{"value"=>"<p>The files are arranged alphabetically by personal name or subject. The bulk of the series deals with communist subversion in the 1920s and 1930s. The files comprise a wealth of material, from as early as 1907, documenting the Easleys' preoccupation with the real and imagined subversive activities of anarchists, socialists, communists, German agents, and Irish Fenians operating in the United States. Their campaign did not end until Gertrude Beeks Easley's death in 1950. Many of the documents paint a bizarre picture of Ralph Easley - acting out of his element, but in a role he clearly relished - as a single-minded and credulous eccentric playing a serious and risky game of cloak and dagger. Among the more interesting papers in the collection are the interviews Easley had with one of his undercover agents, Gaston Means, and Means' diaries. The so-called \"Means Affair\" ended for Easley in public scandal and disgrace when trunkloads of evidence of communist subversion, for which Easley paid Means $25,000 (donated by the philanthropist Helen Gould Shepard), turned out to be forgeries. Matters got worse when it was discovered that Easley had been paying for his anti-communist crusade with money earmarked by NCF for other purposes.</p> <p>There is also considerable material relating to the activities of AMTORG (American Trading Corporation), a trading group founded by the Soviet Union in 1924, and which managed Soviet commercial affairs in the United States until 1935. According to Easley, the OGPU (the Soviet secret police during the period 1922-1934), used AMTORG's New York office as a center of operations for espionage in the United States. There are also correspondence and papers documenting the role played by the Chase National Bank, the Soviet Union's fiscal agent in the United States (see also \"Clark\" -- a false identity - in box 439, folder 5, for Easley's statement concerning the bank; and extensive correspondence relating to a declaration against the recognition of Soviet Russia). Other files of special interest include: The American League Against War and Fascism; American Literature Against German Propaganda; Anarchists; correspondence, 1907-1909, and anti-socialist writings of Martha Moore Avery (for additional correspondence by Avery see Industrial Economics Department, Box 186); Roger Baldwin; Katherine Breshkovsky; Sen.William E. Borah of Kansas (one of several senators who allegedly were paid to help the Bolshevik government gain legitimacy in the United States); communism and communist; Eugene V. Debs; German anti-Semitism; Hamilton Fish, Jr.; J. Edgar Hoover; Otto Kiep (German Consul in New York); German Sabotage; Recognition of Soviet Russia; Maude Wetmore; Archibald Stevenson; and Matthew Woll. (Note that the following printed material has not been microfilmed as part of the NCF Records: Communist Publications, comprised of <span class=\"title\">Programme of the Communist International</span>. 1st edition, December 1929; and <span class=\"title\">The Communist</span>, May, October-December 1931, and February, May 1932). For a complete listing of names and subjects see the Container List for Boxes 435-458.</p>"}