December 3, 1987

Dear Ms. Redgrave:

The International Committee of the Fourth International has taken note of the following statement in the Perspectives Resolution of the “Eighth Party Congress” of the “Marxist Party,” of which you are a principal leader:

“Every state agency was at work in the split. Starting with the CIA, not less than six agencies were involved in the events of October 1985.”

At the end of the next paragraph, there is a further reference to “the manifest state penetration of the WRP which produced the split.”

The resolution in which these statements appear was published in the August-September 1987 edition of The Marxist, which is being sold in Britain, the United States and other countries. These are very serious allegations which, we trust, those in the leadership of the “Marxist Party,” such as yourself, Corin Redgrave and Gerry Healy, as well as those responsible for the publication and printing of The Marxist, are prepared to factually substantiate.

Moreover, as you must appreciate, any individual or organization active in the workers’ movement in possession of information relating to the activities of state agencies is obliged to make that information public.

Therefore, we ask that you respond to the following questions:

In addition to the CIA, which is the only organization you name, what are the other five agencies which you claim were involved in the events of October 1985?

What concrete evidence do you have supporting your allegation of CIA involvement in the events of October 1985? Please produce the documents, testimony of witnesses or any other relevant information supporting your allegation.

What are the names of the individual or individuals who were working on behalf of the CIA during the events of October 1985? Are you alleging that any representative of the Workers League active in the events of October 1985 was working on behalf of the CIA? If so, please identify that individual or individuals and produce the evidence which supports that allegation.

What concrete evidence do you have supporting your allegation that state agencies other than the CIA were involved in the events of October 1985? Please produce the documents, testimony of witnesses or any other relevant information supporting your allegation.

What are the names of the individual or individuals who were working on behalf of state agencies other than the CIA during the events of October 1985? Are you alleging that any leader of the Workers Revolutionary Party, all of whom were close associates of Gerry Healy up until the events of October 1985, were working on behalf of imperialist or Stalinist agencies at the time of the split? Are you alleging that any representative of the International Committee of the Fourth International was acting on behalf of imperialist or Stalinist agencies at the time of the split?

Given the fact that Gerry Healy was personally responsible for all matters relating to security inside the WRP prior to the October 1985 split, how does the “Marxist Party” explain his failure to detect, let alone prevent, the massive penetration of the organization by state agencies which it now claims took place?

Such an explanation is all the more necessary given the fact that for five years prior to the split—the critical period when, presumably, the alleged conspiracy was developing—Healy exercised special supra-constitutional authority inside the organization, empowering him to discipline, as he pleased, all members, leaders and even committees inside the WRP. When this resolution was re-affirmed in February 1985, it was introduced by Cliff Slaughter.

The International Committee challenges you to provide straightforward answers to the above questions. If, as the Perspectives Resolution of the “Marxist Party” implies, you possess information showing that state agencies were active in the October 1985 split, it is your obligation to produce it at once.

If, on the other hand, you are unable to substantiate your allegations, then we demand that you withdraw them immediately and issue a public retraction.

Sincerely yours,

David North

(on behalf of the ICFI)

April 8,1988

Dear Ms. Redgrave:

Last December 3, I wrote a letter, on behalf of the International Committee of the Fourth International, challenging you to factually substantiate allegations made by the Marxist Party, of which you are a leading member, that “Every state agency was at work in the split. Starting with the CIA, not less than six agencies were involved in the events of October 1985.”

Given the serious nature of your allegations, the ICFI also asked that you respond to the following relevant questions:

In addition to the CIA, which is the only organization you name, what are the other five agencies which you claim were involved in the events of October 1985?

What concrete evidence do you have supporting your allegation of CIA involvement in the events of October 1985? Please produce the documents, testimony of witnesses or any other relevant information supporting your allegation.

What are the names of the individual or individuals who were working on behalf of the CIA during the events of October 1985? Are you alleging that any representative of the Workers League active in the events of the October 1985 was working on behalf of the CIA? If so, please identify that individual or individuals and produce the evidence which supports that allegation.

What concrete evidence do you have supporting your allegation that state agencies other than the CIA were involved in the events of October 1985? Please produce the documents, testimony of witnesses or any other relevant information supporting your allegation.

What are the names of the individual or individuals who were working on behalf of state agencies other than the CIA during the events of October 1985? Are you alleging that any leader of the Workers Revolutionary Party, all of whom were close associates of Gerry Healy up until the events of October 1985, were working on behalf of imperialist or Stalinist agencies at the time of the split? Are you alleging that any representative of the International Committee of the Fourth International was acting on behalf of imperialist or Stalinist agencies at the time of the split?

Given the fact that Gerry Healy was personally responsible for all matters relating to security inside the WRP prior to the October 1985 split, how does the “Marxist Party” explain his failure to detect, let alone prevent, the massive penetration of the organization by state agencies which it now claims took place?

More than four months have passed and you have failed to acknowledge receipt of the letter, let alone substantiate your allegations or answer the questions posed by the International Committee.

In the international workers’ movement, your silence will be taken as irrefutable proof that your Marxist Party has no evidence to support its charges and that they amount to slanders against its political opponents.

The involvement of a corrupt bourgeois adventuress like yourself in a filthy slander campaign will surprise no politically-educated worker. In your politics and morals you remain faithful to the reactionary decadence of the social class from which you were spawned.

But the case of Gerry Healy has a more profound significance. His use of slander against political opponents exemplifies the political degeneration that has transformed him from a man who spent nearly a half-century fighting for Trotskyism into a lackey of imperialism and its Stalinist helpmates.

In his private lucid moments, when he looks into the mirror and contemplates the magnitude of his betrayal, Healy understands the political meaning of his slanders against the International Committee and the Workers League.

It is ironic that in 1975 Healy challenged Joseph Hansen to substantiate his lying allegation that the Workers Revolutionary Party may have been infiltrated by agents of the British Special Branch. Hansen’s charge, unsupported by any facts, was made for the sole purpose of discrediting the International Committee’s devastating exposure of his unprincipled politics and his contempt for the security of the Fourth International.

Upon proposing the formation of a commission of inquiry to investigate the allegation, Healy supervised the drafting of a letter to the Pabloite United Secretariat which condemned Hansen for attempting to submerge the Fourth International “in the swamp of unsubstantiated slander and innuendo,” and warned that “To persist in this method is to create the conditions in which the forces of the bourgeois state would be able to sabotage and attempt to break up the Trotskyist movement.

Hansen could not, of course, substantiate his allegation; and the refutation of his slander set into motion the chain of events which led ultimately to Hansen’s exposure as an agent of imperialism.

Healy’s biography is altogether different than Hansen’s. The latter, as we learned through Security and the Fourth International, entered the Trotskyist movement as a Stalinist operative. But Healy, in the process of repudiating Trotskyism, has wound up serving the very forces who directed Hansen’s counter-revolutionary activities. As Healy once knew and as his recent trip to Moscow at the invitation of the KGB demonstrates, the logic of politics is inexorable. And, we might add, judgment of history merciless.

Sincerely yours,

David North

(for the ICFI)