Later, back on the Party line, she wrote another article supporting Foster. But something had happened. Out of this confusion, this “great surprise,” as she termed it, of the Party switch, she seemed suddenly to have seen something new—that the Party was not what it claimed to be, but a fraudulent deception. To Barbara Hartle, as to many communists, doubt had come, an indication that the breath of freedom was still alive in her. As in many such cases, this confusion and doubt quickly disappeared, swallowed up in the rush of Party life. In 1939 she had become disturbed by the Party’s position on the Hitler-Stalin pact, but this also had passed. She soon became the same fanatical Barbara Hartle, attending meetings, issuing orders, making speeches. Yet these doubts were to be followed by other doubts. Now she began, as she later explained, to become conscious of certain features of Party life that she had not previously noticed. She listed some of them: 1. The constant factional struggle for leadership. 2. The hand-picking of leaders from the top. 3. The arbitrary handling of funds by some of the top officials. 4. Finding the “self-criticism” of leaders to be mere “empty promises.” 5. The “furious resistance” of Party leaders to criticism or guidance offered by rank-and-file members. 6. The expulsion of members by “rigged trials.” Like a searchlight, these doubts began to search out other doubts, inconsistencies, and contradictions. The fissure of doubt was widening. Now Barbara was to experience a phenomenon that affects every Party member trying to break the communist spell: _the counterattack of the unconscious Party discipline_. Doubts would suddenly arise, then disappear. They would arise again but again disappear. When she seemed to want to slow up in her Party work, her old enthusiasm would return. She found, as she later explained, that her “process of mental reorientation was impeded by the study and teaching of Marxist-Leninist works, which is the Communist Party’s antidote for such an eventuality.” Over a long period and through a slow process of constant discussion, schools, and self study the Communist Party builds a conscience of responsibility upon which it then relies to keep a member functioning, even though any real desire to do so has passed. That’s why the Party keeps stressing Marxist-Leninist education: Party schools, reading the communist press, self-study. It builds up a discipline that automatically attacks doubts, rationalizes contradictions inside the Party structure, and guides every decision in the Party’s favor. Then, in mid-1950, an important event occurred for Barbara Hartle. She received instructions to attend a secret meeting in Woodland Park, Seattle. There she was told to change her name, leave Seattle, and enter the Party’s underground. For the next two years she lived under assumed names in various Washington State and Oregon cities.