Louis F Budenz

Biography

Budenz was born on July 17, 1891 in Indianapolis, Indiana, grandson of German and Irish immigrants, and grew up on the Southside in a mostly German and Irish Catholic neighborhood around Fountain Square.

He attended St. John's Catholic High School in Indianapolis, Xavier University in Cincinnati, and St. Mary's College in Topeka, Kansas as well as the Indianapolis Law School.

Labor supporter

Budenz's role in the labor movement began from a Catholic perspective. In 1915, working with the Central Bureau of the Roman Catholic Central Verein, a reform-minded and social justice-oriented organization in St. Louis, he published A List of Books for the Study of the Social Question: Being an Introduction to Catholic Social Literature.

In 1920, Budenz moved to Rahway, New Jersey, where he worked for the ACLU (NY) as publicity director. In 1924 and into the early 1930s, Budenz was managing editor of the monthly magazine Labor Age. He also advised striking workers at a hosiery mill in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1928; at a silk workers' strike Paterson, New Jersey, in 1930; and the Toledo Auto-Lite strike in 1934. He taught labor organizing and strike management at Brookwood Labor College outside New York City.

In 1934, he served as national secretary for A. J. Muste's Conference for Progressive Labor Action (which later became the American Workers Party).

Communist

In 1935, Budenz joined the Communist Party, continued to organize labor strikes, and became managing editor of the Party's Daily Worker newspaper. He became a member of the National Committee of the Party.

By 1938, he had been arrested more than 20 times. That same year, he became editor of a new Communist daily in Chicago, the Midwest Daily Record, part of a "cross-country alliance of Communist dailies, between the San Francisco People's World...and New York City's...Daily Worker", at a time when there were more than 700 labor papers in America.

Anti-Communist

In 1945, Budenz renounced Communism, returned to the Roman Catholic Church under the guidance of the popular television and radio personality Fulton Sheen, and became an anti-communist advocate.

Formerly the author of numerous articles and pamphlets in support of Communist causes, after 1945 Budenz wrote several books about the dangers and evils of Communism. He became a professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame and later taught at Fordham University, in addition to working as a syndicated columnist and lecturer. In 1947, he wrote an autobiography, This Is My Story.

Paid informant, expert witness

As early as 1946, Budenz started testifying about other commununists like Gerhart Eisler (former husband of Soviet spy Hede Massing, who would testify in the second trial of the Hiss Case).

Budenz became a paid informant for the FBI like Elizabeth Bentley (and unlike Whittaker Chambers). He testified as an expert witness at various trials of Communists and before many of the Senate and House committees that were formed to investigate Communists. He voluntarily confessed that he had participated in espionage and other efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union, including discussion of the assassination of Leon Trotsky with CPUSA chairman Earl Browder.

A day after "Confrontation Day" (August 25, 1948) in the Hiss Case, Budenz testified before HUAC that the Communist Party "regarded him always" ("him" being Alger Hiss) as a party member and "under Communist discipline." He also corroborated Chambers's claim that Lee Pressman, John Abt, and Nathan Witt as party members.

By his own estimate, Budenz spent some 3,000 hours explaining the Party's "inner workings" to the FBI, as well as testifying on 33 occasions to various committees. By 1957 he estimated he had earned approximately $70,000 for his expert testimony. Budenz was a witness at the 1949 First Amendment case Dennis v. United States, brought by Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of CPUSA. He was also a key witness in the 1950 hearings before the Tydings Committee, which had been called to investigate charges made by Senator Joseph McCarthy that the State Department had numerous Soviet moles in its employ.

Lattimore testimonies

In the 1950 Tydings Committee hearings, Budenz testified that Owen Lattimore, one of the so-called "China Hands," was a member of a Communist cell within the Institute of Pacific Relations but not a Soviet agent. The reliability of his testimony came under question because, in all of his 3,000 hours of debriefing before the FBI (1946–1949), Budenz had never mentioned Lattimore's name. In 1951, Budenz again testified against Lattimore, this time before the hearings of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, headed by Senator Pat McCarran. During this second testimony against Lattimore, Budenz claimed Lattimore was both Soviet agent and secret Communist.

At one point in the late 1940s he testified, according to one account, "that the fact that a man denied he was a Communist might prove he was a communist since all Communists had instructions to deny it."

McCarthy summation

In 1952, Senator McCarthy praised Budenz for having "testified in practically every case in which Communists were either convicted or deported over the past three years; one of the key witnesses who testified against... Communist leaders."

Personal life

Budenz married Gizella Geiss in 1916 in Terre Haute, Indiana. Louis and Gizella adopted a daughter in 1919 named Louise (born in 1917). Louis, wife Gizella and daughter Louise, moved to Rahway, NJ in 1920 where Louis worked for the ACLU (NY). Louis and Gizella were separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938.

Budenz married his second wife Margaret Rodgers of Pittsburgh, by whom he had four daughters: Julia, Josephine, Justine and Joanna.

Death

Budenz died on April 27, 1972 at Newport Hospital in Newport, Rhode Island.

Works

Photos from Life magazine