COMMUNISTS: Reds in the Sierra

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Before a secluded cabin, 8,000 ft. up in California's Sierra Nevada range, stood two bare-chested men basking in the mid-afternoon sun. Not far away, hidden by the underbrush, 16 other men closed in silently around the cabin. They looked like unshaven, jean-clad campers, but they were actually FBI agents, armed with pistols and carbines. When they had completed their circle, at a prearranged moment, five sedans carrying reinforcements rattled down a dirt road to a point 20 yards from the cabin. Slowly the G-men converged on the cabin, covered the two sunbathers, routed out two more men and a pretty, plump girl. There was no resistance, no gunburst, only the sound of the soughing pines. Thus last week the FBI ended its biggest manhunt in years.

Bewildered Innocence. The prize catch of the high Sierra hunt, a bloated, pink-haired man whose oversized pants were held up by a money belt stuffed with $50 bills, was a study of bewildered innocence. He produced drivers' licenses identifying himself as one John Francis Brennan. But the FBI men tagged him on the spot with a fingerprint test as Robert Thompson, one of the eleven top Communist leaders who were convicted in 1949 of violation of the Smith Act. Two years ago, ordered to report to begin his three-year penitentiary term, he jumped bail, disappeared into the Communist underground.

The second fugitive was Sidney Steinberg, onetime assistant national labor secretary of the Party, who was indicted two years ago by a New York federal grand jury for conspiracy. The girl was Shirley Keith Kremen, 21, onetime campus radical, and a budding Red. The other two men, Sam Coleman, alias Samuel Irving Rosenberg, and Carl E. Rasi, alias Carl Ross, were Communist petty functionaries.

Altered Appearance. Shirley Kremen, using an alias, had rented the lonely four-room hideout in June. A tidy housekeeper, she kept a plentiful supply of canned goods, liquor and beer on hand, and $2,000 in sugar-bowl money. When she was arrested, she had just washed a man's white sweater and spread it neatly on a towel to dry. The men stuck close to the cabin, avoided the neighbors, whiled away the time with TV and table tennis. Thompson and Steinberg had gone to some pains to alter their appearances. Thompson, who had gained about 30 Ibs., had sprouted a foppish mustache, tinted his hair and mustache strawberry blond, his eyebrows roan red. Steinberg had a fresh crew cut and an angry little mustache, was pounds thinner than he had been in his last public appearance.

When the G-men and their prisoners arrived in San Francisco, Thompson was taken immediately to Alcatraz, began serving his long-overdue sentence. Steinberg was held for extradition to New York. The others were all charged with aiding the fugitives. The capture of Steinberg and Thompson reduces the number of missing U.S. Communists to five. Of the top leaders who have gone underground, two—National Organization Secretary Harry Winston and Illinois Chairman Gilbert Green—are still missing.