Christian Pineau and Michael Greenberg (economist): Difference between pages
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'''Michael Greenberg''' (born 28 November 1914, died 19 April, 1992), a scholar of Chinese economics and history, was alleged to have provided a Soviet spy with information during the 1940s, but was never charged with espionage.
Greenberg was born as ''Michael Menahem Greenberg'' in [[Manchester]], Lancashire, [[England]], son of a Polish-born father. He attended [[Manchester Grammar School]] and won a scholarship to Cambridge University where he won first class honours.
Greenberg arrived in the United States in 1939 to attend the Graduate School of [[Harvard University]] under a Joseph Hodges Choate Memorial Fellowship from [[Trinity College, Cambridge]]. He studied at Harvard from [[October]] [[1939]] to January 1941. Greenberg also became editor of the [[Institute of Pacific Relations]] publication, ''Pacific Affairs'' in 1939. In 1942 Greenberg became a China specialist at the [[Board of Economic Warfare]] and an assistant to the agency's head, [[Lauchlin Currie]]. Greenberg later worked as a Foreign Affairs Economist in the Administrative Division, Enemy Branch, of the [[Foreign Economic Administration]]. [[Elizabeth Bentley]] stated that for a brief period Greenberg supplied information concerning principally [[China]]. The information was passed through [[Mary Price]].
Civil Service Commission security officials wanted Greenberg dismissed upon learning of an alleged involvement with the [[Communist Party]]. From FBI files, this appears to have been a classic example of "guilt by association" (see Silvermaster file 2C page 18; other accusations came from the discredited FBI-paid witness Louis Budenz and an academic Karl Wittvogel who met Greenberg in Cambridge and stated that he "must have" been a Communist because of his associates). Upon appeal, the Civil Service Commission was overruled. Greenberg became a U.S. citizen in 1944 and transferred to the [[Department of State]] in 1945, resigning in 1946. Greenberg left the United States permanently in 1947 after being interviewed by the [[FBI]] so was never called before a Congressional Committee.
Greenberg's FBI file is highly redacted. A wiretap in 1945 revealed Greenbergs's co-workers discussing "the charges against him", and remarking that Greenberg would have been better off if he had worked, but that he had never turned out a piece of work in the three years he had been employed by the government.
Upon return to England, Greenberg went back to Cambridge and completed work on his Ph.D. thesis, which was eventually published as a book "British Trade and the Opening of China" (1947, Cambridge University Press, reissued in 1970 and republished in the USA in 1979). This book, based on the then recently released archives of the Jardine Matheson Company, a major player in the development of Hong Kong, describes the forceful exploitation of China by British colonial power in establishing and maintaining the colony of Hong Kong.
Blocked from academic promotion, most likely due to his left-leaning politics, he went on to work in a number of jobs in journalism, public relations, advertising and film criticism in England, Switzerland and France. He lost his U.S. citizenship due to absence from the USA and was denied a passport by the British Home Office, even as late as the 1970s, presumably to due the McCarthy-era accusations. His British passport was never restored to him, and the accusations continued to hound him throughout the 1950s.
In 1958, he was recruited as Economic Advisor to the [[Central Bank of Ceylon]], returning to the U.K. in 1961. Shortly thereafter, he became, as Michael Green, assistant editor and then chief editor of The Banker, a monthly professional journal published by the Financial Times of London. He later became Chief Economist at the London stockbroking company De Zoete & Bevan. He commented that in the City of London most people shared the Marxist analysis of capitalism that he had learned in Cambridge in the 1930s, but that they were, by contrast, quite content with the implicit inequalities.
His obituary appeared in the London Times and the Independent. He was survived by his wife and three sons.
== Sources ==
*[http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/silversm.htm FBI Silvermaster file]
* Michael Greenberg interview, 7 June 1947, FBI Silvermaster file, serial 2583.
*Elizabeth Bentley deposition 30 November 1945, FBI file 65-14603.
*Earl Latham, ''The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, (1966), 306–307.
*John Costello, ''Mask of Treachery'', New York: Morrow, (1988), 380–381, 480–481.
*John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pgs. 111, 113, 114, 161, 374, 408, 409, 415, 421.
*Boughton, James M. and Sandilands, Roger J. "[http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sandilands_fdr_economists.html Politics and the Attack on FDR's Economists: From Grand Alliance to the Cold War]", ''Intelligence and National Security'', Spring 2002
*Michael Greenberg FBI FOIA
[[Category:Soviet spies|Greenberg, Michael]]
[[Category:Venona Appendix B|Greenberg, Michael]]
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