Jay Lovestone

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Jay Lovestone (born December 15, 1897 in Molchad , Grodno Governorate , Russian Empire , † March 7, 1990 in New York City ) was an American politician, union official and secret agent ( the labor movement's chief CIA liaison ). Lovestone belonged to the Socialist Party of America from 1914 to 1919 , then to various predecessor organizations of the Communist Party USA and finally - in leading positions - to this itself until 1929. After being expelled from the party, he founded and headed the Communist Party of the USA (opposition), a group comparable in terms of its political content to the German KPD-O . Through the mediation of anti-communist union leader David Dubinsky , Lovestone was in 1937 an employee of the president of the auto workers union UAW Homer Martin , who was involved in serious arguments with union officials who belonged to the CPUSA or were close. Here and in the following years, Lovestone gained a reputation as a "specialist" in suppressing and eliminating communist influence in the trade union movement. In this sense, initially only active on a national scale, Lovestone developed after the Second World War into the “gray eminence” of an initially European and finally worldwide branching network of right-wing social democratic politicians and trade unionists, whom he - now financed and instructed by the State Department and the CIA , officially but camouflaged as "foreign policy advisor" to AFL-CIO President George Meany - supported in the fight against communist parties and left-wing social democrats and sworn to a pro-American course. The extent, mode of operation and importance of this "Lovestone Intelligence Service" were only known in general in 1995 after the opening of Lovestone's estate and are in parts still in the dark.

Origin, youth and education

Lovestone was born in 1897 as Jakob Liebstein in Molchad ( Yiddish Maytshet, today Moŭčadź, Breszkaja Woblasz , Belarus ). His father, a locally respected Orthodox rabbi , decided to emigrate under the impression of the anti-Semitic pogroms sparked by the right-wing extremist Black Hundreds in the wake of the revolution of 1905 and went to the United States with his eldest daughter in 1906 ; in September 1907 the rest of the family followed.

The Liebsteins first lived on Hester Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side and shortly afterwards they moved to Daly Avenue in the Bronx , where Jakob grew up. Lovestone's father, who never learned English, couldn't find a job as a rabbi in New York. He earned only a small income by doing auxiliary work in synagogues and teaching Hebrew . His three daughters worked in the Manhattan's textile industry, thus ensuring the survival of the family and, last but not least, enabling Barnet Liebstein's two sons to attend college. After graduating from high school, Jakob Liebstein attended New York City College from 1915 to 1918 , which at that time was known as poor man's Harvard due to the unusual combination of high educational standards and an almost exclusively working-class student body . He then began to study law at New York University , which he dropped out after a few months in 1919. On February 7, 1919, he was presented with his naturalization certificate. On this occasion he had his name Anglicized and called himself Jay Lovestone from then on.

Activist in the labor movement

Political beginnings

Lovestone came into contact with the socialist movement in his youth . This was not unusual as many of the Jewish immigrants in Europe had already been politicized in this way. Through his eldest sister, who had joined the International Ladies 'Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), he was able to join discussion groups of socialist trade unionists. In May 1914 he attended Daniel De Leon's funeral with thousands of other people , and in the same year he became a member of the Socialist Party of America . At City College , he joined the Intercollegiate Socialist Society , which he eventually took over. Although he publicly opposed the war in accordance with the decisions of the SPA, he advocated the renaming of the ISS to the Social Problems Club after the United States entered the war in April 1917 and in private letters ridiculed party members who continued to have an "rrr-revolutionary position “Represented. At a discussion event he attacked John Reed, who had returned from Russia . At that time New York was the stronghold of the right wing of the party around Morris Hillquit , to which Lovestone was at least inclined.

Nevertheless, a few months later he belonged to a group of New York SPA members around Charles Ruthenberg who were preparing to found an independent communist party. Unlike Ruthenberg, Reed, Benjamin Gitlow and Alfred Wagenknecht had tried for months to win the SPA through internal party majorities; until she August 30, 1919 in Chicago had been excluded from the meeting participants are there congress, they founded with 82 other delegates rejected more or less spontaneously, the Communist Labor Party of America . The Ruthenberg group founded the Communist Party of America a day later - also in Chicago . Lovestone also belonged to the 15-member executive committee of the CPA, and from the beginning he was a leader in the factional struggles in the American communist movement, which continued until 1929. While the CLPA relied almost exclusively on members born or at least raised in the US, the CPA was largely composed of Eastern European immigrants, few of whom spoke English. Ruthenberg himself suspected that among the members of his party only "five speakers who could present their case in English" could be found. The two parties fought bitterly and after just a few months were practically forced into illegality, in which they lost the majority of their members within a very short time (see Rote Angst ). The remnants of the organization that still existed united under the umbrella of the CPA in spring 1921 and formed a legal "front organization" with the Workers Party of America in December of the same year . The WPA was the de facto active communist party in the USA until 1929.

Lovestones role in the wing fighting in the WPA / CPUSA

In the summer of 1921, a group of union activists led by William Z. Foster joined the party. The politically ambitious Foster, who came from revolutionary syndicalism , pleaded for a consistent concentration of party work on the production workers in large-scale industry, who were often unorganized and largely ignored by the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL), which was organized according to principles of skilled craftsmanship . In 1923 he pushed through the relocation of the party headquarters to Chicago against Lovestone's resistance and in 1924 successfully thwarted the attempts of the Ruthenberg-Lovestone Group to work with Senator Robert M. La Follette and his Progressive Party on a common platform for the upcoming presidential elections. Already at this point in time the gap between the “left”, geographically almost exclusively from the West and the Midwest, and socially from the working class party wing around Foster and the “right”, grouped around Lovestone's New York City College boys, was insurmountable . In March 1925, Foster first attempted to eliminate Lovestone's influence by having a Comintern (KI) commission investigate his dubious role in the trial of the communist Harry Winitsky in the spring of 1920.

Lovestone and Foster not only championed competing political concepts, but also felt an extremely strong personal dislike for one another. This was carried out openly and gave the political dispute additional sharpness. In August 1925, at the party congress in Chicago, there were brawls between supporters of both camps, when Lovestone and Foster referred to each other as "bastard" and "goddam liar" when appearing before committees of the Comintern in Moscow.

In keeping with the alliance strategy favored by the Comintern in the mid-1920s, its representative Sergei Gussew intervened at the 1925 Chicago party congress in favor of Lovestones. Although Foster won all major votes with a two-thirds majority, Gusev managed to get the Lovestone Group 40% of the seats on the Executive Committee and half of the Daily Worker's editorial posts . When tens of thousands of textile workers began a strike in New York on July 1, 1926, which was triggered and led by a local majority of left-wing officials against the resistance of ILGWU President Morris Sigman , Foster became very involved, while Lovestone attacked his behavior as "sectarian" . With the unsuccessful termination of the strike in November 1926, the right-wing ILGWU leadership regained control of the New York locals , which Lovestone saw as confirmation of his “cautious” course. After Ruthenberg's death in 1927, Lovestone was appointed the new executive secretary; his influence in the party reached its climax when the Foster group was permanently weakened in 1928 by the exclusion of the circle around James P. Cannon . Lovestone now began to represent the concept of an "American exceptionalism" with which he wanted to finally set the party on a "right" line. In doing so, he borrowed from the theory of a specifically American, dynamic New Capitalism, represented by Thorstein Veblen , among others . Lovestone asserted in this connection that class society in the United States is of "special nature" and therefore a revolution is "structurally" less likely than in other developed capitalist countries.

These positions, however, turned out to be as drastic as they were involuntary self-dismantling, as the AI ​​began a worldwide campaign against “right-wing opportunism” almost simultaneously and gradually laid down its individual sections on an offensive “left” line, the strategic and tactical implications of which were straight across were among the conclusions Lovestone drew from his views on the social nature of the United States. The relevant consultative deliberations in the AI ​​committees finally reached the dramatic climax of the almost decade-long wing fighting in the US Communist Party. Lovestone assembled the ten-person delegation that set out for Moscow in March 1929 so one-sidedly that the impression was created as if his - obviously false - claim that he represented “90%” of the party members was actually true: all ten members of the official delegation were designated followers of Lovestone. Foster therefore traveled to Moscow on his own with William Weinstone and Alexander Bittelman . During the bitter disputes that lasted over nine days (in which Philipp Dengel , Walter Ulbricht and Josef Stalin also intervened) before the American Commission , in which Lovestone stubbornly refused to accept the political and organizational change proposals of the AI, both sides quickly became clear that either way the break was inevitable. Lovestone, who had been characterized by Foster as a "professional factionalist and intriguer" before the commission, made a serious mistake fitting this picture when on May 15 he sent a telegram to shop stewards in New York via a contact in Berlin contained a clear call to split and paralyze the existing party:

“Carefully check all units, all property, all connections, all mailing lists of auxiliaries, all sublists, district lists, removing the same from offices and unreliables. (...) Instantly finish preparations sell buildings. "

Foster's followers became aware of this letter and immediately made it known in Moscow. Thereupon four members of the CPUSA delegation distanced themselves from Lovestone, who finally - on June 11 - left Moscow on a scheduled flight of Deruluft for Berlin. The American-Latvian GRU agent (and presumably FBI informant ) Nicholas Dozenberg had provided him with the necessary passport and flight ticket . On June 24, Lovestone arrived back in New York and was unanimously expelled from the CPUSA a day later by the Political Committee . 92 other Lovestoneites shared this fate.

Lovestone and the Communist Party of the USA (opposition)

In October 1929 Lovestone founded their own organization with Bertram Wolfe , Benjamin Gitlow and about 200 other supporters, which initially appeared as the Communist Party USA (Majority Group) and in 1932 - when the pretension to be a "majority", given the scarcely 500 Members no longer maintained - renamed the Communist Party of the USA (opposition) . The party was only able to organize workable local groups in Detroit's automobile and New York's textile industries; elsewhere it quickly lost all political significance. In December 1930 and July 1932 Lovestone took part in international conferences of the “right” tendency in Berlin (see IVKO ). From 1934 onwards, Lovestone tried to infiltrate the Norman Thomas- led SPA, apparently with the intention of taking over the party itself. The relatively positive discussion of the Soviet Union was gradually abandoned in 1935/36 and replaced by a conspicuously hostile line. At this point the Communist Party of the USA (opposition) began to disintegrate politically and organizationally. In 1937 it was renamed the Independent Communist Labor League and in 1938 the Independent Labor League of America . In this phase, the group, which was now calling for a “democratic socialism”, was no longer a political force and only served Lovestone as a recruiting reserve for his anti-communist activities, which had since begun (it was not officially dissolved until December 1940). This transformation did not go unnoticed by the CPUSA, which since 1935 had occasionally put out feelers in the direction of the organization under the sign of popular front policy . These contacts were abruptly broken off in November 1937; an internal analysis by the Central Committee concluded:

"The Lovestoneites can no longer be considered a real trend in the labor and progressive movement. (...) They end up in the camp of reaction and fascism. "

It is noteworthy that with Lovestone, Wolfe and Gitlow (and Whittaker Chambers , who was excluded as a Lovestonite in 1929 , but resumed two years later for illegal work and rejoined Lovestone in 1938), several formative protagonists of US anti-communism of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s emerged from the comparatively small CPUSA (O). Gitlow published I Confess: The Truth About American Communism in 1940 and The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America in 1948, two books that were widely circulated as “sensations” and are now regarded as key texts of the McCarthy era . Wolfe presented his "expertise" after the Second World War, the State Department made available and had great influence on the content design of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe . The contacts made in and through the CPUSA (O) also proved to be extremely fruitful for Lovestone and his immediate environment.

From union anti-communist to CIA agent

Lovestone and David Dubinsky

Between 1935 and 1938 a profound structural change took place in the American labor movement. After the AFL Congress in Atlantic City in October 1935, John L. Lewis - chairman of the miners' union UMWA - formed the Committee for Industrial Organization , together with the heads of several smaller unions , which prepare the organization of industrial unions in the automotive, steel and mechanical engineering industries should. The AFL leaders, who stubbornly adhered to the professional and qualification principle and rejected the principle of “one shop, one union”, excluded the functionaries of the CIO group - including their unions - from the AFL in September 1936. These then expanded the committee into an independent trade union umbrella organization, which in 1938 adopted the name Congress of Industrial Organizations . Its membership was already over 4 million in 1938. Communist trade unionists played a key role within the CIO. Although numerically manageable, they often enjoyed a high reputation in the individual locals and, due to their great experience and determination, often gave the movement a decisive stamp. The “sit-in” strikes that forced General Motors to allow union organizing were led by Communists Wyndham Mortimer and Bob Travis. The head of the CIO legal department was a communist, as was the editor-in-chief of the CIO magazine News . Numerous communists also worked for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee , including the young Gus Hall .

The pragmatic attitude of the CIO leadership towards the CPUSA cadres (Lewis has handed down the sentence: "Who gets the bird? The dog or the hunter?") Was a thorn in the side of proven anti-communists such as ILGWU President David Dubinsky. Because of the communist presence, he refused to join the ILGWU in the CIO in 1938, although his union had also been excluded from the AFL in 1936. Instead, Dubinsky began to act against the positions of the CPUSA in the CIO as far as he could. When he received a pertinent “cry for help” from UAW President Homer Martin in early 1937, it was he who brought Lovestone, now largely isolated, back onto the political stage. Dubinsky and Lovestone had known each other since 1918. In 1934 Dubinsky had surprisingly invited Lovestone, who was still acting as a “ Leninist ” at the time, to speak to the delegates at an ILGWU congress. Dubinsky also did not take action against Sasha Zimmerman, a Lovestonite who had been elected head of the important 30,000-member Local 22 in New York in April 1933 , although he had previously dismissed every elected left functionary (by no means just communists) - the Not even with the help of thugs. By the beginning of 1937 at the latest - with a view to the above-mentioned evidence, but probably much earlier - Dubinsky must have been informed of Lovestones' complete change of sides. In this respect, Lovestone's later assertion that he broke with communism only under the impression of the Moscow trial against Bukharin is extremely untrustworthy. A year earlier, in March 1937, Dubinsky provided Lovestone with 100,000 dollars and Martin hired him as personal chief of staff. The only task he was given was "to rid the UAW of Reds."

Lovestone and the American Unions

Lovestone's action in the UAW split the union within two years. Even remaining largely in the background, he initially succeeded in displacing around 30 communists who held positions in the central apparatus or on site with administrative means and replacing them with his own confidants - mostly Lovestoneites who were excluded from the CPUSA in 1929 . In the important UAW local in Flint , Lovestone took action not only against communists like Bob Travis, but also against other left-wing functionaries, including the Reuther brothers (cf. Walter Reuther ), who at that time were close to the Socialist Party and already had great influence within the UAW had. As a result, the left-wing delegates of the UAW Congress in August 1937, prevented Lovestone's carefully planned deselection of Communist Vice-Presidents Wyndham Mortimer and Ed Hall . After Congress, Lovestone deepened the rift between the camps when he began smashing the UAW's Education Department ("Not a cobweb of it should be left anywhere," he wrote to Martin). By the spring of 1938, Lovestone had so poisoned the atmosphere that Martin no longer dared to appear at the meetings of the UAW executive committee, angry at the conduct of his protégé; Lovestone then recommended Martin to suspend the five communist members of the board as a "liberation strike", which the latter did in June 1938. In January 1939, Martin dismissed the rest of the board. At this point, however, the CIO leadership intervened and for their part suspended Martin, not least because it became known at the same time that he had negotiated with Henry Ford about the formation of a company-owned yellow union . In March 1939, supporters and opponents of Martin met at two separate congresses and sealed the split in the UAW; Martin rejoined the AFL and his followers (who represented less than 20% of the locals ) in June 1939, but was also expelled from it in 1940. Ford then got him a job in the administration of the company and gave him a house and a car. The later UAW President Walter Reuther remained a bitter opponent of Lovestones for life, whom he regarded as the main responsible for these developments, as "one of the most Machiavellian union splitters ever to prey on the American labor movement".

In October 1938, during the conflict over the UAW, the CPUSA came into possession of documents that had been stolen from a break-in in Lovestone's private apartment in New York. Comintern files evaluated in Moscow in the 1990s suggest that, after reviewing the documents, the party leadership assumed at that time that Lovestone was working for a government agency - or at least with the support of one. Among other things, it emerged from the stolen papers that Lovestone used four apartments under four different cover identities - to which just as many different bank accounts were linked.

After the UAW disaster, initially unemployed, Lovestone - again through Dubinsky's mediation - got a job with the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (from 1942 Citizens for Victory ), whose union contacts he was supposed to coordinate. On August 24, 1942, he applied to the Office of Strategic Services . In his letter he stated:

"I have made a firsthand study of the Nazi movement and I have had practical experience in underground as well as open work in nearly fifteen countries. (...) I would like to see you soon for a real chat - unclocked. "

The application for a position at the OSS was unsuccessful as such, but it apparently led to Lovestone being exempted from military service because of unspecified "important defense work". In the heyday of American-Soviet cooperation during the Second World War, Lovestone, now a designated Red-baiter, had to "hibernate" at Citizens for Victory until 1944, which he did not love . His hour came when the post-war planners in Washington realized in 1944 that bitter disputes over the political direction of the labor movement were imminent in the liberated and conquered countries. At this point in time it was clearly foreseeable that the communist parties leading in the anti-fascist resistance would emerge from the conflict significantly strengthened almost everywhere - not infrequently as a mass party. In addition, significant sections of the social democracy of continental Europe had broken with the anti-communist line of the prewar period, were skeptical of cooperation with the bourgeois parties, which were completely discredited in many places, and instead cooperated with the respective communist parties. Political hegemony was thus up for grabs in many countries. In this context it was of crucial importance who controlled the union movement. Since 1943, individual employees at US embassies in the countries in question have been involved in observing the workers' organizations and making initial contacts. In 1946 these so-called laboratory attachés were active in 22 countries. In 1944 representatives of the State Department approached the treasurer of the AFL George Meany and asked him for the provision of resources and structures with which the establishment of a "free" (= anti-communist) trade union movement should be promoted overseas after the end of the war. Meany discussed with Dubinsky and AFL Vice Matthew Woll , who recommended Jay Lovestone to be coordinator of these activities (Dubinsky: "The son of a bitch is okay, he's been converted."). In November 1944, the Free Trade Union Committee was formed at the AFL Congress in New Orleans and Lovestone was appointed its executive secretary. He held this position until 1963 - when he took over the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Department with the same tasks and headed it until his dismissal by Meany in 1974.

The "Lovestone Intelligence Service"

The work of the FTUC - for about 20 years the central instrument of covert American foreign policy in all questions affecting the international labor movement - was initially financed with funds from the State Department and funds diverted from Dubinsky and Meany from the ILGWU and the AFL. From 1948 onwards, millions of dollars flowed through the Office of Policy Coordination operated by the CIA , which until 1951 was formally part of the State Department and was headed by Frank Wisner . During this period, the CIA agent Louise Page Morris , who appeared as "personal assistant" Lovestones, ensured regular contact with the leadership of the secret service. Morris, who came from the upper class of Massachusetts , initially had great problems understanding the milieu surrounding Lovestone and the ambiguity of its way of working. Another connection ran through Carmel Offie , who was officially dismissed by the CIA in 1950 because of his homosexuality and then continued to work undercover in the FTUC. From 1951 to 1954 the International Organizations Division of the CIA was responsible for the "Lovestone operation" or the FTUC. Lovestone repeatedly clashed with its director Thomas Braden because of inadequate accounting and declaration of the financial resources used:

"The people of Radio Free Europe make acceptable reports, but from Lovestone you don't hear a damn word."
James Jesus Angleton was responsible for coordinating Lovestone's activities from 1954 to 1974

When the immediate practical organizational work of the FTUC was largely completed around 1955, at least in Europe, its network was fully integrated into classic espionage work and provided the CIA with valuable information about developments in the labor movement and about incidents and trends across the left political spectrum. With the leadership of Lovestones and Morris' - which gradually became the second driving force in the Lovestone organization - the longtime head of counter-espionage of the CIA James Jesus Angleton was concerned from 1954 . Lovestone and Angleton typically met several times a week until 1974 and spoke on the phone almost every day. Both men evidently had a close personal friendship. Angleton's wife recalled:

"Many were the times when Jay came to dinner and he and Jim sat up talking into the night. Jay was the only person Jim didn't call a cab for. Even in the driving rain or snow he would drive Jay back to the Statler . "

Angleton collected Lovestone's extensive written reports under the label JX files . Angleton considered the form and content of Lovestones' work to be so important and at the same time explosive that he himself tried to hide them from the internal auditing of the CIA. He urged the CIA director Richard Helms to keep the Inspector General away with a view to Lovestone's entanglements :

"Turn these guys off. We don't want them looking into this Lovestone thing. It might be embarrassing. "

Lovestone was initially commissioned by the State Department in 1944 to select and review the staff of the Labor Attachés . In this context he pushed through the removal of the previously recruited CIO members until 1946. In the early years , the contact person and point of contact in the State Department was Raymond E. Murphy , who had been there for twenty years with the observation of the international communist movement and involved Lovestone in the work of the secret service of the State Department (see Bureau of Intelligence and Research ). Lovestone also maintained close contacts with a network of decidedly anti-Soviet diplomats around George F. Kennan (see Riga group ).

The main task and main interest of the FTUC in the first post-war years was the division of the World Federation of Trade Unions (see World Union of Trade Unions ). The WFTU was founded in Paris in autumn 1945 as the umbrella organization of the trade union movement with the aim of organizing all active trade union movements on an international level, regardless of their political ties. The WFTU was joined by the Soviet Union, the British TUC and the American CIO. The French communist Louis Saillant was general secretary . The AFL was the only major trade union federation that opposed collaboration with anti-capitalist trade unionists from the start. However, the will for union unity was so strong at this time that Meany, when he delivered a speech directed by Lovestone against the founding of the WFTU in London in September 1945 in front of the left-wing inclinations traditionally unsuspecting TUC leadership, was constantly heckled like "Nonsense", "Shame" and "Nonsense" was interrupted. Lovestone was then clear that the formation of an explicitly anti-communist international trade union federation (cf. ICFTU ) depended on the reversal of the left trend at the national level. In the summer of 1945 Lovestone therefore began building a Europe-wide FTUC network. Initially, Irving Brown in France and Henry Rutz in Germany acted as representatives of Lovestones . Brown in particular was a key figure in covert operations by the CIA in Europe beyond the FTUC and was, among other things, heavily involved in the organization of the Congress for Cultural Freedom . Even in the early stages of the Cold War , Brown was internally regarded as “more useful than all Koestlers and Silones combined” or as a “one-man OSS”. In 1948, the FTUC stated that it had shop stewards in every country in Europe.

Activity in Germany

In 1945, Lovestone intervened decisively in a dispute over the direction of the military administration in the American zone of occupation in Germany. The Manpower Division of the military government headed by General Frank McSherry (cf. OMGUS ) was, among other things, tasked with coordinating policy towards the labor movement - and thus in particular with formulating a line on the trade union question. The officers who initially dealt with union affairs, many of whom came from the CIO environment, were united by a deep distrust of the leading functionaries of the old union movement, which had collapsed twelve years earlier, and to whom they assumed either political impotence or a conservative German national sentiment. In doing so, they referred in particular to the line of “apolitical trade union work” pursued by the ADGB in 1933 and the accompanying ingratiation to the Nazi regime. In order to prevent the easy return of the old leadership set, the OMGUS planners proposed in June 1945 that the formation of centralized unions should be banned for two years. Instead, they recommended the election of shop stewards at the individual company level. These unaffected activists should first gain experience and then build a new trade union movement “from the bottom up”. Lovestone immediately made a front against this course. He demanded in Washington and from General Lucius D. Clay the re-establishment of the old unions - with the deliberate use of the former staff - and did not hesitate to denounce the officers responsible for the "bottom-up approach" as communists. If you follow their “insidious” recommendations, the current mood in the factories threatens a march through of “Communists and left-wing Socialists”. As a result of this agitation, the mood in the military administration changed until autumn; in October 1945 one of the officers from the CIO group had to answer for alleged pre-war contacts with the CPUSA in Washington, in January 1946 their leaders were finally withdrawn and demobilized, including McSherry - discredited by Lovestone's people as an "overgrown boy and a fool" - was replaced shortly afterwards.

From 1946 it was foreseeable that the KPD would not exercise a dominant influence in the trade unions. After initial hesitation, the FTUC therefore supported the establishment of “apolitical”, unconcerned, religious and ideological unions. Lovestone saw his job as behind the scenes to promote the work of the reliable anti-communist trade unionists in every respect. Office equipment was made available to them and the restrictive paper rationing was circumvented through special allocations. Hundreds of officials - such as Willi Richter and Ludwig Rosenberg - received financial support from the FTUC over the years and were given monthly food so that they could devote themselves entirely to organizational work, freed from worrying about their own livelihood. In a similar way, Lovestone tried to secure the material security of the Schumacher wing of the SPD. Schumacher received $ 10,000 through the FTUC in April 1947. Lovestone also arranged Schumacher's trip to the USA in the fall of 1947, during this time he stayed at his side permanently and arranged meetings in Washington for the “hero of the German labor movement” with J. Edgar Hoover , Averell Harriman , James V. Forrestal and George F. Kennan. In August 1948, Lovestone flown into Berlin during the blockade and discussed the political situation with West Berlin union officials.

During his work in Germany, Lovestone had to struggle repeatedly with bureaucratic resistance from the military government. The southern aristocrat Clay and many of the mostly right-wing officers of his staff were completely incomprehensible about the work of the FTUC, since they were indiscriminately suspicious of any union organization work. Clay treated Lovestone's requests (and also those from the Foreign Ministry) to provide resources dilatorily and, to his horror, had even anti-communist trade unionists like Fritz Tarnow monitored and administratively hindered by military intelligence. In 1948 Rutz complained to Lovestone that the "job will not be an easy one as long as General Clay and his anti-laboratory advisers set German policies."

During these years the FTUC was also involved in numerous other activities that were to be used in any way against the Soviet Union. Lovestone paid Social Democrat Toni Sender to compile and distribute a report on the Soviet GULag system. Through Schumacher, Lovestone established a close connection to the SPD's east office . After the start of the large wave of exclusions against communist functionaries within the DGB trade unions, the FTUC officially ceased its work in the Federal Republic in 1952. The extent to which the network of contact people established in the previous years was maintained in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR is unknown.

Activity in France

In France, the FTUC found a fundamentally different situation than in Germany in three respects: there was already a trade union federation with five million members (see CGT ), there was a strong communist party (see PCF ) that dominated the labor movement - and this one the unions followed on essential issues. Immediately after their arrival in November 1945, Lovestone's employees began to support the anti-communist current in the CGT around Léon Jouhaux and Robert Bothereau materially and financially. In early 1946, Lovestone recommended trying to split the organization at the upcoming CGT conference in April. For this he made $ 100,000 available to Brown.

"We may have a split in the next convention, and to the extent that the non-CPers can be assured of real financial backing, their will to resist the Communist Party can be reinforced."

The plan failed, however, because only about a fifth of the delegates could be involved in the preparatory agreements coordinated by the FTUC and the group around Jouhaux at that time still shrank from breaking through the “sacred labor unity” - as was ridiculed in the FTUC . At the end of 1947, however, a large part of the current, now emerging as the Force ouvrière , was ready to take this step. On December 18, 1947, 250 delegates constituted the FO as a trade union umbrella organization competing with the CGT. The American ambassador in Paris, Jefferson Caffery , who was enthusiastic about the work of Lovestones and Brown, assessed the Foreign Ministry on January 7, 1948, that this was "potentially the most important political event since the liberation of France". In the critical phase of the strikes organized by the CGT in 1947/48, the FTUC also ensured the establishment of a FO structure that was ready to use force against striking communist workers. To this end, it worked primarily with the trade unionist Pierre Ferri-Pisani , who came from Marseille , who recruited members of the Corsican mafia (see Antoine Guérini ) in his hometown and then showed up with them in striked ports such as Bordeaux , Le Havre and Cherbourg - what a good thing Injured and dead. According to FTUC records, Ferri-Pisani and his followers appeared in the office of the CGT Dockers' Union in Marseille in March 1948 and announced that "we will break the skulls of a number of you gentlemen." February 1951 with a personal letter to Ferri-Pisani:

"Let me congratulate you on your splendid victory in the port of Marseilles. The crushing defeat you imposed on the Communist saboteurs is an event of the greatest significance. "

In France, much of the non-communist left press was also funded through Lovestone. In 1950 , Daniel Mayer received $ 60,000 for his newspaper Le Populaire .

Activity in Italy

In Italy the work of the FTUC got off to a harder start than in France. It was not until the autumn of 1947 that structures capable of working were in place, and until the parliamentary elections in April 1948 they were largely integrated into the measures taken by the State Department and CIA to strengthen the spectrum of non-communist parties. In the process, tons of materials and several million dollars were distributed to individuals and organizations, including through Lovestone's group. Subsequently, Lovestone promoted the split in 1944 of communists, socialists and Catholics from the Resistancea out trade union federation CGIL . His shop stewards in Italy were tied to a single line:

"All those who are fighting Di Vittorio [Communist and CGIL General Secretary] and his gang should be supported and aided to prepare for the eventual split."

The Catholic CGIL movement led by Giulio Pastore offered promising starting points . In June 1948 Lovestone appeared in person in Rome to edit pastors. On that occasion, Lovestone received a personal audience with Pope Pius XII. with which he was able to make a lasting impression on pastors. This already bore fruit four weeks later when the Catholic CGIL wing (800,000 members) refused to take part in the general strike called after the assassination attempt on Palmiro Togliatti and subsequently split off from the organization (October 1948) (see LCGIL ) . The FTUC then tried to detach the socialists from the CGIL. In contrast to Pastore's Catholics, personal corruption seems to have played an extremely important role; After a visit to Rome , Brown announced to Lovestone that those responsible for the FTUC were among the “ Saragat people” with “suitcases of money”. This current (200,000 members) finally left the CGIL too, but to Lovestone's annoyance ("We have tried to put cement in his [Saragat] backbone but he prefers Rome sewage."), Out of an anti-clerical impulse, did not join Pastore's LCGIL, but formed its own organization (see FIL ). Thereupon Lovestone blocked all funds in September 1949 in order to force a union of FIL and LCGIL through the expected financial drying up. This was finally carried out on April 30, 1950 (see CISL ). From 1953 Harry Goldberg headed the FTUC branch in Italy, which continuously financed the CISL and supported its fight against the left-wing socialist UIL and the now purely communist CGIL.

Activity in other European countries and worldwide

From the beginning, the FTUC was active almost worldwide. According to the 1950 budget, $ 27,000 was spent in Finland and $ 145,000 in Taiwan. After the Finnish Federation of Trade Unions (see SAK ) split off from the WFTU in 1951, its social-democratic majority was financed annually with $ 160,000. Since 1949 Lovestone supported the anti-communists in the Israeli trade union umbrella organization Histadrut . In 1951, Lovestones people in India distributed $ 30,050. From 1949 the FTUC also had an office in Tokyo , which was headed by Richard Deverall, according to Lovestone's biographer "surely the most bizarre - some would say pathological - of his agents." Deverall was installed in 1956 by Lovestone in the ICFTU secretariat. Louise Page Morris has been active under her FTUC camouflage over the years in Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan. With Jack Carney, Lovestone also paid an agent within the British TUC, which caused considerable resentment among British secret service agents - who, in the form of the Information Research Department, had an institution whose area of ​​responsibility largely coincided with that of the Office of Policy Coordination - caused considerable resentment when they received one Mistakes Angletons found out about.

The FTUC's work in Africa initially focused on the French colonies in the north. The State Department saw their independence as inevitable and tried at an early stage to establish good contacts with certain currents of the independence movement. The FTUC played an important role in this. In 1951, Habib Bourguiba's visit to the USA, disguised as an "invitation from the AFL", was arranged through Lovestone . In 1955 Lovestone financed the establishment of the Moroccan trade union federation Union Marocaine du Travail , in the same year the FTUC oversaw the Algerian UN delegation. Subsequently, black Africa moved into focus. Maida Springer was responsible for this region within the FTUC . She had been recommended to Lovestone by Sasha Zimmerman, in whose Local 22 she had been one of the few Afro-American textile workers in the 1930s who openly supported the leadership's anti-communist course. Springer was active in Africa between 1956 and 1963, especially in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, where she was expelled several times by the British authorities, who suspected the envoy Lovestones (not without reason) as an agent of influence for the USA. While Springer's staff was relatively successful in Kenya and was able to place a reliable friend of the United States at the head of the union movement in Tom Mboya , the record elsewhere was rather meager. Julius Nyerere , whom Lovestone and Springer had considered absolutely reliable at the end of the 1950s, got out of hand when he became Prime Minister of Tanzania in 1961 and was drawing closer to the Soviet Union. Lovestone raised in particular that Nyerere sent trade unionists to the GDR for training purposes. On November 15, 1961 he wrote to Springer:

"I don't want to hide my deep disappointment with Julius Nyerere. (...) He is embarking on a very dangerous course, particularly if he is responsible for the Tanganyika Federation of Labor sending students to East Germany. (...) This is suicidal. "

Last years

Meany fired Lovestone in June 1974. At this point in time, through his continued bitter opposition to Nixon's China course, the end of the Vietnam War and the disarmament talks with the Soviet Union (see SALT ), as well as absurd and provocative proposals - together with Angleton, he seriously endorsed the appointment of David Dubinsky to US Ambassador to the Soviet Union - made completely impossible to the foreign policy establishment in Washington. The “fanatical anti-communist” Lovestone was - like Clay in the case of the FTUC almost three decades earlier - intellectually incapable of understanding the hostile, but incomparably more flexible, position towards the socialist camp introduced by Nixon. He saw a “German mafia” ( Haldeman , Ehrlichman et al.) At work in Nixon's environment , whose agenda seemed to undermine the “achievements” of the old cold warriors . One of these supposed "liberals" was, astonishingly, Henry Kissinger , whom he mocked internally as "bachelor of ambiguities" and "doctor of disaster" and referred to as "the grave digger # 1 of Western freedom".

For Meany's position within the AFL-CIO, the proximity to Lovestone, now known to many functionaries as the CIA man, became more and more dangerous, as the illegal activities of the CIA in their own country became known (see Operation CHAOS ). In previous years, the wing around Walter Reuther, who died in a fatal accident in May 1970, had occasionally disclosed information exposing Lovestone - for example, an article appeared in the Washington Post in January 1961 in which, referring to Reuther, the FTUC's Europe manager Irving Brown was named "An operative of the CIA and not an independent unionist". Therefore, in the end, in addition to Kissinger, Meany Lovestones' dismantling drove forward as part of a larger personnel exchange. A year after Lovestone, Angleton was also ousted.

In 1976 Lovestone suffered a minor heart attack, but continued to participate in political events as an observer and advisor. He let his doctor know: “How can I relax when the Italian elections are on Sunday?” From 1983 onwards, age and illness became more and more difficult for him; Most recently almost blind, he died of a heart attack on March 7, 1990 in New York. A few weeks later, a sparsely attended memorial event took place at the AFL-CIO's Washington headquarters, in which, according to Philip M. Kaisers - diplomat and deputy labor minister in the Truman administration - "more CIA men (...) than labor men" took part .

Private life

Lovestone never married and had no children. A relationship spanning decades connected him to Esther Mendelssohn, seven years his senior, whom he had met in Montreal in 1924 - at the time she was a member of the Canadian Communist Party . With Louise Page Morris he was also in a long relationship from 1950. He lived with other women for a short time, for example in 1925/26 with the German communist Louise Geisler, who had previously been with Heinz Neumann and later married Manabendra Nath Roy .

Lovestone, who had hardly any real private interests or inclinations, was involved in other CIA operations in addition to his work in the FTUC. Among other things, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Radio Free Europe .

FBI surveillance

Lovestone's change of sides was initially hidden from the FBI in all its scope. In 1942, J. Edgar Hoover played a key role in the failure of Lovestone's OSS application. Years later - Lovestone had long been heavily involved in the work of the State Department and the CIA - Hoover, who apparently thought the former communist was a particularly cleverly camouflaged Soviet agent, personally ordered an investigation against him that seemed bizarre in view of the circumstances. In the fall of 1950, Lovestones' movement profile was created, and his telephone and mail were monitored. In January 1951, the evaluating officers suspected that Lovestone and his staff "may be employed in a covered capacity or in a special project by the Army." Since July 1952, the FBI chief knew that Lovestone was working for the CIA. When Hoover learned in February 1954 that Joseph McCarthy had Lovestone in his sights, he warned the Senator; In this matter he runs the risk of "jumping off into deep water." Hoover told an employee:

"There is no question but that Lovestone is a rather sinister character, and it is a fact that he is being paid by the government in a kind of third-party activity to carry on certain intelligence work through the labor situation for the CIA."

Even so, the FBI continued the surveillance operation until 1957. The currently accessible portion of Lovestone's FBI file is approximately 5,700 pages.

Honors

literature

  • Carew, Anthony, The American Labor Movement in Fizzland: The Free Trade Union Committee and the CIA , in: Labor History , Vol. 39 (1998), Issue 1, pp. 25-42.
  • Charpier, Frédéric, La CIA en France. 60 ans d'ingérence dans les affaires françaises , Paris 2008.
  • Hirsch, Fred, Our AFL-CIO Role in Latin America or Under the Covers with the CIA , San Jose (California) 1974.
  • Kelber, Harry, AFL-CIO's Dark Past , series of articles in Labor Educator , November / December 2004.
  • Morgan, Ted, A Covert Life. Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster , New York 1999.
  • Parmet, Robert D., The Master of Seventh Avenue: David Dubinsky and the American Labor Movement , New York 2005.
  • Radosh, Ronald, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy , New York 1969.
  • Stonor Saunders, Frances, Who Pays the Bill ... The CIA and Cold War Culture , Berlin 2001.
  • Wilford, Hugh, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War. Calling the Tune? , London 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Buhle, Paul, Lovestones Thin Red Line, in: The Nation, May 24, 1999.
  2. ↑ Morgan, Ted, A Covert Life. Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster, New York 1999, p. 371.
  3. ^ Morgan, Lovestone, p. 281.
  4. ^ "Yet he remains an often elusive figure, as though seen in the pulses of a strobe light, brightly illuminated for a moment, then retreating into darkness." Morgan, Lovestone, SX
  5. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 5.
  6. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 6.
  7. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 13.
  8. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 10.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 12.
  10. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 16.
  11. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 18.
  12. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 18.
  13. ↑ See Barrett, James A., William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism, Urbana-Chicago 1999, p. 111.
  14. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 41.
  15. ↑ See Barrett, Foster, p. 115.
  16. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 20ff.
  17. ↑ See Barrett, Foster, p. 150.
  18. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 50-89.
  19. ↑ See Barrett, Foster, p. 150.
  20. ↑ See Barrett, Foster, p. 152.
  21. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 67ff.
  22. ↑ See Barrett, Foster, p. 155.
  23. ↑ See Barrett, Foster, p. 157.
  24. ↑ Quoted from Barrett, Foster, p. 155.
  25. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 94.
  26. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 101–10.
  27. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 103.
  28. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 105.
  29. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 107-109.
  30. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 113.
  31. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 132.
  32. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 119.
  33. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 139.
  34. ↑ See overall the standard work by Bernstein, Irving, The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941, Chicago 2010 [first edition Boston 1969].
  35. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 114–124.
  36. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 114.
  37. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 111.
  38. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 110–11.
  39. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 120.
  40. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 124–.
  41. ^ Morgan, Lovestone, 125.
  42. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 125–.
  43. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 126.
  44. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 126.
  45. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 128ff.
  46. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 131.
  47. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 125.See also p. 132.
  48. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 129.
  49. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 137.
  50. ^ Quoted in Morgan, Lovestone, p. 137.
  51. ^ Quoted in Morgan, Lovestone, p. 137.
  52. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 151–15.
  53. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 144.
  54. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 141.
  55. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 144.
  56. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 196ff. and in total Carew, Anthony, The American Labor Movement in Fizzland: The Free Trade Union Committee and the CIA, in: Labor History, vol. 39 (1998), issue 1, passim.
  57. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 260.
  58. ^ "She knew nothing about the labor movement, except that her father hated unions." Morgan, Lovestone, p. 266.
  59. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 209ff.
  60. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 245.
  61. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 245.
  62. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 246.
  63. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 347.
  64. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 247.
  65. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 246.
  66. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 348.
  67. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 145.
  68. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 146ff.
  69. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 146.
  70. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 153.
  71. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 150.
  72. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 153.
  73. ↑ See Stonor Saunders, Frances, Who pays the bill ... The CIA and the culture in the Cold War, Berlin 2001, p. 89 and passim.
  74. ↑ Quoted from Saunders, Zeche, p. 89.
  75. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 186.
  76. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 157ff.
  77. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 159.
  78. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 159.
  79. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 164.
  80. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 163–163.
  81. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 170.
  82. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 173.
  83. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 166.
  84. ↑ Lovestone on Schumacher. See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 166.
  85. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 167–167.
  86. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 169–16.
  87. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 171.
  88. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 170.
  89. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 199.
  90. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 216.
  91. ↑ The IG Metall alone excluded 654 functionaries of the higher and middle management level by 1955. See Kalbitz, Rainer, trade union exclusions in the 1950s, in: Kritisches Jahrbuch 1977/78, Berlin 1978, pp. 159–175.
  92. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 172.
  93. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 169.
  94. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 178.
  95. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 179.
  96. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 179.
  97. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 180.
  98. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 179ff.
  99. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 182.
  100. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 185f.
  101. ^ Quoted in Morgan, Lovestone, p. 186.
  102. ^ Quoted in Morgan, Lovestone, p. 186.
  103. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 216.
  104. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 191.
  105. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 191.
  106. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 191.
  107. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 192.
  108. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 193.
  109. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 193.
  110. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 301–30.
  111. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 198, 200ff.
  112. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 202.
  113. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 200.
  114. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 221.
  115. ^ Morgan, Lovestone, p. 295.
  116. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 313f.
  117. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 271ff.
  118. ↑ On the work of Lovestones and Browns in Great Britain, see overall Wilford, Hugh, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War. Calling the Tune ?, London 2003. In January 1948 the British government created the Information Research Department, an intelligence structure for covert operations in political and cultural life at home and abroad. The IRD established an extensive national and international network of contacts independent of the American secret services. In Great Britain the IRD had influential shop stewards in "all three major sections of the British non-communist left, that is, the Labor Party, leftist literary intellectuals and trade unions." (Wilford, CIA, p. 48) One of the first George Orwell was the contributor to the IRD.
  119. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 247.
  120. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 289.
  121. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 291f.
  122. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 304.
  123. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 305ff.
  124. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 308.
  125. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 255.
  126. ↑ Wilford, CIA, p. 39.
  127. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 346.
  128. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 353.
  129. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 330.
  130. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 348ff.
  131. ^ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 356.
  132. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 369.
  133. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 45.
  134. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 259.
  135. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 372.
  136. ↑ See Saunders, Zeche, p. 140.
  137. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 138.
  138. ↑ See Morgan, Lovestone, pp. 226, 230–2.
  139. ↑ Quoted from Morgan, Lovestone, p. 231.
  140. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, 232.
  141. ^ Quoted in Morgan, Lovestone, p. 237.
  142. ^ Quoted in Morgan, Lovestone, p. 237.
  143. ^ See Morgan, Lovestone, p. 226.
personal data
SURNAME Lovestone, Jay
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Communist Party official, AFL-CIO employee, CIA agent
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Molchad , Belarus
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1990
Place of death New York City