CIA chief linked to reds
by conservative journos
Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA who has been tapped as the next defense secretary, was on friendly terms with a fellow West Coast progressive who balked at telling Congress whether he was or had been a communist.

However, the West Coast progressive, Hugh De Lacy, was identified by John Abt, longtime Communist Party counsel, as a fellow communist, according to material provided by Accuracy in Media, a conservative organization.

De Lacy however was not prosecuted over charges that he had consorted with Soviet spies.

After De Lacy's death in 1983, Panetta, then of Carmel Valley, Calif., entered a tribute to De Lacy and his wife, Dorothy, into the Congressional Record. It read in part: "The causes to which they have dedicated their lives--peace, jobs, an end to race and sex discrimination, a halt to the costly and dangerous arms race--are causes for which we are still working today."

A Los Angeles Times obituary mentions De Vry's tussle over communism, but a Wikipedia entry simply says he served in Congress, without mentioning the communism controversy.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/panettagate-a-real-scandal-involving-national-security/

www.usasurvival.org/docs/pannetta.pdf

Journalist Wes Vernon relates that the "late columnist Robert Novak told me that he had learned shortly after arriving in Washington in the fifties that the press corps had imposed a 'self-censorship' in ignoring certain stories — that among these were congressional investigations of Communist influence in our society" and that "this de facto 'cartel' turned a blind eye to 'a lot' that was 'still' going on" as of 2007.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/vernon/110613