Posted on 05/05/2008 8:38:27 AM PDT by Ultra-Secret.info
The Real Joe McCarthy
Fifty-four years ago today, Sen. Joseph McCarthy started his televised hearings on alleged Soviet spies and communists in the Army. The spectacle grabbed the country's attention for the next two months.
By the end of the McCarthy hearings, the senator's career was over; before an audience that often numbered 20 million Americans, he came across as bullying and unscrupulous. Yet today, more and more conservative writers are trying to vindicate the late senator. Authors M. Stanton Evans and Ann Coulter, for example, have claimed that McCarthy was more right than wrong because he, along with dozens of other anticommunists, was correct that the government was riddled with spies. [The Real Joe McCarthy] Joseph McCarthy during his Army hearings, May 6, 1954.
The FBI agents who actually chased Soviet spies have a very different perspective....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Herewith a letter sent to The Wall Street Journal a week ago in response to the recent anti-McCarthy article by Ronald Kessler.
By way of explanation for the staccato nature of this letter, I was told that I could have 750-800 words to reply to Kessler (whose article ran to 1,059 words). I overran this by 85 words, but even so it's difficult to answer so many misstatements in such a constricted format.
It's significant, for instance, that Kessler (falsely) invokes the authority of Willard Edwards to support his attack against McCarthy. I point out that Edwards said something very different from this hearsay, but couldn't go into the even more important point that he wrote a very extensive defense of McCarthy—devoted mostly to Fort Monmouth—in Human Events for November 10, 1954.
I have held off on circulating this letter until The Wall Street Journal had ample chance to run it. As of today, a week after the letter was received, it hasn't shown up in the Journal, so I am using this alternative method of conveying its contents.
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The Unreal Ronald Kessler
By M. Stanton Evans
Like many other critics of Joe McCarthy, Ronald Kessler would be more persuasive if he knew something of the subject.
Kessler's Journal essay ("The Real Joe McCarthy," April 22), attacking the Wisconsin senator and taking a sidewise shot at my recent book about him, is an odd amalgam of unverifiable hearsay and a handful of items checkable from the record. It's noteworthy that, on the checkable matters, Kessler is repeatedly, and egregiously, in error.
For openers, there is the bizarre assertion in Kessler's lead that, 54 years ago this April, McCarthy "started his televised hearings on alleged Soviet spies and Communists in the Army." The point is twice repeated in subsequent paragraphs referring to these sessions as McCarthy hearings.
In fact, the hearings that began 54 years ago this April weren't hearings conducted by McCarthy, but hearings in which he was the main defendant, brought on by charges lodged against him by the Army. Kessler has obviously confused these sessions with the Fort Monmouth inquest of the previous year run by McCarthy. Anyone who doesn't know the difference between these two sets of hearings can't be taken seriously as an authority on such topics.
Scarcely better is Kessler's repetition, as supposed fact, of the discredited notion that McCarthy claimed a list of "205 Communists" in the State Department, then crawfished and changed the number to 57. (McCarthy's version was that he never claimed 205, but had said 57 all along.) I devote two chapters to this issue, showing (a) that the alleged documentation of McCarthy's supposed lying about the numbers was a backstage concoction of the State Department, and (b) that the charge of McCarthy's having claimed 205 was debunked in 1951 by investigators for a Democratically controlled committee of the Senate. (Curiously, after the investigators turned in a 40-page report that in essence backed McCarthy, their memo would abruptly vanish—to be recovered later.)
Likewise with the face-value quote of Army Counsel Joseph Welch's lachrymose denunciation of McCarthy for allegedly having outed Welch assistant Frederick Fisher as a former member of the National Lawyers Guild, an officially cited Communist front. Omitted from this Welchian morality play—and apparently unknown to Kessler, since he says nothing of it—is that Fisher had already been outed to the press and public as a former member of the Guild—by none other than Joe Welch, six weeks before this set-to with McCarthy.
As to Kessler's hearsay accounts of what FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover supposedly said to William Sullivan or what Robert Lamphere then said to Kessler, suffice it to note that these windy generalizations about deceased third parties are uncheckable by their nature. Somewhat more susceptible to proof are comments that McCarthy made false accusations against a host of innocent people (specifics, please) and that the FBI couldn't find any Communists in the State Department to back his charges.
If that were true (which it isn't), then the Bureau was more incompetent than its worst enemies have imagined, as there were indeed Communists in the State Department when McCarthy came along, as shown by the official records. In my book I give a complete list of McCarthy's early suspects, plus now accessible data on many of these cases that show Communist affiliation, hanging out with Moscow spies, identification as Soviet agents in the Venona papers, and so on.
In one notable instance, it's possible to check out Kessler's hearsay stories from the grave, as he quotes a third-party account in which Willard Edwards of the Chicago Tribune allegedly said McCarthy picked up the "205" number concerning Communists in the State Department from a rumor relayed by Edwards. This, however, is also wrong, as shown by a memorandum on the matter from Edwards himself (provided by his son, Lee). This says McCarthy may have picked up the number 57 (not 205) from an Edwards article listing this number of suspects in the Federal government—a speculation that supports McCarthy's version of the numbers and contradicts the Kessler version.
A final instance to be noted is Kessler's reliance on Senate associate historian Donald Ritchie, who edited the McCarthy executive hearings for publication. Though Kessler quotes Ritchie as an impartial expert, the facts of the matter are quite different. In numerous comments, Ritchie has routinely stacked the deck against McCarthy—most conspicuously and most often in McCarthy's most famous case, that of Annie Lee Moss.
Mrs. Moss, who appeared before McCarthy in March of '54, has been portrayed for 50 years as a mistaken-identity victim because the committee supposedly collared the wrong suspect. Ritchie's treatment of the case, cited to secondary sources, reinforces the standard image of Moss as victim and McCarthy as browbeating tyrant. All of this, however, again is false, as shown by the extensive archives of the FBI and other official records.
When I got Ritchie on the phone I asked if he had by any chance checked out these official sources, rather than simply citing other academics. When I offered to sum up the relevant data proving McCarthy was right about the case, the historian grew irate, said "I am growing very tired of this conversation" and quickly ended our discussion. Such is the supposedly impartial authority quoted by Kessler—all too typical of the recycled error that passes for historical knowledge of McCarthy.
Such a typical lieberal response when they can't win an argument with facts or logic . . .
The State Department has come a long way since then. They've now perfected the art of screening out Americans.
xlnt, thanx for the post
Mrs Moss was obviously swiftboated by McCarthy
If you can find a link to that letter, I think it should be posted as its own thread on FR?
Doesn’t the WSJ have new ownership?
bump
I draw a correlation between this story and the global warming issue on Wikipedia. Hard to push the facts when the propaganda is so overwhelming.
Reminds me of Stalin's quote more or less: Doesn't matter who gets the most votes; it matters who counts the votes. Almost cited Carter on that one re: Zimbabwe, but he hasn't said anything.
I was a history major for about three years. Had some liberal and conservative professors, but I could not tell you the politics of most of them. As I look back, I was struck by how much they pushed objectivity, emphasizing that historical facts can be elusive or maybe not even available.
Now I long for some objectivity in journalism and history.
Soviet agents were in the U.S. government, as evidenced by the Soviets’ own records.
A typical tactic of someone who has lost an argument.
“Doesn’t the WSJ have new ownership?”
Rupert Murdock?
new ownership, but not new editorial board or new editors per se.
I remember reading that the effort to translate the Venona intercepts was halted after only a small portion was completed. If so why?
McCarthyism harmed the counterintelligence effort against the Soviet threat because of the revulsion it caused."
Yes, some honest Americans really were turned off -- but I suggest that the vast majority of us appreciated what the Senator was doing.
McCarthy was made the "issue" while what he was investigating sank out of sight. That was the plan -- led by CP/USA who I believe invented the term McCarthyism. Despite that the series "I led three lives" remained a popular TV drama and no other anti-communist beliefs suffered among the people I knew.
"We didn't have enough evidence to show there was a single Communist in the State Department, let alone 57 cases," said William Sullivan, who became the number three man in the bureau.
Hmmm.. the FBI apparently didn't have a enough evidence to show a single radical Muslim plotted to massacre Americans -- until it was too late. Next "proof" that McCarthy was lying and self-serving, please.
The author speaks of revisionists dangerously inviting history to be repeated. Well, dummy! This time we got the Internet and modern talk radio. The individual cannot be made the "issue" while the bad guys escape!
bumping
I don't understand this claim.
The Venona transcripts were not made public until decades later and not shared with the House or Senate, but I thought the FBI had access to them, an I read that there was something like 300 different agents revealed by the wire taps and that 150 of them were identified by name, many working for the Federal government and some of those in the state department.
Is Sullivan claiming that the FBI did not have access to the Venona intercepts or is he trying to play word games with the phrase ‘Communist’ or “enough evidence”.
ping
bttt
The title you used didn’t match the article at the Wall Street Journal and had to be changed. Your comments were placed inside parentheses.
We’re trying to reduce the number of duplicate threads. Please don’t alter titles from any publication. Just use the original published titles. Thanks.
Waves of immigrants who came to the USA from 1880-1920: the poles the italians the irish the jews. Most of them voted for FDR by large majorities in 1932, 1936 & 1940. Today only the jews still vote democratic by hefty majorities.
Why?
The reason for this dates explicitly to the McCarthy period from 1950-54. The reason this is so is because Hollywood still strenuously maintains the communist lie about that era. This lie is maintained by movies in the last years called “A Beautiful Mind,” and “Good Night and Good Luck”.
There are various reasons given as to why Stalin initiated the Doctor’s Plot in the early 1950’s before he died. The KGB hated Israel. Many Americans who were enthusiastic supporters of the UN were Jewish.
Edvard Radzinsky in his book “Stalin” argues that while at one time Stalin hoped Jewish financial capital would help rebuild the Soviet Union after the WWII, Stalin hated the prospect of suborning himself to the Baruch Plan and he flat out rejected IAEA nuclear controls—presented in 1946. The Russians were working on their own abomb based on stolen US designs. (Stalin’s attitude is not entirely dissimliar to that of Iran today.) The Russian Communist party was so top heavy with Jews-Stalin himself a Geogian—wanted to insure that the Russians saw a Russian face to the the communist party.
Whatever the reason, Stalin fomented the Doctor’s plot hysteria and broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. He was within days of preparing to exile the Soviet Jews to the Gulag (as was done previously with various other ethnic minorities such as the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, etc.), and initiate another great purge along the lines of 1938.
The important thing to recall is that the Doctor’s Plot happened at the same time as the McCarthy anti communist business from 1950-54 Stalin already had the concentration camps set up. And some of the preliminary accusations had gone out for the Doctor’s Plot.100 or so Russian jews had already been executed when he died in 1953.
At the same time the Rosenburgs were tried and executed for treason in the USA in 1953—and this less than a decade after the Holocaust. This naturally caused fear and suspicion in the US Jewish community. This fear and suspicion was played upon by knowledgeable communists and leftists—large numbers of whom were jewish. These folk not only knew about what Stalin had done in the 1930’s and was about to do with the doctor’s plot—before he died— but also saw the McCarthy trials as show trials american style ... that is, a prelude to an american pogrom. —For which the rosenbergs were exhibit A.
What Stalin had planned to do— in a brilliant piece of jujitsu —leftists and communists imputed to Americans on the right. But it was done soto voce. Basically a blood libel was perpetrated on Americans without their knowing it. Worse, Christian america was painted as tribal enemies tooth and claw of the US jewish establishment without christian America even knowing it. Never again! — Was the battle cry. But there weren’t any christian tribal enemies of Jews in the USA. If there were protestant tribal enemies in the USA — Meyer Kahane would have provoked them into a bloodletting. Why? Because he heard the same thing as everyone else. He also heard about enemies of the jews in the heartland. When he went to give battle, the only sorts of fights the JDL could find resulted in unintelligible court disputes in places like Idaho. In the end, Kahane married an American woman & helped expedite Stalin’s last wish—to rid Russia of Jews. When the american woman committed suicide Kahane lost interest in the USA and focused instead on Israel. When Kahane — died it was at the hands of a Moslem in 1990.
While the American public outside NY/LA were generally given the view that the McCarthy era was an age when innocent men were unjustly tried by suspicious anti semites like McCarthy & Nixon—the NY/LA Jewish establishment was given a very different story. They were given to understand that the democrats/liberals had prevented the US from visiting a holocaust on them. And that therefor American Jews owed their loyalty to the liberal democrats because the liberal democrats were the protectors of the Jews.
And this Meme went on untouched for decades after McCarthy.
This dual track story line didn’t crack until the early 1990’s when the kgb/nkvd/gru opened up their files on the WWII-McCarthy Period. In 1995 the US’s NSA agency opened up their Venona files. Both Russian and American spy agency files showed that McCarthy was right. The US government —as well as the Manhattan Project—had been at one time soaked with Russian Spies. The Rosenburgs were guilty. While McCarthy was wrong in most the details he got the general outline of the story right. Why did McCarthy get the outline right and the details wrong? The reason is McCarthy’s relationship to Hoover was the same as Hoover’s relationship to the NSA.The NSA told the FBI about the Venona intercepts but insisted that the FBI could not use NSA intercepts as evidence in court. The FBI had to develop their own leads. As a result most of the spies escaped prosecution. The FBI did not get their man.
In 1950 J Edgar Hoover began weekly meetings with Joseph McCarthy. Those meetings ended in 1954. The beginning and end of those meetings coincided with the beginning and end of McCarthy star turn in the national spot light. McCarthy got most of the details of the spy story wrong but he got the general outline of the story right. His predicament was the same as that of the FBI. Whatever Hoover told him—McCarthy could not use in the senate hearings. To this day the FBI denies that Hoover told McCarthy anything about the Venona Cables and maybe Hoover said nothing explicit to McCarthy for which Hoover could be liable in court.
Needless to say, an American style shoah was never in the cards.
The reason that hollywood hated Ronald Reagan so much was that he was an anti communist in hollywood during the McCarthy period. During this period to be staunchly anti communist in Hollywood or NYC was to be at least vaguely anti semitic because in the 30’s to the 50’s communism was considered to be almost a secular form of Judaism in the Jewish communities of NY/LA. Why? In Russia, communism was a way to get ahead for the jews. As well, there was a biblical antecedent for jewish communists in the bible in the person of Joseph in Egypt. Why? Because the relationship between jews to joseph’s Egypt maps over well to jews in Russia. And the history of the jews from Joseph to Moses looks very similar to the rise to prominence of many jews in the soviet communist bureaucracy from the 1917-1970 and the decades long expulsion of Russia’s jews after 1970 when it became clear that communism was not working. The Russians blamed Russian jews for the failure of communism.
Reagan was among the first wave of FDR democrats to switch parties. Reagan’s star turn in Hollywood ended after McCarthy. However, his experiences in Hollywood served him well when he went into public service. He always understood the jujitsu of media talk of the age. Something that cannot be said of Nixon.
When I hear American based Moslems talking about McCarthyism being visited on them. I have to laugh. They don’t know that they have pronounced themselves guilty in the eyes of many Americans.
The history of the McCarthy period now is forgotten among american jews except for the vague idea that somehow republicans are bad and somehow democrats are good.
As for the democrats, part of the reason for the loss of their inner coherence in the last decade —has been that part their foundational raison d’être stemming from the McCarthy era was revealed to be based on a lie. So now the core of the democratic party is the sodomites. Those folks are not just confusing. They are confused.
As for McCarthy, it should be noted that there were no cases of russian spies being caught in the USA for 20 years after the McCarthy hearings. So maybe McCarthy did the right thing. When spies started showing up again—they turn coat for money or ego. Not for communism.
There is currently a legally sanctioned Knesset Christian Allies Caucus in the Israeli Knesset.
http://www.knesset.gov.il/lobby/eng/lobbypage_eng.asp?lobby=41
David Horowitz interviewed by Rush Limbaugh a couple months ago talked about how his parents were communists and he was a communist in college. He said when he was in college his views were always treated respectfully by his professors. But he said recently a young christian college student told him that his homosexual college professor had singled him out in class and asked him “Why do you christians hate queers.” Asked why he continued to do what he did in the face of all the abuse he gets, David Horowitz said like Rush he took public political positions because he had to. But also he said he did it as a matter of atonement.
He gets it too.
Venona Historical Writings that include comparisons of venona and russian spy lists and the changing venona story in the academy.
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page43.html
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/index.html
That was a really interesting post.
Pinging the others who have posted on this thread to #19.
RE: "The NSA told the FBI about the Venona intercepts but insisted that the FBI could not use NSA intercepts as evidence in court. The FBI had to develop their own leads. As a result most of the spies escaped prosecution. The FBI did not get their man."
An early version of "the Wall?" But recently even without "the Wall" between agencies there appeared to have been walls among FBI personnel -- at least some recent writings about 9/11 are saying it.
.. and Ronald Kessler cites the FBI to impugn Senator McCarthy?!
What is your source for that statement? As Blacklisted by History proves, McCarthy got most of the details of the spy story right. His errors were few enough to count on one hand; in hundreds of cases, he was right on the money. His antagonists, on the other hand, were not just consistently wrong, but in many cases lying.
In the immediate post-war years the bureau was much smaller and far more selective than today. Both my father and one of his brothers were Agents. My very strong anti-communist position stems directly from what I learned from my father and uncle, who were on the front lines.
The number of spies that McCarthy said were in the government was approximately right. But most of them had stepped out of government in the late 40’s after the fbi grabbed their first spies. So they were out of government service by the time McCarthy was naming names. The names the McCarthy named were people on a state dept watch list prepared in the late 40’s. These were not necessarily people pegged by the venona cables. (A few were. Most weren’t.) In the early 90’s the kgb also released a list of their spies in the US during the 1940’s. I have not seen that list compared to the state department watch list. You should be able to get the list of kgb names at the bottom of my first post. With a little digging you should be able to pull down who the state dept put on a watch list in the late 40’s.
McCarthy never claimed that most of his suspects were still in official positions. His point was that these people had been flagged by the FBI under Truman's executive order 9835 of 1947, and should have been removed as stipulated in that order. Instead they were cleared or permitted to transfer or leave voluntarily, meaning they were clear to take other official positions, or even return to their old ones later, as indeed many did.
McCarthy's investigations sought to find out why these suspects had been cleared, while others, apparently far less dangerous, were not. And -- fatal to his political career -- McCarthy sought to find out who was responsible for these clearances.
The notion that McCarthy's suspects were mostly already out of official positions when he made his charges in 1950 comes from the Tydings report, which was copied almost verbatim from a "confidential memorandum" from the State Department, which was full of disinformation -- including denying the presence of people in the department who were there.
McCarthy named suspects throughout the government, not just in the State Department, many of whom were still there: Meigs in the Army, Brunauer in the Navy, Ferry at the CIA, Remington at Commerce, Lloyd in the White House, Adler at Treasury, Keeney at the UN, etc. Some of McCarthy's suspects had transferred to other official posts from the State Department. Still others had been permitted to leave, at least temporarily. Yet 80 of McCarthy's suspects were still in official posts in 1950, including no less than 67 in the State Department.
Quote: "The names the McCarthy named were people on a state dept watch list prepared in the late 40’s."
You may be thinking of the "Lee list." Most of McCarthy's initial State Department cases appeared on this list, but he had other sources. McCarthy suspects who were not on the Lee list include such headline-grabbers as Adler, Bisson, Keeney and Lattimore.
Quote: "These were not necessarily people pegged by the venona cables. (A few were. Most weren’t.)"
As Haynes and Klehr noted, 139 Soviet agents in the U.S. have been identified from non-Venona sources, and it was these sources, not Venona, that McCarthy had. Nevertheless, among the McCarthy suspects who also appear in the Venona decrypts are such notorious cases as Adler, Bisson, and Currie.
Quote: "In the early 90’s the kgb also released a list of their spies in the US during the 1940’s."
You may be thinking of the "Gorsky memo."
The NSA’s historical society in Ft Meade MD holds a symposium every other year in November that in the last years has included discussions of venona. I’ve attended those symposiums. People there are mostly old and grey. Talking up McCarthy is like touching the third rail. Its a very touchy subject. Not as bad as bringing up McCarthy in Hollywood.
Judging by your statements it looks like you were conflating spies and people whose background made it inappropriate for them to be in government. I agree there were spies who certainly stayed on in government after 1950 and as well as men whose sympathies were such as to make them inappropriate for government service.
Curiously, there is a gap of over 15 years where the US didn’t catch any spies. This lasted until the early 1970s. When spies were arrested after that their motives for spying were discovered to be money or ego and not ideology.
It looks like you have done a closer reading of the original transcripts of McCarthy’s hearings than I have. You would argue that the transcripts show that McCarthy was not arguing that the people he named were spies but rather that their backgrounds made them inappropriate for government service. “Are you or have you ever been a communist,” was not tantamount to charging a person with being a spy but rather a clearance question the answer to which would determine whether a person’s background made them appropriate for government work.
This was what was meant by the smear.
And it just so happened that some were or had been spies.
I hope I did not conflate spies with non-spies. I was responding to your comment that McCarthy got the spy story mostly wrong.
McCarthy didn’t accuse many people of being spies. His most oft-repeated charge (starting with his Wheeling speech) was that the suspects he named “would appear to be either card-carrying Communists or certainly loyal to the Communist Party.”
Even if Herbert Romerstein is correct that no Communist ever turned down recruitment as a spy, there is a difference between being loyal to (or even a member of) the CP and being a spy.
Briefly: The Truman loyalty program of 1947 ordered Attorney General Tom Clark to compile a list of subversive organizations; the FBI to investigate all Federal employees; and loyalty review boards to review FBI reports and remove those employees found to be loyalty or security risks.
The AG compiled the list, including the CP and the multitude of Party-line “fronts” it controlled. The FBI submitted many hair-raising reports, documenting affiliation not just with fronts or the CP, but with Soviet intelligence. Yet few of the officials implicated were actually removed — zero in the State Department.
McCarthy got wind of this in 1950 and blew the whistle.
One part of the spy story McCarthy may have gotten wrong — when he called State Department advisor and Soviet disinformation specialist Owen Lattimore a spy, then immediately retracted the charge. The FBI was never able to prove the continuous accusations of espionage against Lattimore (starting in 1927), but there is no doubt that he was active in the Soviet “influence” strategy, particularly in subverting the policy of aid to China during its civil war with the Soviet-proxy Communist rebels.
Regarding Hollywood and McCarthy: Isn’t it ironic that Tinseltown lavishes so much ritual hate on McCarthy (who never investigated Hollywood), but doesn’t even remember J. Parnell Thomas, who actually did investigate Hollywood, jailed the Hollywood Ten, and chaired the hearings that led to the blacklist? (Those publicity-hounds never forgive a snub!)
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