Tunney was one of the dumbests member of the Senate I ever saw. He would be the perfect dupe.
Cranston - only a full congressional investigation and hearings will ever uncover his role of associations with the Communist Party, his hiring of CP members and spies (Karr), his possible role in the murder of anti-communist labor leader Carlos Tresca, and his role in the Office of War Information during WW2. Also his connections to the Institute for Pacific Relations, a heavily CPUSA and possibly Soviet-infiltrated and influenced propaganda operation.
Cranston's list of Hollywood Red friends would shock you, including the late John Randolph who headed the KGB front, the National Council for Soviet-American Friendship, among other fronts.
Tom Hayden - Watergate derailed the Senate investigation/hearings scheduled on Hayden and Fonda as No. Vietnamese agents of influence.
There is an FBI document from 1970 which listed Sen. Kennedy and his office as one of the prime targets of Soviet KGB penetration/influence operations. This document will be written about within the next week or so.
Communist influence in Congress has only had the tip of the iceberg of exposure. John Conyers is now the leading holding of communist fronts, affiliations, and KGB-contacts of all the members of congress since Abzug and Dellums and Crockett. Image what will happen if he becomes chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
I have wondered about Cranston's OWI background myself. I voiced some thoughts on that in this thread, replying to another poster's comments on Cranston [links embedded in original thread]:
Bob Kerrey and Max Cleland Call for Karl Rove's Resignation
[Quoting Deb:] Anyone who even passed Cranston in the hall was a Commie.
[My reply:] ROFL! Yep, Cranston was one of the "usual suspects". Incidentally he got his start in government in the Office of War Information, which was riddled with Soviet agents (The Secret World of American Communism, by Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov: "The party managed to penetrate both the Office of Secret Services (OSS) and the Office of War Information (OWI), where, according to party leader Eugene Dennis, it played a key role in shaping policy..."), under Archibald MacLeish, whose name shows up a lot in this context (Archibald MacLeish: "MacLeish's FBI file eventually ran to six hundred pages, longer than any other writer in the United States. . .In October 1952 Joseph McCarthy claimed that MacLeish had belonged to more Communist front organizations than any man he had investigated."):
Alan Cranston Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
[Interviewer's question to Cranston:] During the war you worked for the government under Archibald McLeish?
[Cranston:] Yes, I did.
[Interviewer:] Tell us about that. It was bringing groups into an understanding of the American story, is that right?
[Cranston:] I had worked for a little while before the war began, after I came back to America, for an organization called Common Council for American Unity that was trying to help immigrants adjust to American life, and America to adjust to having immigrants among us. So I was working with German Americans, Italian Americans, Polish Americans, everything you could think of. When the war began, President Roosevelt appointed Archibald McLeish to head the Office of Facts and Figures, which was soon replaced by something headed by a famous commentator of those days, Elmer Davis, called the Office of War Information. I was given the responsibility of running the foreign language division which had the task of explaining how price control worked, how the draft worked and so forth, in foreign languages via press or radio to foreign language speaking groups.
Very interesting information on Hayden--I had not even heard such hearings were scheduled, though I recall Ambassador Graham Martin expressing sentiments along those lines about Hayden, Don Luce, et al, which is a subject I know you're very familiar with. I look forward to the article on attempts to influence Kennedy--please let me know when that posts. I share the concern on Conyers.