Alex WellersteinVerified account

Being in CO without my library, I'm unable to re-read what Bird & Sherwin say about this. I recall Herken making a more extreme claim. What stood out for me in both books - being a CP member or fell trav meant different things in 1935 vs 1950

Both rely heavily on Chevalier's later recollections, which are sketchy and can be interpreted different ways. Chevalier said that it was more of a "discussion group" than a "closed unit."

Chevalier says JRO never paid any dues, and it was only 6 or 7 people, they took no orders, and did not think of themselves as CP members. He is impressively vague on what it was or wasn't: "We both were and were not." I rank that as fellow traveler, personally.

I’m less sure about this, partly because the culture of membership denial ran so deep and was such an important tactical defence. This kind of indeterminacy was carefully maintained which not to say I think JRO was a member but the vagueness is handy.

Chevalier had no problem in essentially implicating himself and many other members of the "discussion group" — it is only JRO that he gives a special, "not really a member" status to. I think that is significant, esp. since this was after JRO's death.

I suspect if Chevalier thought JRO was a clean-cut member (or at least as clean-cut as Chevalier considered himself, which is not too clean-cut) he would have said so. Which is to say, my read is that JRO probably deliberately avoided crossing any kind of clear "membership" line.

Which again, just to be clear: Chevalier is definitely wishy-washing on the status of the "discussion group," but it is clear he thinks that he and most of the others crossed a line into a sort of CP membership, but on JRO there are several differences, e.g. the lack of dues.

To put it another way: if the Hoover-era FBI couldn't pin actual CP membership on JRO, with its not-very-high standards of evidence, then I don't think we ought to retrospectively.