 In 1933, with Earl Browder's ascension to the top position in the CPUSA, Stachel was taken into the top leadership of the party, along with Charles Krumbein (New York District Organizer), Bob Minor, Gil Green, and Herbert Benjamin.Stachel was actively sought by the federal government in the fall of 1939, in hopes that he might be compelled to testify against party leader Earl Browder who faced charges of passport fraud.Alerted to the government's desire to take him into custody, Stachel went underground, disappearing from the radar of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from October 1939 until February 1942, by which time America had entered the war and the political climate faced by the Communist Party had changed.