Blacklisted By History

by M. Stanton Evans

  In retrospect, it was a fairly illustrious crew that set out in 1953 on the governance of the republic, at the height of its historic clash with Moscow. It included no fewer than four Presidents of the United States, who among them would serve until the 1970s (Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon),*252 two others who would be nominees of their parties (Goldwater, Humphrey), three Vice Presidents (Nixon, Johnson, Humphrey), and a slew of once and future serious contenders for the White House (Taft, Robert Kennedy, Symington, Jackson).†253 Virtually all the principal leaders of the country for the next generation, and thus for a big chunk of the Cold War, were actors in or products of the Ike-McCarthy era.

  Outside the ranks of government, there were other consequential figures—mostly in the press corps—who would make their influence felt on a daily basis. On the anti-McCarthy side were ranged some of the most powerful media institutions, journalists, and broadcasters of the epoch. These included the Time-Life empire, the New York Times, the Washington Post, provincial newspapers such as the Milwaukee Journal and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, elite broadcaster Murrow of CBS and like-minded radio/TV personalities, columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop, Drew Pearson, Marquis Childs, and Walter Lippmann—to name only the more famous.

  However, back then more than now, there were some heavyweight daily papers on the conservative side of the divide that were zealous backers of McCarthy. Foremost among these were Col. Robert McCormick’s Chicago Tribune and (until 1954) Washington Times Herald, and their top correspondents Willard Edwards and Walter Trohan, the Hearst newspapers including the New York Journal American, columnists Sokolsky, Westbrook Pegler, and Walter Winchell, publisher/columnist David Lawrence of U.S. News & World Report, and radio commentator Fulton Lewis Jr. Somewhere in the middle, leaning mostly to the right but none too friendly toward McCarthy, were the Scripps-Howard papers, led by the New York World Telegram and Sun, Washington Daily News, and correspondent Frederick Woltman.

  As those lineups suggest, the media face-off in those days was a good deal more balanced than it would become about a decade later. This meant McCarthy had some important journalistic allies who were able to communicate and amplify his message in a way that wouldn’t be possible for a hard-line anti-Red or conservative politician beginning in the 1960s. The existence of such media firepower on the right was a critical factor in McCarthy’s ability to get the word out and undoubtedly helped account for some of his early successes with the public.

  Also important in the political mix were outside interest groups and lobbies that followed national security issues. In the McCarthy corner were such as the American Legion, conservative business interests and individuals, and a host of patriotic and women’s groups who took up the cudgels for rightward causes. On the left end of the spectrum were the Americans for Democratic Action, American Civil Liberties Union, labor leaders of the CIO, some large foundations, academic institutions and liberal church groups, plus the already met with, small but savvy, Committee for an Effective Congress.

  Finally, on the McCarthy side of things were researchers, writers, and security experts who provided him with information, advice, and counsel. Among this number were J. B. Matthews, Ben Mandel, and Robert Morris, all specialists on security matters; writers Ralph de Toledano and Freda Utley; journalists/researchers such as Ed Nellor and Howard Rushmore; and a couple of young conservative firebrands just out of Yale—William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell. All would assist the McCarthy cause, by word or deed, in the struggles that were to follow.

  In terms of internal staffing, McCarthy tried to resolve his Cohn-Kennedy dilemma by naming Francis “Frip” Flanagan, a veteran Hill operative who had previously served with the committee, as “general counsel,” Cohn as chief counsel, and Robert Kennedy as assistant counsel. It would prove to be a confused and confusing arrangement. Otherwise, both then and later, McCarthy would lean heavily on former agents of the FBI—these including Don Surine, Francis Carr, and James Juliana, among others. The FBI connection was important to both McCarthy and Cohn, with the powerful J. Edgar Hoover, tacitly and sometimes explicitly an ally but also at times a critic, ever watchful in the background.

  Of course, in all of this, there was one player whose influence trumped all the rest—the new chief executive in the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was his administration and his party, by virtue of his nomination and election; his conduct in office and views about the issues that would be decisive, for good or ill, in what would happen from this point forward. His imposing presence, as events soon proved, would transform the political dynamics of the Capital City, the Republican Party, and the nation. However, so far as Congress was concerned, most observers were intently focused on the high-flying Joe McCarthy, wondering what he was going to do and how he would go about it. They would have much to see, and ponder.

  CHAPTER 34

  Uncertain Voice

  BY FAR the best way of judging the work of Joe McCarthy—and standard treatments of his conduct—is to study the record of Senate hearings at which he presided as committee chairman. Though drastically compressed in time, that record would prove to be substantial and, in many respects, impressive.

  McCarthy, Cohn and Co. obviously meant to get a lot accomplished with their new committee and do it fairly quickly. They hit the ground running in early 1953 with a rapid series of investigations, most now forgotten, others that would be much discussed, if none too accurately, in retrospectives of the era. The hectic schedule is suggested by some comparative numbers. In 1952, according to subcommittee case files, the PSI had held only six days of executive hearings, in which eight witnesses were heard, followed by twenty days of public hearings, a leisurely pace for a major panel of Congress. In 1953, under McCarthy-Cohn, all these figures were ratcheted up in dramatic fashion: 95 days of executive hearings, 331 witnesses called, 75 days of public hearings.1

  Thus, though McCarthy would in effect be chairman of PSI for only about a year and a quarter, his subcommittee did the equivalent of perhaps a decade’s work, measured by the previous output, in a concentrated burst of action.*254 Among the topics covered were tax manipulations and charges of influence peddling, stockpiling practices of the General Services Administration, the condition of State Department employee records, U.S. information services overseas, trade with the Communist bloc of nations, operations of the Government Printing Office, and a series of probes involving security practice in the Army Signal Corps and its several offshoots. This last would be the most extensive and most controverted of all McCarthy inquests, and the most famous.

  Thanks to the fifty-year rule governing confidential Senate records, we now have the executive-session transcripts of the McCarthy panel, added to the long-available transcripts of its public hearings, plus some backup files of the committee. Together these comprise thousands of pages of densely packed material covering a host of issues, hundreds of people, and scores of institutions, and giving us a fairly comprehensive view of McCarthy and his staffers going about their daily business. Anyone who reads these hearings and backup records, or any significant portion of them, will be struck by the contrast between the picture they convey and the accepted image of McCarthy.

  Among the more conspicuous features of the early subcommittee sessions were McCarthy’s frequent comments about the new Republican administration that had just taken office and his relations with his Democratic colleagues. In both cases, the transcripts show, he was generally speaking a model of politesse—something nobody could possibly figure out by reading a whole library of books about McCarthy now available to the public.

  In his investigations of the State Department files, Voice of America, U.S. Information Service, Army Signal Corps, and other topics, McCarthy repeatedly stressed, as was only common sense, that the problems being looked at were not the doing of the Eisenhower White House, State Department, or Department of Defense. On the contrary, he said, the difficulties complained of resulted from practices of the previous administration and hold
overs from the days of Truman. McCarthy metronomically praised the initiatives of the new regime, the improvements Ike and his appointees were making, and the cooperation the committee was getting from these sources.2

  At the same time, in an unlikely but for a while successful balancing act, McCarthy was, in contrast to later scenes of acrimony, the soul of collegiality with Democratic members—John McClellan first and foremost, but also Stuart Symington and Henry Jackson. These minority members of the panel often took leading roles in the early investigations, were encouraged to do so by McCarthy, and were praised by him in this connection. Exchanges between McCarthy and his Democratic colleagues at this time were not only civil but quite cordial. Conversely, some of the most trenchant questioning of witnesses, and toughest comments on the problems dealt with, were offered by the Democratic members.

  A third conspicuous feature of the hearings was the leeway granted even hostile witnesses, up to and including conduct plainly contumacious. Again contra the usual horror stories, witnesses before the panel were (a) permitted to have counsel present and confer with counsel on an unlimited basis; (b) given time to obtain counsel, and urged to do so if they didn’t have such; (c) allowed to say almost anything they wanted, including criticism of McCarthy, challenges to the jurisdiction of the panel, and ideological filibusters of all types—though these always tended in the same direction.

  McCarthy was usually patient with such harangues, seldom tried to gavel someone into silence, and would even debate feisty witnesses on extraneous issues as to their legal merits or lack thereof. When a witness wanted to read a defiant manifesto challenging the panel’s jurisdiction, rather than instantly ruling this out of order, McCarthy would say, “You may read your statement,” placidly sit through the filibuster, announce “The motion is denied,” and continue with the hearing. He even viewed with relative equanimity witnesses who took the Fifth Amendment if they plausibly invoked it to protect themselves from possible incrimination.

  The main exceptions to these rules involved obstreperous witnesses who invoked the Fifth in far-fetched manner, cloaked refusal to answer in some other guise, or were otherwise stonewalling or evasive. McCarthy wouldn’t permit witnesses both to engage in such tactics and to indulge in long harangues. On the occasions where this combination occurred, he would get his back up, say the committee didn’t need any speeches from witnesses who refused to say whether they were Reds or not, and/or dismiss the witness. (An infallible sign of McCarthy’s ire was when he addressed the witness as “Mister”—as in, “Mister, we’re going to repeat the question until we get an answer.”)

  Another salient feature of the McCarthy hearings was the rule that no one should be named as a Communist, pro-Communist, or subversive unless the person named was given notice and the opportunity to respond directly—though there were exceptions when another witness would do such naming on an impromptu basis. McCarthy repeatedly admonished people testifying not to use the names of those they were accusing until these conditions could be met with. One result of this procedure was a series of face-to-face encounters in which accusers and accused were brought together in dramatic fashion.*255 3

  As these comments are so starkly different from what is typically said about McCarthy’s methods, the reader understandably may find them hard to credit. It may thus be useful to note the views about the subject of a Democratic member of the McCarthy panel, as recorded early on by Samuel Shaffer of Newsweek. In the spring of 1953, Shaffer provided a lengthy wrap-up for his editors, devoted to McCarthy’s doings, including the way he managed his committee. In the course of this, Shaffer quoted an (unnamed) Democratic member of the panel as follows: “I must say I have a more favorable opinion of McCarthy than I used to have before I came on this committee. He is a very able lawyer. He is damn sharp. He is fair and courteous to members of his committee. He doesn’t bulldoze the witnesses as much as I expected him to. In fact, he has permitted hostile witnesses to speak at great length.”4

  Though the senator who said this wasn’t named, the internal evidence of the memo suggests it was Henry Jackson. The senator was new to the committee, which excludes McClellan, who had already served there with McCarthy. It further appears the senator was a lawyer, which Stuart Symington wasn’t. By process of elimination, this left Jackson as the person probably being quoted. As shall be seen, he and McCarthy at this time were working more or less harmoniously together on some significant issues.

  A contemporaneous appraisal of McCarthy from a more friendly source, Chicago Tribune correspondent Willard Edwards, likewise testified to McCarthy’s generally measured conduct, even under provocation. “Many will be astonished by this,” said Edwards, “but the fact is that McCarthy is an extraordinarily patient man. He has more self-control than almost any public figure I have encountered in the past two decades. This writer has had…almost numberless occasions to marvel at his control under persistent and insulting questions by hostile reporters….An abusive Fifth Amendment witness gets slapped down promptly but ordinarily McCarthy maintains an even temperament…”5

  These generic comments about McCarthy’s conduct of the subcommittee would be underscored from time to time by agency heads, including the commander of a military post that was under investigation and even the defense attorney for an accused subversive, remarking on the fairness and courtesy of the proceedings. There were, of course, episodes of an opposite nature also, in which things erupted into violent confrontation, and these instances are the ones that get all the notice in the usual write-ups. Some of these contentious sessions, and why they occurred, will be considered in their turn hereafter.

  So much, for the moment, on procedural aspects of the hearings. In terms of substance, the early McCarthy investigations often made good headway, mostly concerning issues that engaged his interest when he was a backbencher and freelancer. Among the first of these was the handling of State Department personnel files, which had been a crucial issue in his Homeric battles with the Truman White House. The condition of those files, the hearings showed, was deplorable in the extreme, concerning which the committee would come up with some shocking revelations and also with proposals to fix things.

  The star witness in these sessions was Helen Balog, earlier quoted, in charge of some 8,000 files concerning Foreign Service personnel. She testified that, in the State Department file setup, there was no way of telling if something had ever been in the folders, had been extracted, or had otherwise been fooled around with. There was no pagination or serialization system, and no index or control card showing what was in the records. She further said several hundred people had access to the files, that folders were often moved around the building willy-nilly, and that some were kept out of the file room for a year and longer.

  In describing this unruly scene, up to and including the matter of John Service’s toiling over the files at night, Mrs. Balog testified with utmost candor. She was obviously an intrepid lady. In executive session, however, she expressed concern about possible sanctions from the State Department for having been so outspoken, saying, “I want you people to protect me.”6 John Matson, a departmental witness who seconded Mrs. Balog’s description of the files, would testify that he had been demoted to more menial duty after he protested their sloppy handling. (A State Department higher-up would later explain that Matson was a chronic troublemaker.)

  The haphazard condition of the files was confirmed by others, including some who had been involved in the practices complained of. The resulting picture was distressing to the committee, as indicated by the comment of one member to a State Department witness: “How do you possibly keep track of derogatory or commendatory letters in that filing system?…There is the danger of someone going through it…and then there is no way of knowing what is in the file and what went out….Do you not see that you have laid yourself open to all sorts of criticism in the fact that you can’t prove or disprove that things are taken out of the file?” Or, as another panel member put it: “If you have a s
ystem where anyone can take anything out of the file without it being known that it was taken out, how can you say that it was a good filing system?”7

  These exasperated comments were a good précis of the situation with the files and the problems this presented, and suggestive of the value of the McCarthy hearings. They were good indicators also of the bipartisan nature of these early inquests, as the statements quoted weren’t from McCarthy or his conservative colleagues Mundt and Dirksen, but from Democratic members of the panel—Henry Jackson in the first case, Stuart Symington in the second.

  As for relations between McCarthy and the Ike regime, these disclosures about the files, and proposals for improvement, were well received by the new State Department security chief under Dulles, R. W. Scott McLeod, a former FBI agent and onetime staffer for Styles Bridges. McLeod wrote McCarthy, on May 5, 1953, that “the information divulged in the hearings before your committee has been very helpful in indicating areas requiring immediate attention and corrective measures,” and said such measures were being taken.8 In turn, the report of the committee saluted the “commendable attitude” of McLeod in getting the situation righted. It would be the first of many such exchanges, and improvements, resulting from McCarthy’s hearings.

  Bipartisan cooperation would be apparent also in the next inquiry of the panel, concerning the Voice of America, a much-controverted subagency of the State Department with a high profile in Congress. This was yet another extension of McCarthy’s previous interests, as VOA and its personnel had been among his major targets going back to 1950. (A further linkage with issues past was that VOA and related services were inheritors of personnel and programs from the Office of War Information, font of endless security troubles.)