The International Committee of the Fourth International rejects with contempt the “verdict” drawn up by Joseph Hansen and George Novack, leaders of the US Socialist Workers Party, and published in the weekly Intercontinental Press of September 6, 1976.
It is a grotesque and sinister fraud concocted by Hansen and Novack in a last desperate attempt to tie their way out of the massive evidence assembled by the International Committee which proves that they are accomplices of the GPU, the Soviet secret police.
It was Stalin and the GPU who perfected the technique of arriving at verdicts without trials. This technique is now practiced by their students, Hansen and Novack. They have proclaimed themselves the “victims” of a “shameless frameup.”
What a despicable distortion! For 36 years they have had the opportunity to bring to light all the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Leon Trotsky and his closest comrades and supporters in the Fourth International.
Instead they have used these years to shield known GPU agents, cover up their crimes and suppress evidence about their criminal activities. They will not answer the specific charges made against them in the International Committee’s indictment (January 1, 1976) and they will not accept the establishment of a commission of inquiry to examine the evidence. The only frameup here is the one being attempted against the International Committee.
Unable to answer the charges, Hansen and Novack have embarked on another course of action. They have manufactured not only a “verdict” but a “jury” as well.
In the 1930s Stalin could always count on an international coterie of petty-bourgeois flunkies who, as strutting “democratic friends of progress,” never hesitated to applaud the shooting of revolutionaries while quoting faithfully from the transcript of the Moscow Trials.
Today, Hansen and Novack recruit from among no less degenerate elements to support their coverup of the GPU’s crimes. Their enemy is always Trotskyism.
After an eight-month worldwide expedition, Hansen and Novack have gathered 168 bodies to affix their signatures to his “verdict” and, in some cases, statements of support. The accomplices describe them as “strong advocates of free and honest dialogue” and “veteran battlers.” The signatories fall into five main categories:
1. Those who have been party to the coverup, who know that the evidence against Hansen and Novack is irrefutable and who know that the charges are proven. This is the group that most of all fears a commission of inquiry to expose the GPU and its accomplices. They are the men who live with lies every day. We include in this group:
Michel Pablo (Raptis), the arch-revisionist renegade, who set out to destroy the Fourth International in the 1950s. He then became an adviser to Ben Bella of Algeria and later Andres Papandreou in Greece. Most recently he hailed Anthony Wedgwood Benn, with whom he privately conferred two days before the Labor government minister voted for spending cuts directed against the working class.
Pablo knew the GPU agent Zborowski, and is well acquainted with his murderous role within the Fourth International, but has never written a word about it. Today, Pablo offers to participate in a “Jury of Honor” to whitewash Hansen, Novack and the GPU.
Ernest Mandel, co-founder of the rump “United Secretariat” who has worked consistently for more than 20 years to oppose an investigation into the activities of Zborowski and the GPU. He sought to prevent Georges Vereeken, veteran Belgian workers leader, from presenting evidence of Zborowski’s crimes. Mandel’s confidence in capitalism is matched only by his singular lack of confidence in the organization he heads: next year he deserts Brussels to take up a professorial appointment at Cambridge University, one of the most reactionary “seats of learning” in the world.
Pierre Frank, who was a witness to the crimes of Zborowski, but, like Mandel, wants the work of the GPU covered up.
Sam Gordon and Morris Stein, both longtime drop-outs from the SWP and deserters from the class struggle, have come in from the cold to defend Hansen and 36 years of coverups. Publicly, they sign for Hansen and Novack. Privately, they know that the charges of the International Committee are all true. They know that James P. Cannon’s secretary Sylvia Franklin (Caldwell) – whom Hansen defends as an “exemplary comrade” – was a GPU agent. Gordon has lied about not knowing Zborowski.
Albert Glotzer, now an open right winger, split together with Shachtman from the Socialist Workers Party in 1940 and was the target of Trotsky’s last great battle. He, too, knows that Hansen is lying about Franklin. But in spite of this, Glotzer has signed the “verdict.”
In an unguarded moment Glotzer explained why: “I hate Healy,” he said. The hatred which Glotzer and the other signatories direct against Comrade G. Healy of the Workers Revolutionary Party is not personally motivated. It is the colder and much deeper hatred of the class enemy directed against the struggle for Trotskyism which the International Committee of the Fourth International represents.
2. Those merchants of slander who comprise a veritable International Renegades Incorporated. They would sign anything directed against the International Committee. We include in this group:
Pierre Lambert and Mrs. Hamilton of the French liquidationist OCI group. They did much of Hansen’s leg work in Europe to collect signatures for his “verdict.”
Lambert has no problem teaming up with Pablo in Hansen’s defense, although Lambert maintains that Pablo destroyed the Fourth International and that he himself is the first anti-Pabloite. Lambert goes about “reconstructing” the Fourth International by preaching the unity of French Stalinism and social democracy.
Tim Wohlforth, who resigned from the Workers League in 1974 shortly after being removed from the position of national secretary by a unanimous vote (his own included) of the Central Committee for having kept secret the CIA family connections of his companion Nancy Fields – who, of course, also has signed the “verdict.” Wohlforth is now Hansen’s most prominent lackey.
Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins, the warped anti-Trotskyists who now call for the restoration of capitalism in East Germany and whose sole political raison d’être is the fomenting of provocations and disruptions within the Workers Revolutionary Party, British section of the International Committee. The venomous group they lead has a membership, including themselves, of 20. Six have signed Hansen’s list.
Ms. Kate Blakeney, the middle-class hysteric who functioned as Blick’s agent provocateur within the WRP, is among them. She worked directly under Blick’s supervision to set up an anti-Party outfit which had as its aim the break-up of the WRP. The same goes for Jim Peck.
Finally, there are the Archers, John and Mary, who in the embittered twilight of their lives are tickled by the attention paid to them by Hansen. He prints their deathly “Bulletins” and accepts their signatures as meaning something.
James Robertson, aging guru of the middle-class haven called Spartacist League, has the dubious distinction of being the only individual who publicly demanded that he be allowed to sign the “verdict.” Politically trained by Shachtman, he was for a time in the SWP but has long since forgiven Hansen for expelling him in 1962. In the 1960s, the FBI fingered Robertson as the man most likely to accept bogus documents and was proven correct. He organizes anti-Trotskyist demonstrations for Hansen, the most recent being directed against the exposure of the GPU.
John Tully, the lethargic radical who deserted the Australian section of the International Committee on the thoroughly reactionary grounds that he saw no personal profit to be gained in the struggle for socialism, and that Stalinism is a product of Bolshevism. Hansen embraced him at once and approved his candidacy for the Australian senate, a selection rivalled only by the Emperor Caligula’s choice of his horse as proconsul.
3. The friends of the Kremlin and “progressive mankind,” who masquerade as Trotskyists whenever it suits them in order to better crawl on their bellies before the Stalinists.
It is within these sick circles that East meets West, that is, where the agencies of both imperialism and Stalinism are afforded a fertile field for reconnaissance operations against the revolutionary movement. This is the milieu of:
Ken Coates of the Bertrand Russell “Peace” Foundation, who has signed the “verdict” even though he has publicly admitted that he never read any of the documents and statements on “Security and the Fourth International” published by the International Committee.
Robin Blackburn, a discredited apologist for Stalinism and self-confessed admirer of the leadership of the British Communist Party. One may include with Blackburn his colleagues Tariq Ali, the much-publicized buffoon, and Pat Jordan of “Dial-a-Demo” notoriety. All three head a sect which they misnamed the “International Marxist Group.”
Ralph Schoenman’s dubious activities are a legend on both sides of the Atlantic. But in return for his signature, Hansen placed him on the official guest list to the recent SWP national conference in Ohio.
Schoenman left the Bertrand Russell “Peace” Foundation under a cloud and has been there ever since. In a confidential testament written on December 12, 1969, Lord Russell broke with Schoenman denouncing him for “accumulating funds by dishonest means” and abusing his position for his own “megalomaniac” ends.
The document was “leaked” in full to Black Dwarf, forerunner of the IMG’s Red Weekly, on September 5, 1970, by another group of revisionists from the Peace Foundation swamp. They were angry because Schoenman’s “excesses” had cost them the Bertrand Russell meal ticket, not to mention airline tickets all over the world.
One of his more recent exploits was to testify behind closed doors for several hours in front of the Rockefeller Commission set up to whitewash CIA activities. Obviously a man with whom Hansen and Novack feel right at home.
4. This is the largest group of all, encompassing not only Hansen’s international entourage of yes-men, opportunists and adventurers, but also middle-class freelancers, renegades and out-and-out anti-communists. There is not to be found among them even the shadow of a serious revolutionary element.
Most of them have not studied the evidence of the International Committee, in a few cases because of language problems but usually because of political indifference. Not one of them has built anything in the working class, content with a life of Philistine squabbles and petty intrigues.
Their ostensible political differences are the subject of interminable “internal” (to all but the FBI and police agencies of their countries) documents. But these dissolve in front of the line drawn by the International Committee between those who stand for the exposure and smashing of the GPU and the Stalinist bureaucracy upon which it is based, and those who stand with the GPU against Trotskyism and the world socialist revolution.
In gathering their signatures, Hansen and Novack in essence pose the question: “Everyone against exposing the GPU, hands up!”
In this group belong:
Jack Barnes, George Breitman, Peter Camejo, Farrel Dobbs, Fred Halstead, Frank Lovell, Tom Kerry, Tony Thomas, et al. The entire leadership of the Socialist Workers Party has taken a loyalty oath to Hansen and Novack and have not the slightest interest in Trotskyism or the truth.
They are all case-hardened opportunists who have presided over the massive penetration of their movement by the FBI. As they live every day with the FBI, whose agents comprise a fair percentage of the SWP’s membership, they have no objection to keeping open house for the GPU. Listed as signatories are also Reba Hansen and Evelyn Reed, but this is hardly likely to impress anyone as they are the wives of the accused accomplices.
Luis Vitale of Chile and Nahuel Moreno of Argentina, who epitomize political bankruptcy, having squandered exceptionally favorable opportunities, helped betray the working class in their own countries, left a demoralised and disintegrating rank and file to their fate and are themselves in comfortable exile. Moreno recently proclaimed his “break” with Hansen. But the question has been posed: “Hands up!”
Charles Van Gelderen has signed, thus fulfilling a long-standing history of disruption. Towards the end of 1938 he spread a false rumour that one of the leaders of the Trotskyists in Britain, R. Lee, stole money from the South African mineworkers’ union before coming to Britain. Van Gelderen succeeded in spreading this slander behind the scenes for several weeks before Lee himself became aware of it. The result was a damaging split.
The same year, 1938, Van Gelderen was in Paris at the time of the founding of the Fourth International where he took a photograph of Jacques Mornard, Trotsky’s murderer, together with his girlfriend, Sylvia Ageloff. When Trotsky was assassinated two years later in Mexico, Van Gelderen sold this photograph to the Daily Express for 50 pounds.
Despite a lifetime of hanging around various groups in Britain, he has contributed nothing politically or organizationally to the building of the movement. He has been activated by the accomplices of the GPU to lie and slander on their behalf.
James and John Percy, Hansen’s political imitators in Australia, are finding this a costly business. Their “Socialist Workers Party” has been penetrated by at least two police agents from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the “Down Under” equivalent of the FBI.
One of them, Max Wechsler, national minutes secretary, got away with heaps of documents from the Melbourne office, while the other, Lisa Walters, was hailed by the Percys as a heroine when she “defected” from ASIO.
The 1,600 FBI agents who passed through Hansen’s SWP in 20 years make no impression on his Australian acolytes. They are puppets on a string who faithfully repeat all that Hansen and Novack say—the International Committee is “paranoid” about security and Sylvia Franklin, the GPU agent, is and remains an “exemplary comrade.”
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and it seems to be Gunnar Jensen of the Revolutionaere Socialisters Forbund and Vagn Rasmussen of the Revolutionary Marxist Group in the Left Socialist Party (!). As far as we can ascertain, neither Dane can speak or read a word of English. Asked why they signed, a colleague replied: “Because New York told them to.”
Peng Shu-tse, one of the longest running political frauds in history who, at the age of 86, is still referred to as the “Chinese section” of the United Secretariat. All votes cast by the Pabloite Chinese section are always unanimous since Peng and his wife are its only members—an impressive total considering that there are only 800 million Chinese living on the planet.
Alain Krivine of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, whose impending liquidation of his own section into the centrist PSU is being held up as a model of Pablo’s “tactic.” This theoretical revisionist is reunited with Lambert on Hansen’s list, even though he boycotted the SWP convention because Hansen extended an invitation to the OCI. Krivine’s LCR recently denounced the OCI as “whirling dervishes” of the French left.
Bala Tampoe, trade union secretary and also leader of the Sri Lanka “Revolutionary Marxist Party,” is a man certainly qualified to provide character references for Hansen and Novack. He was the subject of a control commission report by his own collaborators who established that Tampoe accepted money from the CIA-funded Asia Foundation, paid a call on US warlord Robert McNamara, who was then napalming Vietnam, had dinner with then Chancellor and one-time Nazi Kurt Kiesinger, and partied with the British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka and the CIA-connected right-wing union functionary Thondeman during the 1967 plantation workers’ strike.
Edmund Samarakkody of the Sri Lanka “Revolutionary Workers Party” is on the control commission that investigated Tampoe, whom he now joins on Hansen’s list along with Robertson who publicised the secret report. Samarakkody is a real force in Sri Lanka, turning up in the last May Day demonstration with a mighty band of 35 supporters.
Bob Pennington has impeccable credentials to qualify as a signatory. Utterly devoid of political principles, his pathological hatred of the Workers Revolutionary Party won him the secretaryship of the “International Marxist Group.”
Brian Grogan and Alan Jones are two IMG members who Hansen could not possibly overlook. The former helped set up the Red Lion Square catastrophe and then suppressed the name of the secret IMG witness whose testimony enabled Mr. Justice Scarman to hold that the IMG, not the police, were responsible for the death of Warwick University student Kevin Gateley.
Jones helped Pennington produce a rigged control commission in the Gerry Lawless affair. In August 1973, Lawless gave the capitalist Press a fraudulent IRA communiqué connecting the Republican movement with a spate of bombings. The Tory Daily Mail devoted a two-page spread to Lawless as “The Man Who Tipped Off Scotland Yard.”
Giannis Felikis of the Organization of Communists Internationalists is a Greek associate of Hansen. In his native country he is generally regarded as an incorruptible petty-bourgeois protester. He has also been described as the “clown of Athens.”
Hugo Blanco is the Peruvian adventurer who has left his calling card with Hansen and Novack. It is simply a case of Blanco and Hansen continuing their game of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” This has gone on for many years. In return for receiving limitless free publicity in International Press, Blanco permits himself to be referred to as Hansen’s “Peruvian” section.
A number of other imposing figures in the world labor movement have rallied to Hansen and Novack. Like Hermann Dworczak in Austria, Fausto Amador in Costa Rica, Mar Gudmundsson in Iceland, Robert Mertzig in Luxembourg, Charles André Udry in Switzerland and not to be forgotten, Andrés, Antonio, Carlos, Daniel, Eva, Juan, Orieta and Ulises in Venezuela. When they speak one is obliged to take notice. These are the boys and girls who open up the sections of the United Secretariat in their countries like franchises of a fast-food chain.
Nor can we fail to mention Dermot Whelan of Ireland and Louis Sinclair of Britain, who represent nobody and nothing but themselves.
Michael Kidron is the “International Socialism” group’s signatory. He signs for all of them—Cliff, Harman, Foot—because they are too cowardly to do so. Kidron is an eloquent representative—an academic dilettante who is completely opposed to Leninism and Trotskyism, a snob and playboy who fits perfectly into the milieu somewhere between Private Eye and its proletarian wing, Socialist Worker.
Then there are those Hansen refers to as “veteran battlers.” Like:
Ted Tripp of Australia, who graduated from the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in the 1930s during the Moscow Trials, and had an accidental sojourn in the Trotskyist movement for a brief period upon returning to his country.
He left the movement at the outbreak of the war and became an open exponent of state capitalism. For many years he has been director of the Victorian Labour College in Melbourne which is partly financed by the right-wing Catholic Democratic Labor Party (DLP). This institute turns out bumper crops of Stalinist reformists and bureaucrats. Tripp still holds membership of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), a scab association which works openly against the mass metal workers’ union.
C.L.R. James, the crude Black Power “theorist,” once described Trotsky as “a very defective politician.” In 1942, the International Correspondence Secretary of the Fourth International, Jean Van Heijenoort, denounced him for “conscious falsification” and “a large dose of hypocrisy.” In August 1975 the International Committee contacted James by telephone to learn whether he knew anything about Zborowski’s penetration of the Fourth International when James was still a member. He answered that he could not remember anyone called “Etienne” or Zborowski, and then added: “All that is a long time ago. I have nothing to do with the Trotskyists.”
James has proved that by making a special declaration for the accomplices of the GPU: “The idea that they have at any time been in contact with or in any way associated with the GPU is utterly false and a dangerous political fabrication.” This affidavit on behalf of Hansen and Novack bears no date, but it has already been contradicted by Hansen himself who now admits that he did have contacts with a top-level GPU agent in New York. As for Novack, he admitted last December that he helped bring Zborowski into the United States in 1941.
Raya Dunayevskaya is an old crony of C.L.R. James with whom she formed a faction in 1950 inside the SWP to oppose the defense of North Korea. Both were soon out of the SWP. She then began to cash in on the fact that she once did some typing in Coyoacán, promoting herself vigorously as Trotsky’s “secretary” while preaching her own eccentric brand of state capitalism. She now serves in her dotage as a sort of den mother for politically disturbed radicals who have adjustment problems.
Arne Swabeck, who was expelled from the SWP in 1967, has also found his way back to Hansen, via the thoughts of Chairman Mao. When questioned by the International Committee more than a year ago, Swabeck conceded that he knew nothing about Hansen’s contact with the GPU. He also said that the exposure of GPU-Stalinist crimes against the Trotskyist movement had nothing to do with politics. Swabeck’s politics, that is.
Charles Curtiss, who has given an effusive statement in defense of Hansen and Novack to International Press, served for one year in Coyoacán during the crucial period when the assassination of Trotsky was near fully prepared.
He met Hansen back in Salt Lake City, recalling that “Joe and Reba” often invited him to dinner and would put him up for the night. Curtiss says that they “were and are dedicated incorruptible socialists.” He’s a fine judge of these things, having deserted the Socialist Workers Party at the start of the witchhunt in 1951 to find a niche in the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas.
Murray Weiss and Myra Tanner Weiss, two more drop-outs from the SWP, have now emerged from a long political slumber to give lectures on the virtues of Portuguese Stalinism for the so-called “Marxist Educational Collective.”
Harry Turner, Earl Owens, Milton Zaslow, Hugh Fredericks, Charles Andrews and Bruce Landau, all giants of American labor who could fit the total membership of all their talk shops combined into one spacious closet.
Turner is a fairly representative of them all: ex-Stalinist, ex-SWP member, ex-Spartacist League member, ex-Class Struggle League member. Turner is now doing a tour of duty in the so-called Trotskyist Organizing Committee, while he prepares his next deft maneuver.
Finally, we come to V. Raymond Dunne, who belonged to no organization, but is included for the purpose of confusing people with a familiar name. The real Vincent R. Dunne, who led the 1934 Minneapolis General Strike, died in 1970 at the age of 81. This counterfeiter is perhaps a family relation, but Trotskyism is not transmitted through the genes.
Hansen and Novack claim that the signatories are those of people “holding similar views on this question whatever their special political points of view may be.” They add: “All of them are familiar with the Trotskyist movement; many are acquainted personally with Joseph Hansen and George Novack, and know the record of the Socialist Workers Party, although they may disagree with its position on a number of issues.”
With these being the only necessary conditions to gain a place on this list, we do not understand the purpose of one person who satisfies these qualifications: Sylvia Franklin. She certainly is “familiar” with the Trotskyist movement, having spent years spying on it. Working as the personal secretary to James P. Cannon, she stole more internal documents than most members read in a lifetime. Since she remains, in the words of Hansen, an “exemplary comrade,” he should only be too eager to have her signature.
5. This last group – which consists of associates, sympathizers and the grandson of Trotsky – must decide whether they will stand for the exposure of Trotsky’s murderers or with those who cover up for them.
Those few individuals who belong to this group have signed the “verdict” for reasons best known to themselves. They could have first consulted the International Committee and studied its evidence but they did not. They are being used or – and we will not exclude this possibility – are deliberately offering to be used by Hansen and Novack. We are referring to:
Marguerite Bonnet and Tamara Deutscher, the first being the executor of Trotsky’s literary estate in Europe and the second being the widow of the noted biographer. Neither have any special qualifications to pronounce on the assassination of Trotsky. Mrs. Deutscher, were she to examine the evidence published by the International Committee, would learn that Hansen’s lies are disproven by the research of her late husband from whose book, The Prophet Outcast, we have quoted. By vouching for Hansen, Mesdames Bonnet and Deutscher are implicitly vouching for his “exemplary” comrade, Sylvia Franklin – the GPU spy.
We advise the two ladies that they should be more cautious about whom they invite into their literary salons.
We offer the same suggestion to Mr. Daniel Guérin, a learned historian who has long departed from the field of battle. And to Mr. Vsevolod Volkov, the grandson of Trotsky who has never claimed any special political acumen or interests, we say quite directly: “You have been used by Hansen and Novack and it is about time that you studied the documents for yourself.”
Jean Van Heijenoort, on whom we wish to place special emphasis, was Trotsky’s secretary for seven years between 1932 and 1939. He has not signed the “verdict” but granted an interview in Hansen’s behalf to SWP representative George Weissman which was published along with the “verdict.” What Van Heijenoort told Weissman in the interview dated June 15, 1976 is directly contradicted by what he told the International Committee ten months earlier in the course of a two-hour interview which he gave at Brandeis University on September 10, 1975.
The tape of this interview is in the possession of the International Committee and it will be presented as evidence to a commission of inquiry.
Van Heijenoort now tells Weissman that the investigation of the International Committee is “a hue and cry about nothing.”
But he told the International Committee last year:
“A whole book can be written on the GPU agents who were in the Trotskyite ranks at the top, without talking about local agents like Cannon’s secretary in the SWP, but talking just about the people at the top we could fill a whole book. The only question is where they came from, how they got in, what were their methods once they were in and so forth. So I cannot talk in more detail because the subject is so wide.”
Heijenoort contradicts Hansen
Van Heijenoort has not only contradicted himself. He also has contradicted Hansen whom he now appears to defend.
Hansen says that investigating the activities of Zborowski and the GPU is a “dry well.” Van Heijenoort told the International Committee that the subject could fill a book. Hansen says that Cannon’s secretary was an “exemplary” comrade.
Van Heijenoort mentions in passing that she was an agent. Here we have Pontius contradicting Pilate.
Professorial aloofness
Van Heijenoort cannot hope to sit on the fence and play both sides against the middle, maintaining an air of professorial aloofness. He served for seven years as Trotsky’s secretary and his taped interview with the International Committee constitutes essential evidence. What was said was said. His testimony proves Hansen a liar. By giving a statement in support of Hansen, he only entraps himself in contradictions and calls into question his own integrity.
He now bears the crucial responsibility of testifying as to the truth before a commission of inquiry and presenting for publication all the documents in his possession to the Trotskyist movement where they will belong.
There is one thing of which all can be assured: the International Committee cannot be deterred from its investigation by the “reputation” and “prestige” of anyone. Comrade Trotsky, the Fourth International which he founded, and the historical questions raised in his death, tower above the petty affairs of this or that individual.
The inner political thread which binds all the political reprobates who have signed the “verdict” is their hatred of Trotskyism and their mortal fear of the world revolution. They have the impudence to write that they oppose the International Committee’s investigation because: “We are concerned about the practice of such disruptive methods in the workers movement.” Their capacity for self-righteousness is matched only by hypocrisy.
There is no evidence whatever that any one of them ever showed the slightest concern about the disruption of the workers movement by the GPU and Stalinist apparatus. They apparently do not consider the murders of Leon Sedov, Ignace Reiss, Erwin Wolf, Rudolf Klement and Leon Trotsky “disruptive”. They do not consider the spying of Sylvia Franklin who was feeding information to Trotsky’s killers “disruptive”.
Accomplices of the ‘Big Lie’
What they do find “disruptive” to their cherished middle class existence and their thoroughly corrupt opportunist politics is the struggle of the International Committee to expose the crimes of Stalinism against the Fourth International, an historical task inseparable from the reconstruction of mass revolutionary parties to lead the working class to power and the overthrow of capitalism.
For those signatories who have willingly made themselves the accomplices of the “Big Lie,” nothing can be more “disruptive” than Trotskyism and the truth.
The International Committee of the Fourth International gives its answer: the investigation will continue! The campaign for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry will go forward as never before!
In the coming months the sections of the International Committee will impress upon thousands of workers, youth, students and intellectuals the real facts of the assassination of Trotsky and the historical significance of our investigation.
Hansen and Novack cannot intimidate the International Committee with their shameless “verdict” and their packed “jury.” The International Committee cannot be frightened by the GPU nor diverted by revisionist pygmies. If they continue to refuse a commission of inquiry, this will not halt our investigation for a moment.
We will pursue Hansen and Novack relentlessly until all the charges made by the International Committee’s indictment have been fully answered.