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The Rehabilitated Reputation of Senator Joseph McCarthy
Dr. I.C.F. Spry Q.C.
During the 1950’s Senator Joseph
McCarthy spent much time attacking
the infiltration by communists of
American public institutions. For this
he was widely attacked by American
liberals and the American left. He was
described as a demagogue, and his efforts
were mocked as looking for “reds
under the bed”, as an offensive example
of fascism and as an erratic and
unprincipled persecution of many
good, conscientious and patriotic
Americans.
It now appears that Senator
McCarthy was correct in his assertions.
This has been spelt out in detail
in Ann Coulter’s recent book, Treason:
Liberal Treachery from the Cold
War to the War on Terrorism.1 In describing
attacks by liberals as “a bellicose
campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy’s name”, Coulter comments,
2
“But after a half century of liberal
mythmaking, it would be Judgement
Day for liberals on July 11,
1995. On that day, the U.S. government
released a cache of Soviet cables
that had been decoded during
the Cold War in a top-secret undertaking
known as the Venona
Project. The cables proved the overwhelming
truth of McCarthy’s
charges. It was a mind-boggling discovery.
Professors would be compelled
to retract their theses about
the extent of Soviet espionage. Alger
Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, even
American journalist I.F.Stone, were
exposed as agents of Moscow. And
yet, most people reading this book
are hearing about the Venona Project for the very first time. The
release of decrypted Soviet cables
was barely mentioned by the New
York Times. It might have detracted
from stories of proud and unbowed
victims of ‘McCarthyism’. They
were not so innocent after all, it
turns out.”
The unjustified attacks on Senator
McCarthy are to be viewed in the context
of American politics of that time.
After the end of the Second World War
Stalin was viewed with trust and admiration
by many liberals. President
Roosevelt himself was friendly towards
the Soviets. One of his critical
advisers, Alger Hiss, was a Soviet
agent, who was influential in turning
Roosevelt against Churchill and having
Roosevelt approve at Yalta of the
subjugation of many countries of Eastern
Europe. A principled ex-communist,
one Whittaker Chambers, informed
Roosevelt’s assistant secretary
of state, Adolf Berle, of the names of
at least two dozen Soviet spies working
for the Roosevelt administration,
including Alger Hiss and his brother
Donald. Berle passed on this information
urgently to Roosevelt, who
laughed and told Berle to go f— himself.
3 Far from removing Hiss,
Roosevelt actually promoted him, and
kept him as a trusted aide despite
warnings about him from other
sources.
Nor did President Truman, who
succeeded Roosevelt, overcome the
left’s instinct to protect friends of the
Soviets. Truman denounced a Congressional
investigation of Hiss as a
“red herring” and a cheap political
ploy.4 Other democrats were quick to
add their voices. Felix Frankfurter and
Adlai Stevenson actually offered to be
character witnesses for the Soviet spy,
and Eleanor Roosevelt asserted that
she believed him. The secretary of
state Dean Acheson (whose reputation
has not improved with time) passed
government secrets furtively to Hiss’s
lawyers to help them with his case. The
Department of Justice prepared to indict,
not Hiss the Soviet agent, but
Whittaker Chambers who had revealed
Hiss’s clandestine role.
Whittaker Chambers was vindicated
by the production of further evidence,
but the New York Times (which consistently
attempts to undermine
United States security) continued to
support Hiss nonetheless.
Under Truman Alger Hiss had enormous
influence. He was director of the
Office of Political Affairs at the State
Department, and was secretary-general
of the San Francisco Conference,
which drafted the United Nations
Charter. Despite his subsequent conviction
and imprisonment for perjury,
Hiss continued to be feted by liberals:
his first speech after leaving prison was at Princeton, where he was given
a standing ovation.5
In 1991 Paul Johnson stated, without
the advantage of extensive subsequent
evidence from Soviet archives:6
“The Soviet agent Harry Dexter
White was the most influential official
in the Treasury, the man who
created the post-war international
monetary system, with the help of
Keynes . . . In 1945 Elizabeth Bentley,
a former Communist spy, told
the F.B.I. of two Soviet networks in
the United States, one headed by the
Treasury economist Nathan
Gregory Silvermaster, another by
Victor Perlo of the War Production
Board: classified information was
also transmitted from the Justice
Department, the Foreign Economic
Administration and the Board of
Economic Warfare. F.B.I. and Office
of Strategic Services raids also
disclosed leakages from the Army
and Navy departments, the Office of
War Intelligence and the O.S.S. itself
. . . In the atomic field Soviet
agents included Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, David
Greenglass, Harry Gold, J. Peters
(alias Alexander Stevens) to whom
Whittaker Chambers acted as courier,
and Jacob Golos, as well as
Klaus Fuchs, who had been cleared
by British Security.”
Many other Soviet agents have been
revealed by Soviet records and by the
Venona Project, such as Lauchlin
Currie, Laurence Duggar, Frank Coe,
Solomon Adler and Duncan Lee.
Joseph McCarthy had been a circuit
judge in Wisconsin before becoming
a senator. In 1950 he made a speech
in West Virginia in which he said that
he had in his hand the names of fiftyseven
card-carrying communists in
the State Department. Although (and
to some extent because) his information
was accurate he was immediately
attacked by the liberal establishment,
including its flag-bearer, the New
York Times. (J. Edgar Hoover stated
in March 1947 that there were more
Americans (about one million) registered
to vote for the Communist Party
than there had been In Russia in 1917.)
In retrospect, with knowledge possessed
today — and only a small proportion
of Soviet cables have yet been
decoded — Senator McCarthy underestimated
the number and the importance
of Soviet agents active in U.S.
government. Hundreds of Soviet spies
honeycombed the U.S. government
through the forties and fifties. Many
of these had acquired their positions
during the Roosevelt era. Roosevelt,
who called Stalin “Uncle Joe”, said of
the Soviet Union in his fourth inaugural
address, “In order to make a friend, one must be a friend”.7 Likewise
Truman said, “I like old Joe. Joe
is a decent fellow.”8 These two American
presidents gave support to the liberal
state of mind whereby criticisms
of communists or communist agents
were in bad form.
In fact, as Coulson notes,9
“McCarthy’s contribution to
‘McCarthyism’ consisted exclusively
of his investigation of loyalty risks
working for the federal government.
He was not even particularly interested
in the Communists themselves.
His targets were government
officials charged with removing loyalty
risks from sensitive public jobs.
His campaign lasted only a few
years, from 1950 to 1953, until liberals
immobilised him in 1954 with
their Army-McCarthy hearings and
censure investigation. He conducted
his investigations from the
Senate Permanent Sub-committee
on Investigations, the express mandate
of which was – surprisingly
enough – to investigate the federal
government.”
An example of improper attacks on
McCarthy is found in the Annie Moss
case. Annie Moss was a cleaner who
worked in the Code Room at the Pentagon.
Democrats defended her vigorously,
although it later was learned
that she was a member of the Communist
Party. Democrat Senator Stuart Symington shielded her, mocking
the case against her, but she was
ultimately moved by her employer, the
Army, away from the Code Room. Liberals
thereafter attempted to use the
Moss case to discredit McCarthy. In
fact, the case was one of many in which
government departments had acted
rashly, employing in sensitive positions
people who, in retrospect, can be
clearly seen to have been Soviet
agents.
Indeed, McCarthy set out strictly
not to reveal publicly the names of
those whom he was investigating. He
stated that although he had enough
evidence to convince himself that they
were either members of the Communist
Party or had given great aid to the
Communists, he would not publish
their names, since it was possible that
some of them would eventually receive
“a clean bill of health”.10 However it
was the Democrat grouping in the
Senate that compelled him to reveal
the names. Democrat Senate Majority
Leader Scott Lucas said, “I want to
remain here until he [Senator
McCarthy] names them.” And so
McCarthy was compelled against his
wishes to name the persons in question.
Then the Democrats and their
liberal supporters used the fact of
naming as the most odious aspect of
what they chose to call McCarthyism.
The naming and consequent loss of reputation (in fact, a loss that was almost
invariably justified by the evidence)
of a Soviet agent or communist
was a consequence of the insistence of
McCarthy’s liberal detractors. (These
detractors included, incidentally,
Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger bitterly
denounced those who stated that
Richard Duggan was a spy, until finally
in addition to other overwhelming
evidence to this effect, the Venona
decrypts provided further corroboration
that not even he could ignore.)
McCarthy was a hate-object of
Democrat and liberal groups. Many of
the latter had been to Harvard or other
Ivy League institutions, where tolerance
of the extreme left was fashionable.
Their attitudes were represented
by the liberal newspapers, and particularly
by the New York Times,
which has commonly been viewed as
an instrument of decomposition: it
continuously supports causes that undermine
American security and the
preservation of American values. But
McCarthy was supported by the great
majority of the American people;
opinion polls continually showed majority
backing. He was supported also
by ex-servicemen, who were particularly
concerned by actions that reduced
national security:11
“In the summer of 1951, the Truman
administration planned an all-out
attack on McCarthy, going directly
to his base – The Veterans of Foreign
Wars. At the dedication of the new American Legion building,
both Truman and his not coincidentally
Catholic labor secretary,
Maurice Tobin, gave speeches attacking
McCarthy. Truman spoke
darkly of ‘hysteria’ and ‘fear’ about
Communism. Tobin denounced
‘slanderers’ in Congress undermining
the public’s trust in government.
Though neither had mentioned
McCarthy by name, the point was
clear.
When Tobin mentioned ‘slanderers’,
one of the V.F.W. organisers
had had enough. He leapt from his
chair, grabbed the microphone out
of Tobin’s hand, and announced to
the crowd that maybe the V.F.W.
should let McCarthy speak for himself.
The audience roared its approval.
McCarthy flew in the next
day to address an enthusiastic
V.F.W. crowd. For more than an
hour, he laid into Truman. Acheson
and ‘the whole motley crew’. His
reception was noticeably more positive
than Truman’s and Tobin’s had
been. A cheering audience chanted,
‘Give them hell, Joe!’ and ‘McCarthy
for President’.”
But the liberal press had its own
agenda. In a classic tactic the San
Francisco Chronicle attacked
“McCarthyism” by reference to the
experience that befell the children of
Soviet spies, such as Robert Meeropol,
the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
There were “phone taps, F.B.I. surveillances, subpoenas and ostracism”.
(Coulter comments ironically:
“To be sure their parents were giving
atomic technology to the Soviet Union.
But the F.B.I. had no right to
watch them!”12 ) The Chronicle reported
tendentiously that “these testimonies
chill us to the bone, making
it clear what totalitarianism once
looked like within our own borders”.
This far-fetched comment encapsulates
the liberal myth that developed.
Much of that myth had its origin in the
complaints of the very Soviet agents
who were being exposed. Almost without
exception those agents denied
their guilt and claimed innocent victim
status. They themselves coordinated
propaganda that was readily
assimilated by the Democrats and
their liberal allies.
Coulter’s analysis of the McCarthy
controversy is perceptive, in view especially
of the role of the liberal media
and the attitudes that have been
entrenched during the past fifty odd
years. She comments, after discussing
similar issues:13
“Similarly, having ceded the lie of
‘McCarthyism’, now no-one is allowed
to call liberals unpatriotic.
Liberals relentlessly attack their own country, but we can’t call them
traitors, which they manifestly
are,14 because that would be
‘McCarthyism’, which never existed.
By now the Left’s mind-boggling
self-righteousness about Senator
Joe McCarthy is so overwhelming,
so hegemonic, it seems the record
could never be set straight.”
In this assessment Coulter is nonetheless
unduly pessimistic. One of the
lessons to be learnt from the last century,
when communism and nazism
flourished for so long but were finally
entirely discredited, is that there is
always a prospect – although unfortunately
never a certainty – that truth
will prevail. Any false assessment,
however acceptable at a particular
time, is always subject to an assessment
of later history.
Accordingly the essential question
about Senator McCarthy is, was he
substantially correct in his statements?
The Venona Project and the subsequent
release of information from
Russia indicate that in fact Senator
McCarthy’s statements were substantially
correct, and that his liberal critics
were substantially wrong. It appears
also that there was an organised
campaign against him, in which many senior Democrats who ought to have
known better unfortunately joined.
There is hence reason to be more
optimistic on this subject than Coulter
allows. In regard to Senator
McCarthy we have only recently seen
the public release of facts that support
his statements. In view of the accumulated
prejudice of fifty years, it could
hardly be expected that liberals would
at once cede their position. But as that
position receives critical examination,
and is seen to be defective, there will
doubtless be a gradual change. Those
in the centre will be the first to acknowledge
errors of assessment, and intransigence will increase as one
moves further to the left. But facts are
facts.
Senator McCarthy was evidently
moved by patriotic considerations. He
saw himself as defending America. Of
course good motives would not excuse
a misguided approach.
But the Venona
Project and Soviet archives indicate
that Senator McCarthy was, as a matter
of fact, substantially correct. He
should be now defended by persons
with honest intentions, although this
will, in the short term, attract criticism
from liberals and from the uninformed.
1. Ann Coulter, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism,
2003, Crown Forum, New York. This book was reviewed by Mr. Charles
Francis Q.C. in National Observer, 2005, Issue 64, pages 67-70.
2. Ibid., pages 10-11
3 Ibid., at page 18.
4 Ibid., at page 21.
5 Ibid., at page 28.
6. Modern Times, Harper Perennial Classics, page 456.
7. Coulson, op.cit., page 43.
8. Ibid., page 44.
9. Ibid., page 56.
10. Ibid., at page 65.
11. Ibid., at page 70.
12. Ibid., at page 74.
13. Ibid., at page 75.
14. In Australia one recalls the reluctance of the left to criticise the Soviet Union, and
acts of Australian unionists preventing the sending of munitions and supplies to Australian
Armed Forces abroad, and the support by the left of illegal immigrants hostile
to Australia.
National Observer No. 65 - Winter 2005