Covert Network

Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA

Eric Thomas Chester

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781563245510
• eBook ISBN: 9781315286471
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book tells the story of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the largest nonsectarian refugee relief agency in the world. Founded in the 1930s by socialist militants, the IRC attracted the support of renowned progressives such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Norman Thomas, and Reinhold Niebuhr. But by the 1950s it had been absorbed into the American foreign policy establishment. Throughout the Cold War, the IRC was deeply involved in the volatile confrontations between the two superpowers and participated in an array of sensitive clandestine operations. The IRC thus evolved from a small organization of committed activists to a global operation functioning as one link in the CIA's covert network.

1
Introduction

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is the largest, nonsectarian refugee organization in the world, with a budget of over ninety million dollars and a staff numbering in the hundreds. From its inauspicious origins in April 1933, the organization has blossomed into a worldwide operation, with allies at the highest levels of government and corporate power. Indeed, in November 1993, President Bill Clinton sent greetings to the notables attending the Committee's sixtieth anniversary banquet, praising it as a "beacon of hope and inspiration." Ten years earlier, the New York Times congratulated the Committee for "a half-century of urgent, shrewd, [and] often brave interventions for refugees."¹

Yet the true history of the International Rescue Committee is not merely a straightforward, heartwarming story of a refugee relief agency providing humanitarian aid to the victims of wars and disasters. Throughout the Cold War, the IRC acted as an essential component of the covert network, the interconnected set of organizations helping the U.S. intelligence community to implement a variety of clandestine operations designed to destabilize the Soviet Union and its dependent allies. With the end of the Cold War, the Committee continues to operate in close conformity with the policy mandates of U.S. foreign policy.

In the years following World War II, U.S. decision makers came to understand the vital importance of political exiles who had fled from the Soviet bloc countries. These refugees could provide revealing insights into a closed society. Their skills could be utilized to implement specific projects, for instance, staffing ostensibly "private" radio stations transmitting to targeted countries. Finally, the defection of high-level officials and highly trained intellectuals undermined morale within the Soviet elite. These defections could also be exploited as a propaganda windfall in the protracted campaign of psychological warfare conducted between the two global superpowers.

Kindred Operations

The International Rescue Committee was only one of several organizations working within the same segment of the covert network, which handled refugees from the Soviet bloc countries. To survive, the IRC had not only to project its own distinctive program but also to maintain working relations with kindred operations, or suffer the consequences of destructive vendettas, In general, the IRC energetically exercised its mandate for refugee relief, expanding its purview beyond the limits of this narrowly defined jurisdiction. During the Cold War decades, the Committee eagerly sought to develop innovative projects that would gain the approval of the intelligence community and yet would not directly infringe on the existing programs of neighboring organizations.

Thus, a case study of the IRC necessarily includes a review of other organizations within the same sector of the covert network. Two of these organizations, the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) and the American Committee for Liberation (AMCOMLIB), functioned as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) proprietaries, operations originated and directly controlled by those within the intelligence community. Others, such as the East European Fund, an affiliate of the Ford Foundation, were similar to the Committee in being privately initiated projects enmeshed in a cooperative, working relationship with the CIA. Finally, there were several other refugee relief agencies in direct competition with the IRC, including some that had their roots in the exile communities of specific nationalities. For example, supporters of the Tolstoy Foundation, which reflected the interests and perspective of Russian monarchists, perceived the Committee as an immediate threat and, at one point, attempted to undermine it as a rival.

While the International Rescue Committee usually functioned as a refugee relief agency, it sometimes went beyond that role to sponsor covert operations with more provocative missions. In the 1950s, the IRC sponsored the Fighting Group Against Inhumanity, a West Berlin-based organization. During this period of instability and confrontation, the Fighting Group carried out a detailed plan of action intended to destabilize the East German regime, a plan that encompassed acts of terrorism and sabotage. In the 1960s, the Committee solicited funds for those digging large tunnels under the Berlin Wall, a method of escape that would be shelved after a lethal firefight between East German soldiers and one set of tunnel diggers. During the war in Vietnam, the Committee fostered the creation of the American Friends of Vietnam (AFVN), which organized a propaganda campaign extolling the South Vietnamese regime and its autocratic ruler, Ngo Dinh Diem. When the ties between the AFVN and the Diem regime were exposed, White House aides reporting directly to President Lyndon Johnson initiated the formation of a new organization, the Citizens Committee for Peace with Freedom in Vietnam, which operated along similar lines.

Social Democratic Ties

Throughout the most volatile confrontations of the Cold War, the International Rescue Committee was there, undertaking open and covert programs to advance U.S. foreign policy in the contested zone. Still, the Committee differed from most Cold War operations in that it unstintingly cultivated its ties to European social democrats, ties that had been first established in the period leading up to the outbreak of World War II. Furthermore, the IRC buttressed its credibility by encouraging the continuing participation of liberals and social democrats in leading positions within its ranks. Although a few of these prominent activists were themselves former refugees from occupied Europe, several of them emerged from the ranks of the American socialist movement.

Indeed, the first forerunner of the Committee, the International Relief Association, was initiated in 1933 by the leader of a miniscule socialist sect that had recently split from the Communist party. The other antecedent of the IRC, the Emergency Rescue Committee, was founded by prominent progressives, several of whom had recently left the Socialist party. Although the Great Depression radicalized a significant number of militants, the organized Left, with the exception of the Communist party, remained small and fragmented. Nevertheless, socialist organizations—some of them minute in size—attracted talented, politically sophisticated individuals, many of whom would later pursue successful careers in a variety of fields. The IRC would emerge from this milieu.

The rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, followed by the Allied offensive to destroy the Axis powers, had an enormous impact on the American Left. Upon assuming power, Hitler had directed the full force of Nazi terror against militants from the entire gamut of left-wing parties. Understandably, the antifascist struggle soon acquired the highest priority for socialists, whatever their political affiliation. Even before December 1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, many radicals in this country had decided to join mainstream organizations vociferously demanding that the United States immediately enter the war. Once war was officially declared, dozens of those who had been committed revolutionary socialists only a few years earlier were recruited into government service, and some were then drawn into intelligence work. Once in place as trusted advisers to those with power and influence, these former activists quickly jettisoned their socialist politics.

For the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the newly created civilian intelligence agency with primary responsibility for covert operations within the European theater, Americans with a background in socialist politics could provide a vital service by solidifying relations with the surge of socialist exiles fleeing to the West. Antifascist refugees could furnish valuable information concerning the economic and social conditions in countries otherwise closed to outside scrutiny. They could also link the OSS to networks of dedicated militants who remained behind within Nazi-controlled territory and who were already attempting to forge an effective underground resistance.

For the International Rescue Committee, formed in 1942 by the merger of the International Relief Association and the Emergency Rescue Committee, OSS interest in European political exiles marked a turning point in its evolution. The IRC's concerns were no longer those of a marginalized and insignificant welfare agency; rather, they commanded the close scrutiny of senior officials within one of the most powerful agencies of the U.S. wartime apparatus. With access to those at the highest levels of government, including President Franklin Roosevelt through his wife, Eleanor, the Committee succeeded in obtaining visas for dozens of socialist militants from Germany and Austria, most of whom would otherwise have faced certain death if captured by Hitler's Gestapo. The Committee played a critical role in rescuing left-wing political refugees from Europe, while cooperating closely with the OSS. In the process, it became increasingly dependent upon government support for funding and direction, as its links to the intelligence community deepened in scope and intensity. With the end of World War II and the intensification of Cold War rivalries between the former wartime allies, the IRC was compelled to find its own niche within the intricate complex of organizations that constituted the covert network. During these years, the International Rescue Committee managed to overcome a series of crisis situations, and, indeed, it eventually prospered, in spite of the shifting strategic priorities of U.S. foreign policy and the changing tides of partisan politics. Even with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Committee has continued to flourish and grow. Underlying this successful adaptation to a rapidly evolving historical context has been the remarkable ability of the Committee to persuade powerful figures from the mainstream establishment, including those with intimate ties to the intelligence community, to join some of America's most prominent progressives and social democrats in active and sustained support of its projects.

Prominent Supporters

William Donovan, wartime OSS director, held a seat on the IRC board of directors during the first years of the Cold War, acting as an unofficial liaison between the intelligence community and the Committee. William Casey spent several years as a member of the board of directors during this same period. He would later hold office as IRC president from 1970 to 1971, before becoming President Ronald Reagan's CIA director and a central figure in the Iran-contra scandal.

Important personalities were also recruited from the corporate board room to fill posts as executive officers and board members. One such is John Whitehead of the investment banking firm of Goldman Sachs, who was a deputy secretary of state in the Reagan administration and is currently IRC chair. Leo Cherne, who built the Research Institute of America into one of the leading firms furnishing advice and information to a business clientele, held office as the Committee's chair for nearly forty years before retiring in August 1991.

As the IRC consolidated its standing as a respected institution within the mainstream, it also sought to retain its credibility among progressives. Reinhold Niebuhr, the noted Protestant theologian and one of the founders of the Emergency Rescue Committee, briefly served as IRC chair in 1952. Norman Thomas, the personification of social democracy in the United States and a celebrity of world renown, never occupied an official post within the Committee structure, but in 1951 and 1952, during the heyday of the McCarthy anticommunist hysteria, he provided a crucial link to his trusted friend Allen Dulles, then CIA deputy director. This was at a time when the IRC had come under devastating attack from the far Right. Of course, not only social democrats were drawn to the International Rescue Committee. Venerated liberals such as Eleanor Roosevelt also supported the Committee, helping it to secure funding from public and private sources.

The history of the IRC cannot be dissociated from the course of U.S. foreign policy and the crisis conflicts of the Cold War. Yet it is also the story of an organization initially formed to help socialists under threat of Nazi terror and of that organization's cooptation into the murky world of the covert network. It is a story of heroism and courage, but it is also a story of closely guarded secrets, political opportunism, and personal betrayal.

2
The Formative Years

From its earliest days, the International Rescue Committee has been a relief agency with a distinctive mission. Its humanitarian efforts have always been guided by an underlying ideology. Yet over the decades, this ideology has undergone a total metamorphosis. During the first years, the organization was led by committed socialists, eager to assist their comrades in the antifascist resistance. By World War II, the Committee was balancing this goal with its obligations as an integral component of the U.S. war effort. Throughout the Cold War years the transformation continued, until the IRC had been fully integrated into the foreign policy establishment as a vital member of the CIA's covert network. This chapter traces this transformation through its first stages, up to the end of World War II.

The evolution of the Committee through its formative years in the 1930s can only be understood within the context set by segments of the revolutionary Left in Germany, Austria, and the United States. Small organizations of revolutionary cadre sought to pursue a strategy far more militant than that of the mass social democratic parties, while remaining independent of the erratic path being followed by the Communist International and its member parties. As obscure as this history may seem, the relationships cemented in these tightly knit organizations would provide the personal connections needed to sustain the IRC through its first difficult years.

The organizational history of the International Rescue Committee begins with a letter circulated by Jay Lovestone, a former general secretary of the Communist party, USA. Lovestone had been expelled from the party five years earlier, accused of being a follower of Stalin's archenemy, Nikolai Bukharin, as well as a proponent of American "exceptionalism." In particular, Lovestone vehemently objected to the party's decision, made after prodding from Moscow, to precipitously withdraw from the established trade unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), in order to create dual, parallel unions under Communist control. Lovestone and his supporters formed their own organization, the Communist party (Opposition), a group of a few hundred activists concentrated primarily in the garment industry of New York City.¹

After 1931 the Lovestone group drew increasingly close to David Dubinsky, the formidable president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), and the dominant figure in a broad circle of right-wing social democrats. Dubinsky and his coterie enthusiastically supported President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, while also priding themselves on their fervent anticommunism. Dubinsky had engaged in a virtual civil war with Communist militants in the needle trades during the 1920s, and his passionate hatred toward the Soviet Union and Communism would never diminish.²

Lovestone's group maintained contact with a small group of dissident German radicals who had also been expelled from the Communist International for their ties to Bukharin. This small cadre organization, the German Communist party (Opposition; KPO), was led by Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer, both of whom had once been among the top leaders of the German Communist party before losing their posts in an internal factional fight,³

Soon after assuming power in January 1933, Hitler quickly proceeded to crush every form of oppositional activity. As mass terror was unleashed against socialists from every tendency, rescuing the remnants of the German Left became a question of life and death. At the same time, the Nazis instituted harsh anti-Semitic laws and encouraged pogroms against the Jewish community.

In response, Jewish organizations and trade unions in the United States created an array of new relief agencies to help the victims of Nazism. Mainstream Jewish organizations began to put pressure on the Roosevelt administration to wield America's power to protect German Jews, if necessary by granting them visas to enter the United States. The ILGWU with its social democratic leadership and large Jewish membership, responded to the crisis by establishing an anti-Nazi subcommittee to channel money to the underground resistance within Germany and to social democratic leaders in exile. It was also instrumental in initiating, and then funding, the Jewish Labor Committee, which represented the trade union leadership within the broader coalition of Jewish groups organizing to help German Jewry.⁴

Dubinsky concentrated his efforts on aiding the German social democrats so that they could strengthen their standing as a leading element within the resistance. However, the social democratic leadership had refused to recognize the imminent likelihood of disaster, even after Nazism grew rapidly during the first years of the global depression. With its faith in the constitutional process unshaken, the German Social Democratic party had been totally unprepared for the crushing blows of the Nazi state. Despite its position as the largest left-wing party before 1933, the Social Democratic party contributed little to the formation of an effective underground resistance to the fascist terror.⁵

No matter what his ideological biases were, Dubinsky could not ignore the vacuum on the Left. Although the ILGWU continued to direct much of its aid to the social democratic executive committee in exile, the union also contributed to the efforts of smaller groups to the left of the Social Democratic party. Within this historical setting, Lovestone decided to initiate a new organization for refugee relief.

The International Relief Association

Lovestone's group had been strengthening its own ties to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. The Formative Years
• PART 1. COVERT NETWORK
• PART 2. THE COMMITTEE AND THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE
• PART 3. THE COMMITTEE AS A GLOBAL OPERATION
• Notes
• Biographical Glossary
• Organizational Glossary
• Sources and Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author