Robert Whymant

From Stalin’s Spy, Robert Whymant, 1996

Willoughby’s ears picked up when ‘an excited Japanese official advised me that the release list of political prisoners contained foreign espionage agents, the remnants of the Sorge Ring.’¹ On Willoughby’s orders, a counter-intelligence officer compiled an initial report on the case based on Japanese Ministry of Justice materials. After the exposure of a Soviet spying in Canada in February 1941, the general had homed in on the Sorge story with a new passion. Now he became convinced the [i.e. that] it was part of a global canvas of Soviet penetration and subversion ; “I decided that the Sorge Case, though 10,000 miles away, was a complete parallel and should be reported to demonstrate an existing world-wide pattern’.²

He instructed that a revised version of the Sorge report be sent to Washington, with a recommendation that it be used in military training schools for the study of Soviet intelligence techniques. At first Willoughby opposed publication, but he came to realize that the material had educational value for the American public; it would serve as a warning about what he saw as an international communist conspiracy directed against the Western democracies. Willoughby . . . intended to use the Sorge affair to demonstrate how Soviet espionage recruited and deployed an army of communist sympathizers and fellow travelers to sabotage free societies.

The Sorge report was released to the press in Tokyo on 10 February 1949. The effect was sensational.

The controversy in the US centred on allegations in the report that the American activist and journalist Agnes Smedley was a Soviet spy who assisted the Sorge ring in Shanghai. Another journalist, Gunther Stein, a naturalized Briton, was identified as a Soviet agent working for Sorge in Japan. The pugnacious Smedley immediately counter-attacked, vehemently denying that she had spied for any country. She called on General MacArthur to waive his official immunity, ‘and I will sue you for libel.’

Smedley’s defiance, and the threat of legal action, spurred Willoughby to launch an epic hunt for proof that she and Stein were indeed key figures in the ring. A protracted investigation failed to find firm evidence of guilt ; none the less Willoughby continued his crusade[*] against Smedley in a special report to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951, and in a book, Shanghai Conspiracy, the following year. By that time, there was no danger of a libel suit; Agnes Smedley died in the University Hospital in Oxford in May 1950.

      * Charles A. Willoughby, Shanghai Conspiracy, New York, 1952, in four parts, 315 pages.  Part III   AGNES SMEDLEY AND THE WAR DEPARTMENT, pages 243 – 270.
      Twenty eight (28) pages dedicated to Ms. Smedley out of three hundred and fifteen (315) pages does not look like a crusade against a single person. She is being mentioned throughout the book as one of the figures involved. Please see my magnificent essay titled On the Abominable Blindness, etc. below. (WPT)

To Cold War [?] hawks [?] like Willoughby, Smedley was the link between a bold and successful Soviet spy ring and the ‘fellow travelers and prostituted liberals’ in the United States who espoused left-wing causes. The Sorge material was used as ammunition to attack a broad spectrum of American liberals [?]. The fact that Sorge spied for America’s wartime ally, Russia, and that his targets were Japan and Germany, enemies of the United States, was . . . forgotten . . .

1. Willoughby, Shanghai Conspiracy.     2. Ibid.

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998,
pages 319-320, notes p. 354.

Not Russia but the 'Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics', a murderous clique in power over Russia and parts of Asia from 1917-18 on — was 'America's wartime ally'.

This ally had had a history of deceit ; the alliance with England, France, eventually the U.S., was necessitated by the betrayal in 1941 of Stalin by his erstwhile ally Hitler. This alliance was no other than tactical, the true allies of the U.S. having been only ripped off in the process.

You may examine the actual statements by Ulyanov alias Lenin, by his main co-conspirator Braunstein (Bronstein) alias Trotsky, or by Dzugashvilly alias Stalin himself. War was only an 'accelerator' (Lenin, as quoted by Trotsky). The aim, in any circumstances, was the world-revolution ; the inexorable consequence would be the control of the entire planet by the criminal cabal ensconced in the Kremlin in Moscow.

Disinformation and deceit were the modus operandi, and invariably so.

The row in the U.S. over a phony journalist Smedley would have only served distracting the people's attention from the magnitude of the communistic internal subversion within the U.S. — and from the fact that they were facing a world-wide racket.

This was not about a single " I-was-not-a-spy ! " ; this was about tens and scores, eventually the hundreds of de facto agents of a foreign power ('wartime ally' for the while) who had been able to infiltrate the highest levels of the U.S. Government and, not just spy but, influence its policies.

Also, and this has been all too seldom noticed, the onslaught of disinformation, in the press, in lying books written by corrupt authors, and via any outlets that could be infiltrated by those 'ideologues' of the marxian rackets.

One notes the straw-man fallacy, of the "theories of conspiracy" having been often used to obscure the issues.

One is not interested in a "theory of conspiracy". One is interested in the liquidation of disinformation (false data).

I would not question the general integrity of the author of Stalin’s Spy (as at the top of page) other than by registering that the man had been swayed, by some “cold war” (mere descriptive term of vague import), or anti-anti-communistic propaganda. Unfortunately, he was not the only one.

There is no symmetry (e.g., ‘left’ vs. ‘right’, or, ‘a two-party system’, or ‘nazi’ vs. ‘commie’) inherent in this issue. The history of the 20th century communism is the history of the greatest evil ever known to mankind ; there should be no ambivalence on that point left in anyone’s mind.

WPT, 9 Aug 05