The Naked Communist: Exposing Communism and Restoring Freedom
452
The Naked Communist: Exposing Communism and Restoring Freedom
452Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
A timely update to the phenomenal national bestseller.
Soon after its quiet release during the height of the Red Scare in 1958, The Naked Communist: Exposing Communism and Restoring Freedom exploded in popularity, selling almost two million copies to date and finding its way into the libraries of the CIA, the FBI, the White House, and homes all across the United States. From the tragic falls of China, Korea, Russia, and the UN, to the fascinating histories of Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, and General MacArthur, The Naked Communist lays out the entire graphic story of communism, its past, present, and future.
After searching unsuccessfully for a concise literature on the communist threat, W. Cleon Skousen saw the urgent need for a comprehensive book that could guide the American conversation. So he distilled his FBI experience, decades of research, and more than one hundred communist books and treatises into one clarifying, readable volume that became a touchstone of American values and earned praise from the likes of President Ronald Reagan, Glenn Beck, and Ben Carson. Lauded by one reviewer as “the most powerful book on communism since J. Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit,” this text draws a detailed picture of the communist as he sees himself: stripped of propaganda and pretense. Readers gain a unique insight into the inner workings of communism—its appeal, its history, its basic and unchanging concepts, even its secret timetable of conquest.
Among the many questions The Naked Communist answers are:
* Who gave the United States’ nuclear secrets to the Russians?
* How did the FBI fight communism after it was forced underground in 1918?
* Why did the West lose 600 million allies after World War II?
* What really happened in Korea?
* What is communism’s great secret weapon?
* What lies ahead?
* What can I do to stop communism?
* How can we fight communism without a major war? Now updated for 2017, this edition includes a chapter on the forty-five Communist Goals, detailing how forty-four of those goals have been achieved in the U.S. already, as well as a chapter on the making of The Naked Communist, shedding light on how this book has sold almost two million copies. As relevant now as it was sixty years ago, Skousen’s groundbreaking work provides a renewed understanding of one of the greatest threats facing America today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781630729226 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Izzard Ink |
| Publication date: | 05/09/2017 |
| Series: | Freedom in America , #2 |
| Pages: | 452 |
| Sales rank: | 18,570 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Paul B. Skousen is an investigative journalist, writer, and teacher. He received his MA from Georgetown University in National Security Studies. He was a CIA military analyst and intelligence officer in the Situation Room in the Reagan White House. He has published several books on politics and history, and is a professor of communications and journalism.
Read an Excerpt
The Naked Communist
Exposing Communism and Restoring Freedom
By W. Cleon Skousen
Izzard Ink, LLC
Copyright © 2017 The W. Cleon Skousen Library and Izzard Ink Publishing CompanyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63072-923-3
CHAPTER 1
THE MAKING OF THE NAKED COMMUNIST
BY PAUL B. SKOUSEN
At the end of World War II, W. Cleon Skousen had no intention of writing a national best seller. He especially didn't expect to write a book that eventually would be counted among the great classics of Cold War writings.
He was looking for a single, concise volume that gave an easy-to-read and unobstructed view of Communism, its tactics and its strategies. He hoped to find a clean description of Communism's self-defined morality, its rejection of Judeo-Christian ethics, its lust for power and control, and its threat against freedom around the world.
Skousen was well aware that scholarly libraries already carried some books and articles on the subject. Even the encyclopedia had a page or two on Communism. But he wasn't happy with their tepid discourses, and observed that the most important insights about Communism were scattered too broadly among too many sources to be obtained and understood by the average reader.
TOO MANY "-ISM'S"
In those post-war years of the late 1940s Americans didn't pay much attention to Communism, at least not at first. They had their fill of world wars and all of the stress and deprivation that came with it. As a culture, they now wanted to focus on building their "American dream." That political thing called Communism seemed an insignificant worry, just another of those "ism's" that belonged to Europe or some other far away place — a political or economic abstraction that the politicians were supposed to handle so that everyone else could happily anticipate taking that vacation to Yellowstone, or buying that new car, or house, or flashy radio console.
And yet, that thing wouldn't leave Americans alone — it kept creeping into the morning headlines and radio news almost every day.
By 1947, the Soviet Union had severed its fair-weather cooperation with the U.S. and was dragging Eastern Europe into an economic and military alliance. Any whimpering of anti-Stalinist uprising within the budding Soviet empire was quickly smashed with a merciless war machine. Sadly, when the rising chorus of cries for help finally crossed the ocean to American shores, the big Soviet bully warned the west to stay out, and threatened World War III if they didn't. The result was a standoff between East and West that in 1947 took on the foreboding moniker of the Cold War.
The West thought it stood pretty strong in those days. The CIA assured the administration that any Soviet threat remained confined to conventional capabilities on the European continent. "Among foreign powers, only the USSR is capable of threatening the security of the United States," the SECRET report stated on September 26, 1947. "The USSR is presently incapable of military aggression outside of Europe and Asia, but is capable of overrunning most of continental Europe, the Near East, northern China, and Korea."
And then, just two years later, that fairly benign view was nullified with a big bang.
WORLD POWER SHIFTS AWAY FROM THE U.S.
In 1949, the Soviets detonated their first nuclear bomb, and the West's confident hold on nuclear superiority was suddenly checked. Four years later the Soviets exploded a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, expanding the Cold War into a true race for nuclear superiority.
Meanwhile, Chinese Communists drove out their archenemy, the Chinese Nationalists, and declared to the world on October 1, 1949, that another Communist power had arrived on the world stage. It was called the People's Republic of China, with Mao Tse-tung at its head.
Eight years later, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first manmade satellite on October 4, 1957. Sputnik 1 circled the earth about 1,400 times, and terrorized tens of millions into believing that one day there could be nuclear bombs orbiting overhead.
These events left busy Americans wondering aloud, just what is this ill-defined but violent and growing force called Communism that seems to be making so much progress?
For the most part, Americans didn't understand Communism. To some it was a tool for social justice, the "Russian way" of imposing equality in nations where dictatorships ruled. To others it was an economic ideology that promised fair pay to laborers everywhere. Trade unions around the world that adopted Communism's tactics of force to win better pay and benefits watched happily as their membership rolls magnified under the new Marxist rules. To others, Communism was a continuation of the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, that had garnered enough persuasive powers of anarchy and social agitation to overthrow the American way of life.
Added to this was the worrisome Korean War, spy rings, infiltration, espionage, the arrest of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the great Iron Curtain, and the ever-increasing military buildup by the Soviets.
WAS THERE NO STOPPING COMMUNISM?
In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy took a lead role in an effort to expose Communist infiltration in the U.S. government. He called for appropriate steps to secure the safety of America. The House Un-American Activities Committee ran a parallel although unconnected investigation of its own at the same time.
By 1957, the public face of Communism in America seemed to have crested and was dwindling away. The end of the decade found the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) losing membership with numbers declining from almost 100,000 to less than 10,000. Even so, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew it was still expanding underground, and the Bureau had 1,500 informants in the CPUSA keeping watch.
ELIZABETH BENTLEY
Espionage was a difficult and terrible problem for the FBI. The Bureau had invested enormous efforts to expose subversive groups and undertake the painful chore of rooting out Communism from the most sensitive and high-ranking levels of government.
Once in a while, the hard work paid off. In 1945, for example, Soviet agent Elizabeth Bentley defected and told authorities about the existence of 150 Soviet spies who were active in the U.S. The list included three prominent names, Harry Dexter White, Whitaker Chambers, and Alger Hiss. Their amazing story is fleshed out in Chapter 7 of Skousen's The Naked Communist.
At the time, newspaper reporters sympathetic to the Communist cause tried to destroy Bentley's credibility, one calling her the "Nutmeg Mata Hari." On the other side she was described as naive, and as that "shapely blonde and blue-eyed New Yorker" who was duped by the Communists.
SECRET SOVIET VAULTS FINALLY OPENED
Was Bentley right about her fellow spies? Skousen laid out the case in her favor, showing that not only was she correct, but that she represented the tip of a red iceberg that was stealthily ripping through the hull of the great United States. The debates over her testimony were left to stagnate into forgetfulness for more than 30 years after Skousen's book was published.
And then, an amazing series of events unfolded. The mighty Soviet empire weakened in the 1980s and collapsed in 1991. Shortly afterwards, the secret Soviet vaults and KGB-NKVD archives were opened to Western eyes. After thousands of declassified spy documents were translated and examined, there emerged confirmation that vindicated Bentley's testimony —
Harry Dexter White, a senior officer in the Treasury Department, had indeed been a spy and committed espionage against the U.S. Additional corroboration came from NSA cryptographers who successfully connected him to his secret Soviet code name — "Jurist."
Whittaker Chambers' involvement in the spy ring was verified, as Chambers had so confessed years earlier in his books and speeches.
And Alger Hiss, a senior U.S. diplomat in the State Department, was identified with the "Ware Group," an underground Communist cell operating in Washington D.C. A degree of doubt about his guilt persisted long after he was imprisoned for perjury in 1950. That same collection of Soviet documents showed that Hiss had been a longtime agent of Soviet military intelligence. It also validated the analysts in the Venona Project who concluded that "Ales," a code name used in Soviet cables, was Alger Hiss.
ATTEMPTING TO TAME THE BEAR
It was into this swirling mess of intrigue, espionage, and international suspicion that author W. Cleon Skousen embarked on a difficult path to expose Communism for what it actually was.
"I wanted to portray the innermost thoughts of the Communist," Skousen said in 1958, "so Americans could feel that they truly understood the motivations and ambitions of a Communist."
Consolidating the mounds of complex research into an easy-to-understand collection was the cornerstone of unfinished business.
"I hoped that if we put all of this material under one cover," he told reporters in 1958, "the ordinary American would see the Communist picture sufficiently clear to analyze Soviet strategy as they read it from day to day in the newspapers."
Skousen was a great student of history. He loved political science and earned his law degree hoping to delve deeper into the science of constitutional freedom and the threats it faced. After graduation from George Washington University Law School, he began a 16-year career with the FBI in 1935.
SERVING IN MANY CAPACITIES
Skousen gained broad exposure to the workings of the FBI. He started out on the lowest rung as a messenger. Soon he became a trainer, an administrator over various groups of agents, firearms instructor, police instructor, inspector's aid, and supervisor over the 25-man communication section. As with all agents, he was transferred to numerous cities around the country to "season him" as they called it in those days.
In addition, his official duties were often interrupted with special projects and assignments that took advantage of Skousen's many skills, such as speaking, teaching, training, and writing.
In 1945 he wrote a public relations document called "The Story of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." It was produced as an official publication of the FBI, and was printed in the millions and distributed over a period of several years.
Skousen usually gave 100-200 speeches a year all across the country. One of his immediate supervisors said of him, "He is one of the best speakers in the Bureau. He is thoroughly loyal and thoroughly enthusiastic. ..."
While serving in California, Skousen arrived at work one morning to an impromptu meeting. The agent in charge, Mr. R. B. Hood, had gathered together about 30 of the Bureau's approved speakers, and told them they were to take notes on a model speech they were about to hear. Then he turned to Skousen and told him to give said model speech. Skousen remarked later that he did the best he could but "I lost ten pounds in the process!" Afterwards, Hood announced that Skousen would be the new instructor for a course on speech-giving that would last several weeks.
SCHOLARS OF COMMUNISM AT THE FBI
Skousen's official assignments at the FBI did not place him in the counterespionage unit where Communism was examined, nor did he produce any research documents on the subject as part of his job. However, agents were not assigned exclusively to just "crime" or just "security." They were trained in both fields and were continually moved back and forth from one type of work to another. Skousen's regular duties brought him in contact with Communists and Communist sympathizers. He had a great deal of opportunity to talk to those in the FBI who were "read in," authoritative, and expert on the subject. Skousen's journals mention by name several at the FBI who helped guide him in his studies of Communism:
D. M. "Mickey" Ladd, who "probably knew more about the espionage operations of the Communist apparatus than any other FBI official," Skousen wrote. Ladd was the number-three man in the FBI for a short time, and was a leader in the Bureau's counterintelligence work. He supervised the major Cold War national security investigations including the cases of Alger Hiss, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Lee R. Pennington, Jr., "One of my good friends and mentor on Communism in FBI days," Skousen wrote. Pennington was a senior FBI agent who worked closely with Mr. Hoover, and specialized in identifying activists and Communist sympathizers. When he retired in 1953, he was the third highest ranking agent in the FBI.
Guy Hottel who "was my SAC when I did my preliminary training as a new agent in Washington, D.C. He was deeply involved in the investigation of Communist and criminal intrigue in the nation's capital." Hottel was very close to Hoover and served for a period of time as Hoover's personal bodyguard.
William C. Sullivan was the head of the domestic intelligence division, an expert in Communism, and briefly stood as the number-three man at the FBI. He was the principal ghostwriter for A Study of Communism that was published in 1962, listing J. Edgar Hoover as the author.
WILLIAM C. SULLIVAN BECOMES A FRIEND
In one of several letters between the two, Skousen told Sullivan that The Naked Communist would be printed in a couple of weeks, and "I should really call it 'our' book because I will be everlastingly grateful to you for all the wonderful guidance you gave me in it. My only regret was that I could not write two or three paragraphs in the introduction giving you proper credit for your contribution. However, when you read it I am sure you will appreciate the feelings which I have for your fine research which dug out many of the nuggets that are used in this material."
Subsequent letters from Sullivan helped Skousen correct and flesh out some additional details and quotes.
From these several friends in the FBI, and other first-hand experiences, Skousen gained very specific knowledge and insight into what makes Communism work and what makes a Communist tick.
Skousen explained: "When I asked one of these [FBI] experts why we didn't distribute this information [on Communism], he told me because 'it's not in any form that you could give to the public, yet.' He said, 'You'll appreciate that after you've read about 175 volumes of dialectical materialism.' I said, 'Well, start me out on a symposium, let me kind of get my teeth into it.' He said there isn't any symposium, nobody has written one."
CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH HOLLYWOOD
Hands-on experience with Communism could come at the most unexpected times, Skousen said. One instance was when he was the FBI liaison to the Hollywood studios. Mr. Hoover asked him to try "turning" a leading star who performed in Gone With The Wind from financially supporting the local Communist party and participating in the alleged Communist-front advocacy group, the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions.
"I made an appointment to visit her at the beautiful home she and her sister had in Hollywood," Skousen said of Olivia de Havilland, "but like all of the stars, they had a very pretentious mansion in front but lived in a condo-type of apartment in the rear."
Skousen started by telling Ms. de Havilland how impressed Mr. Hoover was with her portrayal in the movie, and felt if someone could refresh her memory about how great America had been to her life and career, maybe she could be of great help. After 45 minutes, she wasn't convinced and vowed that nothing could change her mind about the warm relationship she had with her advocacy friends.
Skousen returned to the FBI office to work on an idea that might help. He asked a technician to retrieve the secret recordings the FBI had made of the Communists when Ms. de Havilland was absent from their regular meetings. He discovered that behind her back, these so-called "friends" mocked and ridiculed her naïveté, referring to her with profane names, etc. Skousen had several of these discussions spliced into a 30-minute tape and returned to the actress's home with a portable tape player.
"I told her I would wait out on the porch until she had finished listening, and then we'd talk if she wanted to." Not five minutes later Ms. de Havilland stormed back "swearing like a mule skinner," Skousen said. She was livid and vowed never to go back. That's when Skousen suggested she consider putting on one of her greatest performances ever. That caught her attention. He asked her to divulge everything she knew about the party's plans to infiltrate the Hollywood unions and he would make sure that some of the information was leaked to the press. Ten, she should return to the next meeting pretending to be incensed that somebody was talking to the FBI, and declare that she refused to donate another penny until the dirty spy, whoever he was, is rooted out and dealt with.
The star did just that and she was able to separate from the group without creating suspicion. Her subsequent suspicions about the Citizen's Committee led herself and other Hollywood supporters to resign from that group as well. She and Skousen became friends, and worked together some years later to set up a large rally called "Hollywood's Answer to Communism." The regionally televised event included 40 of her fellow actors and producers, and a live audience of 15,000 with millions of television viewers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen. Copyright © 2017 The W. Cleon Skousen Library and Izzard Ink Publishing Company. Excerpted by permission of Izzard Ink, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
PREFACE
The Making of The Naked Communist
The Rise of the Marxist Man
The Founders of Communism
The Appeal of Communism
The Communist Approach to the Solution of World Problems
A Brief Critique of the Communist Approach to World Problems
The Rise of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia
How Russia Became A Communist World Power
Communism in the United States
Communism and World War II
Communist Attacks on the free World during the Post-War Period
Communism Under Khrushchev
The Communist Conquest of Cuba
The Future Task
The 45 Goals of Communism Today
What do Defenders of Communism Say?
How Does A People Build A Free Nation?
What Is Free Enterprise Capitalism?
Did The Early Christians Practice Communism?
What Is The Secret Weapon Of Communism?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Related Subjects
Customer Reviews
Explore More Items
