Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Power of Willful Denial
Below is an incomplete list of Americans who were confirmed by the Venona Project to have both spied for the Soviets and worked for the FDR administration. Okay, it’s an incomplete list for two reasons: 1) Only a small percentage of the messages intercepted by the Army Signal Intelligence Service could be successfully decoded and 2) The list was so long that I got tired of adding new names. But you can parse the rest of the list of Venona-Americans, which is available here. This list includes people who had personal access to FDR himself. In fact, FDR’s closest aide Harry Hopkins was a Soviet spy.
This post is not about whataboutism. It’s about perspective. Democrats’ hands are far from clean when it comes to Russia. The next time you hear a liberal call Trump Putin’s puppet, ask them what they think about FDR’s record on Soviet espionage. There is overwhelming evidence that FDR hired scores of Soviet spies, and many liberals to this day either don’t know about it or know but refuse to accept it. Don’t let them lecture you about willful denial.
John Abt
Solomon Adler
Joel Barr
Alice Barrows
Joseph Milton Bernstein
Frank Coe
Judith Coplon
Lauchlin Currie
William Dawson
Samuel Dickstein
Martha Dodd
Laurence Duggan
William E. Dodd Jr.
Jack Fahy
Edward Fitzgerald
Charles Flato
Jane Foster Zlatovski
Harold Glasser
Gerald Graze
David Greenglass
Theodore Hall
Maurice Halperin
Alger Hiss
Donald Hiss
Harry Hopkins
Bella Joseph
Helen Grace Scott Keenan
Mary Jane Keeney
Charles Kramer
Christina Krotkova
Duncan Lee
Harry Magdoff
SaveSave
Published in General
Also, don’t forget Ted Kennedy’s attempt to get the Soviets to interfere in the 1984 presidential election.
One of the big reasons I became a Republican was the fact that the Democrats often seemed to like our adversaries more than they like America and her allies. What I did not expect was that Republican would ever follow in this infamous trail pioneered by Democrats.
I pray this is all some kind of ruse by Trump to win something important from Putin. I see no evidence that he is doing that but I pray he is.
Action:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-13/u-s-strikes-said-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria
Words:
I agree with you in general about Russiagate, but you should trim your list. David Greenglass wasn’t a Democrat or a New Dealer; he was a Communist and low ranking technician at Los Alamos. Theodore Hall, also a Communist, was a scientist there. They don’t belong here.
Others have vaguer connections to FDR. Samuel Dickstein was a corrupt congressman who took massive bribes. Since John Abt was an open Communist, it’s hard to count him as a spy.
Are the Democrats being hypocrites? Yes indeed.
There are plenty of names from the Venona-Americans list linked above to take their place.
Sorry what do the actions of Democrats over 70 years ago have to do with the actions of Democrats today?
Republicans today reject whole hog the Repiblicanism on 10 years ago, let alone 70 years.
Democrats liked the Russians when they were communists, but they don’t like Russian gangsterism minus the communism. Liberal Democrats still revere FDR and refuse to acknowledge his weak spot for Communist employees. Sorry, not gonna stop pointing that out.
Let’s cut the BS. Trump doesn’t want to admit that Putin helped him win the election, because that would imply that Trump is somewhat less than awesome. Otherwise, why would he need the help? This is self-serving willful denial, but it does not bear any resemblance to treason.
This is just like Democrats refusing to admit that Venona destroys the credibility of their most revered liberal president. They have no reason to want to talk about that subject, so they skirt the issue every time the subject comes up. It’s willful denial.
BTW, two facts make me hesitant to concede that the Russians hacked Hillary’s emails.
Agreed. Trump isn’t doing this in service to Russia but to his own ego, it’s stkll dangerous, but a different kind of dangerous.
Exactly, he’s a narcissist. I’m not sure you’ll find a Trump supporter who denies that fact. But I don’t see how that makes him any more “dangerous” than the 44 presidents who went before him.
OK, time for a requisite plug for M. Stanton Evans.
Buy it, read it.
They might be relevant, they might not. The more ideology matters, the more its proponents can be expected to exercise denial. Ideology is paramount on the left. We believe Alger Hiss. We believe Hillary Clinton. YMMV.
Hopkins is not named in Venona.
BTW, if you believe that Russian intelligence operatives are not entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, then you must also agree that Trump should fire Rosenstein, because that presumption is exactly what Rosenstein just gave 12 Russian GRU operatives.
Wait what?
Read McCarthy.
If you believe like I do that Russian intelligence agents are not entitled to presumption of innocence, then Rosenstein can’t be your guy, because he just indicted a bunch of Russian intelligence guys. According to McCarthy, they are now presumed innocent until proven guilty in a US court of law. If Trump says “we know these guys are guilty, because we have airtight intelligence that they did this”, then he is stepping all over his DAG’s indictments. Where’s the “Justice” in indicting those poor GRU operatives based on evidence that was collected without a warrant (sarcasm)?
But I agree with the reasonable people who say we should take care of this cloak and dagger stuff in secret cloak and dagger fashion, not in court. But I’m afraid Mr. Rosenstein is gonna have something to say about that. So he’s gotta go.
I don’t understand the reason for this post. No one who is even vaguely familiar with the history of the Soviet Union can disagree with it. I certainly do not. And many of the Democrats, except the Scoop Jackson wing of that party, have an awful history. And I don’t a pay a lick of attention to what they say about Donald Trump.
I do care what real conservatives say about him. And nothing can justify how he acted at yesterday’s press conference. Even Trump apologist Newt Gingrich tweeted that he made a bad mistake.
If Hillary had won the election, would there have been an investigation of the help British, Ukrainian and Estonian intelligence services provided to her campaign?
Rule: The left does not care about any of this, except that they think we can be made to care and that they can then use our outrage to attack Trump.
A far better analysis of the meeting with Putin.
“Low ranking” Greenglass
He then turned states evidence, unlike the Rosenbergs.
The larger point is the extensive Soviet espionage apparatus in the US. The US would have been targeted anyway, but FDR’s policies made it much easier than it otherwise would have been. Remember that thing about “aluminum tubing” and Iraq?
Harry Hopkins personally saw to it that Lend-Lease was covertly used to divert aluminum tube sections for uranium purification centrifuges as well as uranium ore to the USSR. Both were highly restricted materials that should not have left the country.
True. And there has been extensive efforts to clear his name, but I’m not convinced. It was his signature trying to transfer uranium to the USSR during WWII.
Not trying. It happened. Tubing, uranium and heavy water were flown to the USSR, though Gen. Groves learned of it and stopped it after tons of uranium had been transferred.
Talk about Trump apologists! That is all that American Greatness is. That plus a liking for the likes of a thug like Putin. What the Devil is wrong with having animus against a thug who kills his political opponents? It is such a shame that we now have a portion of the Right that wants to makes common cause with a murderer like Putin.
I haven’t yet read or watched Trump’s conference with Putin, so perhaps I’m missing something. But it’s difficult to credit claims that Trump is soft on Putin only days after the President encouraged Germany to ditch Russian oil.
Here’s the Poster Boy for this
John Brennan ex CIA Director
Who voted for the Communist Party and Gus Hall for President. ( how he ever got a security clearance baffles me my the way)
And he has the balls to accuse Trump of treason.
Our own spy agencies…the FBI and the CIA as well as our Justice Department…have been doing everything they can the subvert Trump’s Presidency. For me it is easy to see how he could mistrust them. Just a couple of days before this Summit, Rosenstein/Mueller decide to indict 12 Russians that they will never ever convict. The timing seemed eerily coincidental and disruptive. The FBI never saw the server that the Russians are accused of having hacked. Yet it is absolutely without a doubt, according to our highest officials that the Russians did this dastardly act…which only exposed the dishonesty and deceptiveness of the Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign. There were no National secrets exposed. It is common everyday spy work that has been going on for –well forever.
I recommend watching it over reading it.
There is certainly a cognitive dissonance at work in Trumps mind on Russia.
If the President trusts the murderous dictator of a hostile country over his own intelligence agencies then he should immediately fire their leadership and appoint new people.
Dan Coates is a Trump appointee – he trusts Putin more than Coates. Ridiculous.