Posted on 05/04/2003 9:51:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Fifty years after Sen. Joe McCarthy conducted some of the most infamous hearings in Senate history, thousands of pages of his secret probes into alleged Communist subversion will finally be made public.
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Some 5,000 pages of 1953-1954 closed-door hearings from McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will be released Monday by Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican. Levin and Collins have both chaired McCarthy's former committee during the past two years as the documents were prepared for release.
They plan to issue them in the same Senate hearing room where McCarthy himself once held court.
Historians believe the five volumes of transcripts will shed light on what many regard as one of the most shameful episodes in Senate history -- a time when Cold War anxiety about the Soviet Union, Communist China and a perceived domestic Communist threat led to political witch hunts at home.
"This is the first time historians have had access to raw documentation," said Donald Ritchie, the associate Senate historian. "I think it will really stimulate scholarship. They'll have much more substantive information to go on."
Most of the people who took part in the hearings are now dead.
McCarthy himself, a Wisconsin Republican who catapulted himself to fame with his headline-grabbing but ultimately fabricated allegations of vast Communist conspiracies tainting the State Department, the Government Printing Office and parts of the U.S. military, died in 1957. He was censured by the Senate in 1954.
McCarthy's most notorious hearings, the Army-McCarthy hearings, were held in public and the secret portions of that investigation were released long ago.
The very public nature of the army hearings -- they were among the first televised -- helped bring about McCarthy's downfall as ordinary people saw his reckless and brutal behavior as he impugned the loyalty of the U.S. Army.
But before McCarthy was brought down, he brought down scores of people, historians say. Many had some degree of leftist politics or sympathies in their past, but none were traitors or spies.
The documents being made public now were the hearings he held behind closed doors. Some of those witnesses were later called before public panels, where McCarthy asked his trademark question, "Are you now or have you ever been a Communist?"
But some of the secret witnesses were never called again in public. But they didn't necessarily stay secret either. McCarthy often briefed reporters on the secret proceedings -- at least his version of the proceedings. Many people's careers were destroyed simply because he had summoned them to testify.
Was it 1944 that McCarthy switched over from the Democrat Party so that he could run in the Republican Primary?
"Whoever could get his case before a court was generally assured of meeting there with a level of justice no smaller than at any time in recent American history."
-George Kennan
No way! McCarthy was a notorious blabbermouth, especially when he had been drinking.
Most of the Venona intercepts were espionage traffic (KGB). That's why it gives such a great insight into the McCarthy era spies, most of whom were recruited in the thirties when the USSR seemed like the New Deal taken to its logical conclusion. Only the true believers among them still worked for the Soviets after the show trials (meaning, ALL of them betrayed us during the World War).
Just because breaking a one-time pad at a depth of two is possible. is not the same thing as saying it is trivial. In the raw breaks, once available on NSA's website, there are a lot of incomplete messages and uncertain areas. And... while we have (or had) the entire Venona intercepts, the counterspies of the forties and fifties didn't. The Venona intercepts are a body of work that was building until (IIRC) 1981, and even the low-hanging fruit were just coming exploitable in the McCarthy era (at least, if you discount the fact that GCHQ was working on them when it was still Bletchley Park. Nothing from that period has been or will be declassified).
The NSA spies I'm aware of, except for Pelton and Pollard, were low-echelon guys who were working in the military, collecting end of the agency. All Venona related stuff took place, as far as I can tell, at HQ.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I accept the possibility that the several historians who put together this exhibit are biased, but being as the exhibit has been on display for over a year in McCarthy's own home town, I would think that people who knew McCarthy would want to defend his name if the statement could be proved false. The way it is written, the statement would be an outrageous accusation if there wasn't a considerable amount of evidence behind it. Probably there is someone who has tracked down the true story about this and I'll see what I can find out.
I have already heard that LBJ's silver star was unearned and the awarding of it was politically motivated.
WARNING -- These are big files!!!
McCarthy has been dead since 1957. That is a very long time and I would be surprised if there are any old acquaintances left who have the energy or the inclination to bring scorn upon themselves by defending the "evil" Senator McCarthy.
To say that it is politically incorrect to defend Joe McCarthy is an understatement in the extreme. The liberal press and Hollywood have had decades to smear and demean the man. Some of the criticism of McCarthy is certainly deserved - - he brought it on himself with his clumsy heavy-handedness and his inability to handle the sudden fame of becoming a "television star". Power and fame went to his head and he abused it in a sorry display of arrogance, pomposity, and self-righteousness.
But given decades to smear a dead man who is not around to defend himself, the liberals have spun McCarthy's reputation as the devil incarnate way, way, way out of proportion and worse, they have managed to cloud or bury the truth of what McCarthy investigated and exposed.
It is my opinion that McCarthy did more to help his nation than all of the Hollywood scumbags who ever whined and lied about him put together ever did.
Please let me know what your research turns up.
Regards,
LH
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