The Road Back

Like many another smart young man who followed the Communist line, sharp-eyed, sharply dressed Attorney Lee Pressman did very well for a long time. Har-vardman Pressman launched his leftward-turning 'career in Henry Wallace's AAA back in 1933, ended up as chief counsel of the C.I.O. He held the post for twelve years. But though he was a skilled labor lawyer, his fellow-traveling finally became too much for Phil Murray; 2 1/2 years ago Murray tearfully threw him out.

His star did not entirely wane. He became a power among the back-room Reds who steered Henry Wallace through the presidential campaign. But when the Korean war began, he, like Wallace, began slipping away from his Commie cronies. California's Congressman Richard Nixon, scenting opportunity, decided to call him before the House Un-American Activities Committee and ask him a few questions. (Once before, when Whittaker Chambers named Pressman as a member of the same elite apparatus as Alger Hiss, Pressman had taken refuge in the Fifth Amendment, refused to answer Congressmen's questions.)

Last week, Pressman decided to reverse his field. Apparently on the grounds that confession might be good for a goal, he also retailed some sins to the press. He admitted having joined the Communist Party in 1934: it was all, he said, because of the depression and Hitlerism. He had gotten out after one year, though he continued to run with top Communists for 15 more. He had never known Alger Hiss as a Communist. And he was now against the Russians--100%.

This week, hauled before the congressional committee, he reluctantly consented to name three men who had been fellow Communists in the '30s--John Abt, Nathan Witt and Charles Kramer, three other former New Deal job holders in Wallace's AAA. This, however, was as far as he wanted to go. He apparently hoped it was far enough to get back to a new law practice among loyal Americans, with an honorable scar to bare to the clients.

Ben Gold, president of the leftist International Fur & Leather Workers' Union, also cut himself off, publicly, from the Communist Party this week. Gold, however, made it plain that he was resigning only so that his union could comply with the Taft-Hartley Law, and that after 30 years he was still as good a Red as ever. The New York Daily Worker, which ignored Lee Pressman's switch completely, clucked sympathetically over Ben Gold, who to hold his job would have to hide his true colors.

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