Blacklisted By History

by M. Stanton Evans

  This episode seemed rather puzzling for a mere “writer and scholar,” as Lattimore claimed to be, pursuing purely academic interests. Why would such an ivory tower figure ask the veteran Comintern agent Chen Han-Seng for information on troop deployments under Chiang Kai-shek, then locked in a death struggle with the Reds of China? And why, indeed, was this hard-core Moscow agent and member of the Sorge spy ring being sponsored and mentored by Lattimore in the first place?

  As the case of Chen suggests, Lattimore spent an inordinate amount of time swimming in a veritable Red sea of officially identified Communist spies and Moscow agents. Among his innumerable contacts of this nature, according to the Bureau and McCarran records, were Chi Chao-ting, Lauchlin Currie, T. A. Bisson, Frederick Field, Michael Greenberg, Mary Jane Keeney, Philip Jaffe, David Wahl, Harriet Moore, Rose Yardumian, Lawrence Rosinger, and Guenther Stein, all earlier noted in these pages. All were also identified under oath to Congress, and in investigations of the Bureau, as Communists, Soviet spies, or agents of influence for the Kremlin.

  As the names of Bisson, Chi, Field, and Jaffe further suggest, Lattimore was tight with the Amerasia crowd, since all of these had been closely connected, as had he, to that unusual publication. Throw in the names of Andy Roth and Lauchlin Currie and it’s obvious Lattimore was linked as well, not just to the journal, but to key figures in the scandal and the cover-up that followed. When we recall that the biggest fish caught in the Amerasia net was John Service, yet another Lattimore friend and ally, it’s self-evident the professor was tied to this crew by multiple contacts, a fact well noted by the Bureau.

  There is one other such Amerasia linkage reflected in the Bureau archives, though not recorded in the usual histories. This involved the Chinese national Chew Hong, who worked for Lattimore at OWI in the war years and was then under suspicion by security forces as a Red agent. In an episode uncovered by McCarthy, Lattimore had gone to bat for Chew, overridden the security types at Civil Service, and thus kept Chew on the payroll at OWI (along with Chi Chung Kuan, the father of Chi Chao-ting).

  All of that happened in 1943. Two years later came the Amerasia case. In this inquiry, the FBI found that many purloined documents had stemmed from OWI, often bearing indications that showed who had had them in his possession. In several cases, these papers had check marks by the name of Chew Hong, suggesting these were his copies. Based on that information, Hoover and his agents considered Chew a prime suspect in the case—and were also taking a look at other Lattimore protégés and allies at OWI. In the Amerasia affair, it seemed, all roads led to the professor.*225 24

  From these fragments, a number of conclusions are apparent. Most obviously, it’s clear that somebody—or several somebodies—alleged that Lattimore had been a Soviet intelligence asset in China in 1927, had been something similar in the 1930s, and then again in 1941–42 when he was advising Chiang. On top of this, according to Barmine, Red Army general Berzin said Lattimore had been a Soviet intelligence agent—an allegation repeated by Barmine in an appearance before McCarran. And it’s obvious that Lattimore was linked, in myriad ways, to the Amerasia combine.

  All this was well known to the Bureau, and all of it was the subject of an active investigation when Joe McCarthy made his charges and Tydings held his hearings. It’s thus clear that when Tydings said there was “nothing in that file…to show…that you were in any way connected with any espionage information or charges,” he was once more baldly misstating what’s in the records. As the investigation was ongoing, and the redacted fragments are hard to gauge, this doesn’t mean the charges were true, or that if they had once been true they remained so in 1950. But, again, the fact that the charges existed and were being carefully vetted by the Bureau is an incontestable fact of record.*226

  As to whether such charges were valid when McCarthy made his later-retracted “espionage” allegation, given the condition of the files, it’s hard to judge, but the probabilities are against it (and even if the charges were true it’s hard to see how McCarthy could have proved them). Lattimore may well have been coaching or debriefing the Amerasia suspects, or receiving intel from Chen, and could have been involved in transmitting such data himself years before from China. However, the likelihood that he was directly engaged in such activity circa 1950 was small, for two reasons. One is that, after he left OWI, he would have had little or no independent access to confidential data worth passing on to Moscow; the other is that he was far too important in his role as propagandist to have been involved in the often petty but always dangerous business of filching papers.

  In this connection, the Lattimore ties to Currie are instructive. The two were especially close and worked together on many projects. It was Currie who got Lattimore named adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, then engineered his appointment to travel with Henry Wallace to the USSR and China. As noted, both Currie and Lattimore were tied to the British émigré-Bentley suspect Michael Greenberg, who first worked at the IPR and then smoothly transferred to Currie’s operation on the staff of the White House. Currie-Lattimore had also joined forces to get the notorious Communist agent Field an appointment to military intelligence in the war years (an effort that was, fortunately, thwarted).

  That Currie himself was engaged in spying we know from the Bentley testimony and the witness of Venona, which suggests there was nothing wildly implausible in the notion that his good buddy and alter ego Lattimore might have done the same, had opportunity presented. However, Currie on the White House staff had access to confidential data that Lattimore, generally speaking, didn’t. There would have thus been up through mid-1945 (when Currie left the government) a fairly natural division of labor: Currie as Mr. Inside, handling the espionage aspect, Lattimore as Mr. Outside, carrying on the public propaganda.

  All this brings us back to that “desk in the State Department” McCarthy said Lattimore had, Lattimore swore he didn’t, and the Tydings panel concluded was another McCarthy falsehood. In the files of the IPR, the McCarran panel discovered a 1942 Lattimore memo saying: “I am in Washington about four days a week, and when there can always be reached at Lauchlin Currie’s office, Room 228, State Department Building, Telephone National 1414, extension 90.”25 Confronted with this, Lattimore said it totally slipped his mind when he was asked if he “had a desk” in the State Department and denied it. Only when the McCarran panel came up with documentary proof did he remember.*227 But then, as noted, he was a busy man and couldn’t be expected to recall such petty details about his crowded wartime schedule.

  CHAPTER 30

  Dr. Jessup and Mr. Field

  IF LATTIMORE was the intellectual guru of the IPR and Edward Carter its organizational spark plug, its most eminent and visible leader holding federal office was Ambassador Philip Jessup.

  There were others connected to IPR with past or present government rank as prestigious as that of Jessup, some a good deal more so—Gen. George C. Marshall, former Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, and other such distinguished figures. In most cases of this kind, however, the tie-in was mainly formal—a matter of lending a name, or sometimes a presence, to help a seemingly worthy outfit. Off-hand associations of that sort didn’t mean the people involved knew much about the IPR, its personnel or daily workings.

  Jessup was different. Far from being a casual supporter or letterhead decoration, he was actively engaged with the Institute for about a decade and high up in its inner councils. He had served as chairman of the American group, leader of the international body, and head of the IPR research committee, which had oversight of publications. In the period 1939–42, especially, he was in constant contact with Edward Carter, involved in making decisions about meetings, speakers, and research projects, as integral to the functioning of the group as any full-time staffer.

  This background became the more important when Jessup went on to become a major figure in the State Department. In March of 1949, he ascended to the post of Ambassador at Large and would be asked by Dean Acheson to play a pivotal
public role in the conduct of China policy. Most conspicuously, Jessup would head the committee that crafted the “White Paper,” released in August 1949, washing our hands of the anti-Communist Chiang Kai-shek in China, declaring the Communists the winners of the civil war there, and arguing that nothing occurring in that struggle could be laid at the door of State.

  The white paper was significant, and would be disputed, not only for what it said but for what it did. At the time it was put together, the fighting was still going on in China, with the Communists controlling about half of the country, mostly in the north, while the forces of Chiang Kai-shek were hanging on in southern China. There were those knowledgeable on the matter, such as Defense Secretary Louis Johnson and Gen. Claire Chennault, who urged that the document not be issued, saying it would strike the final deathblow at the anti-Communist forces, signaling that they were abandoned. The paper was released nonetheless, with exactly the political-psychological effects predicted.

  This having been accomplished, Acheson called on Jessup to play a further role in shaping policy toward Asia—to organize and lead a conference of Far East experts to discuss the proper course for the United States to take following the China meltdown. Jessup accepted this assignment, and such a confab was duly held in early October 1949, involving a most unusual mix of speakers and advancing some provocative notions. Thereafter, Jessup would continue as an Acheson confidant on other matters, also mainly geared to China.

  Jessup was thus the State Department official who most clearly linked the program of the IPR to policy-making in Foggy Bottom. His only competitor for this honor was John Carter Vincent, who had even more to do with policy but whose connections to IPR, though close, weren’t nearly so close as those of Jessup. Making Jessup’s role somewhat peculiar was the fact that, despite his IPR involvements, he wasn’t an Asia or China expert. His background was in international law, which he taught for many years at Columbia University Law School. As Acheson likewise knew little about Chinese affairs, he and Jessup were on this point oddly twinned, but between them would make a lot of policy on China.

  McCarthy had tried to raise the question of Jessup’s views and actions before the Tydings panel but got nowhere in the effort. Tydings would hear nothing on the subject from McCarthy, but instead brought the ambassador to the stand to make an impassioned defense of his career, opinions, and credentials, an appearance treated by Sens. Brien McMahon and Theodore Green as a forensic triumph. Histories of the era reflect this view and would lead one to believe McCarthy had nothing to back his stance, simply tried to slander Jessup, and in this was ignominiously defeated. But as with other topics noted, a study of the documentary sources suggests another reading—and in this instance McCarthy was eventually able to get a lot of documents on record.

  Of prime importance in the Jessup saga were Senate hearings in September and October 1951 in which his qualifications to be a U.S. delegate to the United Nations were considered, and McCarthy appeared as principal witness in opposition. Here McCarthy would make his case in somewhat orderly manner and debate it with Democratic senators John Sparkman of Alabama, the subcommittee chairman, and the archliberal J. W. Fulbright of Arkansas, inveterately hostile to McCarthy. Likewise, Jessup was on the stand for several hours, cross-examined by Sen. Owen Brewster (R-Maine) and to a lesser extent by Sens. Guy Gillette (D-Iowa) and H. Alexander Smith (R-N.J.), the other members of the panel.

  In his critique of Jessup, McCarthy brought forth materials concerning the ambassador’s actions and opinions, allegedly proving an “affinity for Communist causes.” A vast amount of time was spent on Jessup’s links, or lack thereof, to cited Communist front groups. McCarthy said Jessup was connected to five of these, plus a sixth affiliation involving Mrs. Jessup (and Jessup himself somewhat less directly). Details about these matters are perhaps of little intrinsic interest now except to specialists on such issues, but in 1951 they were thought important, and much effort was devoted to parsing them correctly. Their significance for this study is akin to that of the Wheeling numbers, the four committees, or the backstage history of the Amerasia scandal, as they go to the question of who was being accurate and honest, who erred as to details, and who was actively trying to obscure the record.

  One thing the Sparkman hearings made clear was that McCarthy had his documents in order, and projected them in graphic fashion. His exhibits included the letterheads of Communist fronts, citations of these from official sources, copies of checks the Communist Frederick Field had written to the IPR, and related items. In the case of the asserted fronts, the point was to show the pro-Red character of the group on the one hand and Jessup’s connection to it on the other. In all such cases, the McCarthy data were accurate in detail, but in one particular could be faulted, and promptly were, for lack of context.1

  This was the Committee to Lift the Spanish Embargo, concerning which McCarthy’s exhibit showed the nature of the group, its citation as subversive by the Attorney General, and the fact that its literature featured a quote from Jessup and another law professor in support of its position (one of several such quotes in the original document). On examination, and as McCarthy acknowledged, this didn’t mean Jessup was a member or sponsor of the group, but rather that it was in sympathy with his views, which was a different matter.

  Jessup and his supporters made much of this, and there was logic to their protest. McCarthy countered that the point of the exhibit was that Jessup opposed an embargo on the sale of arms to pro-Communist elements in Spain in the 1930s, but supported an embargo on arms to England during the Hitler-Stalin pact. This was true, and rather important, but on the merits of the exhibit as such Jessup had his best moments of rebuttal. In the other cases, there was less to be said—though much was attempted—in behalf of Jessup, and this plainly weakened his credibility with the panel. McCarthy’s charges relating to these matters, and Jessup’s answers, were as follows:

  • The National Emergency Conference for Democratic Rights. This group had been cited by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and a House Appropriations subcommittee as a Communist front on no fewer than three occasions—in 1943, 1944, and 1947. It was indeed a quite obvious front, including such familiar denizens of the Marxoid left as Franz Boas, Robert Morss Lovett, Lillian Hellman, and numerous others known to students of the genre. (It was also a predecessor to an even more notorious front called the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties—cited in the Francis Biddle list of 1942.)

  Philip Jessup was listed as one of the sponsors of the National Emergency Conference, as shown by McCarthy in his photostatic copy of its letterhead. Jessup’s response to this was (a) that, à la Dorothy Kenyon, he had “no recollection” of being involved with it and that his name must have been used without his permission; and (b) that anyway, other respectable folk who weren’t Communists in the slightest had been involved with it as well. In this category, Fulbright, and later Jessup himself, highlighted the name of Sen. Paul Douglas (D-Ill.), a well-known anti-Communist liberal.2

  On inspection, these answers didn’t appear to be too convincing—the reference to Senator Douglas being especially unhelpful. As emphasized by Senator Brewster, Paul Douglas had been a member of the group but in 1940 resigned from it in a testy letter to Franz Boas, precisely because it was so conspicuous a front.3 Jessup, who said his name was used without his consent and had known about the listing for some time before it was surfaced by McCarthy, had made no similar move to sever the connection. His failure to do so elicited a doubtful comment from Democrat Gillette—a danger sign for Jessup, indicating he was losing ground with moderate members of the panel.*228 4

  • The American Russian Institute. This was an equally blatant outfit set up in the 1920s by the Soviets and run by their American henchmen to promote the Moscow cause in U.S. discourse. Its leaders, too, were well known in Communist-fronting circles and included such hardy perennials of the breed as Henry Pratt Fairchild, John A. Kingsbury, Joe Barnes, Paul Robeson, and man
y others of like nature (including Jessup’s IPR associate, Edward Carter).

  As for Jessup’s connections with the ARI, McCarthy produced documentation showing the ambassador had sponsored a formal dinner put on by the group, in company with such as Howard Fast, Corliss Lamont, Albert Rhys Williams, Langston Hughes, Ella Winter, and others from the united-front wars of the 1930s and early ’40s. (In fact, as it developed, Jessup had sponsored two such dinners.) This irrefutable evidence produced much twisting and turning by Jessup, assisted a bit in these gyrations by his committee allies.

  Jessup’s first defense was one of the usual efforts at deconstruction—that, after all, many prominent non-Communists had been connected with the dinners also. He made the further point that he had merely sponsored the dinners, not the group itself, though this distinction didn’t seem very important to his interlocutors. His main argument, however, was a variation on the mistaken-identity plea made in behalf of Gustavo Duran and some other McCarthy targets—except Jessup argued that, in this case, there was a mistake about the identity of the organization, allegedly being confused with another, totally separate outfit.

  Keying to a statement in 1948 by Attorney General Clark that included a subversive listing for the American Russian Institute of California—also listed as subversive that year by the California state legislature’s Committee on Un-American Activities—Jessup contended this was completely different from the group he dealt with in New York (and made a similar argument about yet a third ARI in Boston). On this basis, Senators Fulbright and Sparkman sprang to his defense, concluding that McCarthy had confused a good American Russian Institute in New York with a presumptively bad American Russian Institute in California.