GERALD W. JOHNSON THE SUPERFICIAL ASPECT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000500440024-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 29, 2003
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: April 16, 1962
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2004/01/16 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500440024-6
APRIL 16, 1962
rather someone. And this someone isn't going to like
the idea. If he resists.-Well, what can we do, except
put him in jail, or, if necessary, kill him. Yet when he is
shot, "democrats" in the West will cry "terrorism" or
"Communist dictators ip.
Can't genuine land reform be accomplished without
setting up a Communist totalitarian state - by some
form of social democracy, for example?
I'm not sure what you mean by "Communist totali-
tarian state," but do you honestly think there can be
democracy in a situation where go percent of the people
can't read, and hardly eat enough to be able to think
of anything beyond mere survival?
Then you propose to replace one kind of elite by
another?
In the early stages. And yet if you look at Cuba, for
example, I don't think the word elite will fit. It's not
an elite when masses of people are given their land,
when they are taught to read and write, when they are
armed and compose their own army; and when, in
short, everything is being done to put them in a posi-
tion where they can take part in the running of their
country as informed citizens with a decent standard
of living. Would Franco do this? Would Salazar? For
that matter, would the French do it in Africa, or the
Americans in Latin America?
You insist that Russia does not attach strings to its
aid. May we remind you of Hungary?
There are two separate things - a Russophile and a
Communist. Russia does many things that I do not
approve of: the firing of the superbomb comes to mind.
And there was a strike among some of the peasant
communities in Russia a few months ago; the authori-
ties suppressed the strike with violence and thousands
of peasants died.
If not to Russia, where then do you look for your
model of Communism?
China. The Russians in 1.917 destroyed a decadent
bureaucracy, but now they have replaced it with still
another bureaucracy. Of course, they have made amaz-
ing progress: they have accomplished in 50 years what
it took the West 250 to do. And I believe Khrushchev
when he says that they are moving toward real Com-
munism. But the bureaucracy is there, and will be hard
to dislodge.
In China, however, the true basis of government
has been created by agrarian reform. The communes
belong to those who farm them, and they work out
their own problems, turning to the central government
only for planning and coordination. Before the Revo-
lution, China was a country exploited by all the major
European powers, overpopulated, divided by language
differences, vast expanses of terrain and different cus-
toms, and united only by widespread famine under
the rule of the imperialists and their native partners,.
Now in 11 years China has come a long way towards
solving its economic problems. As in Cuba, schools
have been built all over the country. The leaders of
our Movement-like the leaders of other underdevel-
oped countries - have consulted with Mao Tse-tung
about strategy and tactics in our fight for liberation.
When you speak of China helping other countries
become independent, are you referring to Tibet?
Too little is known about that incident to condemn
China. Didn't Tibet once belong to China? Don't they
speak Chinese? It is possible that there was repression,
as in Hungary, but what were the real sentiments of
the majority of the Tibetan people? I really don't
know. But I think that in 20 years the whole world
will be Communist. And for the first time in human
history, the problem of hunger will have been solved
all over the world; there will be no more inequality of
races; people will not drive Cadillacs in America while
others die in mud huts in Angola.
Will there be freedom of speech or of the press?
One should not have the right to say stupid and
harmful things. Take the Portuguese peasant and tell
him that the Angolans are a bunch of Communist devils
who want to take his land, and he will believe you --
he cannot read, he knows nothing of the world. How
can this man be expected to judge between two ideas,
between two systems. My idealism has its limits; after
we have carefully shown a man the way, we want to be
very certain he does not lose it.
Who is to decide which books are harmful?
A committee of writers-perhaps with the aid of
government advisers-as in Pasternak's case. What
could be fairer? But your emphasis on this question
reveals your twisted point of view. It is amazing to me
how you can be so concerned with an idea you call
"liberty" when so high a percentage of the world's
people is suffering in real slavery. For the laborer in
Africa or South America, there is no question of free
press: the problem is to keep alive. What good is your
so-called free press - which prints lies whenever busi-
ness interests are at stake and which I notice your
President has recently asked to censor itself - what
good has it done the colored two-thirds of the world?
Your assertions about "liberty" sound good; but they
are based on a situation in which a minority have
bought their freedom -to the extent that they have
freedom - at the expense of an overwhelming majority.
We are that majority.
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 proved For Release 2004/01/4A-RDPA 001
JCerald W. Johnson THE SUPERFICIAL ASPECT
By Hook or Crook
T he Hon. Richard M. Nixon seems to be one of those
unfortunates whose doom it is always to be ill-served
by their friends. Those well-wishers who put up the
slush fund while he was in the Senate came within an
ace of ending his political career in -1952; those Wash-
ington advisers, presumably friendly, who urged him
into that South American adventure against the advice
of the men on the ground did worse - they almost got
him lynched; Allen Dulles, who is not known to have
pp7r,'ge4'9 K 1 "N+w e~ L
been unfriendly,, unwittingly did him an ill turn when
he fa ced to explain to Nixon that Kennedy was not in-
formed.,Q the Cuban. invasion preparations, leading
Nixon to make a serious mistake in his book; and now
it appears that even his research assistant let him down
by permitting Nixon to insert in the same book a pas-
sage making it apparent that Alger Hiss could have
been framed.
Since Hiss has been shouting for years that he was,
in fact, framed, this was much worse than merely a
typographical error, since it adds another wisp of smoke
to the murkiness that already clouds that incident; and
the wisp is not cleared away by the chief researcher's
assertion that the passage was inserted through error
by one of his subordinates. What else could the man
say? It's a poor hireling who will not take the rap for
his employer in such a case.
It is pretty generally agreed that it was the type-
writer that sunk Hiss, and it sunk him because the jury
believed - and Hiss' own counsel at the time believed
- that it was authentic because there was no possible
way in which the prosecution could have planted a fake.
Now Nixon's own book reveals that there was a way;
and while the assertion that it was all a mistake by a
subordinate may be perfectly true, it is the kind of
truth that has too much the look of a lame excuse.
If the Hiss Case had been otherwise clear of suspi-
cion this episode would have been shrugged off by fair-
minded men. But it is not clear. On the contrary,
throughout it has been clouded by the way in which it
was conducted. There are many who, without any idea
whether Hiss was guilty or innocent, look with strong
distaste on the methods by which the man was prose-
cuted by Nixon, among others. By such. methods, they
believe, you could convict anybody of anything - you
could convict George Washington of having shot
Abraham Lincoln. The use of such methods, in this
view, inflicted more permanent damage on the United
States than what Hiss was alleged to have done.
The basic error of the men who handled this case for
the government is one into which police and prosecut-
ing attorneys are all too likely to fall-the error of
believing that there can be no greater evil than that a
criminal should escape paying the penalty for his crime.
But there is a greater evil and a very great American
man of the law pointed it out more than 40 years ago. "I
think it a less evil," said Holmes, "that some criminals
should escape than that the government should play an
ignoble part."
The statute of limitations was embodied in the law
because it is a matter of common knowledge that it is
difficult, sometimes impossible, for an innocent man to
defend himself against charges based on something
that happened -1o years ago. By using technicalities, the
government evaded that statute in Hiss' case; and there
is no doubt of what Holmes would have thought of
governmental evasion of its own laws even to prevent
the escape of a criminal. But since Mr. Nixon is not
another Holmes, perhaps it is less than fair to hold him
to the rigorous standard that the old judge set.
But it was Richard Nixon who, albeit inadvertently,
brought the Hiss case back into the news. Accordingly
he has only himself to blame if his conduct in that case
comes again under public scrutiny and arouses again
the distaste that some have always felt. To say that the
blame is not his, but lies upon his misguided friends -
well, if not friends, certainly associates - is to beg the
question. A man always chooses his friends and usually
his associates; so if they are characteristically mis-
guided, it is a reasonable inference that the man's own
judgment is none too sound.
Partly (and many people think largely) at Nixon 's
instigation, the government played a controversial part
in the Hiss case. Hiss himself is now out of it; guilty
or not, he has paid the penalty and his account is
squared. But if in the process the government played an
ignoble part, then in Holmes' opinion - and Holmes
was a wise man - a greater evil has been inflicted upon
the country by those who managed the case for the
government, of whom Mr. Nixon was one of the most
active, than could possibly have been inflicted on us by
Hiss's escape. This is the issue revived by Nixon 's book,
and it is not one he can easily dodge.
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