Project X behind

_ kidnapping in U.S.

By ART SHIELDS

The kidnapping of Soviet

—NEW YORK

school teachers in New York

by Russian White Guards with the approval of the FBI and
other U.S. government agencies is in line with the spirit of
the administration’s sinister “Project X.”

“Project X” is the name given by the United Press and

various correspondents to U.S.. sec-
ret operations against the Soviet
Union and progressive forces else-
where,

These operations carried on with
the help of White Guard and fas-
eist subsidized groups from the
United States.

The author of Project X is said
to be John Foster Dulles, the mil-
lionaire Wall Street attorney, who
advises Dewey and Secretary of
State Marshall

Its funds are secret and huge.
The United Press reported April 22
that $4,000,000 of Project X funds
were spent by the U.S. government
in Italy for the purpose of swing-
ing the élection against the Com-
munists,

But there is reason to believe
that Project X is not just engaged
in furnishing slush funds in elec-
tions, or supplying newsprint to
reactionary editors.

It appears to be much bloodier
than that. In fact assassination
has been discussed in Washington
circles as one of the tactics to
be used against the Soviet Union
and its friends, conservative jour-
nalists reported last spring.

The ‘shooting of Palmier Togli-
atti, Italian Communist leader, and
Tokuda, Japanese Communist lea-
der, came later.

Project X is warfare of a pretty
thot kind. The purchase of arms
and ammunition for “underground”
anti - Communist movements
abroad has been discussed in Con-
gressional and administration cir-
cles as part of the Project’s opera-
tions, according to the United
Press. .

The actual blow-by-blow reports
of the secret project’s operations
are hidden behind U.S. state de-
partment censorship, of course.

But the growing frequency of
acts of violence against progressive

Padlock law

used in raid

—MONTREAL.

Premier Duplessis has waste
little time in seeking revenge for the
relentless battle labor and left-wing
forces put up against his bureau-
cratic regime during the recent
elections, Intensifying their attack
against free speech, and civil lib-
erties, ten of his thought-control
police recently marched into a sum-
mer lodge in the Laurentians where
an LPP study class was being held,

and presenting a search warrant is-
sued under the notorious Padlock
Law, hauled away a large quan-
tity of “subversive” literature.

Among books seized—all to be
burned—were: History of Canadian
Wealth, by Gustavus Myers; Statis-
tics issued by the federal Depart-
ment of Reconstruction; A History
of Canada, by Carl Wittke; and an
English dictionary — with a red
cover. ;

The raid coincided with an an-
nouncement that conference. of
RCMP, provincial and city po-
‘lice had been held in Montreal to
shape a joint onslaught by St.
Laurent and Duplessis - against
the labor movement here.

Typical of the brutality of the
Duplessis squad during the Lake
L’Achigan raid was the arrest of
school director John Switzman, who
was manacled and charged with
“interfering” with the police be-
cause he asked that the search
warrant be read aloud to all the
students.

All those at the lodge were
subjected to search and person-
al letters and their private be-
longings were seized.

Beckie Buhay, educational direc-.
tor of the LPP, and sister of the
late labor éouncillor Michael Bu-
hay, had seized from her 2 volum-
ous amount of written material
dealing with Canadian labor his-
tory and which she had spent a
life-time compiling for publication.

leaders cannot be ignored.

Particularly crude was the kid-
napping of a Soviet lieutenant-
colonel in Bremen, Germany, on
April 23.

This kidnapping—a forerunner of
the abduction of Mme. Oksaka Ko-
senkina, the Soviet School teacher
—was plotted by British and Ame-
rican officers together.

Lieut, Col. Tassoyev, the Soviet
Army man, tells how he was invit-
ed to the home of Clem, the Ame-
rican officer in charge of the port
of Bremen, and kidnapped by Bri-
tish officers, who tied his hands
and flew him to London. There he
was imprisoned and beaten for
weeks, while his captors tried —
vainly—to turn him into a Spy. >:

He escaped, and told a crowd
of his fate, before he was Ccap-
tured by Scotland Yard men
again. Eventually the British had
to release him. Soviet protests
proved too strong.

Project X is strictly bipartisan.
It is being carried out today by a
nominally “Democratic” adminis-
tration. But its main promoters are
such men as Senator Styles Brid-
ges, the New Hampshire Republi-
ean, and John Foster Dulles.

Bridges told the Senate on March
25 that he had been discussing the
project— then being shaped— with
Marshall and Forrestal and Under
Secretary of State Lovett, who
brushed off the Soviet ambassa-
dor’s protests against the kidnap-
ping of the school teacher.

Dulles’s sponsorship of the pro-
ject began to leak out in the col-
umn of his friend James Reston in
the New York Times on April 8.

Dulles went farther than Bridges.
He wanted to broaden the project
into an international ‘counter
Cominform’” movement, with which
every anti-Communist government
should be connected. :

Dulles’s broadened Project X
would finance anti-Communist

trade unions throughout the
world — with American funds
mainly.

The' project, thinks Dulles, will
be cheaper than strikes,

Since then, on May 7, Dulles has
urged the creation of a special cab-
inet post to direct the American
government’s international warfare
against “Communism.”

The Plotters of Project X are
working for the overthrow of the
Soviet government in violation of
the Litvinov-Hull agreement of
1933, which forbids either govern-
ment to harbor conspirators against
the. other government within its
borders. .

"MME NE

Forgery exposed

—PARIS.

The British embassy in Paris
and the French foreign affairs min-
istry have confirmed the “authen-
ticity” of a document published by
the newspaper Figaro alleging pre-
parations for a “communist plot”
to expel the British, French and
Americans from Berlin,

Of the many signs pointing to
the document as a crude forgery,
howeyer, is the fact that it is
signed: “General Secretary, Ger-
man Communist Party.” Since
there is no Communist Party of
Germany as such, there is no “gen-
eral secretary.”

Reuters, British press agency, has
now been compelled to admit that
British intelligence officials in Ber-
lin believe. the document to.be a
forgery, drawing from the French
newspaper, Liberation, the com-
ment that it evidently emanated
from the same source as “Protocol
M,” a document supposedly calling
on Communists to foment a gen-
eral strike in the Ruhr which was
later exposed as a forgery prepared
by Hans Fritsche, former Goebbels
aide. ’

Reports on both “Protocol M,”
and the Figaro document have been
sensationally played up by Can-
adian dailies, few of which printed
later reports showing them to be
forgeries.)

PRU MUU

Ask a aiay from YWCA

Members of the Social Service Employees Union '(CIO) picket headquarters of the Young Women’s
Christian Association in New York, protesting the organization’s refusal to negotiate with their union
which has had a contract with the “Y” for five years. 4

British business journal terms
U.S. ‘spy scare’ volitical diversion

By ISRAEL EPSTEIN

“Midsummer Spy Scare” was the
title of a dispatch on the Washing-
ton investigations printed in the
British business weekly Economist
on August 7. The next, August 14,

‘issue of the Economist carried a

longer article by its U.S. corres-
pondent headed “Spies at Home
and Abroad.” Since Britain is some
3,000 miles closer to the Soviet
Union than is the U.S., and conse-
quently in more danger if aggres-
sion from that source is regarded
as even remotely possible, it is in-
structive to see how coolly an un-
doubtedly capitalist, paper there
views the un-American committee's
sensations.

The chief conviction held by the
Economist is that the U.S. “spy
scare’ was mounted for election
purposes. It wrote on August 7 that
“a Republican Congress, recalled to
Washington in the: heat of sum-
mer and of an election year, was
sure to seek some means of sub-
jecting the Democratic administra-
tion to even more extreme heat.
Almost unbelievably suitable fuel
was available. Washington was full
of rumors of a blonde bombshell
who ... turned out to be a brun-
ette bluestocking . . . The privilege
and publicity of appearing before
two congressional committees si-
multaneously in the silly season
seems to have gone to Miss Bent-
ley’s head.”

Going into the testimony out of
which the U.S. press has been mak-
ing top headlines, the Economist’s
Washington reporter said Miss
Bentley's claimed connection with
such people as Laughlin Currie, the
late Harry D. White and Walter
Lippmann’s ex-secretary “were ex-
tremely vague,’ even on her own
showing.

The correspondent suspected also
that the attack on Alger Hiss, who
had been actively concerned in
bringing about U.S. entry into the
United Nations, was being used to
“pring into disrepute . . . American
participation in international or-|
ganizations.” Altogether, the Econ-
omist concluded, the witch-hunt
should comfort Colonel] McCormick
and Mr, William Randolph Hearst
in their declining years.”

While the Economist piece pour-
ed mild ridicule on the investiga-
tions, the second lashed them un-
mercifully as “a congressional at-
tempt to divert national] attention
from economics to spy thrillers.”

“Communists are safer game
than rising prices,” the paper

wrote. “They make better head-
lines.” Moreover, “such a chase,
however unsupported by evidence
“that would convince a court, de-
lights the perennial Roosevelt-
hater, embarrasses the Democra-
tic party, wounds Mr. Wallace.

“That it may also damage asPir-
ing Republicans is a possibility
which the gleeful questioners seem
not to have contemplated until one
of the accused revealed that he
had the backing of Mr. Dewey’s
foremost political adviser, Mr. John
Foster Dulles, As political ammuni-
tion, historical footnotes that con-
cern the living are not always
safe.”

* * *

Having taken the un-American
and Ferguson committees to task
in this way, the Economist went
after the federal investigating
agencies and their methods, “In
theory,” it said, “the catching of
spies at home might be supposed
to’ be the job of the FBI. In prac-
tise, this is a muddy pie in which
many offices have a finger.”

The loyalty check procedures. of
the Civil Service Commission were
also criticized by the magazine, as
was “the labor and education com
mittee of the House (which) is
looking into communism among
New York department store work-
ers, though the ground for such
enquiry is not clear.”

Then, in mid-article so to speak,
the Economist switched to quite
another tack. “That spy hunts at
home should this summer coin-
cide with a searching study of
American facilities for spying
abroad is not chance,” it com-
mented. “Despite ... the seman-

tic elegance of ‘intelligence ser-
vice’ as contrasted with ‘spy
rings’, it is obvious that for the
American peace of mind Russian
agents in the U.S. should be.
caught, and American agents in
Russia should operate with skill
and success.”

Describing the conflicts between
the U.S, Central Intelligence Agen-
cy, the FBI and other projects op-
erating abroad, it noted military
writer Hanson Baldwin’s plea for
“recognition of» intelligence work
as a career.” Now, showing its un-
sentimental nature, the Economist
stopped making moral judgments
and began to pass on to American
novices the store of experience of
a country that has spied and coun-
ter-spied for a very long time, on
everyone in the world and with fair
success.

“All this sounds elementary t0°
nations better schooled in the tech-
niques of distrust and defence (@
study of British Intelligence is in-
cluded in the report which preced-
ed the setting up of the Central
Intelligence Agency),” (the Econ-
omist preached. “The U.S. comes
late to the mechanisms of interna-
tional responsibility” (which thé
paper takes to include spying as ®
matter of course).

Having spoken like a Dutch uD”
cle, the Economist came to an OP”
timistic conclusion. The U.S.
was sure, will shortly have as 8'
spies and counter-spies as anyon?
could wish. This is because Ame!
ica “has shown abilities both as %
pupil and an innovator, and under
pressure sometimes performs mit
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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 27, 1948—PAGE 2

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