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Your absurd comments reveal more about you than about me or any critic of yours.

1. First of all, Hoover was not a cross-dresser. Many of our nation’s most prominent and respected scholars about FBI history (all of whom have been profoundly hostile toward Hoover) nevertheless recognized that the “cross-dressing” accusation was false. It was originally presented by a convicted perjurer who was married to a mob figure.

2. Of course the FBI has been “wrong” about many issues. The agency has always been populated by ordinary human beings. However, it is also true that virtually every prominent conservative in our country endorsed Hoover and the FBI during his tenure. For sake of argument, let’s say the FBI error rate was 22%. That still leaves 78% of all FBI investigations which produced accurate, truthful, factual conclusions. Also, keep in mind that the raw data appearing in FBI files came from SCORES of outside independent sources. SO...unless YOUR position is that our entire law enforcement and national security apparatus has been totally incompetent and corrupt — there is no reason to accept your evaluation. It is, of course, easier to deal in broad derogatory generalities rather than carefully examine individual cases.

What is striking to me about your argument (including the “cross-dresser” accusation) is that your comments are IDENTICAL to those circulated by the Soviet KGB and American Communists!!

3. McCarthy was NOT “right”. See, for example, Dr. John Earl Haynes article which discusses the list of names brought to attention by Sen. McCarthy and then compares that list to Venona documents and other relevant material.

(a) Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Lists and Venona
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page62.html

(b) Exchange with Arthur Herman re: Venona
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page58.html

One FBI Supervisor, Robert J. Lamphere, was the FBI liaison to the U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service’s Venona program, which intercepted secret Soviet communications. Lamphere supervised the investigations of some of the biggest espionage cases of the cold war, including those of Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, David Greenglass, and Kim Philby plus he was intimately involved, in conjunction with Meredith Knox Gardner of the Army Security Agency, in using deciphered Soviet cables to build espionage cases.

Lamphere wrote on pages 136-137 of his 1968 book “The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent’s Story” that:

“Senator McCarthy’s crusade which was to last for the next several years, was always anathema to me. McCarthy’s approach and tactics hurt the anti-Communist cause and turned many liberals against legitimate efforts to curtail Communist activities in the United States, particularly in regard to government employment of known Communists…McCarthy’s star chamber proceedings, his lies and overstatements hurt our counterintelligence efforts.”

In one interview, Lamphere made the following observation:

“The problem was that McCarthy lied about his information and figures. He made charges against people that weren’t true. McCarthyism harmed the counterintelligence effort against the Soviet threat because of the revulsion it caused.” [The Real Joe McCarthy, Wall Street Journal, 4/22/08, pA25]

Whittaker Chambers wrote a letter dated 1/14/54 about McCarthy to conservative book publisher Henry Regnery. Chambers observed that....

“All of us, to one degree or another, have slowly come to question his judgment and to fear acutely that his flair for the sensational, his inaccuracies and distortions, his tendency to sacrifice the greater objective for the momentary effect, will lead him and us into trouble. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that we live in terror that Senator McCarthy will one day make some irreparable blunder which will play directly into the hands of our common enemy and discredit the whole anti-Communist effort for a long while to come.”

The FBI created a main file on McCarthy’s accusations about “Communists” working in the U.S. State Department. I have arranged to post a major portion of that file online on Internet Archive. The remainder of the file will be posted online within the next few months. As you can see from the details in that investigative file, the FBI falsified most of McCarthy’s allegations:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=FOIA%3A%20Alleged%20Communists

The FBI’s Chief Inspector (their expert about the communist movement in the U.S. — and he later became Assistant Director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division) made the following observations in his memoir about McCarthy’s claim about “57 Communists” working in the State Department:

“We didn’t have enough evidence to show there was a single Communist in the State Department, let alone fifty-seven cases.”

He also wrote in his 1979 memoir “The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI” (see pages 45 and 267)

“During the Eisenhower years the FBI kept Joe McCarthy in business. Senator McCarthy stated publicly that there were Communists working for the State Department. We gave McCarthy all we had, but all we had were fragments, nothing could prove his allegations. For a while, though, the allegations were enough to keep McCarthy in the headlines.”

4. “Communist Influence” on the Civil Rights Movement:

You obviously are totally ignorant about the actual Communist position regarding our civil rights movement. The Party wanted to use the movement as part of its larger “class struggle” argument which was supposed to ultimately result in a violent revolution that would overthrow our government. Instead, what is indisputably clear from comments made by senior Party officials at their closed, secret meetings at CPUSA HQ in New York City and at their Negro Commission meetings around the country — the Party bitterly complained that they could not get our civil rights leaders to adopt the Communist Party interpretation or the Party recommendations....which is why Party officials were so hostile toward what they considered “reformists” who believed the “Jim Crow” system could be peacefully changed through protests and lawsuits and political pressure and moral persuasion.

As J. Edgar Hoover pointed out:

“It would be absurd to suggest that the aspirations of Negroes for equality are communist inspired. This is demonstrably not true…” [J. Edgar Hoover speech, Faith In Freedom, 12/4/63, page 6].

“In general, legitimate civil rights organizations have been successful in excluding Communists, although a few have received covert counseling from them and have even accepted them as members…The CP is not satisfied with this situation and is continually striving to infiltrate the civil rights movement at every level. “ [J. Edgar Hoover, U.S. News and World Report, 11/1/65, page 46].

“It is no secret that one of the bitterest disappointments to communistic efforts in this Nation has been their failure to lure our Negro citizens into the party. Despite every type of propaganda boomed at our Nation’s Negro citizens, they have never succumbed to the party’s saccharine promises of a Communist ‘Utopia’. This generation and generations to come for many years owe a tremendous debt to our Negro citizens who have consistently refused to surrender their freedoms for the tyranny of communism.” J. Edgar Hoover testimony before U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, 01/17/60, reprinted in March 1960 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, page 7]

Hoover and the FBI saw Communists as OUTSIDERS seeking ways to exert influence and control within the civil rights movement whereas the JBS portrayed them as INSIDERS who created and controlled the movement from the beginning.

Your “Communist Goals” link has been floating around in extreme right circles for decades and has been copied/pasted several times here in FR. It is largely FICTIONAL or consists of generalized statements which have no relevance for Americans because, in a free society, our people decide through elections what policies best serve their personal and community interests.

There is a difference between the Communist Party line (which is sanitized so that it would appeal to a broad audience-—particularly non-Communists) versus what the Party actually believed and wanted to accomplish.

Many years ago I addressed these purported “Communist Goals” in a message posted elsewhere. Below I copy my previous message.

By way of preface, one brief comment is in order regarding Cleon Skousen (the original author of the “Communist Goals”). Skousen’s career within the FBI predominantly consisted of administrative assignments along with police training schools on matters such as juvenile delinquency. his actual experience with internal security related matters was very modest.

For example, Skousen never worked in the FBI Division (Division 5) which was where the FBI’s Agents who specialized in internal security-related cases worked. He was never even recommended for promotion to that Division — according to his annual performance reports. Furthermore, the FBI’s Associate Director (Clyde Tolson) instructed subordinates to prepare a detailed summary of Skousen’s assignments during his FBI service — and it is clear from that summary that Skousen had very little exposure to “Communist” cases. In short — he had virtually no exposure to secret classified information regarding CPUSA strategy, tactics, and objectives. See comment below about Skousen for more info.
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Some people have posted a list of 45 “Current Communist Goals” which originally appeared in former FBI Special Agent W. Cleon Skousen’s 1958 book entitled, The Naked Communist.

This list was then inserted into the Congressional Record in 1963 (see link below) and this list has been circulating constantly since that time. Similarly, many people claim that the United States has adopted 9 of the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto!

http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm

Glenn Beck’s 2003 memoir entitled “The Enemy Within” reprinted Skousen’s “Communist Goals of 1963” and Beck has frequently recommended Skousen’s writings.

However, what is missing from every account is WHERE did Cleon Skousen obtain his understanding of what he claimed were “Communist goals”?

There is a profound difference between what ideas or policy proposals Communists endorsed, for tactical purposes, (i.e. the Communist Party Line), versus what they ACTUALLY believed in and wanted to achieve.

The FBI’s primary expert on the communist movement (their Chief Inspector who later became an FBI Assistant Director) made speeches around the country during the 1960’s in which he gave a list of “Do’s and Don’ts” for well-informed anti-communists.

In those speeches he often quoted comments made by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Here are some of the key “don’ts”

“1. Do not speak or act in any manner that would create fear, hysteria, and confusion. These are the ‘ingredients for Communist coups in nations which have fallen under its spell’ says J. Edgar Hoover…

2. Do not make false charges of communism against other citizens or sow seeds of suspicion, distrust, and alarmism.

3. Do not use, unless you are capable of accurately defining such ambiguous and misleading words and expressions as ‘red’, ‘radical’, ‘leftist’. ‘left wing’, ‘left wing supporter’, ‘socialist’, ‘collectivist’, ‘self-styled liberal’, ‘rightist’, ‘right-wing’, ‘right-wing supporter’, ‘radical right’, ‘reactionary’, and ‘fascist’. Such vague and obscure terms having nothing to contribute to a clear, intelligent and objective understanding of difficult and complex social problems. Their use in the past has given rise to much of the current confusion in the field of communism and religion.

4. Do not confuse legitimate dissent with communism. Hoover gives this warning: ‘Knowing what communism really is and how it operates will also help us to avoid the danger of confusing communism with legitimate dissent on controversial issues. Communism feeds on social ferment. On both the local and national levels, the CPUSA is continually exploiting social, economic, and political grievances for its own tactical purposes. For this reason, the ‘party line’ will frequently coincide with the view of many noncommunists on specific issues. We must not, therefore, indiscriminately label as Communists those whose opinions on a particular question may, on occasion, parallel the official party position. We must also guard against the tendency to characterize as Communists those who merely disagree with us or who advocate unorthodox or unpopular beliefs. When anyone is erroneously branded a Communist, it not only constitutes an injustice to the individual, but also helps communism by diffusing the strength of anti-communist forces.

Given this as a preface, why does anyone think that Cleon Skousen had a correct understanding of “Communist goals” — particularly when you factor in the highly derogatory judgments made by senior FBI officials regarding Skousen’s post-FBI endeavors??

For example, one FBI memo makes the following observation about Skousen’s FBI career:

“As you know, we frequently receive inquiries from the public regarding Skousen’s qualifications to speak with authority on the subject of communism. In view of his obvious efforts to capitalize on his former Bureau association, I feel that it would be well for us to take positive measures to clarify the Bureau’s position in regard to Skousen whenever we receive public inquiries concerning him. I feel, for example, that in addition to stating that his views are his own, that we should also add in correspondence concerning him that he was not regarded as any authority on communism while employed with the FBI. That is certainly a true statement and it might serve in some measure to prevent Skousen from using the FBI’s name for his own personal gain.” [HQ 67-69602, #338; 1/2/63 memo from W.C. Sullivan to A.H. Belmont.]

Insofar as somebody correctly identifies a “Communist goal” — what, precisely, is that supposed to mean for Americans?

Are we to make ALL of our decisions based upon what Communists think or propose or favor?

For example:

** if the official CPUSA position is in favor of an increase in minimum wage laws, -— does that mean that every patriotic American must OPPOSE an increase?

** if the official CPUSA position is in favor of enforcement of civil rights and voting rights and equal protection laws -— does that mean that every patriotic American must OPPOSE such enforcement?

** if the official CPUSA position is against outlawing the Communist Party in the U.S. -— does that mean that every patriotic American must FAVOR outlawing the Communist Party?

** if the official CPUSA position is against the existence of the House Committee on Un-American Activities -— does that mean that every patriotic American must FAVOR its existence?

** if the official CPUSA position is in favor of providing humanitarian assistance to nations which have experienced a natural disaster (earthquake, widespread flooding, etc), does that mean that all patriotic Americans must OPPOSE such assistance?

** if the official CPUSA position is that conflicts in the Middle East (such as Syria or Lebanon) should be resolved peacefully through negotiation, does that mean patriotic Americans must favor continued slaughter instead?