William Albertson

In October 1989, the Federal government agreed to pay Albertson's widow $170,000 to settle her claims out of court for a lawsuit against the FBI. Anthony Lewis of the New York Times again commented in an article called "Rule of Law?":

In 1977, Donner filed an administrative damages claim for Alberton's widow. By 1984, the ACLU filed a lawsuit for damages on her behalf: its resolution took 14 years. First, the government tried to have the case dismissed on the grounds of national security grounds: both a federal district court and the Court of Appeals (District of Columbia Circuit) rejected the government's arguments.

In 1976, the New York Times correspondent Anthony Lewis wrote an article called "A Cointel Story," that related the fake document story. The article cited an article by Frank Donner of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in a forthcoming in the April–May issue of ACLU's Civil Liberties Review. Lewis related:

In 1975, an FBI document released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed the FBI's 1964 act. The FOIA applicant was NBC News law correspondent Carl Stern.

Albertson died aged 61 in 1972 from an accidental fall that broke his neck.

On November 15, 1965, the Supreme Court ruled in Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board that persons (in this case, William Albertson) believed to be members of the Communist Party of the United States of America could not be required to register as party members with the Subversive Activities Control Board because the information which party members were required to submit could form the basis of their prosecution for being party members, which was then a crime, and therefore deprived them of their self-incrimination rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

On June 25, 1964, the FBI planted a fake document ("like an informant's report") with a forged signature of Albertson's to make the Party believe he was an FBI informant.

On July 7, 1964, the Party expelled Albertson and his wife and called him a "stool pigeon." The Party announced the expulsion on the final eighth page of its midweek edition of its newspaper, The Daily Worker, following a "thorough investigation" based on "irrefutable evidence." The Times quoted the conclusion of The Daily Worker that "Because the facts accumulated remove every shadow of doubt that Albertson lived a life o duplicity and treachery–posing as a dedicated defender of the workers' interests while in actuality betraying them–the Communist Party of New York State has expelled him." The news story was big enough to merit two separate articles in the New York Times that day.

The FBI followed the fallout, as related in a July 1964 report:

In a June 1, 1963, report on subversive activities, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy referred to Albertson several times, in part because Kennedy had filed petitions to force Albertson and others to register as Party members.

On January 22, 1962, the State Department revoked the passports of Albertson and several other leaders of the Communist Party.

In 1960, Albertson sued for unemployment insurance for work for the Communist Party. Albertson won in court, but the case went to the Court of Appeals of the State of New York on March 28. Representing him were Stephen C. Vladeck and Judith P. Vladeck (parents of David Vladeck and Anna Vladeck of Vladeck, Raskin & Clark) and Sylvan H. Elias. Representing the Communist Party was John J. Abt. Isador Lubin as Industrial Commissioner represented the Appellant. The court summarized the appeal as follows:

On May 26, 1960, came the verdict. On the one hand:

On September 13, 1957, D. Malcom Anderson, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, asked U.S. District Judge to dismiss the indictment against five of the six Party leaders, including Steve Nelson and William Albertson, following discovery that one of the principal witnesses in the 1953 trial "may have lied."

On August 17, 1951, the FBI held a fourth roundup of Party leaders since the Foley Square Trial which included Albertson and five others. who soon found themselves indicted by a federal grand jury. The New York Times detailed his arrest: Albertson was arrested near Flat Rock, Michigan, while driving with his wife and two children" by the FBI. The FBI also arrested Nelson, "accused by the House Committee on Un-American Activities of setting up a Red cell at the University of California. Radiation Laboratory, during World War II and obtaining atomic secrets for Russia." In November 1952, his trial started in Pittsburgh. In August 1953, he was convicted under the Smith Act for conspiring to advocate violent overthrow of the U.S. government. He received a five-year prison. He served 60 days in jail for contempt of court.

In 1950, the Party transferred him as Trade Union Secretary of the CPUSA's District 7 (Detroit).

In the 1950s and 1960s, Albertson was a prominent national Party official, based in New York City, where he became state Party secretary in 1958.

In 1950, FBI informant Matt Cvetic named "William Albertson, district secretary of the Communist Party in western Pennsylvania." Cvetic managed to work his testimony into an attack on former U.S. Vice President and presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace. As the New York Times reported, "A former undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified today that Henry A. Wallace once conferred with two well known Pittsburgh Communists about support for his third-party Presidential campaign. Matthew Cvetic was the agent. He told the House Un-American Activities Committee that he himself was one of the pair of well-known Communist party members." Cvetic also named both Steve Nelson, who would face arrest with Albertson and four other third-tier Party leaders the following year.

On July 23, 1950, a Pittsburgh Common Pleas Court asked State Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to "intern" Albertson and Nelson among eleven western Pennsylvanian Party officials as "dangerous to the best interests of our country."

In 1947, Albertson returned to Pittsburgh as Organizational Secretary of the CPUSA's District 5 (Western Pennsylvania). That same year, his name appeared in an appendix of principal officers of the national Communist Party under "National review board" as secretary.

In 1946, Albertson served as Assistant National Labor Secretary of the CPUSA.

In 1945, Albertson's name appeared among many others assembled by Father John Francis Cronin in a privately circulated report called The Problem of American Communism in 1945: Facts and Recommendations.

In 1944, he served a year as vice president of the Brooklyn Communist Political Association.

In 1943, he served a year as labor secretary of the national CPUSA and also as member of the Party's New York State Committee.

In 1942, he served a year as secretary and treasurer of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 16, American Federation of Labor. (In 1934, his name had appeared in The Red Network: A Who's Who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots by Elizabeth Dilling: "ALBERTSON, WILLIAM: Communist Party functionary; organizer Food Wkrs. Indust. Un.") During the same period, he supported the candidacy of Israel Amter for governor of New York on the Communist Party ticket.

On October 1, 1939, Joseph Zack, former Party official and witness for the Dies Committee of the U.S. House named Albertson in a list of Party directors and seven out of 40 CIO directors of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) union. On October 17, 1939, former Party co-founder Benjamin Gitlow named Albertson as a Party leader.

In 1934, Albertson stood as Party candidate for House Representative from New York's 17th congressional district.

By 1932, Albertson had moved to New York City, where he lived until 1947. He worked there as a labor union official and organizer through 1940.

In 1932, Albertson stood as Party candidate for the senate of the New York State Assembly.

On June 19, 1932, Albertson married Francene (Francine) Schneeberg in Brooklyn, from whom he separated on April 5, 1953; they had two sons. On June 10, 1955, he married Lillian ("Lillie") B. Lewis; she had joined the Party in 1948. In December 1961, they were living in a first-floor flat in Brooklyn with their son.

On January 15, 1931, Albertson was to serve as secretary of a "Provisional Anti-War Youth Committee" of New York State to hold a rally for a Liebknecht Memorial and Anti-War Demonstration at the Star Casono at Park Avenue and 117 Street in Manhattan; CPUSA executive William Weinstone and YCL leader Gil Green were to attend.

In 1927, Albertson joined the Communist Party of the USA.

William Albertson (May 7, 1910 – February 19, 1972) was a 20th-century American leader in the Communist Party of the USA who battled federal and state courts, and who in 1964 was framed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was only discovered posthumously in 1975. His widow made an out-of-court settlement in 1989 with the U.S. Government for $170,000.

William Albertson was born on May 7, 1910, in Odessa (then in the Russian Empire, now in Ukraine). On February 10, 1911, arrived in Philadelphia with his mother, Esther Dashevsky, from whom he received derivative citizenship (June 29, 1927). Starting in 1923, he attended Schenley High School in Pittsburgh. In September 1927, he began pre-med studies at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1928, he joined the Young Communist League of America. In 1929, he was expelled for activities with the university's "Liberal Club" for organizing a meeting in support of labor leader Tom Mooney.