Given the number and vehemence of such statements, the reader may well inquire how Tydings and the State Department could possibly say that Republicans of the 80th Congress were content with security affairs at State. The answer to this was artfully simple: First, all the comments quoted, and others like them, were just plain ignored—dropped down the memory hole and forgotten. To fill the resulting gap in data, John Peurifoy managed to find a single statement by a single GOPer—the previously met with Bartel Jonkman—and Tydings would showcase this as the definitive comeback to McCarthy.‡180
This Jonkman statement, besides being the view of a lone individual, is peculiar to the point of weirdness—more Lewis Carroll than George Orwell. It indeed says State had shaped up its act, and asserts that preeminent among those deserving credit for this was none other than—Bartel Jonkman. Acting as a “committee of one,” the congressman had looked into security matters at State, made complaints, and demanded action—all of which, he indicated, took him about three weeks (with some follow-up visits to confirm things). Thanks to this endeavor, he concluded, there were no longer any security risks on the job at State. His evidence for this was that John Peurifoy had told him so—directly. Such is the “report” the State Department and Senator Tydings unearthed to prove Republicans of the 80th Congress were content with the security shop at State.18
In sum: Of the “four committees” cited in the Tydings report, three said precisely the opposite of what it represented them as saying. And what they had to say was that the security situation at State was dire, that there were numerous loyalty/security risks (and worse) at large, and that measures to deal with this were shockingly deficient—in essence, the identical theme that would later be sounded by McCarthy. The only “committee” Peurifoy could find to support his position (and the only one actually quoted by Tydings) was Bartel Jonkman’s one-man band. Not mincing any words about it, the Tydings-State performance, across the board, was a carefully woven web of lies. Yet it is this version of the matter that we are given in our alleged histories.
CHAPTER 21
File and Forget It
IN THEORY, the State Department loyalty/security files should have cleared up the mysteries about the nature of McCarthy’s cases and the merits of his charges. However, because of the way the thing was handled, the files would become a considerable mystery in themselves—the cause of angry conflict at the time and much historical muddle later.
There is nonetheless a good deal to be learned from the curious saga of the files—particularly, as in other cases noted, from the sharp disparity between the show of things out front and the reality behind the arras. The State Department and Tydings panel offered many reassuring comments about these records, what was in them, and what was being done about them, comments often quoted by McCarthy’s critics to prove he lied about his cases. Yet, according to the records of the FBI, these statements themselves, time and again, were anything but truthful.
The crucial importance of the security files had been recognized by all concerned from the beginning. The Lee list cases were a précis of certain of these data, and McCarthy, as has been seen, was relying on that list, garnished with his own researches. He took the position that he had gleanings from the records, indicating things were badly amiss with the security drill at State. But, he said, these were simply clues and fragments. The only way to resolve the matter was to produce the security files for examination by the Senate. That would conclusively prove, he said, whether his charges were true or false.
Somewhat inadvertently, McCarthy’s view on this was underscored by one of his main opponents, Sen. Brien McMahon of Connecticut. McMahon raised the point that McCarthy might be reading selectively from the security files, omitting information favorable to the suspects. He stressed “the possibility that if we had the whole file before us, as undoubtedly the State Department has, the information the senator from Wisconsin is giving might be contradicted.”1 This was indeed a possibility, and the only way of gauging whether it was more than that would have been to get a look at the files directly.
There were, however, complications. Chief among these was the fact that providing Congress access to security data was something the Truman administration had successfully fought for several years before this. The issue had come up in 1948 in battles over the William Remington case and the matter of Dr. Edward Condon. In both instances, the administration had refused to supply security information to Congress. Likewise, it repented the fact that John Peurifoy had ever let Hill investigators see State Department security records to begin with, leading to the Lee list and congressional probes about it. It was at the confluence of these disputes that Truman issued his secrecy order of March 13, 1948, denying further such information to Congress.
McCarthy was thus going up against an established policy of omerta— a blank wall of denial Congress had strenuously protested but was uncertain how to challenge. This wasn’t a hopeful augury for his efforts. On the other hand, he had some factors working in his favor. One was that refusal to release the files didn’t look very good for Truman—looked, indeed, like he was hiding something. This was a point stressed by Tydings in his advices to the White House. Some concession on the files, he said, was “the only way the Truman administration can kill permanently the rumor and propaganda that ‘there must be something bad in those files or Truman would not mind showing them.’”2
Also supportive of McCarthy’s view was the fact that S.R. 231, under which the Tydings panel functioned, explicitly said the files should be obtained and studied by the subcommittee. The resolution authorized subpoenaing “the complete loyalty and employee files and records of all the employees in the Department of State,…against whom charges have been heard.”3 Thus, the demand that the files be provided wasn’t merely a personal hobbyhorse of McCarthy but the official posture of the Senate.
All this placed Tydings in a bind, pitting his mandate from the Senate against his allegiance to the White House. His solution to this dilemma was to split the difference—requesting that the files be handed over to the committee rather than issuing subpoenas.*181 And, he soon claimed, this genteel approach was working. On March 10, in the early stages of the hearings, Tydings announced that the State Department had promised the Senate “free and unlimited access” to the files, so there was no need to get stiff-necked about it.4 A few days later, he would expand on these comments before his colleagues, praising the cooperative attitude of State.
“I have,” said Tydings, “asked the State Department to turn over the files to us that have been mentioned. The State Department has indicated a willingness to turn over these files…[on the twenty-five additional cases submitted by McCarthy], I have already asked for the records, and I happen to know that the State Department at this very moment is trying to work out a procedure so that we can see the records. I have asked for the files as a gentleman, not a sheriff.”5
This sounded very well, but it developed that all these assurances were in error—and the error said a lot about the way the files, and the file issue, were being managed. For openers, when Tydings said the State Department would provide “free and unlimited access” to the files, had “indicated willingness” to turn them over, and was “trying to work out” a way to do this, the files weren’t even in State’s possession. Instead, they were snugly locked up in the White House and had been for at least a week, the better to keep them from the Senate. The State Department couldn’t have provided “free and unlimited access” to these records—or any other kind of access—even had that been its purpose.
As occurred throughout the hearings, the FBI was obtaining regular updates on these events, including the commandeering of the files by order of the White House. The motives for this maneuver, per a March 3 Bureau memo, were candidly explained to the FBI by Donald Nicholson of the State Department. “According to Mr. Nicholson,” said this report, “the transfer of these files to the White House is for political reasons, and, further, for the reason th
at the State Department was fearful that the Secretary of State would be served with a subpoena to produce the files, which can now be answered by stating the files were not in the possession of the State Department.”6
In fact, by having the files brought to the White House, Truman signaled a good deal more than a desire to protect the State Department from subpoena. He also made it plain he and his personal agents were going to micromanage the whole affair from start to finish, thus guarding against any possible slipups. Henceforth, as pressures mounted for release of the security data to defuse the uproar created by McCarthy, there would ensue a vast array of White House restrictions, denials, and preconditions relating to the files that were anything but full disclosure. Many such exceptions and provisos are chronicled in the Bureau archives.
On March 4, for instance, the Bureau’s Mickey Ladd reported that Peyton Ford of Justice had said Truman would, at most, show the senators summaries only, not the files themselves. In extremis, according to Ford, the President would let Tydings personally view the files and confirm that the summaries were accurate. If it came to that, said Ladd, “the President is going to take the necessary time to sit down and make the senators look at the material in his presence, and…he will forbid the taking of any notes whatever.” Thereafter, Ladd relayed the further news from his administration contacts that “they are going to insist that the counsel for the committee not be present.”7
On March 7, the Bureau’s Alan Belmont reported that State Department security files on the McCarthy cases “which were transferred to the White House are now being checked over very carefully by former investigators of the old Truman Senate committee.” (What they were checking for not stated.) Belmont added that, “now that the ‘McCarthy’ case files have been transferred to the White House, the State Department is working on 385 loyalty case files (not mentioned by McCarthy) and will also transfer these files to the White House…”8
So the Truman forces were not only combing through the McCarthy cases sent over from the State Department, looking for something (or several somethings), but were moving to head off subpoenas for other security files that weren’t on the McCarthy roster. If this in fact occurred, and there is no reason to suppose it didn’t, the White House would have wound up in custody of about 500 loyalty/security dossiers previously held in Foggy Bottom. None of which looked very much like “free and unlimited access” or preparation for full disclosure to the Senate.
Though now physically controlling the files, the White House hadn’t solved its PR dilemma. McCarthy kept pounding on the issue, saying that if he were wrong about the security mess at State, the President could readily prove it by releasing the records. Conversely, if the President didn’t release them, he must have been concealing something. It was the kind of point McCarthy was very good at making, and he made it often. This was the problem that worried Tydings when he sent Truman his memo of April 12 saying some kind of compromise settlement on the files ought to be arrived at.
This memo seems to have made at least some impression on Truman and his aides, since they followed its prescriptions in several places. Tydings had urged a stepped-up effort to portray the President as a tough Communist fighter while counterattacking against McCarthy. Just such an effort was made, in synch with the onslaught against McCarthy on the floor of the House and Senate. This matched the scenario sketched by Tydings, and so did what happened with the files. The anti-McCarthy blitz in Congress crescendoed on May 3. The very next day, Truman suddenly—and surprisingly—changed direction on the question of the files, or seemed to, saying access would now be granted to the Senate.
This turnabout, in the account of Tydings, was very much his doing. Since the President was against making any new disclosures, the chairman told his subcommittee colleagues, he had come at the matter from that angle. He had pointed out to Truman that the files on the Lee list cases had already been looked at by Congress, and since McCarthy’s cases were identical with the Lee list, it couldn’t do any further harm to let the Senate see these records. Truman bought this distinction, or so Tydings concluded, and the chairman reported back to the subcommittee that the impasse was over.
In summarizing this achievement, however, Tydings made still other comments about the files that proved to be mistaken. “The complete loyalty files of the State Department,” he announced, “will be made available to us on the 81 cases mentioned.” This statement would be repeated in the report of his committee, to wit: “…we have conscientiously reviewed each and every one of the loyalty files related to the individuals charged by Senator McCarthy.” And: “[Our inquiry] has included examination of each of the loyalty files of the so-called 81 individuals accused by Senator McCarthy…”9 (Emphasis added.)
These assertions, as shall be shown, weren’t correct, or even close to being so. But, even if they had been, they represented a drastic limitation on what the Senate investigators would be allowed to look at. By the terms of S.R. 231, the Tydings panel was to have subpoenaed the files of “all employees of the State Department…against whom charges have been heard.” (Emphasis added.) The Truman-Tydings pact said something different. Self-evidently, by its focus solely on the 81 (actually 80) original McCarthy cases, it screened out all other cases McCarthy/Morris had brought forward during the conduct of the hearings. As already seen, this would have been a huge exclusion.
Thus, to take the obvious examples, this proviso would have blocked out security records on Owen Lattimore, John Stewart Service, Mary Jane Keeney, Gustavo Duran, Haldore Hanson, O. Edmund Clubb, Theodore Geiger, and other important McCarthy cases who weren’t on the list of 80. By the same token, the additional net 22 cases submitted to Tydings on March 14 would have been excluded also. All told, the Truman-Tydings agreement—even had it been adhered to—would have omitted more than a third of all the cases surfaced by McCarthy-Morris.*182
While not all these people were in the State Department, the vast majority of them either were or had been—which meant they came within the scope of the Tydings mandate. This drastic shrinkage of the roster of McCarthy cases was thus in clear violation of S.R. 231, but that was only a beginning. There was the further point that the Senate would supposedly get only Lee-list cases—this on the assumption that all McCarthy suspects were included in that lineup. But not all of McCarthy’s original cases overlapped the Lee list. In fact, 10 of the 80 were derived from sources other than that list, and so by the terms of the Tydings-Truman compact would have been withheld from viewing. Added to the 44 cases that weren’t on the original list at all, this would have made a total of 54 McCarthy suspects on whom no files would be provided.
All this would seem to have been quite enough by way of limitations, but there was more to follow. The next constraint imposed, according to the FBI reports, was that no files would be provided on cases disposed of prior to the Truman loyalty order of March 1947. This would have blocked out still other records, most conspicuously those of Robert Miller, who left the State Department in December of 1946. Yet, as stressed in the memos of Sam Klaus in early 1947, Miller continued to be an important figure, as various of his close associates remained in the department, and this was still true in 1950. An examination of Miller’s file would have been essential in weighing, for instance, the cases of Rowena Rommel and Philip Raine, both close to Miller, both on McCarthy’s roster, and both still on the job at State when McCarthy brought his charges.
Though it didn’t affect the subcommittee directly, one further sidebar sheds some additional light on the nonstop maneuvering that went on in the handling of these records. While the Tydings panel was seeking access to the files, a parallel survey was supposed to have been conducted by the Civil Service Commission’s LRB, headed by Seth Richardson, a well-known Washington lawyer. This was treated at the time, and later, as a significant move by Truman. As the Tydings report would put it, the fact that the LRB was “to review each of the cases which were made available to us for review…is salutary, since the public is
entitled to the most nonpartisan estimate possible concerning these files.”10
This too sounded well, but in the event was mere palaver, as the Richardson LRB review amounted to little. For reasons we can only guess at, many significant files were withheld from the Richardson board, just as they would be from the Senate. As Hoover aide Lou Nichols reported on April 10, Peyton Ford at Justice had said “…anybody not in the government or [who] is under security or espionage investigation but…not covered by the presidential loyalty directive need not be provided to Mr. Richardson. As specific illustrations Ford mentioned that material on Owen Lattimore, Dr. Harlow Shapley and Gustavo Duran need not be sent to Mr. Richardson.”11 (Emphasis added.)
The specific exclusion of Lattimore, Shapley, and Duran obviously matched with the limits imposed on the Senate panel. There was, however, a further exclusion also. From the Nichols wording, it appears that anybody on the McCarthy list “not in the government” as of that date would be omitted from the files shown the LRB. This would have lopped off another group of cases—Richard Post, Stanley Graze, Jeanne Taylor, and others. These were all McCarthy and Lee list cases but no longer on the federal payroll in 1950.
In view of this restriction, a rather obvious question arises: Would loyalty/ security files denied the Richardson board have been given to the Senate? Although the records are unclear, this seems unlikely. In fact, it defies belief that Truman would have shown records to the Tydings panel that were denied to his own appointees. So it’s a reasonable inference that anything not provided to Seth Richardson wouldn’t have been shown to the likes of Lodge and Hickenlooper (and hence, all too probably, in some manner made known to Morris and McCarthy).
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