INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, 1st OCT. 1976

On January 1, 1976, the International Committee of the Fourth International indicted Joseph Hansen and George Novack of the revisionist Socialist Workers Party (USA) as accomplices of the GPU, the secret police of the Soviet bureaucracy. As the original indictment^[1] stated, it was the gravest of charges that was not reached lightly.

It was based on fully documented proof that Hansen and Novack had shielded known GPU agents, covered up their crimes against the Trotskyist movement and suppressed other vital evidence of the GPU activities.

Any genuine political opponent would have taken the very first opportunity to present evidence to rebut the charges or agree to the International Committee’s proposal for an international commission of inquiry to prove the evidence one way or the other.

But Hansen and Novack did neither. For eight months they both kept an extraordinary silence.

At the same time their weekly Intercontinental Press was used as a clearing house for a barrage of slander against the International Committee and in particular G. Healy of its British section, the Workers Revolutionary Party.

All those orchestrated by Hansen and Novack in this vicious campaign share one common characteristic — they hate Trotskyism and the revolutionary principles of Marxism for which it stands and fights.

Then, on August 9, 1976, Hansen published a 23-page “reply” consisting of lies, distortions and double-talk.

In addition, it contains downright forgeries of SWP documents.

They have been caught concocting evidence, the time-honored trade of the GPU itself.

Naturally, their reply clears the GPU.

Sylvia Franklin, born Sylvia Callen, alias Sylvia Caldwell, personal secretary to the late James P. Cannon from the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s, is given a complete security clearance.

She was, in fact, a GPU agent located at the heart of the SWP’s New York headquarters playing a deadly role in the GPU machinations leading up to the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico on August 20, 1940.

A method emerges. Hansen and Novack reserve their fury for those who expose the GPU agents while those who set up the murders, provocations and burglaries, like Mark Zborowski, are given the lightest treatment.

This is an old Hansen-Novack policy: bury any investigation of GPU crimes against the Trotskyist movement by slandering those who want it carried forward.

Who benefits? Only the GPU.

Hansen and Novack have supplemented their 23-page “reply” with the publication of a preposterous “verdict” (Intercontinental Press, September 6, 1976).

This is like the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, who arrived at the sentence before the verdict.

Hansen and Novack have gone one better: they have arrived at their own self-styled verdict even before the trial.

That is, they have assumed the role of judge and jury to acquit themselves of all the charges brought by the International Committee.

At the same time they fiercely oppose an international commission of inquiry along the lines of the Dewey Commission of 1937 which the International Committee has proposed.

The International Committee’s position has been stated from the start.

We are prepared to submit our evidence to such an international commission.

(A catalogue of the evidence is appended)

G. Healy of the International Committee is prepared to appear before such a commission to present the evidence and answer any questions providing Hansen and Novack do the same.

The 168 individuals who signed the Hansen-Novack petition have no competence to support the “verdict.”

What evidence did they examine?

What witnesses did they hear?

On what basis can they exonerate men who use slander and provocation to hide the truth and refuse to come before a genuine tribunal to examine the charges?

As we show in this statement, Hansen and Novack’s “reply” and their “verdict” are a complete fraud.

Their literary handiwork and their gutter political orchestrations are not aimed at answering the indictment, since they can’t.

It is to entertain the gallery of revisionists, renegades and anti-Trotskyists in their entourage.

It will not fool anyone except those who want to be fooled because of their blind pathological hatred of the International Committee.

In this statement we resubmit the Eight Charges from the original indictment and show that Hansen and Novack have failed to answer each one of them.

In doing so we call upon the worldwide audience of workers, youth and intellectuals who are following this crucial historical investigation to join with us in demanding that Hansen and Novack stop the diversions, prevarications and slanders and appear before an international commission of inquiry.

If they refuse, let it be known that the International Committee will pursue its investigation, as well as a relentless campaign to get answers from the accomplices of the GPU.

At stake is the continuity of the principles and traditions of Trotskyism and the building of the world party of socialist revolution to which Trotsky gave his life.