Ben Mandel
Ben Mandel, also known as Bert Miller, was a purged communist and Lovestoneite who became a researcher for the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1930s.[1]
Miller was head of the New York district when he was expelled from the Communist Party USA along with Jay Lovestone in 1929.[2]
In the same month he was named as a member of the national committee of the Lovestoneite "Communist Party (Majority Group)" faction, although he would later leave in an early factional split.[3] Miller wanted to unite with the non-communist Committee for Progressive Labor Action, led by A.J. Muste, a position which was incompatible with the Lovestoneites view of themselves as a faction of the Communist Party.[4]
In 1945, Mandel worked as a consultant for the State Department's Eur-X. He noticed a Cahiers du Communisme article by French communist Jacques Duclos attacking US Communist leader Earl Browder for his decision to wind up the American party. Mandel concluded that this reflected a new Soviet hardline towards the west and brought the article to his chief Raymond Murphy, and then to the Jay Lovestone and the AFL leadership.[5]
Notes
- ↑ Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, p.139.
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, p.28.
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, p.35.
- ↑ Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s, Greenwood Press, 1981, pp.63-64.
- ↑ Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence, Transaction Publishers, 2001, pp.204-205.