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Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government
by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Threshold Editions (Nov 13 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 143914768X
ISBN-13: 978-1439147689

Book Description:
Until now, many sinister events that transpired in the clash of the world’s superpowers at the close of World War II and the ensuing Cold War era have been ignored, distorted, and kept hidden from the public. Through a meticulous examination of primary sources and disclosure of formerly secret records, this riveting account of the widespread infiltration of the federal government by Stalin’s “agents of influence” and the damage they inflicted will shock readers.

Focusing on the wartime conferences of Teheran and Yalta, veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans and intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein, the former head of the U.S. Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation, draw upon years of research and a meticulous examination of primary sources to trace the vast deception that kept Stalin’s henchmen on the federal payroll and sabotaged policy overseas in favor of the Soviet Union. While FDR’s health and mental capacities weakened, aides such as Lauchlin Currie and Harry Hopkins exerted pro-Red influence on U.S. policy -- leading to massive breaches of internal security and the betrayal of free-world interests. Along with revealing the extent to which the Soviet threat was obfuscated or denied, this in-depth analysis exposes the rigging of at least two grand juries and the subsequent multilayered cover-up to protect those who let the infiltration happen. Countless officials of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations turned a blind eye to the penetration problem. The documents and facts presented in this thoroughly researched exposé indict in historical retrospect the people responsible for these corruptions of justice.


Summary:
In reading "Stalin's Secret Agents: The subversion of Roosevelt's government" by Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein (2012), I was amazed by the deep penetration of Soviet agents into the very fabric of the U.S. government and the Allied war effort during WW2. This scenario is confirmed in "My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin" by Susan Butler (2005), which clearly demonstrates the influence of these subversives (Harry Hopkins, Philip Faymonville, Joseph E. Davies, Averell Harriman and others) on President Roosevelt and his government during WW2. [See Book Review.]

Appended below are the Introduction and the headings of the 21 chapters. Under the Introduction heading, we emphasize that the role of these subversives as "agents of influence" was more important than their role as "spies" and have excerpted relevant quotes to demonstrate this thesis. Under the rest of the chapter headings, we provide a very brief description of the contents in each chapter and/or relevant quotes therefrom.

Under Chapter 6, we list the 21 names of Soviet agents provided by Whittaker Chambers, who defected in September 1939 and 24 names supplied by Elizabeth Bentley, who defected on 06Nov1945. The U.S. Senate Committee also provided 16 names of active Communists.

Under Chapter 8, we note that there were many Soviet agents in UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), OSS (Office of Special Services, which eventually morphed into the CIA) and OWI (Office of War Information). A list of 41 names was provided in December 1948 by Soviet agent Anatoly Gorsky. Venona decrypts of transmissions of Soviet agent Duncan Lee (who was the top assistant to William Donovan, head of the OSS) refer to 26 Soviet agents within the OSS.

In Chapter 13, we note that William Donovan and  Canadian William Stephenson set up "Camp X" in Canada to train Croatian Communists (working in mines in Canada) to join Tito's forces to the detriment of the pro-Western Serbian Chetniks led by Draza Mihailovich.

Chapter 16, Operation Keelhaul was a particularly painful experience to Ukrainian and Russian Cossack refugees as they were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union, where death or the Gulags awaited them. Department of State Undersecretary Joseph Grew sent a cable protesting the repatriation provisions in the Yalta agreement, but received a curt dismissal from Stettinius, who later claimed that he had neither seen Grew's protesting cable nor sent any reply. Evans/Romerstein surmize that Alger Hiss intercepted Grew's cable and sent the reply.

[W.Z. The information in this book suggests that Soviet agents, who had infiltrated Anglo-American military operations in Europe, were busy staging anti-German scenarios to condition public opinion while suppressing their own atrocities from view. After German capitulation, the DP camps were overrun with Soviet personnel collaborating with Soviet agents in the OSS to forcibly repatriate anti-Soviet refugees -- prompting bitter victims to refer to "the naive Americans and their NKVD handlers". Later, as refugees sought to emigrate, IRO and UNRRA personnel were similarly infiltrated with Soviet agents.]

Chapter 18, the Amerasia scandal refers to 6 people arrested for espionage on 06Jun1945, who were all released because of a "Grand Jury fix" with the connivance of the Department of Justice.

Chapter 20, first discusses a  U.S. grand jury convened from June 1947 to December 1948 to hear Elizabeth Bentley's charges of subversion, which fizzled because DOJ refused to call Chambers as a witness. Evans/Rommerstein then  document the Chambers-Hiss confrontation, where Chambers unexpectedly produces 65 documents that proved that Hiss was guilty of espionage. [W.Z. The Amerasia and the Chambers-Hiss cases demonstrate that the Department of Justice of the United States has been compromised and corrupted since the WW2 era. The John Demjanjuk and other similar cases further confirm this conclusion.]

Discussion from a Ukrainian Perspective:
Throughout the whole book, Ukraine is only mentioned once while referring to Potemkin scenarios in Czechoslovakia, Albania and Ukraine. Nevertheless, it is extremely important, since the "agents of influence" concept helps explain the anti-Ukrainian attitudes fomented since WW1, during the Holodomor, during and following WW2 and up to the present day. Within Canada, it helps explain the Ukrainian community's utter failure with respect to the Deschenes Commission, the d&d policy and the CMHR. Lobbying and convincing our politicians as to the validity of our cause is not enough; one must ensure that appropriate policies are implemented and not deflected by Ukrainophobic "agents of influence". Within Ukraine, it is evident that the "agents of influence" are working on behalf of Russian imperialism and the Oligarchs, and not on behalf of Ukrainian citizens.

In conclusion, we must thank Stanton Evans and Herbert Rommerstein, as well as Susan Butler, for exposing the perfidity of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin to be equal to that of Hitler.

Will Zuzak; 2013.06.21


INTRODUCTION -- THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD
-- [W.Z. The role of these subversives as "agents of influence" was more important than their role as "spies".]

"As the record further shows, a main object of Moscow’s subliminal onslaught was to plant secret agents in the United States and other Western nations, with emphasis on official agencies that dealt with military, intelligence, or foreign policy issues."
"... the Venona decrypts compiled by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the 1940s. Venona was the code name given to encrypted messages exchanged between the Red intelligence bosses in Moscow and their agents in this country."
" ... Vassiliev papers ... previous such defectors, including Oleg Gordievsky, Stanislav Levchenko, and Victor Kravchenko, along with native American defectors such as Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley." [W.Z. Evans/Romerstein never mention the defection of Igor Gouzenko in Canada.]
"The most conspicuous of these ties were to the Cambridge University Communist cell of England, which produced such notorious Soviet agents as Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess. ... Donald Maclean ..."
As Chambers expressed it:
"In a situation with few parallels in history, the agents of an enemy power were in a position to do much more than purloin documents. They were in a position to influence the nation’s foreign policy in the interest of the nation’s chief enemy, and not only on exceptional occasions, like Yalta (where Hiss’s role, while presumably important, is still illdefined) or through the Morgenthau plan for the destruction of Germany (which is generally credited to [Soviet agent Harry Dexter] White) but in what must have been the staggering sum of day to day decisions."
Chambers further noted:
“That power to influence policy has always been the ultimate purpose of the Communist Party’s infiltration. It was much more dangerous, and, as events have proved, much more difficult to detect, than espionage, which beside it is trivial, though the two go hand in hand.”
"... even more disturbing: the disappearance of many official records bearing on Cold War matters, either by way of “weeding” or transfer of important papers from one place to another, with no indication that this was done, or in some cases the outright destruction of security data."

Ch. 1: EVEN IF MY ALLY IS A FOOL
-- Roosevelt's high opinion of Stalin at Teheran and Yalta conferences, such that Stalin considered him a fool.

Ch. 2: THE GHOST SHIP AT YALTA
-- Roosevelt was very ill at Teheran Conference (28Nov1943 to 01Dec1943) and even more so at the Yalta Conference (04/11Feb1945).

Ch. 3: SEE ALGER HISS ABOUT THIS
-- Unexpectedly, Alger Hiss was sent to the Yalta Conference, where he played a very active role. (Which he later tried to downplay.)
-- Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius was a novice and always deferred to Alger Hiss.

Ch. 4: MOSCOW’S BODYGUARD OF LIES
-- The Soviets were experts at deception, denunciation and disinformation. Alger Hiss, Lauchlin Currie (Canadian) and Harry D. White were Soviet agents.
"Most obviously, his [Alger Hiss] skill in positioning himself at the vectors of diplomatic information indicates the degree to which Soviet undercover agents were able to penetrate the U.S. government in crucial places, up to the highest policy-making levels. ... he wasn’t an isolated instance, but only one such agent out of many."

Ch. 5: THREE WHO SAVED A REVOLUTION
-- Raymond Robins (with Alexander Gumberg), Armand Hammer, Walter Duranty.

Ch. 6: THE FIRST RED DECADE
-- A myriad of names from the 1920s and 1930s, including Whittaker Chambers, who defected in September 1939 to Assistant Secretary of State, Adolf Berle:
Lee Pressman—Agricultural Adjustment Administration (later with the CIO)
Nathan Witt—National Labor Relations Board
Harold Ware—Agricultural Administration
John Abt—Department of Justice
Charles Kramer—La Follette Committee (Senate)
Vincent Reno—Aberdeen Proving Grounds
Philip Reno—Social Security
Elinor Nelson—Federal Employees Union
Richard Post—State Department
Laurence Duggan—State Department
Julian Wadleigh—State Department
Leander Lovell—State Department
Noel Field—State Department
Lauchlin Currie—White House
Solomon Adler—Treasury Department
Frank Coe—Treasury Department
Donald Hiss—Labor Department
Alger Hiss—State Department
+
Harry Dexter White at the Treasury
George Silverman of the Railway Retirement Board
Henry Collins of Agriculture (subsequently at the State Department)

Elizabeth Bentley defected on 06Nov1945:
Paul Appleby, Budget
C. B. Baldwin, CIO-PAC
Oscar Chapman, Interior
Benjamin Cohen, White House
Oscar Cox, FEA
Wayne Coy, Budget
Lauchlin Currie, White House
Jonathan Daniels, White House
Mordecai Ezekiel, Agriculture
Abe Fortas, Interior
Robert Hannegan, DNC
Leon Henderson, RIA
Major Charles Kades, Army
Murray Latimer, Railway Retirement Board
Isador Lubin, Labor
Robert Nathan, WPB
David Niles, White House
Randolph Paul, Treasury
Milo Perkins, BEW
Paul Porter, OES
Edward Prichard, OES
James Rowe, Justice
Michael Straus, Interior
Aubrey Williams, NYA

U.S. Senate committee:
The IPR . . . was like a specialized flypaper in its attractive power for Communists. . . .
British Communists like Michael Greenberg, Elsie Fairfax Cholmeley, and Anthony Jenkinson;
Chinese Communists like Chi Chao ting, Chen Han seng, Chu Tong, or Y.Y. Hsu;
German Communists like Hans Moeller . . . or Guenther Stein;
Japanese Communists (and espionage agents) like Saionji and Ozaki;
United States communists like James S. Allen, Frederick Field, William Mandel, Lawrence Rosinger, and Alger Hiss.

Ch. 7: REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR
-- Soviet agent Richard Sorge wanted to prevent U.S.-Japanese rapprochment. He convinced Japanese not to attack Russia, but "to turn south".
[Although Romerstein describes the intrigues of the Soviet agents in the Japanese-China area, he does not state that Roosevelt and Churchill were fully aware of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 07Dec1941.]

Ch. 8: THE ENEMY WITHIN
-- There were many Soviet agents in UNRRA, OSS and OWI (Office of War Information)

Bentley revelations led to spring 1946 memo from Guy Hottel to FBI Director Edgar Hoover:
"It has become increasingly clear in the investigation of this case that there are a tremendous number of persons employed in the United States government who are Communists and who strive daily to advance the cause of Communism and destroy the foundations of this government. . . . Today nearly every department or agency of this government is infiltrated with them in varying degree. To aggravate the situation, they appear to have concentrated most heavily in those departments which make policy, particularly in the international field, or carry it into effect . . . [including] such organizations as the State and Treasury departments, FEA, OSS, WPB, etc. . . .

In December 1948 Soviet agent Anatoly Gorsky named over 60 Soviet agents who had been compromised:
Alger Hiss, State Department
Donald Hiss, Interior Department
Henry A. Wadleigh [Julian], State Department
F. V. Reno, Aberdeen Proving Grounds
Henry Collins, Department of Agriculture
William W. Pigman, Bureau of Standards
Lee Pressman, CIO [formerly Agriculture Department]
Noel Field, State Department
V. V. Sveshnikov, War Department
Harry White, Treasury Department
G. Silverman, Air Force
Harold Glasser, Treasury Department
Laurence Duggan, State Department
Franz Neumann, OSS/State Department
Harry Magdoff, Commerce Department
Edward Fitzgerald, Commerce Department
Charles Kramer, Senate Staff
Donald Wheeler, OSS/State Department
Allan Rosenberg, FEA [Foreign Economic Administration]
Stanley Graze, OSS/State Department
Gerald Graze, War Department
Charles Flato, FSA [Farm Security Administration]
Gregory Silvermaster, Treasury Department
Lauchlin Currie, White House
Frank Coe, Treasury Department
Bela Gold, Commerce Department
Sonia Gold, Treasury Department
Irving Kaplan, Treasury Department
Solomon Adler, Treasury Department
Ludwig Ullman, War Department
David Weintraub, UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]
Maurice Halperin, OSS/State Department
Duncan Lee, OSS
Helen Tenney, OSS
Ruth Rivkin, UNRRA
Bernard Redmont, State Department
Robert Miller, State Department
Joseph Gregg, State Department
William Remington, Commerce Department
Julius Joseph, OSS
Willard Park, State Department

The "Venona" decrypts as recorded by Soviet agent Duncan Lee (top assistant to William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the OSS) list the following "fellow countrymen" (Communists) at OSS:
E. A. Mosk
Carlo A. Prato
David Zablodowsky
Alexander Lesser
Robert M. MacGregor
Major Arthur Goldberg
H. S. Fleisher
Irving Goff
Carl Marzani
Leo Drozdoff
T. D. Schocken
A. O. Hirschman
Frederick Pollock
Seymour Schulberg
Donald Wheeler
Julius A. H. Rosenfeld
Manuel T. Jimenez
Virginia Gerson
Gerald Davidson
Fena Harrison
Nettie Solowitz
Louis E. Maddison
Victor Dimitjevich
Michael A. Jimenez
Bert D. Schwartz
Tillie Solowitz

Ch. 9: FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
-- Pro-Soviet luminaries included President Roosevelt,  Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Harry Hopkins (Lend-Lease for Moscow, including U235 fissile material), Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador to Moscow Joseph Davies (Canadian Lauchlin Currie, David Niles), Army Colonel Philip Faymonville (Lend-Lease in Moscow).

Ch. 10: THE WAR WITHIN THE WAR
-- At beginning of WW2, when Stalin was an ally of Hitler (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), U.S. policy was equally anti-Soviet and anti-German barring Nazis and Communists from attaining security clearance for sensitive positions. However, after 22Jun1941 (when Germany attacked the Soviet Union) Communists were given security clearance. Worse, security agencies were instructed to dismantle, mothball and destroy their anti-communist files. (Civil Service, Office of Naval Intelligence, and G-2 of the Army.)
-- The Soviet agents managed to oust a great many American patriots from positions of power including Rear Admiral Adolphus Staton, Lieutenant Colonel John Lansdale, Colonel Ivan Yeaton, Major Jordan, William Bullitt, Joseph Grew.

-- The Ivan Yeaton chart of pro-Soviet influentials under Hopkins appears as follows:
F.D. Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, John J. McCloy, W. Averell Harriman, George C. Marshall, General “Cid” Spalding, Joseph T. McNarney, Philip Faymonville, John Hazard.

Ch. 11: THE MEDIA MEGAPHONE
-- Communist infiltration of the media: I.F. Stone, Michael Straight, Drew Pearson, David Karr, Andrew Older, Joseph Barnes, Guenther Stein, Israel Epstein, Mark Gayn, Philip Jaffe, John Stewart Service, Edgar, Snow, Richard Lauterbach.

Ch. 12: THE PLOT TO MURDER CHIANG KAI-SHEK
-- Cairo summit in mid-November 1943 between Chiang Kai-Shek, Churchill and Roosevelt. At instigation of Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell, John Paton Davies, Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry White  and  Solomon Adler,  Chiang Kai-Shek was demonized and orders were given to plan for his removal.

Ch. 13: BETRAYAL IN THE BALKANS
-- On 27Nov1943, Churchill and Roosevelt left Cairo for the Teheran summit with Stalin.
-- When Hitler attacked Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941, the Chetniks led by pro-Western Serbian General Draza Mihailovich led a guerrilla war against the Germans. However, once Tito's guerrillas were organized and as a result of disinformation from James Klugmann (British intelligence in Cairo), the West switched support to Tito and abandoned Mihailovich.
-- OSS chief William “Wild Bill” Donovan and Churchill’s North American intelligence chief, the Canadian William Stephenson set up "Camp X" in Canada to train Croatian Communists (working in mines in Canada) to join Tito's forces.

Ch. 14: THE RAPE OF POLAND
-- How the West abandoned Poland to Stalin. Territory lost to Stalin in the east (Western Ukraine) was compensated for by territory wrested from the Germans in the West. Stalin refused aid to the Warsaw uprising in August 1944, despite pleas from Churchill and Roosevelt.

Ch. 15: THE MORGENTHAU PLANNERS
-- "The Quebec II conference of September 1944, where the two leaders [Churchill and Roosevelt] signed off on the “Morgenthau Plan” for Europe, named for Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., proposed that Germany be demolished as an industrial nation and reduced to strictly agrarian status."
-- They openly discussed mass executions of Germans as they surrendered; using German "slave-labor" as reparations; removing children from their parents; etc. Six of the Morgenthau "staffers" were identified by the Venona decrypts as ideological Communists or Soviet agents: Harry D. White, Solomon Adler, Josiah Dubois, Sonia Gold, Harold Glasser, and William H. Taylor. (Two others were V. Frank Coe and Irving Kaplan.)
-- "By the end of the conference, both FDR and Churchill had signed off on the Treasury project, agreeing that German industry was to be abolished, with the goal of “converting Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character.”

Ch. 16: OPERATION KEELHAUL
-- Forcible repatriation of refugees  to the Soviet Union.
-- "As a result of these maneuvers, the United States and Britain would consent to traffic in human beings for the benefit of Stalin, including the use of slave labor as “reparations” for Russia’s wartime losses and a proviso consigning two million anti-Soviet refugees to the control of Moscow."
-- "Perhaps if he had been questioned on Operation Keelhaul, Hiss could have explained who exactly received Joe Grew’s protesting cable, who drafted the peremptory answer, and how a policy sought by Moscow was thus secretly approved at Yalta -- sending two million captives to their doom in Russia."

Ch. 17: STALIN’S COUP IN ASIA
-- Soviet Union entered war against Japan in August 1945 so as to benefit in the "spoils of war" which the U.S. granted them.
-- Military personnel all insisted that Soviet assistance was not needed in 1945. (Admirals William Leahy, Ernest King, Chester Nimitz; General Douglas MacArthur.)

Ch. 18: THE AMERASIA SCANDAL
-- [Roosevelt died 12Apr1945 from a stroke; Philip Jaffe published pro-communist magazine "Amerasia".]
-- On 06Jun1945 FBI arrested Philip Jaffe, Kate Mitchell, Mark Gayn in New York and John Stewart Service, Andrew Roth, Emmanuel Larsen in Washington.
-- Unfortunately, they were all released because of a "Grand Jury fix" with the connivance of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Ch. 19: STATE AND REVOLUTION
-- Internal fighting within the government against anti-communist personnel.
-- Targeted for dismissal: Undersecretary Joseph Grew, Robert Kelley of the Russia desk, Soviet expert Loy Henderson, Far Eastern specialist Stanley Hornbeck, and security analyst Raymond Murphy; William Bullitt and Admiral William Standley from Moscow embassy; Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle; State Department security chief J. Anthony Panuch.

Ch. 20: A NOT SO GRAND GRAND JURY
-- U.S. grand jury convened from June 1947 to December 1948 to hear Elizabeth Bentley's charges of subversion. Nothing came of it, because federal prosecutors (Thomas Donegan, Attorney General Tom Clark) refused to call Whittaker Chambers to confirm the Bentley charges.

-- On 03Aug1948 Chambers appeared before the House committee and provided testimony against Alger Hiss. (Sensational clash.)

-- "The FBI first interviewed Chambers on May 14, 1942, and a year later obtained Adolf Berle’s notes concerning his revelations of 1939. The Bureau interviewed Chambers again in 1945 and 1946, months before the grand jury assembled. His information was featured in one of the earliest FBI reports about the infiltration problem -- “Soviet Espionage in the United States,” dated November 27, 1945. This was based on the Bentley revelations, data concerning Amerasia, and other developing cases. It also contained a summary of the Hiss case, based on the Chambers disclosures. Thus the FBI, thanks to Chambers, had a bead on Hiss almost three full years before the case became a public scandal."

-- DOJ tried to charge Chambers with perjury to discredit him, but Chambers surprised them with 65 documents called the "pumpkin papers" which proved that he was telling the truth and Alger Hiss was lying.

-- "Meanwhile, Representative Richard Nixon (RCA) and House committee chief investigator Robert Stripling asked Chambers if there were other relevant documents that he hadn’t given to Justice. His answer was that such documents existed -- in the form of microfilmed data he had stashed away, which would now be famously, if briefly, concealed in a pumpkin patch at his mid-Maryland farm. This material, obtained by House investigators during the first week of December, [1948] was definitive proof that Chambers was telling the truth and Hiss was lying. Equally important, it was proof that Justice couldn’t deny, and couldn’t sequester."

"It was this evidence in the hands of the House committee that broke the case and led to the indictment of Hiss. These outcomes were made possible by the pumpkin papers and the unwillingness of Nixon and Stripling to turn them over without proper measures for safekeeping. Small wonder the left never forgave Nixon, despite later efforts at placation, for his role in the Hiss-Chambers struggle."

[W.Z. The Amerasia and the Chambers-Hiss cases demonstrate that the Department of Justice of the United States has been compromised and corrupted since the WW2 era. The John Demjanjuk and other similar cases further confirm this conclusion.]

Ch. 21: RECOVERING THE COLD WAR RECORD
-- Much significant data have vanished from the official record.

-- "Cold War falsehoods are passed on by writers who apparently don’t know that they’re recycling disinformation."

-- "In certain cases of this nature, it’s evident that there has been a deliberate cover-up of crucial information reflecting the extent of the pro-Red penetration and the policy effects that followed. The classic instance was the Amerasia scandal, where there was not only a fix and cover-up, but the felonious rigging of a grand jury to make the plot successful. We now have transcripts of the wiretaps that show the jury-rigging in progress and the significant role therein of Soviet agent of influence Lauchlin Currie."

-- Not only the Soviet agents and Communist subversives themselves, but the bureaucrats and officials with whom they worked, have an interest in suppressing publicity of their subversive activities.

-- "Another and even more prominent beneficiary of such treatment has been famed physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the World War II scientific leader of the atom project and a leading figure in nuclear matters for almost a full decade of the Cold War. It’s clear beyond all peradventure that Oppenheimer was considered by Communist leaders to be a secret member of the party when he went into the atom program -- a point made explicit in the records of the FBI -- and that this was known to U.S. officials years before his security clearance was suspended."