Levin and Collins Trigger Disinformation. Senate Historian Clams Up When Queried On McCarthy
5/10/03 | M. Stanton Evans
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.
[Msg #44 has links to the documents in question.]