Evening star., 1953-08-30
Mother BIoor's Chickens
By William Hines


home to rooSt last week, as fine a
flock as the sweet-faced old revo-
lutionary could have wished for.
They were an assorted bevy-
lawyers, economists, StatiSticianS,
philosophers of one sort or an
other; educated men who had made
the United States Government their
career and who-with few excep-
tions-refused to deny that their
purpose was the SubverSion and
eventual conquest of that very Gov
ernment.
The chickens came home to roost
in a report issued Monday by the
Senate Internal Security Subcom-
mittee headed by William Jenner of
Indiana, himself a person around
whom controversy has sWirled for
years. The report, entitled Inter
locking Subversion in Government
Departments, recited again the sto-
rieS of men like Alger Hiss and
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, who
rose to prominence in Washington
in New Deal days.
But the report was more than
mere recital of old facts. For the
first time, it put into focus the
things that Whitaker Chambers,
Elizabeth Bentley and Nathaniel
Weyl have been saying for five
yearS-that Washington in the '30S
was q hotbed Of Communist in
trigue; that Red "cells" flourished
and that those who belonged to the
cells proSpered because Of their
membership.
The Genesis
How did it all get started? That
- where Mother Bloor comes IN.
The late Ella Reeve Bloor, who
has been styled with f1ne incongru-
ity a. "the first lady of American
communism" was q dedicated wom-
an. There is, in her story. a wry
similarity TO q familiar American
phenomenon-that of the church.
going lady whose sole purpose in
life il to rear her son for the min
iStry.
Mother Bloor was q Communist
leader and wanted her son to be one.
too. The son, Harold Ware, lived up
to his mothers fondest hopes; he
even won the Order Of Lenin. She
wrote of him, proudly, in later years.
Ware. who died in an automobile
accident about 18 years ago. got his
basic training in Moscow. and came
to Washington in the 1920s as a
dollar-a-year man for the Agricul-
ture Department. He left Govern
ment in 1882 to form revolution
ary farmers movement.
Then he set about organizing the
"quiz kids" who, early in the New
Deal, focked to the Capital to help
remold the Nation to their own
tastes. The Ware Group" resulted,
and afterward came the "Perlo
Group" and the "Silvermaster
Group" all of which were brought
to public view by Chambers, Miss
Bentley and Weyl. The existence
of the Ware Group-or at least part
of it-later was confirmed by Lee
PreSSman, who first pleaded pos
sible Self-incrimination but later ad-
mitted previous membership in the
Communist Party.
PIeo Of Privilege
Beyond the existence of the Ware.
Perlo and Silvermaster cells, the
precise anatomy of the Communist
network in New Deal days is in
definite. Chief reason for this lack
OF information is the penchant of
witnesses for cloaking themselves
in the fifth amendment.
This section Of the Constitutions
bill of rights provides safeguards
against unjust prosecution, trial and
imprisonment. One of its clauses
states that, mo person shall
be compelled in any criminal case
to be witness against himself. :"
The question of where protection
against self ceases and
obstructioniSm begins is open to
discussion in unofficial circles, even
II not in courts of law and not by
congressional committees.
But while witnesses can plead
their privilege, they cannot plead
Government files. These records, to-
gether with fragmentary leads from
one source or another, plus testi-
mony by the ubiquitous MeSsrs.
Chambers and Weyl and Miss Bent
ley, plus, finally, the very silence of
the witnesses, built the case on
which the Jenner report is based.
Moze of Relationships
The full nature of this "interlock-
ing subversion"-ss the committee
calls it-cannot be outlined in words.
1t cannot even be summarized ade-
quately in pictures. The chart at
the top of this page goes only a
part of the way, but shows by its
maze of criss-cross lines the tangled
relationships of a mere handful