Duped by Soviets both inside and outside his administration.
In this third installment of a revisionist look back at the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, the focus is on communist infiltration of FDR’s administration both before and during World War II and its impact on American foreign policy. In particular, this is the tale of the two Harrys: Harry Dexter White and Harry Hopkins. White was by most accounts a conscious agent of the Soviet Union (though never a Communist Party member) who as a key Treasury Department official influenced U.S. policy to favor Soviet objectives and provided classified information to his Soviet handlers. Hopkins was at best a dupe or “useful idiot,” and at worst a pro-Soviet agent of influence, who was President Roosevelt’s closest adviser during the war. The two Harrys, along with numerous other Soviet agents of influence in a plethora of New Deal and wartime agencies, in James Burnham’s words, “assembled in Washington under the careless scepter of Franklin Roosevelt.”
