Frank Coe

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Virginius Frank Coe
Virginius Frank Coe

Virginius Frank Coe (1907-1980) was a United States government official who was identified by Soviet defectors Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers as being an underground member of the Communist Party[1] and belonging to the Soviet spy group known as the Silvermaster ring.

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 Board of Economic Warfare and the Foreign Economic Administration. Coe was technical secretary at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944.

Based on reports sent from China by Solomon Adler, Coe opposed President Franklin Roosevelt's gold loan program of $200 million to help the Nationalist Chinese Government stabilize its currency in 1943. Secretary Harry Dexter White supported Coe in opposing the attempt to stabilize the anti-Communist government of Chiang Kai-Shek. Hyperinflation in China amounted to more than 1000% per year between 1943 and 1945, weakening the standing of the Nationalist government domestically in China. This economic disaster assisted the Chinese Communist Party in seizing power in China.

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[edit] Allegations of Espionage

In 1939, former Communist underground courier Whittaker Chambers told then-Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle that Coe was a member of an underground Communist group in Washington, D.C., the Ware group.[2]

In 1948, former NKVD courier Elizabeth Bentley testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Coe was an important Treasury official who was one of the underground Communists in the Federal government who passed on information to the "Sound/Myrna" Soviet spy ring.[3]

Coe denied the charges and demanded to cross-examine his accusers. Later, Coe denied under oath having ever been a member of the CPUSA before a House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) hearing in 1948 chaired by Congressman Karl Mundt. However, after Alger Hiss's conviction for perjury, when asked the same question in a 1953 hearing of the McCarthy Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), that day being chaired by then Senator Karl Mundt, Coe declined to answer on Fifth Amendment grounds. 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.

In 1953, the report of the Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security stated: "Coe refused to answer, on the grounds that the answers might incriminate him, all questions as to whether he was a Communist, whether he was engaged in subversive activities, or whether he was presently a member of a Soviet espionage ring. He refused for the same reason to answer whether he was a member of an espionage ring while Technical Secretary of the Bretton Woods Conference, whether he ever had had access to confidential Government information or security information, whether he had been associated with the Institute of Pacific Relations, or with individuals named on a long list of people associated with that organization."[4]

Arlington Hall cryptographers identified the Soviet agent designated "Peak" in the Venona decrypts as "possibly" Coe. One Venona decrypt reported that five reels of documents concerning U.S.-British Lend-Lease negotiations were en route to Moscow, courtesy of "Peak."[5]

Soviet defectors Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers both identifed Coe as being an underground member of the Communist Party[6]

[edit] Postwar career

After World War II, Coe was a leading official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1946 to 1952, when he resigned after public calls were made by Congress for his ouster.

In 1958, Coe moved to the Communist People's Republic of China to work for the Chinese Communist government of Mao Zedong. Coe participated in Mao's Great Leap Forward, a plan for the rapid industrialization and modernization of China. The plan is generally agreed to have failed in its intentions, leading to millions of Chinese deaths in addition to widespread economic dislocation, and is widely regarded both inside and outside the People's Republic of China as a policy and human rights catastrophe.

In 1959, Coe wrote articles justifying the Rectification campaign, later characterized by Chinese dissidents as the "darkest and most ferocious power game ever played out in the human world".

Coe died in Communist China in 1980.

[edit] Source

Haynes, John Earl; Harvey Klehr (2000). Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08462-5. 

[edit] References

  1. ^ Harvey E. Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 0807822450, p. 21
  2. ^ Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, 1952), 0-89526-571-0, pp. 468; U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments [Hearings] (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1953), part 6, pp. 329–30; Adolf Berle, "Underground Espionage Agent," September 2, 1939
  3. ^ "Man of Bretton Woods," Time, December 15, 1952
  4. ^ (Activities of United States Citizens Employed by the United Nations, report of Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security, Jan. 2, 1953, p.7; also see hearings and report of this Sub-Committee on the Institute of Pacific Relations.)
  5. ^ 1838 KGB New York to Moscow, 29 December 1944; Herbert Romerstein and Stanislav Levchenko, The KGB Against the “Main Enemy”: How the Soviet Intelligence Service Operates Against the United States (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989) ISBN 978-0669112283, pp. 106–08; John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300077718, p. 345; Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (New York: Modern Library, 2000) ISBN 978-0375755361), pp. 48, 158, 162, 169, 229
  6. ^ + Harvey E. Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 0807822450, p. 21