Josephine Herbst (March 5, 1892 – January 28, 1969) was an American writer and journalist, active from 1923 to near the time of her death.
[2] She wrote "proletarian novels" conceived along the party line, "in Marxist terms"[3] and described as a "subtle blend of art and propaganda.
Herbst published her first short stories under the pseudonym Carlotta Geet in American Mercury and Smart Set, then edited by H.L.
After Pearl Harbor, Herbst got a job as a propaganda writer for foreign broadcast in the Office of the Coordinator of Information (progenitor of the CIA), but was fired a few months later in 1942 after background investigation by the FBI found that she wrote that she voted Communist, that she lobbied the U.S.
"[5] During the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers battle, Herbst told the FBI that in the apartment she and Herrmann shared for three months in 1934, she had seen documents taken from government offices by members of the Ware group for transmission to New York.