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Attacks on me had been continuous with regard to Bridges ever since the successful operations of the San Francisco waterfront strike. Eventually Bridges, previously unknown, had emerged as a leader of the whole waterfront of the Pacific Coast, from San Diego to Seattle. The attacks on me began long before we had any information from Bonham. However, when it became known that Bonham had made this report and we were dealing with it the demand became louder and louder. As I have said, Bonham was responsible for allowing it to reach certain people who were anxious to have it, and I think the press got it from people who were only too ready to denounce me. These “certain people” were Dies, the American Legion, and so on.

I don't mean that Dies was behind any of this. He was a Congressman who was head of the Un-American Activities Committee. He was charging everybody with everything. He had been one of those who ever since the time of the San Francisco strike was quick to repeat that Bridges was a Communist and he ought to be deported. But he wasn't the one who started the rumors and pushed them. The American Legion's committee on Americanism had done some denouncing around. It was to one of those groups that Bonham allowed this leak to go, a very reprehensible thing for a person to do, disloyal to his department, which was attempting to deal with it as best they could.