330 ChaPter^6
gating and attacking leftist groups such as the Communist Party, the CIO, and
certain liberals in the Roosevelt administration whom Dies and others accused
of communist sympathies because of positive statements about the Soviet
Union, a wartime ally. Dies in fact called for the resignation of several cabi-
net officials who, he explained, “range in political insanity from Socialist to
Communist, with the common garden variety of ’crackpots’ predominating.”
Dies went further in 1941, even before the United States entered the war,
putting together a list of over 1100 federal employees [like the “no fly” lists
today], which he gave to the Attorney General, because he claimed they were
subversives or Communists. Around the same time, the director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation [FBI], J. Edgar Hoover, was also preparing lists of indi-
viduals, mostly on the political left, whom he saw as threats to the “peace and
safety of the United States government.” In the meantime, the FBI and
Justice officials were arresting Communist and labor officials, attacking
American veterans [the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade”] who had volunteered to
fight for the Spanish government in the civil war there, and wiretappingFIGuRE 6-10 Edward F. Sullivan (right) presents evidence of supposed
communist activity to House un-American Activities Committee
Chairman Martin Dies, Jr.