William Remington

William Walter Remington was born on October 25, 1917, in New York City and raised in Ridgewood,[2] in Bergen County, New Jersey, by Lillian Maude Sutherland (1888-1969) and Frederick C. Remington (1870–1956).[3][4] His father worked for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.;[5] his mother was an art teacher in New York.[2] Remington was admitted to Dartmouth College at age 16, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in 1939, and earned a Master's degree from Columbia University in 1940.[2][6] Coming from a branch of the wealthy Remington family of Illion, New York, Remington's parents were demanding and he developed a somewhat unconventional and flamboyant personality. From an early age, he was drawn to radical leftist politics, and declared to his friends that he was a Communist when he was 15. In college, he became active with members of the Young Communist League, and later the Communist Party of the United States. In testimony, Remington stated that while he was a Republican when he entered college, he "moved left quite rapidly" and became a radical but was never a Communist Party or Young Communist League member at Dartmouth.[7] Whether or not he ever officially joined the party later became a point of contention in his legal battles.

Remington was employed in a number of posts, principally as an economist:

• Tennessee Valley Authority, Knoxville, Tennessee, September 1936 to May 1937
• Workers Education Committee, Knoxville, April to August 1937
• Junior Economist with the National Resources Planning Board, Washington, D.C., May 1940 to July 15, 1941
• Associate industrial economist in the Office of Price Administration of the Office for Emergency Management, from July 1941 to February 1942;
• Assistant to the Director of the War Production Board, February 1942 to October 1943
• Assistant to the Director of Orders and Regulations Bureau in the War Production Board, October 1943 to 1946
• President's Council of Economic Advisers, March 1947 to March 1948[8]

For his position with the Office of Price Administration, Remington was required to undergo a loyalty-security check, which began in 1941. He admitted having been active in Communist-allied groups such as the American Peace Mobilization, but denied any sympathy with communism and swore under oath that he was not and had never been a member of the Communist Party. His leftist affiliations raised concerns, but the investigation was superficial and his security clearance was approved.

Elizabeth Bentley (here, in 1948) accused Remington of being a member of her Soviet spy network

In March 1942 and continuing for two years, Remington had occasional meetings with Elizabeth Bentley at which he passed her information. This material included data on airplane production and other matters concerning the aircraft industry, as well as some information on an experimental process for manufacturing synthetic rubber.[9] Remington later claimed that he was unaware that Bentley was connected with the Communist Party, that he believed she was a journalist and researcher, and that the information he gave her was not secret. Bentley was a Communist and an espionage agent for the Soviet Union, who in 1945 broke with the Communists and became an informer for the FBI. She then implicated a number of her contacts, including Remington. Bentley's revelations of Soviet espionage activities in the United States received a great deal of press attention. She identified more than 80 Americans—including several employees of government offices—as working for the Soviets, of whom only William Remington was still working in a government position.

Acting on Bentley's information, the FBI began secret surveillance of Remington in late 1945. Remington was by this time disillusioned with communism and had broken off his relationships with radical organizations, so the investigation revealed nothing of interest.[10] In 1946, Remington was working with the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. From there he transferred in March 1947 to a position with the President's Council of Economic Advisers, where he was paid an annual salary of $10,305.[8] Because the FBI was keeping Bentley's testimony and its investigation of Remington secret, it raised no objection, with the result that Remington remained in fairly high-level government posts.

In 1947, Remington was interviewed by the FBI and also questioned before a federal grand jury in New York City about the information he had given to Elizabeth Bentley. He testified that no secret information was involved, and the issue seemed to end there. In an apparent attempt to bolster belief in his innocence, Remington became an anti-communist informer from this time and for the following year. He sent the FBI information on over fifty people, only four of whom were connected with his own case. Most of those he named he had never met. He accused them of being Communists, isolationists, Negro nationalists, or "extreme liberals." He also verbally attacked his wife Ann, from whom he was now estranged, and his mother-in-law Elizabeth Moos, both avowed Communists.

Another loyalty investigation of Remington was opened early in 1948, and in June, he was relieved of his duties pending the findings of that investigation. In July of that year, the New York World-Telegram published a series of articles about Elizabeth Bentley, and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened hearings to investigate her charges. At these hearings, Bentley made her accusations against Remington public and Remington in turn denied them. The Washington Post called him "a boob...who was duped by clever Communist agents." At his loyalty review hearings, Remington downplayed his earlier connections with Communist and leftist organizations and claimed that his wife's adherence to Communist doctrine was the reason for the end of their marriage.

While testifying before the Senate, Bentley was protected from libel suits. When she repeated her charge that Remington was a Communist on NBC Radio's Meet the Press, he sued her and NBC for libel. At this point, Remington's case acquired considerable notoriety. When Remington's lawyers attempted to subpoena Bentley, she initially could not be found, prompting headlines of "RED WITNESS "MISSING" AT 100-G SLANDER SUIT" and the like. When she finally reappeared, she was subpoenaed for the libel suit. She refused to testify at Remington's loyalty hearing. The Loyalty Review Board noted that the only serious evidence against Remington was "the uncorroborated statement of a woman who refuses to submit herself to cross-examination,"[11] and cleared Remington to return to his government post. The libel suit was settled out of court shortly thereafter, with NBC paying Remington $10,000.[12]

Ann Remington in Federal Court

In 1950, the FBI and the federal grand jury in New York City reopened their investigations of Remington and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened a third. Because of continuing suspicions about him, Remington had been demoted at the Commerce Department, and his once-promising career in the Truman administration was stagnant. Ann Remington, now divorced from him,[13] was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Initially reluctant, she testified that her husband had been a dues-paying member of the Communist Party, and that he had given secret information to Elizabeth Bentley while knowing that Bentley was a Communist.[14] A few days later she recanted, and stated that she would claim marital privilege and refuse to testify against her ex-husband in any trial. The grand jury decided to indict Remington for committing perjury when he denied ever being a member of the Communist Party.

Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury (here, in 2016), where Remington served time

While his attorneys prepared another appeal, Remington began his sentence at Danbury Federal Correctional Institution where he became friends with fellow prisoner, nonviolent action theorist Gene Sharp, before being transferred to Lewisburg. The appeals court upheld the original verdict, and in February 1954, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.[21]

One of Remington's fellow inmates at Lewisburg was George McCoy, a violent man with an I.Q. of 61. McCoy was known to have made a number of angry remarks about Remington's communism. On the morning of November 22, 1954, McCoy convinced another inmate, 17-year-old juvenile delinquent Lewis Cagle, Jr., to join him in attacking Remington as he slept. Cagle used a piece of brick in a sock as a weapon, striking Remington four times on the head.[6] Two days later, November 24, 1954, Remington died of his injuries.[22] The prison warden described it to Remington's second wife as "not a personal attack against Bill...but just the actions of a couple of hoodlums who got all worked up by...the publicity about Communists."[23] The FBI stated that robbery was the motive for the crime.[24] His funeral was held in Ridgewood, New Jersey on November 28, 1954.[25]

Press attention focused on whether more should have been done to protect him in prison, and whether his murder was motivated by anti-communism. When Cagle confessed, the FBI instructed him to describe the crime as if he and McCoy had been trying to rob Remington.[26] When McCoy confessed four days later, he said he hated Remington for being a Communist and denied any robbery motive.

Worried that Cagle and McCoy's confessions might be ruled inadmissible and afraid that a jury would be sympathetic towards men who murdered a Communist,[27] U.S. attorney J. Julius Levy accepted pleas of second degree murder from McCoy and Cagle. They received life sentences.

Remington's biographer Gary May concludes: "Clearly, Remington was no political innocent duped by the Communists, and his conviction for perjury seems justified. Yet Remington was no pro-Soviet automaton, no slave to Party or ideology, and not even the FBI, at least privately, was willing to classify him as a Russian spy."[28]

• McCarthyism
• Communist Party of the United States

• FBI Vault Declassified files
• Library of Congress 1951 photo of Remington with children

• Gary May, Un-American Activities: The Trials of William Remington (NY: Oxford University Press, 1994)