CHAPTER EIGHT
A Look at Lend-Lease
In his Twenty-First Report to Congress on Lend-Lease Operations,
President Truman says: “Total Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union
amounted to $9.5 billions.” [1]
It is this figure of nine and one-half billions, covering shipments only, that
I intend to examine.
I am sure that most people are under the impression that by far the greater
amount of Russian Lend-Lease shipments were munitions. But from the
government’s own figures in the Twenty-First Report, we learn that the
contrary is true. The lesser part, or 49%, was for munitions. The greater part,
or 51%, was for non-munitions! Here are the figures:
Munitions $4,651,582,000 - 49%
Non-Munitions $4,826,084,000 - 51%
TOTAL $9,477,666,000 - 100%
What exactly is meant by “munitions” and how much did we spend in each
classification? The Twenty-First Report breaks down all Russian munitions
under Lend-Lease into those five classifications, with the following
expenditures:
All Munitions
1. Aircraft and parts $1,652,236,000
2. Motor vehicles and parts $1,410,616,000
3. Ordnance and ammunition $ 814,493,000
4. Tanks and parts $ 478,398,000
5. Water craft * $ 295,839,000
_____________
TOTAL $4,651,582,000 [2]
* In addition to a merchant fleet, we gave the Russians 581 naval vessels.
Though they agreed to return all the ships at the conclusion of war, they are
still holding most of them.
Among the few returned: the radar-equipped light cruiser Milwaukee, 4
frigates, and a couple of badly used icebreakers.
The original list included 77 minesweepers, 105 landing craft, 103
sub chasers, 28 frigates, 202 torpedo boats, 4 floating dry docks, 4 250-ton
pontoon barges, 3 icebreakers, 15 river tugs, and the light cruiser.
Few citizens, if any, would cavil at the sums expended in any of the
foregoing categories. Most, like myself, would probably say “Well spent!” But
now let’s take a look at the greater category, the 51% of non-munitions. We
find they break down into:
All Non-Munitions
Petroleum Products - $111,075,000
Agricultural Products - $1,674,586,000
Industrial Materials & Products - $3,040,423,000
TOTAL $4,826,084,000 [3]
Since we gave the Russians planes, tanks, ships and motor vehicles, it is
easy enough to grant them “Petroleum Products,” the necessary oil and gas
and fuel, are a justifiable wartime expenditure. Though the Government does
not do this, “to my mind the $111,075,000 could logically be included under
“Munitions.”
But what about the rest of this greater part of Lend-Lease?
In the spirit of humanity, let us pass over the enormous figure of
$1,674,586,000 for “Agricultural Products,” even though we never got so much as a formal “thank you” from the Russian people or their leaders, and
even though the dislocations and shortages caused in our own domestic
economy by these tremendous shipments of foodstuffs are only too vivid in
our memories.
There still remains the largest figure of all, $3,040,423,000. We now
discover that one-third of the whole of our nine and one-half billions of
Russian Lend-Lease comes under the heading of “Industrial Materials and
Products.”
It is this category which conceals a multitude of sins, running the gamut
from such military secrets as uranium and other atomic bomb ingredients,
down to the Moscow amusement park which I will show you was paid for by
Lend-Lease.
And under which of President Truman’s four main headings – Munitions,
Agricultural, or Industrial – could the following items legitimately be listed?
Cigarette cases
Phonograph records
Household furnishings
Lipsticks,
perfumes
Fishing tackle
Dolls
Bank vaults
Ladies’ compacts
Sheet music
Playground equipment
Yet these are things which we sent to Russia under Lend-Lease, as I shall
shortly show you in detail. And just to mention at this point several other
fantastic items, we also sent pianos and other musical instruments; antique
furniture; calendars; 13,328 sets of teeth; toothbrushes, of course; women’s
jewelry, etc., etc. Yet the Lend-Lease Act specifically excluded “goods
furnished for relief and rehabilitation purposes”!
Are these items listed in the President’s Twenty-First Report? You can bet
your life they aren’t. The Twenty-First Report has only general statements and
the grand totals I have quoted.
Where can one find a list of the specific items of Lend-Lease shipped to
Russia? Not in any Government publication. If you go to the Library of
Congress, or write to the Superintendent of Documents for Lend-Lease
figures, you will get Department of State Publication No. 2739, entitled Soviet
Supply Protocols. [3]
This booklet of 156 pages seems comprehensive. It has an account of the
four big Lend-Lease agreements or “protocols” arrived at between October,
1941 at conferences in Moscow, Washington, London, and Ottawa
respectively.
It has all kinds of headings and sub-headings about Soviet “requirements,”
but after a good deal of frustrating attempts at analysis, you find the loop-hole
statement that the booklet does
“not indicate the extent to which materials were actually delivered to the
Soviet Union.”
And where do they refer you for this information? To the Twenty-First
Report, which has a “Partial List of Goods Shipped” – only 28 items! [4]
After bouncing back and forth between the Soviet Supply Protocols with its non analyzable figures and lack of “actual deliveries,” and the incomplete
figures of the Twenty-First Report, the knowledge-seeking citizen finally asks
himself: “Whom do they think they’re fooling?”
Fortunately, I have the Russians’ own figures. That’s where the items listed
above come from. The lists compiled by the Russians are crystal clear. There
is no legal gobbledygook, no prattle about “protocols.” Instead there is the
name of each item, the quantity, and the cost – just like that!
The Russians reveal that under Lend-Lease they received all kinds of
supplies which can be found in no published Government record.
My own favorite item went over in 1944. There it is, listed all by itself (see
reproduction on page 79 of this edition) as “Tobacco pipe, one, $10.” For what
person would the entire machinery of Lend-Lease make available one pipe?
Maybe Joseph Stalin wanted to test, for himself, the subtler resources of
Lend-Lease. In any event, there it is.
As far as I know, these Russian figures have never been made available. I
consider them the core of this book and I include them in the following chapter
in full. They deserve endless study and examination.
Small businesses that found wartime shortages severe to the point of
stopping production will be amazed to learn how many “scare” items were
lavishly supplied to Russia.
Housewives will be aghast at the quantities of butter we denied ourselves
and sent to a people which used it for greasing purposes.
Chemical and metal experts, and machinists, other specialists in many
fields will find here the facts and figures which affected them in wartime.
Atomic materials were only one of many things that Moscow’s friends in
Washington sent along to Russia via Lend-Lease, in violation of the spirit and
letter of the law, in defiance of our country’s security and safety.
The United States master Lend-Lease agreement with Russia declared:
“The Government of the United States of America will continue to
supply the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with such DEFENSE
articles, DEFENSE services, and DEFENSE information as the President
of the United States of America shall authorize to be transferred or
provided.”
Under the Lend-Lease law the President had full power to decide what
defense assistance the Russians were to get. He delegated that power to
Harry Hopkins, with the result that in addition to defense supplies, the
Russians got whatever they asked for, unless someone lower in the hierarchy
tried to prevent it.
Take the case of copper. American copper resources became so critical
during the war that bus bars of the metal, on electric panel-boards, were
replaced with conductors of silver, borrowed from the Treasury’s vaults at
West Point.
Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, was scarce enough to warrant serious
debate over substituting steel in shell cases.
With such facts in mind, Lend-Lease shipments of copper, brass and
bronze to the Soviet Union, divulged in the Russian lists, seem terrifying. They
aggregated 642,503 tons, valued at $283,609,967.
Seven-tenths of all our copper donations to Russia consisted of wire and
cable.
In January, 1942, Donald M. Nelson was named chairman of the War
Production Board. According to Robert E. Sherwood, he owed the
appointment to Harry Hopkins, who recommended Nelson after talking Mr.
Roosevelt out of his notion of a three-man committee – Nelson, Wendell
Willkie and William O. Douglas.
But Nelson, knowing the needs of American aircraft production, rebelled
against Russia’s enormous requisitions of copper wire. Soviet agents
appealed to Hopkins, who ordered Nelson to give what they wanted. Despite
his personal obligation, the chairman was patriotic enough to refuse, and did
so a second time when the command was repeated.
Thereupon, Hopkins arranged a meeting at the White House, where the
President went to work on the W.P.B chief. Mr. Roosevelt suggested that he
would take it as a personal favor if Nelson let the Russians have all the copper
wire they requested.
What they obtained was enough telephone wire to circle the globe 50
times.
The allotment of copper wire and cable to Russian in 1942 was 32,355
tons. [6] After three more years the total was 219,403 tons, rated at
$108,115,726. [7]
Immediately after Pearl Harbor, the Navy needed to repair our damaged
battleships and placed a high priority order for copper wire suitable for
battleship use. The Navy, however, did not have a priority high enough to secure the wire they needed, because an order for Russian copper wire had a
higher priority.
The American Steel & Wire Company plant at Worcester, Mass. Continued
to rush through the Soviet order, which amounted to nearly a million miles of
copper wire.
This was obviously intended for the post-war rehabilitation of Russian
cities, because the wire, which was on spools, was packed in separate soft
pine boxes and placed in storage on a 20 acre lot in Westchester County,
New York, where it remained until the war was nearly over before it was
shipped to Russia for rehabilitation of their communications system.
About the same time a store arose in the Ordnance Division of the War
Department, which had been sending to Russia quantities of artillery shell
cases. The Russians announced that they wished to make their own cases,
and demanded the requisite metal sheets and machinery, including hydraulic
presses and annealing furnaces.
American experts protested on two grounds. The process left a scrap
amounting to 45 per cent of the original brass which could be melted down
into other sheets. In view of the shortage, it was felt that the surplus should be
kept in the United States instead of being donated to Russia.
More important was the fact that delivery of presses and furnaces would
hand over to possible future enemies the know-how of a vital branch of our
munitions industry. Objections of the War Department and the War Production
Board were overruled by the White House.
The gift of this self-contained unit – a plant for fabricating shell cases –
brings us to a new dimension of Soviet Lend-Lease. Before the Russians, like
a mail-order catalog, had been spread the total array of American products and resources. In order to receive, they had merely to ask. If bills were ever
rendered, they need not pay.
We also sent machine tools and apparatus for precision tests; lathes and
power tools for metal working; machinery for textiles, wood pulp and paper,
woodworking, typesetting and printing; and cranes, hoists, derricks, elevators,
air compressors, coal cutters and rock drills. The thought is disconcerting that
each machine may have been copied and bred multitudes of its kind.
From individual machines Soviet hunger sharpened to demand entire
factories. The Twenty-First Report acknowledges the delivery to Russia of one
tire plant, one aluminum rolling mill and an unstated number of pipe
fabricating works.
General Groves testified that the Manhattan Project, in the nick of time,
snatched from boxes on an American wharf the equipment for an oil refinery
going to Russia. But the agency had to promise the use of “all its priorities” for
replacing the equipment at the earliest moment.
The following installations, mostly described as “complete,” are among
those for which the American Government, under Lend-Lease Act, pledged
delivery to the Soviet Union:
One repair plant for precision instruments $550,000;
Two factories for food
products, $6,924,000;
Three gas generating units, $21,390,000;
One petroleum
refinery, with machinery and equipment, $29,050,000;
17 stationary steam
and three hydro-electric plants, $263,289,000.
They even got more than $88 millions as charity!
Hopkins’ experience as a relief administrator was well known to the
Russians. When they applied to Hopkins, they got “relief” – even though it was
in direct violation of the Lend-Lease Act. According to their records the items
are officially listed as “Relief or Charity.”
In 1942 they received $10,457,417.
In 1943 it went to $19,089,139.
In 1944 the total was $25,479,722.
In 1945 it was $33,674,825.
The total for four years for this handout alone: $88,701,103 [8]
The women of Russia have every reason to be well dressed, even today,
thanks to Mr. Hopkins. In the three years 1942-44 we sent the Russians dress
goods costing more than $152 millions of satin twill, and ribbons, braids and
trimmings, costing millions more – a grand total of $181 millions for women’s
apparel. [9]
(In the same period the Russian army got only $21 millions of uniform
material.)
Among other things I found in the black suitcases at Great Falls were
blueprints of the leading industrial plants of the country. I opened one
suitcase, as an example, and found the complete plans for a General Electric
Plant at East Lynn, Mass.
I have since inquired about this plant and have found that it was under
constant heavy guard, since it was at this plant that our new plane turbo
chargers are being made. Armed guards to keep Americans out – but all the
blueprints sent to our most dangerous enemy before the plant was built!
We also found blueprints of the Electric Board Corp., of Groton, Conn.,
where our new atomic submarines are being built.
During the summer of 1943 there was another load of “diplomatic
suitcases.” Following the routine I had set up, I opened three – one at each
end of the plane and one at the center. To my surprise all contained reprints
of the patents in the U.S. Patent Office, a division of the Department of
Commerce. When I spoke to Colonel Kotikov, he said the entire cargo consisted of these records, and that they would be coming through
continuously.
The Soviet Union has refused to give out a single one of its patents since
1927. But our Patent Office was thrown open to a crew of technical experts
from the Amtorg Trading Corporation. They were on full-time duty, and spent
every day going over the files to pick out what they wanted. The documents
were provided by the Patent Office itself.
Later the task was given over by another Soviet Government agency, the
Four Continent Book Company, which abandoned the selective process and
took everything in sight. The Photostats were paid for with frequent checks,
running from $1,000 to $4,000 each.
The number of patents acquired, the House Committee on Un-American
Activities stated in 1949, “runs into the hundreds of thousands.”
The Committee further stated that
“Russian officials have been able to collect a lot of our industrial and
military inventions from our Government Patent Office. This is done
right out in the open with our permission.”
Among the patent reprints supplied to Russia the committee listed:
bomb sights, military tanks, airplanes, ship controls, bomb-dropping devices,
helicopters, mine sweepers, ammunition, bullet-resisting armor.
This sack of America’s inventive ingenuity did not end with the war, but
continued four years longer. The State Department ruled that nothing could be
done without Congressional legislation. Finally, due to the Fulton Lewis
broadcasts and the resulting public indignation, John Marzall, Commissioner
of Patents, ordered the termination of this practice on December 13, 1949.
Another “diplomatic” cargo which arrived at Great Falls was a planeload of
films. Colonel Stanislau Shumovsky, the Russian in charge, tried to prevent me from making an inspection by flaunting a letter from the State Department.
I told him the letter did not apply to me. It was a letter authorizing this Russian
to visit any restricted plant, and to make motion pictures of very intricate
machinery and manufacturing processes. I looked over a half dozen of the
hundreds of cans of films. That one plane carried a tremendous amount of
America’s technical know-how to Russia.
And, in return? Well, here is the story of “reverse Lend-Lease.” In 1943 we
in Great Falls sent Dr. Patrinkoff on to Washington as a representative of
Russian industry. He was supposed to have the very latest process data for
making synthetic rubber.
The State Department publicized his arrival and arranged for him to meet
with the Rubber Reserve Corporation. There, “in exchange for the invaluable
Russian technique,” he was to be completely enlightened about (1) our
chemical processes for making synthetic rubber, (2) the plant designs and
flow sheets, (3) anything else he might want to know about..
The visit, from the point of view of Rubber Reserve Corporation, was
valueless for the following reasons:
1. In July of 1942 all process designs were frozen so that plant
construction could commence.
2. During late 1943 construction was largely completed and
operations were beginning to deliver the rubber.
3. The protest from Houdry Process Corporation during late 1943
that they had perfected a better, cheaper process than any then
being projected, was overruled since the objective was to produce
rubber and not to perfect an ideal system.
4. Dr. Patrinkoff arrived during the Houdry protest and such ideas
on process as he did reluctantly divulge were unsuitable and, in
fact, covered almost primitive phases of synthesis which had been
obsolete in the United States for some time.
Dr. Patrinkoff, after being refused full unlimited access to its data by the
Rubber Reserve Corporation, went to various chemical and rubber companies
in the country and attempted to gain what had been denied to him in
Washington. Each company he visited called Rubber Reserve Corporation for
confirmation and each in turn refused the requested information. He then went
to the plant construction companies and received the same treatment.
Thereafter the Department of State sent him to Du Pont and asked that he
be given the process data on neoprene production. Sufficient pressure
accompanied this request to make Du Pont accede. The neoprene process is
not patented but is undivulged in this country. Thus, it can be assumed that
the Russians did learn this very valuable process through the intervention of
our State Department. Dr. Patrinkoff’s visit was publicized as “reverse LendLease”
– Russian aid to the United States!
This “reverse Lend-Lease” cost taxpayers: five plants for synthetic rubber
and its constituents, $27,500,000; two neoprene rubber factories; one factory
each for styrene, Houdry method butadiene, and Houdry catalysts. The
neoprene and butadiene plants had a capacity of 40,000 tons annually, which
is probably the reason the Soviet press announced recently that they now
lead the world in synthetic rubber production.
In his ardor for the Soviets, Hopkins never hesitated to seize upon supplies
urgently demanded by other agencies, even when the issue was military
success on the Western Front. Colonel H. E. Rounds, a wartime member of the Supply Committee of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, has stated to me that
interventions of this kind were so frequent that they came to be regarded as
all but invariable. The general feeling, Colonel Rounds said, was that in a
given supply problem the Russians repeatedly came first.
When Harry Hopkins stood up in Madison Square Gardens on June 22,
1942 and said to the Russian people: “We are determined that nothing shall
stop us from sharing with you all that we have,” he knew exactly how he was
going to do this. It was to be through Lend-Lease, over which he had such
absolute personal control that nothing could stop him from sharing with the
Soviet Union all that we had.
SOURCES
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Look At Lend-Lease
1. Twenty-First Report to Congress on Lend-Lease Operations, The White
House, Jan. 31, 1946, (U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 25.
2. Ibid., Table 8, p. 24.
3. Ibid.
4. Soviet Supply Protocols, State Department Document No. 2759, (U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1946).
5. Twenty-First Report, Table 9, p. 25.
6. Soviet figures (Jordan Diary).
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
CHAPTER NINE
The Greatest Mail-Order
Catalog in History
A complete, itemized list of Lend-Lease shipments is unobtainable from
any agency or group of agencies of our Government. However, the Russians
kept their own lists which I, as a liaison officer, was allowed to consult and
copies of which I finally acquired.
They list the dollar value of every item, though not always the exact
quantity, with annual totals as follows:
1942 - $1,422,853,332;
1943 - $2,955,811,271;
1944 - $3,459,274,155;
1945 - $1,838,281,501.
The grand total for four years is some $9.6 billions, which compares with
the President’s figure of $9.5 (for shipments only) in the Twenty-First Report.
But the complete Russian record is much more revealing than any partial or
“protocol requirement” list the public has been allowed to see.
I would have preferred to give the Russian figures for each of the four
years, because there are many interesting comparisons, such as the thorium
shipments which stopped after 1943. Space limitations prevented this. Faced
with the choice of listing some items with all the breakdowns, or cumulative
totals for all the items, I chose the latter. If any readers would like to have the
yearly breakdowns on specific items, I will be glad to provide them from my
worksheets.
At the start I have grouped all the materials – chemicals, metals, minerals –
suitable for use in an atomic pile. I have not listed here the ‘millions of dollars’
worth of mining, ore-crushing, and construction equipment which we sent to Russia. Informed readers may also find materials suitable for use in the
hydrogen bomb elsewhere in the lists.
Item Quantity Cost in Dollars
ATOMIC MATERIALS
Beryllium Metals 9,681 lbs. -- $ 10,874.
Cadmium alloys 72,535 lbs. -- $70,029.
Cadmium metals 834,989 lbs. - $71,466.
Cobalt ore & concentrate 33,600 lbs. -- $49,782.
Cobalt metal & cobalt-bearing scrap 806,941 lbs. -- $1,190,774.
Uranium metal 2.2 lbs. -
Aluminum Tubes 13,766,472 lbs. -- $13,041,152.
Graphite, natural, flake, lump or chip 7,384,282 lbs. $812,437.
Beryllium salts & compounds 228 lbs. -- $775.
Cadmium oxide 2,100 lbs. -- $3,080.
Cadmium salts & compounds, n.e.s. * 2 lbs. -- $19.
Cadmium sulfate 2,170 lbs. -- $1,374.
Cadmium sulfide 16,823 lbs. -- $17,380.
Cobalt nitrate 51 lbs. -- $48.
Cobalt oxide 17,800 lbs. -- $34,832.
Cobalt salts & compounds n.e.s. 11,475 lbs. -- $7,112.
Cobaltic & cobaltous sulfate 22 lbs. -- $25.
Deuterium oxide (heavy water) -- $1,100 grs.
* “n.e.s.” stands for “not especially specified,” throughout.
CHAPTER TEN
My Visit to the State
Department in 1944
The stream of “diplomatic suitcases” passing without inspection through
Great Falls weighed more heavily than ever upon my conscience. During
January, 1944, I made a special trip to Washington to see whether something
couldn’t be done.
When I explained my intention to Colonel O’Neill, he agreed the matter was
important enough for a trip to the Capital and promised to issue the necessary
orders. I left Great Falls on Jan. 4, 1944, which was my 46th birthday.
Because the Colonel and Mrs. Kotikov wished to visit New York at this
time, I got first-class transportation. The C-47 in which we traveled belonged
to the unsuspecting Colonel Kotikov, and bore the Russian red star. Lt. Col.
Boaz was our pilot and when we landed in Minneapolis we were
photographed by the Minneapolis Star.
I reached Washington on the afternoon of January 6. The next morning I
went to A.T.C headquarters at Gravelly Point, and spent the day being shuttled
back and forth among eight different offices. On the following morning I
appealed to Colonel Paige, who suggested that I try the Chief Air Inspector,
Brigadier General Janius W. Jones.
General Jones afterwards denied that he ever met me, but my diary entry
for Jan. 8 reads: Saw Gen. Jones, Col. Wilson, Col. Vander Lugt.” As a matter
of fact, Jones listened to me for fifteen minutes, and promised to send on of his ace inspectors to Great Falls. He said this officer would be Colonel Robert
H. Dahm, who actually arrived on Jan. 25.
That afternoon I went to the old State Department Building on
Pennsylvania Avenue. I had been directed to John Newbold Hazard, liaison
officer for Lend-Lease. He was soon to act as a special adviser to Vice President
Wallace on a mission to the Soviet Union and China, and is today
professor of public law at Columbia University and director of its Russian
Institute. I was not to meet Mr. Hazard, however, until some months later at a
meeting of the Washington Forum.
From his private office, after I was announced, came a young assistant.
“Major Jordan,” he began, “we know all about you, and why you are
here. You might as well understand that officers who get too officious
are likely to find themselves on an island somewhere in the South Seas.”
With natural anger, I retorted that I didn’t think the State Department had
any idea how flagrant abuses were at Great Falls. I said we had virtually no
censorship, or immigration or customs inspection.
Crowds of Russians were coming in of whom we had no record. Photostats
of military reports from American attaches in Moscow were being returned to
the Kremlin. Planeloads of suitcases, filled with confidential data, were
passing every three weeks without inspection, under the guise of “diplomatic
immunity.”
“But, my dear Major,” I was admonished with a jaunty wave of the hand,
“we know all about that. The Russians can’t do anything, or send anything out
of this country, without our knowledge and consent. They have to apply to the
State Department for everything. I assure you the Department knows exactly
what it is doing. Good afternoon.”
I returned to Great Falls in low spirits. But I took heart from Colonel Bernard
C. Hahn, another of General Jones’ Inspectors who did not conceal his
indignation after I took him over the base and showed him the things I had
protested about. “What can we do?” he asked. I replied that the State
Department was hopeless, and that our best chance was to call in Army
Counter-Intelligence.[If you read this book below,which I have completed already,you will see just how infested the State Department was with communists DC]
Colonel Kotikov was displeased when he learned of this turn of events, and
let me understand that he knew I was responsible. An overall report was
drafted, but has never been made public. Its existence was confirmed to me in
1949 by the FBI, through their questions.
On March 28, 1944, however, a report had been prepared by an
unidentified special agent of Counter-Intelligence. It ran, in part, as follows:
On 13 March, 1944, while in the performance of official duties, this agent
had occasion to contact Major George Racey Jordan, United Nations
Representative at East Base, Great Falls, Mont…, Major Jordan stated that he
was desirous of conveying certain information to intelligence authorities…
There is an incredible amount of diplomatic mail sent to Russia through
Great Falls… All of this was protected from censorship by diplomatic
immunity. It may be significant that it is not at all uncommon for the Russian
mail or freight shipment to be accompanied by two men who openly state that
they are to see that the mail or freight is not examined and the diplomatic
immunity privilege violated…
This agency observed that Major Jordan appeared to maintain accurate,
detailed files and was very anxious to convey his information through
intelligence channels. He requested that he be contacted at a time when the
Russian activity could be outlined in minute detail, and was advised that this
would be done…
It is recommended that a prolonged interview be conducted with Major
Jordan; that his records be scrutinized for information of an intelligence
nature; and that he be contacted regularly.
It is further recommended that the facts contained herein be given due
consideration, with a view to contacting the State Department in order that
they may be cognizant of the situation and that corrective measures be taken.
[1]
The recommendations were endorsed by the Acting Adjutant General of
the U.S. Army, Brigadier General Robert H. Dunlop, who urged that their
adoption, in his judgment, would result in “a more comprehensive
enforcement of existing laws and regulations than hitherto has been the case.”
[2]
When the report and endorsement arrived at the State Department, it was
necessary to make at least a show of activity. The matter was assigned to
Charles E. Bohlen, who later became Counselor of the Department. A
specialist on Russia, he acted at Tehran and Yalta as interpreter for Mr.
Roosevelt, and at Potsdam as political adviser to Mr. Truman.
On July 6 Bohlen called a meeting of representatives of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, Office of Censorship, Military Intelligence, Air Transport
command, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Bureau of Customs,
Foreign Economic Administration and State Department. If any minutes or memorandum of the session were recorded by the Department of State, they
were not made available from its files when the Un-American Activities
Committee asked for them in 1950.
Bohlen had an interview with the Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy,
and followed with a written memorandum dated July 28. It presented a
statement of U.S. customs and censorship regulations, and advised that in future they would be enforced. The warning appears to have been ignored
completely.
On Sept. 20, 1944 security officers at Great Falls reported that a C-47 left
for Moscow with 3,800 pounds of non-diplomatic records. They had not been
censored and were therefore in violation of the Espionage Act. But local
officers did not dare to remove the shipment from the Pipeline.
An explanation of their timidity was found in a notarized statement
submitted to the Un-American Activities Committee by Captain Harry Decker,
chief of a new Traffic Control Unit set up in July, 1944 at Great Falls. Its
function was to make sure that overseas personnel and cargo, in and
outbound, were checked by the proper civilian agencies.
Customs, Immigration, Censorship and the FBI now had staffs at Great
Falls. Captain Decker had learned, as I had to, that it was possible to force the
Russians to accept inspection by refusing to clear American pilots flying
Soviet planes. Beyond that, nothing could be done. Captain Decker said he
had asked again and again for authority to ground any plane bearing
contraband persons or freight, and to hold it until the defense was rectified.
He was enlightened by a high official of the Department of Commerce,
Irving Weiss, who made a trip to Great Falls. Such authority, Weiss told him,
could be granted only by a top echelon decision of the State Department, the
Board of Economic Welfare and the President’s Protocol Committee. “It
seemed,” Captain Decker observed ruefully, “that the power of enforcement
lay at very high levels beyond the reach of us there.” [3] Needless to say, no
enforcement order was issued.
By this time, I was no longer at Great Falls.
SOURCES
CHAPTER TEN
My Visit to the State Department in 1944
1. Hearings, testimony of Donald T. Appell, March 2, 1950, pp. 1128-29.
2. Ibid., p. 1146.
3. Ibid., p. 1140.
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