The following letter was published in 1976 by the IWP in responses to charges brought by former IWP members known as Communist Cadre (or "Comcad"). The Comcad began rallying against the Newmanites after learning that in 1974 IWP members Harry Kresky and Ann Green had presented damaging political information about former CFC member James Retherford to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office. The piece provides a valuable lesson on Newman's "organizing" work around City College and the IWP's historical relationship to the FBI-especially in light of their 1993 "civil suit" against the FBI for its description of the IWP as a cult and the false "informant" charges brought against M. Ortiz in 1994.

INTERNATIONAL WORKERS PARTY

May 5, 1976

Comrades and Friends:

We are writing to alert you to the suspicious behavior of a new formation known as the Communist Cadre (Comcad), which has-in its brief existence-engaged in behavior which objectively amounts to that of provocateurs, regardless of subjective intent.

This small grouping was formed early in March when an ultra-left fraction left the International, Workers Party after attempting to disrupt a party plenum called to discuss political issues raised by them. For detailed analysis of the political issues surrounding their departure, we refer you to the March 20, 1976 issue of the International Worker:

Attacks on the Left

Their provocative and highly suspicious behavior has not been directed only at the IWP. At the May 1 "Anti-Apartheid" demonstration and march called by Workers World Party (with which the four leading members of Comcad were affiliated until they were expelled late in the Fall of 1974), Comcad attempted to hand out a leaflet that was a frontal attack on the demonstration. When it was made clear that they would not be allowed to continue distributing it, they left. Some time later, as the march was proceeding along a particularly crowded portion of its route, Comcad, in force, burst out of a side street running and unfurling their banners. They forced their way into the ranks of the march, pushing whoever was in their way aside.

At another march earlier that day, called by the Communist Party, the Comcad group behaved in a similar manner, trying repeatedly to force their way into the ranks of the march by bursting out of side streets.

Since leaving, the IWP these Comcad have attempted to destroy two significant mass organizing thrusts (the New York City Unemployed Council (NYCUC) and the New York Working Peoples Party), which the IWP has undertaken. Their efforts to do so, regardless of the specific character of their actions, marks them objectively as enemies of the working class movement. At a time when the developing of mass organizations of the working class under communist leadership is of the utmost importance, to attempt to disrupt the steps being taken in that direction serves only the interests of the bourgeoisie no matter how left or ultra-left the cover. The specific character of what Comcad has done so far in their short life makes their role as provocateurs quite clear.

False Charges Exposed

Their most recent exploit occurred at the first public meeting [in] May of the New York Working Peoples Party, at which they distributed to those attending the meeting a document charging:

a.                 That in early 1974 Centers For Change, the predecessor organization to the IWP-under the leadership of current IWP Chairman Fred Newman-directed three of its members to meet with the FBI and give the FBI information about the Weather Underground to induce the FBI to cooperate with securing the return of the son of a CFC member who had been taken by its father. Comcad charged that such a meeting actually took place in early 1974 between the FBI and CFC members Nathan Darrow [a pseudonym], Harry Jackson [Harry Kresky] and Ann Green (the mother).

b.                That while teaching at City College Fred Newman opposed open admissions on, Comcad implies, racist grounds, moved off campus because of his unpopular position and inspired the formation of an organization called "If ... Then" whose modality was obscenity for its own sake. (For people who have not received the document from Comcad, we can make a copy available.)

There were other specific charges of a less serious nature, and the repetition of previous charges (which will be dealt with later in this letter), but the above two form the core of Comcad's most recent attempt to disrupt and destroy the mass organizing efforts of the IWP by portraying its leadership and history as racist and anti-working class agents of the bourgeoisie.

The FBI Charge

[... ILLEGIBLE.] The true facts regarding the "FBI" charge are as follows:

On or about April 11, Jim Retherford, a former leading member of CFC, took the child of CFC member Ann Green. Harry Jackson [Kresky] and Nathan Darrow (political names), who were attorneys, instituted a habeas corpus action in state court to obtain the return of Ann's son, Jesse. The legal papers make no mention of politics whatsoever. On April 15, 1974, a judge returned Jesse to Ann pending final determination of custody. On May 2, 1974, Retherford signed an affidavit for the court case containing extensive political distortions concerning CFC and its relationship with the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). On June 1, CPC dissolved itself and its members joined the NCLC and were from that point on acting under the discipline only of the NCLC. On June 15, Retherford took Jesse and send Ann Green a telegram stating:

"JESSE AND I HAD TO LEAVE [STOP]. I FEEL BADLY BUT HAD NO CHOICE [STOP]. YOU ARE DETERMINED TO DENY JESSE AND ME A FULFILLING RELATIONSHIP AND DENY MY RESPONSIBILITY TO HIM [STOP]. I KNOW LC'S SCARE TACTICS SO TOLD NO ONE [STOP]. LETTER FOLLOWS."

On June 25, 1974, under the discipline of the NCLC, Darrow and Jackson prepared an affidavit, which Green (also in the NCLC) signed, which identified Jim Retherford as a former Weatherman. Between July 8, 1974 and July 25, 1974, under the direction of the NCLC legal and security staff Darrow, Green and Jackson [Kresky] spoke by phone and met with members of the FBI and told them that Jim had harbored Weather people and had been in contacts with Jane Alpert in December 1973 or January 1974, in an attempt to induce the FBI to search for Jim and thus help recover Jesse. As part of the same plan Jackson met with members of the office of the U.S. Attorney in New York during the same period to get them to pressure the FBI to act. The last step in this strategy occurred on August 14, 1974 when Jackson wrote a letter to the U.S. Attorneys Office complaining that the matter had not been acted on. On August 25, 1974, Darrow, Jackson [Kresky] and Green, together with almost all the former CFCers, resigned en masse from the NCLC to found the IWP. Fred Newman had himself resigned from the NCLC some three weeks earlier.

Who is Rehabilitated?

There is, of course, no defending the actions that were taken by the three NCLC members in the effort to get the FBI to help find Retherford. They were anti-working class and counterrevolutionary, as were and are so much else of the NCLC's actions, which included many attempts to use the bourgeois state against groups such as the Weather people and the BLA which it identified as CIA [controlled] "countergangs." The IWP has made its involvement with and analysis of the NCLC quite public (Manifesto on Method, Critical Practice; Vol. 1, Nos. 1 and 2).

The collaboration with the FBI did not mark a significant departure from standard NCLC operating procedure. Moreover, it was consistent with what the CFCers, under Newman's leadership, soon realized was the dominant strategic perspective of the NCLC: don't organize the working class; move toward state power by maneuvering in and among competing factions of the bourgeoisie; attack the left as dupes or creations of Rockefeller-CIA to the extent they did not openly recognize the NCLC as hegemonic, and use the state apparatus against them. The NCLC did not hide this. What was impossible to determine, until after a brief period within the NCLC, was how that was their dominant perspective and how other initiatives such as the development of NUWRO functioned as a left cover. It was this realization that led to our resignation and has formed the core of our consistent efforts to expose the NCLC, by serious analysis of their degeneration and the lessons that must be learned [ILLEGIBLE] and divide the left internally and from the working class.

Ann Green and Harry Jackson have been active members of the IWP since its founding after leaving the NCLC in August 1974. They have undergone considerable political education since then and recognize the political errors and thoroughly anti-working class character of the NCLC. They are, indeed, more than a little self-critical for having taken part in the actions described above. In their defense they can say only that they were functioning as disciplined members of the NCLC and acted under the misleadership of its legal staff and infamous security apparatus and were; at the time, quite inexperienced politically. Jackson's [Kresky's] first involvement as a member of a left organization began when he joined CFC in March of 1974. Green had been a member of CFC for several years. However, she was, as were many members of the organization, quite naive politically at the time CFC joined the NCLC. She also desperately wanted to get back her nine-month-old son.

Darrow, a founding member of Comcad and the obvious source of misinformation, will have to speak for himself; although he has already spoken through the gross distortions in the document distributed by the Comcad. It is clear that he has learned little since leaving the NCLC. For the same technique of hysterical distortion; of cop-baiting, of saying whatever is expedient for the accomplishment of immediate ends was a major characteristic of the NCLC. When the former members of CFC realized, less than three months after they joined, that the NCLC was rotten to the core, and the positive thrusts it had made such as the abortive efforts to build NUWRO into a mass organization uniting the employed and unemployed were being sabotaged by the NCLC itself (much as the Comcad now seek to sabotage the building of the New York City Unemployed Council and the New York Working Peoples Party) that they quit. And it was Fred Newman who led the way in quitting then and in presenting a probing analysis of that organization's behavior. As for Nathan Darrow, during the period of the "FBI "Weather-baiting," he was maneuvering to move into the leadership group of the NCLC legal staff.

In addition to these lies and distortions, the behavior of Darrow and others of the Comcad at the May 2 Working People's Party meeting is strikingly reminiscent of the NCLC. When Mohammed Kenyatta, speaking on behalf of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition, attacked Comcad for the display of sectarian destructiveness represented by their document, Comcad member Ellen Byrnes began to scream at him and berate him in such a racist way that he was forced to point out to her that "even a colored boy from Philadelphia knows where it's at with this kind of nonsense." Her outburst was followed by other hysterical displays by Comcad members, until finally it was moved that they were excluded from the meeting. At this point they announced they were leaving, to the hearty applause of all the others present.

And they marched out en masse, leaving confusion, bewilderment and disgust in their wake. It is a pleasure to add at this point that when a fight developed outside between Comcad and the IWP members who escorted them to the door, that the Comcad proved themselves as incapable of fighting as they are of being truthful. Those of their members with guts enough, to even try to fight were roundly thrashed, while most, including their leader and self-proclaimed "global class struggler"-Joel Meyers-stood by and watched their comrades take it on the chin.

The meeting continued, but damage had been done and a significant organizing meeting disrupted.

Other similarities between Comcad and the NCLC must be pointed out. Like the NCLC, they use lies and distortion to manipulate their cadre into blindly following bizarre and anti-working class behavior. They see reality only in terms of their position on the left and have revealed their utter contempt for actually organizing the working class. Just as the NCLC thought the road to vanguard leadership lay through mopping-up the CPUSA and cop-baiting and slandering the left, so the Comcad has engaged in nothing but cop-baiting, slander and other provocative behavior since their inauspicious beginning little of a month ago. They have revealed their contempt for the working class through their sectarian antics at demonstrations, public meetings and in their disdain for the day-to-day work of the Unemployed Council helping working and poor people fight for survival against welfare, cutoffs, evictions, etc., work which the Comcad dismisses as "sub economist."[2]

While they were in the IWP the present Comcad leadership, particularly Joel Meyers and Myron Jefka, pushed for public repudiation of a statement in the International Worker written by Fred Newman-which identified the NCLC as fascist. And, during discussions subsequent to that concerning an aggressive propaganda campaign against the NCLC, Thomas Ross another leading Comcad, cautioned the IWP Central Committee to be sure and date the point at which we said the NCLC became proto-fascist in such a way as to not cast aspersions on the IWP founding members for having briefly joined the NCLC.

It is such concern for truth as something to be manipulated for immediate, tactical expediency that marks the latest Comcad document (as well as all those which proceeded it). This lying and distortion-which the NCLC carried to its greatest extremes (although Comcad is well on the way to surpassing them)-must be ruthlessly purged from the left. For it is the atmosphere created by such behavior-which makes it possible for an organization like the NCLC or Comcad to acquire any credibility whatsoever.

The Open Admissions Charge

The second charge in the Comcad document, concerning Fred Newman's position on open admissions and the founding of "If ... Then" is likewise a gross distortion. While teaching at City College in the period around 1968, Newman attempted to explain how open admissions was being used as a palliative, much as busing is now, to disguise the totality of the oppression of black people and to attempt to co-opt the revolutionary ferment (which the Black Panthers were becoming the increasingly recognized leadership of) through the promise of a college education. What Newman proposed as an alternative was total control of CCNY by the Harlem community and open admissions for all third-world students, while keeping the same, highly qualified faculty and curriculum. This program had its political shortcomings, but it is nothing but; slander and distortion to suggest as does Comcad that "In 1968, at the height of leftist ferment on the CCNY campus, Newman, practically isolated in his defense of quality education against open admissions, formed 'If ... Then' as a step off campus." To dismiss the step off campus as nothing more than an escape from isolation is to in fact deny one of the most progressive aspects of the nearby Columbia rebellion, its attempt to reach out to the community. The Comcad perspective would have confined the student involvement to the campuses just as it now seeks to confine the left, as it confines itself, to its own rarified atmosphere, isolated from the masses, all the time shouting its ultra-left rhetoric about the global class war. In addition, the Comcad document conveniently fails to mention that Fred Newman was fired from City College in 1968 for anti-war organizing which included giving all his students "A's" to help make sure none of the male students got drafted.

"If ... Then" did attempt to use obscenity to reach working people with left ideas, inspired by the then popular "up against the wall motherfucker."

Their Attempt to Bust Up the Unemployed Council

Comcad's intervention into the May 2 Working Peoples Party meeting came only four weeks after they attempted to break up a meeting of the New York City Unemployed Council with similar provocateur tactics. At that meeting they distributed a document which accused Council Vice President and IWP member Harry [Kresky] Jackson of being a cop on the basis of their careful research-which revealed that an article that Jackson quoted in an IWP internal document was a forgery. The article was contained in a "Red Paper" which Jackson found in the Tamiment Library at New York University in a file marked "COAIM" a united front anti-imperialist group set up mainly by Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF)) while doing research on Workers World Party and YAWF in connection with the polemic against the faction which became Comcad while they were still in the IWP. The Comcad document, in NCLC style, charged that Jackson [Kresky] was a cop because COAIM never published any "Red Paper" and, anyway, the article quoted was written in a way which made it clear it was written by an agent. In fact, the article quoted from is reprinted almost verbatim in the February 7, 1969 issue of Workers World Newspaper. Other items in the "Red Paper" were reprinted verbatim in that same issue.

Even If the "Red Paper" itself were a forgery that is hardly a sound basis for concluding that someone who quoted from it is a cop. And, it was, to say the least, provocative and highly irresponsible for Comcad to publicly make such charges without first bringing to the attention of the IWP that we might have an agent in their midst. The Comcad document makes other charges of a more minor nature. The IWP prepared a fact sheet, which was sent to all Comcad members, which contains other documented material fully refuting the charges in the hope of deterring them from continuing their destructive course. Unfortunately, we were not successful in this. We will be happy to send you a copy of the fact sheet if you request. This incident is another example of NCLC type distortion and slander on the basis of no hard evidence whatsoever.

At the NYCUC meeting as well as at the May 2 Working Peoples Party meeting, Comcad engaged in hysterical disruption and slander from the floor, and when the chair made clear the disruption would not be tolerated, they marched out.

Our Responsibility

The IWP has never sought to deny its involvement with the NCLC. We take full responsibility for our relationship with them, and have worked long and hard to purge whatever racist and anti-working class attitudes we brought with us when we left. It is in this context that the behavior of Green and Jackson [Kresky] while in the NCLC must be located. Their actions were not those of isolated individuals, but a coherent part of a despicable political tactic of that corrupt although disciplined organization. Green and Jackson-as all IWP members-have shared in the painful reeducation process that followed our short stay in the NCLC. For them this process continues.

As for those former IWP members who took a step back toward NCLC-style politics when they formed Comcad, they are similarly responsible for the course that organization is taking, and the mark of NCLC on their politics cannot be overlooked. The question of political rehabilitation from backward and anti-working class influences-which are by no means confined to the NCLC alone-is an important part of the development of a vanguard Bolshevik-type formation. Such efforts will not always be successful. It is painful to see the results of our failures in this regard manifesting themselves in Comcad.

It is as well a painful responsibility to prepare so detailed a reply such charges. Valuable time is taken from organizing the working class and formulating the program, tactics and strategy necessary to win the struggle for international socialism. And we do not have forever. Unfortunately, it is easy to make up slanders, and it is difficult, time-consuming work to refute them-just as it is easy to disrupt a meeting or demonstration which took weeks or even months of hard work to build.

We are circulating this letter not to engage in sectarian squabbling, but to thoroughly expose the latest group of wreckers and provocateurs, the Communist Cadre, in the hope of bringing about the destruction and dis-editing of that ill-starred formation before it can do further damage. We hope this letter will represent a step toward the kind of ruthless honesty and self criticism which is necessary if the left is to begin to live up to the truly monumental tasks before us in this period.

In Solidarity,

International Workers Party