> Now if any of these characters had even gone to a cocktail party that
> was also attended by a low-ranking functionary in a Stalinist front
> group, that would be another story!
>
> The Sandwichman
Heh ;-) I'll make more fun of myself then and my occasional spiderweb amalgams of Stalinist intrigue (to cite the title of a notorious article by Irving Kristo circa '47 or so in Partisan Review or Commentary, "The Liberal (Stalinoid) Fifth Column in America.") and remind you of what you probably already know that Dwight Macdonald attended a cocktail party in '48 after that gasp of the Popular Front among the intelligentsia, the Waldorf-Astoria conf. of the fellow travellers, CPUSA members like Howard Fast, Norman Mailer, Milosz (in an official capacity for the Polish regime), Lillian Hellman and a scared out of his wits Shostakovich. Macdonald found himself pleasantly surpised to be charmed by the "geniality, " of that low brow Howard Fast. And reflecting that he had much more in common with these CPUSA intellectuals on a cultural and political level (on domestic issues only) than with the braying right-wing mob that picketed the Waldorf-Astoria conf. earlier that day.(See chap. 10 of the Michael Wreszin bio. of Macdonald.)
Looking up Wohlstetter in the index of the Wreszin bio. I see that during WWII, Albert and Roberta W. had pitchers of martinis and crab w/ Dwight and Nancy Macdonald in Nantucket.
Getting back to your (heh, to cite a short piece in the neo-con, "National Interest, " last yr.), "Neo-Conspiracy Theory, " it could be just an elaborate in-joke, or just a piece of art on the cover of a report. Was Rockefeller a Bolshevik for hiring Rivera to do that mural at Rockefeller plaza!? (That, we all know was destroyed when Rivera painted in Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.) Is the painting by Rivera on the cover of this WB report from his Trotskyist period , or his Stalinist period after LDT was killed and he re-joined the Stalinist PCM?
-- Michael Pugliese