From Major Jordan's Diaries - B

From Major Jordan's Diaries

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 subchasers, 28 frigates, 202 torpedo boats, 4 floating drydocks, 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! [8]
     After bouncing back and forth between the Soviet Supply Protocols with its unanalyzable 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 WPB 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 catalogue, 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: bombsights, 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 nay 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 Lend-Lease” – 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.
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From Major Jordan's Diaries

CHAPTER NINE

The Greatest Mail-Order Catalogue 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.

These lists continue on page 83. Pages 77 through 110 are copies of written orders, etc. along with many pages of details itemizing goods sent through Lend-Lease to Soviet Russia. 

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From Major Jordan's Diaries

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 m 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 ATC 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 attachés 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.

     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 Teheran and Yalta as interpreter for Mr. Roosevelt, and at Pottsdam as political advisor 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 memoranda 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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From Major Jordan's Diaries

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Priest Who Confronted Stalin

     Many surprising things turned up on the Pipeline, but the most unexpected of all was a priest.

     Before I tell the story of Father Orlemanski, it is necessary to recall some details of the tragic fate of Poland. In a speech on Jan. 22, 1944 Winston Churchill gave the first clue that the Western Powers were planning to deliver Poland, one of their staunchest allies, into Russian hands.

     The Prime Minister could afford to take the public lead; he had no Polish constituency, while the United States had 3,000,000 citizens of Polish birth or descent. At Teheran, four months earlier, Poland’s death-sentence had been arranged; it was to be executed at Yalta early in 1945.

     Prominent roles in the tragedy were played by two American citizens who were cleared from Great Falls to Moscow on April 12 and 19, 1944. Both had been equipped by the State Department with passports authorizing travel to the Soviet Union, and by the War Department with military passes for the Western Defense Command (Great Falls) and Alaska Defense Force (Fairbanks).

     First to arrive was Oscar Richard Lange, professor of economics at Chicago University. Born and educated in Poland, he had been a traveling fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1934-36 and had come to America in 1937, at the age of 33. He was naturalized in 1943.

     I first heard of Oscar Lange from Colonel Kotikov, who was leaving on one of his mysterious hurry-up flights to Washington. He asked me to keep a particular look-out for a man “high in Polish affairs” who would be passing through on the way to Moscow. He could be identified because he “walked with a limp.” On account of an urgent appointment in Edmonton, he was to be sent along without delay.

     As my diary records, Professor Lange arrived on April 11 and departed early the next morning. In the press of other business I took little notice except to examine his papers, which were in order. But I sat up when a telegram was forwarded by the Airbase Commander. It was from General Marshall, who sent his personal order for the professor’s clearance. I thought, “This Lange must really be a V.I.P.” Never before, at Great Falls, had such intervention from the Chief of Staff occurred.

     The second American was Father Stanislaus Orlemanski. To the best of my information, Professor Lange and Father Orlemanski were the first Americans to pass the “Iron Curtain” stretched across the Bering Sea.

     Father Orlemanski was the pastor of a church in Springfield, Mass. He was possessed by the idea of an heroic mission. He would confront Joseph Stalin face to face and wrest from him a promise that Communist persecution of religion would cease. For such a dream there have not been too many parallels since the Middle Ages.

     In the year 1219 another of “God’s fools,” Saint Francis of Assisi, trudged across a no-man’s land in Egypt, through the Moslem camp where there was a price on every Christian head, and stood at last before the Saracen commander-in-chief. To Sultan Malik-al-Kamil the friar preached the Gospel and implored him to accept baptism. The monarch smiled, but granted safe-conduct to Francis and remarked to his courtiers that for the first time he had met a true “Nazarene.”

    On the morning of April 18 Colonel Kotikov telephoned us that he had been stranded at Billings, Montana. In a B-25 bomber, Colonel Boaz, Major Paul Reid and I flew to the rescue, returning about 2:15 the same afternoon.

     There in my office, sitting with an air of tranquil patience, was a Catholic priest. He was nearly six feet tall and had the build of a husky workingman. We shook hands and exchanged names.

     Quite simply, Father Orlemanski said that he was on the way to Moscow. I, Major Jordan, was to put him on a plane. He spoke with the serenity of one who had taken to heart the favorite maxim of Saint Francis of Assisi: “Cast your care upon God, and He will protect you.” Thinking of the fate in store for a priest in Russia, I was horrified.

     I demanded his credentials, never dreaming he could have any. To my stupefaction, he ordered military passes for the Alaska Defense Force and Western Defense Command, bearing the names of their respective chiefs, Major General Simon B. Buckner and Major General David McCoach, Jr. Next he produced a passport from the State Department empowering him to travel to the Soviet Union by way of Egypt, Iraq and Iran. He also had visas for the three countries.

     I asked why he was in Montana instead of the Near East. The Soviet Consulate in New York, he answered, had instructed him to ignore the visas and report to me in Great Falls. I went immediately to Colonel Kotikov, who showed me a wire from the Soviet Embassy directing him to facilitate the priest’s departure. He was bound for Moscow by personal invitation from Premier Stalin himself.

     “But it isn’t safe!” I objected. “Your people have been killing priests by the thousands!”

     “Ho, ho!” Kotikov laughed. “Was years ago, during bad part of Revolution. Today, under the great Stalin, religion in Russia very fine.” He shrugged off the visas for Egypt, Iraq and Iran..

     “Stalin wants him. Is visa enough,” he said.

     Full of worry, I went back to Father Orlemanski and asked how it happened that he, a Catholic priest, had been invited to Moscow by Joseph Stalin. He explained that his flock was made up entirely of Poles, by nativity or heritage, and that he had been besieged with questions, which he could not answer, about the fate of the Catholic religion in their homeland. Would it be suppressed? Would it be allowed to survive? Would it be tolerated for an interval and then destroyed? Had the hour not come for trying to bring about good relations between the Vatican and Kremlin?

     Believing in direct action, Father Orlemanski sat down and wrote an appeal to the one man in the world who had the answers.

     No letter could have been more providential for Stalin. He was preparing to swallow Poland, a morsel notoriously indigestible. There was urgent need of help from quarters which were Polish and non-Communist. Father Orlemanski was both. That he was also an American, and beyond all else a Catholic priest, was too good to be true.

     It happened that the Springfield cleric had published some writings on the position due to labor in society. The son and pastor of workingmen, and himself no stranger to manual labor, he had advanced ideas on the subject. His writings came into Stalin’s hands.

     The result was one in which the priest saw the hand of God. Through the Soviet Consulate in New York he received a cordial invitation to go to Moscow as Stalin’s personal guest, for a discussion across the table of the matters cited in his letter.

     “When Mr. Stalin invited me,” the priest told a correspondent in Moscow named Harrison E. Salisbury, “he sent a message to Mr. Roosevelt and asked him if it was all right for me to come over and, if it was, to fix it up about my travel papers.”

     Out of his native independence, Father Orlemanski responded with demands so uncompromising that they might have served as an example for the White House and State Department. He had the boldness to dictate the three conditions under which he would accept Stalin’s invitation:

(1) He would not travel to Moscow unless there was a sworn understanding that he would talk with Stalin himself.(2) In case of an attempt to elude the promise after he got there, and foist some lesser person upon him, he would take the next plane home.
(3) Under no circumstances would he travel with Professor Oscar Lange, who had been suggested as a companion.

     I told Father Orlemanski that transportation would not be available till the following afternoon. So I phoned for a reservation at the Rainbow Hotel and asked him to tell me about himself.

     He was 54 years old, and pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church on Franklin Street, Springfield, Mass. His father was an immigrant from Posen who had come with his young bride to Erie, PA, in 1876. Then had ten children, five girls and five boys, of whom four became priests. The elder Orlemanski started life in America as a common laborer, but gained a modest fortune in the contracting business. In 1912 he won a Carnegie medal for heroism: he had risked his life in an effort to snatch a stranger from death in a railroad accident.

     In 1917, two years after ordination, Father Orlemanski was sent to Springfield to found a parish in a settlement of Polish-Americans who were employed in local mills. There were only 80 families, but the number grew in 27 years to 965, aggregating bout 3,000 souls. Beginning with a rented tenement, he developed a parish center, not without fame, which covered more than a city block and was valued at half a million dollars. It boasted a school, convent, community house, rectory and an extraordinary new church, dedicated in 1940. Most of the construction was done with their own hands by men and boys of the parish, who gave their work free. As carpenter, plasterer and painter, the priest toiled shoulder to shoulder with the others. He himself designed the church. He finished with an expression that was very old-fashioned and somehow touching in an era of installment buying and public deficits: “There isn’t a penny of debt!”

     By this time I began to feel protective toward Father Orlemanski. Though not a Catholic, I was moved by his courage, simplicity and faith. I asked whether he had flown before. He had never been on a plane, and had traveled from New York to Great Falls by railway, at his own expense. He had no parachute.

     “Do I need one?” he asked.

     Under regulations, he could not board a plane without it and it would be useful in getting to the ground, I said, if anything happened. He looked so disturbed that on impulse I offered to lend him my own. But he must be sure to return it, as the Army would charge me $125 if it were lost. (The parachute arrived by express several weeks later.) To show how the apparatus worked, I buckled it over his black coat.

     “Father,” I warned, “if you do have to jump, don’t start praying until you’ve counted to ten and pulled the release handle. After that, you can pray your hardest.” He laughed, and said he would remember. I saw him to the hotel and asked him to lunch at the Officers’ Club at 11 A.M. the next day.

     We entered the club with Colonel Kotikov, in Red Army uniform. Eyes bulged and jaws dropped. While the Colonel chatted with other Soviet officers, I was glad to have the priest to myself, for I had another question, and a serious one. Did he have the sanction of the Catholic Church for his one-man crusade?

     A look of distress crossed his face. To be frank, he admitted, he was acting against orders from his superior. This was the Most Rev. Thomas M. O’Leary, Bishop of Springfield, who has since died. He had told Bishop O’Leary of the invitation from Stalin, and had been expressly forbidden to accept it. “There were fences,” he said, “and I had to leap over them.”

     He realized that if he went to Russia, it would have to be as a private individual. The Church must not be committed in any way. If he got back alive, and had accomplished something of benefit, the rest would be up to the Bishop. The priest had applied for his first vacation in 30 years and it had been granted. So here he was in Great Falls, severed temporarily from his parish and free, as he imagined, to act on his own.

     I had thought of a small service that would make the trip to Fairbanks more pleasant. Going to the ready-room where pilots waited for assignment, I asked whether any of them spoke Polish. A stocky, blonde lad, whose name I have forgotten, came forward.

     I introduced him to Father Orlemanski before the take-off. They broke into happy exchange in their own tongue as Colonel Kotikov and I walked with them to the C-47. The priest’s farewell word to me was: “Bless you, Major, for such a good Polish pilot!” I went to my office and wrote in the date-book: “Rev. S. Orelmanski departed for Moscow, 14:40.”

     At Fairbanks, it appears, the transport halted only long enough to take on gas and a Soviet pilot. Father Orlemanski had no chance to dismount. It seems probable that no one at Ladd Field knew he was aboard. The first night was spent in Siberia, at the third airfield beyond Nome. According to my list, it was Nova Marinsk.

     The flight across Asia was punishing. Winter still prevailed. Due to cold, altitude or motor noise, or all together, the priest’s hearing was permanently injured. There was a day when the plane got lost. The pilot was too stubborn to consult his maps or too proud to admit that he didn’t know how to use them. Father Orlemanski was accustomed to taking charge and making decisions. He got out the maps, identified points on the ground and convinced the pilot he was 150 miles off the course.

     He arrived in Moscow on April 25, and was promptly fastened upon by Professor Lange. They were in a theatre at 10 P.M. when a messenger notified Father Orlemanski that a car was waiting to drive him to the Kremlin. He arose, and so did Lange. The priest halted.

     “If this man is going along, I’ll stay here,” he announced.

     The economist dropped back into his seat and the priest went alone to meet Stalin. Also present at the Kremlin were Molotov and the interpreter, Pavlov.

     No respecter of persons and the son of a fearless man, the priest talked to Stalin as if he were a member of his own parish. At emphatic moments he did not hesitate to pound the table and shake his finger in the autocrat’s face. He addressed the Generalissimo as “Mr. Stalin” or simply “Stalin.” Flatly he declared that Poland must never have Communist rule, but a government modeled on the American system.

     For his part, the wily Stalin acted to perfection a role that was to take in Americans more worldly than Father Orlemanski. Such a performance tricked President Truman into praising him as “good old Joe,” and led General Arnold, returning from Teheran, to swear that Stalin was not a Communist at all, but the soundest of democrats.

     In every respect he was the jolly, flattering host, full of deference and good humor. He made jokes, and laughed heartily at those cracked by the priest. Throughout he used the respectful title “Father.” No offense was taken when the pastor charged that Communism was persecuting the Catholic Church. On the contrary, Stalin protested, he was an ardent champion of liberty of conscience and worship. After a decent resistance, he admitted that Father Orlemanski was right about everything.

     When he saw that the spell had taken effect, Stalin got down to business. At Sumy, he revealed, was the Red Army’s first detachment of Polish recruits, numbering 8,000. For the moment, at least, they had been christened the “Kosciuszko Division.”

     Tadeusz Kosciuszko, one of Russia’s most formidable enemies, was a hero of the American Revolution, an aide to General Washington and an honorary citizen of the United States. Father Orlemanski himself was the founder of a society in America named the “Kosciuszko League.” Visibly he was enchanted by what seemed the happiest of omens.

     If he liked, Stalin went on, it would be possible to arrange for Father Orlemanski to inspect the camp, and perhaps speak a few words to his countrymen. The pastor accepted gratefully, and in his enthusiasm consented to a further proposal that he should address the Polish people over the radio. Two and a half hours had passed when the session broke off.

     “You won’t believe me,” Father Orlemanski exclaimed afterward to a friend, “but when Stalin was talking to me I couldn’t help thinking to myself: ‘There is a man who would make a good priest!’” Stalin, it has been said, trained for the priesthood in his youth.

     The Washington Bureau of the Tass Agency broke the story for the morning papers of April 28. It was confirmed by Radio Moscow. All the globe was electrified by news that Stalin and Molotov had been in conference with a Catholic priest from America. Dispatches stated that no Catholic priest had entered Russia, at least openly, since 1934. Only rarely, they emphasized, did Stalin receive a private person, and almost never a religious one.

     Russian newspapers, on April 29, gave the episode a play reserved for guests at highest official rank. On front pages were headlines and group photos of Stalin, Molotov and Father Orlemanski. It was noted that the Generalissimo was smiling broadly.

     In the United States this caused a tumult. Polish cliques branded Father Orlemanski as a man of “divided loyalties.” The Springfield chancellor announced that “diocesan authorities had no knowledge of the pastor’s trip to Russia” and that the journey “was made on his own initiative, without permission.”

     Speaking for the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the Rt. Rev. Monsignor Michael J. Ready, its general secretary, described the mission as “a political burlesque, staged and directed by capable Soviet agents.” He added pointedly that one would like to know “the exact part our own government had in the performance.”

     Secretary Hull admitted that the State Department had supplied passports to Russia for Father Orelemanski and Professor Lange. They went as private citizens, he declared, and in no way represented the American government. Both had been invited to Moscow by Soviet authorities.

     At a news conference, the President diverted inquiries from himself to the chief of the Passport Division, Mrs. Ruth B. Shipley. Everyone knew her severity in granting passports, he pointed out, and whenever an applicant got by Mrs. Shipley, it was certain the law had been complied with.

     One midnight, toward the end of April, I was aroused by a telephone call from New York or Washington. The speaker was a woman correspondent for a wire service. She asked whether I had cleared a Catholic priest through Great Falls to Moscow.

     She repeated the question in several forms, taking care not to mention Father Orlemanski’s name. I was sleepy and shivering with cold. I instructed her that any information about Father Orlemanski must come from Colonel William Westlake, chief of public relations for the Army Air Forces.

     “Thank you, Major,” the girl chuckled, “you’ve told me exactly what I wanted to know.”

     Newspapers revealed the next morning that Father Orlemanski had been routed through Great Falls. The airfield’s gates were thronged with reporters, who waylaid mechanics and crewmen and learned from them that a Catholic priest had been walking with me.

     A general in Washington got me on the phone. Had I seen the newspapers? I had. “Well,” he shouted, “you’ve certainly stuck your neck in a sling! What right had you to put a priest on a plane and send him to Moscow?” The voice was full of menace.

     I hastened to remind him that Father Orlemanski, in addition to a passport, had two permits from the War Department, covering the Western Defense Command and the Alaska Defense Force. Evidently this was news to the General. There was a pause. In a very different tone, he muttered: “Oh. I see!” He hung up, and that was the last I heard from the Pentagon.

     In the meantime, Father Orlemanski visited the “Kosciuszko Division” at Sumy. A special train was put at his disposal for the four-day trip. He was pleased to note that the men were duly provided with Catholic chaplains. He assured them in a speech that he was no Communist, and led cheers for Poland, the Soviet Union and the United States. But he declared that Stalin, to his personal knowledge, was a true friend of Poland and the Catholic religion. Of similar tenor was his radio address to the Polish people.

     Back in Moscow, he was taken in charge by Salisbury, bureau chief in Russia for the United Press, and by a commentator for the Columbia Broadcasting System, James Fleming, who was a Catholic. They knew that turmoil was raging in America, and were fearful about the reception awaiting Father Orlemanski. The public would have only his word, they declared, that Stalin’s intentions were friendly and peaceable. The pastor would be “slaughtered” unless he could furnish tangible proof – something over Stalin’s signature, for example.

     On that evening the priest had a second engagement at the Kremlin, which also lasted two and a half hours. He said: “Mr. Stalin, I have to have something in writing, I must have some sort of statement from you to take back to America.” The Generalissimo answered that was a “good idea.”

     The remainder of the night was spent by Father Orlemanski in drafting two documents. One was his own statement summarizing conclusions reached at both interview. The other contained two questions, for which Stalin was asked to give signed answers. Father Orlemanski’s statement, sanctioned by Stalin, was released on the day the pastor left Moscow. It read in part:

       Unquestionably Marshal Stalin is the friend of the Polish people. I will also make this historical statement: Future events will prove that he is well disposed toward the Catholic Church…

       “Poland should not be a corridor through which the enemy passes at will and destroys Russia,” said Stalin.

       He really wants a strong, independent, democratic Poland to protect herself against future aggressors.

       He has no intention of meddling in the internal affairs of Poland. All he asks for is a friendly Poland.

       As to religion, the religion of our forefathers shall be the religion of the Polish people. Marshal Stalin will not tolerate any transgressions in this regard.

     Salisbury and Fleming were delighted when Father Orlemanski produced the other document, signed by Stalin. The document read as follows:

Translation of the answers of Marshal Stalin to questions by Rev. Stanislaus Orlemanski.Q. Do you think it admissible for the Soviet Government to pursue a policy of persecution and coercion with regard to the Catholic Church?
A. As an advocate of freedom of conscience and that of worship, I consider such a policy to be inadmissible and precluded.
 Q. Do you think that cooperation with the Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, in the matter of the struggle against persecution and coercion of the Catholic Church is possible?
 A. I think it is possible.

     Stalin invited Father Orlemanski to a third meeting, from which the priest excused himself. He was in haste to report the success of his mission at home. After 12 days in Russia, he departed on May 6 in jubilation.

     The priest had no doubt that he had managed single-handed to negotiate a private concordat with Stalin guaranteeing the Catholic Church against persecution throughout the Communist world. As evidence that Christianity was still free in Russia, the guileless cleric took with him a basket of Easter eggs procured in Moscow.

     Disillusionment began at Fairbanks, where he arrived three days later. The War Department, alarmed by public clamor, refused him transportation to Great Falls. Borrowing $200 from a Catholic chaplain, he took passage on a commercial airliner and reached Seattle May 10.

     His journey across the continent was accompanied by a blare of headlines. At a press conference in Chicago, he made public the questionnaire signed by Stalin. He was welcomed by his parishioners with music, banners and acclamations. From Bishop O’Leary, however, came a missive ordering him into seclusion. The charges were “disobedience” and “treating with Communists.”

     He was not helped by an announcement from the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Cicognani, that Father Orlemanski, like every priest, was subject to his Bishop. There could be an appeal, if he wished, to the Pope, but the Apostolic Delegate had no jurisdiction.

     After two days the pastor surrendered. To Bishop O’Leary he wrote a letter of apology. An old friend and enthusiastic admirer of his accomplishments as a parish priest, the Bishop on May 21 allowed him to celebrate Mass once more at Our Lady of Rosary Church. His two papers, including the document with Stalin’s signature, were sent by ordinary post with a three-cent stamp, to Archbishop Cicognani. Presumably they are now in the Vatican archives.

     Early the following June the Premier of Free Poland, Stanislaus Mikolajczyk, arrived in Washington to offer a last desperate prayer for the life of is country. He refused to receive Professor Lange, whom he regarded as a notorious Soviet propagandist. Mr. Bohlen, of the State Department, sent for Mikolajczyk.

     Although Lange was a Marxist, Bohlen asked the Premier to see him in the interest of good relations between the USSR and the United States. Unable to refuse, Mikolajczyk had to listen to Lange’s “realistic” views. Stalin, he said, thought Poland unadapted to Communist rule, did not wish to dominate the country and had no interest in its internal structure.

     Soon afterward the Premier had a conference with Mr. Roosevelt, who thanked him for meeting Lange and suggested that he talk also with Father Orlemanski, “a good man, pure and decent, possibly too naive, but with the best of intentions.” Father Orlemanski would tell him that Stalin favored religious freedom and particularly freedom for the Catholic Church.

     Father Orlemanski had reported, he went on, that Stalin was troubled by religious separatism. Obviously he did not wish to become, like the Tsars, head of the Greek Orthodox Church. He might agree to a union of the Catholic and Greek Orthodox faiths, with the Pope in command of both.

     What did Mikolajczyk think of sending Father Orlemanski to Rome to submit this idea to the Vatican? The Premier answered dryly that he would be ready to believe in Stalin’s sincerity after he released many Catholic priests still held in Soviet prisons.

     Poland was sold down the river at Yalta in February, 1945. Three months later Stalin and Harry Hopkins met companionably in Moscow to discuss the “Government of National Unity” which was to be the intermediate step toward that country’s absorption in the Soviet empire.

     There would be 18 or 20 ministries, the dictator said, of which four would be offered to Mikolajczyk’s faction. The rest would go to the pro-Soviet “Lublin regime.” What would Hopkins think of Professor Lange as a member of the new Cabinet?

     The only objection offered by Hopkins was that the economist might be unwilling to give up his American citizenship, which was only two years old. Shortly afterward Lange was in Warsaw getting himself re-naturalized as a Pole.

     It was decided that he should become Ambassador to the United States. For an obscure pedagogue, he proved to have unparalleled backing. Former Ambassador Davies entreated him in a letter to accept the appointment for the sake of Soviet-American friendship. Arthur Bliss Lane, Ambassador to Poland, warned the State Department that Lange had been known for years as a Communist sympathizer, but his warning was ignored. On July 5, 1945 Poland’s Stalinist government was recognized by the United States and the United Kingdom.

     As for Father Orlemanski, he is still pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church. But events in East Europe have taught him that the only freedom of religion tolerated by Communism is freedom to serve as an organ of the state; and that Communist cooperation with any creed is impossible save on terms of overlord and vassal.

     One condition of his reinstatement was a promise of silence regarding the mission to Moscow. He is quoted, however, as reflecting sadly: “Stalin tried to use me and I tried to use him, for the good of my Church. He won and I lost.”

     It is possible that he finds a bit of comfort in remembering the occasion on which Stalin took him to admire Lenin’s tomb. The priest said to Stalin: “I suppose you’ll be having a bigger one.” Then he looked him in the eye and said: “Because you know, Stalin, you too will die some day, like the rest of us.”

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From Major Jordan's Diaries

CHAPTER TWELVE

How Russia Got U.S. Treasury Plates

     I returned to Great Falls, for the first time as an Army Officer, on June 13th, since I had just been replaced by Lieutenant George Walewski Lashinski. I was due to speak in Omaha on the 16th, and this was my last chance to say good-by to my friends, including Colonel Kotikov.

    On a personal level, I had always been very friendly with the Colonel; he was one of the most unusual people I had ever known, and he had many likable traits as a human being. It was only when politics intervened, or orders came to him from above, that his attitude and manners became difficult.

     During our farewell talk, Colonel Kotikov mentioned the “money plane” which had crashed in Siberia and had been replaced. I asked what he meant by “money plane.” The U.S. Treasury, he explained, was shipping engraving plates and other materials to Russia, so that they could print the same occupation money for Germans as the United States was printing.

     I was certain he was mistaken. I was quite sure that never in history had we let money plates go out of the country. How could there be any control over their use? “You must mean, Colonel,” I said, “that we have printed German occupation money for Russia and shipped the currency itself.”

     “No, no,” he replied. He insisted that plates, colored inks, varnish, tint blocks, sample paper – these and similar materials had gone through Great Falls in May in two shipments of five C-47s each. The shipments had been arranged on the highest level in Washington, and the planes had been loaded at the National Airport.

     I was still incredulous, but I was impressed enough to pass these remarks on to Colonel Bernard C. Hahn, the Air Force Inspector who had come on as a result of my trip to Washington.

     Not until 1950 did I learn all the particulars about these money plates. The full story has never been released to the general public, and only a few people in Washington seem to know the details of this Lend-Lease scandal. I see no reason why every citizen should not know how his public servants handled such a grave matter in wartime.

     The sum of money which we lost in redeeming the marks which the Russians rolled off their presses, with no accountability whatever, appears to have been $250,000,000! It was not until September, 1946, that we put a stop to the siphoning of our treasury by refusing to redeem further marks. By this time the plates had been in Russian hands over two years.

     At the closed hearing in June 1947 Senator Styles Bridges, chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, inquired of Assistant Secretary of War Howard C. Petersen:

“Does Russia still have the plates, so far as you know?”Mr. Petersen: As far as I know, they still have the plates.
Chairman Bridges: And as far as you know, are they still printing the currency?
Mr. Petersen: As far as I know, they are still printing the currency.
Chairman Bridges: And has there been any protest from this Government endeavoring to stop them?
Mr. Petersen: There have been strenuous efforts from the Allied Control Council in Berlin to obtain an accounting from the Russians as to the amount of Allied military marks which they have issued. Those efforts have been unsuccessful. [1]

Senator Bridges and Mr. Petersen had previously had this exchange:

Chairman Bridges: Was there any action taken by the War Department to restrict the number of notes issued by the Russians?Mr. Petersen: The answer of the War Department is “No.”
Chairman Bridges: And as far as you know, was there any action taken by the State or the Treasury Department to restrict Russia in the number of notes she would issue?
Mr. Petersen: To my knowledge, none. [2]
Mr. Petersen later stated: “I know when we stopped the use of them (the Allied marks) in Germany. It was September 1946.”
Here is the exchange between Senator William F. Knowland of California and Assistant Secretary Petersen:
Senator Knowland: As I understand, there are $380,000,000 more currency redeemed than there were appropriations for?
Mr. Petersen: That is correct.
Senator Knowland: And you expect eventually that that amount will be cut down to $160,000,000; is that right?
Mr. Petersen: Yes…
Senator Knowland: Now what I would like to ask is, what is the amount outstanding as of, let us say, the end of last month (May, 1947)?
Mr. Petersen: That is $340,000,000. [3]

     The hearing continued for two days. At its end there were 141 printed pages of oral testimony, and in addition 31 pages of State Department documents, 59 pages of Treasury Department documents, and 474 pages of War Department documents. From the mass of unreleased material it is possible to reconstruct the story chronologically, step by step.

     It started in early 1944, when the need for uniform occupation currency in Germany was acknowledged by the Allies. On January 29th Ambassador Averell Harriman informed our State Department from Moscow:

“Great importance is attached by the British Government to the Russian Government’s participation in this arrangement. [4]

Cordell Hull informed Harriman on February 8th that the U.S. would be glad to print the money for Russia.

“The production of sufficient currency to take care of Soviet requirements, if desired, is being contemplated. [5]

     On February 15th Moscow’s answer came from Harriman:

“The Commissariat for Finance considers that in preparing the currency it would be more correct to print a part of it in the Soviet Union in order that a constant supply of currency may be guaranteed to the Red Army…It will be necessary to furnish the Commissariat for Finance, in order that the M-marks may be of identical design, with plates of all denominations, a list of serial numbers, and models of paper and colors for printing.”

     The Russian technique was clever: Don’t ask whether your demand will be met; ask when it will be met. Harriman’s cable ended as follows:

“Molotov asks in conclusion that he be informed when the Commissariat for Finance may receive the prints, models of paper and colors and list of serial numbers. Please instruct.” [6]

     Secretary Hull took over a month before replying on March 23:

“It is not expected that the Combined Chiefs of Staff will favor the delivery of plates to the Russians.” [7]

     However, other departments of the Government were also being consulted. Inside the Treasury Department great concern was expressed by two veteran civil servants, Mr. D.W. Bell, Under Secretary of Treasury, and Mr. A.W. Hall, Director of the Bureau of Engraving. In a memorandum to his immediate superior Bell stated:

“It would be very difficult to make the plates available to the Russians, The Treasury had never made currency plates available to anybody.” [8]

     Mr. Hall reported to the same superior, pointing out the gravity of the problem of accountability. His memorandum said:

"To acquiesce to such an unprecedented request would create serious complications. To permit the Russian Government to print currency identical to that being printed in this country would make accountability impossible…he present contractor for the printing of invasion currency for Germany is under heavy bond to insure against the misappropriation, loss, or improper use of plates, paper, and printed currency.
I do not believe that under any circumstances would the contractor agree to the manufacture of duplicate plates by any agency outside of his plant. Furthermore, it is doubtful that the Treasury Department could force him to do so. Almost certainly his bond would become forfeit if such an arrangement were resorted to." [9]

     The immediate superior of Mr. Bell and Mr. Hall was a relative newcomer to the Treasury Department named Harry Dexter White. Revealing testimony about Mr. White has been made by Whittaker Chambers in his recent book, Witness:

In the persons of Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, the Soviet military intelligence sat close to the heart of the United States Government. It was not yet in the cabinet room, but it was not far outside the door…Harry Dexter White had become Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. In a situation with few parallels in history, the agents of an enemy power were able to do much more than purloin documents.
They were in a position to influence the nation’s foreign policy in the interests of the nation’s chief enemy, and not only on exceptional occasions like Yalta (where Hiss’ role, while presumably important, is still ill-defined), or through the Morgenthau Plan for the destruction of Germany (which is generally credited to White), but in what must have been the staggering sum of day-to-day decisions. [10]

     With this clue in hand, the day-to-day progress of the decision on the engraving plates makes fascinating reading. Mr. Bell again conferred with Harry Dexter White.

     He pointed out that the plates which had been engraved for the Treasury Department were, in fact, the property of the Forbes Company in Boston and if we insisted that they should make duplicate sets available to the Russians, it is possible that the Forbes Company would simply refuse to print any further currency for us, on the grounds that security control had been removed and they could not be responsible for anything that might happen to the printing of the currency from that time on. [11]

     He added that not only could the U.S. print all the currency the Russians could possibly desire, but

“we could have the first shipment ready for them before the Russians could start manufacturing currency from plates that we might make available to them.”What did Henry Dexter White think of all this?

    White said that he

…had read with considerable interest the memorandum of March 3 from Mr. Hall to Mr. Bell on this subject, but he was somewhat troubled with the views expressed therein, which indicated that we could not make these plates available to the Russians…

     Mr. White reiterated that he was loath to turn the Russian request down without further review of the matter. He called attention to the fact that in this instance we were not printing American currency, but Allied currency and that Russia was one of those allies who must be trusted to the same degree and to the same extent as the other allies. [12]

     Never, of course, had any other ally asked for engraving plates nor had we supplied them. We had printed other occupation currency for use in Italy and Japan, and our other allies were perfectly satisfied with this arrangement, but Mr. White made no reference to this.

     Mr. White then records his meeting with Ambassador Gromyko at the Soviet Embassy in Washington on the evening of March 22. He relates that Gromyko

“kept coming back with a question which he asked a number of times, namely, why the Forbes Company should object to giving a duplicate set of plates to his Government. He said that after all the Soviet Government was not a private corporation or an irresponsible government. I explained to him how both the Forbes Company and the American Banknote Company felt but I am afraid he remained unimpressed with the reasons I offered.” [13]

     At no point did Mr. White say that our Government, for which he was in this instance the spokesman, objected to providing duplicate plates because this would make accountability impossible. There was only the integrity of two American business firms with which to meet Russian demands and protect the interests of the United States.

     The State Department also heard from Mr. Harriman in Moscow that

“the Russians could not accept the explanation of a private printing company interfering with the program under consideration. The Russians asked that they be told whether the plates would or would not be made available to them. In the event the plates were not made available, they were prepared to proceed with the printing of their own variety of mark currency.” [14]

     This threat had the desired effect.

     When Senator Bridges asked Assistant Secretary Petersen at the closed hearing, “Who in the United States made the decision to turn over, to the Russians, United States engraved printing plates for producing currency?”, Petersen answered: “The record as I have seen it in the War Department indicates that the decision was made by the State and Treasury Departments…” [15]

     The decision was made on April 14, 1944. It was recorded by James Clement Dunn of the State Department in the following memorandum of his conversation with Secretary Morgenthau. The paragraph next to last, referring to the difficulties raised by the Forbes Company, indicates that the Treasury Department was ready and willing to assume, under the President’s War Powers, the responsibility which the business firms would not undertake. Here is Mr. Dunn’s memo in full:

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Memorandum of

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

Date: April 14, 1944.

Subject: Duplicate plates to be furnished to the Soviet Government.Participants: Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the treasury; Mr. Dunn,
Copies to: SEE – Mr. Bohlen.
Mr. Morgenthau telephoned me this morning to say that he was informing the Soviet Ambassador this afternoon that the duplicate plates for the printing of the Allied military mark to be used in the invasion of Germany would be furnished to the Soviet Government in response to that Government’s request. He asked whether the Department of State was in favor of this action.
I replied that it was the opinion of this Department from the political point of view, aside from any military considerations or any technical questions or difficulties, that if possible it was highly advisable to have the duplicate plates furnished to the Soviet Government in order that the three Governments and the three Armies entering Germany would be using the same identical currency.
The Soviet Government had informed us that if the plates were not furnished to it, that Government would proceed to produce a different currency for use in Germany. It was our opinion that it would be a pity to lose the great advantage of having one currency used by the three Armies, which itself would indicate a degree of solidarity which was much to be desired not only for the situation in Germany but for its effect on the relations in may other aspects between the Soviet, British, and United States Governments.
Mr. Morgenthau said he was very glad to have this expression of the Department’s views on this question as there might be some technical difficulties arise which would require the Treasury to take over, under the President’s War Powers, the plant which is now using the original plates for the production of these marks.
This question has been up between the United States and Soviet Governments since last November, and it has become perfectly clear to us as a result of the exchanges of correspondence on the subject that the Soviet Government is not ready to join in the common use of the same currency unless it receives the duplicate plates from us.
In order to convince the Soviet Government of our sincerity in the desire to have the closest collaboration in these military operations against Germany, it becomes essential that we make every effort within our possibility to furnish the plates to that Government.

JAMES CLEMENT DUNN. [16]

     On the same day Secretary Morgenthau sent a memo to Soviet Ambassador Gromyko saying,

“There will be shipped from Washington on Tuesday, April 8, glass negatives and positives of all plates used for printing M-marks. The designs are in negative and positive forms since it is not known which is preferred by the Soviet Government.”

He ended by saying,

“The U.S. Treasury is desirous to cooperate with the Soviet Government in this matter in every possible way.” [17]

     It was not until May 13 that the first shipment actually left the Washington airport. There was a comedy of errors on the second shipment, which was supposed to leave by plane at 6 A.M. on Tuesday, May 23. Mr. Hall reported to Mr. Bell as follows:

The material was loaded on the trucks yesterday, and a crew of men brought in to work at 5 A.M. today (May 23), and delivery was made to the Airport before 6 A.M…. I called Colonel Frank H. Collins (of the ATC) to ascertain whether the planes had left, and he informed me that the crews of the five planes were standing by waiting for the representatives of the (Soviet) Embassy. He further stated that the crews were becoming impatient as they wanted to land at Great Falls, Montana, before sundown. [18]

     The trouble was that the Soviet Embassy had arranged for their couriers to board he planes on May 24! The five airplanes were therefore held overnight with “a guard in each plane, and a guard around the area where the planes were parked.”

     They left early on Wednesday, May 24, after each courier arrived with an additional box weighing over 200 pounds. Colonel Collins said he “thought the extra boxes contained American canned goods and American liquor.” [19]

     As for the third shipment, said Mr. Hall,

“it is now necessary to uncrate all of the material and rearrange the whole shipment. You will remember when we talked to the Ambassador (Gromyko), he insisted upon complying strictly with instructions he received from his government, and now that his government had reversed itself, we have to do the job all over again.This has been a pretty trying assignment for all associated with it.” [20]

     Was there anything else that Russia could possibly ask from the Treasury? Yes, it could ask us to repeat one of the planeloads. That is exactly what Gromyko asked on June first, in a note to Morgenthau which stated briefly that “all the materials… perished in connection with a crash of the plane which carried them.” [21] Gromyko said absolutely nothing about when the crash occurred, or where.

     Did we ask for proof of the crash, or direct any questions whatever to Gromyko about the alleged accident? On the contrary, Secretary Morgenthau promptly answered:

“I am pleased to inform you that the seven items representing replacement of the materials lost in the plane crash will be ready for shipment on Wednesday, June 7… I trust that this arrangement meets with your approval.” [22]

     Why was Russia so insistent on printing German occupation currency without accountability? The answer is quite simple. They knew that the U.S. Army would convert such currency into dollars. (Russia, of course, refused to redeem the same currency with roubles.) As a result, every Russian-made mark that fell into the hands of an American soldier or accredited civilian became a potential charge against the Treasury of the United States.

     Russia could pay its occupation army in marks, and in fact did so, adding a two-year bonus for good measure. If the Red Army could get anything out of the German economy with these marks, all well and good. If they could get anything out of America, even better.

     In any event, these marks cost the Russian economy nothing whatever. With the materials provided from Washington, they took over a former Nazi printing plant in Leipzig, deep in the Russian zone, at a safe distance from American inspection, and started the presses rolling.

     Any GI could buy a pack of cigarettes for 8 cents at a U.S. Army Post exchange. For this the Russian and German black-markets would offer him 100 marks from the Leipzig mint. To realize a profit of almost $10 on an 8-cent package of cigarettes, the American had only to take his 100 Leipzig marks to an Army Post Office, purchase a $10 money order and mail it to the United States.

     It was revealed that the standard offer for a five-cent candy bar was 50 marks, or $5; $18 for one pound of Crisco; $20 for one K-ration; $25 for a pound of coffee, and $2,500 for a wrist watch costing $17.

     By December 1946, the U.S. Military Government found itself $250,000,000 or more in the red. It had redeemed in dollars at least $2,500,000,000 marks in excess of the total marks issued b its Finance Office! The deficit could have had no other origin than the Russian plant in Leipzig.

     Let us read once again the War Department’s testimony at the hearing in 1947:

Chairman Bridges: Was there any action taken by the War Department to restrict the number of notes issued by the Russians?Mr. Petersen: The answer of the War Department is “No.”
Chairman Bridges: And, as far as you know, was there any action taken by the State or the Treasury Department to restrict Russia in the number of notes she would issue?
Mr. Petersen: To my knowledge, none.
Chairman Bridges: My next question is, does Russia still have the plates, so far as you know?
Mr. Petersen: As far as I know, they still have the plates.
Chairman Bridges: And as far as you know, are they still printing the currency?
Mr. Petersen: As far as I know, they are still printing the currency.
Chairman Bridges: And has there been any protest from this Government endeavoring to stop them?
Mr. Petersen: There have been strenuous efforts from the Allied Control Council in Berlin to obtain an accounting from the Russians as to the amount of Allied military marks which they have issued. Those efforts have been unsuccessful. [23]

     To everyone’s surprise, the Russians at one point agreed to submit quarterly statements of the volume of money they were putting into circulation. Their statements were so palpably rigged, however, that American officers called them “unbelievable.” In that case, smiled the Russians, it would be useless to make further reports.

     It took 18 months before Russia’s siphon into the American Treasury was severed. The Army’s payroll in Germany was shifted from Allied marks to U.S. Military Certificates, which were non-convertible.

     In addition to the $250,000,000, there was a further loss, which through small was mortifying. A charge of $18,102,84 was rendered to the Soviet Embassy, covering the expense of the engraving plates and the materials in the three 1944 deliveries. The bill was ignored and is still unpaid. The Russians, as Mr. Petersen indicated, still have the plates and undoubtedly a good deal of knowledge regarding U.S. currency manufacture techniques.

     As for Harry Dexter White, his ascent was steady. Five months after the duplicate plates fiasco, there was a conference of the Secretaries of State, War and the Treasury at the Hopkins office in the White House. White read a prospectus for the doom of Germany: It’s people were to become a pastoral horde; their entire industrial plant would be removed or destroyed; all equipment was to be torn from the Ruhr mines, and it’s coal deposits would be “thoroughly wrecked.”

     Secretary Stimson was struck with horror – an emotion which Secretary Hull shared. They learned with consternation two weeks afterward that the “Morgenthau Plan” had been initiated by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at the Quebec Conference of Sept. 11, 1944. To Mr. Roosevelt’s face, Secretary Hull charged that Churchill’s signature was procured by Morgenthau with an offer of $6,500,000,000 of postwar Lend-Lease for Britain. [24]

     From Assistant to the Secretary, Mr. White moved up to Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 1945. During February 1946, he was appointed by President Truman, and confirmed by the Senate as U.S. Director of the International Monetary Fund, with a tax exemption salary of $17,500.

     The name of Harry White became so important in the record of the Senate committee that finally Senator Bridges suggested calling him as a witness. But White was absent from the capital on vacation. It was announced that Morgenthau and White would be placed on the stand at a future section, but this was never called.

     Mr. White submitted his resignation from the International Monetary Fund on June 19, 1947, the day after the committee recessed. When the economist was put on oath the following year, he denounced the Chambers accusations as “unqualifiedly false.” He was not and never had been a Communist, White affirmed, and had committed no disloyal act. But two weeks later his funeral was held at Temple Israel in Boston: he had died of a heart attack.

     In November of that year Whittaker Chambers produced five rolls of microfilmed documents. Among them were eight pages of script divulging U.S. military secrets. Found in possession of an acknowledged Communist courier, the handwriting was identified as that of Harry Dexter White.

SOURCES

CHAPTER TWELVE

How Russia Got U.S. Money Plates

1. Occupation Currency Transactions Hearings before the Committee on Appropriations, Armed Services and Banking and Currency, U.S. Senate, (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947), p. 27.

2. Ibid., p. 27.

3. Ibid., p. 8.

4. Ibid., p. 147.

5. Ibid., p. 147.

6. Ibid., p. 148.

7. Ibid., p. 150.

8. Ibid., p. 178.

9. Ibid., pp. 175-176.

10. Witness, Whittaker Chambers, (Random House, 1952), p. 427.

11. Occupation Currency Transactions Hearings, p. 178.

12. Ibid., pp. 178-179.

13. Ibid., p. 183.

14. Ibid., p. 151.

15. Ibid., p. 16-17.

16. Ibid., p. 152-53.

17. Ibid., p. 186.

18. Ibid., pp. 206-7.

19. Ibid., p. 208.

20. Ibid., p. 207.

21. Ibid., p. 208.

22. Ibid., p. 211.

23. Ibid., p. 27.

24. The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, (Macmillan, 1948), Vol. II, pp. 1613-18.

---------------------------

From Major Jordan's Diaries

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“The Broadcast Goes on Tonight”

     My one desire, after retiring from the Army, was to forget it. I had had a surfeit of military life dominated by political practices, and vowed to have nothing more to do with it. The means of escape was to plunge up to my ears with private business, taking up where I left off in 1942.

     As a side-line I kept up a modest career in public speaking which has continued until now. It started in Montana. Colonel Meredith was frequently asked to deliver addresses. He loathed them and got in the habit of ordering me to take his place. I remember my first effort was before parents and teachers of the Whittier School in Great Falls early in 1944.

     For some reason the invitations persisted after I left the Army, though I never sought an engagement nor was I connected with a speaker’s bureau. Prior to 1950 the subject was generally deeds of heroism on the Fairbanks flight and my adventures among the Russians. Again and again I declared that we knew nothing about the Russians, while they knew everything about us. Understanding them for what they were, I stated, was now one of the crucial things in the world.

     The Smyth Report was issued in August, 1945, the month of the Hiroshima announcement. My first intimation that uranium and the atom bomb had any connection derived from summaries of the Smyth Report which filled newspapers and magazines in the weeks following its appearance.

     In my memory the word “uranium” sounded like an echo, but I was not even certain whether the spelling was the same I had written two and a half years earlier. I made a journey to the safe where my most important records were stored. From a metal box I drew the memorandum on my first search of the diplomatic suitcases. One of the entries read: “Uranium-92.”

     I thought to myself: “So that’s what the Russians wanted with uranium!” But my alarm was quieted by official lullabies. Because of “Russian ignorance and backwardness,” top authorities stated, Moscow could not hope for years to achieve an atom bomb. Like the rest of the nation, I buried my head in the sand.

     News in May 1949, that a fraction more than an ounce of U-235 had been lost or stolen at the Argonne Laboratory, convulsed the nation for more than a month. Headlines bellowed and Congress roared.

     My own response was indignation. In view of the petty amount involved, so colossal an uproar appeared absurd and spurious. What was a single ounce of uranium compared to the hundreds of pounds that had passed through Great Falls? And why screech about the Russian espionage when Washington itself had delivered to the Soviet Union one installment of 420 pounds and another of half a ton?

    Of course, I was still unaware of the distinction between uranium compounds and uranium metal. I had heard of fissionable U-235 and non-fissionable U-238, but they were phrases without meaning. In my untutored thought, uranium was uranium, just as iron was iron. But my instinct was not wholly wrong. The 1,465 pounds of uranium chemically handed by Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union contained a potential of not merely one ounce of U-235 but 6.25 pounds, or 75 ounces.

     In July, 1949 I took the plunge and phoned the office of Fulton Lewis, Jr. I had never met him, but I was one of his radio fans. He was out of the city, and I told the story to his secretary. Mr. Lewis never heard of my call.

    On September 23, 1949, President Truman disclosed that an atomic explosion had just occurred in the Soviet Union.

     I was shocked and stunned to the depths of my being. American policy had suffered a stupendous defeat. There was evidence in my possession, I was convinced, proving that the disaster was chargeable not only to spies but to actual members of the Federal hierarchy. It was information that the American people obviously should have. But I was at a loss where to turn.

     Eleven days after the President’s announcement, I had lunch with my friend Arthur Johnson at the Army and Navy Club in Washington. Once more I recited the story of the Pipeline and my experiences at Great Falls. At the conclusion, Mr. Johnson solved my dilemma with six words. He was a native of New Hampshire and a personal friend of his senior Senator. As we left the table, he announced: “I’m going to telephone Senator Bridges.”

     When I was received on the afternoon of Oct. 5, the Senator looked at me quizzically. “Well, Major,” he smiled, “I’m afraid you’re on the wrong track. I have been assured that in 1943 there were not 1,000 pounds of uranium in the whole United States.”

    “Who said the uranium came from the United States?” I retorted. “It came from Canada!” The Senator seemed stunned. I told him there had been a previous shipment of 420 pounds from Denver and a later consignment of what I then thought to have been 500 pounds.

     “What is more,” I went on, “Mr. Hopkins personally directed me to expedite the Canadian shipment.” Incredulously, Mr. Bridges exclaimed: “Harry Hopkins?” I insisted Harry Hopkins himself gave the order by telephone. The Senator asked whether I would be willing to testify, under oath, as to what I had charged. I answered that I would.

     For two long hours the Senator examined me closely. As I was leaving, he said the things I alleged were so shocking that an investigation would be necessary. He would need time to decide on the course to be pursued. In the meanwhile, I must promise to keep the matter secret. I gave my word.

     Twenty days passed and, on Oct. 25, 1949 Fulton Lewis telephoned from Washington. Senator Bridges had spent the weekend with him, he stated, and they had gone over my story in detail. It was decided to use the Lewis staff for a thorough investigation, and then, if the story stood up, to break it by radio. I was to join Mr. Lewis at breakfast next morning at a hotel in New York and bring my documents.

     At 9 A.M. on Oct. 26 we got down to work. The commentator went through my chief records page by page, item by item, and word by word. His questions were pitiless; it seemed to me that the bar had lost a great prosecuting attorney. Five hours later, at 2 P.M., he rose and stood for some minutes looking out of the window. Then he wheeled about and let me know the verdict.

     “I suppose the next stop,” he drawled, “will be your former superior, Colonel Gardner, in Mansfield, Ohio.”

     As I was collecting my papers, he added: “I’m sorry, Major, but this is something I’ll have to turn over to the FBI.”

     I heard nothing from Mr. Lewis for almost a month, but it was not long before Edgar Hoover’s boys started to haunt my days, from early morning to night. In pairs they beleaguered my office. My three metal cabinets, brought up from the basement, were ransacked folder by folder. Endless Photostats were taken. Looking for discrepancies, they had me tell the story again and again. Sometimes their questions were new. More often they were the same ones, asked on different occasions, to check previous answers.

     When I slipped away for a quiet Thanksgiving to the home of my mother-in-law in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, there, waiting in a chair on the porch when I arrived, was an FBI man, with twenty typewritten questions.

     On Dec. 1 there was a call from Mr. Lewis.

     “Major,” he announced, “I’ve checked your story from stern to stern. The FBI made a parallel investigation and has given me permission to break it over the radio. The first broadcast will be on Monday night, Dec. 5. We’re going ahead from there a whole week, and maybe longer.”

     He invited my wife and me to his home in Maryland for the weekend.

     The next day we were sipping cokes in his living-room and my wife, Kitty, in all innocence, dropped a bombshell. “By the way, Racey,” she asked, “did you get those calls from Walter Winchell?” Mr. Lewis slowly put down his glass. I hurried to explain that Winchell’s office had been telephoning since Nov. 28 and that in the last two days there had been several calls. The commentator rose.

     “I think,” he announced, “that we won’t wait till Monday. The broadcast goes on tonight. Let’s get at my typewriter!”

     There was the chance that Winchell, on Sunday, might try to heat the gun. And so our opening interview went on the air that evening, Friday, Dec. 2, 1949.

---------------------

From Major Jordan's Diaries

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Clouds of Witnesses

     The first Fulton Lewis broadcast had scarcely ended, when a multitude of officers and servicemen, throughout the country, sprang to my support – at the risk, in a few cases, of postwar government jobs. Several participated in later broadcasts from the Lewis studio, others on local radio programs and newspaper interviews.

     A number were my former colleagues at Newark, Great Falls, and Fairbanks. The names of most of the others I had never heard before. Some disclosed incidents of questionable aid to Russia that lay outside my own experience.

     The WAC sergeant who worked in my office was one of the first persons to come forward. She was now Mrs. Gordon Bean of Meadville, Pa., but as Sergeant Georgianna Pilkington she had acted for a year as my chief military clerk at Great Falls.

     When my date book was produced, she recognized the volume as the identical one she had often seen while tidying my desk. In its pages, she said, I was always entering “copious notes about everything.” She said I kept it under lock and key in the top drawer, whenever I left the office.

     “Major Jordan told me frequently,” declared Mrs. Bean, that he was very much concerned about how much information was going through.” She observed that I was troubled by the importance as well as volume of these contraband shipments. When Colonel Kotikov was dissatisfied, she related, it was common knowledge that all he had to do was call Washington to get whatever he wanted. [1]

     It was also disclosed that traffic in black suitcases started before I ever dreamed of their existence. This was revealed by former Corporal Henry J. Cauthen of Company G, fourth Infantry Regiment, which was stationed at Nome, Alaska. He was employed in 1949 by an engineering firm in San Jose, Cal. In an interview he told of an experience at Nome one Sunday afternoon in late November or early December, 1942. That was one month before I arrived in Great Falls and three months before my first search of Russian suitcases.

     “Some friends and I were watching an A-20 take off for Russia,” said Cauthen. “About five miles from the base it crashed and burned. We skied over to see whether we could rescue any of the men. The plane was destroyed and four Russians were dead. On the ground were four suitcases. Two had been almost consumed, but the others were intact except that the light straps with which they were bound had split apart. All were black and very cheaply made.     “We examined one of them. There were maps on top, and beneath was a stack of blueprints. The first chart had been made for the Air Corps by the American Army Engineers. It was in English, but there were markings in Russian showing all our positions and defenses in and around the Nome Airbase.
     “While we were looking at this map, some Russians came over in a skimobile. One officer was very disturbed to see that we had opened the suitcase, and demanded that I give it to him. I did so. He wrapped it up and carried it away. This was witnessed by several of our own Army Corps officers who were there at the time.” [2]

     Corroboration of the charge that uranium information went to the Soviet Union came unexpectedly from a senior GI student at Clemson College, S.C. He was Royall Edward Norton, 29 years old and married, with one son.

     Norton consulted the president of Clemson College, Dr. Robert E. Poole, who suggested that they ask counsel from former Justice James F. Byrnes, who was arriving next day to deliver an address. Byrnes advised Norton to send a full report to the Un-American Activities Committee. Thus it happened that Mr. Lewis made a special trip to Clemson, which is near Greenville, S.C.

     Norton enlisted in the Navy during October, 1941, and served till the close of the war, in the North and South Atlantic, the Caribbean, Africa, Sicily and Alaska. He suffered shipwreck aboard the USS Motole and injuries to his foot and back in an airplane crash. He was honorably discharged with the rank of Chief Petty Officer, four letters endorsing his candidacy for a commission, and a general service rating that was exceptionally high.

     A letter of commendation for his service with the Red Army Air Forces covered a tour at the Coast Guard Air Station, Elizabeth City, N.C., and the naval base on Kodiak Island, Alaska. At Elizabeth City planes were conditioned for delivery to Russia and Russian pilots were trained to fly them. At Kodiak they were reconditioned, stripped of surplus gear and cargo, inspected and reloaded. He gave Fulton Lewis the following account of one of his Alaskan experiences:

A PBM – a Catalina type without landing gear* - was being loaded for the take-off to Russia. I had finished checking the cargo against my inventory when I noticed three extra parachute bags that obviously were not filled with parachutes.

*This seaplane was requested by the Russians only for its Wasp engine, which they could not get from us any other way. Since they never used seaplanes, this PBM (and how many others?) was presumably discarded after being cannibalized.

“I started to inspect them, and in the first one found a wooden box about 18 inches long, less than a foot wide and maybe 8 or 10 inches deep. The top of the box was not fastened down or sealed in any way, and I lifted it up to see what was inside.

“The Soviet pilot, who was making a final check in the cockpit, saw what I was doing and put on a terrific scene. He tried to make me stop, yelling in English: ‘Personal gear – personal!’ I went on long enough to see what was in the box. It contained a solid stack of blueprints, all of about the same size and general appearance, as if they belonged to a set.

“I unfolded the one on top and examined it fairly carefully. I had had some little experience in reading blueprints. This was very unusual and different from anything I had ever seen. But I had studied enough chemistry in school to recognize it as a highly complicated pattern of atomic structure. Protons and neutrons were shown.

“In the lower right hand corner was a group of words, which were probably an identification of the blueprint. I cannot remember the terms, but I do recall the figure ’92.’ It meant nothing to me at the time, as I had never heard of atomic energy or atomic bombs. In the light of Major Jordan’s broadcast, this was undoubtedly a blueprint of the atomic structure of the 92nd element, uranium.” [3]

Norton also revealed that he entered a protest against Russian demands for a complete set of astronomical charts of all Alaska and the Aleutian island chain.

“I could not see why they had any need for such a thing,” stated he. “A simple course map would have been enough. The astronomical charts give them a tremendous amount of additional information, far beyond what was necessary. But the Russians were able to use enough influence, despite my objection, to get 15 complete sets.” [4]

     During the Fulton Lewis broadcast of Dec. 7, his researcher Russell Turner quoted Marcus McCann, a civilian member of the loading crew at Great Falls, as stating he was present when I opened a large brown-paper bundle on a plane being turned over to the Russians. In this package McCann saw railroad maps and plans of factories.

     Another of the freight-handling crew, Elmer Williams, was reported to have explained to Turner that two kinds of shipments went through Great Falls. One was sent openly and the other consisted of hundreds of “diplomatic” pouches, boxes, bags and suitcases, accompanied by armed guards who never left them, but slept with them in the warehouses.

     Crewmen weighed these secret shipments, Williams said, so that planes could be kept in balance when they were loaded, but had no idea of the contents. “Virtually anything could have gone through,” he asserted. Among open deliveries he remembered thousands of pounds of printed materials – books, technical publications, newspapers, plans and tools, such as wrenches and fine precision drills. [5]

     Colonel Frank C. Lynch of Pasadena related that he was an ordnance expert at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. It was one of his duties to accompany a Russian officer assigned there and make sure he learned nothing about super-secret weapons. They included an anti-aircraft cannon that aimed itself, so that all the gunners had to do was feed it with shells. In the summer of 1944 he was ordered to crate this miracle gun for shipment to Russia. He accompanied the weapon to Philadelphia, Colonel Lynch related, and saw it loaded on a freighter.

     Harvey Hart, port manager of Longview, Wash., declared that one of the last shipments to Russia included items labeled “301A Geiger tubes” and “401A registers,” purchased from the Cyclotron Specialties Company. Geiger counters are used for detecting radioactivity. These instruments left for Vladivostok on the steamship Surikov, said Hart.

     Lloyd Chestley of Presque-Isle, Main, volunteered that in 1944 he gave information about American radar to a Soviet General. Chestley was an Air Forces radar officer, with the rank of Captain, at a U.S. airbase near Gluntoe, Ireland. He stated that an American officer accompanied the General, who was armed with “authorization” to inspect secret equipment.

     Robert K. Califf of Lake Worth, Fla., who was weighs and balances officer at the Washington airport, with the rank of First Lieutenant, revealed that he was often prevented from inspecting Russian shipments. In his interview, as quoted, he stated:

I can say I was prevented many times from examining parcels and pouches which I should have inspected. I was prevented from examining these articles by higher authorities, on the grounds that they carried “diplomatic immunity.” [6]

     Private George F. Roberts, of Seattle, told reporters he was stationed during the war at an Army base near Edmonton, and that he was driven away from transports bound for Siberia by civilians wielding tommy guns and speaking a foreign language. He saw large boxes in the planes, but was prevented from inspecting their contents. Superiors ordered him, Roberts declared, to “stay off C-47s.”

     An offer to produce the manifesto for a cargo containing two helicopters and thirty large U.S. Army tanks, which left the Erie pier in Jersey City on the Russian freighter Chutokea for Siberia by way of the Panama Canal in 1948, was made by Herbert Cooney, a former Congressional investigator, of 1419 University Ave., Bronx. Apparently a ruse, he said, the tanks were earmarked for Turkey.

     Two intelligence officers, residents of Los Angeles, told newspapermen they had been questioned by FBI operators. Lt-Colonel Lewis J. Clarke, Jr. said that during four years at Fairbanks and Great Falls he made daily reports on Russian activities to G-2 in Washington. “I could only tell the FBI what any other officer could tell them,” reported Major Perry W. Parker, “namely, that the Russians in Montana and Alaska spent most of their time trying to worm out secret information from Americans.”

     One of the Navy’s specialists in small arms and special weapons, whose name was withheld because he was still in active service, related that he was placed in charge of a training program at Governor’s Island, N.Y. He was harassed by Russian officers who demanded information about weapons so new that they had not yet been tested or even built. When he refused, the Russians threatened to appeal to Washington and have him dismissed. He was haled before Navy superiors at 90 Church Street and reprimanded. His request for a transfer was granted.

     The War Department itself announced that during 1944 a dozen Russian officers were trained in radar operations at Fort Monmouth, N.J., Signal Corps Center. They were instructed in three types of radar – for aiming artillery, identifying aircraft and tracing low-flying bombs and planes.

     My former superior, Colonel Gardner, was interviewed by Fulton Lewis. In his Dec. 5 broadcast Mr. Lewis told me:

I talked with Colonel Gardner this afternoon and he told me he had the same experience in Newark that you had. Every time the Russians were displeased with the way things were going – which was frequently – they would get on the telephone to their Embassy in Washington and have the Embassy contact Mr. Hopkins. All the difficulties would be straightened out immediately. I asked Colonel Gardner how he knew it was Mr. Hopkins who did the job. He said it was common information. The Russians referred to it, and so did everyone else. It was general routine knowledge, he declared. [7]

     In a broadcast of his own, Colonel Gardner was kind enough to remark that “Major Jordan was one of my best and most trusted officers.” He continued:

     I know nothing first-hand about the shipment of atomic materials. I do know that, while I was in command at Great Falls and in charge of this operation, the Russians could and did move anything they wanted to without divulging what was in the consignment. [8]

     Before a microphone in Mansfield, Ohio a week later, Colonel Gardner declared:

“There is more beneath the surface than has yet come to light, and it is to be hoped that the investigating committee will forget partisan politics and go to the very bottom. We in America must know whether public servants in Washington are still giving our secrets away. If so, they should be eliminated. We have had enough of fellow-travelers and Americans who believe in foreign ideologies.” [9]

     He then quoted a letter from “one of the outstanding airmen of all time,” Roscoe Turner of Indianapolis.

Many thanks for your good letter of Dec. 6 and the attached statement of yours in support of our mutual friend, Racey Jordan.I am needling the Legion on this support too because, after all, there may be an attempt to hush this thing up, as it is stepping on too many high places.
I also wrote Jordan and told him not to lose his nerve since he has done such a magnificent job of uncovering it. [10]

     Major John C. Starkle came forward in San Francisco for the Fulton Lewis broadcast of Dec. 9:

I recall an occasion late in 1943 when Major Jordan came into my office and raised quite a row because Russian aircraft had come in with equipment he thought the Russians shouldn’t have. He was in communication with his superiors. We discovered that none of us was familiar with the apparatus. It was a secret type of electronic equipment which was not authorized for the Russians and which we removed. It did not go to Russia.

I was in Great Falls for a year and a half. During 1943 Major Jordan and I were closely associated. His office was across the hangar from mine and we had lunch together nearly every day at the Officer’s Club. He was United Nations Representative for the 34th Sub-Depot, in which I was assistant maintenance officer for the Ferrying Section, with jurisdiction over repair, maintenance and utilization of UN aircraft.

Major Jordan mentioned Harry Hopkins’ name quite often… Concerning materials of which I had person knowledge, and so far as my observations went, everything Major Jordan has said checks out. [11]

     Lt.-Colonel Bernard C. Hahn of Washington, Pa., was on duty several months at Great Falls as personal representative of the Army Air Inspector, Brigadier General Jones. In a newspaper interview, Colonel Hahn said that he “helped Major Jordan break open some of those mysterious black suitcases the Russians were sending home.” He continued:

Through 1934-44 Great Falls was the take-off point for thousands of planes supplied to Russia through Lend-Lease. I noticed cheap, black composition suitcases that the Russians were putting aboard planes going to Siberia. It was not my job to inspect them. My principal duty was to watch for sabotage and defects in these planes.Shortly after I arrived at Great Falls, Major Jordan became much concerned over the black suitcases. I told him he’d better take it up with the security officer at the base.
He did so, and one morning the security officer whose name I have forgotten [Col. O’Neil]; Colonel William Boaz, the technical officer at the field, Major Jordan, and I moved in and began examining suitcases. We found no Oak Ridge plans, documents or heavy water. But I do know they were sending to Moscow enough U.S. roadmaps and technical magazines to cover all the pantry shelves in Russia. [12]

     Colonel Kotikov, Hahn added, requested that a WAC Sergeant be assigned to watch over his wife. Mrs. Kotikov complained to Colonel Hahn, the letter stated, that her husband didn’t trust her “and has that woman follow me everywhere.” He reflected that Colonel Kotikov probably has as little privacy as his wife, and explained that “an enlisted man on Kotikov’s staff was at his heels day and night.” The reference, of course, to Sergeant Vinogradsky.

     The first person to whom I confided the story of my search of “diplomatic suitcases” was the security officer of the 34th Sub-Depot, at Gore Field, Lt.-Colonel George F. O’Neill. Without losing a moment’s time, Colonel O’Neill published a pledge to “support Major Jordan to the limit.” His interview was dispatched from Los Angeles, where he had taken a post, after retirement, with the Veterans Administration. He was quoted as follows:

There is one instance which offers conclusive proof of Major Jordan’s story. I have detailed this evidence to the FBI. For that reason I cannot speak about it at this time. I’m ready to tell the whole matter under oath.All of us at the Great Falls airbase knew that Russia had the ear of the White House. That was common knowledge among the officers.
If the Russian mission didn’t like the way something was going, in no time at all they’d have the White House on the wire and then we’d be jumping.
As far as anything Major Jordan says, I knew him to be a square-shooter. I have absolute faith in his integrity.

Only people who were at the base could understand the difficult times we had there. It was men like Jordan who never slept that made an impossible job possible. [13]

     The former commandant of Gore Field, Col. D’Arce, declared in an interview that the Russians “could have sent the Capitol dome to Moscow without our knowing what was in the boxes.” Under prevailing instructions, he explained, it was not the duty of American officers to question the nature of shipments to Russia but to speed the cargo through as fast as possible. “I remember Major Jordan very well,” said Col. D’Arce. “He is not the type of man to make up a story out of whole cloth.”

     The Lewis broadcast of Dec. 6 presented quotations from an interview with Lt.-Colonel J. D. McFarland of Hamilton, Ohio, formerly an inspector for the Alaskan Wing of the Air Transport Command. “I believe,” he announced, “that I can substantiate everything Major Jordan says,” His statement was cited in part as follows:

I was in Great Falls every couple of weeks. Major Jordan repeatedly raised hell about uncontrolled deliveries going to Moscow.The Russians wanted no restrictions from the U.S. Army. Every time the issue got hot, they would telephone Washington, and they always had their way. [14]

     According to the Cincinnati Inquirer, Colonel McFarland, who was in close touch with General Gaffney in Fairbanks, declared that I was transferred from Great Falls in 1944 as a consequence of my activities against uninspected shipments to Soviet Union. He had personally examined the diary, he said, in which I kept records of such consignments.

     As commander of the Great Falls Army airbase, Colonel Russell L. Meredith was in nominal command of the Soviet movement. By his own wish, I seldom bothered him with problems in that area. More than once he protested that it was my job to keep the Russians out of his hair.

     With good cause, I hold Colonel Meredith in respect and gratitude. Naturally he was indignant over a scandal alleged to have taken place in a post under his authority. It was only human that his impulse should have been to denounce some features as “preposterous.”

     An officer of roved equity, Colonel Meredith in respect and gratitude revised his opinion now that fuller information is at hand. In November, 1949, there had not been a single Lewis-Jordan broadcast and the Un-American Activities Committee had not heard a single witness in the case. I quote the ensuing dialogue between Fulton Lewis and Russell Turner during the Dec. 6 broadcast:

Turner: I interviewed the former commandant of the base, Colonel Russell Meredith, now retired; and seven civilians who had been members of the ground crew at the Lend-Lease depot – the individuals who actually handled the freight.Lewis: Well, let’s handle the Colonel first. He is one of the people quoted as saying that Major Jordan’s story is “unbelievable.”
Turner: He told me the same thing. But he also said he found a notation in his own diary – that he could not understand how 10 tons a month of printed material passing through the Great Falls base was going to help the Russians win that particular war.
Lewis: So this statement in itself confirms the fact that tremendous quantities of printed matter were going through the Great Falls base?
Turner: More than that. He stated that he himself had personally protested against the quantity of stuff that was going through, but was told to lay off – that such policy matters were being decided by “top brass.” He said he didn’t recall any specific occasion on which names were mentioned, but that at the time, in his own mind, he presumed Hopkins and Wallace to have been the persons referred to.
Lewis: Did the Colonel have any other information to offer?
Turner: He said once again it was difficult to remember anything specific, but that generally speaking the material going through seemed to be everything the Russians could lay their hands on about American industries, locations, plans, mechanical designs and scientific data of all kinds – and that there was a mountain of it. [15]

SOURCES

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Clouds of Witnesses

1. Interview with WAC Sgt. Bean, Fulton Lewis broadcast, Dec. 5, 1949.

2. Corp. Henry Cauthen, Fulton Lewis broadcast, Dec. 19, 1949.

3. Royall Edward Norton, Fulton Lewis broadcast, Dec. 14, 1949.

4. Ibid.

5. Interview with Great Falls crewmen, Fulton Lewis broadcast, Dec. 7, 1949

6. Interview with Robert Califf, Associated Press, Dec. 5, 1949.

7. Fulton Lewis broadcast, Dec. 5, 1949. Interview with Col. Gardner.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Letter of Roscoe Turner to Col. Gardner, Dec. 8, 1949.

11. Major Starkle, Fulton Lewis broadcast, Dec. 9, 1949.

12. Interview with Lt. Col. Hahn, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 14, 1949.

13. Interview with Lt. Col. O’Neill, Los Angeles Examiner, Dec. 5, 1949.

14. Interview with Lt. Col. McFarland, Cincinnati Inquirer, Dec. 7, 1949.

15. Fulton Lewis broadcast, Dec. 6, 1949.

---------------------

From Major Jordan's Diaries

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Conclusion

     As final corroboration of the story which I have set forth in this book, I am going to call on testimony which comes from the other side of the Iron Curtain. It is the testimony of four people, two of whom are Russian and two American.

     The first witness is a former member of the Soviet Purchasing Commission, Victor A. Kravchenko, Author of I Chose Freedom, who was questioned by the counsel for the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, Frank S. Tavenner, Jr., as follows:

Mr. Tavenner: What position did you hold with the Soviet Government while you were here in the United States?Mr. Kravchenko: I was economic attaché of the Soviet Purchasing Commission from August 1943 to April 1944.
Mr. Tavenner: Will you explain to the committee the set-up of the Soviet Purchasing Commission, that is, who controlled the activities in which the Commission was engaged, and any other pertinent matter regarding its function which this committee would be interested in?
Mr. Kravchenko: Yes. First I ask your permission to explain the general features of the situation during the war. Before we came to the United States – when I say “we” I mean all members of the Communist Party who had more or less responsible duties or more or less responsible jobs – before we came to the United States, we had received instructions from the party.

Mr. Tavenner: By “party” are you referring to the Communist Party?Mr. Kravechenko: Communist Party, of course, because in the Soviet Union there is only one party. In conversations which I had with officials of the Central Committee Party, I was told repeatedly:

“You are going to the capitalistic United States. We are allies today because we need each other, but when the war is over and we shall have won victory – and we are sure we shall win it – we shall again become open enemies.We shall never modify our philosophy and our doctrine. We are allies in trouble, but both partners know that they hate each other. Sooner or later a clash between the two is inevitable. Until then the Allies will remain our friends and we shall cooperate in our mutual interests.
For this reason and with an eye to the future we must study carefully the industry in the United States, the military industry, the civilian industry, all technological and industrial processes, and we must get hold of their secrets so that we can achieve similar results in our country and when the time comes we will be ready for the fight.”

Rep. Francis E. Walker: Did the Russians regard the United States as their enemy during the period we were fighting for the common cause?

Mr. Kravechenko: Ideologically and secretly, yes. For example, every week we had closed Party sessions in our office in Moscow. Somebody would come from the Central Committee or from the Politburo. He would give us a speech on the international situation, the war situation, and so on, and would make it absolutely clear – I mentioned it in my book and it is not necessary to repeat, but I would like to mention that they always said and always repeated:

“We are Allies because there is a war on. But we must realize that the Americans will never like us and we will never like them.”

Also,

“We will never like the English and the French; I mean their political attitudes.”

And practically – as a practical result of all this – every Soviet official, when he goes to the United States or to any other country, he always has two duties to perform. These duties go parallel:
One of them is a simple engineer to the Soviet Purchasing Commission, but before he comes to the United States, the Central Committee of the Party or some special government office or department, issues orders indicating where in the United States he must work, which factory or chemical plant, or any kind of industry he has to watch. I am talking now about engineers, because I was one of them and I know their work best. I don’t know what orders were given by the general staff.

Now, when this man came to the United States he had to do two jobs at the same time. The one was open and legal, and the other was conspiracy. And when he went back to the Soviet Union, the Soviet Government would appreciate his work in the U.S.A. according to the secret information he had gathered for the Soviet industry or for the military staff. All of us had such duties.Mr. Walter: Is that true of the diplomats as well?
Mr. Kravchenko: Absolutely. They are absolutely no different. In 1943 or 1944 Mr. Rudenko, who was chairman of the Soviet Purchasing commission, had an office at 3355 Sixteenth Street in Washington. General Serov was military attaché at that time.
Gromyko was Soviet Ambassador to Washington. Gusev, in New York, was head of the organization Amtorg. All these officers worked together. Of course there was competition among them, because everyone wanted the “thank you” from the Soviet Union so that upon his return to the Soviet Union he would receive a higher position.
Mr. Walter: Do I understand the Soviet diplomatic representatives in the United States were engaged in espionage?

Mr. Kravchenko: Absolutely. Mr. Chairman, that is their system. We must understand that they all received special training, for instance, Mr. Malik, now representative in the United Nations: Mr. Zarubin, Soviet Ambassador in London*; Mr. Panyushkin in Washington, who has good experience in military intelligence. All of them – there is no question – all of them are members of the Party. That comes first. Their first duty is not diplomatic; their first duty is to be devoted members of the Party. They must do everything the Politburo of the Soviet Union requires, at any price.

*Georgy Zarubin is now Ambassador to the United States.

Now I come back to your question. For example, the Soviet Purchasing Commission during the war had more than a thousand employees. Some of them came to the United States as simple engineers, but in reality they were in top positions in industry or in scientific research. Some came as citizens, but really they were officers of the Navy or artillery or tank troops or the air force.No official of the Soviet Purchasing Commission came to the United States as a member of the Communist Party. If you look at the records in the Department of State you will find that no Party members came from the Soviet Union.
This was the psychologically favorable moment for the Soviet Government. We were in the midst of a war. Many American people paid great respect to the Soviet Army. Everybody was in sympathy with and liked to talk to men in Soviet military uniform.
In the Soviet Purchasing Commission, Mr. Rudenko, Mr. Serov, and a few chairmen of departments were called “the Politburo of the Purchasing Commission.” On the seventh floor of the Soviet Purchasing Commission, behind an iron door at 3355 Sixteenth Street, Washington, D.C. – it was not in Moscow – there was a special department of the NKVD.
Everything that came from the Soviet Union, for instance a secret communication, came to the seventh-floor department. Also, the seventh-floor department kept agents in every department, in the metal department or chemical department or aviation department.
Secret material went to the special department, one of whose officials was Mrs. Arutunian. Her husband was son of the Deputy Commissariat of Railroads of the Soviet Union. She also worked for this special department and all secret papers went through her hands. With this department I had some trouble, and I know what I am talking about. All of us knew about the functions of the special department, but we never knew who the representative of the Soviet Secret Police was in the Soviet Purchasing Commission.

Mr. Tavenner: Did I understand you to say Rudenko was responsible to the NKVD which had its headquarters on the seventh floor? Is that a correct statement?Mr. Kravchenko: The special department formally was under Mr. Rudenko, because he was head of the Soviet Purchasing Commission; this is natural. But in fact they were independent, the NKVD section was independent from the chief of the Purchasing Commission.
Mr. Tavenner: And the head of the Purchasing Commission, Mr. Rudenko, was compelled to carry out certain activities that were outlined by the NKVD? Is that a correct statement?

Mr. Kravchenko: This is absolutely natural. You see, he had two bosses. The one boss – may I make this clear? – was Mr. Mikoyan, the member of the Politburo, and second assistant to Mr. Stalin during the war. Mr. Mikoyan was Commissar of Foreign Trade. During the war Mr. Mikoyan was in charge of Lend-Lease. That was his duty as a member of the Politburo. All supplies for the Soviet Government passed through the hands of Mr. Mikoyan.As to Leonid Rudenko, I had known him many years. We worked at the same factory in the Ukraine in about 1924 or 1925. Mr. Rudenko received orders from Moscow from Mikoyan, from the foreign office, from the general staff, and from the Party. What he did for one office or another I don’t know, but the fact is that all these offices were represented in the United States.
At the end of 1943 or beginning of 1944, one day we received orders issues to all responsible members of the Communist Party. It was after work, after 5 o’clock. The office door was closed, and Mr. Serov came in with several sheets of paper containing orders from Mikoyan to Mr. Rudenko and to all members of the Party in the Soviet Purchasing Commission.
These orders made it absolutely clear that we had to find out all secret information about the industrial development in the United States, and especially in the military industry, and Mr. Mikoyan said, “We shall appreciate you according to your ability to comply with this order.” This document was read to us and we were asked to sign a statement that we knew about this order and that we would make every effort to fill it. This was what I saw, what I knew. It was absolutely clear; there was no mistake about it.
Mr. Tavenner: What effect did this order have upon the activities of the Russians who were members of the Soviet Purchasing Commission?
Mr. Kravchenko: First I will mention a few names and give you a practical example of what they did.
One day I saw big books like this, approximately (indicating) which contained many pictures of the aviation industry, the special machines, special details, and so on. There were pictures and blueprints. Three large volumes. This material was signed by General Belayev, Alexander Rostartchouk,* and Engineer Khimuchin.
General Belayev was chairman of the Soviet Purchasing Commission; Alexander Rostartchouk was head of the metal section; and Engineer Khimuchin, who came to the United States as a simple engineer, actually was doctor of technical sciences and was working on research at an institute in Moscow in that capacity. He came to the United States as a simple engineer. How they obtained those pictures and blueprints, how they found all this information about the development of aviation in the United States, I don’t know. I just saw these documents; I saw the signatures; and I know General Belayev took them when he flew to Moscow. This is the first example.
Second example: I can’t mention a certain name in open session of the committee. I have some good reasons for that. But I know this: Two Soviet Navy captains obtained information on the production of American submarines, on technological processes and details on the perspective development of the submarine industry. This is the second example.
The third example: From 1925 or 1926 I have known Semen Vasilenko. Semen Vasilenko, now in the Soviet Union, is head of the whole production of pipes and tubes in the Soviet Union, as part of the metallurgical industry.
Mr. Tavenner: Will you repeat that?
Mr. Kravchenko: He is head of the production of pipes and tubes in the Soviet Union.
Mr. Tavenner: Will you spell that name?
Mr. Kravchenko: S-e-m-e-n V-a-s-I-l-e-n-k-o. Semen Vasilenko. I knew him many, many years. Vasilenko was a member of the Party; he had been a member of the Ukrainian Government and was awarded a Stalin premium, and also he had a few decorations. He came to the United States for the sole purpose of finding some special information about the metallurgical and tube industry and military industry.
One day in February 1944, I don’t remember the date, Vasilenko, myself and Vdovin got ready to fly to the Soviet Union six large bags, and Vasilenko took the six bags to the Soviet Union. I saw that material. Some of this material was about the production of planes and the new technological processes; some was about artillery; some was about new technological processes in metallurgy; some was about the possibilities of industrial development.
Mr. Kearney: Would the witness mind repeating that?
Mr. Kravchenko: Among this material there was also an outline of the possibilities of industrial development. I mean the perspective: for example, what was planned 5 or 10 years ahead; what the plans for the present are; and so on; also the plan in perspective for the general development of industry. Do you understand?
I know all this material was found in an unofficial way. What could be the reason for Mr. Vasilenko, former member of the government, or for somebody else, to do work as a plain workman? They were working as plain workmen.

We closed the door. Nobody could see this material. And Vasilenko took this material and flew to the Soviet Union.

Now, one more example. At the end of 1943 or the beginning of 1944, Vassili Sergeiev was deputy of Mr. Mikoyan. Mr. Sergeiev* came to the United States. He had meetings here and saw many responsible industrial people and so on. He brought from Moscow another order about various types of information which should be obtained. Sergeiev gathered the heads of the departments and explained what kind of material they are expected to get at any price.

*My diary records that Vassili Sergeiev, his wife Nina, Petre Makeev, Valentina Batanova, and Anatoli Baranovsky were expedited through Great Falls to Moscow on March 9, 1944. They were allowed to depart nearly two tons of personal and “diplomatic” baggage.

I must make it clear, Mr. Chairman, all departments of the Soviet Purchasing Commission – aviation, transportation, all of them – were working for this purpose. We transferred to the Soviet Union not just this one package; we transferred to the Soviet Union dozens of tons of material, and not just by airplane. We also were using Soviet ships that came from Lend-Lease for the Soviet Union, and they called this material Super Lend-Lease. (Laughter)

Well, it is true. And they sent material by these ships for the only reason, that the Soviet Government never believed in peace between these two countries. They worked very hard to prepare themselves. They understand very well that a new war, if it comes, will be a great technical war, much more so than the last war, and they know very well that the United States is a great industrial country They must find all material they can, all kinds of information, to be on a level with this country in its military and industrial developments; also, to be up to date.

Mr. Walter: Do you know how this Super Lend-Lease material was concealed before it was put aboard the ships?

Mr. Kravchenko: Lomakin simply could come to any boat, or anybody else could come and bring whatever they wanted. And any captain and any sailor would go ashore to New York or Philadelphia or Baltimore. They did as they pleased. How could you check on them? I saw Soviet ships in New York. We brought this material on the ship. Who cared what we took? Had we taken the Empire State building and put it on a ship, nobody would have cared! That is true. I know; I saw that. Nobody opened boxes and checked. I witnessed it. I saw dozens of times how Soviet boats were loaded, and I know what I am talking about.

Mr. Walter: So no check was made, and these packing cases containing plans and blueprints were freely passed on the ships with other Lend-Lease material?

Mr. Kravchenko: You see, Mr. Chairman, it was absolutely naturally during the war. In the United States, as in many countries in the world, there was much respect for the Red Army. It was a natural feeling. I am talking now about the policy and psychology of the Soviet Government. They did everything against the United States during the war, and now why should they change?

Mr. Kearney: Were any of those packages under diplomatic seal?

Mr. Kravchenko: Yes. Vasilenko flew to the Soviet Union with all this luggage; possessed diplomatic immunity. And Vasilenko was not an exception. Everybody who went back always took something with him under diplomatic immunity. And during the war the Soviet Government received plenty of airplanes from the United States. These airplanes were flown by Soviet pilots to the Soviet Union. It was part of our activity during the war.

Mr. Tavenner: If I understood you correctly, Vasilenko packed these six bags behind closed doors?

Mr. Kravchenko: That is right.

Mr. Tavenner: Were you there when they were packed?

Mr. Kravchenko: Yes. I was helping him.

Mr. Tavenner: You helped him pack them?

Mr. Kravchenko: Yes. We worked like simple workmen because they didn’t trust anybody.

Mr. Tavenner: Then you did actually assist in packing that sort of material?Mr. Kravchenko: Yes, I did.
Mr. Tavenner: Do you recall the month and year in which Vasilenko flew these packages to Moscow?
Mr. Kravchenko: I don’t remember exactly the date, but I remember very well it was sometime in February, 1944.
Mr. Tavenner: February, 1944?
Mr. Kravchenko: That is right.

Mr. Tavenner: Mr. Chairman, it was the testimony of Major George Racey Jordan, from his diary, that Vasilenko came through Great Falls, on the 17th of February, 1944, en route to Moscow with diplomatic mail. [1]

     Besides corroborating so dramatically the espionage journey of Semen Vaslienko through Great Falls, which I had recorded in my diary, Mr. Kravchenko also confirmed many other names and duties of Russian agents who appeared on the list which I had turned over to the FBI.

     My second witness, An American, is Father Leopold Braun. For eleven years he was the only American priest in Russia. He served from 1934 through 1945 as the pastor of the Church of Saint Louis de Francais, in Moscow. Since his return to the United States, Father Braun has made few public appearances, one of which was at a Communion breakfast held at the Hotel Brevoort in New York.

     At the time Father Braun went on record with these observations, based on what he saw at first hand during the crucial war years in the Russian capital:

     The American people were fooled into believing that our wartime aid to Russia was aiding the Russian people, when instead it was implementing the harsh and brutal regime of Stalin and the Politburo. Organized appeasement hid from the American people the truth about what was happening to the millions[billions, actually] of dollars’ worth of aid that we gave to Russia.

     Lend-Lease aid to Russia during the war was diverted to a second, secret Red Army which was used exclusively for the purpose of suppressing revolts against the Kremlin regime.

     Naïveté on the part of responsible persons in the State Department has strengthened the grip of the Politburo and the Communist Party. Our State Department has absorbed Soviet propaganda time and again, and if by chance they did not absorb it, they indicated that they did not understand it. [2]

     Father Braun saw Lend-Lease supplies, which were intended solely to fight a war against a tyrant named Adolf Hitler, used by the Soviet for purely domestic purposes – just as tyrannical, of course.

     Two final witnesses, American and Russian, also confirm the main contention of this book – that there were Lend-Lease shipments of a non-military nature. They confirm it explicitly and concretely, and they are the two people who really ought to know: Harry Hopkins and Joseph Stalin.

     I said I would cite testimony from behind the Iron Curtain only. Well, that is where Mr. Hopkins’ words were spoken – in the Kremlin, to Stalin’s face. It was in May, 1945, during Hopkins’ last trip to Moscow, following President Roosevelt’s death.

     Former Secretary of State James F. Byrnes quotes the words verbatim and tells us that their source is Hopkins’ and Averell Harriman’s “report on their conversations with Marshal Stalin, which they sent to the President,” [3] meaning of course President Truman, who asked Byrnes to read this record of the meeting before embarking for the Potsdam Conference.

     The report reveals that Stalin, at this final meeting with Hopkins in the Kremlin, “was particularly irritated by the manner in which Lend-Lease shipments had been suspended at the end of the European war.” [4]

    He stated that Russia had intended to make a “suitable expression of gratitude” to the United States for the Lend-Lease assistance during the war, but the way to which it had been halted “now made that impossible to do.” [5]

     In other words, we were officially told that we were not going to get even a “thank you” from the Russian people or their master for our eleven billions of Lend-Lease, and of course we never have got one.

     Naturally Hopkins was very much upset by Marshal Stalin’s remarks, which reflected on the one operation of the war nearest his heart, the vast program in which he had chief responsibility. Stalin noticed Hopkins’ reaction and stated later in the meeting that “he was afraid that his remark concerning Soviet public opinion had cut Mr. Hopkins to the quick.” [6]

     In any event, Hopkins did not let Stalin’s ungrateful gibes about Lend-Lease go unanswered, and at once “explained that cancellation of Lend-Lease was necessary under the law because Lend-Lease was authorized only for the purpose of prosecuting the war.”

     Hopkins then proceeded, in an understandable state of emotion, to make this historic admission. Secretary Byrnes tells us:

“He reminded the Marshal of how liberally the United States had construed the law in sending foodstuffs and OTHER NON-MILITARY ITEMS to their aid.” [7]

     In stating how liberally the United States construed the law, Mr. Hopkins was, of course, referring to himself. As William Chamberlain has said, Hopkins was, “after the President, the most powerful man in America during the war.” [8]

     He was Administrator or Lend-Lease. The law under which he operated was at no time submitted to any court for interpretation or test, and therefore it was he who “construed” the law, he decided what we supplied to Russia under Lend-Lease, and he himself tells us, addressing Marshall Stalin directly, that he construed the law liberally in sending non-military items to Stalin’s aid.

     And what did our final witness, Joseph Stalin, have to say to this? A man of few words, he replied in character. There is neither ambiguity nor obscurity in his reply and, with these eight words, I rest my case:

“Stalin readily acknowledged the accuracy of Hopkins’ statement.” [9]

     And what of my friend Colonel Kotikov? In August, 1945 the Soviet Government announced rewards “for the successful execution of tasks assigned to them by the Soviet Government, according to stipulations of the Red Army and Navy.”

     Second on the list, receiving the Order of the Red Banner, Russia’s highest decoration after the Order of Lenin, stands the name of A.N. Kotikov. [10]

     The United States of America did not rate Russia’s official “thank you,” but it is at least interesting to know that Colonel Kotikov did.

SOURCES

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Conclusion

1. Hearings Regarding Shipments of Atomic Materials, testimony of Victor A. Kravchenko, March 7, 1950, pp. 1179-86.

2. New York Times, April 12, 1952.

3. Speaking Frankly, p. 61.

4. Ibid. p. 62.

5. Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 896.

6. Ibid., p. 898.

7. Speaking Frankly, p. 62.

8. America’s Second Crusade, William H. Chamberlain, (Henry Regnery & Company), p. 187.

9. Speaking Frankly, p. 62.

10. Bulletin No. 781, American Russian Chamber of Commerce, Aug., 1945.

“ABOUT THE AUTHOR”

     “His statements prove true,” said John O’Donnell in the New York News.

     The man to whom he was referring is Major George Racey Jordan, whose statements concerning American Lend-Lease to Russia during World War II were met with strident denials from columnists, commentators, and government employees.

     Fortunately, Major Jordan did not have to rely on his memory: Shortly after his appointment as Lend-Lease expediter, a post he held at Newark Airport and then at Great Falls, Montana, he began keeping his famous diaries.

     He credits his foresight in doing so to a World War I sergeant at Kelly Field, Texas, who in 1917 told the then nineteen-year-old corporal:

“Jordan, if you want to get along, keep your eyes and your ears open, keep your big mouth shut, and keep a copy of everything!”

     George Racey Jordan served in the 147th Aero Squadron of Captain “Eddie” Rickenbacker’s First Pursuit Group in World War I. Between 1918 and the Second World War, he completed his education and became in time a successful sales and advertising executive. He left his business career to serve his country again during World War II.

     Working under a special presidential directive at Great Falls, Major Jordan watched with increasing uneasiness the growing mountain of Lend-Lease items being channeled to Russia and the infiltration, on the return trip, of Soviet agents into the United States.

     Most disquieting of all, however, were the thousands of “black suitcases” that traveled with diplomatic immunity and State Department top priority from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. through the Lend-Lease pipeline. In spite of strenuous objections by armed Russian couriers, Major Jordan inspected some of these suitcases. His notes on their contents, and on “regular” Lend-Lease shipments, became the basis for his radio interviews with Fulton Lewis, Jr., and for his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1949 and 1950.

     Major Jordan’s statements have indeed proved true. The Soviets were able to explode their atom bomb earlier than our experts dreamed possible because our officials provided them with uranium, thorium, cobalt, cadmium, and atom bomb data from our own top-secret Manhattan Project.

     Major Jordan is the author of Gold Swindle, The Story of Our Dwindling Gold. He presently lives in Southern California.

END

     Again, our very sincere appreciation and thanks to Karen A. for donating her precious time to transcribe this book.  As stated in the forward statement, we've made an exhaustive search and cannot find a bookseller who offers it.  

     Another relevant report Karen has transcribed which will be posted here, is titled "And Not A Shot Is Fired."  (Webmaster's note: Link coming soon) Revisit this section often for new additions as our time allows.  Here are the first few paragraphs of the intro to that report:

By Jan Kozak (Member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia)     One might ask today, years after the fall of the Berlin Wall: “Why would anyone want to read a report by a communist about the revolutionary takeover of Czechoslovakia – a country that no longer exists? The Czechs are capitalists now, remember?"
     Such a question reveals a number of erroneous assumptions that this document convincingly refutes – not the least of which is the false assumption that the leaders of the former Communist states of Eastern Europe were wedded to ideology.
     As Jan Kozak and 40 years of brutal Communist Party rule in Czechoslovakia so clearly demonstrate, communism was a tactic employed for the assumption of power, rather than a sincere belief.
     These same tactics, modified only slightly, are being used today. Americans who labor under the false premise that communism is either an ideology or a system of economics that died with the Cold War do so at their personal and national peril.

     Thanks, also, to Darren Weeks, our webmaster extraordinaire, who gives so generously of his time and limited personal funds in building and maintaining this site.  

With love and gratitude. . . Jackie  -- June, 1st, 2003