Loading ...Entitled ‘ American Betrayal ‘ , documenting the takeover of the US government by those seeking to destabilize the American way of life and replace it with extreme socialism ( Communism with a capital C ) . Whittaker Chambers mentioned below was a Communist who later defected , and in later Congressional hearings ( 1948 ?) helped take down Alger Hiss and others .
This is an excerpt from the introductory chapter in which Wirt , an educator from the midwest overheard a dinner conversation plotting that overthrow , and wished to address Congress in 1934 to expose the plot :
” “proposed overthrow of the established American social order,” as Wirt put it. These officials, it bears notice, were mainly employed by the same New Deal agencies from which Whittaker Chambers was to marshal forces to fan out across the U.S. government. Wirt’s assessment of the radicalism within the folksily titled New Deal had preceded him to Washington, having made it into the Congressional Record and then the newspapers. “The fundamental trouble with the Brain Trusters,” he wrote, “is that they start with a false assumption. They insist that the America of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln must first be destroyed and then on the ruins they will reconstruct an America after their own pattern.” 3
Out of the political pandemonium that ensued, a select House committee emerged to investigate—or, as the Democratic New Deal majority preferred, to lay the matter to rest. 4
On April 10, 1934, in the same caucus room where Whittaker Chambers would testify fourteen years later, witness Wirt would have his say, but barely. The powers that be understood that Wirt’s story of radicalism in the Roosevelt administration might distract from or even halt their political momentum. Thus the select committee of three Democrats and two Republicans would merely go through the motions—and not even all of them. Contrary to custom (and by party-line vote, 3–2) Wirt wouldn’t be allowed to read his ten-minute opening statement, wouldn’t have benefit of counsel (3–2), and wouldn’t be permitted to rebut charges against him (3–2)—not even after he was falsely accused of having been jailed for German sympathies during the World War (1917–18). 5
Hitler, too, would be invoked to smear Wirt. Most important of all, the committee voted (3–2) not to call any of the key administration officials Wirt cited in his testimony—not the Agriculture Department official who told him about talk in the AAA about retarding the economic recovery in order to speed up the revolution, nor the housing officials planning to collectivize American workers in government-planned communities, nor the “brain trusters” advocating the seizure of the economy and the destruction of laissez-faire. House Democrats preferred, in the words of the scathing minority report on the Wirt investigation, to leave Wirt’s testimony as hearsay. Then it could be smacked down by denials in the press and majority rule. Indeed, within an hour of Wirt’s hearing, such denials “followed in rapid order.” 6
So, too, did a countercharge from the dinner party attendees, all midlevel government officials (five U.S. and one Soviet) Wirt had cited for what he described as revolutionary statements. Not only, they told the press, had they not made any of the statements Wirt alleged, Wirt himself had monopolized all conversation to the point where no one else had been able to say anything at all. As they told it, he just never stopped talking. The world laughed. William Wirt became the butt of jokes throughout the administration and press corps. This front-page Miami Daily News story, headlined LAUGHING THROUGH, is not untypical.” …