Howard Zinn's FBI Files: What It Reveals
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/129975.html
8-5-10
The announcement last week by the FBI that it was releasing the FBI
files of the late radical historian, Howard Zinn, was not met with
universal acclaim. In fact, many leftists were enraged. Typical was
the reaction of Noam Chomsky, who was quoted by writer Clark
Merrefield. Zinn's files, Chomsky said, were "mostly a mixture of
things that they've picked up here and there which is mostly false,
things they've gotten from informants that are mostly false. We took
for granted that obviously we were being monitored by the FBI." For
Chomsky, anything coming from the FBI obviously has to, by definition, be lies.
The most recent comment from the ranks of the Left is by frequent
Nation writer Chris Hedges, whose column in Bob Scheer's
inappropriately named Truthdigreflects the most common take on Zinn's
work by liberal/left intellectuals. Hedges writes how he used Zinn's
A People's History of the United States as a text for the American
history class he was giving to prison inmates. "We've been lied to,"
students would comment at the end of class. He assigned Zinn's work
because he says it opened the "eyes of young, mostly
African-Americans to their own history and the structures that
perpetuate misery for the poor and gluttony and privilege for the
elite." (Wonder no more about why so much of the American underclass
get a bad education.)
So what is in these files? First, the FBI had evidence that Zinn was
a member of the Communist Party of the United States, and lied about
his membership when being interviewed by FBI agents. The first file
on the subject appeared in March of 1949, when an informant noted
"that he (ZINN) is a Communist Party member and attends meetings five
days a week." Zinn was then employed by the American Labor Party,
which itself gives credence to the informant's report. By that date,
the ALP created in the early forties to give NYC labor a left-wing
ballot on which to vote for FDR had been taken over lock, stock and
barrel by the CP. It never would have hired non-Party members as
full-time employees.
Another informant described Zinn as a "person with some authority" in
the CP group to which they belonged. Zinn, he said, taught a course
for his comrades on "basic Marxism." On June 12, 1957, another
informant told the Bureau that when he was transferred to the
Williamsburgh branch of the Party in 1949, "HOWARD ZINN was already a
member of that section." It was his impression that "ZINN was not a
new member, but had been in the CP for some time."
Zinn, however, denied he was a Communist when questioned by the FBI
in 1953. It is important to note here that unlike those who testified
before Congressional investigating committees, Zinn was not under
oath. The reason Zinn denied his membership was the same as that for
other Communists. The Party instructed them not to, even when asked
to testify before committees like HUAC. As some of the Hollywood Ten
members revealed years after their own investigations, if they said
they were Reds, that would only prove that the Red-baiters were right
when they called them Communists! It would undermine their pose as
good liberals, who were only taking pro-Soviet positions because they
genuinely believed in them, not because it was the Party line.
And this is precisely the pose Zinn took to the agents who questioned
him in 1953. Zinn "acknowledged that perhaps his activities in the
past had opened him to charges that he was associated with the CP as
a member; however," he told the FBI, "he was not. … He stated that he
was a liberal and perhaps some people would consider him to be a
'leftist.'" He admitted that he participated in the work of groups
that had been considered CP fronts in fact, he belonged to and
worked in scores of them, not just one or two; "but his participation
was motivated by his belief that in this country people had the right
to believe, think and act according to their own ideals." He went on
to note that if he had knowledge of anyone who sought to overthrow
the U.S. government by force or violence, he would advise the
Bureau. Zinn added that "he would advise the FBI if he observed
persons committing acts of sabotage or espionage against the
Government." He also declared that he "would defend this country in
the event of war against any enemy including the Soviet Union."
What can one say about these statements? First, Zinn had defended his
country, serving as a bombardier in the US Air Force during World War
II. Indeed, it was that experience that led him to view the US as a
nation that committed atrocities against the people of the world, and
he obviously never lost a sense of guilt about the civilian injuries
he had caused as a result of his wartime bombing raids .
Secondly, Zinn, like other leftists, protested the innocence of all
those accused of espionage, like Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. Since
he viewed any of the people so accused as innocent victims of a
witch-hunt (like Christopher Hedges today), he did not have to worry
about the facts. He automatically assumed they all had been framed
up. Would he have defended the US if indeed the Cold War had
escalated into a real war with the USSR? Note he says "any enemy,"
and in his eyes at that time, the Soviet Union was a peacemaking
power and a friend of the American people, hence not an enemy. So as
he obviously saw things, a result like that would never take place.
Finally, he acknowledged to the agents that he belonged to obvious
front groups, and that "some of the members…with which he had been
associated might be CP members," but he was "certain that not all of
the members" were. This too was obfuscation, typical of how CP
members talked. The fronts to which he belonged included The American
Veterans Committee, the Committee To Repeal the Mundt-Nixon Bill, and
others. These groups were then entirely made up of Communists, with
rare exceptions, and these members were often Communists in all
regards except formal membership. No one in that period in the
democratic Left and anti-Communist Left joined or worked with such
Communist dominated or controlled groups. No one in the FBI was fooled.
The file stops, and resumes in the early '60', when as the Bureau's
press release notes, "the Bureau took another look at Zinn on account
of his criticism of the FBI's civil rights investigations." The FBI,
in fact, had much to account for, and took a rather passive role in
protection of civil rights workers. The new investigation reflects a
great deal about J.Edgar Hoover's paranoia that any actual threats to
America's security may have come from those opposing segregation.
By this time, it is clear that Howard Zinn had long departed from CP
ranks. If anything, he was far to the left of the official American
CP. During the war in Vietnam, they backed the moderate group known
as "Negotiations Now," which sought a negotiated settlement of the
war, and had the support of people like Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
and Irving Howe. Zinn became the architect of advocacy of unilateral
withdrawal from Vietnam and a North Vietnamese victory. In 1968 he
and others went to North Vietnam in a solidarity trip, and to arrange
the release of a tiny minority of American POW's, a propaganda coup
for the North Vietnamese government.
Internally, Zinn gave his support to the black radicals in SNCC, as
well as the militant new group, the Black Panther Party. He called
all blacks in American prisons "political prisoners," and said that
the United States "has been a police state for a long time." He also
gave his backing to myriad far left groups, including the Maoist
Progressive Labor Party, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, and
the Third World revolutionary nations of Cuba and North Vietnam. One
did not need FBI reports to learn what he stood for. In a 1965
article found in the files, Zinn praised the New Left for having "no
illusions about Reds," and for seeing "Stalinism unmasked." His
position was one of "moral equivalence," in which he equated the
totalitarian East with the democratic West as evil centers of power,
the United States being the most culpable.
Before long, he would write his book on America's history which has
found its way into many American homes and classrooms. A mega hit,
the book put Zinn's name before the public as a major cultural
figure. No longer a Communist, history became a more effective
vehicle for presenting his ideas.
"He who controls the past controls the future." George Orwell, 1984
--
[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute,
and a Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York's
Queensborough Community College.]
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