Herbert Philbrick

Who was Herbert Philbrick?

Herbert Arthur Philbrick was a Boston area advertising executive who was encouraged by the FBI to infiltrate the Communist Party USA between 1940 and 1949. His involvement began when he joined a Communist front group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Cambridge Youth Council. His suspicions aroused by the strange power structure and the positions taken by this group, Philbrick contacted the FBI. Encouraged by them, he began deepening his involvement in Communist activities, joining first the Young Communist League, and later, as a secret member, the Communist Party itself.

Philbrick was used by the Party for his advertising skills. Another asset was his public role as a Baptist youth leader. After time spent in local party cells in Wakefield and Malden, Massachusetts, he received training in the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and worked for the Party in a variety of front groups. Later he was removed from local party work and assigned to a cell of professionals where his main work consisted of working on the 1948 Progressive Party presidential campaign of former U.S. vice-president Henry A. Wallace.

During Philbrick's time in the Communist Party, its membership and support were eroded by the Party's sharp zigzag from anti-war agitation during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, to enthusiastic support for the war effort after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.