Herbert Romerstein


Herbert "Herb" Romerstein was an American ex-communist and historian who became a writer specializing in anticommunism and was appointed Director of the U.S. Information Agency’s Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation and Active Measures. As an author he is best known for his book The Venona Secrets.

Background

Herbert Romerstein was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York into the Jewish family of Sam and Rose Romerstein. Two years after his cheder, while still in high school in Brooklyn he joined the Communist Party USA.

Career

Romerstein gained employment with C. Ludwig Baumann, "a retail furniture establishment."
In 1949, as the Truman administration continued its crackdown on communists, the party's denials that it had ever intended to overthrow the US "knocked the props from under all my teaching... Stop this shilly-shallying, I yelled at one of my party bosses." During the Korean War, Romerstein left the party for accusing South Korea of attacking North Korea, and he fought in that war.
In September 1950, Romerstein had become a research analyst and investigator for American Business Consultants, publishers of the anticommunist newsletter Counterattack as well as for Bookmailer, which published his first book, Communism and Your Child, in 1962.
On April 12, 1951, Romerstein, at "19 1/2", testified before the Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security regarding Communist infiltration into the American Communications Association and United Office and Professional Workers. The same year, he also testified before the Subversive Activities Control Board.
From 1965 to 1983, Romerstein served as a staff member for the US House of Representatives and worked as investigator for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, as minority chief investigator for the House Committee on Internal Security, and on the staff of the House [Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence].
In 1983, he joined the Reagan administration full-time as a director of the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation at the U.S. Information Agency. He served in this capacity until President Reagan left office in 1989.
Thereafter, he became director of the Center for Security Research at the Education and Research Institute. ERI's board members include Ralph Bennett, M. Stanton Evans, Patrick Korten, James C. Roberts, Allan H. Ryskind, and Terrence M. Scanlon. Later, he worked at the Institute of World Politics as a specialist on espionage, Soviet political warfare, international terrorism, and internal security.
He conducted research in both U.S. and foreign archives, such as the Ukrainian archives in 1992 and the archives of the Communist International in Moscow, Russia, in 1993.
In 1992, Romerstein and Ray Kerrison reported in the New York Post that Oleg Kalugin had identified I. F. Stone as a Soviet agent, developed in The Venona Secrets, co-authored with Eric Breindel.
Romerstein defined counterpropaganda as "carefully prepared answers to false propaganda with the purpose of refuting the disinformation and undermining the propagandist."

Personal life and death

Romerstein was married to Pat Romerstein. He moved to Clinton, Maryland, in the early 1970s.
Romerstein died on May 7, 2013, age 81.
He was buried on May 9, 2013, at the Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Adelphi, Maryland.

Legacy

In January 2013, the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University acquired his collection of papers. According to the archive, after being processed and registered the Romerstein papers will be Hoover's largest collection on communist subversion and the activities of communist front organizations, complementing its previous holdings of papers of the Subversive Activities Control Board and William T. Poole.

Works

Books

Communism and Your Child. New York: Bookmailer.

Articles and essays