| Notes |
- "A Remington Family History" by Lois Remington Smith, p. 71, gives Walter's date of birth as 24 Oct 1917.
"William Walter Remington."Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 5: 1951-1955. American Council of Learned Societies, 1977. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/
Biographical essay fromthe above source:
Remington, William Walter (Oct. 25, 1917 - Nov. 24, 1954), economist and federal government employee, was born in New York City, the son of Lillian Sutherland and Frederick Clement Remington, an insurance agency executive. He entered Dartmouth College in 1934 but interrupted his studies to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1936-1937, during which time he participated in labor union activities and associated closely with radicals. After returning to Dartmouth, he joined a group of self-proclaimed radicals and espoused a communistic philosophy. Remington married Ann Moos on Nov. 28, 1938; they had two children. He graduated first in his class with the A.B. in 1939 and received the A.M. in economics from Columbia University in 1940. Remington then worked as an economist with the National Resources Planning Board (1940-1941), the Office of Price Administration (1941-1942), and the War Production Board (1942-1944). He enlisted in the navy, serving first as a Russian translator in Washington, then with the Economic Affairs Mission in London and, from December 1945, with the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. Appointed to the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 1946, Remington transferred two years later to the Department of Commerce, where he headed the division that cleared export licenses to trade with the Soviet bloc nations.
In 1945 Elizabeth Bentley informed the FBI that during the war she had been a courier for a Soviet espionage ring in Washington, D.C., and that Remington had been one of her sources. She repeated these charges in 1947 before a federal grand jury, which returned no indictments, and publicly in July 1948, before a Senate subcommittee. Remington admitted meeting Bentley secretly and giving her information during 1942 and 1943, but claimed that he knew her only as a researcher and had never given her classified material.
Bentley's charges coincided with the beginning of President Harry Truman's loyalty program; and on Sept. 28, 1948, the Commerce Department's loyalty board ordered Remington's dismissal (a ruling that he appealed). Meanwhile, on Sept. 12, 1948, Bentley repeated her charges on "Meet the Press"; Remington brought a $100,000 slander suit against her, the broadcasting network, and the program's sponsor. On Feb. 10, 1949, the Loyalty Review Board ordered Remington reinstated. Later that year the sponsor and the radio station settled out of court for $10,000; Bentley, however, was not a party to the settlement. Then during congressional hearings in April 1950, two former Communists claimed that Remington had been a Communist party member in 1937, while he was working for the TVA. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer dismissed Remington on grounds of "inefficiency"--Remington had been frequently absent from his job while testifying before grand juries, loyalty boards, and congressional committees. On June 8, 1950, a federal grand jury indicted Remington on one count of perjury, his denial of Communist party membership.
Remington was convicted after a trial lasting from Dec. 26, 1950 to Feb. 7, 1951, but a unanimous Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, citing principally Judge Gregory Noonan's improper instruction to the jury of what constituted Communist party membership and his refusal to provide the defense with the minutes of the grand jury testimony of the government's star witness, Remington's former wife, from whom he had been divorced in 1949. Rather than retry the case, the government convened another grand jury and on Oct. 25, 1951, secured a new five-count perjury indictment based on Remington's trial testimony.
After obtaining the grand jury minutes, Remington's attorneys unsuccessfully appealed to the United States Supreme Court to quash the indictment. The grand jury minutes revealed that Ann Remington had changed her testimony under pressure from the foreman, John Brunini (who had contracted to assist Bentley in writing a book). Without objection from the United States attorney, Brunini had threatened Ann Remington with a contempt citation, improperly telling her that she had no privilege to refuse to testify.
The jury at the second trial (Jan. 13-27, 1953) found Remington guilty of perjury on two counts: swearing that he had not known of a Young Communist League chapter at Dartmouth and that he had not given Bentley classified material. Sentenced to three years in prison, Remington appealed this verdict, arguing that the manner in which the first indictment had been obtained prevented his being prosecuted for testimony made in his own defense. On Nov. 24, 1953, the Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Remington; and on Feb. 8, 1954, the United States Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari. Remington began serving his sentence at the Lewisburg, Pa., federal prison on Apr. 15, 1953. On Nov. 22, 1954, he was brutally beaten by two fellow inmates who were, the FBI said, ransacking his cell. He died two days later.
By 1948, when Truman's loyalty program began, Remington was no security risk, being an anti-Communist and a moderate in economic philosophy. Attracted to radicalism as a youth, he was an ambitious young man who sought to salvage his reputation by on some occasions dissembling about his association with Bentley and affirming his anti-Communism. He was thus vulnerable to the anti-Communist politics and priorities of the early years of the cold war.
-- Athan Theoharis
FURTHER READINGS
[There is no comprehensive biography of Remington or his family. Obituaries are in the New York Times, Nov. 25, 1954; Life, Dec. 6, 1954; and Britannica Book of the Year, 1955.
Records of the congressional investigations and the trials include U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, Investigations Subcommittee, Hearings on Export Policy and Loyalty, 80th Cong., 2d sess., 1948; U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government, 80th Cong., 2d sess., 1948; and Hearings Regarding Communism in the United States Government--Part I, 81st Cong., 2d sess., 1950; and the transcripts of both trials, U.S. v. Remington (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York). Although the New York Times provided detailed daily coverage of both committees and the trial testimony, that of the second trial was often perfunctory. The rulings of the Circuit Court of Appeals and of the United States Supreme Court are 191 F.2d 246 (1951), 342 U.S. 895 (1951), 343 U.S. 907 (1952), 208 F.2d 567 (1953), and 347 U.S. 913 (1954).
There is no full scholarly treatment of the complex issues involving Remington's trial and the congressional investigations. The best analyses remain Fred Cook, "The Remington Tragedy: A Study of Injustice," Nation, Dec. 28, 1957; and Herbert Packer, Ex-Communist Witnesses: Four Studies in Fact Finding (1962). Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage (1951), is valuable principally for its revelations about her personality and in contrast with her congressional testimony.
Contemporary studies sympathetic to Remington include James Wechsler, "The Remington Loyalty Case," New Republic, Feb. 28, 1949; Daniel Lang, "A Reporter at Large," New Yorker, May 21, 1949; and Helen Fuller, "Remington and Lee: The Loyalty Purge," New Republic, June 19, 1950. Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time: Some Monuments and Ruins of the Thirties (1967), contains a highly impressionistic portrait of Ann Moos Remington.
The memoir of former Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer, Concerns of a Conservative Democrat (1968), has factual errors but is highly revealing about the priorities of those administering the loyalty program.]
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1917 - 1954 (37 years)
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