Posted on 05/10/2003 9:53:42 AM PDT by DPB101
In a key step toward unravelling the secret history of the Cold War, the U. S. Senate last week released 50-year-old executive hearings on subversion and internal security matters conducted by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R.-Wis.).
Running to more than 4,000 pages, these hearings are crammed with backstage data on a host of once-torrid issues—including controversial McCarthy sessions on the Voice of America, United States Information Agency libraries, State Department personnel, and the Army Signal Corps installation at Fort Monmouth, N.J., to name a few. The last is of special interest as it was the prelude to the famous Army-McCarthy fracas in the spring of 1954, the event most people are probably aware of, if only dimly, when they think about McCarthy.
Having these documents available for study will be a major boon for scholars.
Unfortunately, the send-off they have been given by Senators Carl Levin (D.-Mich.) and Susan Collins (R.-Me.), and Donald Ritchie, the Senate historian who edited the hearings, has stirred up an orgy of media disinformation. All three have made invidious comments about McCarthy, putting a huge negative spin on the story. As most media types don’t read much further than summaries and press releases, these initial statements from the Senate sponsors can only serve to darken counsel.
Levin and Collins got the honor of releasing the hearings, under the 50-year Senate rule relating to such records, because they were chairman and ranking minority member, respectively, of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the previous Congress. (This was the panel headed by McCarthy that conducted the executive hearings.) In a preface to the massive five-volume set, Levin and Collins zestfully bash McCarthy, setting the tone for media coverage. However, to judge from further inquiry on the matter, neither of them knows anything about it.
In their preface, Levin-Collins assert that “Sen. McCarthy’s zeal to uncover subversion and espionage led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics destroyed the careers of people who were not involved in the infiltration of our government.” Similar statements have been made by Senate Historian Ritchie in comments to the press, and numerous stories have repeated these charges as uncontested fact. But when asked to back up this sweeping and inflammatory statement, neither Senate office could do so.
Trying to check the matter out, I called the offices of both Levin and Collins and asked if they could provide me with the names of any innocent victims of McCarthy whose careers had been ruined in this manner. Neither office could provide me with a single name.
Who’s Running the Senate?
I also addressed the same question to a reporter for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, whose story happened to be the first one I read about the hearings and who made such assertions on his own. I got essentially the same non-answer, except that he mentioned in his story the case of an employee of VOA who had committed suicide—allegedly from fear of McCarthy.
Similar conversations ensued with reporters from the Washington Post and Reuters, both of whom got very testy when I asked them if they could back up anti-McCarthy comments in their stories with information on specific cases. Ken Ringle of the Post said write us a letter, and Joanne Kenen of Reuters was much too busy to discuss the matter with me.
In these press conversations, the people I talked to said the individual with all the answers was Senate historian Ritchie, who contributed his own introduction to the hearings slamming McCarthy, in slightly more subtle terms than those used by Levin-Collins. However, when I finally got Ritchie on the phone, he wasn’t much more helpful, giving me lots of generalities, but little by way of hard specifics. (It’s a big subject, and so forth).
As to McCarthy’s browbeating tactics, said Ritchie, they were apparent throughout the hearings, particularly those pertaining to Fort Monmouth. I told him I had read a fair amount of these (plus the long-available public hearings conducted by McCarthy) and personally I didn’t see it. A matter of interpretation, I suppose, but hardly justification for the venomous slurs that are being thrown around so freely.
I then tried to narrow things down to a specific case I have studied in some detail: Alleged McCarthy victim Annie Lee Moss, who worked in a code room for the Army and was called before his subcommittee.
In the standard treatment of Moss, she was a dazed and helpless woman falsely accused of being a Communist by the heartless and irresponsible McCarthy. This image is reinforced at some length by Ritchie in his editorial comments, citing as authority for his statements three books about McCarthy by academics.
I noted that these were secondary sources and asked him if he had looked at the official, primary documents on the case, and whether he was aware that these conclusively prove Mrs. Moss was, indeed, a member of the Communist Party in the District of Columbia.
At this point historian Ritchie became very irked with me, and declined my offer to capsule these data for him. “I am,” he said, “growing very tired of this conversation.” He said he had been doing many media appearances on the McCarthy hearings, didn’t want to talk about the subject with me anymore, but that if I wanted to send something to him he would look at it. End of discussion.
Questions abound: How does it happen that Senators Levin and Collins make categorical statements in a Senate report that their offices cannot back up with a single specific?
Why was historian Ritchie so unwilling to discuss with me well-documented facts about one of the more publicized McCarthy cases—though he has been prolific with disparaging comments on McCarthy to anyone who will listen?
What ever happened to fact-based reporting? And, who, by the way, is running the Senate?
P.S. On the VOA employee allegedly driven to suicide by McCarthy: As the record shows, this employee was a potentially friendly witness for McCarthy, had views on the question at issue that would have backed McCarthy’s position, and was anxious to testify in the McCarthy hearings. Whatever drove this employee to suicide, if that is what in fact occurred, fear of Joe McCarthy is the least likely of all explanations. The reporter I spoke to on this knew nothing at all about these matters.
There is testimony about a CIA and a CPUSA assassination of McCarthy, testimony which nails Oppenheimer and other scientists dead (their espionage began in 1928)--among other things we are not reading in the media.
And more:I. The present ``peace offensive'' is designed to be the last stage in the program of administering a ``sedative'' to the American people before the hammer of war falls on Continental United States. All functionaries have been alerted to concentrate on this present phase of the ``peace offensives'' for the purpose of building resistance to war and clamour for tax reduction so as to effect the defensive power of the Nation.
II. In line with the ``peace offensive,'' all trade union functionaries have been ordered to lay low, to make it appear that the class struggle has been sidetracked by the present Russian regime.
III. Actual ``operation propaganda'' is concentrating upon school, churches and children with principal reliance on front agencies, notably Civil Rights Congress.
IV. Senator McCarthy is among those listed for liquidation or murder--an American agent assigned to the job (L.B.).
V. The pending communist cases against known communist functionaries have been ordered dragged out for the purpose of diverting the attention of the American people to the `down in the mouth defendants' to make it appear that the communists apparatus U.S.A. is bankrupt, defunct and on its way to the prison, when actually, there has never been more money or more activity in the communist apparatus in the past eleven years.
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM J. MORGANMr. Carr. Do you recall a meeting which you attended while you were in that position which was attended by Mr. Horace ``Pete'' Craig? \2\
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\2\ Horace S. Craig (1911-1963) served with the CIA until 1958.Dr. Morgan. I attended many meetings with him because I was in the same office. As a matter of fact, he was my superior.
Mr. Carr. Do you recall any meeting with Mr. Craig in which a statement was made concerning Senator McCarthy? Dr. Morgan. Yes, sir . . .
Mr. Carr. At that time was there any discussion as to a procedure to combat the influence of Senator McCarthy?
Dr. Morgan. Well, here is the situation as briefly as I can remember it. The question of Senator McCarthy was raised--what would you do with it, and I said, ``Well, I don't know what the problem is.'' He said, ``You know General Donovan, what would his suggestion be?'' I said, ``Well, I don't know what Donovan would suggest.''
Mr. Carr. You say General Donovan? \3\
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\3\ Gen. William J. Donovan (1883-1959) served as head of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Dr. Morgan. Yes, I had been in OSS.
Senator Potter. I would like to go back to where this man Craig stated that he felt that Senator McCarthy should be liquidated. I'd like to place the date of this. When did it happen?
Dr. Morgan. It happened in September.
Senator Potter. September of what year?
Dr. Morgan. Last year, 1953.
Senator Potter. He stated in essence that this man should be liquidated, referring to Senator McCarthy?
Dr. Morgan. It may be necessary.
Senator Potter. And that there are madmen----
Dr. Morgan. For a price willing to do the thing.
Senator Potter. Did you make any comment after that?
Dr. Morgan. No, sir. I looked at him and kind of figured, ``What gives?'' I didn't say anything.
Notice that the CPUSA memo says McCarthy was "among those" listed for "Liquidation." Wonder who else was on the list and what happened to them.
The operative words here are "least known." Ever wonder why is dat? Like "The Black Book of Communism," Venona should have created screaming headlines around the world. Neither did. Hmmmmmmmm.
Yes, the intercepts and the recently opened KGB files remove all doubt -- about Hiss, the Rosenbergs, all of them.
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