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Westbrook Pegler, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the FBI

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Westbrook Pegler, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the FBI Westbrook Pegler, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the FBI Beginning in 1942, Pegler’s attacks showcased his gift for vituperation and his willingness to test the limits of what then was considered appropriate behavior for the press. In February 1942, for instance, he informed his readers: "For all the gentle sweetness of my nature and my prose I have been accused of rudeness to Mrs. Roosevelt when I only said she was impudent, presumptuous and conspiratorial, and that her withdrawal from public life at this time would be a fine public service."39 He used her to denounce liberals in general as elitist, do-gooders, who lacked any real connection to the average working American. At the same time, she offered him an opportunity to trumpet his populist credentials. Thus, in a column in February 1942, Pegler drew on a recently published history of the First Lady's family to highlight her wealthy background and his more humble upbringing. "There were many in Mrs. Roosevelt's book who apparently never worked and this may explain why the privilege, indeed the right to work when work can be had, is less important to her." He said in his family, however, "everyone went to work early and down to my generation not one had ever been able to resist the temptation to work and earn long enough to permit the completion of high school."40 Pegler centered his attacks on her support of organized labor, framing his columns as a series of public responses to hers. It was in that context that on July 3, 1942, he used his column to address an open letter to her. In it, he charged that she overlooked the problem of racketeering and the abuses that rank and file workers encountered in their unions. "Mrs. Roosevelt, do you ever meet any real union members? I don't those horn-rimmed ideologists who ate to be found around the so-called labor schools and social and political studycenters," he wrote, making a disparaging reference about the progressive activists with whom she often associated. "I mean common, ordinary, walk-around American working men and women. I meet a lot of them." And he said that he received letters from many others. "I tell you they are not happy in their unionism. That 'not happy' is a delibetate understatement.41 He went on to offer to set up interviews where she could meet workers who suffered a range of depredations from corrupt and exploitative union leaders. He closed by writing, "I am willing to believe that you don't really know how bad it is, but would you be willing to listen to proof, or is that asking too much of your time?"42 Her response not only indicated the degree to which Roosevelt took Pegler's criticism seriously but highlighted a generosity in her character because she might easily have responded quite differently. He had directed considerable vituperation her way already and his role as a committed critic of the New Deal was well established. But she apparently saw his challenge as an opportunity to do some good. She also may have thought that he had a point up to a degree. She, too, was receiving letters from disgruntled working-class Americans who sided with Pegler's depiction of unions.43 Some of these echoed his charge, asserting, as one correspondent 1 put it, that she was not "familiar with the common working American and his point of view in regard to unions."44 Carey and Meany both urged Mrs. Roosevelt not to send Pegler her proposed letter and not to make the offer of organizing a conference on the subject of union abuses. They distrusted Pegler too much. As Meany explained in his response, "Entirely apart from the difficulty you would have for promulgating rules for such a conference, (rules which would be necessary to prevent Mr. Pegler from placing his own malicious interpretation on what took place), I do not see how any good purpose would be served for holding such a conference." He went on to explain that he did not believe Pegler's claim that he sought to curb abuses in the name of strengthening the labor movement. "On the contrary," Meany insisted, "I feel he is bitterly and maliciously opposed to the liberal principles of Trade Unionism."47 Carey's response made similar points, counseling Mrs. Roosevelt against making any such overture to Pegler. "Since he is the master of half-truth and distortion, he will twist any type of reply to serve his own purposes," the CIO leader warned.48 In a subsequent letter to Carey, Mrs. Roosevelt confided, "I had the same reaction from Mr. Meany, so will do nothing."49 Thus, her offer to Pegler was never made. Instead, six months later, she chose a much different kind of response to his columns by prodding the FBI to open a sedition investigation involving him. The sedition case revolved around a column that Pegler had written on November 28, 1942. He quoted at length from a letter to him by Andrew Hercha, Jr ., an assembly line worker at a Philadelphia tank factory. Hercha complained that union regulations were hampering production and thus undercutting the war effort. He described his frustrating experiences on one night shift when he tried to put together a riveting crew and complained "the whole cause of this is thanks to our union steward, who wouldn't let the men work off their jobs. He don't care if no tanks go out of this shop." Referring to the union's leadership, Hercha wrote, "I wonder if anyone has told them that these tanks are to lick the Axis with." Then, he echoed Pegler's columns by charging the union with "sabotage." "That's plain murder," his letter complained about the restrictions he encountered, "while our men are fighting to protect unions and these same unions won't stand by the men that are fighting to save them from Hitler and Togo [sic]."50 Although Pegler had not identified him in the column, Hercha's co-workers had guessed who had written the letter. Officials at the United Steel Workers Union (USW) in Philadelphia, which represented the workers in that tank factory, decided to mount a vigorous response. They contacted one of the union's representatives in the plant and asked him to gather information that would, as he later told the FBI, "show that a Nazi was the source of Pegler's information." According to the FBI agent's report of his interview with this union representative, "He said that the Union would like to put 'the blocks under Pegler.'"51 In the affidavits gathered as a result of the union's request, seven of Hercha's co-workers made allegations that he was anti-semitic and anti-Roosevelt with one remembering that he said the president "was a Jew cock sucker." Hercha also allegedly claimed that "Hitler and Mussolini were better fitted to run the country than Roosevelt." Such depictions of him, howevet, were not unanimous. Later it would turn out that other workers at Hercha's plant had no recollection of 2 him malting any such comments and regarded him as anything but pro-Nazi or pro-German. Even the union official who had gathered the affidavits admitted, though he worked in the same plant and knew Hercha , "I personally have never heard Hercha make any unAmerican or Pro- Nazi statements nor have I heard him say anything against the President."52 But the allegations were juicy, and officials at the USW turned them over to the Daily Worker, which on December 20 ran a story on them headlined, "Pegler Uses Hitler-Admirer's Ammunition to Attack Arms Workers."53 Another left-wing activist at the plant, Robert Block Heineman, passed on the allegations to Josephine Truslow Adams, an acquaintance of Mrs. Roosevelt's with links to the Communist Party. His note to Adams emphasized the political implications of these charges. "If you can get this story into hands where it will count it would be important," his note explained. "It is very important for revealing the Nazi nature of the defeatist & reactionary opposition to FDR and the war effort." Adams forwarded his allegations to Eleanor Roosevelt on December 4.54 Mrs. Roosevelt apparently came to the same conclusion as Heineman. Sometime in early December, she showed the letters from Heineman and Adams to her husband, who seized the politically valuable opportunity to connect Pegler to the fascist cause. He spoke with the FBI ditector about this matter at a meeting in the White House on December 10, 1942. As Hoover recalled, the president referred to a letter forwarded to his wife from someone who "was in possession of certain information concerning Westbrook Pegler." It was information "of such a character as to prove that Pegler gets his material from 'out and out Nazis.'" On the next day, a presidential aide sent Adams' correspondence to Hoover, who promptly ordered an investigation.55 Eleanor Roosevelt contacted the FBI director about this matter on December 31, 1942, writing a short note to "Dear Mr. Hoover" and enclosing a follow-up letter from Adams. She explained that she was passing the information along to Hoovet at the suggestion of her husband.56 Thus urged on by the White House, the FBI launched a sedition investigation. Agents conducted initial interviews with Heineman and officials at Hercha's plant, acquired a copy of Pegler's column, and a copy of the Daily Workers article on the episode. Hoover gathered those materials together into a report that he sent to Eleanor Roosevelt on January 6, 1 943.
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