page_title: George Shaw Wheeler
section_title: Continued allegations
hierarchical_section_title: George Shaw Wheeler / Career / Continued allegations
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Washington, D.C., July 20. A new informal picture of Max Lowenthal, counsel to the Senate interstate commerce sub-committee 'which' is investigating railroads, 7/20/39 Abstract/medium: 1 negative&#160;: glass&#160;; 4 x 5 in. or smaller
context_page_description: George Shaw Wheeler was an American economist and advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, best known for being the first American to defect over the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia in November 1947. Wheeler's defection inspired his friend Noel Field to do likewise the following year in 1949 and also US Senator Joseph McCarthy cited Wheeler's name when accusing US President Harry S. Truman of "Trumanism," i.e., "the placing of your political party above the interest of the country," specifically when it came to promoting alleged Communist spy Harry Dexter White and others.
context_section_description: On November 19, 1950, the government published Max Lowenthal's closed-session testimony from September 15, 1950.  During testimony, Lowenthal had denied aiding or abetting Communists in government service.  Specifically, he denied any involvement in the employment or sponsoring of George Shaw Wheeler.  Lowenthal noted that Wheeler had been transferred to his division on the Board of Economic Warfare from the War Production Board "toward the end of my service with the board" He also said that Wheeler had not worked with him in Germany."
  
  In 1951, the Saturday Evening Post mentioned Wheeler and Lowenthal in a long article on Carol Weiss King:  
  Lowenthal is of special interest. A product of Harvard Law, he has been described by a New Deal associate as "self-effacing and ubiquitous." Shuttling between New York and Washington, he has maintained a New York office while holding a variety of Government posts dating back to World War I. On one hand, he has been an assiduous cultivator of high-level friendships, including Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis. On the other, he has been an equally assiduous collector of proteges for whom he has found many Government jobs. Alger Hiss and Lee Pressman benefited by his friendship, and, for a time, did one George Shaw Wheeler, a young lawyer who became so carried away by communism that he denounced his United States citizenship to make a new career bebind the Iron Curtain. Back in 1920, at the time of her admission to the New York bar, Carol also was a Lowenthal protégée, and it was in his office that she served her first and only legal clerkship.
      (Note:  The detail about Wheeler's being a lawyer conflicts with other available resources, which call him an economist.)
caption: Truman friend Max Lowenthal helped get Wheeler government jobs
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