Another major structural change occurred at the same time that Madden left the NLRB. The Smith committee's anti-communist drive also targeted David J. Saposs, the NLRB Chief Industrial Economist. Saposs had been surreptitiously assessed by members of the Communist Party USA for membership, and rejected as a prospect. But Smith and others attacked Saposs as a communist, and Congress defunded his division and his job on October 11, 1940. Although the Smith committee's investigation proved critical, the disestablishment of the Economic Division was due to many reasons—both internal and external to the NLRB, and only some of which involved allegations of communist infiltration. As historian James A. Gross observed:.