CHARGE FIVE:
“Joseph Hansen has suppressed the fact that in 1941 it was the Socialist Workers Party who helped bring Stalin’s No. 1 anti-Trotskyist agent, Mark Zborowski, into the United States from France.”
In line with their policy of shielding the GPU agent Sylvia Franklin, Hansen and Novack have shielded Zborowski as well.
They did not report Zborowski’s testimony at the US Senate Committee hearings in 1956, nor his arrest and trial for perjury in 1958, nor his retrial and jailing in 1962.
In the one and only article he ever wrote on Zborowski (the Militant, April 5, 1956), Hansen gave a plagiarized account of an article from the New Leader written by none other than David Dallin, the State Department hack whose wife, Lola Estrine, had worked with Novack to bring Zborowski to New York in the first place.
None of this appeared in the Militant article. We can confidently state that all the Zborowski testimony remained a closed chapter until the International Committee dug it up and published it in August and September of 1975.
Let us make clear just who Hansen and Novack have been protecting.
Mark Zborowski, having infiltrated the Trotskyist movement in France and adopted the pseudonym “Etienne,” was responsible for the theft of Trotsky’s Russian archives in Paris in November 1936; the murder of Trotsky’s secretary Erwin Wolf in 1937; the murder of Trotsky’s son Leon Sedov in February 1938; and the murder of still another secretary Rudolf Klement in July 1938.
When the GPU agent Ignace Reiss broke with Stalinism in 1937 and declared his allegiance to the Fourth International, it was Zborowski who betrayed him to the GPU and thus set up his killing in September of that year.
The exposure of this murderous agent by the International Committee struck raw nerves in both Hansen and Novack.
The former said that the Zborowski case was “a dry well”; the latter said that we were raising “a hue and cry” about nothing (Intercontinental Press, November 24 and December 8, 1975).
In his latest “reply,” Hansen deliberately avoids answering any of the questions raised by the International Committee about Zborowski.
We find Hansen and Novack holding firm to their long-standing policy of protecting agents of the GPU, especially those who become double agents like Zborowski, Sylvia Franklin (Callen) and Floyd Cleveland Miller.
The International Committee now presents new evidence which provides startling proof that Hansen has sought for decades to deliberately divert and strangle all attempts to investigate the role of Zborowski within the Trotskyist movement.
We are able to document the fact that more than 16 years ago it was Hansen who came to Zborowski’s rescue when the leadership of the British section of the International Committee first proposed a thorough examination of this agent’s activities.
In doing so, we are able utterly to dispose of the abominable and sinister lie circulated by Hansen via Intercontinental Press that Comrade G. Healy of the Workers Revolutionary Party once knew Zborowski.
A whole page in Hansen’s statement published on August 9 is devoted to a section subtitled, “Why is Healy silent about his connections with Zborowski?”
Only the most cynical prevaricator could even have posed this question. Comrade Healy has never had any connection with Zborowski whatsoever. He has never even set eyes upon him.
No one knows this better than Hansen and Novack. But considerations of truth do not enter into their thinking at all.
What concerns them above all is stopping—regardless of the means employed—the exposure of the GPU.
In March 1960, Comrade Healy obtained a review copy of Mind of an Assassin by Isaac Don Levine, a new book which threw fresh light on the identity of Trotsky’s killer and the GPU network which carried out his murder.
A top GPU agent
Among the revelations -- none of them new to Hansen or Novack -- was that Mark Zborowski, using the name “Etienne,” was a top GPU agent responsible for the murders of leaders of the Fourth International in Europe during the 1930s.
Upon reading this book, Comrade Healy wrote at once to Hansen in New York seeking more information.
The Socialist Workers Party was still in political solidarity with the International Committee. Its complete break with Trotskyism occurred three years later in 1963.
Comrade Healy wanted to know whether Zborowski–Etienne was the same “Etienne” whom he had met after World War Two. The latter was a French Trotskyist who had spent some time in London.
When Comrade Healy wrote his letter of March 14, 1960, he did not know something which Hansen and Novack did: that Zborowski–Etienne had been brought into the United States in 1941 through the combined efforts of Lola (Estrine) Dallin and Novack.
Zborowski thus spent the war in relative safety, free to spy on the SWP and the Fourth International while haggling with his GPU controller about the $150 a month he received for the assignment.
The “Etienne” whom Comrade Healy recalled had spent the war years in Europe.
Comrade Healy’s letter was a scrupulously principled response to his reading of Levine’s book.
Not knowing the whereabouts and movements of Zborowski during the 1940s, he volunteered to the SWP information concerning the Frenchman “Etienne” whom he had met.
The letter had another purpose: Comrade Healy immediately told Hansen that the penetration of a GPU agent into the leadership of the Fourth International had enormous political and historical implications for the Trotskyist movement.
Hansen attempts to distort this letter entirely by quoting only one paragraph out of context, and then claiming that it proves that “not only was he (Cde. Healy) in close association with GPU agent Zborowski, he remained silent about it all these years.”
Hansen continues:
“Healy acted precisely as if he were trying to cover up his relations with Zborowski.” The best way to clean away this filth is by quoting Comrade Healy’s letter of March 14, 1960 to Hansen in its entirety:
Dear Joe:
“I have just finished reading Isaac Don Levine’s book which will be published here on March 14. It seems to me that this book will be somewhat of a sensation in our circles. There is so much that has to be explained and it requires very full treatment by us.
“First of all, Etienne was in Europe after the war and attended the second congress.
“I personally met him on a number of occasions and in fact he stayed overnight at my place once.
‘If Etienne was an agent of Stalin, then a whole number of things follow from this, the chief of which would be who replaced him in the ranks of the Fourth International.
“Etienne was in West Berlin when Comrades Hippe and Haas were kidnapped by the GPU. What was his role during the war under the German occupation?
“Did he have something to do with the betrayal of Marcel Hic, Lesoil and Videlin?
“The only address which was not raided by the Gestapo was Pablo’s on the Avenue Victor Hugo. This was occupied off and on by him from 1943.
“In 1950 when the Korean war broke out Pablo suddenly had to quit his place because, it was alleged, of GPU pressure.
“The astounding revelation at that time was that the tenancy of the flat was under the name of Mme Saboureau who it transpired was a member of the French CP all the time.
“There seems to have been a reshuffle of things at that time which demands considerable explanation.
“The French in particular have maintained certain opinions about this whole situation. What I have told you is, of course, the facts as given at the time by Pablo.
“The man certainly has enough money to allow him to travel and to send his agents from one end of the world to the other.
“From Tunisia to Cuba there is hardly a journey that our sections can make possible any old day in the week.
“The astounding thing about Etienne is the flexible way he was able to treat political questions and at the same time maintain his political position as an agent.
“I say this, of course, assuming that there may be some truth in Levine’s allegations. We are duty bound to check on this allegation immediately because all sorts of possibilities emerge.
“Among these is Levine’s accusation that it was Etienne who was responsible for at least the murder of Sedov and Klement.
“It would also seem that there have been, in France at least, a succession of agents of Stalinism inside the movement.
“I think, Joe, we need a full discussion on the whole matter and I will be glad of your observations. Is Levine right on the question of Etienne?
“If he is, then it is necessary for us in the not-too-distant future to have a very real examination of the whole international ramifications of the Trotskyist movement.
“I say this without any panic whatsoever, but there are things which take place which cannot be explained. We are usually too busy to deal with them.
“Levine has posed the questions. The book will have to be reviewed in this country in about ten days and if you can drop me an interim line between now and then I would appreciate it.”
It is clear from Comrade Healy’s letter that the “Etienne” to whom he was referring was not Zborowski, although he did not know that at the time.
But the essential political conclusions he drew from Levine’s book were absolutely on the mark:
“We are duty bound to check on this allegation immediately because all sorts of possibilities emerge...It is necessary for us in the not-too-distant future to have a very real examination of the whole international ramifications of the Trotskyist movement...there are things that take place which cannot be explained...”
Here was the long-overdue moment—20 years after Trotsky’s assassination—for Hansen to begin to set the record straight. His first responsibility would have been to advise Comrade Healy and the British section of the International Committee that the “Etienne” encounter in London was not Zborowski.
But Hansen did nothing of the sort. The March 14 letter of Comrade Healy set off the alarm bells in Hansen’s office at SWP headquarters.
He was not going to reveal that Zborowski had been brought into the United States by Novack and had worked with the Fourth International under the wing of the SWP in New York City.
Hansen did not want to release information that might throw light on the GPU agents who had set down roots deep within the SWP.
Hansen’s central preoccupation was to divert Comrade Healy from pressing ahead with his proposal for an investigation into Zborowski.
He feared that the unmasking of one agent would lead to the exposure of others.
We now publish in its entirety the March 19, 1960 reply of Hansen to Comrade Healy’s letter.
This reply is further irrefutable proof that he, along with George Novack, is an accomplice of the GPU who has spared no amount of effort to protect its agents.
“March 19, 1960
“Dear Gerry,
“First, on Etienne. There is no doubt about his role. He admitted as much in court here. His defense was that he gave up being a GPU agent and had broken with the Kremlin on coming to the U.S.
“I have a few clippings about the case which I can check if you need further information. Levine based his report in the book on what was printed about the case.
“He did not get to the hearings themselves and inquired of us whether we had anyone at the trial as an observer. (We didn’t because of our personnel problem).
“In our review of Levine’s book, we decided not to give much space to the Etienne case. First of all, no credit is due Levine at all on this; he is simply reporting what he read in the public press.
“Secondly, Levine has a definite political objective in view that is completely reactionary. He is intent on picturing communism as an international conspiracy of which Trotskyism is only one variant.
“Still further he wants to picture the Trotskyist movement as crawling with spies. To further this aim he includes material that is false.
“I mentioned one item of this type in the review I did — Budenz’ report of Muste’s visit to Trotsky.
“I used that one because it is so flimsy that a reader can easily see it once the true setting is indicated. I considered including another one, the report about Cannon’s personal secretary being a GPU agent.
“But this would necessitate an article on our investigation years ago of the slander and the review would have been thrown out of balance.
“In addition, the size of the protestation would have just the opposite effect to what we intended — you know the aphorism about protesting too much. . . It was simpler and more effective to characterize the book in a few sentences and illustrate it with the most obvious example.
“Of course your political needs may be different from ours and may require a different handling. One of our primary concerns was not to give the slightest encouragement to the view Levine seeks to implant — that our organizations are loaded with spies.
“Such a view is deadly poisonous and can do incomparably greater harm than the occasional stool pigeon that turns up in any organization.
“Trotsky was very emphatic about this and this was not just a personal quirk of his, as Levine tries to make out. It was based on a century of experience in this question, including the rich experience of the Bolsheviks.
“Now as to your suspicions about who might have replaced Etienne. Some of us wondered about this around 1953 and some have continued to wonder.
“However, we could not think of a worse political mistake than to base a policy on suspicions. So long as no evidence exists and an alternative explanation fits the known facts, our feeling is that we must actively oppose the suspicions.
“In the long run political policy is sure to prove decisive whatever the suspicions prove to have been correct, or, on the other hand, turn out to be the not unusual accompaniment of a faction struggle of this character.”
“I think we should keep trying to put together all the odd facts, but in the process we should not permit this department of our activity to affect policy until (if that’s the way it turns out) something substantial can be reported.
“It should be added, in case you don’t know, that Levine has a very bad political reputation. He seems to have been tied in with the Knowland bunch and is currently active in the broadcasts beamed to the Soviet Union. His closest ties appear to be among the Social Democrats.
“We took the same attitude toward him that we do toward anyone doing research into the activities of the GPU, particularly as they related to the murder of Trotsky.
“We permitted him to go through back files of the Militant and our other publications which are matters of public record. We also answered questions from him on matters of fact.
“I saw him several times and discussed some of his theories of the assassination. He wanted me to read his manuscript but I did not care to assume the responsibility that would have gone with such a gesture.
“He was well aware of our attitude regarding such items as the Budenz reports but he put them in anyway.
“As you can see, it is a case of a reactionary author with a reactionary aim seeking to turn the truth to his advantage by skillfully adding his own ingredients.
“In case you don’t happen to have my review handy I am enclosing a copy.
“When your review is printed, would you mind sending me two copies? I’ll mail them to Levine.
“Regards,
“Joe”
This letter brings into focus the insidious and treacherous role of Hansen in shielding the Stalinist agents.
He never informed Comrade Healy that Zborowski was not the “Etienne” he had met.
Hansen said nothing about Zborowski’s entrance into the United States and his association with the Fourth International and the SWP in New York City.
Hansen merely reports but does not challenge Zborowski’s defense that “he gave up being a GPU agent and had broken with the Kremlin on coming to the US.”
Hansen, of course, knew that Zborowski had attended meetings of the Fourth International and that he remained in the pay of the GPU. Jean Van Heijenoort testified at Zborowski’s trial about his association with the agent in New York.
Hansen made the astounding claim that the SWP did not cover the Zborowski trial with an observer at the courthouse “because of our personnel problem.”
Fifteen minutes away from the office of the SWP, the man who organized the murder of Leon Sedov is on trial — and Hansen writes about “personnel problems.”
The problem was not the number of people on the SWP staff. The problem was who was making the decisions.
Trial was not covered
Zborowski’s trial was not covered because a political decision was made by Hansen not to involve the SWP in any large-scale exposure of the GPU. The decision was made to cover up as much as possible the trial revelations.
Hansen devoted the letter to a denunciation of Levine, as if the issue of GPU penetration within the Trotskyist movement devolved upon the politics of an author who unearthed important details.
The issue of Levine was a diversion used by Hansen to give the impression that the content of this book when it deals with GPU agents is unreliable.
In essence, Hansen was employing the time-honored argument of all Kremlin hacks: to belittle the crimes of Stalinism plays into the hands of imperialism. This attack was directed against Trotsky himself.
Hansen asserted that Levine “wanted me to read his manuscript but I did not care to assume the responsibility that would have gone with such a gesture.”
But in 1975, writing his first “reply” to “Security on the Fourth International” (Accent, 29 Nov. 1975, Review Press), Hansen wrote:
“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 interrogators reflects what I told Levine.”
Hansen attempted to discredit Levine’s assertion that Cannon’s personal secretary was a GPU agent. He offered a tortured argument for his decision not to publicly refute Levine’s statement on Sylvia Franklin:
“In addition the size of the protestation would have just the opposite effect to what we wanted — you know the aphorism about protesting too much...”
But just eight months later, the “opposite” to what Hansen “intended” happened: Sylvia Franklin was named as a co-conspirator along with Lavrenti Beria in the Soblen espionage case.
What was the purpose of Hansen’s silence at that point? If she was falsely accused, why did Hansen throw this “exemplary” comrade — as Hansen now calls her — to the wolves? More likely, Hansen felt it best not to “protest too much” in the midst of front-page revelations about the GPU.
Hansen did not fail to use his favorite argument against the exposure of agents and the maintenance of security vigilance:
“One of our primary concerns was not to give the slightest encouragement to the view Levine seeks to implant — that our organization is loaded with spies. Such a view is deadly poisonous and can do incomparably greater harm than the occasional stool pigeon that turns up in any organization.”
Just as Hansen was writing those lines, the FBI was already implanting the first several hundred of what would eventually total more than 1,000 stool pigeons.
Hansen’s letter reveals how skillfully he had worked for decades to divert historians, writers and above all the Trotskyist movement from exposing the whole truth behind the assassination of Trotsky and the GPU conspiracy against the Trotskyist movement.
Two irreconcilable methods
Contained in Comrade G. Healy’s letter of March 14 and Hansen’s reply of March 19 are two irreconcilably opposed methods and purposes.
Comrade Healy, speaking for the British section of the International Committee, is anxious for as much information as possible in order to initiate a full-scale investigation of Zborowski.
But in New York, Hansen is resorting to evasions and downright lies to get the British comrades off the track of the GPU.
But the leadership did not leave it there. Comrade Healy went to the American Library in London and found the testimony which Zborowski gave to the US Senate judiciary committee in 1956.
Thus quite independent of Hansen and Novack, the British comrades of the Socialist Labor League (forerunner of the Workers Revolutionary Party) determined that the French “Etienne” was not Zborowski.
At the same time they sent off a further letter to Hansen asking for a photograph of Zborowski. The correspondence does not show whether Hansen ever did.
But what was most important in the March 28 letter was its first paragraph:
“Many thanks for your letter on the Levine book. We handled this as carefully as we could in the Newsletter, bearing in mind the points which you made. Needless to say we are in agreement with your general remarks and the need for caution in approaching a serious matter like this. The whole thing, however, has to be the subject of a most thoroughgoing investigation.”
Hansen and Novack didn’t want an investigation then, they don’t want one now. They covered for Zborowski in 1960. They do exactly the same today. What Comrade Healy began in 1960 is being carried forward by the International Committee today. Hansen and Novack cannot stop it.
The International Committee has brought forward every available piece of information on the killer Zborowski. We have assembled evidence which proves that Hansen and Novack have shielded him.
It is ready to be placed before the International Commission of Inquiry, and we have no doubt that it will fully substantiate Charge 5.