Laurence Todd

Todd is best remembered as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS for nearly three decades, a relationship about which he was interrogated in a hearing of the United States Senate in April 1956.

[3] In November 1914 Socialist Party candidate for Congress Meyer London won election to office from his Lower East Side 12th Congressional District of New York City.

In need of a skilled journalist of radical political proclivities familiar with the intellectual landscape of the nation's capital, London tapped Todd to serve as his secretary and he would remain in this position through 1916.

[2] In April 1934, Todd briefly found himself in the national news when he was the subject of an allegation by educator William A. Wirt of Gary, Indiana that he had discovered a radical plot at a dinner party.

Wirt accused Todd of likening President Franklin D. Roosevelt to ephemeral Russian leader Alexander Kerensky who would be shortly replaced by a "Stalin" in the coming revolution.

[6] This and other charges against other dinner party guests were parlayed into a Congressional hearing on a so-called "Brain Trust Revolution" chaired by conservative North Carolina Democrat Alfred L.

[6] Called to testify, Todd denied saying any such thing at the September 1933 dinner party, adding that Wirt had a "weird idea of the conversation" that transpired and had in fact monopolized the evening talking himself.

The occupational relationship to the Soviet news agency kept Todd under close government scrutiny, culminating in a subpoena to appear before a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on April 17, 1956.

Todd's papers, including correspondence and diaries totaling one linear foot, is housed at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.