In the early 1930s, Wheeler also served as assistant head of the economics department at the University of Chicago. Then, in 1935, he and his wife moved to the Washington, DC area. According to
Jay Lovestone, Wheeler was there to help control Brigadier General Frank McSherry, "a patsy for the Communists" according to
David Dubinsky and who had worked with
Sidney Hillman on the War Production Board. In June 1945, Wheeler helped write a 16-page "procedure for organizing unions".
Soviet espionage served as chair of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (predecessor to the permanent
House Un-American Activities Committee) for its entire 7-year duration An
FBI report dated February 28, 1942, reported information from the
Dies Committee that Wheeler was a member of the
American Peace Mobilization's Washington Book Shop and was a member at large of the Executive Council of the Washington Committee to Aid China. On March 24, 1942, the FBI interviewed Wheeler in New York, at which time he denied being a member of the
Communist Party. He admitted to being a member of the Washington Committee for Democratic Action and attending meetings of the American Peace Mobilization.),
Josiah E. DuBois Jr., Richard Sasuly, George Shaw Wheeler,
Heinz Norden,
Max Lowenthal, and
Allan Rosenberg (member of Lowenthal's staff). Dondero stated, "It is with considerable regret that I am forced to the conclusion the Secretary Patterson falls short of these standards." On April 6, 1948, Dondero again questioned support for Wheeler from
William Treadwell Stone and
David A. Morse. In a July 9, 1948, letter to
The Washington Post, Wheeler countered Dondero's 1947 and 1948 charges at length. He dismissed Dondero's charges because Dondero in fact disliked their roles in Nazi war crimes trials, denazification, investigations into German corporate conglomerates (e.g.,
I.G. Farben), and supporting the
New Deal so-called "discredited" policies of US Presidents
Roosevelt and
Truman (particularly the
Potsdam Agreement). Wheeler notes that he received two further clearances by government investigators since Dondero made his allegations. Further, the government never made any specific charges of disloyalty. He cites a stream of "excellent" ratings for performance (most late in September 1947) and a letter of recommendation from an Army colonel dated March 10, 1948, for his "policies and plans" as "democratic and practicable". Rather than defecting, Wheeler says that he entered Czechoslovakia "the way thousands of other tourists" and stayed to lecture "in the field in which I am trained". Wheeler counters Dondero's query, "Will anyone pay for the damage that has been done?" (i.e., by Wheeler's alleged communist sympathies) with his own thoughts on suing Dondero for slander but concludes it too "time-consuming" and a "costly procedure which I cannot afford". (In 1949, Noel Field, another American spy for the Soviets, found inspiration in Wheeler's successful flight and new life led him to seek refuge in Czechoslovakia for himself. Both men had come under investigation by the
House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1951, the
Saturday Evening Post mentioned Wheeler and Lowenthal in a long article on
Carol Weiss King: {{blockquote|
Lowenthal is of special interest. A product of Harvard Law, he has been described by a New Deal associate as "self-effacing and ubiquitous". Shuttling between New York and Washington, he has maintained a New York office while holding a variety of Government posts dating back to World War I. On one hand, he has been an assiduous cultivator of high-level friendships, including Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and Supreme Court Justices
Felix Frankfurter and
Louis Brandeis. On the other, he has been an equally assiduous collector of proteges for whom he has found many Government jobs.
Alger Hiss and
Lee Pressman benefited by his friendship, and, for a time, did one George Shaw Wheeler, a young lawyer who became so carried away by communism that he denounced his United States citizenship to make a new career bebind the
Iron Curtain. Back in 1920, at the time of her admission to the New York bar, Carol also was a Lowenthal protégée, and it was in his office that she served her first and only legal clerkship. On April 24, 1954,
United States Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell told the US House Appropriations Committee that his department had dismissed five employees for "falsifying their job applications" and another 17 with "unfavorable information in their files were allowed to resign". During the same hearing, US Representative
Fred E. Busbey stated that Under Secretary David A. Morse "once helped to get a loyalty clearance for a Federal employee who later "went behind the Iron Curtain to join the Communists". Busbey named that person as "John Shaw Wheeler", but
The New York Times corrected by stating "Busbey apparently referred to the case of George Shaw Wheeler". Wheeler retired from Washington State University and taught at
Franconia College until 1977. He and his wife lived in retired in
Grapeview, Washington. In 1990, he returned to
Czechoslovakia and lived with one of his daughters. ==Personal life and death==