We know where these insights are coming from.

The Frankfurt School not only had its admirers but also severe critics and enemies. One of them (again a professor of philosophy) claimed that they were Soviet agents. This was considered a base calumny: there was no hard evidence to this effect and we know from their private correspondence that they were quite critical of Soviet politics and conditions. They merely thought that open criticism would put them in the camp of the reactionaries and warmongers.

But it is also true that they did not know much about the Soviet Union (perhaps did not want to know too much) and many years later, after the breakdown of the Soviet system, it appeared that Neumann had indeed passed on information to KGB agents; his handler was the wife of the KGB resident in the US, a lady of Romanian origin and a relation of the famous Ana Pauker. In his defence it could be argued that such collaboration lasted only for a year, that the Soviet Union was not an enemy but an ally at the time, that the Soviets could not possibly benefit much from the information he conveyed — and that, as so often, they disbelieved the information they received from him anyway.

 And yet, how to explain such behaviour but for the presence of a great deal of political naivety? According to many of his students, Neumann was not a fanatic but a man of sterling character. Moreover, unlike many Marxists he was a strong believer in the rule of law. He was firmly convinced that unless the wartime alliance between the West and the Soviet Union continued, Nazism in Germany would undergo a revival.

The idea that passing on information to the Russians would somehow prevent a return of Nazism was far-fetched, to put it mildly. But it may perhaps help to understand the strange political psychology of a misguided individual.

The historical fate of the Frankfurt School has been described and discussed in many books and articles. After the end of the war some of the functions of OSS were taken over by the State Department, others by the Pentagon. Eventually, following the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA was established. Marcuse and Kirchheimer continued to work for a number of years for various agencies of the American government. Neumann became a professor at Columbia University. He died in a traffic accident in Switzerland in 1954.