Marc Aronson Read online

  Prologue: Blackmail

  PART ONE: NOTHING IN THIS BOOK MATTERS UNTIL YOU CARE ABOUT COMMUNISM

  CHAPTER 1: John Reed and Revolution

  CHAPTER 2: The Rise of J. Edgar Hoover: The First Secret

  CHAPTER 3: “There Will Have to Be Bloodshed”

  CHAPTER 4: “We’re Going Back to Russia — That’s a Free Country”

  CHAPTER 5: Legal Rights: Hoover vs. Louis Post

  PART TWO: THE WAR OF IMAGES

  CHAPTER 6: Clyde: The Second Secret

  CHAPTER 7: Public Enemy Number One: John Dillinger

  CHAPTER 8: The Crisis of Capitalism: The Third Secret

  PART THREE: THE TURNING POINT: SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES

  CHAPTER 9: The Secret Assignment

  PART FOUR: THE FIGHTING WAR

  CHAPTER 10: Great Injustice

  CHAPTER 11: Hoover’s War

  PART FIVE: THE WAR OF SHADOWS

  CHAPTER 12: The Hope of the World

  CHAPTER 13: Tailgunner Joe

  PART SIX: THE AGE OF FEAR

  CHAPTER 14: Loyalty

  CHAPTER 15: No Decency

  PART SEVEN: THE LAND OF LIES

  CHAPTER 16: The Specter

  CHAPTER 17: The Descent

  CHAPTER 18: COINTELPRO

  Epilogue: Master of Deceit, Then and Now

  How I Researched and Wrote This Book

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Image Credits

  Acknowledgments

  FACT: In November 1964, William Sullivan, an assistant director of the FBI, set out to blackmail Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  FACT: Sullivan was not only one of the highest-ranking FBI officers; he also had good reason to believe he would succeed J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the organization — if only he could overcome his terrible mistake of having once defended Dr. King.

  THE INSIDE STORY: On November 24, an FBI agent boarded an airplane from Washington to Miami in order to mail a package. The box held audiotapes and an anonymous letter, probably written by Sullivan. “King,” the letter warned, “there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. . . . You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.” Though the letter was deliberately ambiguous about what “way out” Dr. King should take, King believed the note was telling him to commit suicide.

  How could one of the most honored and trusted law officers in America conspire to destroy Dr. King? How could he imagine that blackmail leading to suicide was legal? Hoover, the longtime head of the FBI, was furious at King for criticizing his men. And he was certain that King was a pawn under Communist influence, which meant that he had to be exposed, marginalized, and neutralized. Stopping the “reds”— the Communists — was more important to Hoover than anything: laws, rights, even human lives. The plot against Dr. King opens a window into a dark past — a time of secrets and lies, an era when Hoover both protected America and betrayed the principles that define its system of government.

  The plot against King was not a strange, onetime fluke. It was the product of a time when a branch of the government — our government — believed that its mission to defend against revolutionaries was more important than any law. This book is a journey back into that age of war and cold war, into the time that produced J. Edgar Hoover. Whenever America faces threats, there will be those who offer us security — at a price. That price may be your privacy or the freedom of a classmate or the life of a leader. We cannot know how we will react to the next crisis — but we can learn by revisiting, and reliving, the last one.

  The FBI released this letter twice, selecting different words and sentences to black out. It has not explained the odd logic behind the choices. The second version can be seen here.

  The background image here comes from the same issue of the Liberator quoted in chapter 3.

  Today, Americans face intense terrorist threats and thus hard choices: Which rights and freedoms can we, must we, curtail in order to be safer in our streets and homes? Can our government tap wires without a court order? Detain suspected enemies without specific charges? Subject members of one religious group to additional scrutiny at our borders? These are precisely the sorts of decisions that J. Edgar Hoover and his successors faced in dealing with Communism for much of the twentieth century, so there should be a great deal we could learn from reading about that time. But today, Communism and anti-Communism are just terms that appear on tests, like the Whig, Greenback, or Know-Nothing parties. Flattened out into a chronology of unfamiliar names and forgettable dates, the great dramas of the twentieth century are useless to us. We can benefit from the story of Communism and anti-Communism only if we experience it as the people who lived it did — with passion. Once you step inside the mind of that recent past, you will have a new tool for facing the challenges of our time.

  There are two ways to tell the story of America. Here’s one: Yearning to be free, courageous individuals set out from England to the New World. From the Mayflower on, the spirit of this land has been that of liberty and personal effort. No longer needing to bow to kings or obey priests, Americans set out to improve themselves and to show the world what democracy, industry, and individual effort could achieve. America is the land where anyone can make good. We see that over and over again, from the farmers of the rocky soil of New England to the settlers hitching up their wagons to go west to the immigrants flocking to our shores to the intrepid businessmen who built the shops, factories, and corporations that made this land the wealthiest place in the world. America is proof that capitalism works: every person seeking his own fortune, aiming to “make it,” can succeed.

  Here’s a second way to describe our past: As the Communists see it, what you have just read is a lie. America was settled by racists who murdered Indians, enslaved Africans, and silenced women. Every time the poor or the enslaved tried to rise up, they were either shot at or imprisoned. Worse yet, through the aid of the media, and with the cooperation of prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers, those heroes who fought for all Americans were called un-American. America’s poor are kept docile by TV, games, and fast food; they are pigs at the trough, fed slop to keep them happy on the way to the slaughterhouse. As the journalist John Reed wrote in 1918, “Nothing teaches the American working class except hard times and repression. Hard times are coming, repression is organized on a grand scale.” America is proof: in order for capitalists to get filthy rich, they must have a base of the divided, ignorant poor they can use. The future belongs to the people, united, working together for a future in which all share and all are equal.

  It is nice to believe the first story. It feels good; you can feel proud to be an American and hopeful about the future. But if, having grown up with that patriotic tale, you began to see the holes in it — the land stolen from the Indians, the endless labor of the Africans, the strikes broken by Pinkertons hired by callous bosses, the illegal wiretapping and break-ins organized by the FBI — then the second story offers a thrilling clarity. It is like waking up from a dream: you suddenly understand the way America and indeed the world works. The author Arthur Koestler, who was a Communist for many years, described that moment perfectly: “New light seems to pour from all directions across the skull; the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces of a jigsaw puzzle assembled by magic at one stroke.” And you have a mission: you must bring this truth to the world; you must free your fellow Americans from their illusions. You must be the beacon of truth in a land of lies.

  The first view celebrates individuals: the brave pioneer, the courageous immigrant, the brilliant inventor. A nation is great if it prot
ects our right to make choices: to pray, to vote, to make money, to pass our property on to our children. In this view, the more freedom each one of us has, the better off we all are.

  The second view turns those same beliefs upside down. The nineteenth-century German philosopher Karl Marx claimed that the tale of individual choice and progress was an illusion. The victims of society — the poor, working people, the enslaved, women, children — were prisoners of their condition. They were so crushed by their basic needs — to eat, to have shelter, to survive another day — that it was a cruel joke to speak about them as individuals who could improve their lot. All the fine talk about free enterprise and private initiative was like the false promise of the lottery: sure, one person may win the jackpot, but millions of players are sure to lose. Marx wanted to change the game so that everyone would be guaranteed to do somewhat better, even if that meant there were no big winners. Improving the lives of working people, the vast majority of suffering humanity, was all that mattered.

  For workers seeking a way to change their lives of backbreaking toil, for idealists troubled by the vast gaps between rich and poor, by racism, and by the oppression of women, and for intellectuals drawn to sharp, skeptical analyses, Marx was a golden light in a dark world. And yet that is not the end of the story. Who exactly are “the people”? If the poor are downtrodden, uneducated, and ignorant, who speaks for them? What if most citizens prefer to go to church, or play with their children, rather than take over the government? Does that mean a small group can rule in the name of “the people”? If that is so — and, in fact, that is precisely how Communism has played out almost everywhere it has gained power — then who is the bigger liar: the capitalist who teases the poor with images of goods they cannot afford or the Communist who hypnotizes the masses with empty slogans and false ideals?

  Communism upholds the ideal of helping the helpless — which has not worked out in practice. But what about capitalism? Are we really all that free? Are we able to hold any idea? Express any point of view? The Supreme Court has ruled that high schools and even colleges can censor school newspapers. How free is that? Political campaigns run on money, and those with plenty to spend make sure to drown every potential winner in lavish contributions. How can any individual swim against that tide? According to a recent survey, only 28 percent of high-school biology teachers in America follow the National Research Council’s guidelines on how to teach evolution. Most of the other 72 percent are not creationists; they’re just cowed, depriving their students of real science because they are too afraid of their own communities. And what if you begin to believe in Marx, if you think America needs to be totally and completely changed? Are you free to believe that? To argue for it? To organize for it? To plot and plan to bring about a revolution?

  Communism is beautiful in theory, but Communist nations have murdered millions upon millions of their own citizens. Capitalism offers freedom while letting the wealthy and powerful set the rules. These are the competing visions that people struggled to judge in the twentieth century. Switching from one view to the other led some to spy for foreign governments, to betray their closest friends, and even to suffer mental breakdowns. And the questions of how we should live are still with us today. If the good life is buying a new Wii, the latest iPhone, or a game the day it’s released, then America is a great place to be. If the good life is impossible until the system that rules us is changed, then these little treats are pathetic bribes and America is a prison. Is the truth in being just like everyone else or in demanding radical change? What should you do if everyone around you is blind to the truth? What should you do if you begin to doubt the truth you once believed in?

  How does change come to nations? For people who believe Marx, the answer is obvious. Those who have power will never give it up. Why would they? The rich have always staged lavish spectacles to distract the poor — how different is American Idol from The Hunger Games? Or they whip up fear and hatred of outsiders, so that workers do not recognize their real enemies. Notice how anti-immigrant talk spread after the 2007 economic crash. There may even be elections in which a candidate claims to be the voice of the neglected and abused. But that is one more illusion. The small class of people who control the economy of a nation are the real rulers, and they clutch on to power. The only way actual change comes is through force.

  When the victims of the wealthy and powerful band together, throw off their chains, and seize control of the economy, that is the first and only moment of hope. The word revolution means “turning over,” the world turned upside down: the worker drives off the boss and takes control of the factory; the students run the school; the hungry demand the bread they need. A revolution breaks the spell, and the vise grip, of the rich through the massed power of their victims. And so, just as in childbirth, the birth of a new society must come with blood. No one voluntarily gives up power, so those who recognize their oppression must train to seize control. Indeed, many revolutionaries do not shrink from violence; they believe that only bullets and bombs can bring liberation.

  Violent revolution brings a thrilling clarity: no more compromises, no more lies, no more bending to old ways or old people — which makes it particularly appealing to the young. The English poet William Wordsworth described that feeling perfectly, because he felt it during the French Revolution: “we who were strong in love! / Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!”

  Completed in 1833, this classic painting by Jean-Victor Schnetz captures the combination of idealism and tragedy that can come with violent change, in this case the so-called July Revolution of 1830 in France.

  Who believes in this idea of necessary violence? Certainly people like Marx. But Thomas Jefferson himself said exactly the same thing. In 1787 he wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” The author of the Declaration of Independence, soon to be the third president of the United States, a Founding Father if there ever was one, announced the need for violent change.

  When he first took office, Abraham Lincoln — the man most historians believe was the best president America ever had — added that whenever the people “shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.” Revolution is not just a Communist idea, a Russian idea; it is bred in the bones of America.

  But is revolutionary violence any different from a dictator’s murders? Revolutionaries may say they love the people, but that does not mean they are any better leaders than the kings, emperors, and tsars who say God gave them the right to rule. Was the French Revolution, which made Wordsworth dizzy with happiness, the birth of a new and better world or of a heartless tyranny wrapped up in fine words? These questions are abstract and theoretical to us, but in 1917 they were the most practical choices.

  John Reed was born in 1887 to a wealthy family in Portland, Oregon, and grew up to study at Harvard when the college was all male and overwhelmingly white, Protestant, and privileged. But Reed was hungry for new ideas and burned to change the world. Wherever he went, whether he was drinking with radical artists in New York’s Greenwich Village or rushing off to Mexico to write about revolution, he was a shining star. If there was a pulse of change in the world, Reed needed to be there to share the good news.

  World War I began in 1914, and it sent ancient empires crashing into one another like tilting icebergs. Amid the gore and death, the world of kings and princes seemed to be destroying itself. In October 1917, Reed got word that he must dash off to Russia. There, he saw a tiny group of committed Communists take over the vast empire that the Romanov family had ruled for three hundred years. Led by Vladimir Lenin, the disciplined cell of revolutionaries named themselves Bolsheviks — the “majority” party — as if they were the true voice of Russia’s toiling masses.

  The Soviet artist El Lissitzky created this design for an ultramodern movable tower from which
Lenin could spread his new truths to the people.

  Reed described the Bolshevik takeover in his book Ten Days That Shook the World. Seeing the revolution unfold before him, he “suddenly realized that the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die.” (Reed’s experiences are vividly reenacted in Reds, the 1981 film about his life.)

  This new kingdom was for the whole earth, not just Russia. “A great idea has triumphed,” said one admiring American. The working people had their first victory, and Communists believed the whole world would soon follow.

  Reed believed that the Russian Revolution was the beginning of a new era. For once, the poor had fought and had won. Now they ruled Russia, and they would make an example of that vast land. They would show the path to the future for working people everywhere. To those idealists, the message of Russia in 1917 was hope. No government was safe. Soon the laborers who worked endless hours in soulless factories would rule the world.

  The great Soviet director Sergey Eisenstein made this film based on John Reed’s enthusiastic account of the Russian Revolution. For generations, Americans critical of capitalism found inspiration in Reed’s life and his words.

  In 1917, just as Reed was in Russia basking in the glories of the revolution, a young lawyer named John Edgar Hoover was beginning to burrow his way into the heart of the American government, in Washington, DC.