The following letter was published in mid-1976 by former IWP members known as "Communist Cadre" (Comcad). The Comcad began rallying against the Newmanites after learning that 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. Sources allege that one or more Comcad later became FBI informants themselves. Still, the piece provides an invaluable 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.

ALL THE MUD THEY SLING CANNOT COVER UP THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THEIR CONFESSED GUILT,
OR THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF THEIR CHAIRMAN, FRED NEWMAN

IWP ADMITS SNITCHING TO FBI!

This statement is a follow-up to our press release of May 2nd, and the document which accompanied it entitled "Beware of the International Workers Party." It is also a response to the IWP's "answer" of May 5th. We had hoped that with our May 2nd expose of this unrehabilitated anti-working class sect, we had dispatched our duty to the working class and progressive movement and could now give up any preoccupation we have had towards it due to our past association. However, while its reply does admit to the crimes committed against the working class-as we exposed-it is, in addition, so filled with lies and distortions, that with great disgust (and hopefully for the last time) we are, given our unique, knowledge of their past, forced to set the record straight. As we have more important things to do than continue to disrupt its counter-organizing; or endlessly reply to its lies, we hope that after this, any further attacks and slanders it may make upon us can be seen for what they are by all serious politicals.

IWP ADMITS STOOLING TO FBI ON LEFTISTS

In its May 5th statement, the IWP openly admits that in 1974, three of its members ratted out Jim Retherford as a former Weather person, to the FBI in order to enlist the FBI to help it regain custody of Ann Green's and Retherford's child, with whom Retherford had disappeared: The IWP admits that, accompanied by Harry [Kresky] Jackson an Nathan Darrow [pseudonym] (who is now with the Communist Cadre and the original source of this information), Ann Green told the FBI that Retherford had harbored wanted members of the Weather Underground, and that he had made contact with Jane Alpert, who was then being hunted by the FBI, and whose life was in danger at the hands of the state (and whom the CFCers then naively associated with the Weather Underground). In addition, the IWP statement newly reveals that it continued to press the state to take action against Retherford as late as August 14, 1974-after it had supposedly belatedly discovered that the NCLC was "rotten to the core" and after it had formed a disciplined faction within the NCLC, whose function it now claims was to combat this rottenness!

For these admissions alone, our exposé was more than justified. However, the IWP pleaded guilty with an explanation in which it tries to whitewash the whole incident as just another in a series of NCLC tactics which it takes no political responsibility for, other than having naively put its members under the discipline of the National Caucus of Labor Committees for three months.

SYCOPHANTS COVE UP FOR COWARDLY NEWMAN

When first confronted with our exposure of the IWP's collaboration with the FBI at the IWP's May 2 "Working Peoples Party" meeting, the chairman of the IWP, Chairman Fred Newman, publicly denied the charges. His denial, however, couldn't stick, because too many people inside and outside the IWP knew something about the incidents, even though none of them except our comrades, especially Nathan Darrow (who was directly involved) had the courage to make this information public. In order to get itself off the hook, the exposed IWP now claims that its then CFC (Centers for Change) members had already joined the NCLC and were under NCLC discipline when the FBI incident occurred and that Newman didn't know what his followers were up to.

The IWP may imagine that this relieves it of guilt and political responsibility. However, even accepting this chronology, the disclaimer of responsibility, especially from Newman, is ridiculous. These people functioned inside the NCLC as an informal and tightly knit faction. In fact, the purpose given by Newman for entering into the NCLC was, as an organized force, to change the NCLC. It was seen by Newman as having the correct political and economic analysis of the world, but not knowing how to organize the working class.

TAIL DID NOT WAG DOG

After joining the NCLC, most of the ex-CFCers remained a tightly knit social clique around Newman. He was consulted on virtually everything that was done, both while he was in the NCLC with them and during the three weeks' duration following his resignation, and prior to the collective resignation of the rest of the CFCers from the NCLC. It is utter nonsense to claim that Newman had no knowledge of the FBI incident on the ground that he was not allowed into the NCLC leadership. Newman called all the shots, and literally held the hands of most CFCers throughout that whole period. He first [ordered] them into the NCLC, then he resigned to write an obscure, apolitical psychological/philosophical critique of the NCLC. As soon as he left the organization he began holding frequent meetings with his followers, helping then to internalize his arguments. It was at this time in the midst of a "faction fight" with the NCLC under Newman's leadership, that Jackson claims he petitioned the U.S. Attorneys office to get it to pressure the FBI to track down Retherford-"without Newman's knowledge!" Only eleven days later, Newman yanked his whole faction-including Jackson-out of the NCLC and set up the IWP.

NO POLITICAL POLEMIC AGAINST NCLC

All of this was justified on the basis of Newman's polemic against NCLC paranoia and Lyn Marcus' [LaRouche] Hegelian idealism (from Newman's neo-existential point of view), but no criticism was made by Newman-or his followers-of the NCLC's rightwing politics, either during the entry or right after the split, when the IWP was set up. Whatever criticism Newman made of the NCLC was made after he gutlessly resigned without, as a member, having put up any resistance to the NCLC's blatantly anti-working class, racist and sexist politics and practice of the criminality of which even the naive CFCers were well aware before they joined. It was the leader of the CFC faction, Fred Newman, who was trying, by not raising even the little working class politics he knew, to worm his way into the upper echelons of the NCLC. The main criticism was that the NCLC had sabotaged its own North American Unemployed and Welfare Rights Organization (NUWRO). Even here, the criticism was purely organizational-the Newmanites never criticized NUWRO's U.S. chauvinist and blatantly racist politics, which they knew at first hand. IWP member Lew Hart [Steinhart] has, for example, confessed to meeting with the Ku Klux Klan of Michigan under NCLC discipline!

Furthermore, the entire initiative for the meeting with the FBI was raised by the CFCers. The NCLC security staff was only consulted.

THREE (POLITICALLY) BLIND RATS

The IWP misstatement here is specifically designed to cover up Newman's role and to scapegoat his three blind followers who actually attended the meeting with the FBI. Even today, in claiming that Green and Jackson are self-critical for what they did, the statement still covers up Newman's role in the whole affair. It was Newman who wrote the heinous article "Beware of the Movement" in the CFC newspaper Right On Time, which praises the NCLC for trying to destroy the "movement." Copies of this article are available from the Communist Cadre.) It was Newman who drove Retherford out of CFC for refusing to work in "united front" with the NCLC, and then cop-baited Retherford as part of the process of stampeding the CFCers into the NCLC. Such cop-baiting of Retherford and his alleged political associates chimed in with the NCLC poison that all the groups in the swamp left are CIA-controlled "countergangs"-the anti-left perspective that attracted Newman to the NCLC in the first place, and to which he has recently reverted (see his February 26 document, "Out of the Marsh"). It was in this political climate-which was just as much Newman's responsibility as their advisors in the NCLC-that the CFCers ratted out Jim Retherford and Jane Alpert, and attempted to rat out the Weather Underground to the FBI. And everyone who was then in the organization and knew about it-especially Newman-must take full political responsibility for that act, NCLC or no NCLC!

NCLC-BAITING

After transferring all their guilt to the NCLC, the IWP statement then tries to slander the Communist Cadre as unrehabilitated NCLCers, to put the onus of having been in the NCLC on us rather than on themselves, where it squarely belongs, in an attempt to drag us down in the mud along with them.

OUR POLITICS AND THEIRS

Our tendency, which was expelled from Workers World Party for actively resisting its reformist degeneration, entered the newly formed IWP with the hope of taking over the organization, or at least winning Fred Newman and his followers over to our revolutionary communist politics, away from the right-wing politics of the NCLC. Although we partially succeeded, the Newman clique began to regress back to NCLC politics, to its American chauvinism and racism, to its chasing after the most privileged and backward elements in the U.S. working class by appealing to their backwardness, to its contempt for the progressive working class as the "swamp left."

[ILLEGIBLE] faction and attempt to salvage whoever could be salvaged, and leave the IWP. (The history of our factional fight within the IWP for a class struggle perspective and proletarian internationalism is amply documented in a series of 13 documents, which are available from us for $2.50 per set.)

One of the issues we raised was the failure of IWP chairman Fred Newman and his followers to criticize themselves for ever having joined the NCLC, and to openly admit that the NCLC was a clearly proto-fascist organization, at least since "Operation Mop-Up" against the Communist Party and other left groups such as the Socialist Workers Party who came to the CP's defense. These fascist attacks took place a full year before Newman led his therapy cult, Centers for Change (CFC) to dissolve itself into the NCLC in the spring of 1974.

THE ISSUE OF NCLC'S PROTO-FASCISM

We now criticize ourselves for not having fought to get the IWP to do this immediately upon our entry into the organization (at which time we did, however, force them to face and to renounce the NCLC's "advanced sector" chauvinism, American exceptionalism and racism, as a condition of our entry). When we called Newman to question for calling the NCLC "fascist," we did so because of his breach of discipline in not getting Central Committee approval. This was done at a time, shortly after we first entered the IWP, when Newman was throwing the word "fascism" around so loosely (by calling all liberals "liberal fascists") that he was obscuring the meaning of the word "fascist." It was our tendency, which-after partially reeducating the Newmanites-pushed for the IWP to publicly recognize that the NCLC was proto-fascist. Even here, Harry Jackson, who was then editor of the International Worker, attempted to sabotage the Central Committee decision which we had pushed through.

The. NCLC is a proto-fascist organization, not merely because of its sectarian violence against the left (which, unfortunately, has been engaged in by many leftist organizations), but because, like what remains of the IWP, they lack a working class base, either domestically or internationally, and are predominantly composed of declassed petty-bourgeois youth who have been organized on the basis of contempt for the international movement of the working class and its allies, and its local ideological reflection, the U.S. left. This contempt is put into practice through their open collaboration with the bourgeois state apparatus in persecution of leftists. The material explanation of their hostility to the left and to the national liberation struggles from which so much of the U.S. left takes its inspiration, is their catering to the hatred in the labor aristocracy and the enraged petty bourgeoisie against the international working class and its allies, which they blame for the destruction of their privileged position-the "piece of the action" which imperialism had previously given them.

NEWMAN'S "RED HERRING"

Having no politics of its own other than what it copied from the NCLC, with the exception of the rightwing implications of Newman's mystical, anti-dialectical methodology, the rightwing fragment of the IWP is afraid to publicly raise the real political issues behind our organizational struggle, and baits us as provocateurs, and as cop-baiters in order to cover their own tracks.

But it was neither provocative nor cop-baiting to call for an investigation of leading IWP member Harry [Kresky] Jackson. Our suspicions against Jackson, who is now Vice President of the thoroughly reformist New York City Unemployed Council, were originally based on his being the ex-CFCer who most consistently defended the rightwing NCLC political line which we were fighting to get the IWP to repudiate. When in May 1975, Myron Jefka questioned the advisability of socializing delicate security information with Jackson [Kresky], Fred Newman vouched for Jackson [Kresky], saying that he had known Jackson [Kresky] and his whereabouts for eight years. Only months later, during the factional struggle were we to learn that Newman was covering up for Jackson [Kresky], when our comrade Ellen Varady told us that Jackson's first acquaintance with CFC or any of its members took place at Hazel Daren's talk on Sexism, a year and a half before Jefka's discussion with Newman. (Now Newman out-rightly lies and denies he ever said he knew Jackson [Kresky] for eight years, just as he openly lied in denying it when confronted with the FBI incident at the May 2nd meeting of the NY Working People's Party.

Jackson's phony co-AIM "Red Paper" was an obvious forgery and immediately justified our investigation of him. Only through the investigation of Jackson's [Kresky's] past misdeeds were we able to uncover the FBI incident.

CATALOG OF AD-HOMINEMS

We will not stoop to presenting a detailed refutation of every particular slander.

IWP ATTEMPTS. TO SLANDER OUR CLEAN
THOUGH BOLD POLEMIC WITHIN LEFT

The IWP has tried to blur the political distinction between our own political interventions into the CP and Anti-Apartheid May Day actions, and our exposé of the IWP's past treachery at its NYC Unemployed Council and its N.Y. Working Peoples Party meetings. It fails to understand that we draw a qualitative distinction between the genuine left activities which we may critically or wholeheartedly support, and the IWP's continuing attempts to parade as a left organization-even after it has denounced the entire left, and driven our tendency out of the organization for fighting to keep it on the left. Nevertheless, our intentions in intervening against the IWP were to politically expose it to any independents present, and not to break up its meetings. In fact, we had to restrain ourselves after a brief scuffle provoked when one of their men, Warren Liebesman, attacked Comrade Judy Millard of Communist Cadre, at a point when we were already outside the meeting hall. Having attacked us and outnumbering our delegation 3-to-1, the IWP hollowly and carelessly boasts about its macho prowess, all because we decided not to break up the meeting or seriously injure any of them in response to the attack (after having accomplished our political task)!

LIES ABOUT MAY DAY RALLIES

The IWP's account of our participation in this year's May Day rallies are outright falsifications. Our leaflet for the Anti-Apartheid demonstration was not a "frontal attack" on the demonstration but a comradely political criticism of Youth Against War and Fascism-the major group responsible for the politics of the activity-for not adequately supporting the struggle against apartheid, for limiting its political thrust to a non-socialist block with bourgeois nationalists and their liberal supporters. We did not "force [our] way into the ranks of the march, pushing whoever was [our] way aside, but entered the rear of the march (so as to avoid a confrontation with YAWF) with critically supportive banners (e.g. "Only the Socialist Revolution Can Smash Apartheid and All Forms of Oppression!"; Build a New Communist International on a Real Trotskyist Basis!"; "Global Class War Must Smash U.S.-led Imperialism/Capitalism!" "Jail All Capitalist War Criminals, Free Their Political Prisoners!"). Despite YAWF's sectarian threats later at the uptown rally, we refused to take our communist and Trotskyist banners down, and there were no incidents of violence.

Our joining the CP's march was physically blocked by a goon squad which, with the help of the police whom they had called over, prevented us from joining the march. Every time we tried to run around them and catch up to the march, we were physically attacked. When we out flanked them and got to the rally site ahead of the march, they had the police push us out of the rally area, but not before everyone on the march had heard us sing the "International" and seen our proletarian internationalist banners: "Build a New Communist International on a Real Trotskyist Basis!" - Global Class War must Smash U.S.-led Imperialism/Capitalism!"-"From Haiphong to Angola-Hail the Proletarian Internationalism of the Cuban Revolution!" and "Defend Cuba, China, the USSR and all Workers States Against Imperialist War and Nagy-Dubcek Style Subversion and Decay!"

Although we will continue to defend ourselves against the sectarian violence of all our political opponents within the left, we no longer have any special responsibility to personally expose the counter-organizing of pseudo-left organizations such as the NCLC or the IWP. The IWP clearly has a proto-fascist dynamic, but it is still ostensibly on the left, and its physical annihilation, at this time, would not push the class struggle forward. Our perspective has been to drive Newman and his followers out of politics, so that the proto-fascist dynamic inherent in the interaction between his mystical methodology and the declassed social milieu which that methodology has victimized, can never fully mature.

DUTY TO EXPOSE AND REPUDIATE

We have done more than our duty in exposing everything we collectively know about the IWP, even at the cost of raising further suspicions about ourselves due to our past association with it. The six of our comrades who used to be in the CFC and followed Newman into and out of the NCLC are extremely self-critical for their past participation in the NCLC's daily crimes against the working class and progressive humanity, especially comrade Nathan Darrow [pseudonym], who was directly involved in the FBI incident. They do not plead innocent on the grounds that they were only following orders, either from Newman or from the NCLC security staff, as do IWPers Ann Green and Harry Jackson [Kresky].

Our comrades not only blame the NCLC for its criminal misadvice, and themselves for their naiveté in following that misadvice, but they blame themselves for their own political backwardness at the time. They were extremely backward for not joining Retherford in standing up to Newman in refusing to work in "united front" with the NCLC; for not protesting the cop-baiting of Retherford and the decision to meet with the FBI; for not resigning and publicly exposing the meeting after it took place; and for following Newman into the NCLC. They denounce their political past as blind followers of Newman as a serious political mistake.

Our organization, the Communist Cadre, takes full responsibility for the onus of all their past crimes, before they were communists, before they were rehabilitated. What is mist important is that at the risk of their personal reputation-especially in the case of Comrade Darrow-they have made the truth about the Newman clique publicly known. They do not-as the Newman clique still does-rationalize their stool pigeon and NCLC past as a necessary part of the necessary process of their development. Their political association and blind following of Newman-beginning with his moves toward the NCLC-was a mistake, a shameful mistake, whose consequences they have committed themselves to undoing by joining us in the Communist Cadre as we collectively dedicate ourselves to the struggle for international socialism.