Frank Coe
Virginius Frank Coe (1907-1980), was identified as assisting Soviet espionage by Elizabeth Bentley, deciphered KGB cables (Venona), and KGB document cited in The Haunted Wood.[1]
Senate investigations
Coe worked in the Board of Economic Warfare and later became the Director of Monetary Research in the United States Department of the Treasury. Coe also worked in the Foreign Economic Administration, and was technical secretary at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.
After World War II Coe was a leading official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1946 to 1952. At the same Coe was a member of the Soviet spy group known as the Silvermaster ring - part of The Silvermaster-Perlo Groups.
When testifying before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on 1 December 1952, Coe invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked if he knew Philip Jessup, who at the time was being considered for the World Court. Three days after his testimony the IMF requested his resignation.
Coe denied under oath having ever been a member of the Communist Party USA before a House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) hearing in 1948 chaired by Congressman Karl Mundt; after Alger Hiss's conviction for perjury, when asked the same question in a 1953 hearing of the McCarthy Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations , that day being chaired by then Senator Karl Mundt, Coe declined to answer on Fifth Amendment grounds. Coe, on advice of counsel, could not answer whether he knew William Taylor, Coe's assistant for many years at the IMF, under protection of the Fifth Amendment.
The (PSI) heard prior testimony from Economic Cooperation officials that the high rate for Austrian currency in 1949 worked against Austria's financial stability and in favor of Soviet occupation forces. The IMF, where Coe was secretary, objected to efforts to devalue the currency.[2]
Military communists
Miscellaneous posts of military importance occupied by those who refused to deny evidence of their Communist Party membership, in addition to those in the Office of Strategic Services, include the following as revealed in subcommittee hearings: Virginius Frank Coe, of the National Advisory Defense Council, 1940, Joint War Production Committee as executive secretary for the United States and Canada; Sidney Glassman, Signal Corps inspector, 1942; Jacob Grauman, War Production Board, 1942-46, Office of War Mobilization, 1946-47; Stanley Graze, War Production Board, Army Officer's Candidate School, second lieutenant; Jerome A. Oberwager, Army Ordnance Division, 1943-46; Irving P. Schiller, civilian employee of the Navy Department; Alexander H. Svenchansky, Army, noncommissioned officer, orientation work; Alfred J. Van Tassell, War Production Board, 1942; Eugene Wallach, Judge Advocate's office, United States Army, 1941.[3]
Links with Chinese leadership
In 1958 Coe moved permanently to the People's Republic of China to work for the Maoist regime during the Great Leap Forward, culminating in what Chinese history recalls as the Three Years of Disasters. By 1959, Coe was writing articles justifying the infamous Rectification campaign.[4]
References
- ↑ http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page100.html
- ↑ [Haynes, John Earl & Klehr, Harvey, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press, (2000).]
- ↑ [1] "Interlocking subversion in government departments" July 30, 1953, page 38
- ↑ [Haynes, John Earl & Klehr, Harvey, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press, (2000).]