Lt. Col. Archibald B. Roosevelt during World War II
Remember when that old cabal of American ex-Communists and American Communism experts shrieked, hissed and hurled toxic mud over American Betrayal's thickly-sourced discussions of the "occupation" of the halls of power in Washington, D.C. by a secret, Kremlin-directed intelligence army?
The late M. Stanton Evans would write:
Especially galling to West's critics is her contention that Washington in the war years was so riddled with Communists and Soviet agents as to be in effect an "occupied" city -- an image that seems to have sparked the greatest anger and most denunciation of her thesis.
By using the "occupied" image, Ms. West is of course not saying Soviet tanks were patrolling the streets of Washington, or that Red martial law was imposed on its cowering citizens. What she is arguing instead is that Soviet agents, Communists and fellow travelers held official posts, or served at chokepoints of intelligence data, and from these positions were able to exert pro-Soviet leverage on U.S. and other allied policy. Though ignored in many conventional histories, the evidence to support this view is overwhelming.
What is more than passing strange is that my detractors, of all people, some of them once privy to internal machinations of this same secret Communist army of occupation, should have known far better. With their first-hand or up-close experience, however, it turns out they are no better guides to the pre-1960s Long March through our institutions than the rest of the "court historians," those teachers and writers who blind and benumb us to its breadth and depth, either ignoring all, or unduly focusing on a short list of all-star traitors headed by the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss.
It is sometimes hard to remember (because we are supposed to forget) that the Communist subversion of this country through the secret infiltration -- occupation -- of our institutions was for a time the subject of painstaking and exhaustive public study led by patriotic elected officials sitting on the great investigating committees in Congress, such as the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
In 1956, to take one example, the Committee held hearings into Communist Political Subversion in the cities of Washington, D.C., Youngstown, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. I have just cracked open Part One, a volume measuring over four inches thick, and found that these hearings open with a statement by Archibald B. Roosevelt (1894-1979), conservative businessman and much-decorated veteran of both World Wars who was also a son of President Theodore Roosevelt.
He doesn't use the word "occupation" but he certainly describes it.
A. B. Roosevelt:
Most people don't realize that the Kremlin has already invaded America. The reason that most Americans are not conscious of this invasion is due to the fact that it has been going on gradually for 39 years [since the Russian Revolution of 1917]. The Soviet leaders have moved entire divisions of their political army into our country unnoticed by all except a few security-minded citizens. These Red forces are a political army which is civilian in appearance and walk the streets in America indistiguishable from the rest of the population. Their weapons of war [consist] of infiltration into the government, education, finance, and communication by subversion, disruption, poisonous propaganda, and espionage. They are largely an invisible enemy acting behind fronts and, therefore, difficult to pinpoint. Operating as a disciplined and dedicated force they insinuate themselves into various sensitive and key areas of our society. ...
He went on from there.
Citing the example of Hungary, where Soviet forces had recently invaded and brutally put down the heroic uprising, Roosevelt observed that violent Communist assault is the sequel of stealthy Communist invasion, which, in Hungary's case, had begun when "Soviet partisans posing as civilians and refugees" began infiltrating Hungary in the 1920s following the Bolshevik revolution.
He continued:
Right after World War II, this hidden army of invasion, with the aid of Soviet troops, seized political power and began killing thousands of innocent Hungarian civilians ... The massacre of men, women and children ... was just as great if not greater than the current one, even though it did not have the dramatic accompaniment of shellfire from Soviet tanks and planes. The real invasion of Hungary began in 1917 through immigration after the Bolshevik revolution. The invasion of America by Soviet immigration began at the same time.
Roosevelt feared similar violence would break out here -- "if we permit the Kremlin to undermine our society by filtering in a growing army of Red agents, posing as immigrants."
"Posing as immigrants"? The historical echoes are audible in today's immigration controversies, from Syrians to Trump's wall.
Roosevelt continued, discussing ways in which our adversaries used immigration against us throughout the 20th century.
Ever since the formation of the [US] Communist Party in 1919 the Soviet leaders have considered the native-born Communist as insufficient and inadequate for the purpose of seizing power. As a result, the control of the Communist apparatus has been primarily in the hands of highly-trained hard-core alien Communists.
Describing the Kremlin's "two-pronged course of action," Roosevelt noted that the Kremlin first needed "assurance that their foreign-born operators ... will not be deported or denaturalized. This would ensure the maintenance of those forces which the Red strategists have filtered in through our weak immigration barriers throughout the years."
He went on:
The second requirement for the conquest of America is to make certain that the security checks against immigrants are weak and ineffective and that there must exist loopholes through which swarms of Red agents can enter this country to swell the size of the subversive forces. ... The Walter-McCarran Immigration Act provides America with the legal weapons to stop the Red immigration plot in its tracks ....
Holy smokes. Roosevelt was discussing what remains a matter of intense topicality, the subversion of U.S. immigration policy, focusing on the 1950s Communist/Leftist oppositionto the Walter-McCarran Immigration Act.
Plus ca change and all that. I'm going to have to read this one and see how it all comes out.
