Here's
a hypothetical for you. What would you do? It's
February 1944 in New York City - wartime. One
of your informants contacts you and tells you
that the leadership of the Communist Party of
the United States (CPUSA) is planning a secret
meeting in a midtown Manhattan recording studio.
Here's
what you know as background: That this organization
has accepted secret money and foreign control
from the Soviet Union since its formation. That
it has conspired to commit passport fraud; to
provide cover for foreign agents; to collect and
pass U.S. secrets to Soviet intelligence; and
to recruit spies. And that you are on firm legal
ground to find out the purpose of the meeting.
You have heard that its leaders - William Z. Foster
and Earl Browder - are wrangling over the future
direction the organization should take: to support
or not support the U.S. war effort.
Do
you:
The
real thing.
If
you guessed option #1, you get partial credit,
though CCTV surveillance hadn't been invented
yet. If you guessed option #3, you were entirely
correct. A call went out to every Agent in the
New York City area: Report in if you can play
a musical instrument, it said.
Step
#1: Ahead of time, the Bureau rented the studio
where the CPUSA was to meet. While some Agents
struck up a little ragtime there, other Agents
placed listening devices.
Step
#2: The Bureau rented the studio right next door
and "played" there throughout the long CPUSA meeting
- one set of "musicians" arriving with their instruments,
playing some compositions, then departing and
letting in the next "combo" to play new music,
all to keep up the ruse.while a handful of agents
steadily manned the bugs.
"I
think Comrade Browder. is also subject to making
a mistake.," Foster was heard to say. Browder,
he argued, was wrong -- the CPUSA should not forget
the class struggle and it must not support the
capitalists.
The
upshot.
Ironically,
Comrade Foster was right, by Soviet lights, but
not at that particular moment in time. Moscow
briefly forsook the party line to support Browder's
idea because it needed the help of its U.S. military
ally in the wartime effort. Foster lost much prestige
and had to acquiesce, for the time, in Browder's
leadership.
Less
than a year and a half later, though, Moscow's
tactics again shifted. Browder was denounced by
a major European communist, a signal taken by
all to be at the command of Moscow. He was immediately
expelled from the CPUSA and his nemesis, William
Foster, took over. It was back to business as
usual.
Related
Link: FBI History
Photograph
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division,
Theodor Horydczak Collection, LC-H814-T-2496-008
DLC.
