Chapter Sixteen
Out of the Woodwork

Perhaps not every schoolchild could identify Lattimore as the architect of American policy in the Far East, but by the end of March 1950 every scoundrel in the country, and some abroad, knew that Lattimore had been targeted as another Hiss. Would-be informants came crawling out of the woodwork, drawn to McCarthy as moths to light, each peddling a new version of Lattimore's evil deeds.

Abe Fortas did his best to warn Lattimore that he was "operating in a situation characterized by insanity" and that "it may be necessary that you get down in the gutter in which we are now operating as a result of Senator McCarthy's personal attack on you."^[1] But not even the worldly-wise Fortas fully appreciated the depravity of some of those who now sought fame as accusers of Lattimore. The "respectable" witnesses (Utley, Chambers, Barmine, George Carter, Budenz) were only the visible part of the problem. The underclass of kooks and winos, drifters and opportunists, many of whom would never be named publicly but all of whom were eagerly embraced by McCarthy and the zealous Surine, added a dimension to the problem that no rational argument could deal with. Lattimore could hardly have gotten down in the gutter with them even had he wanted to.

Here there was a paradox. While J. Edgar Hoover was preeminent in stirring up the midcentury scare about domestic communism, and while he hated Lattimore with a passion, it was the ability of Hoover's agents to discern flakiness in those clamoring to sell their testimony against Lattimore that prevented things from being even worse. The bureau made mistakes; there were illegalities aplenty; but only the bureau cut the crazies down to size. The right-wing press, the House and Senate inquisitors,

even the Justice Department tended to believe the most implausible tales about Lattimore. Hard-bitten FBI agents knew the difference between evidence and trash.

Lattimore was still in Afghanistan when the accusations began. To understand the intensity of the onslaught he faced on his return, it is necessary to sample this underclass attack and note the willingness of McCarthy and his supporters to believe the unbelievable.

Some of the fantasies spun about Lattimore were predictable. If Lattimore were a Soviet spy, he might well have been associated with the most famous Soviet spy ring operating in the Far East, that of Richard Sorge. Sorge worked from 1930 to 1941, first in Shanghai, then in Tokyo, sending brilliant reports on Asian events to the Kremlin. The imagination of several would-be informants followed precisely this path.

On March 23, exactly two days after McCarthy named Lattimore as the top Soviet spy, the first of the Sorge informants appeared. A report of that date from the Washington field office (WFO) of the bureau is heavily censored; all that comes through is an anonymous informant's claim, second- or third-hand, that Richard Sorge kept a diary and that "the name of OWEN LATFIMORE appeared therein with the indication that he was a 'friend who could be used.' "^[2] This caused a flurry of bureau activity. By the next day bureau flies had been searched, and this informant was found to have a record. He had talked about Lattimore six months earlier but had not mentioned Sorge. Orders went out immediately to locate and reinterview this individual.

On March 27 WFO caught up with this informant. He was vague. He had not actually seen Sorge's diary. He had been a friend of the late secretary of defense, James Forrestal, and perhaps Forrestal had told him about it. He was sorry he could not be of more help.^[3]

So the bureau went to the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Intelligence Division of the army to see if they knew about Sorge's diary. By March 28 both had denied ever hearing of such a document. On March 30, as McCarthy was speaking to the Senate, SAC Scheidt in New York reported that records of the Sorge case maintained in his office showed a 1947 document from General Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence chief (G-2), listing "The Members of the Sorge Spy Ring." Lattimore was not among them. The informant was written off by the bureau.^[4]

A month later the Sorge rumor cropped up again. In this set of documents the FBI released names. The channel for this canard was Frank Tavenner, general counsel of HUAC. Tavenner's tale: "One of the Staff Investigators for the HUAC named Owens is alleged to have seen the

original of Sorge's confession, wherein Sorge named several American Communists, it being stated that he, Sorge, then furnished a list of names of individuals who could be depended upon by Communists to cooperate and that Lattimore headed this list." Easy to check. The bureau got to Owens, and he backed down from his tale. Someone else had seen the Sorge confession and told him about it. Tavenner, humbled, put his staff to searching their Sorge papers: there was no mention of Lattimore.^[5]

There was one more Sorge story, this the most irrational of all. It began when Hoover and McCarthy received identical letters from a German soldier of fortune, Willi Foerster. Foerster had lived in Japan before and during World War II but was expelled as an undesirable alien and shipped to Europe in 1947. In May 1950 Foerster was living in Agno, Switzerland. His English was a bit unruly, but the meaning of his letter of May 9, 1950, is clear:

Sir:

From press reports I learned the controversy of Senator MacCarthy contra Lattimore and, that the FBI has orders to re-investigate the whole question carefully, therefore I wish to inform you as follow:

1. I do not know whether or not camerade Lattimore belonged to the US Communist party or any US underground organisation. But I know exactly that Lattimore was intimately connected with Dr. Richard Sorge, the master-spy of the Kreml who worked in Tokyo (Japan) until he was catched by the Japanese secret police and, after a court trial and a stated open confession sentenced to hang. This verdict was executed in 1944. Before Dr. Sorge was hanged I had the unpleasant chance to see and talk with him several time in the Sugamo prison, Tokyo (Japan).

2. A certain Max Clausen, who turned out to be the first assistant of Dr. Sorge and who also was convicted in connection with Dr. Sorge's spy work to life-prison ——— asked [Foerster's wife, on her] vacation trip from Japan via America to Germany to take along a private letter from Dr. Sorge to America, and buy in San Francisco post-stamps and then mail said letter ordinarely. This letter, Clausen said at that time, contained private family matters Dr. Sorge did not want to be known by the Japanese secret police, who censored secretly foreigners mail.

3. [My wife] took this letter along to America and mailed the same as requested. Said letter, as I clearly remember, was addressed to a certain schoolteacher Owen Lattimore. I thought "Owen" was the calling name for a female.^[6]

There followed a page and a half of colorful prose about how he, Foerster, had been mistreated, how Americans were stupid to "liberate" Max Clau-

sen, and how the State Department was leading the world into "disaster and confusion."

This letter did not impress the FBI, and Hoover did nothing about it. McCarthy and his excitable investigator Surine, however, jumped on it immediately. On May 18 the Washington Daily News carried a story headed "Global Private Eye Probes State Dept. for McCarthy."

Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R., Wis.) has an international investigator in Paris helping him uncover evidence against State Department officials, it was disclosed today.

The agent was said to divide his time between his Paris attic office and traveling on the famed Paris-Istanbul Orient Express.

Sen. McCarthy refused to identify him, but the agent is said to be an American with contacts in U.S. intelligence circles and the French Surete General.

It was revealed the agent has already visited Switzerland to obtain affidavits which Sen. McCarthy hopes will link a Soviet spy ring to one of the major targets in his charge that the State Department is harboring Communists.

Surine, fired with enthusiasm about this new development, appeared at the WFO May 24. Off the record, he told agents there

HIS OFFICE NOW HAS REPRESENTATIVE EN ROUTE JAPAN IN EFFORT TO SECURE DOCUMENTARY PROOF OF THIS INCIDENT FROM INDIVIDUAL HE DECLINED TO IDENTIFY BECAUSE IF STATE DEPARTMENT LEARNED OF THIS HIS REPRESENTATIVES LIFE WOULD BE IN DANGER. SURINE ALSO CLAIMED HIS TELEPHONES ARE BEING TAPPED, HIS MAIL TAMPERED WITH, AND HE BELIEVES THAT HE IS UNDER CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE. INDICATED THAT STATE DEPT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. . . . SURINE'S PURPOSE IN FURNISHING INFO RE SURGE NOT KNOWN. HE HAS STATED THAT QUOTE THEY ARE INTERESTED IN BEATING THE BUREAU UNQUOTE ON THIS CASE .^[7]

Hoover, on hearing this tale, ordered the legal attaché (an FBI man) at the U.S. embassy in Paris to go to Switzerland to interview Foerster. On May 30 the attaché's report reached Washington. McCarthy's "global private eye," one John E. Farrand, had already seen Foerster. Foerster had provided Farrand with an affidavit stating that Lattimore was working with Surge and that Surge had sent a letter to Lattimore in the United States via Max Clausen and Foerster's wife. Further, Foerster knew where hard evidence was: (1) he had a file on Max Clausen, with a penciled

notation made in 1937 about the letter to Lattimore; this file had been turned over to Lieutenant Root of the Army Counterintelligence Corps in Japan in 1946. (2) His former wife, Martha Ann Foerster, now residing in Nagano, Japan, had made a notation about this letter in her diary:^[8]

Hoover wrote General Willoughby, asking him to check out the Foerster story. Willoughby replied June 6:

Ref Hoover request. . . . no papers of interest are in Root file except 10 Sep 46 ltr and a business agreement of no current interest. . . . No notes of any kind or in pencil on margin of papers sent Lt Root. Mrs Foerster interrogated Apr 49 and again 31 May 50. Her statements ref Sorge ltr carried by her to USA in both interrogations are similar. She remembers ltr given to her by Clausen thru W. R. Foerster was addressed to Miss or Mrs Sorge. She states on 31 May 50 that "She has never heard of Owen Lattimore, never kept a diary, has no documents or papers concerning Sorge or Lattimore and that Willi Foerster is an habitual and current liar." Our experience with Willi Foerster over period of several years suggest that he is an unreliable opportunist of questionable veracity attempting use of uncooperative ex-wife as stooge for vague repts made to high levels to secure his obj of returning to Japan. It is significant that in 1949 his statement centered on our interest in Sorge, now he has substituted the name of Lattimore, and no doubt will change his stand to coincide with whatever issue is of importance at the time.^[9]

That, one would think, would end the matter. But truth rarely catches up With rumor, and the McCarthy crew tried to connect Lattimore with Sorge for the next three years. On August 1, 1950, McCarthy gave the Senate a story based on the Foerster affidavit his agent had obtained in Switzerland, claiming that the story was supported by an army report about the Sorge case released in February 1948. The army report was alleged to be significant "in connection with the Foerster affidavit mentioning Lattimore." Willard Edwards, McCarthy's most gullible journalistic collaborator, wrote up this story in articles appearing in the Chicago Tribune and other papers. The headline over the Tribune story screamed, "M'Carthy Links Lattimore to Slain Red Spy." Edwards did acknowledge, in the last line of his story, that "Lattimore's name was not mentioned in the Army report."^[10]

By the time of this revelation the Korean War was dominating the news, and Edwards's story got little response. The Sorge connection disappeared.

Surine resurrected it in 1953. In July of that year, still chasing phantoms, he told the bureau that he had "located a witness who will identify

Lattimore as a member of the Sorge Spy Ring and the Soviet espionage apparatus." The bureau knew his witness, believed him to be of "questionable credibility," and ignored the whole thing.^[11] McCarthy never produced the witness.

Another rogue informant came from the ranks of the U.S. navy. On April 4, 1950, the WFO informed headquarters that a potential witness against Lattimore was Navy Commander Milton M. "Mary" Miles, then stationed in Rhode Island.^[12] As American coleader of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization during the war, Miles had worked closely with, and become deeply attached to, Nationalist secret police chief Tai Li.^[13] When Tai Li died in 1946, Miles moved heaven and earth (and the naval bureaucracy) to be allowed to go to China to the funeral. Miles's wartime experiences in China had been debilitating; he suffered a nervous breakdown at the end of the war and was hospitalized for many months.^[14]

Less than twenty-four hours after FBI headquarters learned that Miles had interesting information, two Boston agents were talking to him in an office at the Naval War College in Newport. What they heard was indeed spectacular. Much of this interview is still denied by the FBI, since Miles demanded that "under no circumstances should his identity be made known." (FBI censors did not realize, when they released a sanitized version of this interview, that describing this secret informant as "the American who during the recent war was closest to Tai Li" would positively identify Miles.)

Miles began his interview with the Boston agents by acknowledging that he "dislikes heartily OWEN LATTIMORE ." Though he never had any "affirmative proof" that Lattimore was a Communist or a Russian agent, everything Lattimore did while in China "was designed to subvert the Chinese National Government and to facilitate the seizure of power by the Chinese Communist Party." And, as reported by the Boston agents, there was one specific action that damned Lattimore:

When HENRY WALLACE came to China on his "good will mission," LATTIMORE acted as interpreter. WALLACE made some comment concerning collaboration between the Nationalist and Communist forces before CHIANG KAI-SHEK. LATIMORE wilfully and falsely, [according to Tai Li] translated this comment to the Generalissimo so that it read in substance: "Unless you permit American military men, press representatives, OSS representatives and State Department officials to immediately establish liaison with the government at Yenan, President ROOSEVELT will deny you any further Lend-Lease aid and we will permit your country to fall into the hands of the enemy."

CHIANG KAI-SHEK was alleged to have been shocked by this threat because he could not exist at that particular moment as the head of a living nation without such aid. He thereupon responded in the following language: "The only reason that I have barred Americans from visiting Yenan is because any government which issues a visa should do so with a guarantee that the person's life and property will not be molested. I can make no such guarantee with reference to the territory occupied but not governed by the forces at Yenan. If you wish to assume the burden of protecting your own life and property, you certainly have my permission to go there. I cannot suffer you to refer to Yenan as a government. It is like your telling me that if I wish to visit the Government of the United States, I must not only see Mr. ROOSEVELT at Washington, but also FRANK HAGUE of Jersey City.^[15]

Here was another ludicrous scenario. Neither Miles nor his alleged informant, Tai Li, attended the conferences with Chiang where Kuomintang-Communist relations were discussed. T. V. Soong, not Lattimore, was the translator according to the official records. Lattimore at the time was still a strong supporter of Chiang and had Chiang's full confidence. And, had Lattimore mistranslated something vital, Soong, Madame Chiang, or Wang Shih-chieh would have corrected it immediately.

But the Boston agents were not skeptical of Miles's tale, and their acceptance of his statements was reinforced when he told them that he had "thirteen and a half tons of material in his confidential file and safe" in Washington. This material consisted of "diaries and personal notes concerning the political activities, black market activities and illicit sex life of the individuals named above [Lattimore, Vincent, Davies, Service]. . . . This safe has been sealed under the cover 'Top Secret' and ——— he is the only living person who has the combination."^[16]

The Boston agents were ecstatic. Miles obviously had the smoking gun needed to convict Lattimore. Their report showed a most positive evaluation of Miles: "He is a direct, forceful individual, given to carefully weighing his words. He indicated that he would say no more about the above-named persons until he could refresh his memory from his notes and prove his statements."^[17]

One can imagine the excitement at FBI headquarters. Unfortunately, Commander Miles was unable to come to Washington immediately to produce his thirteen and a half tons of documents; the best the bureau could do was to instruct WFO to see him as soon as he was in town.

Miles was finally available May 5, when two WFO agents interviewed him at his home. The outcome was startling. Far from producing the "proof" that he had promised a month earlier in Boston,

he stated that there was a possibility that there might be information in these files concerning OWEN LATTIMORE and others whose names are mentioned in the reference Boston letter. [Miles stated] however, that he did not remember any particular document in the files which contained any information concerning OWEN LATTIMORE or the others mentioned. He stated that if he were to search all of his files he would probably be on a "wild goose chase." ——— He stated that he had apparently been misunderstood by the interviewing agents of the Boston Office, for he advised that . . . he had no files in his possession. further, he also stated that he had no diaries or personal notes concerning the political activities, black market activities, and the illicit sex life of the individuals mentioned in the reference Boston letter.^[18]

Reeling from this unanticipated setback, the Washington agents pressed Miles specifically on the other charges he had made in Rhode Island. He backed down on all of them.

The bureau was now greatly embarrassed. Hoover had already informed Assistant Attorney General James M. McInerney of the Miles revelations, which now had to be retracted. The Baltimore office of the bureau was even more upset; they wrote Hoover requesting that Boston and Washington agents be asked to "advise whether there was anything [about Miles's behavior] to indicate that he expected or experienced any pressure from any outside source to tone down his very definite statements regarding the subject [Lattimore] and his possession of documents to corroborate such statements."^[19]

Baltimore also wanted a follow-up on Miles to see whether the inconsistencies in his statements could be resolved. So the Boston and WFO agents who had interviewed Miles were probed as m whether they thought he might have been subject to pressure. All responded negatively; Miles was a tough, independent individual, a "man of action" who "would not stand for pressure from any source." They advised dropping the whole matter. The Boston office was particularly opposed to confronting Miles with an agent from each office: he would only be alienated and embarrassed. Anyway, said the Boston response, "It would appear ——— that few of the records in his possession were composed under his direct supervision or by agents employed by him. It is exceedingly doubtful that he has access to the original sources and therefore the evidential value of such material is extremely questionable.^[20]

Hoover did not let the matter rest there. There had to be something to the original Miles account other than complete hallucination. Who else might have been witness to the mistranslation? The Chinese participants,

Chiang, Madame Chiang, Wang Shih-chieh, and T. V. Soong were out of his jurisdiction. There was no point in asking Lattimore. Vincent, however, was in Switzerland; the legal attaché in Paris could be sent to interview him. This was done, and on June 1 the Paris FBI man saw Vincent at the Berne Legation.

Vincent was incredulous. The story made no sense at all. There had been too many Chinese present who had a perfect understanding of English for any such fraud to have occurred.^[21] This was enough to sour even Hoover on Miles as an informant. There is no further mention in bureau files of the "Wallace mistranslation" charge.

In mid-April 1950 a Japanese mischief maker went to the San Francisco office of the FBI with the unlikely story that Lattimore had directed the Strategic Bombing Survey (SBS) sent to Japan in the fall of 1945 and that he had hired at least four Nisei Communists for the survey. SBS was an operation of the U.S. Air Force, then still under Army. The FBI had dose liaison with Army. A few telephone calls could easily have located an air force officer with definitive knowledge of who ran SBS. The bureau should also have recalled that Lattimore had been an active member of the Pauley reparations mission, which operated at the same time as SBS. Lattimore could not have directed SBS while devoting full time to Pauley. Somehow, these commonsense observations were never made.

The informant report that made the charge appears in a letter from the San Francisco office to Hoover dated April 25, 1950: "Regarding OWEN LATTIMORE group worked under the name of the Strategic Bombing Survey included three known Japanese Communists who are presently in Los Angeles. They are SHIRO TAKEDA . . . NOBUYOSHI . . . and TEIJI KOIDE . . . . They flew in Tokyo by the Strategic Bombing Survey group immediately after the surrender under LATTIMORE direction. When they came to Tokyo, I was very much surprised. Many of us who knew their commie reputation could not understand why such boys were sent there. It was rumored that the communistic encouragement might be introduced."^[22] This letter started a full-scale search. WFO, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and other offices were instructed to determine who directed SBS, who selected personnel, what the records of these Japanese Americans were, and what role Lattimore played in it all.

It was not until August that WFO provided the names of those in charge of SBS. The list of thirteen included Paul Nitze, John Kenneth Galbraith, George Ball, and Rensis Likert. Likert was alleged to have "had quite a bit to do" with recruiting personnel. The WFO sources "advised that at no time during the bombing survey did the name of LATTIMORE come to

their attention as having recommended persons to be employed. Both stated that at this time they had never heard of LATTIMORE "^[23]

That should have settled the matter, but it did not. The FBI now set about to interview all or most of the thirteen persons named as directors of SBS. Accordingly, requests for interviews went out to Detroit, New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and elsewhere; when reports came in from these interviews, the universal answer was that Lattimore was not involved. Not until November 15 did WFO tell headquarters, in effect, "Enough. There's nothing to this."^[24]

But a late report came in November 29 from San Francisco. That office had finally connected with a former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer who was one of the directors of SBS. He gave a bit of background to the survey that showed that even as early as 1945 anti-Communist fanaticism was interfering with professional judgments of government officials. This informant told the bureau that the SBS official responsible for hiring "based his selection of individuals upon their qualifications, competency and willingness to accept assignment to an overseas post." The SBS informant remembered that there had been a challenge to the loyalty of SBS personnel. Representative Andrew May alleged that several of the fifty SBS staffers were Communists and threatened to "expose" the survey as Communist infiltrated. Army authorities were annoyed at the delay caused by May and devised a brilliant strategem; they "randomly removed the names of approximately 20 men from the list of selected personnel. May and his council [committee] were then satisfied and the group departed for Japan."^[25]

The end was not yet. Incredibly, as late as December 1951 the bureau was still interviewing former SBS personnel because "LATTIMORE is charged with using his influence in the hiring of Communists for the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey."^[26] It was one of the worst performances in bureau handling of the Lattimore case.

McCarthy got hundreds of calls from people who claimed to be able to identify Lattimore as a Communist. One of them came on April 17, 1950, from a seaman named Sidney Troster in Memphis. Troster claimed that he had met in Memphis two persons with significant knowledge of Communist affairs. One was a fellow seaman. This seaman told Troster that "while unloading the SS Bayside in Shanghai, China, one Colonel Tsing of the Nationalist Army ——— that he and many others in the Nationalist Army were Communists. ——— should not be surprised because the United States Government also has Communists in it, adding that the

US has its Lattimore." Troster had other tales. One of them was about a trip through the Panama Canal during the war when a crew member took photographs of the canal, later giving them to a Russian spy in Shanghai.^[27]

The day after getting these stories from Troster, McCarthy phoned Ladd at the bureau. Ladd immediately contacted Assistant Director Alan Belmont, ordering "that a memorandum be submitted to the Department advising of the additional information received from Senator McCarthy and that this investigation is being conducted."^[28]

Ladd also phoned SAC Hostetter in Memphis, instructing Hostetter to interview Troster and his two friends and cable results to the bureau.^[29] It is doubtful that Ladd thought this story credible but the bureau could not allow McCarthy to steal a march on it.

The day after Ladd's call to Memphis, Hostetter wired a six-page report to Washington.^[30] A full page of it is still denied for "national security" reasons, and all names are denied, so the exact sequence of events is hard to determine. The clear parts of Hostetter's cable, plus later reports from Knoxville and WFO, provide a biography of Troster that does not inspire confidence.

Troster was from Toronto. In 1945 he joined a Canadian maritime union, which turned out to be Communist controlled. Troster became a Communist, worked as a seaman for several years, and served as a courier for the Party, taking sealed messages to ports all over the world. About 1948 he became disillusioned with communism, left the Party, was beaten up by Communist goons, and came illegally to the United States. After various unfortunate adventures in Toledo and New York, he went to Memphis, where the Immigration and Naturalization Service caught up with him. On April 7, 1950, INS sent an agent from Washington who questioned Troster for seven hours but did not take him into custody. Troster then decided to contact Senator McCarthy, according to an FBI cable, believing that "HE WOULD BE IMMEDIATELY TAKEN TO WASHINGTON, WHERE HE WOULD HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO TALK TO HIGH GOVT. OFFICIALS CONCERNING HIS IMMIGRATION STATUS. "^[31]

The telephone call to McCarthy, however, did not yield a ticket to Washington; instead, Troster was interviewed by Hostetter in Memphis. This result did not satisfy Troster; the next day he started hitchhiking to Washington. The FBI put out a bulletin to have Troster apprehended, but to no avail. When he arrived in Washington, he telephoned a friend in Memphis, learned that the FBI was looking for him, and decided to go to the WFO. There he was interviewed on April 27 by Supervisor E. M.

Gregg, who proved to be a hard-nosed interrogator. After going over his life story, Troster confessed to Gregg that he had no information about Lattimore, nor did his friends in Memphis. He had made it all up. When Gregg reported on the interview, he noted that Troster was "extremely nebulous when queried concerning dates, stating 'I don't want you fellows pinning me down on dates because I don't recall them.' " At the conclusion of the interview, Troster asked Gregg for a sleeping pill.^[32]

Gregg turned Troster over to the INS; presumably he was sent back to Canada. The bureau had once again followed one of McCarthy's leads to a dead end.

Some of Lattimore's enemies in Baltimore were also hallucinating in April 1950. On the eighteenth a woman active in countersubversion phoned McFarlin with a new story that she had gotten from an anonymous source. McFarlin's telegram to Headquarters reported "A REUTERS, BRITISH NEWS AGENCY, DISPATCH FROM KABUL, AFGHANISTAN DATED ON OR ABOUT MARCH EIGHTEEN [SAID THAT] OFFICIALS OF THE AFGHANISTAN GOVERNMENT HAD A SOCIAL FUNCTION AT KABUL IN HONOR OF THE RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR TO PAKISTAN AND HIS NINETEEN ADVISORS. THIS FUNCTION WAS ATTENDED ALSO BY SUBJECT [Lattimore] AND THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE UN COMMISSION WHO WERE THEN ON A MISSION TO AFGHANISTAN. "^[33] This informant also noted that the Russian ambassador would have gone out of his way to meet Lattimore in Kabul.

McFarlin, whose office usually grasped each new lead eagerly, showed a bit of skepticism at the end of his message. "IT COULD BE REASONED THAT IT WOULD BE PERFECTLY NORMAL SHOULD THE AFGHANISTAN GOVERNMENT HOLD SOME OFFICIAL SOCIAL FUNCTION IN HONOR OF THE RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR AND HIS ADVISORS TO INVITE SUBJECT AND THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE UN COMMISSION WHO WERE THEN PRESENT IN AFGHANISTAN AS FOREIGN DIGNITARIES. HOWEVER, NY IS REQUESTED TO CONTACT REUTERS IN NYC TO ASCERTAIN IF THE ABOVE DISPATCH ACTUALLY EXISTS, AND, IF SO, TO FURNISH COPIES OF SAME TO THE BUREAU AND BALTIMORE. " FBI headquarters seemed more impressed with the story than was McFarlin, since they quickly passed it on to Assistant Attorney General McInerney. Meanwhile, Reuters was put to work tracking down the incriminating dispatch. By April 25 the New York office of Reuters reported that they had heard from London and that no such dispatch existed.^[34]

That would probably have been the end of it, except for Don Surine of McCarthy's office. The Baltimore informant believed that the FBI was

showing insufficient zeal, so she took her story to McCarthy. McCarthy turned it over to Surine. On May 19 Surine phoned WFO, asking that a Lattimore case officer contact him. The meeting was held three days later. Surine's story had some new embellishments; whether the Baltimore source had provided them or Surine thought them up himself is unknown.

The affair in Kabul was no longer a "social function" but a "most important meeting." And there were some new participants:

In conjunction with the meeting in Kabul, SURINE said that he had also learned that ANDREW ROTH , the subject in the Amerasia investigation who is now serving as an Advisor to Communist HO CHI MINH in Indo China, had also attended this meeting along with MINH. SURINE identified MINH as a Communist who had been employed at the Russian offices in Boston from 1931 to 1933 prior to the United States recognition of Russia. He also advised that in 1937 MINH had visited at the LATTIMORE home in Baltimore.

SURINE believed that the foregoing could be verified by the Central Intelligence Agency or by reviewing dispatches issued by the Reuters News Agency, which had issued releases concerning (1) LATTIMORE'S presence in Kabul and (2) the Russian group in Kabul en route from Moscow to Karachi.^[35]

One has to assume that renewed FBI attention to this implausible tale was caused by lack of internal coordination. McFarlin in Baltimore cabled headquarters requesting that WFO "attempt verification" of Surine's account through the CIA. Headquarters followed through not only with the CIA but also with the State Department.

The CIA, never inclined to exercise itself about requests from Hoover, took its time about answering. Most of its reply of June 19 is denied, but the bottom line was skepticism. Ho Chi Minh had tuberculosis: "it is considered doubtful that he could have undertaken a trip requiring arduous physical exertion. . . . it would appear reasonable to conclude that it is improbable that a meeting took place between these individuals at the time and place mentioned."^[36]

The State Department was more positive. Their embassy in Kabul knew of no such meeting. Ho Chi Minh could not have been in Kabul, and Ambassador Louis G. Dreyfus observed, "It is interesting to note that Professor Lattimore in paying courtesy calls on the Chiefs of Mission of countries which are members of the United Nations, was not received by the Soviet Ambassador. His requests for an interview were either not replied to or the false statement was made that the Ambassador was out of the city."^[37]

If the Reuters and Dreyfus responses were not definitive, McFarlin added an observation from Baltimore. Since Lattimore did not move to Baltimore until 1938, he could hardly have entertained Ho Chi Minh at his home there in 1937.^[38]

This was the end of the "meeting in Kabul" flap. Even Surine had to give up on it. But there were dozens of other equally risible stories in his repertoire; it was a veritable encyclopedia of hallucinations.

One of the most bizarre stories concerned Leon Trotsky's murderer. This story came from an adventurer whose name the FBI documents deny. The informant, who had spent time in Mexico, wrote McCarthy sometime in April 1950 claiming to know much about communism in Latin America. McCarthy passed this information to the bureau.^[39]

The bureau took it up. Dallas FBI agents interviewed the informant on April 21, at which time he elaborated on the claims he had made to McCarthy and "indicated that he had other information which he did not wish to disclose," but he would be in Washington during the first week of May and would tell Ladd about it. As was now routine in bureau interviews with informants on communism, the agents asked him if he knew anything about Owen Lattimore. He did not. The agents described him as "one of those persons with a detective complex and he made a most unfavorable impression."^[40]

By the time he reported to the bureau on May 5 in Washington he knew something about Lattimore, connecting him now with the 1940 murder of Trotsky by Frank Jackson. He had a female acquaintance who "had occasion to talk with TROTSKY'S murderer and the latter said 'Don't worry about me, I won't hang or be executed as I have a contact in the United States who is highly placed in the United States Government.' He then identified this contact as OWEN LATTIMORE ."^[41]

The informant was unable to give the FBI much time in Washington; he had to leave for New York, but the bureau could contact him again there. This they finally did, on September 7. He repeated the Frank Jackson story but had no further details. He would, however, be happy to provide the name of his source in Dallas, and the bureau could tell her that he had given them her name.^[42]

The bureau did not follow up this lead, probably because they found it too fantastic to pursue. On December 2, however, the New York office called headquarters to say that the female source of the story about Jackson and Lattimore had been investigated by them previously because of her Communist connections. She was then in New York and was likely

to be subpoenaed soon by HUAC, which intended to hold hearings on Trotsky's murder. Shouldn't the bureau get to her first, so they would not be caught short if she told her story publicly? Headquarters agreed, and New York agents interviewed her the next day.

As with almost all of the leads that came from McCarthy, this one too vanished into thin air when it was finally tracked down. The woman had indeed talked to Frank Jackson, but she had "NEVER HEARD FRANK JACKSON MAKE ANY STATEMENT AT ANY TIME THAT HE HAD AN IMPORTANT CONTACT OR FRIEND IN US GOVERNMENT . [She had never heard] OF OWEN LATTIMORE BEFORE RECENT NEWSPAPER PUBLICITY ."^[43]

Of all the charlatans clamoring for the spotlight and claiming knowledge about Lattimore during 1950, few were as resourceful as Paul Walters (this seems to have been his real name; the FBI documents have a long paragraph about his several aliases, but most of it is denied). Not only did Walters lead McCarthy, Surine, Robert Morris, J. B. Matthews, and the FBI on a merry chase; he also extracted money from both Alfred Kohlberg and a fanatic anti-Communist in Baltimore, Virginia Starr Freedom, to carry out a wild mission to Cuba.

On April 20, 1950, Walters called McCarthy from New York. He had information proving that Lattimore was a Party member, but he would give it to no one but McCarthy. It is not clear how much of his story he told McCarthy over the telephone, but it was enough for McCarthy to promise Walters that one of McCarthy's trusted agents would contact him immediately.^[44] McCarthy then instructed J. B. Matthews to get in touch with Walters. Matthews invited Walters to come to his apartment that same evening, and he complied; he was there from 7:00 P.M. until 2:00 A.M. Matthews was impressed. Walters could name Communist party officials whom he had known in Baltimore during the 1930s, such as Al Lannon and Tommy Ray. Matthews called Robert Morris, at that time in New York for the Republicans on the Tydings committee, and Morris also heard the story by telephone.

Before Walters would talk, he demanded that the FBI not be informed; Matthews agreed to this request. Then Walters began a tale that outdid even Louis Budenz's story of Party instructions on tissue paper to. be flushed down the toilet. Walters had seen a list of contributors to the Communist party in the handwriting of Roy Hudson, a list now stored in Mexico City; it contained the name of Owen Lattimore as a contributor. Walters could get this list in forty-eight hours. He also recalled two times when Lattimore addressed the Baltimore Waterfront Section of the Party

in 1932 and 1933. And shortly before the Seaman's hunger march on Washington in 1932, Lattimore had signed a receipt for $1,380, which was money collected to finance the march.^[45]

In 1934, Walters said, the Party ordered that all records in possession of the Baltimore Waterfront Branch be gotten rid of. The records were to be eliminated in one of three ways: (1) buried in a box under the cellar of the union hall at 1629 Thames Street; (2) sent by courier to the town of Taxco, Mexico, where the records were buried in caves in a hillside outside of town; or (3) taken by courier to a building operated by a Party sympathizer in Mexico City, which was occupied exclusively by Communist artists. Whenever it was Walters's turn to destroy records, he would collect them in an old sea bag, then dump them in a container to be buried beneath the union hall.

This sea bag was to become Walters's passport to fame and fortune. Shortly after 1934, he said, he quit the Communist party, left Baltimore, and bought a string of racehorses. He kept racing equipment in the old sea bag. In 1940 he got out of the racehorse business, sold his horses to a Florida agent named Jose Gomez, and included the sea bag with the deal. A month after this sale, he received a letter from a horse trainer in Cuba who had purchased the horses and sea bag from Gomez. There were some papers, including a receipt, in the bottom of the sea bag. Were these of any value? Walters did not answer the letter.^[46]

Now, in 1950, he knew what had happened. On some occasion when he dumped the Communist documents out of his sea bag, "a couple of them apparently stuck in the bottom of the bag and remained there unnoticed until found by the Cuban trainer in 1940." If he could just get to Cuba, he could locate the horse trainer, recover the papers in his sea bag, and produce documentary proof of Lattimore's Communist party activity.^[47]

Not only that, the Roy Hudson list of Party contributors was probably at the repository in Mexico City. He had friends there who could obtain it and bring it to New York. Or perhaps he could go get it himself. The latter proposal later appealed to Surine, who told the bureau on April 28 that he and Walters were going to Mexico City the next day.^[48] (Apparently this trip did not take place.)

Walters had other tales: about an American consul in Italy who was a Communist, about a company he worked for that was acting for the Party, about Communist lawyers in Baltimore. But it was the promise of documents about Lattimore that attracted Matthews and later his friends Kohl-

berg and Virginia Freedom. Walters made several telephone calls while he was at Matthews's apartment, saying that he was calling collect to Mexico and Havana.

The next day Matthews and Morris discussed Walters's claims extensively. They concluded that despite their promise to Walters not to involve the FBI, there was sufficient doubt about his credibility to get the bureau to check him out. Accordingly, on April 22 Morris requested the FBI to send agents to talk to him and Matthews. When the agents appeared at Matthews's apartment that evening, they heard the Walters story and were requested to check it out quietly. All this was reported to Ladd the next day.^[49]

Ladd's reaction was to inform Matthews and Morris that the bureau would do no investigating unless they could talk to Walters. Two days later Morris said they could talk to Walters after a week had gone by. Meanwhile the bureau did routine name checks. New York showed nothing, but Baltimore found some interesting items. Walters had not been active in the Communist party there in 1931-34. (Nor had Lattimore been in the city at that time; he was in China.) In 1947 Walters had been arrested by the Baltimore County Police for obstructing justice and withholding information relative to the commission of a crime. He was a "heavy boozer," and his "FORMER EMPLOYER ADVISED THAT HE WAS A MAN OF MYSTERY AND TOLD WEIRD TALES ."^[50]

This information should have been enough to kill FBI interest, but McCarthy was involved. So on April 27 Hoover asked the legal attaché in Havana to check out the places to which Walters had allegedly made telephone calls from Matthews's apartment. This investigation produced nothing.^[51]

McCarthy was now going strong on the Walters story. Surine had been put in charge of it. An incident in New York April 30 stirred up some bad blood between McCarthy's henchman and the FBI. SAC Scheidt cabled the bureau on that date that he had located Mrs. Walters, learned that she and her husband were checking out of their hotel very soon, and put a tail on them. His cloak-and-dagger report:

SPOT CHECK INSTITUTED AT APPROXIMATELY NOON OF THIS DATE. UNKNOWN MAN OBSERVED LOADING PACKAGES AND BABY CARRIAGE IN CAB, IN FRONT OF HOTEL ——— UNKNOWN MAN GLANCED UP IN DIRECTION OF BUREAU CAR AND IMMEDIATELY PROCEEDED THERETO, OPENED THE DOOR OF THE CAR AND IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS FORMER AGENT SUR -

INE. HE DISPLAYED HIS TEN YEAR KEY HANGING ON HIS TIE CHAIN. HE STATED "I RECOGNIZE THIS CAR AS A BUREAU CAR AND I ASSUME YOU ARE A BUREAU AGENT. I WISH YOU WOULD CLEAR OUT OF THE AREA. I AM WORKING IN COMPLETE COOPERATION WITH THE BUREAU. MY MAN MADE A MISTAKE LAST NIGHT ——— PLEASE DO NOT CHECK THIS ——— FOR IT MAY MEAN THIS MAN'S LIFE." HE THEN INDICATED THAT HE WAS GOING TO WASHINGTON THIS WEEKEND AND WOULD SEE MR. LADD AND THE DIRECTOR AND GIVE THEM THE WHOLE STORY . [Hoover's comment in the margin at this point: "He will never come near the Bureau."] HE THEN RAN TO AN AWAITING TAXICAB AND ENTERED WITH ——— AGENT IN BUREAU CAR COULD NOT DISCREETLY TAKE UP THE SURVEILLANCE IN THE AUTOMOBILE AND WAS UNABLE TO LOCATE A CAB .^[52]

But the agents traced Surine's cab, learning that it had gone to Newark Airport and that Surine had given the driver a seven-dollar tip.

McCarthy was uneasy when he heard that Surine had been tailed by a bureau agent. Jean Kerr, McCarthy's secretary, called Hoover and arranged an appointment for herself and another McCarthy staffer (not Surine; Hoover was right, he never came near the bureau) to see the director. On May 1 Hoover wrote a long memo to Tolson about their visit. They had come to smooth ruffled feathers. Hoover's memo said that according to Kerr, Walters had promised McCarthy that he would "produce the documents" that weekend to prove Lattimore a Party member. But the next day Kerr telephoned Hoover to say that Walters had produced nothing.^[53]

Walters then disappeared from FBI files until May 11, when he surfaced at the Miami FBI office and told a sad tale to SAC Carson. He had originally hoped to testify before the Tydings committee, but when Tydings did not call him, Surine put him in touch with Virginia Starr Freedom of Baltimore and Alfred Kohlberg of New York. They believed his story and agreed to finance a trip to Cuba to retrieve his sea bag and the Lattimore receipt. Kohlberg sent a former Office of Naval Intelligence agent with him on this trip, but the ONI man "kept him in a drunken condition from time of departure until arrival back in Miami last night." The ONI man also "tried to dope him" in Miami. Sadly, he did not find his sea bag.^[54]

Walters arrived back in New York May 22, when FBI agents there talked to him. His whole tale now unraveled:

SUBJECT CLAIMS ALL OF THE MATERIAL AS SET FORTH IN REF MEMO IS PURE FABRICATION ALLEGES THAT WHEN QUESTIONED BY SENATE COMMITTEE INVESTIGATORS THEY AND HIMSELF WERE DRINKING HEAVILY. AS A RESULT OF INTOXICATION, HE IS NOT SURE WHAT HE TOLD THEM BUT NONE OF IT TRUE. . . IN ORIGINAL STORY TO I. B· MATTHEWS AND ROBERT MORRIS, SUBJECT ALLEGED ATTENDING CP MEETINGS AT WHICH LATTIMORE LECTURED. NOW STATES THAT HE NEVER TOLD THIS STORY AND THAT HE HAS NO KNOWLEDGE OF ANY CP ACTIVITIES ON PART OF LATTIMORE OTHER THAN SEEING HIM IN OFFICE OF ADES IN BALTIMORE. . . . STATED THAT IN ALL INTERVIEWS WITH SENATE COMMITTEE INVESTIGATORS THEY ALL ATTEMPTED TO "BLOW UP" HIS STORY AND HAVE HIM TESTIFY TO FABRICATION. MAINTAINS HIS ONLY MOTIVE IN ORIGINAL CONTACTS WITH COMMITTEE WAS PATRIOTISM· ADMITS PRESENTLY DEALING WITH NY JOURNAL AMERICAN NEWSPAPER THROUGH [former FBI agent] LARRY E. KERLEY TO SELL STORY AND TO INVESTIGATE CP ACTIVITIES. . . . UPON REQUEST BY INTERVIEWING AGENT, SUBJECT REFUSED TO EXECUTE SIGNED STATEMENT. NO FURTHER INVESTIGATION CONTEMPLATED BY THIS OFFICE .^[55]

After this memo, Walters disappeared from bureau files. The only missing detail provided by a bureau summary was that Kohlberg had supplied $520 to pay Walters's wife's expenses while he was in Cuba. On July 13 Hoover notified Assistant Attorney General McInerney that the Walters investigation was a dead end.^[56]

One of the ingenious former Communists who wanted to jump on the anti-Lattimore bandwagon was from Cleveland; his name is blacked out in the FBI files. This man went to the bureau office there May 9 with the claim that a Communist writer who used the pen name B. T. Lo was really a collaboration between Lattimore and Thomas A. Bisson. B. T. Lo represented these men's initials reversed. Farfetched? Not in the climate of 1950. The FBI machinery began to track down this possibility.^[57]

B. T. Lo was found to have signed his name to only two articles. One appeared in the June 1940 issue of the Communist , the other in the July 1946 issue of Political Affairs . Both articles contained phrases indicating that the author was a Party member. The Cleveland ex-Communist claimed

that the style of the 1946 article, "U.S. Imperialist Intervention in China," was similar to Lattimore's style in Solution in Asia .

There were several avenues the bureau could use to check out this hypothesis. One was a straightforward search for somebody who knew the author of the B. T. Lo articles. Accordingly, twenty-six leads were put out to bureau and army offices requesting file searches and ordering interviews of ex-Communists who might know B. T. Lo and of anti-Lattimore China specialists who would be familiar with Lattimore's publications.^[58] (One lead was later canceled: "John K. Fairbank should not be interviewed at this time.")

The results were disappointing. No biographical directory, government bureau, or library had a listing for B. T. Lo. None of the ex-Communists interviewed knew who he was, though several said he did indeed write like Lattimore. One ex-Communist said that Lo might have been one of two Chinese associated with the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy; the bureau checked out this suggestion, with negative results. The Daily Worker index, New York Times index, Library of Congress, and other similar repositories yielded no information.

The Baltimore FBI office, always more zealous and optimistic than headquarters, refused to admit defeat. On July 6 Baltimore wrote Hoover pointing out that Louis Budenz had said Lattimore was charged with changing the Party line on Chiang Kai-shek, that this task was carried out by Bisson in the July 14, 1943, Far Eastern Survey , and that Lattimore and Bisson had been to Yenan together in 1937. Q.E.D. Baltimore therefore had a new avenue of investigation to suggest: "The Bureau Central Research Desk is requested to compare the style and expression of articles written by B. T. LO with the known writings of OWEN LATTIMORE and THOMAS ARTHUR BISSON , aka T. A. BISSON ." Baltimore also wanted federal income-tax records searched to see if Lo had ever filed a return.^[59]

FBI Inspector Carl Hennrich supported the IRS search. Hoover, always sensitive about bureau relations with other government agencies, shot it down on July 19; it would require an immense search by IRS. "This is an unreasonable request and might injure our present excellent relations."^[60]

Hennrich also supported Baltimore's request to the FBI Central Research Desk. The head of that office, F. J. Baumgardner, objected in a letter to Belmont on August 9: "Such a comparison will require extensive research and can not be expected to produce conclusive results. The B. T. Lo articles are alleged to be the production of Lattimore and Bisson and, therefore, the style and expresssion of either would be altered in such a

joint article. A further limitation is the availability of only two specimens of the B. T. Lo writings."^[61]

Baumgardner got his way.

Then there was a discouraging report from Seattle. A bureau informant there, probably George Taylor, read the B. T. Lo articles and decided that Lo was less sophisticated than Lattimore was. As for Bisson, he was a "dull, factual writer" whose style was different from both Lo and Lattimore. Further, Lattimore held opinions different from those stated by Lo.^[62]

The bureau then went back to the original informant in Cleveland. Presumably, Cleveland agents told him that little support could be found for his tale. He then changed his ground: B. T. Lo's similarity to Lattimore-Bisson was one of substance, not style: "he feels the same author may have written both articles since similar conclusions are reached."^[63]

Other informants were still skeptical. A Washington, D.C., authority frequently consulted by the bureau on China affairs said the B. T. Lo language would not have been used by Lattimore.^[64]

By the end of November, headquarters had cooled on the whole topic. Hoover wrote Baltimore telling them that most of the leads had been run out; since nothing of consequence had been obtained, "No comparison will be attempted by the research desk at the Bureau at this time."^[65] The matter appears to have died at this stage.

But Baltimore filed it away for future reference. In November 1952, when the Justice Department was about to take the Lattimore case to a grand jury, Baltimore raised the B. T. Lo matter again. There were "a number of new high-level Communist Party defectees who might now be in a position to give information concerning this matter." Why not interview these defectors in Denver, Miami, Los Angeles, and New York? Hoover gave his approval, but the new "high-level defectees" knew nothing about B. T. Lo. This was the end of the line.^[66]

There is almost no end to the series of improbable tales and unreliable informants in the Lattimore FBI file. They become wearisome. They were all seeking to ride the wave of hysteria unleashed by McCarthy. Ultimately the FBI rejected them all.

Most of the tale bearers peddled their fictions through Senator McCarthy. One seaman who shipped on the United States Lines General Lee told McCarthy that Lattimore had boarded this ship in Manila in July 1936 and had created a disturbance on deck that delayed the ship's sailing. The FBI obtained logs for the General Lee , found no reference to Latti-

more (who was nowhere near Manila at the time), and noted that the informant often overindulged in wine.^[67] Another informant claimed Lattimore had worked for the Williams Drug Company in China, selling tiger's-blood pills; these pills were much desired by the Chinese, and their purveyors had access to "a wide coverage of the Chinese provinces." This also the bureau checked out; Lattimore had no connection with the Williams Drug Company.^[68] Still another informant, an officer of Naval Intelligence in San Diego, claimed that Lattimore had been a "friend and associate of Nicholas Roerich," who was alleged to have been a Soviet spy. The Japanese claimed Roerich had traveled widely in Mongolia locating sites for Soviet air bases. Again the bureau conducted a major investigation; Lattimore was found to have had no connection with Roerich.^[69]

There is no adjective adequate to describe the insanity of the times, the corruption and unreliability of the informants, or the gullibility of senators and their staffs. It was this netherworld of fanatics, psychopaths, alcoholics, con artists, and demagogues that Lattimore confronted on April 1, 1950, when he landed in New York.