David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol
Among the founders of the Civil Air Patrol were D. H. Byrd, the owner of the Texas School Book Depository building when Oswald worked there at the time of the assassination, and aviator pioneer Cord Meyer, father of CIA official Cord Meyer, Jr.
[Many Thanks to Greg Parker for uncovering these articles.]
"The plan released by the
Pennsylvania Wing indicated the organization was getting set to send selected
CAP recruits to the Army Counter-Intelligence School at Holabird Signal Depot, Baltimore,
Md. It declared that these recruits would be taught 'the Russian language,
Russian military tactics, Russian politics, and all characteristics of the
Russian people.'”
The Gazette and Daily from York,
Pennsylvania
Sunday, February 22. 1948
York, Pennsylvania
Publicity Stalls ‘Loyalty Police’
Civil Air Patrol Says Pennsylvania
Wing’s Report is ‘Inaccurate’
YORK, PA.
An intention to set up the Civil Air
Patrol as a sort of “loyalty police” with overtones of a strong-arm squad for
American industry may have been scotched because of premature release of the
idea through the Pennsylvania Wing of the CAP.
The national CAP has been a bit coy
about the whole business, declaring that the press release issued by Norman J.
Griffin, Public Information Officer of the Pennsylvania, CAP, was inaccurate
and not in keeping with the national organization’s policy. The Civil Air
Patrol, originally under the wartime Office of Civilian Defense, is an official
auxiliary of the U. S. Air Force.
However, the national CAP admits
that some sort of plan for using the CAP for “espionage” work to act in case of
a national emergency is now in the tentative stage, and is awaiting the
approval of U.S. Central Intelligence and the FBI.
The plan released by the
Pennsylvania Wing indicated the organization was getting set to send selected
CAP recruits to the Army Counter-Intelligence School at Holabird Signal Depot, Baltimore,
Md. It declared that these recruits would be taught “the Russian language,
Russian military tactics, Russian politics, and all characteristics of the
Russian people.”
The release further stated that Col.
Philip F. Neuweiler, Commander of the Pennsylvania Wing, had asked the
cooperation of the FBI and the State police in screening candidates for this
training.
INDUSTRY FUNDS SOUGHT
According to the release Col.
Neuweiler was quoted thus:
“We are asking for the industrialists
and business men of Pennsylvania for three things: first, that they enlist at
least one member of their firm in CAP and have them take this course; second,
report via this enlistee, all persons in their organizations known to have
Communistic leanings or subversive tendencies; third, lend any financial
support they are able so that CAP can carry out this program.”
Col. Neuweiler is quoted further:
“This is the first opportunity the
business men have had to do something about this growing menace of Communism.
We, of the CAP are going to call a spade a spade, and do something about it.”
‘POSSIBLY SOONER’
In backgrounding the idea, Col.
Neuweiler stated:
“We feel that some day, and,
possibly sooner than we expect, an attack may be made against the shores of the
U.S. by some unfriendly foreign nation. Many of us in CAP are certain that any
open and violent attack against the peace of the U.S. will be preceded by an
intensive enemy-guided ‘softening up’ campaign utilizing sabotage, espionage,
propaganda, and many other underground subversive activities. It is against activities
of this type that CAP with adequate and proper training, can help…..”
Col. Neuweiler did not explain why
such work should be done by volunteers, rather than by regular security force
of the U.S. A., nor did he have any suggestions as to why industrialists were
to recruit candidates and pay the bills.
Industrialists in central
Pennsylvania, asked for their reaction, said they had not yet been approached.
Some thought it might be a good idea, and they indicated an understanding of
what they might expect for their financial support, especially with their own
hand-picked recruits doing the job.
Griffin’s premature release of the
scheme seems to have put the quietus on it for the time being. However, neither
the national CAP nor the Pennsylvania Wing has stated that the idea has been
dropped.
FURTHER ANALYSIS
CAP Membership Directory 1952 w/photos of Col. Cord Meyer and D. H. Byrd
1952_8D184B3F628D7.pdf
CAP Membership Directory 1952 w/photos of Col. Cord Meyer and D. H. Byrd
1952_8D184B3F628D7.pdf
WASP Newsletter
Keystone Defenders:
The Politics of Civil Defense in
Pennsylvania 1940-1960
Philip Jenkins
Delivered to Second International
Conference on the Cold War,
Los Alamos, NM, August 1998.
Abstract
During the Cold War era, the state
of Pennsylvania experienced some of the most intense anti-Communist activism,
and Pittsburgh especially was regarded as "that Mecca of the
Inquisition". As the center of American industry in this period, it was
also, arguably, the primary nuclear target in the United States. This paper
traces the history of civil defense preparations in the state from the anti-German
scare of the late 1930s through the mid-1960s, and stresses the growing
emphasis on counter-subversion tactics to supplement the more obvious armaments
designed to counter bombers or missiles. The paper also shows the intimate link
between the civil defense establishment and the politics of extreme
anti-Communism in the early 1950s.
During the Cold War years,
Pennsylvania was the scene of some of the most vigorous and indeed merciless
anti-Communist campaigning, which long predated the McCarthy movement, and
proceeded quite independently of those events. David Caute’s Great Fear includes
a chapter entitled “Hell in Pittsburgh,” describing the testimony of one long
term infiltrator into the Communist Party, Matt Cvetic, and how his allegations
initiated a period of purges and trials. Pittsburgh now became “that Mecca of
the inquisition.”1 Philadelphia was equally subjected to major loyalty purges
in 1952-53, while these events had ramifications in many smaller communities.
The labor movement in the state experienced something like civil war, reaching
a height with the schism in the vast United Electrical Workers’ union (UE) in
1949-50. This anti-red trend was quite remarkable given the state’s customary
moderate bent, and association with middle of the road Republicanism. The
governor from 1946 to 1950 was James Duff, who was also elected US Senator in
1950. A remarkable moderate on issue like civil liberties and the environment,
he was one of the first major Republicans to condemn McCarthy, but he also made
no secret of his belief that all Communists were ipso facto traitors, and
should be hanged. Furthermore, “if people put themselves in a position where
their activities are doubtful, we are going to treat them if they are doubtful
the way they are if they are wrong, because the time has come in America where
we can’t continue to make mistakes with the people who are trying to destroy
our Way of Life.” Such were the views of a moderate Republican in a politically
moderate state in 1950. The Democratic Party was if anything even more
fanatically anti-Communist, and in the 1950 Congressional elections achieved
the unusual feat of red-baiting the Republicans for their alleged complacency
on the Communist threat. The UE Left believed that the main Cold Warriors in the
Pittsburgh region could be summarized as “the FBI, the Democratic party, and
the CIO”.
Pennsylvania therefore emerges as a
heartland of bipartisan anti-Communism of the most rigorous, red, white and
blue in tooth and claw. Though it is no adequate excuse for the hysteria of
these years, the popular consensus can only be understood against a background
of likely war: emergency measures were justified because the nation might at
any day face a military conflict of unprecedented savagery, and it was an urgent
necessity to seek out and suppress potential spies and saboteurs. A clear and
present danger to national security arguably did justify the suspension of some
civil liberties. If there was a subversive threat, then all logic suggested
that one primary targets would be the defense-related industries of
Pennsylvania, its steelworks and coalmines, electrical plants and shipyards.
Nor were concerns about a global war unfounded: such an outbreak was a real
possibility at several points between, say, 1947 and 1962, and had this
occurred, both superpowers would have exploited whatever assets they had behind
enemy lines to cause maximum disruption. Both sides would likely have used
front organizations to undermine the other side’s will to fight. As it would be
suicidal to speak openly on behalf of a military enemy during wartime, anti-war
propaganda would have to be carried on in the guise of other ideologies, such
as humanitarian calls for world peace. Americans were here influenced by
memories of the discredited isolationist movement which had been such a
powerful voice before Pearl Harbor, and which in retrospect was (unfairly)
regarded as a naive puppet of the Axis governments. If the United States might
now be facing a nuclear Pearl Harbor, then the nation was justified in using
the harshest measures against subversives and their dupes, as a necessary part
of the broader civil defense effort.2
If war broke out, then the
experience of European states in the second world war suggested the likely
dangers for a key industrial state like Pennsylvania, even before a Soviet
nuclear attack was conceivable. While war industries and population centers
would be targeted by long-range bombers, initial strikes would come from
clandestine forces, either domestic guerrillas or Soviet special forces
operating on the lines of the United States’ own wartime OSS, or its British
counterparts. In this perspective, Pennsylvania’s Communist Party took on a
sinister appearance as an organized conspiracy that specifically targeted the
leading industries for recruitment and propaganda, while several of its leaders
had significant experience in clandestine warfare. One of the most notorious
was Steve Nelson, with his dazzling record in the Spanish Civil War, while the
remarkable career of George Wuchinich included a spell in the OSS, serving with
Tito’s Partisans, and later alongside Chinese Communist forces. In 1949, HUAC
remarked that “Because of his military training and espionage experience, and
because western Pennsylvania is a highly strategic industrial area, Wuchinich
is one of the most dangerous individuals in the American Slav Congress.”
In reality, evidence of actual or
planned sabotage was next to none, and this negative statement can be justified
by the failure of state or federal authorities to produce substantiated charges
at the time: between 1945 and 1955, the FBI had a dozen known agents in place
in the state’s Communist apparatus, and if any of them had encountered serious
military or conspiratorial plans, these would presumably have come to light in
trials for sedition, treason or espionage. None did: instead, Party leaders
were tried on unconvincing charges of seeking to overthrow the United States
government by distributing Communist propaganda works. Nevertheless, the hatred
of Communists can only be understood in this fifth column context, that they
were viewed as potential enemy agents in a “next war,” which might only be days
or weeks away. And these perceptions were all the more potent because of the
recent experiences of the fifth column panic of the early 1940s, which had
actually targeted many of the same groups and individuals who came to the fore
in 1950.
Anti-Communist suspicions became
lethally dangerous following the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950, when
Communist sympathy for foreign powers was potentially transformed into support
for an enemy power with which the United States was in armed conflict, so that
treason charges became a real likelihood: perhaps Governor Duff would have his
way after all, and mass hangings would ensue. When Pittsburgh’s CP headquarters
were raided in 1950, seized documents opposing the war were quoted as showing
the Party’s allegedly treacherous positions: “The document does state in part
its hope and wishes that the American forces fighting in South Korea take a
shellacking.” Korean events had a double resonance for Catholics and many
ethnic groups, in raising fears of an imminent Soviet military move against
Western Europe. The events of June 25, 1950, a second day of infamy, fundamentally
changed the whole political environment for dissent within the United States.
The intensified anti-subversive quest of the next three years is conventionally
known as McCarthyism, but might with more justice be termed the Korean War Red
Scare. No account of this movement can afford to ignore the element of living
in “pre-war” conditions, or that regions like Pennsylvania already regarded
themselves as a critical home front in the emerging global struggle. The
anti-Communist purges, which reached their height in 1950, are best seen as
part of the overall civil defense effort, and that movement had its roots even
before the second world war.
The Fifth Column Scare 1939-42
The anti-Communist events of the
early 1950s grew out of a long history, and in fact, follow very directly upon
the precedents of the second world war years, when a “fifth column panic” had
raged in the popular media, and had had a major impact upon policy-makers. In
Pennsylvania as much as any state, the fifth column was a constant nightmare
from about 1939 through 1942, and fighting this danger consumed much of the
energy of the state government and law enforcement authorities.
During the late 1930s, Pennsylvania
was home to several of the countless far-Right sects that flourished in the
Depression years3. As a European war approached in 1939, it was an obvious
question whether these domestic groups might actively support the Nazi or
Fascist cause in time of war, by engaging in sabotage or even launching a
guerrilla war on American soil. In January 1940, the leaders of the New York
Christian Front were prosecuted for planning an urban guerrilla campaign that
was intended to provoke a civil war in the United States, while in August, Bund
members and Klansmen held joint military exercises in New Jersey. While there
was less open talk of fascist revolution after early 1940, fears of terrorism
and sabotage continued unabated for years afterwards. Rumors about sabotage at
military plants had been circulating for some time, but intensified as war grew
more likely in 1940 and early 1941. Of course, many of these rumors were simply
false, and even when sabotage occurred, it was not necessarily politically
motivated. Some sources depicted as suspicious virtually every fire and
explosion that could be linked (however weakly) to the rearmament effort, and
they offered wildly exaggerated lists of several hundred fires and explosions
which they regarded as enemy action. On the other hand, some of the incidents
were viewed as sabotage at the time by experts or police authorities who were
in an excellent position to judge.
If a “fifth column” was planning
serious subversive activity, then Pennsylvania was vulnerable as a critical
center of the military build-up in 1940-41, and of subsequent war production.
In November 1941, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia reminded an audience in
Harrisburg that “Here in Pennsylvania you have so many centers that are
attractive and tempting targets to an enemy”. These military facilities were
viewed as likely targets for enemy action. In 1938 there was an abortive
investigation of possible tampering with shell production at the Frankford
Arsenal. Some alleged incidents of sabotage appeared to be plausible examples
of planned sabotage. One of the most convincing events involved the three
near-simultaneous explosions in munitions plants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
that November, a coincidence that, as Secretary of War Stimson remarked, “might
suggest Teutonic efficiency”. The targets, if such they were, included the Burton
Powder works of American Cyanamid and Chemical Corporation in Edinburg, near
New Castle, and the Trojan Powder company at Troxell’s Crossing near Allentown.
The newspapers noted that these were only the latest in a lengthy series of
inexplicable disasters in the munitions industry in the north-eastern United
States. In 1940, the Philadelphia papers headlined a series of sabotage
attempts at the Sun Shipyards in Chester. In January, persons unknown opened
the sea valves of a new vessel destined to serve as a troop ship. In October, a
congressional committee heard of literally dozens of recent incidents at the
same yard. In 1941, there were several fires in the Philadelphia Navy Yards and
the Frankford Arsenal. Perhaps significantly, the Navy Yards had been listed as
one of the potential targets of the Christian Front terrorists prosecuted in
1940. Throughout these years, the media gave heavy coverage to thefts of
dynamite and other explosives, with the suggestion that these were intended for
use by fifth columnists. By November 1940, the Philadelphia Record was
headlining
“FBI Battles Wave of Sabotage”.
Communications were also seen as
vulnerable, with the new Pennsylvania Turnpike an obvious target: in August
1939 a narrowly averted dynamite attack came close to destroying a key bridge
in Bedford County. Charges of railroad sabotage and line-tampering were
numerous through 1940, and in June the Lehigh Valley Railroad reported “several
cases of sabotage”. The following March, public concern about the subversive
threat was focused by a rail crash, when the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Cleveland
to Pittsburgh express train crashed near Ambridge in Beaver County, killing
five. The railroad authorities were certain that tampering had been involved,
but the political motive was less apparent. The leftist news-magazine The
Hour linked the attack to Ukrainian-American groups working for German
intelligence. Historian Charles Higham writes that in these months, Ukrainian
fifth columnists spread out across the country, with a particular concentration
on “virtually the whole of Pittsburgh, with its mills, railroad yards and river
barges”.
Apart from the Ukrainians, concern
about sabotage naturally focused on Germans sympathetic to Hitler.
Coincidentally or otherwise, the German-American Bund’s paramilitary training
camp at Sellersville in Bucks County was located close to a factory manufacturing
gauges for the armed forces, and Bund rallies here were said to have attracted
workers from the Navy Yard and the Frankford Arsenal. Some Irish-Americans were
also working in concert with Axis agents. In June 1939, it was
feared that German-sponsored Irish agents were plotting to assassinate the king
and queen of England as they traveled through Pennsylvania by train. A massive
security operation was launched involving a huge commitment of Motor Police and
National Guard, who were warned to watch carefully for rail sabotage, or “for
the throwing of a bomb or hand grenade by someone standing in a crowd or
someone passing in an automobile . . . for someone sniping from a hillside with
a rifle or someone in a crowd firing at the trains”. In October 1940, the
Pennsylvania Motor Police were discussing the possibility that the state’s
revived Ku Klux Klan might become active as a “Legion of Death”.
The reality of these supposed plots
and attacks is controversial. War fears clearly made people made people willing
to jump to unwarranted conclusions, and to accept wild rumors: in June 1940,
for instance, Philadelphia experienced a short-lived panic following a report
that hundreds of “fifth column rifles” had been unloaded from a truck downtown.
The report was more solidly based than most in that someone was reporting a
genuine event, but the weapons were in fact wooden theatrical
props. On the other hand, well-informed later writers like Ladislas
Farrago accept that German rings were carrying out sabotage attacks, presumably
operating through American agents and sympathizers. Also, that the alleged
attacks were genuinely aimed at targets of concern to the Germans is confirmed
by the incident in June 1942, when Nazi agents were landed by submarine in
Florida and on Long Island. Their critical targets in Pennsylvania included a
Philadelphia cryolite plant producing the materials essential for the
manufacture of aluminum: also listed was the Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, the
destruction of which would paralyze the production and transportation of coal,
and delay troop movements to the East Coast.
Though ultra-rightists bore the
brunt of suspicions, the Communist Left also came under attack following the
Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, and the political repression of Communism in western
Pennsylvania in the Spring of 1940 looked almost exactly like what would occur
exactly a decade later, and in both eras, the media suggested that the
suppression of Communists was essential to national security: when dozens of
Communists were indicted in an election fraud case, the Post-Gazette crowed
about “a smashing attack against leftist activists in this important national
defense area.” The best-known target here, in 1940 as in 1950, was Communist
veteran James Dolsen, who was described in the Pittsburgh area press as an
agent of the Soviet OGPU. All the more humiliating, Left-wing leaders were
interviewed by the Dies Committee as part of a wider investigation into
pro-Nazi and fascist militants, suggesting that all were equally connected with
international totalitarianism, and potential anti-American sabotage activities.
Creating a Civil Defense Machinery
State and federal authorities had
excellent reason to fear subversive activity, and they prepared extensive
counter-measures. From the Spring of 1939 the FBI in Philadelphia was
investigating pro-Nazi and Christian Front paramilitaries in the region, and at
the end of the year the local field office was strengthened and restructured in
order to combat potential tampering with shipping along the Delaware
waterfront. It was exactly at this time, 1940 and 1941, that the FBI was
planting within the Communist Party those moles and defectors who would surface
with such embarrassing consequences a decade later, including Matt Cvetic
himself.
The other counter-subversive agency
in the Commonwealth was the State Police, which from 1937 to 1943 was
technically known as the Pennsylvania Motor Police (PMP). As 1940 progressed,
the PMP developed a systematic plan to prevent fifth column activity, a concern
that reached new heights after the Fall of France and the threat of a German
invasion of Great Britain. In July, the PMP was instructed to observe and
defend telephone and telegraph lines, to be on the watch for suspicious
activities near suspicious points. In October, the PMP issued a series of
directives which taken together illustrated the breadth of concern. One was
intended to forestall the “probability” of “sabotage activity involving plants
manufacturing war materials”: these vital installations were to be listed and
contacted, with plainclothes officers in place. At the same time, liquid fuel
refineries and storage plants were to be kept under surveillance, presumably to
prevent a repeat of the Black Tom disaster of 1916, when German agents had blown
up an armaments plant. Similar edicts were intended to protect electric light
and power facilities, railroad bridges and tunnels. The force remained on high
alert until a new series of orders following Pearl Harbor tightened security
further, with an emphasis on waterworks and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Though actual invasion was not
discussed as a high likelihood, in November 1941 Pennsylvania authorities
collaborated in preparing a massive contingency plan to evacuate the state of
New Jersey if need arose. There were sporadic scares over the next year, as
nervous locals reported the landing of a kite as a possible parachute attack,
or a Nazi agent come to link up with local fifth columnists: Lancaster County
endured one such panic in mid-1942. Fears were intense on and near major
holidays, especially following the submarine landing in June 1942. Shortly
afterwards the PMP warned all its forces “that our enemies choose occasions
such as the Fourth of July to strike us. Therefore, everyone should be on the
alert particularly for sabotage or other acts of the enemy.”
For all its efficiency, the PMP was
far too small a force to defend so many installations over the whole
Commonwealth, and the task of protection increasingly fell to voluntarism and
private enterprise. The most important body here was the American Legion, an
authentic mass movement with almost a hundred thousand members in Pennsylvania
alone by the late 1930s. Since its inception in 1919, Legionnaires had often
turned out as vigilantes to combat what they saw as Communist-inspired activism
in labor disputes, but now they targeted Nazi influences. Though the Legion had
wide differences about the need for American intervention in the European war,
the vast majority of its membership bitterly resented the growth of
“un-American” groups like the Bund, and were anxious to root out sabotage and
fifth column activity. Legionnaires regularly picketed fascist meetings, and
maintained surveillance on suspicious sites like the Bund’s camp in Bucks county.
Volunteers were happy to offer their services to informal organizations that
sprang up to protect vital installations. By August 1940, the commander of the
Pennsylvania Legion told the state Convention meeting in Reading that members
were turning in between fifty and a hundred reports of suspicious
activities each day, mainly concerning sabotage at industrial plants. If
the figure is correct, this deluge of intelligence must have swamped the
resources of the PMP and FBI, to both of whom it was routinely forwarded.
Legionnaires and members of other
patriotic groups were recruited for the anti-fifth column activities which were
coordinated by the commanders of the National Guard and PMP In May 1940,
the Philadelphia Record reported that an undercover force some
thousands strong had been assembled from the “state police, veterans, Army
Intelligence men, National Guard officers and special agents of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation”, and that members were active “in all of the state’s
industrial; plants, railroads, shipyards, utility companies and steel plants”.
In the Fall, Pennsylvania was one of the first jurisdictions to mobilize a
State Guard for local defense duties in the event of the National Guard being
called to active duty. As the Reserve Defense Corps, this body received
military weaponry during 1941, and following Pearl Harbor was activated to
defend bridge and other strategic sites in Pennsylvania.
Officially encouraging civilian
participation undoubtedly contributed to a general “spy fever”, and an upsurge
of vigilante movements of questionable usefulness. Often, they owed allegiance
to one or more entrepreneurs who reveled in the trappings of secret armies and
cloak-and-dagger work. Pennsylvania played home to an “American Vigilance
Association” claiming 65,000 members, their identities (allegedly) known only
to to their chief. The group was initially formed in response to reports of
sabotage along the Philadelphia-Camden waterfront, but it soon acquired
strongly right-wing and anti-New Deal overtones, and was funded by anti-labor
industrialists. Like saboteurs, counter-spies and vigilantes were much in vogue
in 1940 and 1941.
Apocalypse Soon?
Civil defense preparations were
naturally relaxed with the end of the European war, but concerns about new
hostilities became intense in 1948-49, when Pennsylvania followed a federal
directive to revive its wartime civil defense apparatus. Not surprisingly, the
old-time anti-Communist militants were prominent in this endeavor.4 By late
1949, the state civil defense committee was headed by Judge Vincent Carroll, a
former chairman of the American Legion’s state committee on national defense:
as long ago as 1940, during the earlier sabotage scare, Carroll had argued that
Communists had no place in the American electoral system, as “the right of free
speech is only for those who deserve it.”5 In 1950, Duff fulfilled the worst
liberal fears about the rightist connotations of the civil defense movement
when he appointed Major General Richard King Mellon to head the Commonwealth’s
Military and Civilian Defense Commission: Mellon was from the immensely rich
Pittsburgh family who so often featured in leftist exposés of the super-rich.6
By 1950, the threat of open
hostilities had become a prime concern of Pennsylvania’s state government. In
July, Governor Duff alerted the three fighter squadrons of the state’s air
National Guard for immediate combat duty, and a few days later, the governor
wrote to warn local government authorities that “the rapid deterioration
recently of the foreign situation has resulted in need for precaution, if not
alarm.”7 The desperate mood of the time is indicated by Duff’s speech to the
state American Legion convention in Philadelphia that August, just at the time
when United Nations forces in Korea were fighting off savage attacks against
the Pusan perimeter. The Governor warned that “Pennsylvania is bound to be one
of the prime objectives of the Soviet Union not only by Communism but by major
attack in the event of world war III,” and that the state must consider the
danger of Soviet bombers flying over the Pole. Pennsylvanians must be prepared
“to have some of our principal cities bombed and bombed by the most terrible
type of explosive that has ever been known to the human race. And therefore
that would be the kind of occasion in which the subversive elements will await
like some hidden bears to jump out and cause confusion.” 8
Duff stressed the linkage between
direct Soviet attack and fifth column activities. He claimed that “in the event
that the difficulty in Korea breaks out and explodes into world war III that
one of the great fronts we must defend is the front here at home. And unless we
make this home front secure it makes very little difference what happens
anywhere else in the far flung corners of the world.” Pennsylvania was uniquely
vulnerable to subversion: “no other community anywhere in the whole country has
the concentration of industry that there is in Pennsylvania,” and “In this
city, in Pittsburgh, in every large industrial community, there is a tremendous
problem this very hour of sabotage.” He warned Legionnaires that, “No one knows
better than you the widespread activities of Communism in this country. There
are many large industrial establishments that have been infiltrated by those
who do not believe in our Way of Life, and all they are awaiting is a favorable
opportunity in order to do their dirty work.”
Governor Duff hoped to meet the
challenge by reviving the civil defense system created during the second world
war, and enforcing the emergency anti-sabotage legislation introduced in 1941
and 1943.9 With the state’s national guard unit called up for federal service,
defensive policies would be implemented through state forces, which would
coordinate with the State Police, home guard units, rifle clubs, and veterans’
organizations: this was of course a return to the wartime idea of the State
Guard or Reserve Defense Corps. Duff’s new network of County Defense Councils
would prepare “precautionary and remedial measures for the prompt detection and
neutralizing of any sudden and unexpected invasion, such as from air attack
against our vital industries.”10 Veterans and other volunteers would be
critical to the revived ground observer corps, the first line of defense
against air attack.
Industrial Pittsburgh was believed
to be the key target for potential Communist assault. This danger was a
frequent theme in the jeremiads of Judge Michael A. Musmanno, who was perhaps
the state’s leading anti-red demagogue. He almost single-handed led the effort
to prosecute the Pittsburgh CP leadership for sedition, and during the 1950
elections, he declared that, “Every communist in US is a Soviet paratrooper
already landed here.” In 1951, it was his “Musmanno Act” which outlawed the
Communist party within the Commonwealth. The judge claimed that “The steel city
of America is reportedly listed in Moscow as the number one target of Russian
aerial invasion:” apart from the steelworks, “the huge Westinghouse and other
electrical plants manufacture the delicate equipment and machinery for
submarines, radar and air engines.”11 In May 1950, Pittsburgh’s Chairman of
Civil Defense agreed that “Metropolitan Pittsburgh, the workshop of the world,
is high on the list of strategic cities vital to the national defense. We are
very vulnerable, and in the event of war, we could expect to be among the first
to be bombed.” He was accordingly examining the likely consequences of a
nuclear strike on the city, though he cautioned against “an unreasoning fear of
radiation.”
Pittsburgh’s preparations reached feverish intensity that August,
when a volunteer army seven thousand strong was requested to come forward to
staff positions on a 24-hour a day basis. They would have the task of
transmitting warnings of enemy threats, and getting help to devastated areas.12
Defense against the fifth column
implied an intelligence response that was, of its nature, covert, but a
surprising public statement at this time cast some light on the means by which
Duff’s “hidden bears” were to be hunted.
In 1948, Pennsylvania’s Civil Air
Patrol issued a press release describing an ambitious plan to meet the
“possibilities of an attack on the peace of United States through fifth column
subversive activities,” which would involve selecting members for intensive
training in clandestine warfare, counter-insurgency, Communist methods and
ideology, and the Russian language: training would be coordinated through an
Army counter-intelligence school at Holabird Signal Depot in Baltimore. As the
CAP was a part-time organization, this plan would require the support of the
state’s private corporations and businesses, each of which was asked to enlist
at least one member of their firm in the CAP to take the counter-subversion
course, while private industry was asked to subsidize the scheme. Businesses
would “report via this enlistee all persons in their organization known to have
Communistic or subversive tendencies.” The military link with industry was
sensitive in a state that had less than twenty years ago rid itself of its
loathed Coal and Iron Police, an employers’ militia which appeared to be coming
back under a different guise. The left-liberal York Gazette and Daily saw
the proposal as “the frank bid of CAP to constitute itself as a form of loyalty
police,” while the Communist paper, The Worker, headlined “Industry
Backs Labor Spy Ring in Pennsylvania Factories.”13
Presumably the CAP was not
the only agency in the state contemplating such internal security operations at
this time, but it was the only one naive enough to discuss them openly.
Duff’s concerns were wholeheartedly
shared by the new governor, John S. Fine, who may, if anything, have been even
more sensitive to the need for implacably anti-Communist politics: his
political base was in Luzerne County, with its strong concentration of east and
south European ethnic groups. Taking office in 1951, Fine announced that
Pennsylvania was being placed on a war footing in expectation of imminent
international hostilities which would “make our familiar backyards, the
Turnpike, our suburbs and cities of today, the potential frontlines of
tomorrow.”14 Speaking to the Amvets convention at Harrisburg in July, he warned
that “If and when the Communists decide to attack us, some of their bombs will
reach home. Because they have atom bombs, eleven million Pennsylvanians for
their own individual good will have to learn what to do if a bomb strikes.”15
He continued the civil defense bureaucracy established by Duff, so that by
1951, the state had 624 ground observation posts located over the whole state
at eight mile intervals. Fine also expanded intelligence efforts. Pennsylvania
had a well-established political surveillance system orchestrated through the
State Police, but there now appeared “a new program integrating the work of the
State Police and Justice Department against subversives. Our state now works
closely with the FBI and with other progressive [sic] states to prevent any
Communist infiltration.”16 The state’s Sabotage Prevention Act provided heavy
penalties for the destruction of property affecting national defense facilities
at a time of national emergency, and such acts would represent first degree
murder if death resulted.17
Meanwhile, the State Council of
Civil Defense alerted the public to possible dangers through training programs,
films, and pamphlets with titles like “Protect your family - Keep it safe from
biological warfare.” The Council advertised and distributed films like
“Biological Warfare for Farmers,” “A Tale of Two Cities” (that is, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki), “You Can Beat the A-Bomb,” “Our Cities Must Fight,” and of
course, the notorious “Duck and Cover,” which told schoolchildren how to minimize
nuclear damage by hiding under their desks.18 The new civil defense bureaucracy
published a monthly newsletter, with articles like “Suppose the Enemy Uses
Gas?,” “Coal Mines Studied for Shelter,” “Block Wardens the Key to Panic
Control,” and “8,000 Nurses Take Atomic Nursing Course.” Public awareness of
nuclear and other dangers was enhanced by state and local ”preparedness days,”
and by training in schools and churches, Granges and community groups. In a
typical training drill in Bucks and Chester counties in 1952, the CAP initiated
the imaginary “raid” by dropping leaflets which announced “This might have been
a bomb.” 19
The nuclear war scare reached its
height in the first year of the Fine administration. In October 1951, “Defense”
was the theme of the state’s “Pennsylvania Week,” and shortly afterwards, the
director of Philadelphia’s Civil Defense Council asserted that the civil
defense network would “be called upon to perform under fire very soon, possibly
before the Spring of 1952 has passed.”20 Obviously, this constant emphasis on
sabotage, air-raids and civil defense served to fuel anti-Communist sentiment,
and Leftists protested the “hysteria” generated by school drills.21 Talk of
sabotage encouraged the rumors which buzzed in these years, like the charge
that the Communists had poisoned the Pittsburgh reservoirs, or that a hoard of
sabotage manuals (unaccountably written in Spanish) had been unloaded from a
ship at the Philadelphia docks. The press tended to sensationalize such
reports, as when dynamite was discovered at a McKeesport steelworks, while
paying little attention when the incident was explained innocently.22
The defense of Pennsylvania’s cities
and industries was obviously a priority for the federal government. Apart from
its economic significance, Pennsylvania also possessed other key strategic
sites. At Raven Rock, a remote location near the Maryland line, was the secret
underground headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be occupied in the
event of nuclear catastrophe (York was earmarked as a possible national
capital, if and when Washington ceased to exist).23 Through the 1950s, the
military planned to defend American cities from air attack, and Pittsburgh was
prepared to resist bomber raids by the tactics used by London and other
European cities during the second world war. By 1952, a fighter wing was based
at greater Pittsburgh airport, its efforts supported by a “ring of steel”
around the city, namely a network of anti-aircraft artillery positions in the
surrounding hills, supported by the civil defense observer corps. Each battery
was equipped with 90-mm guns and radar, with a detachment of 55 soldiers.24
As the nuclear threat grew, the
emphasis shifted from staving off air attack by shooting down bombers to
preserving the population through shelters and evacuation procedures, and
periodic air raid exercises gave an opportunity to test sirens and civil
defense mobilization.25 Material goods also required safeguarding. Already by
1951, major corporations like US Steel were taking the precaution of
microfilming crucial records which were buried in disused deep quarries, in the
hope that these would survive the loss of the Pittsburgh area. One site near
Saxonburg in Butler county initially proved ideal, though other more remote locations
were favored in later years, as the destructive power of nuclear weaponry
grew.26 These records would provide the basis for post-nuclear industrial
reconstruction, in which executives of major corporations like Westinghouse,
Alcoa and US Steel already had their assigned roles.27
Suppressing Communism
As in 1940, the war scare provides
an essential backdrop to the political events of these years, and the
suppression of the political parties seen as covers for disloyalty. One key
focus of anti-red enthusiasm was the Cvetic defection and testimony in February
and March, and his subsequent lionization through the popular media, which
reached its height in the film I Was a Communist for the FBI28.
Meanwhile,
Cvetic’s main nemesis was Communist leader Steve Nelson, who served the local
media as the visible face of the Soviet war effort on American soil.
Anti-Communists saw him as a key agent of the Comintern or the Soviet secret
police, or both, so that his presence in the industrial regions around Pittsburgh
seemed a likely prelude to a campaign of sabotage in the event of war.
The Pittsburgh Press greeted his arrival in 1948 with the description
of Nelson as “inspector general for the Soviet underground.” Nelson’s supposed
role as an “atomic spy” appeared in the first news stories reporting Cvetic’s
defection, and the Pittsburgh papers continued throughout the coverage to
depict Nelson as a ruthless spymaster. One Sun-Telegraphstory announced
that “Plot to Cripple Nation Headed by Steve Nelson,” in which columnist Howard
Rushmore spoke of “Stalin’s Fifth Column in this country,” which operated
through “red fascist cells.”29 The Pittsburgh Press claimed that
“Nelson Gave M-Day Orders to Reds Here,” giving local Communists instructions
on how to act in the event of a war between the USSR and the American “enemy,”
an event that had apparently been thought imminent in the Spring of 1948.30 The
Atom Spy tag gained added significance over the coming months, as nuclear
espionage was very much in the news, and one figure in the alleged Rosenberg
network was Harry Gold, arrested in Philadelphia in May 1950.31 Though Gold had
no direct links with the Pennsylvania Communist Party, the publicity accorded
his case could not fail to carry the taint of treason to local Communists.
Addressing workers at the Westinghouse plant, Musmanno declared, “That
industrial strength the Philadelphia scientist [ie Gold] spoke of is dropping
[sic] of an atom bomb which would level all of Pittsburgh like a finger
crushing a grape. Do we have any of those people around here?” 32
Meanwhile, the crucial ballots
within the UE union occurred in April, amidst an atmosphere of war panic: At
the East Pittsburgh Westinghouse works, “Through the Democratic machine, Philip
Murray arranged to get hold of the main gates in Westinghouse for gate meetings
today and Wednesday. The UE was refused permits and the CIO was given permits
for all the days at the main gates... Philip Murray arranged for the National
Guard in full uniform with rifles and bayonets, followed by armored cars
mounted with machine guns, to parade through East Pittsburgh to a noon gate
rally where Judge Musmanno, dressed in Navy uniform, spoke for the [rightist]
IUE and against the [left] UE .”33
The apparent imminence of war also
condition the great sedition trials which got under way Acting on information
sworn out by the judge in his capacity as private citizen, the group seized
large quantities of documents which would be used for a sedition prosecution
against three key Party leaders, including Steve Nelson and James Dolsen, the
latter of whom had been tried in the earlier 1940 purges. The action may be
better understood when we note the timing, in the last two days of August 1950,
at a time when the news media were grimly reporting the desperate plight of
United Nations forces trapped within the Pusan perimeter, and the likelihood of
a final Communist offensive within days or hours: for Musmanno, a move in
Pittsburgh was his only way of striking a blow in the growing world conflict.
Decline
I have argued that the
anti-Communist furor in Pennsylvania has to be seen as an integral part of the
war scare which grew apace following the news in late 1949 of the
Soviet atomic bomb and the fall of China, and which reached appalling heights
with the Korean outbreak the following June. It should moreover be linked to
the civil defense movement of the same years. Accordingly, as the fear of imminent
global war slackened from mid-decade, so the political atmosphere eased
greatly. Though nuclear fears rose once more between about 1959 and 1962, the
political environment never again became quite as torrid as it had in 1950, and
there were good military reasons for this. In a world of ICBMs and
thermonuclear “hell-bombs”, sabotage and subversion became far less plausible
or pressing a threat: poisoning reservoirs or blowing up bridges only made
sense in a war lasting months or years, not the few days which would presumably
mark the span of the next world war. As Tom Lehrer sang in the early 1960s,
“we’ll all fry together when we fry”, and little difference would be made to
this outcome by the efforts of secret paramilitary bands on American soil, no matter
how determined or cunning.
Changing perceptions of the
Communist peril are indicated by the history of the civil defense movement,
which was transformed from a high social priority in the early 1960s to
near-farcical irrelevance by the end of that decade. The Kennedy years marked
the high point of perceptions of a direct nuclear threat to the state, and the
Cuban missile crisis stirred commitment to civil defense to a remarkable
intensity. Civil defense preparations in these years could no longer make the
optimistic assumption that the US military would be able to shoot down Russian
bombers, and the question was when, rather than if, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh
would fall to nuclear missiles. Survival could only come through evacuation or
bomb shelters. In 1960, a civil defense scenario assumed that residents of the
southern parts of metropolitan Pittsburgh would evacuate en masse to Uniontown
in Fayette county, fleeing a city “torn, smashed and seared by a sneak atomic
attack,” and such exercises were repeated through the early 1960s.34
Defense preparedness reached its
height in late 1962, during the Cuba crisis. By this point, 190 buildings in
Pittsburgh stored survival supplies, and some shelter complexes were vast:
facilities under the Federal Building and the Penn-Sheraton Hotel each claimed
to be able to safeguard eight thousand residents, while the Carnegie Museum had
supplies for twelve thousand.35 One shelter complex in Wilkinsburg boasted
accommodation for nearly five thousand; Mount Lebanon had space for 6,400,
complete with an underground hospital.36 Allegheny County had almost three
thousand shelters by this point, and notional space for 369,000 survivors. On a
domestic level too, civic authorities enthusiastically sponsored nuclear drills
in schools, and urged each family to develop its own survival plan and shelter
area. The Cuba scare resulted in the official shelters receiving unprecedented
attention, and all were now fully supplied with medical supplies, water and
food, the last mainly in the form of notoriously indigestible crackers,
intended “for sustaining life and for retaining vigor and good spirits.”37 The
Federal Building alone was stocked with nearly 30,000 gallons of water, as well
as nearly two and a half million crackers, and 164 sanitation kits. 38
After 1962, the large commitment to
civil defense seemed increasingly irrelevant, as concern about global nuclear
war diminished rapidly. By the mid-1960s, the news media were beginning to
publish what would become an enduring genre of stories which noted the
remaining vestiges of the civil defense establishment, but as monuments of a
distant bygone era. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked in 1966, “Is
Civil Defense Program Worth Saving”? Or as the Pittsburgh Press asked,
succinctly, in 1972, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Boom?”39 Meanwhile, civil
defense facilities deteriorated rapidly, so that by 1969, Pittsburgh’s Director
of Civil Defense stated that the city could no longer be given an effective
emergency warning in the event of attack. The sirens, powered by 1951
automobile engines, were going flat, and one had already ceased to function: to
quote a 1971 newspaper headline, “City Bomb Sirens Rust in Silence.”40 Shelters
themselves were falling into disuse, and were being converted en masse into
wine cellars, photographic dark rooms, indoor marijuana gardens, museums and
simple curios.41 The question of disposing of the remaining nuclear defenses
remained a matter of semi-serious debate. What exactly could be done with the
multi-million remaining Cuba-era crackers? They did not lend themselves to bulk
feeding to animals because they were individually wrapped: moreover,
experiments suggested that their dubious taste inspired consumer resistance
among the zoo animals chosen for this experiment, even the bears.42
In retrospect, civil defense has
acquired a rather ludicrous reputation in American historical memory, as a kind
of hysteria epitomized in documentaries like Atomic Cafe, and the movement
did have its silly aspects, such as the “duck and cover” program. Having said
this, the concept of civil defense, broadly understood, deserves recognition as
one of the more powerful social and political impulses in mid-century America.
Especially in its counter-subversive manifestations, the civil defense idea is
essential to any understanding of what may otherwise seem like mystifying
outbreaks of political repression in these years.
REFERENCES
PEB Philadelphia Evening
Bulletin
PI Philadelphia
Inquirer.
PP Pittsburgh
Press.
PPG Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette.
PPL Philadelphia
Public Ledger
PSA Pennsylvania
State Archives, Harrisburg.
PST Pittsburgh
Sun-Telegraph.
PSU Pennsylvania
State University, Pattee Library.
TU Temple
University, Urban Archives
UE United
Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
UP University
of Pittsburgh.
1. Caute, The Great Fear, 216-23,
387. Many of the points discussed here are covered more fully in my book, The
Cold War At Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania 1945-60 (University of
North Carolina Press).
2. James T. Patterson, Grand
Expectations (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996); Michael S.
Sherry, In the Shadow of War (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1995)
3. This section draws on Philip
Jenkins, Hoods and Shirts (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997).
4. Guy Oakes The Imaginary War (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994).
5. “McDevitt Predicts Ouster of US
Reds,” PI, May 2, 1940.
6. PSA, MG 190, Papers of James H.
Duff, official papers 1947-51 subject file, “Defense 1948-50.”
7. ibid, George R. Acheson to James
Duff, July 22, 1950; Letter of Duff, Aug. 1, 1950.
8. 32nd Annual Convention of
the American Legion, Department of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, Aug. 9-12,
1950 (American Legion, Department of Pennsylvania, 1950), 73-76
9. “State Open to Red Attack, Duff
Says,” PP, Aug. 31, 1950.
10. PSA, MG 190, Papers of James H.
Duff, official papers 1947-51 subject file, “Defense 1948-50,” Duff to Vincent
A. Carroll, Aug. 1950.
11. Michael A. Musmanno, Across
the Street from the Courthouse (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1954), 84-5.
12. PSA, MG 190, Papers of James H.
Duff, official papers 1947-51 subject file, “Defense 1948-50,” Governor’s committee
on civil defense, speech by Ross Leffler, “If War Comes,” May 1950; Douglas
Naylor, “34 Key Posts Filled Here in Civil Defense” PP, Aug. 9, 1950;
“Seven Thousand Needed for City’s Civil Defense” PP, Aug. 17, 1950.
13.HCLA, Josiah W. Gitt papers, Box 2,
“Correspondence” Harry E Sharkey to Governor Duff, Jan. 29, 1948; Harry E
Sharkey to Senator Francis Myers, Jan. 29, 1948; News release, from state Civil
Air Patrol, no date, c.Jan. 1948; Walter Lowenfels, “Industry Backs Labor Spy
Ring in Pennsylvania Factories,” The Worker, March 21, 1948
14. John S. Fine, “Governor Fine
Says,” Keystone Defender, 1(1) March 1952, 1.
15. PSA, MG 206, Papers of John S.
Fine, William W. Wheaton files, Box 1, July 22, 1951 - Fine speech to Amvets
convention at Harrisburg, p.5; John S. Fine, A Record (Harrisburg:
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Governor's Office, 1954).
16. PSA, MG 206, Papers of John S.
Fine, “Statement by Albert R. Pechan - State Senator from Butler-Armstrong
Counties, As Requested by INS,” ?early 1953?
17.Digest of the Public Record of
Communism in the United States (New York: Fund for the Republic, 1955),
264.
18. PSA, MG 206, Papers of John S.
Fine, William W. Wheaton files, Box 1; compare Civil Defense for Schools (Harrisburg:
State Council of Civil Defense/Dept. of Public Instruction, 1952). The list of
films and pamphlets is also derived from successive issues of the civil defense
newsletter Keystone Defender.
19. “Two Counties Hold
Alerts,” Keystone Defender, 1(4) June 1952, 7.
20. “Defense Head Comes Up With New
Horror Hoax,” The Worker, Dec. 9, 1951.
21. “Mothers Protest Effects of
A-Drills on Kids,” The Worker, Feb. 4, 1951.
22. Steve Nelson, James R. Barrett,
and Rob Ruck, Steve Nelson: American Radical (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh
Press, 1981), 377 for the reservoirs; the sabotage manual story is from Ralph
Schapell, “The Termites Within,” Keystone Defender, 1(3) May 1952;
James H. Dolsen, “Pittsburgh Paper Reveals Frameup Techniques,” The
Worker, March 11, 1951.
23. “If Washington is Destroyed,
What Then?” Keystone Defender, 3(12) Feb. 1955.
24. “Hot Reception Awaiting Any Red
Bombers Here,” PST, May 18, 1952.
25. “Tighter City Air Defense Still
Snarled,” PPG, Sept. 5, 1952; “Sirens to Wail October 15 in Statewide Air
Raid Test,” PP, Oct. 4, 1952, 2.
26. James McCarthy, “Vital Records
on Microfilm Go Underground in Unused Pits to Protect Against War Loss,” PST, May
20, 1951; Herbert G. Stein, “Plant Records Go Underground,” PPG, Jan. 30,
1961.
27. Douglas Smith, “Industrialists
Here Know What to Do if A-Bombs Wipe Out Capital” PP, Jan. 17, 1960.
28. HUAC. Exposé of the
Communist Party of Western Pennsylvania based upon testimony of Matthew Cvetic,
Undercover Agent: Hearings, 81st Congress, 2nd session (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1950), 1195-1205.
29. Howard Rushmore “Plot to Cripple
Nation Headed by Steve Nelson,” PST, Feb. 26, 1950. Compare “Commie
Leader Here Unmasks Self as FBI Agent for Nine Years” PP, Feb. 19, 1950.
30. “Nelson Gave M-Day Orders to
Reds Here” PP, Feb. 27, 1950.
31. Schneir, Walter and Miriam
Schneir, Invitation to an Inquest (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1965),
70-77.
32. UP, UE/Labor Archive, Papers of
UE Local 601, Box 1. A contemporary Philadelphia exposé of a Communist “peace
petition” movement in the Oxford Circle area made the gratuitous observation
that Harry Gold had lived nearby, presumably seeking to link Communism and
espionage: “Red Peace Fake Here Designed to get Party Funds,” PI, June 26,
1950.
33. UP, UE/Pitt Labor Archive,
papers of UE Local 601, 1949-52, Box 1, James Matles to “UE General
Vice-Presidents” May 29, 1950.
34. “Volunteers End Two Week Stay in
Bomb Shelter,” PPG, June 20, 1960; “Shadyside Test Success,” PPG,
March 18, 1961; “Mock Nuclear Attack Devastates District,” PPG, May 18,
1963; compare Barry Paris, “The Bomb and Pittsburgh,” PPG, Nov. 12, 1981.
35. “175 Buildings Here OK’d as Raid
Shelters,” PPG, Nov. 24, 1962; “700 Calories a Day for Atom
Survivors,” PP, June 16, 1963.
36. Paul Maryniak, “City Still
Suffering Shelter Fallout From Cuba,” PP, Sept. 3, 1994
37. “Survival Food Stored Here for
Emergency,” PPG, Nov. 9, 1962.
38. “700 Calories a Day for Atom
Survivors,” PP, June 16, 1963; Geoffrey Tomb, “County Set for
A-Attack,” PPG, April 30, 1973.
39.Jack Ryan “Is Civil Defense
Program Worth Saving?” PPG, Jan. 12, 1966; Robert Stearns, “Who’s Afraid
of the Big Bad Boom?” PP Roto Dec. 24, 1972.
40. “Civil Defense Chief Wails for
Sirens and City Turns a Deaf Ear,” PP, April 6, 1969; “City Bomb Sirens
Rust in Silence,” PP, Oct. 31, 1971.
41. “County Warms to Cold War
Shelters,” PPG, April 14, 1980.
42. Paul Maryniak, “City Still
Suffering Shelter Fallout From Cuba,” PP, Sept. 3, 1994.
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