Evening star., 1953-08-30

cording to all available testimony.
went much farther af1eld than the
"a persons in the chart. The chart
does not show that Coe was the
perennial assistant to the late
Harry Dexter White, top Treasury
official who was identified as a
Communist but denied membership,
or that White sent Silvermaster to
Breton Woods. Nor does it show
links between Witt and Edwin S.
Smith, who was a member of the
National Labor Relations Board
while Witt was NLRB's secretary.
Nor does it show that Smith now
runs "Eastfoto,' a propaganda
service which circulated phony
germ warfare pictures in this
country during the Korean war.
Policy or Plumbing?
The question logically arises. how
important were these people in
Government? Did they make and
influence policy. or were they mere
plumbers, doing workaday jobs of
no particular Importance?
From start to finish, one of the
chief functions of the Ware, Perlo
and Silvermaster groups was espio-
mage, according to Chambers and
Miss Bentley, both of whom were
Red couriers by their own teSti-
mony. Other espionage was carried
on independently of these rings as
well as through them, according to
the same witnesses.
This was one part of the net
works function. The other was the
making of policy or, as Chambers
said of Hiss, the messing up thereof.
Some of these quondam bureau
Gratis, Of course, were of more i'm
portance than others. Hiss and
Coe were in the highest echelons
Of policy making; Wits job as sec
retary of the NLRB speaks for it
self. Weintraub. as director of the
National Research Project, was in
a position not only to make policy,
but to guide it and to use that WPA
agency as a hiring hail." as 1t has
been described.
Others were in less exalted spots.
but the record seems to indicate
that the spots were picked for the
good-or evil-that could be done
in them.
In the emergency period, the
scope of activities appears to have
been the entrenchment of personnel,
Y1luS tln forroIlotiop If oe,,ito hIoD
G.e., Communist iine) policies and
the immobilization and DETECTION
of unsuitable ones.
Sounding Boards on Hill
When the network moved in on
Capitol Hill, the obvious aim was to
provide propaganda sounding boards
not unlike the anti-Communist
sounding boards of today and to
rig hearings so the anti-Communist
point of view would be minimized.
During the war period, espionage
and preparation for postwar activ-
tiles seems to have been the aim.
And in the postwar era the goals
were such projects as diversion of
UNRRA supplies, formulation and
advancement of the Morgenthau
plan, domestic and foreign currency
manipulation and control of the
Commerce Department policy on ex-
port licensing.
In the report, the Jenner COM
mittee suggests that not all Mother
Bloor'S chickens have yet come home
to roost. If there remain Commu-
mist cells in the Federal Government,
however, it is certain their work
would be much harder now than
then. Also, they must be much far
ther underground than the Perlo,
Ware and Silvermaster groups ever
were. Roofing them out will be a
task for titans. in the absence of
some turncoat Communist who will
shed his cloak of immunity and talk
about today's-not yesterdays
Subversion
No such person has turned up to
date. But the Jenner committee con-
tinues to hope.