that as far as this committee is concerned, there are neither Democrats nor Republicans, that this committee has acted consistently on the sole basis of fulfilling its mandate from the Congress. I therefore wanted the record clear on that and asked permission to include the letter. The CHAIRMAN. Will you call your first witness, Mr. Arens.

Mr. ARENS. Mr. Herbert Philbrick, please stand while the chairman administers an oath.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. PHILBRICK. I do.

The CHAIRMAN. Be seated, please.

TESTIMONY OF HERBERT A. PHILBRICK

Mr. ARENS. Mr. Philbrick, realizing that you have testified for the Government on many occasions as a former undercover agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation serving in the Communist Party, I shall not ask you this morning to go into any great detail with respect to your background with the Communist Party. I should, however, like to ask just a few questions for the purpose of identifying you on this particular record.

Would you kindly give us, then, a word about your personal background, your education, and your present occupation?

Mr. PHILBRICK. Yes, sir. I was born and brought up in Boston, Massachusetts, and its surburbs, and graduated from Somerville High School. I went to college in Boston and then went into the advertising profession.

My business now is that of owning and operating a country general store in Rye Beach, New Hampshire.

Mr. ARENS. Have you, since testifying for the Government as an undercover agent of the FBI in the Communist Party, maintained a keen interest in the activities of the Communist conspiracy? Mr. PHILBRICK. Yes, sir, I have.

Mr. ARENS. Mr. Philbrick, the record of the committee reflects that you operated for years within the party at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

This morning, for the purpose of background in the general exploration of this committee into Communist activities among youth, we would like to ask if you could give us an appraisal and the importance of youth to the Communist conspiracy.

Mr. PHILBRICK. Well, in their campaign of aggression against the free world, of course, the Soviet Union and its Communist agents in this country are very busy on many fronts.

(At this point, Mr. Scherer left the hearing room.)

Mr. PHILBRICK. Over the years, the record shows, however, that youth particularly as a target of the Communists has always occupied a top position on the agenda and the attention of the Communist apparatus.

In Communist infiltration of labor groups, for example, or church or peace movements in schools or colleges, the Communist always and constantly keeps an eye on the young people within those organizations. I think the reasons are obvious.

First of all, if the Communist Party is to build membership and maintain membership and to secure recruits for its Soviet apparatus in this country, of course, it must do so among young people.

Secondly, the Reds have found the youth of America vulnerable to their attacks, vulnerable to their appeals.

The Communist youth movement offers them excitement. It offers them activity, a sense of belonging to a worldwide organization of great impact and with much going on.

The Reds also, of course, know that our young people lack the knowledge and the experience of adults to weigh or to judge or to detect Communist propaganda appeals and so they know that they are vulnerable to that kind of an appeal.

The Communists are always very quick to seize targets of opportunity. Right now the Reds feel that they are in a very favorable position for a new drive on young people. The reason, they say, is that, first of all, we are now in a period of so-called relaxation of tensions and there is much favorable response to the appeals and to the statements of the Soviet leaders to the world. Secondly, the Communists, of course, always maintain a constant threat of war against this country and the free world. They know that young people are interested in preserving peace and so, by first posing the threat and then second. offering a supposed solution to this threat, offering young people a phony answer, a solution, a means whereby they can secure peace, they know that young people are anxious to look for those answers.

(At this point, Mr. Miller entered the hearing room.)

Mr. PHILBRICK. Third, the Communists know that our young people lack training and lack education concerning communism. They know that schools and colleges generally are providing very little if any information to our young people concerning communism. Hence, again they know that young people are vulnerable to their attacks. In other words, the Communists know that, if they can weaken or if they can destroy the loyalty of our young people in our country and all that it stands for, they will be a long way toward eventual victory over the United States and the free world.

Mr. ARENS. Mr. Philbrick, we would like to have the benefit of your experiences in youth groups. We know, of course, of your activity in a number of the principal Communist controlled youth organizations. With that in mind, would you tell us how you first became involved in the Communist Party?

Mr. PHILBRICK. One of the reasons I have maintained a continuing interest in the matter of Communist subversive activities among young people is because I happen to be one of the victims of the Communists, specifically in this area.

As a young person, I was victimized and duped into joining a supposedly legitimate youth organization. It was an organization called the Cambridge Youth Council of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I joined the group at that time, a sincere young person interested in world peace, and the appeal of the Cambridge Youth Council was that of world peace. I was not the only one who joined it, incidentally; there were some 350 to 400 other young people who joined that organization, too.

After joining it, however, I began to discover that something was rather wrong with the organization and within six months had de

tected that the organization was not a legitimate youth organization at all, it was a complete phony, it was a fraud and, furthermore, it was dominated and controlled by persons I suspected to be members of the Communist criminal conspiracy.

Mr. ARENS. What did you do about it?

Mr. PHILBRICK. At that time, I decided to do two things.

Number 1, I decided to quit, to get out from an organization that was not a legitimate group. I also decided that someone should know that a vicious racket was being perpetrated against the young people and, therefore, decided to report those facts to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. ARENS. Would you proceed with what happened next?

Mr. PHILBRICK. After talking to the FBI, they suggested to me that I might stay on in the youth group, the Cambridge Youth Council, in order to learn more about what the Communists were doing in that organization, and I agreed to do so.

Mr. ARENS. Then following your experience with this Cambridge Youth Council, did you have similar experiences with other organizations geared to the demands of youth which were likewise Communistinfiltrated or controlled?

Mr. PHILBRICK. Yes. Indeed, it was a shock to me to discover the extent of Communist activity among young people. I was astonished to learn that not only were the Communists active in the Cambridge Youth Council but that they were also active in many other youth organizations and, upon their request and their invitation, I joined a great many similar Communist front youth organizations, groups such as, for example, Youth for Victory, the American Student Union, the National Youth Lobby, the American Youth Congress, the Young Progressives, Youth for Wallace. The list itself would be very long. All of this was an awakening to me as someone who at that time knew very little about communism, an awakening and realization of the tremendous amount of activity and time and effort the Communists were putting in among the young people of this country.

Mr. ARENS. Did your association with these numerous organizations lead you into any connection with the parent organization, the Young Communist League?

Mr. PHILBRICK. Yes. After working within the Communist front organizations for a period of time, the Communists then invited me to join the Young Communist League and I did so, again after checking with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. ARENS. How did these various organizations which you have described briefly, such as the Cambridge Youth Council, differ from the Young Communist League itself?

Mr. PHILBRICK. Well, the purposes of the Cambridge Youth Council and the other Communist front organizations as front organizations were several fold. First of all, of course, the over-all purpose of the Communist front youth organizations was to strengthen the position of the Soviet Union and to weaken the position of the United States; to break down, if possible, the loyalties of young people, their respect, their regard for their own nation, their own country, their own background, their own heritage. This was done, incidentally, over most of the period of time in the guise of peace propaganda.

The second major purpose of the Communist front organization was to serve as a transmission belt for Communist propaganda. In

other words, the Communists knew at that time that perhaps very few of the young people would be vulnerable to direct appeals by the Communist Party itself.

They knew, for example, that if a leaflet or a booklet or a pamphlet were to be given to the young person and it was clearly and accurately labeled Communist Party, they might tend to disregard it or perhaps not to believe it. However, if they were to take the same propaganda written at Communist Party headquarters, take off the label "Communist Party" and put on a new label, such as "American Youth for Democracy," this, they hoped, would sufficiently disguise the subversive propaganda and the material would be accepted. The Communists called these organizations transmission belts. That is not my term. That is their term.

Third, the front organizations served as recruiting grounds for the Communist Party itself. It was here that the Communists looked for their future members in the Communist criminal conspiracy.

Out of the many young people who joined and participated in the Communist front organizations, the Communists very carefully selected the most promising, they felt, future members of the Communist Party, who were then invited to join the Young Communist League.

In the Young Communist League, the purpose there was specifically to serve as a training ground for eventual membership in the Communist Party itself. Hence, it duplicated the Communist apparatus in the form of its organization, in the nature of its meetings.

The meetings were held secretly. They were held every other week as Communist cell meetings are held.

The organizational structure pretty much copied and duplicated that of the Communist Party itself; thereby the young people were trained to be future members of the Communist apparatus.

The Young Communist League in fact called itself the "vanguard of the youth movement."

Mr. ARENS. Did the Communist Party find it necessary from the standpoint of the impact on the mind of youth to disband the Young Communist League and create in its stead an organization with the same objectives and same purposes but with a different facade or front?

Mr. PHILBRICK. Yes, it did.

Mr. ARENS. When was that, please?

Mr. PHILBRICK. That was back in 1943.

Mr. ARENS. What was the successor organization?

Mr. PHILBRICK. The organization which succeeded the Young Communist League was called American Youth for Democracy.

Mr. ARENS. How did the American Youth for Democracy differ from the Young Communist League?

Mr. PHILBRICK. It differed only in that it offered a much wider membership than the restricted membership of the Young Communist League. The reason was that at that time the Communists were anxious to involve, to recruit as many American young people as possible behind the war effort and to aid as allies the Soviet Union in the war against fascism.

To do that, they felt that it was necessary to broaden the scope of its organizational structure and therefore the American Youth for Democracy replaced and succeeded the Young Communist League.

Mr. ARENS. While there was an organizational difference, Mr. Philbrick, between the American Youth for Democracy and the Young Communist League-in other words, was the AYD itself controlled by the Communist Party as was the Young Communist League?

Mr. PHILBRICK. The American Youth for Democracy was completely controlled by the Communist Party due to the fact that all of the officers known to me, including myself, were secret members of the Communist apparatus. I, incidentally, served in the capacity of Massachusetts State Treasurer of American Youth for Democracy. Similarly all of the other top officers of AYD were members of the Communist criminal conspiracy.

Mr. ARENS. I would like to pause here for just a minute in your presentation of this background material, Mr. Philbrick, to ask you a few questions on the theme that the chairman pursued in his opening statement this morning.

To what extent is the Communist operation among youth reflected in the numerical strength of the identified hard-core agents working among the youth?

Mr. PHILBRICK. The number of actual Communist youth among the young people has always been a very tiny minority. For example, when I first joined the Cambridge Youth Council, I had no way, at that time, of knowing who the Communists were and who the dupes

were.

It later developed that the Communist criminal conspiracy controlled that organization, the Cambridge Youth Council, composed of 350 or more young people, controlled it completely with only three secret members of the Communist apparatus.

Mr. ARENS. Did these secret members make it known to the young people that they were part of the conspiratorial apparatus known as the Communist Party?

Mr. PHILBRICK. No, sir.

Mr. ARENS. Do they in their approach to the young people speak in humanitarian terms, uplift terms, idealistic terms?

Mr. PHILBRICK. Yes, they do.

Mr. ARENS. They do not reveal to the young people that they themselves are hard-core conspirators of the Communist apparatus, do they?

Mr. PHILBRICK. No, they do not. In fact, after I joined the Communist apparatus, I was specifically ordered and instructed by the Communist bosses not to reveal my membership to any of the young people with whom we were working. In fact, I was further ordered that if I were challenged as a Communist, if I were charged with being a member of the Communist apparatus, I was to deny that I was or ever had been a member of the Communist apparatus.

Mr. ARENS. In appearance, do these hard-core agents of the conspiracy working among youth give the appearance of a conspirator, as such?

Mr. PHILBRICK. No, indeed. The skill with which the Communists have developed these Communist front organizations is truly magnifi

cent.

We must not underestimate the ability of the Communists to disguise these organizations.