MEN WITHOUT FACES BOOKS BY LOUIS FRANCIS BUDENZ THIS IS MY STORY MEN WITHOUT FACES MEN WITHOUT FACES The Communist Conspiracy in the U . S. A . By LOUIS FRANCIS BUDENZ HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK MEN WITHOUT FACES Copyright, 1948, 1949, 1950, by Louis Francis Budenz Printed in the United States of America All rights in this book are reserved . No part of the book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews . For information address Harper & Brothers FIRST EDITION D-Z To J . M . J . CONTENTS PREFACE ix I . THE HOUSE ON THIRTEENTH STREET 1 II . NOT A PARTY 22 III . STALIN'S POLITICAL TOURISTS 5 0 IV. CLIMBING JOSEPH'S LADDER 88 V. THE RANK-AND-FILERS 112 VI. THE STALIN CULT 139 VII . S-DAY 1 59 VIII . RED WEB IN LABOR 180 IX. CAPTURE OF THE INNOCENTS 208 X. "CLOAK AND DAGGER" 247 XI. CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER 282 INDEX 299 PREFACE ON OCTOBER 2, 1935, the Daily Worker publicly announced that I had joined the Communist party . I had signed my applica- tion for membership the previous August, but had been kept wait- ing until Earl Browder's return from Moscow, when the decision was made whether I should function openly or as a concealed Communist . Several of the Red leaders thought that I should take advantage of my wide acquaintance in the labor movement to act as an undercover member of the party . I did not favor this, and Browder and the Communist International representative, Gerhart Eisler, agreed with me . The immediate reason I became a Communist party member was the adoption of the People's Front policy at the Seventh Con- gress of the Communist International, held in Moscow in the summer of 1935 . I had previously read Lenin and other Com- munist authorities, and had accepted the Communist viewpoint some years prior to this time; but my experiences in the labor movement, which had been rather extensive, had led me to insist that the Communists' labor tactics and subservience to Moscow were wrong. I favored what I called the "American approach ." However, when Georgi Dimitrov, speaking for Stalin at the Seventh Congress, stated that the Communists in each country should have due regard for their respective national traditions, I became converted to the necessity of joining the party. I became a Communist with my eyes open . For a number of years I had alternately criticized the Communist party and worked with it in united fronts . Upon joining, I agreed to the oath of fealty to Stalin, and in the public statement in the Daily Worker I acknowledged Stalin's leadership . I then believed that the Soviet dictatorship, when established over the world, would lead to ix i x PREFACE emancipation of the workers and to a "higher stage of democracy ." This decision of 1935 had been in the making for twenty years . A fourth-generation Indianian, I had grown up in a Catholic house- hold with a father of German ancestry and a mother of Irish descent . When very young, I became aware of discrimination against the Negro people and workers who lived in our vicinity . Studying every available book I could get hold of on these matters, I resolved to do something to remedy such abuses . During my high-school days, my attendance at the conventions of the United Mine Workers of America, which were then held regularly in Indianapolis, convinced me still further of the urgency of taking a stand on the side of labor . In order to help my work with and for labor, I took a degree in law and became immediately after- ward editor of The Carpenter, the organ of the United Brother- hood of Carpenters and Joiners, then the largest union in the American Federation of Labor . From then on, the story was one of increasing labor activity . By the twenties I was in New York as editor of Labor Age, a monthly magazine devoted to industrial unionism . It had on its board national officers of most of the unions which later formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations . Organization work ac- companied my editorial work, and resulted in my direction of strikes in Kenosha, Wisconsin ; Nazareth, Pennsylvania ; Paterson, New Jersey; and the Auto-Lite contest in Toledo, Ohio . Concen- trating especially on getting injunctions and yellow-dog contracts nullified, I was arrested twenty-one times and acquitted twenty- one times in the course of these organizational drives . Throughout this period I was studying the Communist "classics," especially the works of Lenin . State and Revolution particularly impressed me, with its promise that the Soviet dictatorship would voluntarily end in the anarchistlike Communist society. It was quite easy by then for me to view Marxism-Leninism sympatheti- cally, since I had broken with the Catholic Church in 1914 . Actually excommunicated at that time for marrying a divorced PREFACE xi Catholic, I had been increasingly impatient with the Church for not more rapidly facilitating reform . It was only after long years of sweat and strain that I was to learn that impatience is not a virtue . Shortly after joining the party, I was appointed labor editor of the Daily Worker because of the belief of Jack Stachel and other leading Reds that I could help considerably in infiltrating the new CIO . In that capacity, I quickly learned that the party in this country was completely controlled by aliens hidden from the public view. The discovery was a distinct shock ; but for a long time I. excused the czarlike rule exercised by Moscow's foreign agents on the ground that it was necessary in the fight against Hitlerism . Many other revelations that "workers' emancipation" had become a cloak for world slavery I likewise explained away on the grounds that these measures would lead in time to the wither- ing away of the state and the establishment of the free Communist society. It was only after ten years of active Red leadership, when I could no longer evade the incontestable fact that the Soviet dicta- torship was bent on world conquest by armed minority bands in each country, and could lead only to world slavery, that I broke with the party . The decision to break was not made overnight. I had to think carefully about what I actually believed . It was difficult to admit publicly that I had been mistaken ten years before when I joined the party, and that thirty years before the Church had been cor- rect and I had been wrong . My reluctance to make this admission undoubtedly contributed to the delay . But, among many other considerations, I had to recognize that the Church had foreseen the evils in the Communist camp which I had become acquainted with by experience. It had also understood clearly that the gravest danger of all nations was their failure to grasp the true nature of Com- munism . Out of my experiences of ten years in Communist leadership, I XII PREFACE hope in this book to make the American people understand the extent and character of the Communist conspiracy for world conquest. I hope to demonstrate that the Soviet dictatorship and its fifth column in this country constitute a clear and present danger to the existence of the United States . I want to show beyond question that the Communist party is not a political party in the American or democratic sense, but solely a fifth column of the Kremlin . Finally, I shall try to make clear, once and for all, from the re- peated pledges of the Kremlin itself, that the Soviet dictatorship will not rest until it has achieved its objective of the "World Oc- tober," the world Soviet dictatorship . L . F . B . Fordham University Easter Week, I 95o MEN WITHOUT FACES (I) The House on Thirteenth Street MANAGED the Daily Worker from a guarded, locked, sound- 1 proof room . It was guarded, locked and soundproof because as managing editor I did more than get out a daily New York newspaper . I was an active participant in the whole network of conspiracy of which the Daily Worker is a part. The only men and women permitted to enter the room were those who were successfully serving Stalin in America . Some of them were directing espionage against the United States . Others were working secretly-and effectively-to influence the opinions of people who counted in American life . Not infrequently a select comrade did both . More than a few of our visitors were from the Red underground, and as abruptly as they had come, would disappear into it again . Occasionally, either through un- welcome accident or design, one or another of these hidden comrades was snatched suddenly from his oblivion by the bright searchlight of American newspaper headlines . Still others, some- times seen in the Daily Worker and registered there as the Kremlin's faithful servants, lived openly as non-Communists . A long list of these loyal and concealed Communists, men and women who occupy distinguished positions in business, pro- fessional and public life, was given to me orally by Politburo members and committed to memory . Never was this list of names I 2 MEN WITHOUT FACES permitted to appear on paper . Today, now that I have left the Communist party, it gives me a distinctly queer feeling to see and hear these people, who I know have sworn fealty to Stalin, fervently defended by unsuspecting and patriotic Americans . The Daily Worker is the daily official organ of the Communist party of the United States, and the years that I functioned as its editor were those very years in which the Reds sank their roots most effectively into many key places in American life .