Close to a million Americans at one time in their lives joined the Communist Party, but very few talk about it now. Last week one did. He told the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee a shoddy tale of party membership in the U.S. and of spy service abroad on behalf of the Kremlin. As sometimes happens, he triggered a chain reaction of disclosures about other people. Almost all had been or were still connected with the business of reporting the news, like the witness himself: Winston Burdett, 41, now a $20,000-a-year Columbia Broadcasting System radio and TV commentator.
Long Way from Brooklyn. Burdett, son of a prosperous civil engineer, graduated from Harvard magna cum laude at 19, worked five years on the Brooklyn Eagle, went abroad in 1940. For CBS he reported the war from Norway to North Africa, later covered Washington. Rome and the United Nations. Last week, after reporting the U.N. anniversary session at San Francisco for CBS, he went to Washington for a hearing in the Senate caucus room.
For nearly three hours Burdett—poised, precise, prissy—detailed his secret career as a Communist and a spy. He first worked with a Communist clique in the American Newspaper Guild, joined the party in 1937. "My whole life was in the party," he said. "I was an emotionally fanatic person." In January 1940 the party tapped him for espionage.
Through an elaborate clandestine ritual, a meeting was arranged in a Union Square cafeteria with a stranger who told Burdett: "We have a mission for you in Finland," which was then fighting the Russian invasion. The stranger: the late Soviet spy chief, Jacob Golos. Reporter Burdett, financed by the party, arranged to travel as an unpaid roving correspondent, accredited by the Brooklyn Eagle.
In Stockholm a "Mr. Miller" gave him $200 and orders to report on Finnish morale. Burdett was visiting Finnish army positions when Finland capitulated three weeks later. When he went back to Stockholm, he met his contact, Miller. "Well," Miller asked, "how did the Finns take the end of the war?" Burdett said that they "were prepared to go on fighting." "Well, Mr. Burdett," said Miller, handing him $400, "thank you very much. That's everything. Here is your money to go back to the U.S."
Footless Frenzy. On the stand last week, Burdett still sounded puzzled: "I was surprised it was all over." Actually, his spy career continued for two more years of footless frenzy and melodramatic bungling. As Burdett told it, he chased around wartime Europe waiting for orders that seldom came and contacts that he often missed.
In Moscow he was told to report to the Soviet consulate in Bucharest; he reported twice, waited for weeks but got no orders. In Belgrade he met one contact (who wore one glove and carried one as proof of identity), then lost track. "It just went up in the air," he testified. In Ankara he reported to "Madame," a Soviet embassy official whom he met at a ball. "I got to know her very well," he testified, but he could not remember her name. When he finally broke off with Madame and the party in March 1942, Burdett related, "she acted like a child who has just been deprived of something she enjoyed."