Victor Perlo

Victor Perlo (1912–1999) was a Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA. From 1935 through the middle 1940s, Perlo allegedly participated in the gathering of information for the secret foreign intelligence apparatus of the Soviet Union, activity for which he is remembered as the namesake of the so-called "Perlo group." In the years following World War II, Perlo published extensively as one of the Communist Party's leading voices on economic issues.

Biography

Early years

Victor Perlo was born May 15, 1912 in East Elmhurst, Queens county, New York. Perlo was the son of ethnic Jewish parents who had both emigrated in their youth to America from the Russian empire.^[1] His father, Samuel Perlo, was a lawyer and his mother, Rachel Perlo, was a teacher.^[1]

Perlo received his Bachelor's degree from Columbia University in New York City in 1931 and Master's degree in mathematics from the same school in 1933.^[2]

Late in 1932 or early in 1933, while still a student at Columbia, Perlo joined the Communist Party USA, an organization with which he was affiliated throughout his life.^[1]

Perlo married his first wife, Katherine, in 1933 and divorced in 1943. Subsequently, he married his second wife, Ellen, with whom he remained for the rest of his life. The couple had three children, a girl and two boys.^[3]

Perlo had varied interests, which included tennis, mountain climbing, and chess. He was also a talented pianist.

Governmental career

After his graduation from Columbia in 1933, Perlo went to work as a statistical analyst and assistant to a division chief at the National Recovery Administration (NRA), remaining at that post until June 1935.^[1] Perlo then moved to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board where he was an analyst for the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, establishing statistical analyses for properties mortgaged to the corporation and projecting long term financial accounts.^[4] Perlo worked in that capacity until October 1937.^[1]

In October 1937, Perlo left government service to work in the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank established in 1916, where he stayed as a researcher for more than two years.^[1] In November 1939, Perlo went to work in the US Department of Commerce, where he worked as a senior economic analyst in the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.^[4]

Perlo moved to the Office of Price Administration (OPA) in November 1940, where he was head of the economic statistics division.^[1] There Perlo engaged in the study of inflationary pressures in the American economy, particularly with the advent of World War II, which helped provide documentation enabling the institution of price controls.^[4]

Perlo remained in that capacity until leaving to become head of the aviation section of the Bureau of Programs and Statistics at the War Production Board (WPB).^[1] Perlo's work at the WPB involved analysis of the various economic problems of aircraft production.^[5] In September 1944 he was made a special assistant to the director of the Bureau of Programs and Statistics of the WPB.^[1]

During his time in the federal bureaucracy, Perlo was a contributor to the Communist Party's press, submitting articles on economic matters under a variety of pseudonyms.^[1] He also secretly assisted I.F. Stone in gathering materials for various journalistic exposés.^[1]

About December 1945, Perlo went to the U.S. Treasury Department, where he worked in the Monetary Research department.^[6] There he was an alternate member of the Committee for Reciprocity Information, which took care of technical work relating to trade agreements under the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act and doing preparatory work for the International Trade Organization.^[6]

Perlo left government service in 1947, resigning in the midst of an investigation over whether his continued employment represented a security risk.^[7]

Career after government

In 1948, Perlo obtained a position as an economist for the Progressive Party, assisting the Presidential campaign of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President Henry Wallace.^[8]

In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.^[9]

Espionage allegations

In 1935, Perlo was allegedly part of a Washington, DC-based communist group headed by J. Peters (code-named "Steve") which mined information on behalf of Soviet intelligence.^[10] At Peters' direction, Perlo (code-named "Raid") met with several other leading CPUSA members including V.J. Jerome, Eugene Dennis, and Roy Hudson, although any relationship of these latter-named individuals to the Soviet intelligence gathering effort was not clear even to the service's Washington, DC station head Anatoly Gorsky in December 1944.^[10]

Perlo was accused of being a Soviet agent by defecting spy Elizabeth Bentley in the summer of 1948 and on August 9 was called before Congress to give testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), engaged in an investigation of alleged Communist infiltration of the federal government. Perlo repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about his relations with other alleged espionage agents and Communist Party members, refusing three times when asked in various ways whether he was or had been a member of the Communist Party.^[11] He took the Fifth three more times when asked whether he had ever known, seen, or passed classified information to Elizabeth Bentley, who was present in the hearing room, and 36 more times when asked about various other individuals of interest to HUAC.^[12]

Perlo was then temporarily excused from the stand and Elizabeth Bentley brought forward. Bentley testified that she had first met Victor Perlo in the apartment of attorney John Abt in March 1944 and acknowledged that Perlo was the head of the "so-called Perlo group of Government employees" that had furnished information to Bentley for transmission to the Soviet government.^[13] Bentley testified that Perlo was employed in the part of the War Production Board which made use of secret information on aircraft production and stated that he had passed on to her "production figures listed by types of planes — fighters, bombers, transports, photographic planes, and so on."^[14]

Recalled to the stand, Perlo again repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment before being allowed to read into the record a prepared statement. "The lurid spy charges of the Bentley woman and Chambers are inventions of irresponsible sensation seekers," Perlo declared, adding "I am a loyal American citizen, and I categorically assert that I have never violated the laws or interests of my country."^[15]

While the veracity of the charges remained unresolved at the time, the cloud over Perlo with respect to the espionage allegations made against him combined with his refusal to cooperate with HUAC effectively denied him future academic employment and ended his government career.

Perlo was again called by Congress for testimony in 1953, this time before the Senate Sub-committee on Internal Security.

Death and legacy

He died on December 1, 1999 at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. He was 87 years old at the time of his death.^[3]

Victor Perlo's papers are housed in the special collections department of Lewis J. Ort Library at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Maryland.

Footnotes

Works

Books and pamphlets

Note: Many of Perlo's works were translated into other languages, such as German, Russian, Polish, Czech, Japanese, Spanish, etc.

• Our Foreign Policy Costs One Million Jobs. Chicago: National Labor Conference for Peace, n.d. [c. 1949].
• American Imperialism. New York: International Publishers, 1951.
• Trends in the Economic Status of the Negro People. New York: Science and Society, n.d. [1952].
• Israel and Dollar Diplomacy. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1953.
• The Negro in Southern Agriculture. New York: International Publishers, 1953.
• The Income 'Revolution.' New York: International Publishers, 1954.
• The Empire of High Finance. New York: International Publishers, 1957.
• USA and USSR: The Economic Race. New York: International Publishers, 1960.
• Dollars and Sense of Disarmament: Carl Marzani. Victor Perlo. With Carl Marzani. New York: Marzani and Munsell, 1960.
• How the Soviet Economy Works: An Interview with A.I. Mikoyan, First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR. With Anastas Mikoyan. New York: International Publishers, 1961.
• Militarism and Industry: Arms Profiteering in the Missile Age. New York: International Publishers, 1963.
• Bitter End in Southeast Asia. With Kumar Goshal. New York: Marzani and Munsell, 1964.
• Marines in Santo Domingo! New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1965.
• The Vietnam Profiteers. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1966.
• American Labor Today: How Has It Changed? Is It a Revolutionary Class? Are Marx's Views Still Valid? New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1968.
• The Dollar Crisis: What It Means to You. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1969.
• Robbing the Poor to Fatten the Rich: Inflation, Wages, Prices and Profits. With Barry Cohen. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1972.
• The Unstable Economy: Booms and Recessions in the United States Since 1945. New York: International Publishers, 1973.
• High Prices and High Profits: How They Affect Your Wages and Living Costs. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1973.
• End Fascist Terror and US Imperialism in Chile! New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1974.
• The Economics of Oil Production. New York, American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1974.
• Economics of Racism USA: Roots of Black Inequality. New York: International Publishers, 1975.
• Dynamic Stability: The Soviet Economy Today. With Ellen Perlo. New York: International Publishers, 1980.
• History's Biggest Rip-Off: The Arms Budget Threat to Your Livelihood and Life. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1980.
• Super Profits and Crises: Modern US Capitalism. New York: International Publishers, 1988.
• Belt-Tightening Time: But for Whom? New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1989.
• Economics of Racism II: The Roots of Inequality, USA. New York: International Publishers, 1996.
• People vs. Profits: Columns of Victor Perlo: Volume 1, The Home Front, 1961-1999. Edited by Ellen Perlo. New York: International Publishers, 2003.
• People vs. Profits: Columns of Victor Perlo: Volume 2, The USA and the World. Edited by Ellen Perlo. New York: International Publishers, 2006.

Articles

• "On the Distribution of Student's Ratio for Samples of Three Drawn from a Rectangular Distribution," Biometrika, vol. 25, no. 1/2 (May 1933), pp. 203–204.
• "The Investment-Factor Method of Forecasting Business Activity," With Richard V. Gilbert. Econometrica, Journal of the Econometric Society, vol. 10, no. 3/4 (July–October 1942), pp. 311–316.
• "New York as the Financial Center," Science & Society, vol. 19, no. 4 (Fall 1955), pp. 289–302.
• "'People's Capitalism' and Stock-Ownership," American Economic Review, vol. 48, no. 3 (June 1958), pp. 333–347.
• "The Revised Index of Industrial Production," American Economic Review, vol. 52, no. 3 (June 1962), pp. 496–512.
• "Notes on Marxian Economics in the United States: Comment," American Economic Review, vol. 56, no. 1/2 (March 1966), pp. 187–188.
• "Criminalization of African Americans," Political Affairs [New York], vol. 75, no. 2, (February 1996), pg. 18.

Congressional testimony

• Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government (Alger Hiss Case), Part 1. Committee on Un-American Activities, US House of Representatives. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1948; pp. 677–686; 693-701. —Testimony of August 9, 1948.
• Hearings, Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments — Part 7. Judiciary Committee Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, US Senate. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1950; pp. 383–459. —Testimony of May 12, 1953.

Additional reading

• John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
• John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

See also

• Perlo group
• Soviet spies

External links

• Finding Aid for the Victor Perlo Papers, Ort Library, Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD. Retrieved August 10, 2010.
• Alexander Vassiliev Notebooks Index, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. Retrieved August 10, 2010.