William E. Dodd, Jr.

Who was William E. Dodd, Jr.?

William Edward Dodd, Jr. was an American political activist who ran unsuccessfully for Congress during the 1930s. While working for the Federal Communications Commission in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s, he became the target of an early congressional crusade against alleged communist sympathizers and subversives. A 1943 amendment to an emergency war appropriations bill deprived Dodd and two other federal officials of their salary and positions. Three years later, the United States Supreme Court declared the law’s provision to be an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Dodd was the son of William E. Dodd, who served as United States Ambassador to Germany between 1933 and 1938, and the brother of Martha Dodd, who had affairs with Nazis and a Soviet NKVD agent before becoming an accused secret agent of the Soviet Union.