Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954) was a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York (22-year tenure), a New York State Supreme Court Justice, and a Soviet spy. He played a key role in establishing the committee that would become the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which he used to attack fascists, including Nazi sympathizers, and suspected communists. In 1999, authors Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev learned that Soviet files indicate that Dickstein was a paid agent of the NKVD. Background Dickstein was born on February 5, 1885, into a Jewish family of five children near Vilna in the Russian Empire (now known as Vilnius, Lithuania). His parents were Rabbi Israel Dickstein (died 1918) and Slata B. Gordon (died 1931). In 1887, his family emigrated to the United States. They settled on the Lower East Side of New York City. Dickstein attended public and private schools, the City College of New York, and in 1906 graduated from New York Law School. Career In 1908, Dickstein passed the bar and began private practice in New York with the firm of Hyman and Gross. In 1911, he entered the Tammany Hall Democratic organization in Manhattan under mentor John F. Ahearn. From 1911 to 1914, he served as Deputy State Attorney General. In 1917, he became a New York City Alderman. In 1919, he was elected as an Assemblyman of the New York State Legislature. Congressional career In 1922, Dickstein was elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth Congress, defeating Socialist incumbent Meyer London. He was reelected eleven times. He resigned from Congress on December 30, 1945. In 1930, Dickstein co-sponsored a bill in condemning religious persecution in the Soviet Union. Committee on Naturalization and Immigration By 1931, Dickstein was serving as Chairman on the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization (Seventy-second through Seventy-ninth Congresses). During his tenure, he became aware of the substantial number of foreigners legally and illegally entering and residing in the US, and the growing Anti-Semitism along with vast amounts of anti-Semitic literature being distributed in the country. This led him to investigate independently the activities of Nazi and other fascist groups in the U.S. In 1932, Dickstein joined forces with Martin Dies Jr. to outlaw membership in the Communist Party of the USA. In 1933, he called for congressional investigation into Anarchism, following the failed assassination attempt of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara. In