Abe Bloom
Abe Bloom died Jan 27, 2007, age 93.. He had been a lifelong communist, but hid his Communist Party USA membership from everyone in the U.S. Government, especially during his security clearance checks because of his work at the National Bureau of Standards. The NBS was deeply involved in the development of the "proximity fuse", used in the detonation of anti-aircraft shells and artillery shells near their targets, as well as being the detonator fuse for the atomic bomb of WW2. Bloom once told a group of member of the "D.C. Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam" that he had worked on the "proximity fuse" and that is why he joined the "peace movement", though he never said just when, according to then undercover operative Max Friedman who was at that meeting. Friedman was also told that Bloom was "an old CP member" by Tom Quinn, then the chairman of the Socialist Workers Party youth front local for DC, the Young Socialist Alliance. Quinn provided no other information on his statement (1969). Only some of this was published in the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) hearing of Aug. 16, 1969, "Testimony of Max Phillip Friedman: Extent of Subversion in Campus Disorders", Sen. Judiciary Committee, because of the security implications that Bloom might have been a Soviet spy, as well as the fact, published, that Bloom had told the local Mobe meeting that he ran his own electronics company which employed Casey Gurewitz, a longtime member of the CPUSA and an early employee of the NSB, and his wife, Helen Gurewitz, also an identified member of the CPUSA as well as having been the first wife of convicted and later admitted Soviet spy Morton Sobell.
Both Casey and Helen Gurewitz were identified, under oath, as members of the D.C. Communist Party (DCCP) in "Communism in the District of Columbia-Maryland Area (Testimony of Mary Stalcup Markward)", Hearing, House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), June 11, 1951, released July 7, 1951, pp. 4469, 4472, 4475, 4477, 4479, 4486, 4490 & 4497, and p. 4490 respectively. Mary Stalcup Markward was an FBI undercover operative who was a key member of the DC CP for many years. Also identified as member of the Communist Party of the District of Columbia in the Stalcup testimony were Sammie Abbott and his wife Ruth Abbott, "Maryland Club, p. 4488.
Bloom had decades long ties to members of the old CPUSA chapter known as the Maryland/DC Chapter of the CPUSA, some of which was exposed in House Committee on Un-American Activities testimonies including that of undercover FBI operative Mary Stalcup Markward, who kept the dues books of that organization. Among Bloom's friends was Dr. Alfred Henley, an old CPUSA member and PhD physicist. Both Henley and Bloom, during WW2, visited the Emerson Radiation Laboratory in New Jersey, a place where work on the proximity fuse was taking place. More on this below.
In the Markward testimony, a Lillian Henley was identified as a member of the DCCP, p. 4488, 4489.
Bloom was a key leader of most of the major leftist organizations in the DC/Maryland contiguous area including being the chairman of the local chapter of SANE, National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy; the Gray Panthers; DC Mobe; National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (National Mobe); New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (New Mobe), and its Trotskyite-SWP dominated split-off faction, National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC); associated with the leftist Quaker-run " Washington Peace Center; and a teacher at the CPUSA school the "W.E.B. DuBois School of Marxist Studies (DuBois School of Marxist Studies), along with Alfred Henley [1].
National Committee to Re-Open the Rosenberg Case
An * A. Bloom was a "signatory" to a CPUSA front organization's ad of June 18, 1975, p. 50, New York Times (NYT), entitled "What Are They Afraid Of?". The ad was created by the CPUSA's successor front organization, the National Committee to Re-Open the Rosenberg Case, to their earlier National Committee to Secure Justice for the Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell, a congressional identified CP front that was the subject of two House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings and final report "Trial By Treason: The National Committee to Secure Justice for the Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell", House Doc. No. 206, 85th Congress, 1st. Session, August 25, 1956, and the earlier two part hearings of HCUA entitled "Investigation of Communist Activities (The Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case and Affiliates, about 1953 or 1954 CHECK EXACT DATE).
Radical youth
When he was a young man in the Progressive Party and working for Henry Wallace, the labor movement was strong and you had to hide party membership.
These days, no one talks of the FBI following them, the way they used to.
But they insist that they are still relevant. It is with confidence that Bloom says capitalism is ruining the world. Retired from the National Bureau of Standards-a government agency-Bloom has seen movements come and go. But he has hope for this one.[2]
CCDS
Bloom was listed as one of the "chapter members and friends" on the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, Washington DC chapter website.[3]
81-year-old Bloom was at the Committees of Correspondence founding convention in Chicago in 1994.[4]
Gray Panthers
Abe Bloom, was one of the conveners and chair of the Gray Panthers National Health Task Force.[5]
References
- ↑ "Congressional Record", Oct. 8, 1975, "Extension of Remarks", "The World Peace Council in Congress: Soviets Lobby for U.S. Disarmament", pp. E5329-5331, pg. 5330 for Henley, Rep. Larry McDonald, Oct. 8, 1975 ,
- ↑ Chicago Tribune, Despite Might Of Right, Leftists Keep The Faith July 23, 1994|By Steve Mills, Tribune Staff Writer.
- ↑ http://dccofc.org/personals.html
- ↑ Chicago Tribune, Despite Might Of Right, Leftists Keep The Faith July 23, 1994By Steve Mills, Tribune Staff Writer.
- ↑ http://dccofc.org/graypanthers.html