On Dec 13, 2010, at 2:03 PM, c b wrote:
> Anyone up for shedding more light on this event? October 12th, would
> have been about a month and a half after the invasion/partition of
> Poland and the declaration of war by Britain on Germany.
>
> Curious in Perth, Mike B)
>
> ******************
>
> "Trotsky wrote on 12 October 1939 to J.B.Mathews, Chief Investigator
> of the US Congress's Committee on Un-American Activities (which
> investigated foreign subversion of the American Constitution),
> offering to appear as a witness against the leadership of the
> Communist Party of the USA. His only condition was that he should be
> sent the questions in advance." Trotsky, A Biography by Robert
> Service, 2009
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Puts in a different light the American Trotskyists' claim that
> the CPUSA urged SWPers' prosecution under the Smith Act in 1941.
Service is a literary Mercader. Trotsky's offer was to testify about his *own* politics, not "against" any American. His goal was to appear and speak publicly in the USA and perhaps gain a safer place of political asylum. Dies and Roosevelt were so afraid of Trotsky that, their bluff having been called, they immediatey folded and cancelled the invitation.
Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64