Introduction

Sylvia Franklin (alias Callen, alias Caldwell) was an agent of the GPU, Stalin’s secret police, who infiltrated the national office of the Socialist Workers Party in the late 1930s and became personal secretary to the party’s leader, James P. Cannon.

In that post, Franklin was a key link in the chain of GPU agents who carried out the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940.

This pamphlet contains the results of two years of investigation by the International Committee of the Fourth International into Franklin’s sinister role.

The Franklin dossier is only one part of the mountain of evidence brought to light by the International Committee on the crimes of the GPU and the circumstances surrounding Trotsky’s assassination.

Besides presenting documents, court testimony, and statements from Franklin’s former GPU associates and those who came into contact with her inside the Trotskyist movement, this dossier includes an interview with the spy herself, whom the International Committee tracked down after she had disappeared without a trace more than 25 years ago.

The case against Franklin is irrefutable and anyone who reads and seriously considers this overwhelming evidence, let alone anyone who considers himself or herself a Trotskyist, cannot deny it.

The unmasking of Franklin by itself represents an indispensable contribution to the training of Trotskyist cadres today and to the exposure of all the crimes of Stalinism.

But there are some who have fought relentlessly against this exposure, who have done everything possible to cover up for Franklin. They include above all Joseph Hansen and George Novack, leaders of the SWP. For these two men, Franklin was and remains an “exemplary” comrade.

This compilation of the outstanding results of the International Committee’s investigation utterly demolishes the blatant lie of Novack that there is “no probative evidence” showing Franklin to have been an agent of the GPU.

Hansen and Novack’s “case” for Franklin, such as it is, is also presented in the pages of this pamphlet.

It is a case of men who have spent the last 37 years covering up the crimes of Stalinism against the Trotskyist movement. Hansen and Novack’s desperate attempts at a coverup for Franklin brand them as accomplices of the GPU.

For more than two years, the International Committee has fought for the establishment of an international Commission of Inquiry into all matters relating to Security and the Fourth International.

The Franklin case, and Hansen and Novack’s continued shielding of this agent, would alone merit such an investigation.

But when all of the material uncovered by the International Committee is taken into account, the case for such a Commission of Inquiry is overwhelming. It is of course desperately feared by the counterrevolutionary forces of Stalinism who are determined to halt the exposure of their crimes against the revolutionary movement and the working class.

Whose interests are then served by the unparalleled series of slanders, provocations and diversions launched by Hansen and his supporters against the International Committee’s call for a Commission of Inquiry? Only those of Stalinism and imperialism.

In particular, Hansen and his allies have singled out Comrade G. Healy of the Central Committee of the Workers Revolutionary Party, British section of the International Committee, for a stream of vilification and slander. On the night of January 14, 1977, the revisionists held their Platform of Shame in London, with speaker after speaker denouncing the International Committee and Comrade Healy at length. But these stalwart defenders of “workers’ democracy” didn’t even dare to give Comrade Healy five minutes to reply. Thus they admitted their guilt and forfeited all claim to speak in the name of Trotskyism.

Stripped of the rhetoric, all of Hansen’s positions amount to this:

1. Neither he nor any of his supporters have been able to answer a single charge presented by the International Committee. Two former secretaries of the FI, Michel Pablo and Jean van Heijenoort, whom Hansen tried to enlist in his defense, have since admitted that Franklin indeed was an agent.

2. Hansen is absolutely opposed to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry. Can there by any doubt that this is the position of a man who has a great deal to hide? By his actions, Hansen is taking his stand with Stalinism and the forces of counterrevolution.

The sinister implications of Hansen’s desperate coverup of Franklin become even more overwhelming in light of the latest exposure by the International Committee — that Joseph Hansen entered into secret collusion with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the weeks following the assassination of Leon Trotsky on August 20, 1940.

Behind the back of the Socialist Workers Party and the international Trotskyist movement, Hansen fed internal party documents to the FBI and requested a “confidential” liaison with a top G-man in New York City. Among the documents published by the International Committee proving Hansen’s collusion with the FBI is a letter dated October 23, 1940, in which he “respectfully” thanked a Government official for placing him in touch with the FBI director in New York. (See “Will the Real Joseph Hansen Please Stand Up,” Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International, July 29, 1977. Published in the Bulletin, August 5, 1977).

In light of what is now known about Hansen — thanks to the International Committee’s relentless investigation — his approach to the FBI was perfectly consistent with his defense of GPU agents. Hansen and the FBI shared at least this in common: neither were (nor are) in the least bit interested in alerting the Trotskyist movement to the deadly GPU agents operating within its midst.

The International Committee’s fight for Security and the Fourth International is directly in line with Trotsky’s whole struggle against Stalinism. We present this pamphlet in the spirit of Trotsky’s appeal to the forces of the Fourth International in 1937:

We must tirelessly gather printed material, documents, testimonials of witnesses concerning the criminal work of the agents of the GPU-Comintern. We must periodically publish in the press rigorously substantiated conclusions drawn from these materials.

We make a special appeal to all members of the Socialist Workers Party to examine the material presented in this dossier. The record speaks for itself. It is high time, if there are any members of the SWP who take seriously the fight for Trotskyism, that they call Hansen and Novack to order and demand that they appear before a Commission of Inquiry.

August 1, 1977

EXHIBIT 1. BUDENZ

MID-1950: LOUIS F. BUDENZ, EX-STALINIST, FBI INFORMER, EXPOSES SPY IN SWP NATIONAL OFFICE IN HIS BOOK “MEN WITHOUT FACES”

From out of the ranks of the Chicago YCL there came a young couple whom we shall call Helen and Irving. While they were still teenagers, they fell under the influence of pro-Communist teachers and dedicated themselves to the revolution and the party. They served their apprenticeship during their school years, doing all the chores that are expected of the Red in the ranks...

Just before I went out to Chicago in 1937 to become editor of Midwest Daily Record, I had been instructed by Roberts to find a comrade who was engaged in penetrating the Trotskyite organization there. Through the reluctant help of Jack Kling, district leader of the Young Communists in Chicago, I met Helen.

Our first conference was at Kling’s house out on the West Side of Chicago. With curtains drawn so that no one could see who was there, we arranged the ways and means by which I could get in touch with her. She expressed an eagerness to work on a wider scale for the party among the Trotskyites and, before she knew what the mission involved, gladly volunteered her services.

Kling was opposed to this move because he did not want to lose Helen’s truly effective services in the regular party infiltration work in Chicago.

Her soft voice and conservative dress, which suited her position as a social worker, enhanced her skill as an underground agent. My relations with the Soviet secret police were unknown to Kling and Helen at the time of our interview, but since I spoke in the name of the National Committee my instructions prevailed.

I arranged to meet her privately at different places in South Chicago where much of her social work was done. During these meetings, I gradually broached the possibility of her moving to New York and also tested her skill in her present assignment. When I had satisfied myself about her loyalty and capability, I sent word to Roberts in New York through Jacob Golos of World Tourists, whom I could call on long distance for supposedly business purposes.

In the spring of 1938, Roberts accordingly arrived in Chicago and registered at the Hotel Stevens under the name of Rabinowitz. We chose the Drake Hotel for his meeting with Helen, since she thought it was unlikely that any of her Trotskyite associates or social-worker friends would be dining there.

At dinner Roberts gave her $300 in cash to cover her first class fare to New York and her initial expenses there. He then told her how she was to proceed. She would have an apartment in mid-Manhattan and arrangements had been made for her apparent employment by a woman doctor who was a trusted party member. This would explain her regular income and also her irregular hours. She could then volunteer to do stenographic and other clerical work at the Trotskyite national headquarters on University Place and 13th Street.

Helen listened with rapt attention, taking mental notes of her instructions. She demonstrated her adaptability by falling in naturally with Roberts’ suggestion that the conversation be turned to the theater whenever a waiter approached.

Roberts had thought of everything: he had even made plans for Irving. For him, upon his return from Canada, the Soviet secret police would provide an apartment in the Bronx, and at least once a week Helen could visit him there. However, it was to be an unbreakable rule that Irving was never, for any reason, to go to her apartment, nor were they ever to be seen together in public.

The arrangements went through at top speed: Helen departed for New York and Irving soon was located in the Bronx. And Helen so ingratiated herself with the leading Trotskyites that she became a close friend of James Cannon, American Trotskyite chief, and his wife Rose Karsner. She had the full run of the Trotskyite offices, became Cannon’s secretary and made available to the Soviet secret police all the correspondence with Trotsky in Mexico City and with other Trotskyites throughout the world.

EXHIBIT 2. NOVEMBER 11, 1950: LOUIS BUDENZ SUBMITS A SWORN AFFIDAVIT TO HUAC NAMING SYLVIA FRANKLIN AS A GPU AGENT

Another person whom I introduced to Roberts (an alias of Dr. Gregory Rabinowitz) was Sylvia Caulwell (sic) and whose maiden name was something like Sylvia Kallen.

When I went to Chicago, under Roberts’ instructions I got in touch with Jack Kling, head of the Young Communist League in that area. The purpose of this consultation was, in the name of the National Committee of which I was a member, to get hold of some Stalinist agent infiltrating the Trotskyites, who could be moved to New York and put into the Trotskyite national office.

Jack Kling introduced me to Sylvia Franklin, a Chicago social worker who was successfully infiltrating the Trotskyites. Her husband, Irving Franklin, had been in Spain working in secret work and had been sent to Canada to aid in espionage activities there.

After a number of consultations with Sylvia Franklin, I advised Roberts that he could meet her in Chicago if he wished to do so. He made a special visit to Chicago for that purpose staying at the Hotel Stevens where he registered under the name of Rabinowitz. He was obliged there of course to register under his legal name in this country, and this fact I mentioned in my book, This Is My Story, written in 1946.

It was a fact that he was thus compelled to use his correct name of Rabinowitz that enabled me to check with Miss Bentley and learn definitely that he was Dr. Gregory Rabinowitz.

In Chicago, Roberts gave Sylvia Franklin $300 as an initial expense account to make the trip to New York where he had arranged her employment with a woman doctor, who was connected with the Soviet secret police.

He also arranged that her husband Irving, who had returned from his espionage work in Canada, should be located in a special apartment in the Bronx, so that Sylvia could visit him there from time to time. She was to represent herself to the Trotskyites as unmarried and was set up in a separate apartment of her own in Manhattan.

By first volunteering to do secretarial work in the national Trotskyite offices in New York, Sylvia Franklin under the direction of Roberts-Rabinowitz, gradually made herself indispensable to James Cannon, then head of the American Trotskyites. She became his secretary and served in that capacity for some time. Roberts-Rabinowitz advised me that she had proved to be invaluable.

EXHIBIT 3. ISAAC DON LEVINE

I. D. LEVINE’S BOOK, “THE MIND OF AN ASSASSIN,” SUBSTANTIATES BUDENZ’S ACCOUNT

He (Budenz) made it possible for the NKVD to steam open and pilfer Trotsky’s mail to his New York followers. He got a Communist Party girl, a Chicago social worker, to move to New York and volunteer her services to James Cannon, the American Trotskyist leader:

‘She had the full run of the Trotskyite offices, became Cannon’s Secretary, and made available to the Soviet secret police all the correspondence with Trotsky in Mexico City and with other Trotskyites throughout the world,’ he testified.

Hansen later admitted advising Levine on his book... Yet he did not deny Levine’s statements about Franklin

Nor would I quarrel with the paragraphs cited from Levine’s book. In preparing his manuscript, Levine consulted me concerning the details of the assassination of Trotsky, and I think the information contained in the paragraphs approved by Healy’s ‘investigators’ reflect what I told Levine.

Intercontinental Press, November 24, 1975

EXHIBIT 4. NOVEMBER 29, 1960: FRANKLIN NAMED IN SOBLEN INDICTMENT AS AN UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR

Above: Photocopies of an official Justice Department brief filed by the U.S. prosecutor at the time of Dr. Robert Soblen’s appeal in 1962. Sylvia Callen-Franklin-Caldwell was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the document.

Below: Photocopy of the original indictment handed down by the Grand Jury of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, on November 28, 1960, naming Sylvia Callen, married name Sylvia Franklin, party name Sylvia Caldwell, as a member of Dr. Robert Soblen’s GPU spy ring.

EXHIBIT 5. ROBERT SOBLEN

The New York Times on November 30, 1960 carried a front-page story headlined: “Brother of Soble is seized as a wartime Soviet spy.” Inside it carried the names of Dr. Soblen’s co-conspirators including Beria and Sylvia Callen-Franklin-Caldwell.

EXHIBIT 6. SUMMER, 1961: JACK SOBLE TESTIFIES ABOUT FRANKLIN

GPU master spy Jack Soble gave detailed evidence of the anti-Trotskyist spy network which he controlled in New York during the 1940s. Testifying in the 1961 trial of his brother, Dr. Robert Soblen in the US District Court in New York, he said the following about Sylvia Franklin:

Soble: There were people — there was a secretary of Cannon, who was a secretary of the Trotskyite organization at that time here in the States who had been one of the secretaries working for the GPU. I never recruited her; I never introduced her. The GPU introduced her to me.

Judge Herlands: What is her name?

Soble: I knew her under the name of Sophie or Sylvia.

In later testimony the theme was picked up again.

Soble: I went further into the Trotskyite field and worked with the secretary of Cannon, Sylvia, whom I knew only under the name Sylvia or Sophie, also introduced to me by the same Russians who worked for them already before.

Q: What did she do?

Soble: She gathered material at the secretariat of Cannon and gave it to me.

Q: The same Trotsky material?

Soble: The same Trotsky—

Q: Trotsky material?

Soble: Yes, it had pure Trotsky material.

EXHIBIT 7. GRACE CARLSON

OCTOBER 13, 1975: FORMER SWP LEADER TELLS ABOUT JAMES CANNON’S PERSONAL SECRETARY

The International Committee asked Grace Carlson, former member of the Socialist Workers Party’s National Committee, for her recollections about Sylvia Franklin:

Q: Did you know Sylvia Franklin?

Carlson: Yes, very well. We had lunch together and things like that.

Q: What were her responsibilities?

Carlson: Oh, she was Cannon’s confidential secretary. There wasn’t any doubt about that. She was as close a secretary as anybody ever has, you know. We used to know her very well. We used to talk about how secret she was about her family.

Because we wanted to visit her in Chicago on one trip or another and we simply weren’t able to make connections and our conclusion was that — I guess we just accepted what she said — that her family was very hostile to the idea that she had anything to do with radical parties.

So she presented to them a story about being a social worker in New York and then she would go home to them in Chicago to visit but separate herself entirely.

Q: How did she happen to become Cannon’s confidential secretary?

Carlson: I don’t know. I really don’t know at all.

Q: Do you know who recommended her?

Carlson: No, I don’t know that. It seems to me that she was already his secretary by the time I knew anything about the New York set up. I am sure that she was his secretary by the time that I was ever anywhere near New York, you know.

Q: She had total access to Cannon’s office?

Carlson: Everything. There is no doubt about that. She was truly a confidential secretary.

Q: In other words, she was able to obtain documents of extreme value to the Stalinists.

Carlson: Sure. She typed them.

Q: International correspondence, which of course could then be used to locate Trotskyists in Europe and have them murdered?

Carlson: I think so.

Q: Do you recall learning about this?

Carlson: Yes, when I read Louis Budenz’s book. At that time we spoke of the fact that Cannon’s confidential secretary had been a Stalinist agent. I remember raising the question, and the answer being given by Cannon. I didn’t raise it, someone else did.

And the answer that he was given was that this was a lie and just not true, at all. Now that I think of this, I don’t know when she did leave.

Q: You mean Cannon denied it?

Carlson: He denied it.

Q: That remained his position as far as you know, or did he change it eventually?

Carlson: I don’t know if he changed it eventually because not too long after that I left myself. We’re talking about 1951-1952; so I don’t know if he changed his position and I don’t know if his true position was different from his public position.

When you know that Sylvia Franklin was in there you should ask yourself the question, I suppose, what people are given access to such highly confidential material? I don’t know where Sylvia Franklin came from. I really don’t know that.

I wondered about it many different times after the Budenz thing came out as to whether or not there was anything that approximated an investigation of her own background. Because here you had somebody willing to work that many hours for the party and what seemed like surely in a very dedicated way and living on very little.

Q: She was present at most discussions?

Carlson: Well, she wasn’t present at National Committee meetings, Political Committee meetings, although whoever would take the minutes would have her transcribe them and send them off to the members and all of this type of thing.

And she was present at the sort of discussions that you’d have following a meeting or something of the kind, you know. She was around all the time. Six days a week, that kind of thing.

Q: Did you ever raise it with Cannon? Did Cannon ever raise it with anyone you knew?

Carlson: Not at all, to my knowledge. I think that the general feeling around was that we ought to just play down this business of spies because it will get people too agitated. I’m just reporting now in retrospect. It was a kind of feeling that was there.

Interview recorded on tape

EXHIBIT 8. MARCH 8, 1977: JEAN VAN HEIJENOORT, TROTSKY’S SECRETARY FROM 1932 TO 1939, STATED AT A PUBLIC MEETING IN PARIS...

Everything in my mind at the present time goes in the direction that Sylvia was an agent of the GPU.

EXHIBIT 9. MARCH 8, 1977: AT THE SAME MEETING, WHEN ASKED WHETHER HE AGREED WITH VAN HEIJENOORT, MICHEL PABLO, FORMER SECRETARY OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, REPLIED...

Oh, I think so, definitely. I think she was, yes, an agent. I think so. And I think it is right that they must admit it. That’s my position. The Socialist Workers Party must admit it.

EXHIBIT 10. ALBERT GLOTZER, SWP FOUNDING MEMBER, RECALLS SYLVIA FRANKLIN

My feeling about Sylvia Franklin is that I don’t know why she was hired. I was absolutely against her working in the national office.

I was organizer of the North Side branch when she came in. I spoke to her, and I could not understand why she joined in a socialist organization. She appeared not to know why she was joining. She had no ideas and pretended to be dumb, stupid and ignorant.

Another person comes in and would say: ‘I’m a socialist and I want socialism. I’m against capitalism.’ But from her you couldn’t get an intelligent answer, on anything. She’d give you that smile. It was strange to me. A few months later—she’s hardly in the organization—she comes to me and says she would like a transfer, she’s going to New York.

I said, “For what?” She said, “I’m looking for a job”. So I gave her a transfer, and I wrote to the comrades that she was a member of the North Side branch.

Shortly afterwards, Glotzer, who was a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party and a national committee member, made a trip to New York and was appalled to find Sylvia Caldwell working in the national office.

So I go to Marty (Abern). I said, ‘Marty, what the hell is this girl doing in the national office?’ And then, not only that, does she work for everybody in the national office? McKinney? Anybody? Cannon comes along and says, ‘She’s my personal secretary.’ So everybody she worked for no longer mattered.

Now, alright, so I won’t say I suspected her of being an agent of any kind. I just thought this was a piece of irresponsibility, that a girl who just came into the movement, who knew nothing — I really believed she knew nothing.

Now when this business (that she was a GPU plant) came out, I said, ‘That explains why she pretended not to know anything.’ When this business came out, it became clear to me immediately why she pretended when she joined the branch in Chicago, not knowing even why she was a socialist. This girl put on an act. And that’s why she went to New York — so she could get into the national office, worm her way in.

Interview recorded on tape

EXHIBIT 11. MAY, 1977: LOLA DALLIN INTERVIEW

Mrs. Lola (Estrine) Dallin, friend of George Novack, one-time confidante of GPU agent Mark Zborowski, and widow of the anti-Soviet propagandist David Dallin, is someone else who recalls Franklin. Interviewed in 1977, Mrs. Dallin was asked:

Question: Did you know Sylvia Caldwell?

Dallin: Sylvia who was the agent?

Question: Yes.

Dallin: She was Cannon’s secretary. I knew her.

Question: And what did you know of her?

Dallin: Nothing much. When I needed somebody I used to walk nearby in Union Square. So I used to phone Sylvia and say, “Please ask George (Novack) or somebody to call me” if I needed something from them. Then they told me, “She’s an agent.”

Question: When did you find out she was an agent?

Dallin: Someone, I don’t remember. It was much later, I think.

Asked why she contacted Franklin-Caldwell, Mrs. Dallin replied: “She was the only one in the office. When I rang, it was during the lunchtime. Everybody was out. She was there. So I remembered I knew her when I finally read in the paper. And I remembered I saw her two or three times.”

Question: That was to arrange appointments.

Dallin: Arrange appointments or get a copy of the (Russian) Bulletin that they had in their office if I needed it for some purpose. I know her only from the office. She was very friendly I always remember. A young slim girl. Very nice, very friendly. And later when I read it in the paper I said, “Oh boy, she looked so nice, so modest.”

EXHIBIT 12. SYLVIA FRANKLIN FOUND

‘I don’t want to remember’

Interview with Franklin appeared in the Bulletin, Tuesday, May 31, 1977

Now 62 years old, Sylvia Franklin has assumed a completely new identity and submerged into anonymity in a mid-Western community in the United States.

She was born Sylvia Callen and became Sylvia Franklin when she married for the first time. On joining the Socialist Workers Party as an undercover GPU agent she took the party name Sylvia Caldwell. Today, through a second marriage, her name has changed once more.

The international Committee located and interviewed Franklin in the spring of 1977.

She began with a tribute to the comfortable middle class existence that she now leads. ‘I’m pleased how the way things worked out for myself,’ she said. ‘I have a nice life. It’s nice not to have a lot of responsibility at this stage of the game.’

Of her years at the political nerve center of the Socialist Workers Party and the international Trotskyist movement (the International Secretariat functioned there during the war), she said disdainfully: ‘I don’t see why it’s even important.

‘I was never really in politics. I never read, I never understood it. I was just an immature child, that’s about all I can say.’

Of her former ‘comrades’ in the Socialist Workers Party who are frantically trying to present her as an ‘exemplary’ member with a spotless career, Franklin says:

‘I haven’t paid any attention, to tell you the truth. I know that during the anti-war demonstrations I heard that name mentioned (the Socialist Workers Party) as being active in the draft.’

What about the history of the US Trotskyist movement? Wasn’t that important?

‘Well, there’s history and there’s history,’ and she curled her lips to show what she thought of Trotskyists.

She did not deny having been a Stalinist agent in the Trotskyist movement. Rather, she takes shelter beneath what is undoubtedly the most extraordinary and convenient case of amnesia in history. She doesn’t remember!

Her mental black-out covers virtually all events which occurred before 1947, the year she departed the Socialist Workers Party. ‘It’s like I blacked it out,’ she says. ‘All that period of my life.’

As for the circumstances of her leaving the Trotskyist movement, Franklin replied: ‘I was very upset. Very tired. I wanted to go home. I was emotionally upset. I just wanted a change. I couldn’t stand it any more.’

*

As for James P. Cannon, who — according to Mrs. Reba Hansen she served with such intense loyalty — Franklin dismisses him with a sneer:

‘He wasn’t an important man, in my opinion. Is he? What part did he play in the world?’

*

Franklin claims that she remembers nothing about being named as a co-conspirator in the espionage trial of Dr. Robert Soblen.

Question: This is an official document. Grand Jury, 1960, in which your name is mentioned right here, Sylvia Callen.

Franklin: Grand Jury charges!

Question: Yes. All I would like to ask you is why were you named on this indictment? That’s all I’d like to ask you.

Franklin: I can’t believe it!

Another document was shown to her.

Question: Here as well is your name on the list of witnesses the Government was going to call.

Franklin: My God!

Question: You have no explanation for your name.

Franklin: No, but the FBI came to see me here.

Question: Why did they come to see you?

Franklin: I don’t know. I had a mental breakdown afterwards so it must have been pretty terrible.

Question: So why . . .

Franklin: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.

Question: Do you have a memory block which begins after all these events supposedly took place?

Franklin: I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t try to make me remember because I’ll have a breakdown. I can’t remember. It’s been many years, and I’ve put it out of my mind.

Question: Is it possible that you were in the Communist Party and simply have forgotten all about it?

Franklin: I don’t know. I don’t know. It could be one way. It could be the other. I can’t believe that person was me. I can’t believe that I worked in that office. That I was his secretary. I can’t believe anything.

*

Another question also overtaxed her memory:

Question: Did you believe in Trotskyism?

Franklin: I don’t know what it is really.

Question: You don’t know what Trotskyism is?

Franklin: I really don’t know what it is.

Question: How did you come to leave the SWP?

Franklin: I just don’t want to discuss it, frankly. I don’t want any part of it. I hope you’ll excuse me, I just can’t. It’s too many years and it’s too upsetting to think about and I don’t want to. Forget it.

*

After remarrying in the early 1950s, thus obtaining a new identity, she kept her first marriage a carefully guarded secret — just as she kept it a secret from the Socialist Workers Party. ‘My children don’t know that I was married one time,’ she said, ‘and I hope you won’t mention that.’

*

Question: Do you know what became of Irving Franklin? Your first husband.

Franklin: My first husband?

Question: Yes.

Franklin: He died — years and years ago. He had a heart attack I heard.

When asked whether her husband had fought in Spain during the Civil War, she replied, ‘For a short time.’

*

Franklin once again fell back on amnesia when she was asked about Lucy Booker, the woman to whose apartment she regularly brought material stolen from the national office of the Socialist Workers Party.

‘I cannot help you,’ she answered. ‘I don’t know because I can’t remember. I don’t want to remember and I can’t remember.’

EXHIBIT 13. MAY 14, 1977: LUCY BOOKER REMEMBERS

Lucy Booker is the woman to whose apartment Franklin regularly brought material stolen from the national office of the Socialist Workers Party. Booker is still alive and remains quartered in the very apartment which was used by Franklin three decades ago.

The GPU paid the rent for Booker’s mid-town apartment in Manhattan. Soble testified in the New York District Court in 1961 that: “I should give her $100 a month and if she needs sometimes a little more I should give her $120, $150.”

On May 14, 1977, Lucy Booker — who was named with Sylvia Callen as a co-conspirator by a Federal Grand Jury in the Robert Soblen-Jack Soble spy ring — answered questions put to her by the International Committee:

Question: How did you know Sylvia Callen?

Booker: I don’t remember. I was introduced to her. She was told to come and ring my bell. I don’t remember how I met her first, and that’s all.

Question: She came to your apartment?

Booker: Yes.

Question: And she brought material for you?

Booker: Yes, and left it here.

Question: Was it a regular thing, or did it just happen on and off?

Booker: Well, whenever she — I don’t remember how — it wasn’t a regular thing. We didn’t set — I think she probably said she’d be back at a certain time. I don’t remember now, and that’s very true. I just don’t know.

Question: Did you get friendly with her?

Booker: Not really, I mean, I didn’t see her outside. I gathered that she lived here someplace in the Village, down further. I never was there. I know nothing about the girl.

Question: As far as you know, what was her actual role? Where did she work?

Booker: Well I gathered — and this is only vague impressions, I was not positive — that she worked in the Socialist Workers office, in the party office some place around here.

Question: And she would deliver material here?

Booker: Yes. It was sealed. I never read it. She also used my typewriter from time to time to write stuff down and I did not look at it or read it or anything. I wasn’t interested. It was the first time I really heard about the Socialist Workers Party. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t care anything about it.

Question: With whom were you dealing? Who was the man?

Booker: Jack Soble.

Question: Jack Soble?

Booker: Yes.

Question: To your knowledge did Jack Soble ever meet Sylvia Callen here?

Booker: Yes. They saw each other here from time to time. Not very regularly. Usually— I don’t know now, to tell the truth, it’s too long ago.

Question: About how many times would have Sylvia Callen come to this apartment?

Booker: I have no idea. I never kept track of it.

Question: A rough estimate?

Booker: I can’t.

Question: How often? Every month or so?

Booker: Oh, I don’t know. Maybe once in three weeks. Something like that.

*

Question: Do you know what happened to her (Franklin)?

Booker: Well, an FBI man told me that she had some kind of breakdown or something and had been taken to a hospital in Chicago. But he told me that after telling me they were bringing her from Chicago. So that’s the only way I knew she was in Chicago, from Chicago, and that she had been ill. But I got that information from the FBI. An FBI man I talked to.

Interview recorded on tape

[116 University Place, New York, National Headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party, where Franklin worked.]

SYLVIA FRANKLIN’S DEFENDERS

1. JOSEPH HANSEN

INTERCONTINENTAL PRESS, NOVEMBER 24, 1975

Sylvia Caldwell (that was her party name) worked very hard in her rather difficult assignment of managing the office of the Socialist Workers Party, which included helping Cannon in a secretarial capacity. In fact all the comrades who shared these often irksome chores with her regarded her as exemplary. They burned as much as she did over the foul slander spread by Budenz.

2. REBA HANSEN

PATHFINDER PRESS, 1976:

During those years Sylvia Caldwell served as secretary in the national office, a job that included working with Jim, who held the post of national secretary. She was the second full-time secretary the party had. The first was Lillian Roberts.

Jim often told us about how it was ‘in the old days’, when it was difficult to get things done because of having no secretarial help. He said he was grateful for any help he could get and he never failed to show his deep appreciation for the aid that Sylvia gave.

Jim was fond of telling the story about how Sylvia went to a business school to learn shorthand when it was proposed she work in the national office. This was before the days of the tape recorder, and shorthand was essential to taking adequate minutes at meetings and dictation for letters and articles. Sylvia learned fast and well. Her Gregg characters were like copper-plate engravings, her typing without strike-overs, and no messy erasures.

When the load in the national office was heavy and Sylvia needed help, I gave her a hand, working very closely with her. Her efficiency impressed me. She knew how to do everything that was necessary to keep a one-person office running smoothly. Her devotion to the movement and her readiness to put in long hours of hard work inspired us all.

Sylvia and I became close collaborators and good personal friends. She was a warm human being.

When Sylvia left New York in 1947 because of family obligations, Jim asked me to take her place in the national office. Since this included working closely with Jim, I felt a little nervous, but Sylvia helped me through the transition from business manager of The Militant to my new assignment.

At that time Rose and Jim lived at 126 West Eleventh Street, seventh floor. The apartment building was modern — it had an elevator — and the rooms were large by New York standards. The front room, facing on Eleventh Street, was big enough for two desks, several filing cabinets, and a worktable. Sylvia took me there to work with her and learn the ropes.

But Jim didn’t shift easily from one secretary to another. And it was only after Sylvia had been gone some time that Jim felt enough at home with me through working together in the national office to ask me to come over to West Eleventh Street.

(James P. Cannon As We Knew Him, Pathfinder Press, 1976, pp. 232-233.)

3. GEORGE NOVACK

INTERCONTINENTAL PRESS, DECEMBER 8, 1975:

His (Comrade Healy’s) reckless and indiscriminate allegations insinuate that Trotsky’s nineteen-year-old guard Sheldon Harte; Sylvia Caldwell, Cannon’s secretary; and Lola Dallin, who helped save so many anti-fascist refugees, were likewise GPU agents, although he provides no new probative evidence to that effect.

Anything goes in his frantic endeavors to cast a net of suspicion around Joseph Hansen and his colleagues.

4. TIM WOHLFORTH

JANUARY 19, 1977:

At a public meeting in Birmingham, England, members of the Workers Revolutionary Party asked Wohlforth the question: ‘Was Sylvia Franklin a GPU Agent — yes or no?’

We’ll take the question of Sylvia Franklin. See, here we have two conflicting historical opinions of Sylvia Franklin. One is Louis Budenz and the other is James P. Cannon. Now, of course, we don’t write off the testimony of anti-communists who have broken from the Communist Party.

No, we don’t write it off. But we don’t accept it as good coin in and of itself. It has to be investigated, which is what Cannon did. Cannon came to the judgment that Sylvia Franklin was not an agent. Budenz insisted that she was.

That’s where it stands historically at this point. I believe that Cannon was right. I accept Cannon’s judgment at this point over Budenz.

Perhaps I’m prejudiced in this thing, but I accept the judgment of a revolutionist over an anti-communist swine.

Secondly, even if Budenz was right, it means that the comrades have got the wrong GPU agent because by their method, because if Budenz was right, someone covered him up, covered up Sylvia Franklin. That person who covered up, not someone who made a mistake, or made an error of judgment or didn’t know, they covered up.

And if they covered up, they were accomplices of the GPU. Well then, the person who covered up and was an accomplice was James P. Cannon.

That is really what they’re saying and I find that, comrades, difficult to believe, really difficult to believe. If that is your position, you should at least spell it out and add the new accomplice, James. P. Cannon, to your list and see how that one grabs people. Because that’s the logic of this kind of thinking.

HANSEN’S DESPERATE EVASION

The publication of the interview with Sylvia Franklin by the International Committee exploded Hansen’s mountain of lies built up over the last three decades to protect this GPU agent. In the June 20, 1977 issue of Intercontinental Press, he made a frantic effort to head off the formation of a Commission of Inquiry. Below we reprint Hansen’s reply in full.

In an article entitled “Sylvia Franklin G.P.U. Agent Unmasked,” published in the May 28, 1977 issue of the News Line under the byline of the “International Committee of the Fourth International,” the Healyites have again escalated their slanders of the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party.

As the basis for notching up their lies, they offer two purported interviews, one with Sylvia Caldwell (Franklin) and one with Lucy Booker, neither of which provides any new information of substance. (Readers can judge this for themselves from the texts, which are published elsewhere in this issue of Intercontinental Press.)

Nonetheless, say the Healyite authors, “The 30-year coverup of the GPU by Joseph Hansen and George Novack of the revisionist Socialist Workers Party (USA) has been shattered.” The authors even aver that the interview with Caldwell “completely confirms the revelations made 30 years ago by ex-Communist Party leader, Louis F. Budenz.”

Budenz was one of the prize exhibits in J. Edgar Hoover’s stable of turncoats, stoolpigeons, and provocateurs. Some of his “revelations” may have been calculated to cause disruption in the Trotskyist movement and should be weighed with due caution.

The Healyites ought to have learned this from the case of Thomas L. Black, another FBI informer in whom they placed complete confidence, taking what this rat said “under oath” as a key part of their “evidence” against me and Novack.

More important than this in the progression of the frame-up are the new charges leveled by Healy’s “International Committee.”

The members of this select body of witch-hunters commit themselves to a slander they had previously only hinted at; namely, that the control commission set up by the Socialist Workers party in 1947 to examine the rumors circulated about Caldwell was “rigged.”

Here is the lie they now assert:

“First of all, a rigged Control Commission was set up to completely exonerate her...

“The fact that Sylvia Caldwell was, in reality, Mrs. Sylvia Franklin utterly demolishes Hansen’s long-standing lie that a Socialist Workers Party control commission investigated Budenz’s charges against her and proved them to be false. The control commission, cited by Hansen, supposedly proved that the personal background of Cannon’s secretary was entirely different from the description of it given by Budenz.

“This lie is now blown up once and for all. If the Socialist Workers Party ever held a control commission on Franklin, it was rigged to cover up the fact that her background coincided entirely with that described by Budenz.”

If a control commission was ever held, it was rigged! This falsehood is aimed squarely at James P. Cannon, as can easily be proved.

In an article in the August 28, 1950, issue of the Militant, which was reprinted in the November 24, 1975 issue of Intercontinental Press, Cannon said that in the early part of 1947 a “tip” had been received, “purportedly emanating in the first instance from circles close to the FBI,” that a secretarial worker in the national office was an agent of the Stalinists.

“This report,” Cannon continued, “was promptly handed over to the party Control Commission for investigation...

“The Control Commission rejected the accusation and exonerated the accused comrade, who had fully cooperated with the investigation, answered all questions put to her and supplied the Control Commission with all the data relating to her biography and previous occupations, which were subject to verification.”

Sixteen years later, in a letter dated November 12, 1966, Cannon again spoke of this investigation:

“In another case, a rumor circulated by the Shachtmanites and others outside the party against the integrity of a National Office secretarial worker was thoroughly investigated by the Control Commission which, after taking stenographic testimony from all available sources, declared the rumors unfounded and cleared the accused party member to continue her work.”

If there was a coverup, if the control commission was rigged, if no control commission was held at all — as the Healyites now allege — then the main guilt clearly falls on James P. Cannon, one of the founders of the Fourth International. In accordance with the logic of the Big Lie as practiced by the Healyites, Cannon must be listed as an “accomplice of the GPU,” if not worse.

This is only the beginning. If Cannon was an “accomplice” or “agent” of the GPU, then the entire top leadership of the SWP associated with him must be similarly listed, for they obviously participated in staging the alleged control commission fraud, whether by helping to rig it or, if it was not held at all, by making out — along with Cannon — that it had been held.

How far back did such fraudulent practices go? Was Cannon an accomplice or agent of the GPU when he founded American Trotskyism? When he collaborated with Trotsky in founding the Fourth International? Was his long battle against Stalinism a sham? Were his close relations with Trotsky a coverup for a secret connection with Stalin? Just whom did Cannon use as willing tools in working for the GPU — for instance, in the alleged fake control commission? And what about the period of fifteen years or so in which Cannon collaborated closely with Healy? Did the master succeed in indoctrinating his disciple with the methods of the GPU?

*

In a logical development of his course for the past two years, Healy goes still further.

His infamous committee has now actually converted the term “accomplices” into “agents” of the GPU. The article they put out as a joint enterprise states that “A GPU-connected cabal is desperately at work right now to stop the commission of inquiry into the assassination of Leon Trotsky, Lenin’s co-leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917.”

Lest anyone misinterpret this escalation of their previous lies, they add:

“At stake is a network of GPU agents who infiltrated the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s and who are still there to this day.”

Still further and still more specifically:

“After the murder of Trotsky in Mexico on August 20, 1940, they continued their ‘deep entry’ into the Socialist Workers Party to disrupt the Trotskyist movement and isolate it. Others felt the long arm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and became double agents...”

“WE CONSIDER that the ‘Security and the Fourth International’ investigation has reached a point where it is bursting asunder a functioning spy ring.”

Adherence to the technique of the Big Lie has thus brought the Healyites to a qualitatively new level in the perpetration of their frameup. It can be summarized in the thesis: From the 1930s on the Socialist Workers party has been permeated and run by a network of agents of the GPU which is still functioning as a spy ring.

On this incredible assumption Cannon’s comradely attitude toward his secretary Sylvia Caldwell becomes entirely explicable to Healy and his team. Were not both members of the network of GPU agents who, according to the Healyites, have been running the Socialist Workers party since “the 1930s”?

It is true that these character assassins may still be mulling over an opposite schema. Thus they say: “From our investigation it appears that Hansen and Novack not only hoaxed the international Trotskyist movement about Franklin, they hoaxed Cannon as well.”

In short, Cannon might well have discounted Caldwell’s hard work and seen it as nothing but a put-on by the GPU had not Hansen and Novack cleverly pulled the wool over the country bumpkin’s eyes, so that he came to think of his secretary as a “heroine.”

However, it remains to be seen how long the former two-devil “indictment” lasts as the emerging multidevil pronouncement is pushed by Healy’s poison-pen artists.

*

Why have Healy and his committee permitted themselves to sink deeper and deeper into this morass? No costly investigation is required to find the explanation.

Their two-year campaign of lies, slander, and vilification of leaders of the Socialist Workers party and the Fourth International has failed in the most miserable way.

Aside from the Belgian sectarian Vereeken, who has an ax of his own to grind against Trotsky, not a single well-known figure in the left, either in Britain or any other country, has given any credence to the crude frameup. Instead the Healyite campaign has met with universal condemnation.

To hold their ranks together in face of this dismal outcome, the “International Committee,” refusing to acknowledge the deadly consequences the WRP now faces, has resorted to stronger and stronger doses of what the campaign began with — slander, amalgams, and easily exposed frame-ups.

The politics in this method boils down to substituting lurid falsifications for political issues. It is a continuation of the sectarian policies that have blocked the organization from taking advantage of the opportunities for revolutionary advances that have repeatedly arisen in Britain in the past two decades.

*

The article ends on an ominous note:

“The completion of the Sylvia Franklin case is a milestone in the two-year inquiry, but there is much more to come.

“We have reason to believe that this could well produce provocations against our movement all over the world.”

What do the Healyites mean by “provocations”? Precisely what do they have in mind?

If they are weighing a course of physically attacking Trotskyists whom they have designated as “accomplices” or “agents” of the GPU, or members of a “functioning spy ring,” part of their preparations would naturally consist of trying to pin the blame on the prospective victims by forecasting “provocations” on their part. It is the ancient trick of the pickpocket who cries, “Thief! Thief!” as he runs from the scene with the loot.

That the Healyites are quite capable of initiating physical violence against other sectors of the labor movement was shown as recently as last October when they beat up two persons in Sydney, Australia. One was a member of the Spartacist League, the other of the Socialist Workers Party.

The Australian Healyite Workers News offered the following excuse for the punch-up: “There was no premeditated attack by the Socialist Labour League. What took place were two scuffles which resulted from efforts by SLL stewards at the meeting to prevent provocation by these organizations.”

The beatings were denounced by an impressive number of figures in the Australian left and workers movement.

The “International Committee” in London has maintained silence over the beatings to this day. It is the committee’s way of condoning the violence used by their Australian contingent.

Trotskyists the world over should do their utmost to avoid such provocations staged by the Healyites. These peddlers of the Big Lie are looking for sensationalistic incidents to spice up their campaign as it enters its third year. Nothing is to be gained politically by falling into the trap of responding physically to their new slanders or threatened provocations.

STATEMENT OF THE POLITICAL COMMITTEE OF THE WORKERS LEAGUE: HANSEN’S BIG LIE GROWS BIGGER

With the tracking down and exposure of Sylvia Franklin, the Stalinist agent who penetrated the national office of the Socialist Workers Party between 1938 and 1947 and became the confidential secretary of James P. Cannon, the International Committee of the Fourth International has dealt a shattering blow to the 30-year-old coverup of GPU activities within the Trotskyist movement by Joseph Hansen and George Novack.

The vast edifice of lies constructed by Hansen to protect GPU agents involved in the assassination of Trotsky — especially Sylvia Franklin — is crumbling on its own rotten foundations. Having now read the interviews with Sylvia Franklin and her GPU contact, Lucy Booker, obtained by the International Committee, the politically honest members of the SWP are finding it impossible to defend with any conviction Hansen’s blatant lies about the role of Franklin inside the SWP.

Hansen is still trying to brazen it out with yet another dose of lies and crude diversions. His latest article, “Healyites Escalate Frame-up of Trotskyist Leaders,” published in the June 20, 1977 issue of Intercontinental Press, is not, in any sense, a reply to the interviews with Franklin and Booker. Rather, it is a desperate, last-ditch effort to prevent the formation of a Commission of Inquiry as demanded by the International Committee into the circumstances surrounding the death of Trotsky.

Without even attempting to answer the overwhelming proof of Franklin’s guilt — something, incidentally, that not even she denies — Hansen continues his coverup of Franklin. Taken by itself, Hansen’s article provides still more evidence of his role as a GPU accomplice and makes all the more urgent the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry.

1. Hansen complains about the International Committee having “escalated their slanders of the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party.” What stands out immediately is that Hansen considers the exposure of the GPU agent Franklin as an attack upon himself! It is he who establishes in this way the bonds of solidarity. Rather than answer the content of the interviews, Hansen resorts to some revealing insinuations. He writes:

“As the basis for notching up their lies, they offer two purported interviews, one with Sylvia Caldwell (Franklin) and one with Lucy Booker, neither of which provides any new information of substance.”

Does Hansen, by the use of the word “purported,” mean to suggest that the interviews with Franklin and Booker never took place? He avoids making the charge directly because he knows that testing it means coming before a Commission of Inquiry that could examine all evidence. The International Committee is of course prepared to produce the tapes of both interviews before such a Commission where the authenticity of the tapes could be established. The International Committee is prepared to have its evidence tested by a Commission. It is Hansen who opposes the establishment of a Commission.

Budenz

As for Hansen’s claim that the interviews contain no “new information of substance” this is simply absurd. Just how “new” the information is can be readily gauged by the fact that Hansen now automatically refers to “Sylvia Caldwell” and “Sylvia Franklin” as one and the same persons.

In defending Caldwell, the name used by the spy as she infiltrated the SWP, Hansen continuously maintained that the story about an agent named “Sylvia Franklin” was a fabrication invented by Louis F. Budenz, the ex-Stalinist who became an FBI informer.

The heart of Budenz’s allegations was that Sylvia Caldwell whose maiden name was Callen was secretly married to the American Stalinist and GPU agent Franklin. In a sworn affidavit submitted on November 11, 1950 to the House Un-American Activities Committee Budenz stated:

“Jack Kling introduced me to Sylvia Franklin, a Chicago social worker who was successfully infiltrating the Trotskyites. Her husband Irving Franklin had been in Spain working in secret work and had been sent to Canada to aid in espionage activities there.”

“If the interview had done nothing more than establish that Sylvia Caldwell was Sylvia Franklin which it clearly did then it would have already substantiated the charge made by Budenz against Cannon’s personal secretary. Hansen makes the devastating concession on Caldwell-Franklin but goes right on lying as if nothing had happened!

Even the most politically naive member of the SWP must be rubbing his eyes in amazement by now. Hansen might just as well have said: “Yes Caldwell is Franklin but while Franklin was a GPU agent Caldwell isn’t!” The secret of this riddle is that Hansen is a liar and an accomplice of Franklin.

To all members of the world Trotskyist movement and especially to members of the SWP, everything in the interviews obtained by the International Committee is “new.” Until the International Committee located, photographed and interviewed Franklin no member of the SWP had any idea what became of her. Some of them had been led to believe that she was dead! SWP members knew only what Hansen had chosen to tell them: that Caldwell was a Trotskyist heroine whose loyalty and devotion to the SWP and its founder James P. Cannon, was beyond question.

In the November 24, 1975 issue of Intercontinental Press, Hansen wrote: “Sylvia Caldwell (that was her party name) worked very hard in her rather difficult assignment of managing the office of the Socialist Workers Party, which included helping Cannon in a secretarial capacity. In fact all the comrades who shared these often irksome chores with her regarded her as exemplary. They burned as much as she did over the foul slander spread by Budenz.”

Mrs. Reba Hansen poured it on even thicker just a few months later. She recalled how Cannon “never failed to show his deep appreciation for the aid that Sylvia gave.” Reba Hansen went on to write that Franklin “knew how to do everything that was necessary to keep a one-person office running smoothly. Her devotion to the movement and her readiness to put in long hours of hard work inspired us all.

“Sylvia and I became close collaborators and good personal friends. She was a warm human being.” (James P. Cannon As We Knew Him, Pathfinder Press, pp. 232-233.)

The sinister implications of these extraordinary tributes can be grasped by any politically-literate person. Hansen is now trying to wriggle out of his own words by pretending at this late hour that the issue of Franklin is nothing more than a matter of different juridical procedures within the SWP and the International Committee.

He has the temerity to claim that “Hansen and Novack have refused to pronounce Sylvia Caldwell an ‘agent of the GPU’ in the absence of substantial evidence establishing her guilt. They have maintained that Caldwell must be considered innocent until proved guilty. The Healyites have taken an opposite position holding that she is guilty until proved innocent.”

Who does Hansen think he’s fooling at this point? He has not been arguing that Franklin is innocent until proven guilty. He’s been claiming that she was an “exemplary comrade” and has been organizing an international slander campaign against the International Committee in order to prevent her exposure.

Commission of Inquiry

If Hansen is so concerned about defending the juridical principle of presumption of innocence why doesn’t he do it in front of a Commission of Inquiry? What Hansen wants is the right to lie about GPU agents, protect them against exposure and slander anyone who presents evidence that drags their foul crimes into the light of day.

Once this Commission is functioning it can deal with all the other insinuations made by Hansen about the interview. Hansen goes on about the “lack of evidence in the interview itself.” Apparently, short of an outright confession by Sylvia Franklin, Hansen considers no evidence sufficient. This is in sharp contrast with his attitude toward the statements of self-confessed Stalinist agent Thomas L. Black about other GPU spies in Coyoacan.

Hansen dismissed Black’s revelations as “The lying testimony of an avowed agent of the GPU and of the FBI” in which no credence can be placed (Intercontinental Press, August 9, 1976).

The International Committee did not require, or, for that matter, expect a confession from Franklin. The mountain of evidence already obtained — court documents, a Grand Jury indictment, newspaper articles, interviews, etc. — constituted an overwhelming case establishing her role as a GPU agent.

Franklin’s “amnesia”

However, what is most devastating to Hansen’s lies is that the interview has confirmed everything written by the International Committee about Franklin. She denied none of the charges, relying on “amnesia” as the most convenient escape route. Hansen doesn’t say whether he believes this transparent charade, though a number of his more cynical lieutenants in the SWP have been telling rank-and-file members to ignore what the “sick old lady” — until yesterday an “exemplary comrade” — said in the interview.

Hansen adds: “Another curious gap is that the interviewers (or interviewer) say nothing whatsoever about the circumstances of the conversation. Was it held in the street, as the accompanying blurred photograph of a woman in hair curlers would indicate? Was she on her way to a supermarket when she was accosted? What guise — perhaps a praiseworthy one — was used in approaching her?

“Finally why do the committee members refuse to name the ‘midWestern community in the United States’ where they claim to have met with Caldwell. Why do they refuse to expose her ‘new identity,’ which she went to the length of obtaining, they charge, ‘through a second marriage’? If the committee proved through the interview that Caldwell was a GPU agent, why are they so interested in covering her up?”

What Hansen finds so “curious” is that the International Committee has exercised basic security precautions in relation to the information it has gathered. This is so self-evident that the very manner in which Hansen raises these questions is grounds for suspicion.

Upon the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry, the International Committee will provide all the details of the circumstances under which the interview was obtained and conducted. It will also disclose the present identity of Franklin and other biographical details.

2. Although Hansen concedes that Franklin is Sylvia Caldwell, he attempts to challenge the International Committee’s assertion that the interview with Franklin “completely confirms the revelations made 30 years ago by ex-Communist Party leader, Louis F. Budenz.”

Hansen writes: “Budenz was one of the prize exhibits in J. Edgar Hoover’s stable of turncoats, stoolpigeons, and provocateurs. Some of his ‘revelations’ may have been calculated to cause disruption in the Trotskyist movement and should be weighed with due caution.”

For the past two years Hansen has been shouting up and down about the “perjurer Budenz,” but has never once produced any factual evidence that refuted Budenz’s accusations. Furthermore, these accusations have been substantiated with vast quantities of evidence arising from sources entirely independent of Budenz.

Not only did Hansen never answer the Budenz affidavit of November 11, 1950, he never sought to defend Franklin when she was named by a Grand Jury as a GPU co-conspirator in November 1960.

It is also a matter of the historical record that the SWP widely publicized Budenz’s revelations in 1946-47 until he made his reference to Cannon’s GPU secretary.

But as for the possibility that Budenz’s revelations may have been calculated to cause disruption inside the Trotskyist movement, that can best be determined by a Commission of Inquiry. The Commission should definitely investigate the role of Budenz and all the others working in Hoover’s “stable of turncoats, stool pigeons and provocateurs.”

The International Committee believes that it is of the most urgent importance that a Commission of Inquiry very carefully examine the activities of all those in and around “Hoover’s stable” and determine the exact role they played in the assassination of Trotsky and all the events surrounding it.

Hansen can bring before the Commission whatever information he has about the activities of “Hoover’s stable.”

3. Hansen claims that the International Committee is slandering the SWP Control Commission that supposedly investigated the allegations against Caldwell-Franklin which first emerged in 1947. He writes:

“The members of this select body of witch hunters commit themselves to a slander they had previously only hinted at: namely, that the control commission set up by the Socialist Workers party in 1947 to examine the rumors circulated about Caldwell was “rigged.”

What follows is not a refutation of the charge made by the International Committee. Rather, with a cynical sleight of hand, Hansen launches into another fantastic diversion:

“If a control commission was ever held, it was rigged! This falsehood is aimed squarely at James P. Cannon, as can be easily proved.”

This is Hansen at his tricks again. He doesn’t give a straightforward answer, backed with evidence, to the question: was the SWP control commission rigged or wasn’t it? Instead, he drags in the late James P. Cannon in order to hide behind his grave. Why doesn’t he leave Cannon out of it? The International Committee has made no accusations against Cannon. We’ve accused Hansen. It’s Hansen’s favorite trick to immediately conjure up Cannon’s ghost the moment he himself is challenged.

What this in fact amounts to is the most odious political blackmail against the Socialist Workers Party!

James P. Cannon

Hansen’s blackmail note is written as follows: “If there was a coverup, if the control commission was rigged, if no control commission was held at all — as the Healyites now allege — then the main guilt clearly falls on James P. Cannon, one of the founders of the Fourth International. In accordance with the logic of the Big Lie as practiced by the Healyites, Cannon must be listed as an ‘accomplice of the GPU’, if not worse.

“This is only the beginning. If Cannon was an ‘accomplice’ or ‘agent’ of the GPU, then the entire top leadership of the SWP associated with him must be similarly listed, for they obviously participated in staging the alleged control commission fraud, whether by helping to rig it or, if it was not held at all, by making out — along with Cannon — that it had been held.

“How far back did such fraudulent practices go? Was Cannon an accomplice or agent of the GPU when he founded American Trotskyism? When he collaborated with Trotsky in founding the Fourth International? Was his long battle against Stalinism a sham? Were his close relations with Trotsky a coverup for a secret connection with Stalin? Just whom did Cannon use as willing tools in working for the GPU — for instance, in the alleged fake control commission?”

All this comes straight from the pen of Joseph Hansen. He is charged with covering up the activities of GPU agents, and so he replies by trying to frighten SWP members with the suggestion that his guilt makes Cannon a Stalinist agent! He is trying to intimidate the SWP membership and bully them into silence by telling them how terrible the consequences will be if the International Committee’s charges against him are proven correct.

Hansen deals with his members like an airplane hijacker with a bomb in his hand who waves it above his head and shouts at the passengers: “Anyone tries to stop me and we’ll all be blown to Kingdom come!”

What is clear is that Hansen will stop at nothing to save his own political neck. Hansen is not protecting Cannon, he is using him to save himself.

There is one way to immediately clear up the entire question of the SWP control commission into Sylvia Franklin. Let Hansen come before a Commission of Inquiry and submit to it all the official party records of its proceedings and findings.

Hansen refuses to do this, so he tries to confuse and mislead his own members about the charges made by the International Committee.

Hansen writes: “Adherence to the technique of the Big Lie has brought the Healyites to a qualitatively new level in the perpetration of their frameup. It can be summarized in the thesis: From the 1930s on the Socialist Workers Party has been permeated and run by a network of agents of the GPU which is still functioning as a spy ring.

“On this incredible assumption Cannon’s comradely attitude toward his secretary Sylvia Caldwell becomes entirely explicable to Healy and his team. Were not both members of the network of GPU agents who according to the Healyites have been running the Socialist Workers Party since ‘the 1930s’?”

More insinuations

Look how insidiously Hansen tries to twist everything to avoid answering the real charges made by the International Committee. It has never said that GPU agents have been running the Socialist Workers Party. Hansen — the political blackmailer — says that. Then, notice how in the second paragraph cited just above he inserts “the 1930’s” between quotation marks! Everything here is his invention.

While shrieking about the “slanders” of the International Committee, it is Hansen who is flinging the most reckless insinuations in all directions. The fact that it is Hansen and only Hansen who continuously alludes to Cannon as a possible GPU agent should hit every SWP member in the face like a splash of ice water!

What the International Committee has stated — and proved — is that Hansen and Novack are accomplices of the GPU because they have covered up for a Stalinist agent like Franklin. He cannot refute this charge. But Hansen’s desperate attempt to evade the real issues by dragging in Cannon actually rebounds against him. If Hansen believes that the charges of the International Committee place a dark shadow over Cannon — whose memory Hansen supposedly cherishes — all the more urgent is his responsibility to accept a Commission of Inquiry to clear the air.

Once the Commission is convened, the role of Cannon could be investigated and Hansen would be free to defend his memory and that of any other pioneer member of the SWP.

As for Hansen’s claim that it is an “incredible assumption” that a GPU spy ring is still functioning inside the SWP, let us simply point out that it is a matter of public record that at least one spy ring is functioning inside the SWP at this very moment — composed of at least 66 US Government agents.

The SWP has brought a $27 million suit against the Federal Government to bring to an end the activities of this functioning spy ring.

4. Hansen hides behind another blatant lie when he writes: “Aside from the Belgian sectarian Vereeken, who has an ax of his own to grind against Trotsky, not a single well-known figure in the left, either in Britain or any other country, has given any credence to the crude frameup. Instead the Healyite campaign has met with universal condemnation.”

Hansen, of course, has never acknowledged that two former secretaries of the Trotskyist movement, Jean Van Heijenoort and Michel Pablo, have publicly stated that the evidence assembled by the International Committee proves that Sylvia Franklin was an agent. Both men originally supported Hansen’s fraudulent “verdict,” but were compelled beneath the weight of the evidence to withdraw their endorsement of Hansen’s lies about Franklin.

On March 8, 1977, at a public meeting in Paris, Van Heijenoort stated that “everything in my mind at the present time goes in the direction that Sylvia was an agent of the GPU.”

When asked in front of the audience whether he agreed with Van Heijenoort, Pablo replied:

“Oh, I think so, definitely. I think she was, yes, an agent. I think so. And I think it is right that they must admit it. That’s my position. The Socialist Workers Party must admit it.”

Only last summer, Intercontinental Press praised Van Heijenoort and Pablo as “veteran battlers” when their names were listed as supporters of Hansen’s so-called “verdict” which labelled the International Committee’s investigation into the assassination of Trotsky as a “Shameless Frame-up.”

But since Pablo and Van Heijenoort changed their minds about Franklin, not a word has been said about them in Intercontinental Press.

Why has Hansen been silent on the statements of Pablo and Van Heijenoort for the last 3-1/2 months? This is the Hansen School of Falsification at work.

Hansen claims that the charges of the International Committee consist of “easily exposed frameups.” Then why doesn’t he accept the formation of a Commission of Inquiry where he would be able, presumably, to “easily expose” the charges made against him?

5. Hansen’s method of dealing with Lucy Booker is so blatantly cynical and deceitful that it cannot possibly be accepted by anyone save the most pathological enemies of Trotskyism and ...the truth. Like the interview with Franklin, Hansen finds nothing “new” here either. But for members of the SWP and the Trotskyist movement internationally, everything here is “new.”

This is the first time ever that Lucy Booker — named as a GPU courier along with Franklin by a Federal Grand Jury in 1960 — has been contacted and interviewed. She gives an eyewitness account of the GPU activities of Cannon’s secretary. “Maybe once in three weeks,” Franklin delivered documents from the national headquarters of the SWP to Booker’s apartment. Booker also reports that Franklin met with Jack Soble, Stalin’s number one anti-Trotskyist spy.

Hansen makes no mention of these astounding revelations at all. This is a measure of his utter contempt for the members of his own organization. He does not even feel that he owes them an explanation.

Rather, he attempts to evade all the devastating statements made by Booker with a grotesque diversion. Hansen writes:

“Booker reveals in her concluding answer that she was in touch with the FBI. In fact she flatly declares that the FBI was the source of her knowledge that Caldwell was ‘from Chicago, and that she had been ill’.

“This should serve to remind everyone who has been following the exposures of the two-year Healyite slander campaign that it was the FBI that first circulated the rumor that Caldwell was a GPU agent. At the time the rumor smacked of a standard tactic used by the political police everywhere, a tactic well understood by the pioneer American Trotskyist leaders, who had to confront it from the beginning. Today, since the exposure of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s methods have become common knowledge, at least in the United States.

“It seems incredible that the members of the ‘International Committee’ — no matter how much they have become caught up in the logic of their frameup methods — would listen in silence to such a revelation by Booker. Unfortunately, that is precisely what they did. Instead of pursuing this promising lead opened up by Booker, they acted as if struck dumb. Without saying another bumbling word, they rose and quietly filed out of her apartment — if that was where they met.”

The role of the FBI

Hansen’s performance over Booker’s statement that she spoke with the FBI is utter rubbish. Whoever denied or doubted that she did? Booker was the subject of an intensive FBI investigation because of her connections with the GPU. The FBI came to her apartment and she was hauled before a Grand Jury. To save her own skin, she turned states evidence against the main accused, Robert Soblen. This is all a matter of the historical record.

Another person who met with the FBI — which Hansen says nothing about — was Sylvia Franklin. The portion of the interview where she admitted this is reproduced in the June 20 issue of Intercontinental Press on page 702:

Question: You have no explanation for your name.

Franklin: No, but the FBI came to see me here.

Question: Why did they come to see you?

Franklin: I don’t know. I had a mental breakdown afterwards so it must have been pretty terrible.

Hansen has introduced the question of Booker’s meeting under interrogation with the FBI as a cynical diversion.

However, he apparently wants to suggest that the International Committee has been fooled by FBI propaganda.

As we said before, this is a question that should be resolved before a Commission of Inquiry.

The International Committee issues this challenge again: let a Commission of Inquiry determine who has been duped by the FBI or fallen for its propaganda.

We repeat: central to any investigation by a Commission of Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Trotsky’s death and its aftermath must be an examination of the role played by the FBI and all its agents.

We say that Hansen is desperately trying to cover up for the agents involved in the murder of Leon Trotsky. Now that it is widely accepted within the SWP that Franklin was a GPU agent, Hansen is lying more brazenly than ever. He is now at the point where he will say anything and do anything to keep the coverup going and prevent the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry.

6. The International Committee, upon concluding its statement, “Sylvia Franklin: GPU Agent Unmasked,” wrote:

“The completion of the Sylvia Franklin case is a milestone in the two-year inquiry, but there is much more to come.

“We have reason to believe that this could well produce provocations against our movement all over the world.

“This places the greatest urgency on the International Committee’s demand for a Commission of Inquiry to hear all the testimony and examine all the evidence.”

Every historically-conscious Trotskyist will immediately appreciate the grounds for the warning raised by the International Committee against the dangers of provocations. The exposure of its agents strikes a mortal blow against the counter-revolutionary Soviet bureaucracy. The investigation into “Security and the Fourth International” has aroused the greatest anxiety within the camp of the bureaucracy and its allies.

The manner in which Hansen chooses to reply to this historically justified warning by the International Committee raises the most serious questions. When Trotsky warned that he and his followers faced the danger of physical liquidation by the bureaucracy, the Stalinists stepped up their hysterical lies about “Trotskyite terrorist plots” against the leaders of the Soviet Union. This was the cover they used while staging the Moscow Trials and preparing Trotsky’s assassination.

In the spring and early summer of 1940, the Mexican Stalinist press was bursting with these sort of lies.

Within this historical context, examine Hansen’s response. He writes:

“What do the Healyites mean by ‘provocations’? Precisely what do they have in mind?

“If they are weighing a course of physically attacking Trotskyists whom they have designated as ‘accomplices’ or ‘agents’ of the GPU, or members of a ‘functioning spy ring’, part of their preparations would naturally consist of trying to pin the blame on the prospective victims by forecasting ‘provocations’ on their part.”

These lines are part of Hansen’s attempt to create the political atmosphere within which he can continue his coverup of the GPU and prepare his own provocations against the International Committee.

By writing that “the Healyites are quite capable of initiating physical violence against other sectors of the labor movement,” he is simply regurgitating the most obscene lies of the Stalinists.

There is a simple way to guard against and prevent all provocations. The Workers League proposes the setting up of a joint commission with the Socialist Workers Party, composed of an equal number of members from each side, to attend all public functions of both organizations and investigate all provocations and incidents of violence on the spot!

7. Every serious member of the Socialist Workers Party, class conscious workers and intellectuals who have followed the documents and all the evidence uncovered over the last two years by the International Committee will immediately realize upon completing Hansen’s article that he has failed to reply to any of the charges.

Once again he serves up nothing but devious and sinister diversions. Hansen writes that the International Committee is guilty of “lurid falsifications” but cannot point to one falsification, lurid or otherwise.

Is the interview with Franklin a falsification? Is the interview with Booker a falsification?

When all is said and done, it is Hansen who will not accept the formation of a Commission of Inquiry. The fact that the International Committee has called for the establishment of a Commission is not mentioned once by Hansen in his article.

Hansen says he is the victim of a frameup. He protests too much. History has recorded the example of Trotsky in fighting the frameups of the Stalinists. He set in motion whatever resources he had, however limited, to form a Commission of Inquiry. He said he had nothing to hide. Trotsky produced willingly every existing document covering 40 years of his political activity. And he was the leader of the October Revolution, the founder of the Third International and the supreme commander of the Red Army!

Hansen won’t accept a Commission because he has a great deal to hide.

All SWP members devoted to Trotskyism must now demand an end to Hansen’s lies and diversions. His refusal to accept a Commission is the distilled expression of his hatred of Trotskyism. This contempt was shown no less sharply just a few days ago when one of Hansen’s lieutenants in the New York local leadership of the SWP told a member of the Workers League: “You’re right about Franklin, but we don’t have to answer you.”

The Workers League does not believe that this is the attitude of the many sincere members of the SWP who want to know the truth. We are sure that they share our scorn for those who not only are willing to lie about history, but are even prepared to say history doesn’t matter.

The highest point of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalinism was his unyielding defense of history against the monstrous falsifications of the bureaucracy. Those who lie about Trotsky’s death by covering up for the agents who plotted his assassination are lying about all the principles for which he fought. They can claim no connection with Trotskyism. In the eyes of objective history they serve the goals of the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy.

The words of Trotsky ring out more powerfully today than ever before:

“In point of fact, the lie in politics, as in daily life, serves as a function of the class structure of society. The oppressors erect the lie into a system of befuddling the masses in order to maintain their rule. On the part of the oppressed, the lie is a defensive weapon of weakness. Revolution explodes the social lie. Revolution begins by giving things and social relations their real names.” (The Stalin School of Falsification).

The Commission of Inquiry must be formed and begin its work. It will examine all the evidence and arrive at conclusions which give both things and people their real names.

June 19, 1977