A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (13 page)

The Naval intelligence services, however, realized
that FDR would only be President for so long, but America would
need to be protected from its enemies, foreign and domestic,
forever. They began to track Soviet and German cable traffic. Their
biggest fear was that the Hitler-Stalin pact, broken when Germany
invaded Russia in 1941, would be re-instated, meaning that the
Soviets would stop being our ally against Germany, and suddenly
German allies against us. While listening in on Soviet cables they
also picked up on espionage activities directed against us. In
1943, the Navy confirmed that Chambers’s accusations against Hiss
were true, and that a number of top Democrats were also spies.
Among them were Harold Ickes, FDR's interior secretary and father
of President Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff by the same
name.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was informed of these
confirmations. Hoover and the OSS (pre-cursor of the CIA) were
involved in sensitive, classified investigations of domestic
infiltration by the Communists. So sensitive were these
investigations that they could not afford to let the U.S.S.R. know
that they knew what they were up to. Hiss was allowed to remain in
place. When FDR met with Soviet leader Stalin and British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill at Yalta, Hiss was an influential aide.
The agreements between the three countries at Yalta, and later the
United Nations charter, were written in large part by Hiss. They
were highly favorable to the Soviets, giving them the rope they
needed to “hang” Eastern Europe in violation of their promises to
Churchill and the sickly, dying Roosevelt.

Meanwhile, Whittaker Chambers was beside himself. He
had turned Hiss in, only to see a known Soviet spymaster shaping
U.S. foreign policy at a crucial juncture in world history. His FBI
contacts told him they were equally frustrated, but their hands
were tied. Hoover insisted on leaving Hiss alone while he
investigated the Russians, largely revolving around the
ultra-dangerous area of atomic secrets and further infiltration of
the American scientific community (eventually resulting in the
conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and shedding light on the
turncoat Manhattan Project architect Robert Oppenheimer).

Chambers finally decided to go public with what he
knew. He approached Congress, and found a willing ear in young
Congressman Richard Nixon (R.-California). Nixon was looking for an
issue that would help him make a huge splash. Chambers told Nixon
all that he knew, which stunned Nixon. He was previously naïve to
the fact that Communist infiltration was so prevalent in the
American government and, and it turned out, the movie industry.

Nixon went to Hoover for confirmation of Chambers’s
story. Hoover told the Congressman he could not reveal the results
of his on-going investigations; that it was too sensitive to let
the Soviets know he knew all that they were up to. But Hoover told
Nixon that he was on the right track; that the Communists had
penetrated deeply into the Democrat Party, the White House, the
State Department, Hollywood, and even the Pentagon. He could not
help Nixon, but he encouraged him to go where the truth would take
him.

The result became the genesis of the great political
divide we see in America today. Nixon hailed Hiss before the House
Un-American Activities Committee. Chambers leveled his accusations,
which were denied. Nixon persisted. Hiss was eventually convicted
and disgraced. Many Democrats were exposed as Communists, as were
many “fellow travelers” and actual spies in the film business. This
led to McCarthyism in the 1950s, a period of further tremendous
division. Because of the nature of FBI and CIA covert operations
against the Soviet Union, Hoover was never able to reveal all that
he knew, so a shred of doubt often hung over the guilty
parties.

The Democrat establishment fell in line behind Hiss
with everything they had. Every top Democrat vouched for him. Vile,
foul, unimaginable lies were uttered against Chambers, who
stoically absorbed each of the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune, girded spiritually by Christ’s suffering on the cross. He
said little if anything, preferring not to answer critics but
rather letting their foul epithets speak for themselves.

“There is nothing louder than the truth-teller’s
silence in the face of the liar's shouts,” he stated.

After Hiss was convicted and Chambers proven right,
Chambers wrote a 1952 Best Seller,
Witness
, which was a
testament to Christian truth and American righteousness, but
ultimately contained grave prognostications. Chambers said that
Communism – whether it be called Communism or not – stood for
something exceptionally evil, an anti-God creed, using racism and
social inequalities as covers for the devil’s works, and would
ultimately prevail over American-style freedom and Democracy. To
date Chambers’s pessimism has not become true, but it does not take
more than a quick glance at the media, the socialist lies about
America’s role in the world, and a pervasive effort to tear down
the institutions that made the U.S. exceptional – family, faith,
patriotism, valor – to see that someday he may be viewed as a
prophet. One can only pray it is not so.

For years, the
New York Times
,
The
Nation
, the Democrats and the establishment Left clung to
Hiss’s innocence despite his conviction. They excoriated Chambers,
besmirching and slandering his good name, each of their lies more
outrageous than previous ones. Finally, when the United States won
the Cold War on the day we celebrate Christ’s birth – December 25,
1991 – the Soviet archives were opened. The Venona Project, the
long-secret Naval intercepts of Soviet cable traffic during World
War II, along with ancient secrets from the KGB, further revealed
that Chambers had been right all along. Hiss and many top FDR
Democrats had been actual traitors.

Nixon rose to national prominence on the strength of
the Hiss case and his Red-baiting, anti-Communist rhetoric. The
Left hated him for it, and would finally exact revenge when they
nailed him for Watergate. But in 1950, Nixon defeated the liberal
Hollywood actress Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate. He was
one of the first politicians to directly link Hollywood with
Communism and general anti-American sympathies, an accusation
leveled with every bit as much fervor today as in the 1950s.

Nixon was chosen as Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate
in 1952, and served as an influential, muscular Vice President for
eight years. Ike strove to walk a fairly moderate course. Nixon was
his Right wing “attack dog.” In 1954, when the Communists defeated
the French at Dienbienphu, Nixon advocated the use of “tactical
battlefield nuclear weapons." Eisenhower chose not to do so.

When American business interests in Latin America
were threatened by Communist takeovers, Nixon made a courageous
trip in which he and his wife (a USC graduate, Patricia Nixon) were
spat upon, but the American V.P. stood up to the crowds and earned
respect. When Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev came to the U.S.,
Nixon took him on. In one famous “kitchen debate” he squared off
with the bellicose Soviet leader, defending American-style
capitalism against Kruschev’s admonitions that the Communist system
was superior.

Kruschev also made a trip to San Francisco, where he
was given a tour by Nixon of Petrini’s supermarket in the upscale
Stonestown section of The City. Kruschev looked at the rows and
rows of gourmet foods in the market, convinced it was a set-up;
that such groceries were not made available to the average consumer
on a daily basis. Nixon assured him that it was an ordinary example
of goods and services made available to American shoppers, but
Kruschev did not believe it, even though it was true.

Nixon was the point man during a series of crises,
such as Fidel Castro’s take-over of Cuba and Kruschev’s infamous
“shoe-banging” incident at the United Nations, when he told the
West “we will bury you.”

In 1960, Nixon beat John Kennedy, but the
Presidential election was stolen from him. In Cook County, Illinois
(Chicago), Major Richard Daley arranged for Democrats to “vote
early, vote often” via multiple, fraudulent votes, pushing JFK over
Nixon in electoral-rich Illinois. In Texas, Senator Lyndon Johnson
orchestrated the “tombstone votes” of dead Texans for the
Kennedy-Johnson ticket. It was a replay of Johnson’s fraudulent
stealing of the 1948 Texas Senate election. It gave Texas and its
electoral votes to the Democrats. The combination of Illinois and
Texas was just enough to push Kennedy into the win column.

Nixon returned to California. He was a tremendous
sports fan who had been reading the
Washington Post
Sunday
baseball statistics when the call came in that Eisenhower had
suffered a heart attack. He let hyperbole get the best of him when
he called the Sports Arena the “best arena in the country” in 1959
(it may have been at the time, but it paled in comparison with the
Forum), and especially when he lauded Candlestick as the “finest
baseball stadium” in the land at its 1960 opening ceremonies.

Nixon was offered the role of Commissioner of
Baseball in 1961, but turned it down. He moved to Beverly Hills and
joined a corporate law firm in downtown Los Angeles. In 1962 he ran
for Governor of California against a popular Democrat, Edmund “Pat”
Brown. Brown’s list of accomplishments included the successful
state university system, expansion of the junior college system,
the water aqueduct supplying the Southland with Northern California
water, and implementation of an impressive freeway system, the
result of Ike’s highway bill enacted in the 1950s.

Brown was something of a rarity of his time: a
powerful Northern California political figure. The period between
World War II until after Vietnam was one in which Southern
California consolidated economic and social power, re-making the
state, the West and indeed the rise of conservatism as a winning
ideology, into its image. While Nixon was the first, he really only
paved the way for Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was a college football player from the
Midwest who announced Chicago Cubs games. During a trip to Catalina
Island, where the Cubs’ held Spring Training, Reagan on a lark went
to take a Hollywood screen test. He was met favorably and given a
chance to achieve stardom when he portrayed Notre Dame’s tragic
football hero, George Gipp, in the 1940 classic
Knute Rockne:
All-American
.

Reagan never attained true movie greatness. In the
end he was weighed, measured and found wanting. An FDR Democrat,
Reagan was politically savvy and became president of the Screen
Actors Guild. In that role, he saw up close Communism in Hollywood,
and worked closely with the Federal government to help weed it out.
This earned him the enmity of liberals. Because of on-going
investigations of Soviet infiltration, the FBI as in the
Nixon-Chambers case was not able to divulge all they knew. The Left
used this “shadow of doubt” to cast doubt on Reagan, McCarthy and
Right-wing accusers, but the Venona Project and de-classified
Soviet archives revealed that Reagan was right. McCarthy was right,
too, although his methods had been over the top.

Reagan’s movie career fizzled and he went into
television, but great success eluded him. He did meet his wife,
Nancy Davis, because of his political position. Miss Davis, an
aspiring actress, received notice that she was to appear before a
committee investigating allegations that she had participated in
Communist Party meetings. She had not, and approached Reagan for
help in straightening the issue out. They met over dinner, at which
time Miss Davis informed Reagan that she was not merely a patriot,
that this was obviously a mistake, but that she was a
registered
Republican
. This was virtual
prima facie
evidence that
while she might be many things, a Communist was not among them. Her
obvious love for America was a strange turn-on for Reagan, and
nature took its course. There turned out to be another person, a
Communist, who used the fake name of Nancy Davis.

Reagan eventually became a spokesman for
Westinghouse following television programs sponsored by the giant
corporation. His talks were friendly, engaging and charismatic,
with increasingly political overtones. Reagan was concerned with
the rise of “big government,” advocating a lowering of the tax
base, fiscal responsibility, and tough reaction to Soviet
adventurism. By 1962, however, he was at loose ends. His acting
career had gone no where and his TV speechmaking had run its
course. With Kennedy in the White House, Brown re-elected as
Governor of California, Nixon beaten twice in three years and
Reagan seemingly washed up, the country and its largest state
seemed to be trending to the Democrats after a long period of GOP
hegemony.

Northern California was regaining some political
influence in the early 1960s, but heading into 1962 they had little
to cheer up about on the fields of play. Stanford had been a
juggernaut for decades. The Indians played in the first Rose Bowl
(1902), and won National Championships in 1905, 1926 and 1940. In
1942 they won the NCAA basketball title, and in the early 1950s,
led by one of the greatest athletes in history, two-time Olympic
decathlon champion Bob Mathias, they went to the Rose Bowl.

But in the mid-1950s, in response to rising rents,
they established a slush fund to pay their football recruits. When
the NCAA investigated, Stanford knew they would be caught. They
also knew similar violations had occurred at rivals California,
Washington, USC and UCLA. Stanford cut a deal with the NCAA,
turning in the other programs in order to avoid penalties of their
own. But the resulting scandal had a terrible impact on the Pacific
Coast Conference, reducing its prestige just as they were
rebounding from post-war doldrums. Stanford went into a prolonged
down period.