"I Led Three Lives”
Herbert Arthur
Philbrick
Citizen, 'Communist',
Counterspy
Seventh Cousin, Two Times Removed of
Merle G Ladd
bert Arthur Philbrick
"I Led Three Lives”
Citizen, 'Communist', Counterspy
Cousin, Two Times Removed of Merle G Ladd
The Philbrick family in 1952 (left to right) Dale Lorraine (9),
Sandra Ruth (10), Herbert, Mrs. Eva Philbrick, Leslie Sue
(2), Brenda Mae (6), and Constance Anne 11).
Philbrick maintained a secret room in his basement where
he prepared reports on his activities as a Communist Party
member in Massachusetts - counterspy for the FBI.
Herbert Arthur Philbrick was born 11 May 1915
in Rye, New Hampshire; he died 16 August 1993
in North Hampton, New Hampshire. He was one
of two children, and the only son, of Guy
Philbrick, a conductor for the Boston & Maine
Railroad, and Alice May Shapleigh, a nurse. He
spent his early years in northern New
Hampshire, and the family moved to Boston
before he was ten years old. He attended high
school in Somerville, Massachusetts, and his
social life revolved around the Baptist church
there. He worked at odd jobs to attend night
school at the Lincoln Technical School of
Northeastern University in Boston, earning a civil
engineering degree in 1938. He married Eva
Luscombe on 3 September 1939 and they later
had five girls. He was an assistant advertising
director for the M. & P. Theatre cinema chain.
The couple lived in Cambridge near Harvard
Square for a while before moving to a large
house at 8 Park Street in Wakefield in 1942.
Unable to find engineering work, he took an
advertising job with Holmes Direct Mail Service.
Seeking new clients in 1940, he called on the
Massachusetts Youth Council in Cambridge.
Through this sales call, he became interested in
the Youth Council and later helped to set up a
subsidiary organization in Cambridge. Gradually
he came to realize that the organization was
controlled and used for propaganda by the
Communist Party. His early discomfort with the
positions and tactics of the group led him to
contact the FBI, who convinced him to remain
connected to the party and act as a counterspy,
providing information and documentation on the
activities, internal organization, and people
involved. During the 1940s he infiltrated several
Communist Party organizations in the Boston
area, including cells in Wakefield and later
Malden. His activities were kept secret from all
except his wife, Eva, and the two agents he
worked with over the nine year period from 1940
to 1949.
Herbert Philbrick in 1961
Herbert Philbrick, appearing before the UnAmerican Activities Committee of the U.S.
House of Representatives. Photos are from his
autobiography I Led 3 Lives (McGraw-Hill,
1952)
While in Wakefield, living at 8 Park Street, he
filed his FBI reports from a hidden room behind
the false wall of a cedar closet in the unfinished
attic, where he kept a typewriter, dictating and
photographic equipment. He was also involved
with the First Baptist Church of Wakefield, just
across the Common from his house near the
corner of Park and Main Streets. He edited the
church newsletter, known as the "Tall Spire",
and he and his wife were president and vicepresident of the church's "Mr. and Mrs. Club". In
mid-1944 the family moved to 248 Tremont
Street, Melrose.
Philbrick was used by the Party for his
advertising skills. Another asset was his public
role as a Baptist youth leader. After time spent
in local party cells in Wakefield and Malden,
Massachusetts, he received training in the
fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and worked
for the Party in a variety of front groups. Later
he was removed from local party work and
assigned to a cell of professionals where his
main work consisted of working on the 1948
Progressive Party presidential campaign of
former U.S. vice-president Henry A. Wallace.
During Philbrick's time in the Communist Party,
its membership and support were eroded by the
Party's sharp zigzag from anti-war agitation
during
the
Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact,
to
enthusiastic support for the war effort after the
Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
Herbert Philbrick, Communist Party
Membership Card
Philbrick would relay his documents to the FBI by placing
them in a subway locker, and then mailing his FBI contact
the key.
While Philbrick was in the Party, Earl Browder, its
General Secretary, who was enthusiastic about
wartime cooperation between the United States
and the Soviet Union, and was looking forward to
postwar cooperation and growing acceptance of
the Communist party by the American public,
dissolved the Communist Party and reconstituted
it as the Communist Political Association,
apparently intending to set the Party on a
reformist course. Philbrick himself made a brief
show of opposing this new policy -- a
masterstroke, as the policy was also opposed by
William Z. Foster, longtime Chairman of the
Communist Party. Shortly thereafter, in July
1945, as a result of the Duclos letter -- a letter
by a leading French Communist, which actually
was a policy directive that originated in Moscow - the Party turned away from Browderism and
again took a Marxist-Leninist line, though not
completely abandoning the tactics of the United
Front.
Eventually the U.S. Justice Department asked
him to be a surprise witness in the New York trial
of U.S. v. William Z. Foster, et al., in which
twelve Communist Party leaders (later, eleven,
as Chairman Foster was excused due to illness)
were prosecuted under the 1940 Smith Act for
conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.
The trial started in January of 1949, and
Philbrick's testimony began on Wednesday April
6, 1949, and continued through Friday of that
week. The eleven remaining defendants were
eventually convicted.
Philbrick later wrote an autobiographical book about his experiences, called
"I led 3 lives; citizen, "Communist," counterspy". The book was made into a
movie as well as a half-hour prime time syndicated television series which
ran for 117 episodes between September 1953 and 1956. Philbrick himself
narrated the show, which was loosely based on his own experiences. J.
Edgar Hoover and the FBI approved of the program, and approved all
scripts. Philbrick was played in the series by actor Richard Carlson.
Later in life, Philbrick retired to the home of his youth, in the Little Boar's
Head district of North Hampton, New Hampshire. He remained active,
giving speeches and encouraging youth and adult citizens to exercise their
political rights and power, admonishing his listeners to be ever-watchful
against those who would undermine the republican form of government.
Toward the end of his life, he owned and ran a variety store in Rye Beach,
New Hampshire. He claimed that he never stopped traveling under assumed
names and watching for people following him.