169. In 1974, Tim Wohlforth, who had led the founding of the Workers League in 1966 in the struggle against the break with the ICFI and the unprincipled reunification of the SWP in the US with the Pabloites, rejected the principles and program for which he had fought for the previous 14 years. Wohlforth was removed from the national secretary position after it emerged that he had concealed from the International Committee the fact that his companion, Nancy Fields—who had been elevated into the national leadership of the Workers League—had close family connections with high-ranking personnel in the CIA. As the Workers League began an investigation into Fields’s background, Wohlforth resigned, publicly attacked the International Committee, and rejoined the SWP. Joseph Hansen made a vitriolic denunciation of Gerry Healy, describing the treatment of Wohlforth as an example of his “paranoia.”

170. Hansen’s belittling of the need for security in the revolutionary socialist movement was extraordinary. As he was well aware, the Trotskyist movement had paid a devastating price for its infiltration by agents of the Stalinist bureaucracy. He had been a witness to the assassination of Trotsky by Mercader. Moreover, Hansen’s defence of Wohlforth’s negligence came at a time, following the resignation of US President Richard Nixon, when evidence was emerging of massive state spying and the infiltration of radical and socialist organisations. Documents would later reveal that the SWP had been a target for the FBI, which had sent hundreds of agents and informers into the organisation between 1961 and 1975.

171. In response to the Pabloites, in 1975 the International Committee launched the Security and the Fourth International investigation into the circumstances surrounding Trotsky’s assassination, reviewing the Fourth International’s entire historical experience with security. The investigation uncovered a 37-year conspiracy to conceal information about the assassination and the infiltration of the Fourth International by the FBI and Stalinist agents. The documents revealed that after Trotsky’s assassination, Hansen established secret contacts with high-level US agents. Although Hansen had written extensively about Trotsky’s last days, he had never disclosed anything about these contacts. Only after the publication of the documents did Hansen admit to meeting with FBI agents, claiming that the party leadership knew about and approved of these contacts. Felix Morrow, a leading member of the SWP during Trotsky’s time, denied this claim. A lawsuit filed by SWP member Alan Gelfand against the US government, alleging that the SWP was controlled by the state, led to the publication of further documents confirming that Hansen had been a GPU agent within the SWP before he defected to the FBI.

172. Despite the evidence uncovered by the ICFI, all the opportunist and Pabloite organizations opposed the Security and the Fourth International investigation. In September 1976, virtually every leading figure in the Pabloite movement issued a so-called “Verdict” denouncing Security and the Fourth International as a “Shameless Frame-up.” Repeated calls by the International Committee for the establishment of a commission of inquiry to examine the evidence went unanswered. Political interests played a decisive role in the Pabloites’ response. Instead, on January 14, 1977, the Pabloites held a public meeting of their supporters in London to denounce Security and the Fourth International and, in particular, Gerry Healy. Among those addressing the assembly were Ernest Mandel (leader of the United Secretariat), Tariq Ali (leader of the British Pabloite organization), Pierre Lambert (leader of the OCI), and Tim Wohlforth.

173. The ICFI’s ongoing Security and the Fourth International investigation was crucial in the struggle for Trotskyism against Stalinism and Pabloism, which ultimately represented an opportunist adaptation to Stalinism. The struggle to expose the assassinations of Leon Trotsky and other leaders of the Fourth International, and the agents who had infiltrated the movement, confirmed that the ICFI was the only legitimate heir of the Trotskyist movement. It was also a major counterattack. As David North would later explain, “It also represented, in very real and objective terms, a political offensive by the Trotskyist movement against the counter-revolutionary agencies of both the capitalist state and the Stalinist bureaucracies.”^[1]