Classic Edition: "Agents of a Hostile Foreign Power"

States and perhaps some of our allies as well. Now I think it's possible the story is even worse than it sounds. It's bad enough that national security has been breached, but there may be something even more serious lurking in the background that we ought to start thinking about and talking about and investigating. And I'm going to introduce this

line of inquiry in a roundabout way. This headline got me to thinking about one of the last books of my mentor M. Stanton Evans, whose biography, of course, I recently wrote, and one of his last books was called Stalin's Secret Agents, which he co authored with Herb Romerstein,

someone I also knew slightly. He had been head of the House Intelligence Committee as a staffer, not as a congressman, and Stalin's secret agents took on an interesting thought, which was, you know, all the spy stories of the forties and into the fifties, and McCarthyism and all the rest. In the alger Hiss case, for example, we're mostly about well, gosh, were they giving secrets away to the Soviet Union? But Stan and Herb got to thinking, I wonder if this

problem is more serious than that. And in fact, if you look closely, maybe all the Soviet agents and Soviet sympathizers and the useful idiots who sympathize with communism, who were embedded in high positions in our government, many more than we ever knew about and may ever learn about, might have had a significant effect on policy and key decisions in World War two, and just after that went a long way towards shaping the Cold War that happened

after World War Two. So what I want to do is share with you a lecture that Stan gave about this subject about twenty years ago now, and I think you'll pick up where I'm going with this, and after it's over, I will come back with a few comments of my own, and then you can take the story from there. So without further Ado here's m Stanton Evans at the Philadelphia Society from around about I think two thousand and three, and we'll just pick it up in the middle.

both preceding it and following it. And this is something that evolved out of my research that is now becoming a project of the Education and Research Institute, which is our little five O one seat three, which we're collecting data on these problems, not only the FBI files, which are immense, but the Venona papers, which are the decryptions of the Soviet messages to their agents in America back in the forties, that the FBI had in its possession

for many years. Also the archives of the State Department, of the Office of Strategic Services, the Office of War Information, other agencies back in the forties and fifties, all the which are now available under the rules of the Archives and also under the rules of the Senate. The Congress is the fifty eurou for the Senate, for example. All this material is now coming online and can be obtained if you want to look at it. Is what we're doing.

So we have been assembling this stuff and sorting it out and trying to figure out what does it tell us? And the answer is another of my laws. Lee does not mention Evans law of inadequate paranoia, which says, no matter how bad you think something is, when you look into it, it's always worse. And this stuff is amazing the record that's there. And I can tell you that based on the information we now have, I say we generically,

not just us, but other people doing this. The histories that we have of the Cold War, most of them can be thrown out. They're just wrong, they're inaccurate, frequently disinformation really, and the true history that era remains to be written. And again thinking about the young folks here, that there are a one hundred books or more waiting to be written based on this material of what actually happened in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties in our

government and the consequences thereof. What this material shows in a nutshell is that there was massive, truly massive infiltration of our government by communists, fellow travelers, and Soviet agents, beginning in the nineteen thirties, but then intensifying in the nineteen forties, particularly during World War Two, when the Soviet Union was our ally and hundreds of communists and Soviet agents were in our government, and perhaps thousands, although there's

no way of telling it because a lot of them, A lot of the information is not yet available, and some of it, some of it was never obtained to

begin with. However, early on the FBI got on the trail of these people, and based on surveillance, based on tips from informers, and then ultimately based on the revelations of Elizabeth Bentley, who was probably the most important single witness of this era, got after these communists in the government and wire tapped them, open their mail, conducted intensive personal surveillance, did everything in the world to follow and track them around, and violated their civil liberties to the max,

which I'd like to say was the good old days. That's that's that's the way you should deal with communists. I came to the conclusion some years ago that having communists in your government is not good. It is not a good thing, and the reason for that is not because of their theoretical beliefs, but because they were, and to extend they're still around, are agents of a hostile foreign power, and probably therefore it should not be in

our government. Maybe in their government, not our government. Let me give you just a couple of quick examples of why it isn't so good to have communists in your government, or as happened with the British and their government and many other governments, a couple of anecdotes from the year World War Two. I'm trying to do this very briefly.

In nineteen forty three nineteen forty four in Yugoslavia, there was a contest between a communist faction headed by the man who took the Nome Daghea Tito, and an anti communist faction headed by a man named dra Mihailovich. In forty three early forty three, Radio Moscow began putting out the line that Mihailovich was a collaborator with the Nazis and a crater, and then only Tito was really leading

the battle against the Nazis. This line was picked up by our own Office of War Information and by British Broadcasting Corporation, and reports began coming out of Cairo, which was the center for intelligence for the Mediterranean and the Balkans which were due north of there, that indeed Mahailovich was a trader and collaborator, and only Tito was fighting against the Nazis, and so forth and so on. That was then believed by the British ministries up to including

Winston Churchill. They cut Mahailovich off, gave all the age to Tito, disowned Mahailovich, and when push came to shove, Tito was able to capture Mahalovich and kill him and take over Yugoslavia. Well. The central player in the Cairo intelligence set up for the British as a man named James Klaugman who was a Soviet agent who had been part of the phil Bey ring in Cambridge, and he was the one who was massaging these days and sending

them back to London, and they were believed. In September forty three, our Office of Strategic Services parachuted a man into Yugoslavia, Captain Lynn Ferris, who began sending back exactly the same reports Mahilovich as a collaborator and trader working with the Nazis. Only Tito is leading the fight against Hitler,

and our government made the same decision. We cut Mahalovich off and backed Tito, and that report was given to President Roosevelt from this Lynn Farrish on the eve of the Terror End Conference in November forty three, where Tito

was anointed as the new leader of Yugoslavia. Well in the Venona papers, Lynn Ferrish shows up as a contact of the KGB, and there we find him a meeting with his controller from the KGB, we find a meeting with an another Soviet agent and receiving from them such contacts, this party line, which he then transmitted back to the OSS which then reached high as the White House itself, and President Roosevelt and so our government too wrote off

Mihailovich and put its chips on Tito. The following year, in Chung King, China, nineteen forty four, the diplomat named John Stewart's Service was dispatched by our government to aid the then government of China under Chang Kai Chek and anti communists. John Stuart Service was living in a house in Chung King was not one but two Soviet agents. One was a man named Solomon Adverer who was then

addessay of the Treasury Department. And another one was a man named Chi Chiao Ting who was acidic Chinese, who was a mole. And the government of Chang Kai Schek, so we had on our top diplomats in China is living with two case hardened Soviet agents. And this is all clear of the FBI records. And Invenona and he service and Saul Adler, the Treasury guy, are sending back a stream of reports to our government saying Shang Kai Shak is a collaborator and a trader. Chang Kai Shak

is working with the Japanese. Chang Ky Check is doing nothing. Only the Chinese communists are resisting the Japanese. This is the message identical to the message that came out of Yugoslavia the year before. This information goes in the case of John Stuart's Service to the State Department, but also to this White House, to a men named Lauchlan Curry, who was a Soviet agent in the Treasury Department. In the case of sal Laddler goes to a man named

Harry Dexter White, also a Soviet agent. These messages are then mutual confirming and the intelligence well, therefore Chang Kai Shek is a collaborator and treder, just as Mihalovich had been. We need to cut Chang Kai Shek off, stopped giving him any aid and put our chips on the Chinese threads that a non In the Treasury Department, we have the morgans Thaw diaries who was the Secretary of the Treasury at this time, in which Secretary Morgan Thaw is asking his age, why has not the aid that we

promised Chang Kai Shek been sent forward? And the nationalist Chinese were complaining bitterly that they had not received this aid two hundred million dollar loaning. Gold and his staffers Harriet extra why a man named v front Co and Solomon Adler when he was back in the States, are explaining to Secretary Morganhaw why it is not feasible to get this aid to Chang Kai Scheck. Every person talking to Secretary Morgan Thaw in the Treasury conference where this

is brought up is a Soviet agent. Three Soviet agents surrounding the surgery telling him why you should not advance aid to Chang Kayshak, and that aid was indeed cut off and further aid was cut off in the following year during the Marshall Mission to China, and that pretty well spelled curtains for tang Kaishak. This is why it is not good to have communists in your government. If you have communists in your government, things like that tend

to happen. Now that's the history, and there's a hinge here. I'm going to bring this forward to the current day. There was a rationale for that time for having communists in the government, and many such pronouncements were made. Here was one that was handed down in December of nineteen forty four, covered at the time by Willard Edwards, the father of Lee Ewart, for the Chicago Tribune of the

Watching Times Herald. This is an order headed down by the Adjutant General of the Army to the Army commanders. There had been a rule that communists should not have commissions in the army, and this order rescinded that rule and said quote, no action will be taken that is predicated on membership in or adherence to the doctrine of the Communist Party, unless there is a specific finding that the individual involved has a loyalty to the Communist Party,

which outweighs his loyalty to the United States. Now imagine the mind Reading Act. His loyalty to Communism is about fifty one percent, and his loyalty to the United States is about forty nine percent. So I guess we should get him out of here. Well, this is impossible. Nobody can do that. This is blanche for having communists on the payroll, which they did, and they come Mason the Communists in the army, and this was indicative of what

happened throughout the government. This doctrine is based on the notion that just theoretical adherence to the Communist Party is no big deal, or that mere advocacy of Communism is no big deal, that mere membership in the Communist Party

is not a disqualification for government service. That became the established jurisprudence of the United States, starting in a court decision in nineteen forty three, the Schneiderman decision that it was dicked up, and then picked up later the Kyishian decision in sixty seven, a five for decisions written by William Brennan and then repeated in other decisions thereafter, which basically said that mere membership in the Communist Party, mere

knowing membership in the Communist Party is not a disqualification for a government job or anything else. That doctrine became the standing rule of our government in the nineteen sixties seventies and resulted in the almost complete destruction of our

internal security system. And if you read the hearings of this the Civil Service Commission, people were saying, we cannot even ask if somebody is a member of the Communist Party that is not permitted to be asked, You can't ask them, and many other indicators of the same the

same thing. And in the seventies we saw the abolition of the House Committee on Our American Activities, of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations, the Subversive Activities Control Board, all of these wiped off

the books in obedience to this doctrine. Also in the seventies, and this brings us now forward, were adopted to sets of rules governing the FBI the activities of the FBI what was called the Levy Guidelines, named for them Attorney General Edward Levy, which said basically that the FBI could not conduct surveillance or intrusive observation of any so called subversive group absence probable cause that a crime was about to be committed, and there was this overt act standard

is then enshrine in these regulations so that they weren't allowed to follow KGB agents around, They weren't allowed to clip articles on groups like the Progressive Labor Party and keep files on them. All that was wiped out, and FBI had then Director William Webster, testified that as of nineteen seventy six seven, the FBI was out of the

domestic security business, just out of it. They were not permitted to surveil any of these groups, and the number of such investigations dropped from about twenty two thousand twenty two thousand in nineteen seventy three to thirty eight three eight twenty two thousand to thirty eight in nineteen eighty two.

That just totally wiped out the whole activity of the FBI and surveiling these groups, not just communist groups, but terrorist groups that were then becoming an increasing concern, the Weather Underground, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party, and many others. Progressive Labor Party, They were not permitted to keep files on them, follow them, surveil them to anything.

This stuff was then again enacted in nineteen seventy eight, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act adopted the impetus of Senator Teddy Kennedy in the American Civil Liberties Union, in which it was stated that even in foreign intelligence, the other stuff was domestic, that there could not be any kind of intrusive measures absent of finding that a crime was being committed or about to be committed by the person who was to be surveilled. Fast forward again to

August two thousand and one. In Minneapolis. In August of two thousand and one, the FBI arrested a man named Zacharias Musawi, who, by information received from French intelligence, was tied in without TITA, tied in with other terrorist jihattage terrorist organizations, and he addition, been taking flying lessons at an air school in Minneapolis, and the FBI agent there in charge of that, Colleen Rally, petitioned Washington, DC, headquarters of the FBI, for permission for a warrant to download

his laptop computer and to search his personal effects in order to find out what this guy was up to. This is like August twenty first two thousand and one, denied. Cannot do it. Why there's no crime being committed. What crime is being committed. He's just taking flying lessons. He just belongs to his jihadist organization. That's not a crime.

So it's denied. Well, this then, as we know, was preliminary to the attack of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the death of Free for the murder of three thousand people by the group to which Zachariisman salary was connected. That same attitude, and I'm almost out of time here pervades a good deal of our official activity reach to you from the guideline to the State Department, just prior to nine to eleven, which transpose all of this stuff from the Cold War to the terrorist war.

And here's one of the stipulations on the Department's state website as of September two thousand and one. Statements approving a specific terrorist act and asserting that such acts should be repeated do not render an applicuanting ineligible for visa. It's just advocacy. It's just advocating terrorist actions, not actually committing them. Rules stipulated that mere membership in a terrorist organization there's no grounds for denying the visa. I read this quote a few years ago when we had a

dinner for Vic Milione in Philadelphia. I'll read it again because I'm pretty sure most of you were not there. This is from the State Department visa application form, which as far as I know, is still extant. I haven't checked it recently, but it was still there. It was the last fall. This is one of the questions or series of questions. Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities,

or any other unlawful purpose? Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the Secretary of State? Have you ever participated in persecutions directed by the Nazi government of Germany? How old are these people? Uh? Or have you ever participated in genocide? I'm telling you yes, yes, I uh uh a terrorist and I was young, but I was in the Nazi thing and yeah some genocide. Yes. So then at the bottom of the form it says this, well,

a yes answer does not automatically signified. Dave Barry said, I am not making it up. Not automatically signifying in eligibility for visa If you answered yes, you may be required to personally appear before a consular off So, like we need to talk about this, hello, I mean, what's going on here? Well, there's a lot more. And these are just a few examples of what the American Civil Liberties Union, Sater Teddy Kennedy and others of their eark

have inflicted upon our nation. Now, I know side Budding here very interested and we all are in getting the history. We need to get the history of this stuff straight, and that's important. I'm for that. There's one thing that is at least as important as getting the history right, and that is recriminations. We were promised a lot of recriminations after the fall of Vietnam. Remember that, Don's I'm gonna be recriminations. Well we never got them. I never

I don't remember the recriminations For that. I wanted those recriminations and I want them now. Yeah, that's one I'm going to think you about history because it's never too late, never too late or well based with recriminations. So to the scholars here are the young people in projection, or I would say, it's recrimination time. Let's get started now.

be nice to Israel. Instead, I think we have to ask some basic questions, like why did President Obama sign off on giving billions of dollars to Iran. It's not necessarily that he was an agent of Iran, but that he's soft headed or had people around him who convinced

it was a good idea. In particular, there is the case of the Special Envoy to Iran under both Biden and Obama, Robert Malley, who negotiated a lot of the nuclear agreement from twenty fifteen and of course last year his security clearance was suspended and the proximate charge is

that he mishandled classified material. But the investigation has been referred to the FBI, and in fact the State Department and the White House refused or declined to inform Congress that Mallei security clearance had been suspended.

foreign power infiltrating our government back in the forties and fifties and maybe later. And I think now we need to ask the question, are we facing the problem of agents of a hostile foreign power, namely Iran, succeeding and affecting American foreign policy. Right now, people call it McCarthyism.

next year. You know, the Heritage Foundation will it published the first Mandate for Leadership in nineteen eighty, which is the precursor, of course, for Project twenty twenty five that has liberals so upset today, did in fact propose bringing back the House and Senate committees on internal security, but the Rega administration and the Republican Senate never acted on the idea, although they did start some committees on terrorism,

which is a halfway house. But still, maybe we should bring back those committees entirely another thing to drive the left out of their mind and cause them to riot.