Blacklisted By History

by M. Stanton Evans

  For some reason, Budenz didn’t receive the kid-glove treatment given Lattimore and Jessup but instead was bombarded with skeptical, insulting questions. Green, who seemed most hostile, asked Budenz if he had ever met Lattimore in person. The colloquy on this would go as follows: Budenz: “No, sir, I have not. As a matter of fact, however, I did not see Mr. Alger Hiss, either, but I knew him to be a Communist and so testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.” Green: “But you are not reasoning that everyone you have never seen or heard may be a Communist? Is that your argument?”18 (Emphasis added.) Budenz allowed that it was not.*108

  Thereafter, Green lectured Budenz—who had spent several thousand hours working with the FBI—on the urgent need to turn such information over to the Bureau. The senator seemed distraught that Budenz might be sharing data not yet provided to the FBI, and indeed resentful that Budenz was giving any information whatever to the panel. Green further undertook a line of questions suggesting that, since Budenz had been a Communist, and since Communists were known for lying, perhaps this habit of lying was hard to break (“if you believe in some other great cause, the same frame of mind might shift your lying for the cause”).19

  All this was but prologue to the most spectacular witness in the sequence—former Communist Party boss Earl Browder. (Browder had been deposed as party chief in 1945 but retained—as he liked to stress—a good relationship with Moscow.) As Tydings would make quite clear, his main purpose in having Browder on the stand was to rebut Budenz—specifically, to say suspects named by Budenz and/or McCarthy weren’t members of the Communist Party. The chairman, indeed, was not about to rest until he could wring such statements from this grizzled apparatchik.

  Under questioning by Morgan, Browder obligingly denied that he knew Owen Lattimore, T. A. Bisson, Edward Carter, and other people mentioned by McCarthy and/or Budenz to be members of the party. He was fuzzier on Frederick Field and Philip Jaffe; though denying they were engaged in spying, he skated on whether they were party members—with no follow-up or clarification sought by members of the panel. Browder also denied that the Communist Party had tried to place any agents in the State Department or that any Communists had ever worked there.20

  Browder’s ideas of candor may be judged from his assertion that he had “never received any funds from abroad” for the CPUSA or received commands from Moscow. As head of the party, he averred, he had been “an independent executive responsible only to my executive committee.” These ludicrous statements drew no riposte from Green about the well-known Communist habit of lying, nor were they subject to follow-up questions, skeptical comments, or rebuke from Tydings.21

  Hickenlooper then questioned Browder about the meeting at Philip Jaffe’s New York home five years before this, attended by Browder and Red Chinese official Tung Pi-wu.*109 When Hickenlooper asked if either John Carter Vincent or John Stewart Service had been at this meeting, Browder refused to answer. Hickenlooper then read a list of names, nine in all, asking if they were known to Browder as CP members. Two of the people on the list were Dorothy Kenyon and Haldore Hanson. In these cases, as in others, Browder said, “I refuse to answer.” This caused great distress to McMahon and Tydings, both of whom implored the witness to reconsider. Appealing to standards of “fairness and truth,” Tydings at last got Browder to say neither Kenyon nor Hanson “had any organized connection to the Communist Party.”†110 22

  The same ticklish problem would arise again in further discussion of Service and Vincent—this time as to whether they were CP members. Once more Browder refused to answer, and again Tydings beseeched him to do so—at least with respect to these two cases. (Browder: “Yes—before it was two other names. Now it is two. Maybe one by one we will get into a list of thousands.”)23 This brought a further plea from Tydings, providing another gleam of insight into the object of the hearings. In a courtly appeal to the former CP boss, Tydings said: “I see your point of view, I am not arguing at the moment, but I do think you are defeating the purpose of this inquiry in a way that you perhaps do not realize, if you allow this to be obscured, and if you felt that you could answer, in the case of Mr. Vincent and Mr. Service, I would be most grateful.”24 (Emphasis added.)

  This supplication seems to have touched some better angel in Browder’s surly nature, or perhaps turned on a lightbulb in the recesses of his brain, as he at last responded that, “to the best of my knowledge and belief,” neither Vincent nor Service had any connection to the Communist Party. The sigh of relief from Tydings is almost audible in the printed record. The chairman said “Thank you, sir,” abruptly ended further questions, and soon signaled that the hearing was over. It was a close-run thing, but the purpose of the Tydings inquiry, this day at least, was not defeated.

  IN SUCH manner did Millard Tydings investigate McCarthy’s cases, concluding with numerous lengthy sessions involving Service and the Amerasia scandal. These dragged on into June, with results to be considered. But, before the hearings were ended, the chairman would add a few more distinctive touches suggestive of the Tydings method.

  On what turned out to be the last day of formal sessions, June 28, Tydings and Co. were pressing hard to get out a report and write finis to the whole endeavor. Green’s view was that “we have done all that we need to do in connection with the job that was imposed on us.” Tydings likewise opined, “I think our work is pretty well concluded.” To this Hickenlooper rejoined, “I don’t think it has even started, Mr. Chairman.” (He had previously suggested some twenty or thirty potential witnesses—developed by Morris—he thought should be examined.) Lodge for his part proposed a series of questions, eighteen in all, he said had not been answered.*111 25

  Morris then raised a case mentioned in a previous session he said deserved some looking into. To this Tydings replied, “Mr. Morris, we can mention cases from now until doomsday.” Morris, backed by Lodge, persisted, explaining that the case involved one Theodore Geiger, formerly with the State Department, who had moved on to work for Paul Hoffman of the Economic Cooperation Administration in matters pertaining to foreign aid. “I have gone and gotten witnesses together,” said Morris, “who will testify that he [Geiger] was a member of the same Communist Party unit they were.”

  This cut no ice with Tydings, who told Morris: “Turn it over to the FBI or do something else with it. I would like to get a decision here. We don’t want to waste this afternoon.”26 As presaged by this, nothing of substance would be done about the case of Geiger, the questions raised by Lodge, or the twenty or thirty witnesses Hickenlooper wanted to summon. The afternoon would not be wasted on any topics of that nature. Tydings-Green-McMahon then pushed through an opaque arrangement to have Morgan draft a report about the hearings (see Chapter 18), and the Tydings probe was over.

  There would, however, be a bizarre footnote to these already unusual hearings, in the form of a federal court decree reflecting on their conduct. This resulted from an unfathomable decision by the subcommittee to bring contempt proceedings against Earl Browder, based on his refusal to answer various of Hickenlooper’s questions. As it happened, Browder had never been ordered by Tydings to answer these particular questions, or told he would be cited for contempt if he didn’t, or required to state any constitutional basis for refusing.

  Given all this, Browder was no doubt amazed to find himself slapped with a contempt citation and haled into court to face a possible prison sentence. He mounted an aggressive defense against the charges, assisted by court-appointed attorney Roger Robb, though mainly acting as his own counsel. In these court sessions, among the most fantastic in American judicial history, Browder brought only one witness to the stand to defend him against the Tydings contempt citation. That single witness was Joe McCarthy. Thus, in a scene no Hollywood writer could have scripted, the nation’s former Communist boss called in his defense the nation’s most famous Communist hunter. It proved to be a wise decision. Asked if Browder had been in contempt of Tydings, McCarthy answered:

  �
�in all my experience as a judge, and a lawyer, I don’t know if I have ever seen more perfect cooperation between a witness and the chairman of the committee. When the witness refused to testify it appeared to be with the wholehearted approval of the chair. The chair, in fact, was not interested in eliciting information from the witness which would indicate the presence of Communists in the government…. The witness came down and took avery active part in what the chair was trying to do, and that was to conduct a cover up.27

  These McCarthy statements were addressed directly to Browder, conducting the interrogation. At no point did Browder demur, interrupt, or ask any skeptical questions suggesting McCarthy’s comments about a Tydings cover-up were mistaken. Thereafter, Browder’s attorney Robb likewise argued that, when “Browder refused to answer those questions, he was doing what the majority of that committee wanted him to do.”28 Having heard McCarthy’s testimony and Robb’s summation, the court ruled that the defendant in fact hadn’t been required to answer Hickenlooper’s questions and entered a directed verdict: Earl Browder was acquitted.

  CHAPTER 17

  Eve of Destruction

  BEHIND the scenes at the Tydings hearings, the action was almost as hectic as that unfolding before the cameras. However, much of what went on backstage was starkly different from what was being said in public.

  By the terms of S.R. 231, Tydings was to have conducted a “full and complete investigation as to whether personnel who are disloyal to the United States are or have been employed by the Department of State.” No such investigation ever happened, or anything remotely like it. Nor did Tydings usually bother saying this was the object of the hearings. Rather, as he often stated, the idea was to have McCarthy come before the panel and present whatever facts he had for its consideration. The burden of proof, and investigation, was squarely on McCarthy.

  Demanding that McCarthy put up or shut up was obviously different from the official purpose of the hearings, but even this was fairly distant from what went on in subcommittee sessions and even further from events occurring behind the arras. Tydings came closer to the truth when he told McCarthy, “You are going to get one of the most complete investigations in the history of this republic.” To this McCarthy had objected, saying the chairman must have misspoken. The point of the inquest, after all, was to look into the loyalty setup at State, not the doings of McCarthy. Of course, said Tydings, that was what he meant.

  As shown by now-available data, Tydings had it right the first time. Both in its regular operations and in more shadowy backstairs dealings, the Tydings panel in fact set out to investigate McCarthy, and did so in systematic fashion. The proofs of this in formerly confidential records are legion. Among the more suggestive is a strategy memo Tydings passed on to counsel Edward Morgan, with cover note, on April 11. This was roughly a month into the hearings, as Tydings in his public, ostensibly objective mode claimed to be suspending judgment on McCarthy’s charges.

  The memo he sent to Morgan was of a very different tenor—a blueprint for turning the hearings, not merely into an investigation of McCarthy, but into a formal arraignment, trial, and condemnation by the Senate. The Humpty-Dumpty logic of this plan was that, since McCarthy had triggered the hearings to begin with, “the scope of the subcommittee’s power to make recommendations is sufficiently broad to include a recommendation that Senator McCarthy be censured.” Hence, no problem turning a supposed investigation of loyalty matters in the State Department into an investigation—and indictment—of McCarthy.

  Among the complaints against McCarthy prophetically capsuled in this memo was, first and foremost, that he “practiced a fraud and a deceit when he assured the Senate he would read into the Congressional Record the text of the speech he delivered at Wheeling. As to its most relevant passage, Senator McCarthy interpolated new language in the Senate reading.” (This in reference to the fact that the Wheeling-Reno speech McCarthy read to the Senate didn’t mention a “list” of “205 Communists” at State, which Tydings and Co. always insisted had been said at Wheeling.)

  The second charge set forth in the memo was that McCarthy also committed “fraud and deceit” concerning the sources of the security data he recited on his fourscore suspects. Linked to this was the further charge that these data weren’t either new or current, as “Senator McCarthy’s information was in the possession of the Congress in 1947.” (Both charges here related to the contention that McCarthy in his Senate speech did nothing but repeat outdated cases from the Lee list, compiled in the fall of 1947.)

  To these main counts were added others, all prelude to the inevitable guilty verdict: that McCarthy, “in the sordid pursuit of political advantage, has demeaned the Senate, lowered its prestige and injured its reputation by subjecting matters of world import to partisan attack, wholly divorced from semblance of truth.”1 All in all, something less than judicial calm in weighing evidence from the hearings, which had another ten weeks to run and were supposed to be digging out the facts on possible loyalty risks at State.

  Exactly who drafted this philippic isn’t indicated on it.*112 Whatever the source, Tydings in his buck slip to Morgan made it plain that the views expressed weren’t distasteful and that the charges raised against McCarthy would probably be brought at some date in the future. “This is confidential, for your information,” he wrote to Morgan. “Please bring it to my attention at the proper time.” The implication was that such a necktie party would be staged, but not at that particular moment. (And, indeed, the main charges in this strategy memo would be repeated, point for point, in the report Tydings gave the Senate three months later.)

  Why Tydings may have felt the time was not yet ripe for pressing formal charges against McCarthy is suggested by a worried letter he wrote the following day to Truman. This April 12 missive is of interest for what it says about the chairman’s back-channel dealings with the White House, his reading of the political omens, and his real objective in the hearings. It indicates he felt McCarthy and the GOP were scoring heavily on the Communist issue and that the President needed to take dramatic action to stop the bleeding.

  To this end, Tydings made two chief proposals. First, that Truman seize the initiative on the subversive question by emphasizing the prosecution of Communist agents on his watch (including, with no apparent sense of irony, Alger Hiss), thus trumping McCarthy’s message with the public.*113 Second, that the President make some adjustment on the matter of State’s security files, the withholding of which was being blasted by McCarthy as a cover-up and scandal. With these steps to clear the way, the administration and its allies could go on the offensive against its accusers. In concluding, Tydings made an urgent, and revealing, plea to Truman:

  I strongly recommend for your own welfare, for the welfare of the country and lastly for the welfare of the Democratic party that the present Communist inquiry not be allowed to worsen, but that you take bold, forthright and courageous action which I presume to say will do as much as anything I can think of to give you and your administration and party a tremendous advantage in the coming election.†114 2

  Further suggesting the Tydings mood—and purpose—was a meeting with Democratic members of the Senate in which he voiced concern about the State Department hearings and asked his colleagues for their aid in bringing down McCarthy. The gathering would be recalled by Tydings ally William Benton, who had by 1950 moved from the department to the Senate, where he would be a relentless McCarthy critic. Benton later wrote his assistant John Howe, “I was the first senator by several weeks to go after McCarthy,” and explained the comment this way:

  I remember well the meeting in [Secretary of the Senate] Les Biffle’s office when Tydings spoke with great distress about the problems of the Tydings’ Committee. McMahon was also there. So, too, was Chauvez [sic—Sen. Dennis Chavez (D-N.M.)]. I was to make a speech the next day…[and] I hastily wrote in the paragraph about McCarthy as a “hit and run propagandist on the Kremlin model”…My recollection is that Chauvez followed with another
attack on McCarthy and for this Chauvez was bitterly assailed.*115 3

  The Tydings pessimism revealed in these vignettes would in due course be tempered by happier thoughts about turning the tables on McCarthy. In this pursuit, the question of the Wheeling numbers would be for Tydings the dominant, virtually all-consuming, issue. Again, the focus on this statistical point seems odd, but the chairman had his reasons. To Tydings, it came to mean not only that McCarthy had been evasive and untruthful but that he had actually committed perjury—since he would deny under oath, in an executive session, claiming a “list” of 205 Reds at State. This perjury angle would become an idée fixe with Tydings, as also with Benton.

  From the outset of the hearings, a good deal of backstage effort had been devoted by Tydings and his staffers to seeking proof that McCarthy lied about the Wheeling speech. The main item relied on at the beginning was the Frank Desmond story in the Intelligencer. Also getting notice in this context was the Edward Connors piece that ran the following Sunday in Reno. This was ambiguous evidence, if that, but for some reason obviously had strong appeal for Tydings. To check these matters out, Tydings-Morgan early on assigned committee staffers to quiz the two reporters.

  One Tydings aide, assistant counsel Lyon Tyler, was to have contacted Frank Desmond about the 205 quotation. A Tydings-to-Desmond letter saying Tyler would be coming up to Wheeling gives a pretty good view of the chairman’s true investigative interests. Among the questions Tydings posed to Desmond: “From what was the quote…referred to taken? Was it handed to you by Sen. McCarthy with the statement that you could print it or words to that effect? Is it an accurate quotation from such paper as Sen. McCarthy gave you?”4