The government was overloaded with Reds, pinks, fellow-travelers, social planners, do-gooders, proletarians, boondogglers and Socialists. The federal establishment is still up to its neck in conspirators and collaborationists, despite a few publicized firings.
Let’s take the case of this humble clerk who is seduced by Reds. Seduced is just that. We covered the modus operandi used by the Pervert Sections of foreign chancelleries in the previous chapter. But not all government employes are homos or susceptible. The normal must be romanced with natural methods. Sex-starved government gals are enticed by smooth, suave, good-looking men. Meek male clerks, in soporific jobs at standardized sustenance-pay, are awakened with a sudden whiff of the esoteric when fast-working, trained good-lookers make a play for them. These happenings are not cribbed from E. Phillips Oppenheim novels. They are planned that way and they come off.
Wealthy left-wingers with mansions in Georgetown cooperate avidly. Humble government employes are invited to exotic, erotic parties. This sudden entrance into a world of wealth, taste, refinement, liquor and libido is irresistible to hoi polloi.
Smart Red undercover agents try to get a hold of some kind on their victims, something insidious. Soviet agents press a systematic campaign to bring women employes of the State Department under their control by enticing them into acts of adultery and abnormality. Parties are staged in rich surroundings with pornographic exhibitions, unlimited liquor and every form of dope—and a hidden, talking moving picture camera recording it all.
As many as 65 or 70 attend these aphrodisiac get-togethers, where many wear rich Oriental costumes and Arabian Nights music completes the intoxication of all the senses. Not only potential friends are thus won and hooked, but dangerous foes are silenced. One gossip writer, a feared crusader, has within the last couple of years become a virtual transmission belt for the Communist line. He was called into a secret projection room and shown a devastating film of his behavior at a drunken, depraved orgy. We have seen “stills” from it.
This use of sex as a means of recruiting is a basic tactic. It has been developed to such an extent by the Reds, they now seek to convert children thereby. Herbert J. Benjamin, long a key figure in the Communist Party in the United States, was arrested recently by vice squad men for selling lewd pictures and literature to Washington children, and convicted of violation of the D.C. code.
Benjamin, a former secretary of the International Workers Order, long a contributor to party magazines and periodicals, was mentioned in a memo by Earl Browder, November 27, 1939, as an alternate to the tenth convention of a national Communist Party committee. Later he was the organization’s national press director and was in charge of the St. Louis office of a Communist political association. He and his wife lived in the Trenton Terrace apartments, on Mississippi Ave., SE, where other tenants were Rob Hall, Washington correspondent for the Daily Worker, and Joseph Forer, a veteran attorney for Reds. Benjamin’s wife was manager of the apartment house.
The pinks are still working strenuously to grab off and bring up new followers from the incubator stage. As these lines were written, three names listed by the District Board of Education as speakers for its in-service-training program were found to be also in the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ files as left-wingers—Dr. Paul B. Cornely, Freedmen’s Hospital medical director; Dr. Alice V. Keliher, of New York University; and Dr. Dora B. Smith, of the University of Minnesota. Superintendent of Schools Corning said, “The names were identical with names in the House Un-American Committee records.” Since then Red and Socialist-slanted text books have been found to be in use in Washington’s schools.
Until two years ago, there was considerable radical financial interest in radio station WQQW. The stock has since been placed in a voting-trust with a good American as trustee. For years this station refused to sign off with “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The Dupont Theatre specializes in interracial and foreign films, most of them slanted left. Danny Weitzman, owner of the building, was active in the Wallace presidential campaign.