Based on the Hickenlooper Q & A, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that Judge Kenyon had been linked with a phenomenally large number of front groups, just as McCarthy contended. The Tydings panel estimated the number at twenty; and while the subcommittee downplayed the significance of these connections, it’s well to remember that, from the Biddle era forward, such designations weren’t whimsically arrived at. Even more to the point, under the Truman loyalty program, connection with even one such group was a factor supposedly weighed in gauging the security status of employees.
Yet, as brought out in the hearings, nobody in the State Department had ever asked Judge Kenyon a single question about these affiliations. This was developed in a further exchange between Hickenlooper and Kenyon:
QUESTION: Before you took public employment as a representative of this country in the United Nations did any official discuss with you the allegations of your membership in organizations that had been declared subversive?
ANSWER: Never. They have come and talked to me about other people.2
Thus, not only was McCarthy’s charge about Kenyon’s front connections supported by the hearing record, so was the arguably more important point that the State Department wasn’t enforcing the security standards that nominally governed its operations.
Haldore Hanson
Haldore Hanson was the second of the McCarthy public cases and, considering all the factors involved, might easily have been the first.
Hanson was a full-time State Department employee, as Judge Kenyon wasn’t. He had previously served on the staff of Assistant Secretary of State William Benton—one of the numerous group of McCarthy suspects once employed in that office. At the time of McCarthy’s charges, Hanson headed a division at State that dealt with matters of foreign aid. Most to the present point, he had in the latter 1930s gone on record with some revealing comments about the Communist cause in China, and otherwise had a vita that made him an obvious McCarthy target.
McCarthy’s Exhibit A was a book Hanson published in 1939 called Humane Endeavour,*204 based on his experiences and observations as a journalist in China. The book was full of plaudits for the Red Chinese similar to those expressed a few years later by John Service, a Hanson friend and sometime roommate. In the 1930s, a united front was in effect between the Reds and Chiang Kai-shek against Japan, and in this context Chiang merited some kind words from Hanson, as well as some that weren’t so kind. However, Hanson showed no similar ambiguity toward the Red Chinese, on whom he showered lavish kudos. McCarthy quoted some of these comments, and with one exception the quotes were accurate in detail,*205 leaving no doubt about the author’s ardent liking for the Yenan comrades.3
The pro-Communist message in the Hanson book came in two different guises: statements in his own behalf as to the nature of the Communist program and its leaders; and the views of others, including the Reds themselves and their admirers, presented as credible evidence on the merits of Mao’s revolution. The net effect is a more or less continuous hymn of praise, albeit spread out in different sections and interwoven with other topics not bearing on the issue. Following are some excerpts:
“The Red leaders organized the masses, gave them discipline and something worth fighting for.” “Chiang Kai-shek suppressed news of the victory because he feared the popularity of the Communists.” “The Red leaders became heroes to thousands of students in China…a self sacrificing spirit among these leaders seeped down through the ranks.” “…the whole [Red] army has a democratic spirit….” “Right wing groups in the China government still want a one party administration. They are fighting against the democratic revolution as proposed by Mao tse-tung and the Communists.”4 (Emphasis added.)
There was more in similar vein, including praise of Mao (“a completely selfless man”), curt dismissal of Communist atheism (“the Chinese leaders are not anti-Christian”), denial of Soviet influence (“the old bogy that Soviet Russia is directing the activities of the Chinese Communists”), and so on. Thrown in as a kind of bonus was a claim that the Soviets themselves had brought reform and progress to Asia: “Russian policy among the Outer Mongolians appealed to the common people by exposing the corruption of the priests and princes; aristocratic privilege was abolished.”†206 5
All these effusions were offered by Hanson in his own persona. They were wrapped around the pro-Communist views of others, cited as if they were prosaic, factual statements. Examples in this genre included quotes from Maoist guerrilla leaders, to wit: “…we decided to give each village a democratic council and complete political freedom.” And: “We wanted to be the first area in China to achieve genuine democracy…. The Communist Party, like the liberal group, is placing its faith in the democratic form of government.” This Red boilerplate was served up by Hanson with no hint of skepticism or need for any possible rebuttal.6
In short, McCarthy was not mistaken in saying Humane Endeavour was laced with pro-Red propaganda. And there were still other such aspects of the Hanson record that McCarthy correctly noted. One was Hanson’s tie-in during the 1930s with the magazine Democracy, which McCarthy said was a pro-Communist publication. In seeking to deny this, Hanson cited the involvement with the journal of allegedly distinguished writers and academics of non-Communist outlook. In its usual mode, the Tydings report uncritically accepted this denial and repeated it as a finding.
What this Hanson-Tydings rebuttal omitted was that the chief editors of Democracy were the pro-Red author Edgar Snow and his wife Nym Wales, both revealed in Cold War records as agents of the Communist interest (Snow as at best an obedient fellow traveler who took instruction from the Communist Party, Wales as an identified party member). Hanson himself had mentioned Snow and his wife as leaders of this publishing venture in Humane Endeavour but forgot to give them credit before the Senate.7 The Tydings panel, invincibly clueless, made no mention of the couple, apparently knew nothing about them, and made no effort to find out.
All this, however, was but prologue to a major bombshell of the hearings, one of several touched off by Louis Budenz, formerly of the Daily Worker. Asked to be specific about people he knew to be concealed members of the Communist Party, Budenz began reciting a considerable list. In order, he named Ella Winter, Joseph Barnes, Victor Yakhontoff, and Guenther Stein. Then came the bombshell: “Haldore Hanson. I knew him only from official reports to be a member of the Communist Party.” And further: “I…knew this not as a general matter but from official information received…. Not gossip around the headquarters; official information. I carried his name with me.”8
This was one of several such identifications by Budenz that floored the majority members of the panel. They managed, however, to regain their footing in time to clear Hanson in sweeping fashion, finding no indication in his case that there was anything amiss with security goings-on at State. Humane Endeavour was just reporting, Democracy a respectable journal, and the Budenz testimony “hearsay.” These see-no-evil comments don’t tell us much about the security drill at State but say a lot as to what it took to raise doubts about that drill with Tydings and his Democratic colleagues.
Esther Brunauer
Mrs. Brunauer was a former official at the American Association of University Women who got into the State Department in 1944, showed up like Hanson and several other McCarthy suspects on the staff of Assistant Secretary William Benton, and held various posts in the department dealing with the United Nations.*207
“DR. ESTHER BRUNAUER WILL PRESIDE”
A flyer advertising a 1936 meeting of the American Friends of the Soviet Union and the prominent involvement of Mrs. Brunauer.
Source: J. B. Matthews papers, Duke University
She was also a Lee list alum, the only one from that particular roster to become one of McCarthy’s public cases. It’s noteworthy, however, that McCarthy’s presentation of the case to Tydings was derived almost entirely from non-Lee sources. These included data about asserted Communist fronting on her part and loyalty/security information ab
out her husband, Stephen, a scientist working for the Navy.
When Mrs. Brunauer took the stand, she made an impassioned denial of McCarthy’s charges and presented a sheaf of testimonials in her behalf from important people. She also tagged McCarthy with at least one alleged error. He said she had served as an assistant to Alger Hiss at the United Nations founding conference in San Francisco. This wasn’t so, she countered, as she had worked with the American delegation there while Hiss had been secretary general of the whole shebang. This Brunauer answer, however, was itself a bit of an evasion, obscuring the substantive point at issue.
As it turned out, Mrs. Brunauer had been a State Department staffer at the Dumbarton Oaks conference of 1944, which laid the groundwork for the founding of the United Nations. The executive secretary of the American group at Dumbarton Oaks was Hiss, who thus would have been her superior at this U.N.-related confab. Thereafter, she was a Hiss subordinate in the Office of Special Political Affairs at State. As she had been an aide to Hiss in any event, the statement about the San Francisco conference was hardly an outrageous smear but got ostentatiously counted by Tydings as a McCarthy error.9
Other McCarthy allegations about Mrs. Brunauer were well substantiated by the record, though it takes some sleuthing to discern this. One charge was that she had presided at a 1936 meeting of the American Friends of the Soviet Union, an egregious front group, featuring the pro-Soviet speaker Myra Page. In the manner of Judge Kenyon, Mrs. Brunauer claimed to have no recollection of this meeting, but the proof of her involvement was clear (see Chapter 27). It was moreover revealed that she had spoken at yet another gathering of the same front group two years before.
Likewise, there was no denying another McCarthy charge, though Mrs. Brunauer and the Tydings panel did all they could in trying to obscure it: that she had participated in a “call” for a national meeting of the American Youth Congress (AYC)—a group the Communists had famously taken over at its inception, and cited in the Francis Biddle list of 1942. As shown in the McCarthy exhibits, her name appeared on a call for a “Congress of Youth,” a conclave of the AYC held in New York City in 1938. According to Mrs. Brunauer, however, the meeting she sponsored had nothing to do with the subversive AYC. Her denial was, in the usual manner, echoed by the Tydings report, which found “no evidence before the committee that this particular matter was under the domination of the American Youth Congress.”10
This was, even for Tydings, a bit much. In fact, the evidence linking the Brunauer effort with the AYC was ample. As noted in Appendix IX, the Brunauer-sponsored “call” and accompanying list of cosigners were taken “from the proceedings of the Congress of Youth, being the fifth national gathering of the American Youth Congress.” Likewise, a roll call of officers chosen at this meeting tells us, “elected officers listed above constitute the Cabinet of the American Youth Congress.”11 (Emphasis added.) In sum, the conclave Mrs. Brunauer sponsored was a meeting of the AYC—information that Tydings and his staffers had in their possession. Her denial was rather like saying the Republican national convention has no connection to the Republican Party.
A related McCarthy charge was that Brunauer had been on the executive board of the American Union for Concerted Peace Efforts (formerly the Committee for Concerted Peace Efforts, the same group with the same leadership—her name appearing under both designations). McCarthy said the group had been identified as subversive by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and that “the leader of the group was Clarence Hathaway, editor of The Daily Worker.”12 Mrs. Brunauer again denied all, saying the Peace Efforts operation was intensely patriotic, there were no Reds or pro-Reds in it, and Clarence Hathaway had no connection to it.
Once more, so far as Tydings was concerned, a denial was a refutation. In discussing the Peace Efforts agitation and clearing Mrs. Brunauer for her involvement with it, his report came down hard on the Clarence Hathaway issue—using the same ingenious phrasing that disposed of inconvenient data about the AYC. “There is no evidence before us,” said the report, “to support the allegation that the editor of the Daily Worker was involved therewith.”13
Again, a check of the records shows that the evidence existed—albeit not deemed “before” the Tydings panel—though it also tells us McCarthy made an error of his own in his allusion to it. The basis for his charge was a 1944 report of the House Committee on Un-American Activities that described the Peace Efforts operation as supporting “the same goals as the Communist front American League for Peace and Democracy” and saying Clarence Hathaway was “a leader” in this project (not “the leader,” as stated by McCarthy).*208 14
So, sorting out the details, we find that McCarthy upgraded Clarence Hathaway from “a” leader in the Peace Efforts agitation to “the” leader, obviously a different connotation in terms of Communist influence. Over against this we may place the categorical statements of Mrs. Brunauer and the Tydings panel that Clarence Hathaway had no involvement with the enterprise whatever. Thus, neither side in this dispute earned top marks for precision. Readers may judge for themselves which of the two errors was more misleading.
All told, the Communist-front affiliations of Mrs. Brunauer weren’t of overwhelming number—nor did McCarthy press the point unduly. Far more significant, he said, was the case of her husband, Stephen, working on classified weapons research for the Navy. Intimating that he knew something of the security record on Stephen, McCarthy raised points he said the Tydings panel should look into: whether Stephen had been subject to security investigation for the past ten years; whether he was a close friend of the absconded Communist Noel Field; and whether Stephen Brunauer himself was not an admitted former member of the Communist Party.*209 15
Tydings gave no credence to any of this, dismissing the case out of hand on the grounds that Stephen wasn’t in the State Department. Nonetheless, the panel did manage to give Stephen a “clearance” of sorts, saying of McCarthy’s charges: “The record contains a complete denial of these allegations, as well as substantial evidence to support that denial.”16 This was in the inimitable Tydings manner true, as Brunauer himself denied the allegations and the subcommittee printed the denial, so “the record” unquestionably did “contain” such a denial. (Likewise, the “substantial evidence” was the material Brunauer presented.) Thus, both Brunauers were in effect cleared by Tydings, based strictly on their own assertions.
To all of this there would be a sequel. In April 1951, a year after the Tydings hearings, both Brunauers were suspended from their official jobs in proceedings under the Hiram Bingham loyalty board. The official summaries of the two cases tracked closely with McCarthy’s charges. In the case of Esther, the particulars included allegations that she had been active with the American Friends of the Soviet Union, the Union (Committee) for Concerted Peace Efforts, the American Friends of German Freedom (a Paul Hagen operation),*210 and in the latter 1920s and early ’30s had been in close and habitual contact with persons known to be Communist or pro-Communist.
In the case of Stephen, the charges were that he had been linked with Communist or pro-Red groups from 1924 to 1932 and “possibly later,” had been an “underground” member of the Communist Party, and kindred allegations. Some of this Stephen admitted, but he said it was ancient history and that he had long since renounced all such sympathies and contacts. These explanations might have been availing had not other items in the record worked against him. Particularly damaging to his case were charges that he tried to obtain a special pass to attend the Bikini atomic tests in 1946, was turned down in these efforts, and then misrepresented the facts about the matter when questioned.17
In the end, Stephen was subject to dismissal by the Navy and declined to fight this at a hearing. His case rebounded on that of Esther, who was found not to be disloyal but was adjudged a security risk because of her ties to Stephen. All this occurred, it’s worth repeating, under the Truman-Bingham loyalty setup, two years after the cases of both Brunauers had been casually brushed aside by
Tydings.
Gustavo Duran
The foregoing episodes tell us something about security practice at the State Department before McCarthy came along and the handling of such matters by Millard Tydings. None, however, was more revealing than the case of Gustavo Duran, one of the most instructive in Cold War records.
In this instance, McCarthy to all appearances assumed the investigative burden Tydings thrust upon him, producing copious documentation on Duran, pointing up the security issues involved, and providing leads for further investigation. The essence of the McCarthy case was the same as that set forth in Chapter 12: that Duran had been named in intelligence reports as a Soviet agent in the Spanish Civil War, despite this had been taken on by State, and thereafter moved with evident ease to the United Nations—where he was employed when McCarthy made his charges.
McCarthy stressed the porous to nonexistent security measures that allowed Duran to enter the State Department and stay there for several years, and raised the further question of how someone with Duran’s record had so readily moved to the U.N. On the latter point, Tydings initially concurred, asserting: “Senator McCarthy, I would like to say that your inquiry that we should find out who got him the job in the United Nations…will be part of our inquiry. We don’t know who he is, whether innocent or guilty, but we will find out anyway.”18
In the event, no such inquest would happen. As earlier noted, data on Gustavo Duran were among the records the Truman White House explicitly refused to provide the Tydings panel or the Seth Richardson LRB. As with the twenty-two net additional McCarthy names that were supposed to be followed up by the subcommittee but were dropped entirely, Tydings accepted this constraint as one of his own ground rules, blandly dismissing the Duran case as falling outside the panel’s province. This despite the fact that Duran, as a former State Department employee, was clearly within the scope of S.R. 231.*211
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