RARE “Communist Party Infiltrator\" Herbert Philbrick Hand Signed 3X5 Card COA For Sale

Up for sale "Communist Party Infiltrater" Herbert Philbrick Hand Signed 3X5 Card. This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller

Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.

ES-5461

Herbert

Arthur Philbrick (May

11, 1915 – August 16, 1993) was a Boston-area advertising executive who was encouraged by the FBI to

infiltrate the Communist Party USA between

1940 and 1949. His autobiography was the basis for the 1950s

television series I Led 3 Lives. Philbrick's

involvement began when he joined the Cambridge Youth Council, a Communist front group in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His suspicions aroused by the strange power structure and the positions taken

by this group, Philbrick contacted the FBI.

Encouraged by them, he began deepening his involvement in Communist activities,

joining first the Young Communist League,

and later, as a secret member, the Communist Party itself. Philbrick was used

by the Party for his advertising skills. Another asset was his public role as

a Baptist youth leader. After time spent in local party

cells in Wakefield and Malden, Massachusetts, he

received training in the fundamentals for the Party in a variety of front groups. Later he was removed from

local party work and assigned to a cell of professionals where his main work

consisted of working on the campaign of former U.S. Vice

President Henry A. Wallace. During Philbrick's time in the Communist

Party, its membership and support were eroded by the Party's sharp zigzag from

anti-war agitation during the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,

to enthusiastic support for the war effort after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

While Philbrick was in the Party, Earl Browder, its General Secretary, who was enthusiastic about wartime

cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union, and was looking forward to postwar cooperation

and growing acceptance of the Communist party by the American public, dissolved

the Communist Party and reconstituted it as the Communist Political

Association, apparently intending to set the Party on a reformist

course. Philbrick himself made a brief show of opposing this new policy—a

masterstroke, as the policy was also opposed by William Z. Foster, longtime Chairman of the Communist Party.

Shortly thereafter, in July 1945, as a result of the Duclos letter—a letter by a leading French Communist, which

actually was a policy directive that originated in Moscow—the Party turned away

from Browderism and again took a Marxist–Leninist line, though not

completely abandoning the tactics of the United Front. Philbrick's Party career came to its end to use him as a witness in the Smith Act prosecutions of the leadership of the Communist

Party, in the Foley Square trial. On

April 6, 1949, he was called as a witness, testifying about his career and

training as a Party activist. His testimony was perhaps most useful in that he

demonstrated from the content of the training which he had received that the

intent of the Communist Party was to overthrow the government of the United

States. He went on to write an autobiographical book, I Led Three Lives: Citizen,

'Communist', Counterspy. In addition, a television series called I Led 3 Lives, starring Richard Carlson and Ed Hinton, loosely based on Philbrick's experiences, aired

in syndication for three

seasons during the 1950s.