One FBI report about Bergson activist Maurice Rosenblatt derisively referred to the left-wing Coordinating Committee for Democratic Action, in which Rosenblatt was active, as “this Semitic Committee.” The FBI complained that Rosenblatt and his colleagues were trying to “smear” Nazi sympathizers in New York City.
“When there is a genuine threat, governments sometimes have to do things like eavesdrop,” Jack Yampolsky concedes. “But in our case, they were doing it for political reasons, and anti-Semitism also played a role. The fact that we vocally disagreed with U.S. government policy regarding the Holocaust and Jewish statehood was not a valid reason for the Roosevelt administration to enlist the FBI and the IRS in a war against the Bergson group.”
