the early 40's. In 1964 he attended the Communist-controlled International Association of Democratic Lawyers in Argentina with Robert Kenny of Los Angeles, Conrado Gomez of Argentina, and Norman Endicott of Canada. After attending the meeting these four went to Portugal where they endeavored to stir up difficulty over civil rights matters, and were summarily ordered to leave that country . . .(snip)
(Note: "Hillary interned for former Communist Party lawyer Robert Treuhaft, husband of the prominent communist writer Jessica Mitford. Both were Stalinists and rigidly pro-Soviet...Hillary Clinton has never repudiated her involvement with these extremists or explained her opinion of their beliefs"--Barbara Olson, 'Hell to Pay')
In February, 1965, Dr. Allen Krebs, 31, was fired from his position as assistant professor of sociology at Adelphi College. An open Marxist, Krebs emphasized Marxism in his classes, but he did not believe that that was the real reason for his ouster. "The real problem," he said, "is that if you restrict yourself to a strict intellectual role in the classroom you are o.k. But if you become visible—if you act—you are squashed like a cockroach. The system cannot tolerate a real exposure of what America is in the world today." . . .(snip)
Conditions at Berkeley in the fall of 1964 provided an ideal situation for Communist activity. The administration was opposed to the maintenance of proper security facilities; there was a militant left-wing element in the faculty; there was a lack of communication between the administration, the faculty and the students; there had been an alarming influx of Communists to the Berkeley area; there had been an easy acceptance of radical student organizations that had become both arrogant and defiant; there was a confusion of rules and directives concerning student activities; the Regents had been persuaded to rescind their long-standing ban against Communist speakers on the campus; the headquarters for the nationwide Communist youth organization had been established in San Francisco; there was general student resentment of the cold and bureaucratic atmosphere on the Berkeley campus, the inaccessibility of university officials, and obviously weak administration and confusion of rules and restrictions that were constantly being amended, repealed, supplemented, and reinterpreted . . .(snip)
It is incredible that anyone could be so gullible as to believe that these Communist leaders, whose names are listed herein, presented with the opportunity at Berkeley and occupying strategic positions in Communist organizations as well as in the FSM (Free Speech Movement ) would simply sit on their hands instead of making a determined drive for leadership. Let us take a look at some of the individuals who occupied important roles in the leadership of the FSM and who participated in its demonstrations.
Bettina Aptheker is the daughter of Herbert Aptheker, a member of the national committee of the Communist Party of the United States; leading party theoretician; lecturer at Communist schools and on university campuses throughout the country; former editor-in-chief of the official publication of the National Committee of the Communist Party, Political Affairs; presently the head of a Communist school in New York . . . She has been affiliated with SLATE, the DuBois Clubs, and resided for a short time with the family of Albert Lima, whose daughter was also prominent in the FSM demonstrations as an undergraduate at Berkeley, and whose father is the head of the Northern Division of the Communist Party of California.
Miss Aptheker was a member of both the executive and steering committees of the FSM, and when arrested in connection with the invasion of Sproul Hall on December 3, 1964, was living at 1005 53rd Street, Oakland.
Robert Paul Kaufman, a member of the FSM executive committee, was formerly a member of SLATE during his undergraduate days at Berkeley, was active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and played a leading part in the organization of the DuBois Clubs of America. He is now a teaching assistant in the Department of Social Science at Berkeley.
Jacqueline Goldberg, the sister of Arthur Goldberg, came from Los Angeles to attend the university at Berkeley. She soon became the head of U.C. Women for Peace, a front organization,and was its delegate to a Moscow meeting in 1963. She was also active in the American-Russian Institute at San Francisco, cited by the Attorney General of the United States as a Communist-dominated organization, and is now a member of the Policy Committee for the next World Communist Youth Festival which is scheduled to be held in Algeria . . .(snip)
Arthur Goldberg, who was a member of both the executive and steering committees of the FSM, received his early Communist indoctrination as a member of the Youth Action Union in Los Angeles. At Berkeley he identified himself openly with the more militant Peking line of the Communist movement, proclaimed that he was a follower of the Progressive Labor Movement, and was present to hear Mort Scheer, West Coast Representative for the PLM, deliver a lecture at Stiles Hall Y.M.C.A., across the street from the Berkeley campus, in August, 1964 . . .(snip)
Alex P. Hoffman had been a speaker for the Labor Youth League, young Communist component of the Party, has been acting as an advisor for the FSM, has made no effort to conceal his Marxist convictions, and was a research assistant at the law center on the Berkeley campus. He recently transferred into the Department of Speech . . .(snip)
Mort Scheer, already mentioned, was a former member of the Communist Party, found it too tame and inactive for his taste, and was expelled with several other founders of the Progressive Labor Movement for what the Communist theoreticians would term "left-wing deviationism." He had been present at all of the FSM demonstrations, is an associate of Arthur Goldberg, and with his adherents has been active in distributing propaganda literature on the Berkeley campus.
William Mandel, is a middle-aged member of the FSM executive committee. He is also Moscow correspondent for radio station KPFA in Berkeley, the recent target of an investigation before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee. He has been identified as a member of the Communist Party . . .(snip)
Sydney Stapleton and his wife, Elizabeth, are typical of the Trotskyist Communist element in the FSM movement. Sydney was a member of the FSM executive and steering committees, and both were arrested during the Sproul Hall invasion . .(snip)
Kathleen Grossman, who, like Margaret Lima was a student at the Berkeley campus, is the daughter of Aubrey Grossman, who was active on the Berkeley campus when he was a student at the same institution. He had repeatedly been identified as a member of the Communist Party, has been its legal representative, and was formerly listed on its official stationery as the Party's educational director in San Francisco.
Lee Goldblatt, a student at Berkeley, is the daughter of Lou Goldblatt, and served as secretary-treasurer of the East Bay DuBois Club. Miss Goldblatt was also arrested at the time of the Sproul Hall invasion.
Ann Goldblatt King, sister of Lee Goldblatt, and also active in the FSM, was organizational secretary for the East Bay DuBois Club.
Barbara Garson, the wife of Marvin Garson, who wrote the booklet The Regents, heretofore mentioned, was a member of the FSM executive committee, was formerly active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, was affiliated with the Young Socialist Alliance, the Trotskyist branch of the Communist movement, and was arrested during the invasion of Sproul Hall . . .(snip)
James Burnett, head of the Trotskyist movement on the Berkeley campus and formerly national president of that organization, was a member of the FSM executive committee . . .(snip)
Stephanie Koontz, a member of the DuBois Club and also the FSM executive committee, was arrested during the Sproul Hall invasion.
Steve Weisman, whom we have heretofore discussed at length, was a member of both the steering and executive committees of the FSM, and was also civil rights chairman of the East Bay DuBois Club.
Jack Weinberg, whom we have also discussed at some length, was a representative of the East Bay DuBois Club on both the executive and steering committees of the FSM, and was arrested during the Sproul Hall invasion on December 3, 1964.
Mike Rossman, a Sproul Hall arrestee, was a member of the FSM steering and executive committees as a representative of the DuBois Club.
David Rynan, formerly active in SLATE, and whose father is a professor in the Speech Department at Berkeley, was a member of the FSM executive committee.
Robert Treuhaft, who has been repeatedly identified as a member of the Communist Party and who is the husband of Jessica Mitford Treuhaft, was one of the first to be arrested at Sproul Hall. Since he is attorney for the FSM movement it was hardly necessary for him to be formally listed as a member of its executive or steering committees. Obviously he was in constant communication with the leadership of the FSM, and if he had not had some influence with them, they would undoubtedly have dispensed with his services. The fact that this veteran Communist lawyer was closely associated with the FSM and obviously exerted great influence on it is too clear to warrant further consideration.
Elena Flemming, a Berkeley student, visited Cuba in 1963 and was also one of the Sproul Hall arrestees.
Brian Shannon, a leader of the Young Socialist Alliance, was also active in the FSM demonstrations.
We do not consider it necessary or productive to extend this list further. It would be possible to do so, but we submit that it is perfectly obvious that after December 3, 1964, with the perfection of the FSM system of Centrals, the establishment of its executive and steering committees on a highly effective basis and with the type of leadership we have already mentioned, those who still doubt that there was a Communist domination of the movement after December 3, 1964, could not be convinced even if we produced a document showing that the FSM movement was actually operated by the members of the national committee of the Communist Party of the United States, the heads of the Trotskyist movement, and the leaders of the Progressive Labor organization . . .(snip)
It is important to observe how the vast majority of Berkeley's 27,500 students were largely ignored by the administration and the press during these long months of incredible rebellion. At least 23,000 students who were trying to get an education were subjected to brainwashing in their classrooms; were excluded from their classes during the campus-wide strike in early December; were subjected to a barrage of filth and pornography, and their civil rights were not deemed worthy of attention by the ACLU, or the administration, or the press. Certainly one of these was the right to pursue their studies, without undue interference.
(Excerpt) Read more at texts.cdlib.org ...
You would go to a concert at the Hatch shell and the YSA, Socalists Workers, and the DuBois people would be working the crowd.
Same here. I never bought into any of it but was affected by the constant negativity just at the age when I should have been optimistic and building for the future. The doom and gloom the left spread in the 1970s was terrible. Know it affected more people than me. Remember listening to Reagan's inaugural address in 1980 when driving through the Mojave desert and yelling "YES!...We can do whatever we set our minds to do!"
One of Treuhaft's best friends in the Communist Party was Al Bernstein--the father of Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.
Hillary worked for the House panel which investigated Watergate.
When he was a district attorney deputy in CA, Ed Meese, in person, ordered the arrest of Truehaft for his part in the take over of a building at the University of Berkeley.
In the 1960s, Truehaft organized some sort of Funeral association in the Bay area. To publicize it, he appeared on a popular San Francisco TV show. The host of the show?
Casper Weinberger (who was considered a liberal at the time).
Source: Truehaft
Wow, what a koinkadink. Just like all those others.
Great post, DPB, as always.
Excellent piece. Thanks!
Check out this Soviet 1946 memo to Mikhail Andreevich Suslov. Ben Goldberg, an associate of Einstein, a writer for the Toronto Star, the Saint Louis Dispatch, the New York Post Today, and the New Republic was on an extended visit to the USSR. The memo says his dispatches were "extremely friendly toward the Soviet Union." While in Moscow, Goldberg was working on a book titled "England, the Opponent of Peace." Susov was a powerful figure in the USSR. He , Stalin and Kaganovich worked together during the purges. He was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and buried next to Stalin in the Kremlin wall. That Goldberg came to Susvov's attention shows the interest Soviets took in American journalists. If Goldberg wasn't on the Soviet payroll, he could have been had he asked.
New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews is another case. This 1960 Senate hearing transcript shows , I believe, he was working with people in the State Department to see that Castro became the leader of Cuba.
How many more worked for the Soviets? How many worked for Mao, the Sandinistas and Saddam?
Anyone running agents against America would want operatives in the highest media positions. Yet all the ones we know of worked before Viet Nam. And it has been the Viet Nam crop of journalists which have been the most marxism class in American history. Was it simply disillusionment with Viet Nam? Or were they recruited or blackmailed during Nam?
No. Day of the dead is celebrated in California because it is now effectively a province of Mexico.
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