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To: "H-HOAC" <H-HOAC@h-net.msu.edu> Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2007 9:24 AM Subject: Bedacht & Spying Berle Chambers Two matters raised in a post on Bedacht and spying that discussed Whittaker Chambers and Adolf Berle. First was it "downright myth-shattering" to observe that Whittaker Chambers wanted immunity from espionage prosecution when he approached the White House in September 1939 to discuss his earlier covert activities? In _Perjury_ (p. 328) in 1978 Allen Weinstein wrote, "Chambers agreed to cooperate on one condition: that he received immunity from prosecution for his previous activities, something he had sought through [Herbert] Solow in 1938 without success." If it was a myth, it was shattered three decades ago. Second, the White House sent Levine and Chambers (who didn't get immunity) to see Assistant Secretary of State Berle, who prepared detailed notes from his meeting. The notes had the title "Underground Espionage Agent." The assertion has been made that the FBI "provided the title. There's now no reason to believe Berle wrote that title himself." Why is the title of the notes of interest? The notes had the title "Underground Espionage Agent" and clearly indicate that Berle understood that he was discussing espionage with Chambers. And Hiss's defenders wish to believe that Berle did not understand that espionage was what was being discussed. For political and personal reasons, in the late 1940s, Berle found it convenient to be diminish the seriousness and detail of what he had been told in September 1939. In a letter to Jerome Frank, Berle stated that his 1948 testimony the HUAC about the meeting was intended to be "sedative." And, indeed, his testimony was vague, he told the committee he was "testifying from recollection about something that happened nine years ago," and asked the committee to put down any "discrepancies in detail" to "faulty memory." And, certainly, he got many details wrong in his 1948 testimony, putting the meeting in August rather than in September and implying that Isaac Don Levine wasn't even there. Berle's biographer refers to his testimony in August 1948 as "vague and confused" and made "with only three hours' preparation and no time for refreshing his memory by consulting his diary." And Dean Acheson, in the State Department at the same time as Berle, commented, "Mr. Berle's memory has g one badly astray." [Jordan A. Schwarz, _Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era_ 298-303] Fortunately for history, there was documentation that provided a better account of the meeting that Berle's poor memory (or personal agenda). There was, for example, the diary he appeared not to have consulted. Let us look first at Berle wrote in his diary on 4 September 1939, not his faulty memory of 1948. Berle wrote in 1939: "Isaac Don Levine in his contact with the Krivitzky matter had opened up another idea of the Russian espionage. He brought a Mr. X [Whittaker Chambers] around to my house on Saturday evening..... Through a long evening, I slowly manipulated Mr. X to a point where he told some of the ramifications hereabout; and it becomes necessary to take a few simple measures. I expect more of this kind of thing, later. A good deal of the Russian espionage was carried on by Jews; we know now that they are exchanging information with Berlin; and the Jewish units are furious to find that they are, in substance, working for the Gestapo." Note that "espionage" is in Berle's 1939 diary entry regarding his meeting with Chambers. And, as Allen Weinstein wrote in his account of the Chambers-Berle meeting: "Berle did not retire immediately. Instead he transcribed his handwritten notes and memories of the conversation on an office typewriter; he titled the four-page memo 'Underground Espionage Agent.'" (_Perjury_, 292) And it was after Berle's "sedative" testimony that Berle's detailed four page notes with the title "Underground Espionage Agent" were made public by the FBI. [One can see a transcription of the notes at: http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page100.html ] When his notes were made public Berle did not question even a jot or tittle of their accuracy. Berle's notes became a government exhibit at Hiss's second trial, and neither Berle nor the Hiss defense suggested any FBI tampering with Berle's notes. (Not that the Hiss defense wanted Berle's testimony, while Berle did not regard Hiss as a traitor, he wrote in his diary on 3 September 1948 that Hiss was "a liar," not the sort of witness the defense would want when the charge is perjury.) Chambers included Belrle's notes in his biography _Witness_. After _Witness_ appeared Berle read it and in his diary he wrote that _Witness_ "is not in detail inaccurate." Berle's quarrel was not with the details, such as the accuracy of his notes, "but the whole impression is wrong" about what Berle did or didn't do in September 1939. William Jowitt in his _The Strange Case of Alger Hiss_ (1953) took a pro-Hiss stance and was skeptical of the testimony of various witness and raised issues about some of the evidence, but he reproduced the Berle notes, including the title "Underground Espionage Agent" an appendix of the book without even a hint that the title was suspect, and, again, Berle did not question the accuracy of the notes. Berle's notes were also read into the record of several congressional hearings in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Berle never raised any question about their accuracy. Indeed, not at any point in his life (Berle lived until 1971) did Berle suggest any FBI tampering with his notes. This view that FBI invented the title of Berle's notes cannot be taken seriously. John Earl Haynes
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