CHARGE EIGHT:
“George Novack accuses Leon Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov of responsibility for their own deaths.”
This charge has met with an eight-month silence from Novack and a frantic outburst of slander from Hansen.
In his August 9, 1976 article in Intercontinental Press, Hansen writes:
“Novack can now truthfully say that he has seen everything. After devoting a lifetime to fighting formups, he himself has become a victim of a frameup, and one that is about as crude as they come.”
In formulating this charge, the International Committee has done no more than quote Novack himself. He wrote in Intercontinental Press on December 8, 1975:
“Healy likewise does not see that Hansen and the others are only secondary figures in the drama. The principal actors were Trotsky and Sedov themselves who trusted Etienne (Zborowski) and allowed Jacson entry into the household. By aiming at the American Trotskyists Healy strikes at the victims themselves.”
Novack lies. Trotsky was unhappy about Zborowski after he received the letter from General Alexander Orlov early in 1939 and instigated a commission of inquiry.
Although they know about the findings of the inquiry, Hansen and Novack say nothing about it.
Trotsky received only one known clearance of Zborowski and that came from Novack’s friend, Mrs. Lola Dallin.
Novack also lies when he insinuates that Trotsky trusted the assassin Jacson.
Both Natalia Sedov and biographer Isaac Deutscher recounted that Trotsky had deep misgivings about Jacson which he conveyed to Hansen one day before the assassination. (The Prophet Outcast, Oxford University Press, pp. 498 and 499.)
This section of the book was personally checked and approved before publication by Hansen.
Now, somewhat belatedly—with Deutscher safely in his grave for the past nine years—Hansen states that he “could not recall Trotsky telling me he had developed suspicions about Jacson.”
He claims this was a point of contention between himself and Deutscher with the latter promising to check his sources.
Invariably, Hansen recruits his best witnesses from among the dead.
Nevertheless, even if Hansen disputed this point with Deutscher, the final manuscript included the following sentence:
“These questions (about Jacson) must have been on Trotsky’s mind, for two days later he repeated his observations to Hansen, as if to ascertain whether similar misgivings had occurred to anyone beside himself... it was on the day before the attempt on his life that Trotsky confided his vague suspicions to Hansen.”
Deutscher, whom Hansen has praised as a “scrupulous scholar”, did not bow to Hansen’s objections - if, indeed, Hansen had any at the time.
One final point must be made here.
Novack’s foul charge that Trotsky “trusted” Jacson and was responsible for security negligence in Coyoacan conveniently overlooks one thing: and that is that the security arrangements for Trotsky were the responsibility of the Socialist Workers Party leadership.
It was their task to ensure the safety of Trotsky.
This responsibility was delegated to Hansen as Trotsky’s secretary in Coyoacan.
It was not Trotsky who admitted Jacson.
It was the successful penetration of the SWP by the GPU that enabled Jacson to gain access to Trotsky.
Thomas L. Black, whose testimony Hansen ignored for years and now attacks, declared that GPU agents were operating within Trotsky’s villa.
Hansen and Novack want to blame Trotsky for his own death in order to maintain the cover-up of GPU agents functioning within the Fourth International who organized the assassination.
When the GPU first introduced, via the world-wide press apparatus of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the theory of “self-assault” immediately after their May 24, 1940 attempt on Trotsky’s life, it was to divert attention from the criminal plots of Stalin and his agents.
Once again, Hansen and Novack employ the same arguments to cover up for the Zborowskis, Franklins, and Millers.
Charge Eight stands.
Novack has accused Trotsky of responsibility for his own death and this accusation is supported by Hansen.
They cover up for the GPU because they are its accomplices.
The International Committee is ready to make available all the evidence to support this charge.