National Affairs: Another Witness

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Open Break. Weyl lost contact with the cell in mid-1934, he told the committee, after persuading Harold Ware to allow him to give up his AAA job. For a while Weyl went to the Middle West as an organizer for the Communist United Farmers League, then turned principally to writing and speechmaking. He broke openly with the party at the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, "culminating a period of doubt and indecision." But not until the outbreak of the Korean war (five months after Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in his second trial) did Weyl go to the FBI and offer his evidence. Why had he waited so long to tell his story? His answer gave a clue to the reluctance which may keep other ex-Communists from coming forward. "It was a feeling that I had an obligation to protect people who had been associated with me in the Communist Party and who, I thought, might very well have broken quietly," said he. "[After Korea] we were at war. The Communist Party is an organization mobilized for the specific purpose of committing treason. I didn't think I could continue to be silent."

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