The Taft-Knowland logic, however, was unavailing with some in Congress, and McCarthy was inevitably of this number. It’s ironic, to say no more, that he is often depicted as a blind partisan who cynically used the anti-Communist issue to bludgeon his Democratic opponents. The truth about McCarthy, and ultimately his main political problem, was that he wasn’t nearly partisan enough, at least from the standpoint of the Eisenhower White House. He was far too consistent in his views to support under Ike policies or people he had castigated under Truman.
In Senate floor debate, McCarthy was by no means the leader of the anti-Bohlen forces. Among the first to go after the nominee was the veteran conservative Democrat Pat McCarran. Others taking up the cudgels were Republicans Styles Bridges, Everett Dirksen, Karl Mundt, and Bourke Hickenlooper. McCarthy supported this contingent but spoke less than did some others, reserving most of his floor remarks for a set speech toward the end of the process.
Complicating matters were reports that an FBI loyalty/security check on Bohlen had turned up derogatory data. Rumors and comments to this effect added to the atmosphere of discontent among the anti-Bohlen forces. Also disturbing was a widely bruited tale that Scott McLeod, the new security chief at State, had refused to sign off on the appointment. This story, as it happened, was true, though some unusual methods would be adopted to disguise this.
Based on these allegations, a clamor arose to have the relevant facts brought before the Senate. The wrangle went on for several days, as McCarthy, McCarran, Bridges, and others asked for the security data on Bohlen. In this, for the most part, they were unsuccessful. As to the FBI report, there were as usual strong objections from the Bureau, as well as from the White House, to making such intel public. The dilemma was in part resolved by having senators Taft and John Sparkman (D-Ala.) review a summary of the FBI file and relay their findings to the Senate.
As for Scott McLeod, he had indeed refused to sign off on Bohlen, only to be overruled by Dulles. A much-distressed McLeod considered resigning over the affair, and at one point shared his concerns with FBI Director Hoover. The Hoover memo on their talk, which took place on March 25, 1953, gives this picture:
Mr. McLeod seemed to be quite depressed…as a result of the recent publicity in which his name had played a prominent part incident to the nomination of Mr. Bohlen as Ambassador to Moscow. Mr. McLeod also stated that he had been at the point of resigning several times as a result of the treatment which he had received in this matter but had refrained from doing so up until the time I saw him. Mr. McLeod stated he had made an evaluation of the FBI summary on Bohlen which had been submitted to the Secretary of State, and indicated that he could not conscientiously give Mr. Bohlen a security clearance. He stated he had refrained from appearing before any committee of Congress although he had been sought to appear before several of the committees.6
To say Scott McLeod “refrained” from appearing before the Congress was to put it mildly. When the Bohlen security issue surfaced, McCarthy, John McClellan, and others suggested McLeod be called to testify (a suggestion also made privately by Hoover). This, however, the White House was determined to prevent, and McLeod would be strangely unavailable for any such appearance. As McClellan put it, “I felt that Mr. McLeod should be called and that the question as to his differing with the Secretary of State should be cleared up…there does seem something a little mysterious—I do not know what it is—about the unavailability of Mr. McLeod.”7
The matter was indeed mysterious, and also of unusual import. As would later be disclosed, not only had McLeod been ordered not to testify on Bohlen, but steps were taken to ensure that he was physically unavailable to do so. This maneuvering resembled certain practices under Truman—most obviously, the sequestering of the State Department security files in the White House to keep them from the Senate. In this case, however, it wasn’t a matter of sequestering files but of sequestering a person.
The Dulles phone logs reveal, for instance, a March 20 talk with Ike Attorney General Herbert Brownell about ways and means of preventing McLeod from being subpoenaed by the Senate, possibly by invoking the Truman secrecy order of 1948. Later that day, in further conversation with Brownell, “the secretary said McLeod was going out of town so that the subpoena could not be served.” Logs for the following day reflect that McLeod was then in Concord, New Hampshire, presumably out of the reach of process servers, though how long he would remain there isn’t apparent from the record.8
While the exact location of McLeod thereafter is uncertain, we are once more indebted to the candor of Emmet Hughes for background data on the disappearance. As Hughes would put it, “For days, someone on the White House staff had to be assigned to make sure that the State Department security chief was kept ‘secure’ from any public places where a subpoena might be served on him.”9 Thanks to these precautions, McLeod was never called, so the puzzle would remain and deepen. The episode presaged others down the road in which witnesses would be prevented by unusual methods of the Ike regime from testifying to Congress.
Meanwhile, after viewing a summary of the FBI report, Taft and Sparkman would say there was nothing in it reflecting negatively on the loyalty of Bohlen. The seeming contradiction between this Taft-Sparkman “clearance” and Scott McLeod’s refusal to provide the same can now to some extent be resolved, as we have the FBI report in question. Though this is as in other cases heavily redacted, it’s possible to see how different judgments were arrived at.
The FBI report on Bohlen came in three sections—one involving loyalty issues, another the somewhat different question of security, and one relating to general suitability for the job in Moscow. At the first level, nothing in the record and nobody interviewed said Bohlen was disloyal or pro-Red, that he was a “loyalty risk,” or that there were any doubts on this score whatever. So when Taft and Sparkman reviewed the précis, they could correctly say there was no problem of this nature. However, there were noted in the Bureau wrap-up doubts as to whether Bohlen might be a security risk, which was an entirely separate matter.
In this category, the question was not subjective loyalty but aspects of personal history indicating flaws of judgment, moral turpitude, or susceptibility to blackmail. Traits that came under these headings included alcoholism, mental or emotional problems, criminal conduct, or sexual peccadilloes. In the case of Bohlen, the factor most often mentioned was the belief that he might be a homosexual. This was closely linked with allegations against his brother-in-law Charles Thayer, who was in fact being discreetly ousted from the Dulles State Department precisely as the Bohlen nomination was going forward.
There was no evidence or testimony of homosexual activity by Bohlen, but there were reports that tied him in with Thayer and others against whom such charges had been made. Bohlen and Thayer were close friends as well as in-laws, moved in the same circles, and had several friends in common who were reputed homosexuals. One such lived in Bohlen’s house while the nominee was in Europe, had been arrested on a morals charge, and had been ousted from the State Department for this reason.10
Contrary to current notions of gay liberation, a closeted homosexual in the 1950s was considered a grave security risk, especially in a high official posting. Homosexuality was thought so alien to the culture that exposure would be ruinous, which meant a homosexual in public life was seen as a candidate for blackmail. This notion was by no means confined to Joe McCarthy, though he and other security sleuths in Congress and the executive viewed it as axiomatic.*259 11
Ironically, the fight over Bohlen occurred exactly at the time the Eisenhower White House was issuing tough new security regs that stressed the importance of just such matters. Among the criteria to be used in judging an employee’s fitness, according to the new Ike decree, were “any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion.” (Emphasis added.) In those non-PC days, the italicized phrase was obvious code for homosexual.12
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It was apparently this part of the FBI report that made Scott McLeod reluctant to sign off on Bohlen. It was this aspect also that caused Director Hoover to voice a word of caution. As a memo on a March 17 meeting of Hoover with Dulles and Herbert Brownell records: “The Director made it clear that the FBI did not as a usual procedure evaluate any of its reports, but in view of the President’s request [for Hoover’s opinion], the Director would not be inclined, if he were passing on the question of security, to give Bohlen a complete clearance. The Director pointed out that there was no evidence that Bohlen had engaged in homosexual activities, but it was a known fact that several of his closest friends and intimate associates were known homosexuals.”13
It further appears much of this was known to McCarthy. The day after the Hoover-Dulles-Brownell meeting, McCarthy got in touch with Hoover about Bohlen, seeking the Director’s guidance. The resulting conversation is suggestive as to what McCarthy knew about the case, his quest for further data, and the tactics he was or wasn’t prepared to use in debate before the Senate. Hoover’s memo on this informs us:
Senator Joseph McCarthy called with reference to the Charles Bohlen appointment and the matter of keeping John Davies on. He stated that he was quite concerned regarding the entire picture as there was practically no change and everything was running about the same as it was a year ago. Senator McCarthy wondered whether I would tell him in complete confidence just how bad Bohlen was. I told him, of course, that it was hard to evaluate….
The senator was advised that we had not shown any overt act, but he, Bohlen, had certainly used bad judgment in associating with homosexuals. The senator stated this was a matter he was almost precluded from discussing on the floor; that it was so very easy to accuse someone of such acts but difficult to prove; I agreed, and stated it was a charge often made by persons who wanted to smear someone.14
As presaged by these comments, the security angle was now for the most part dropped by McCarthy and other Bohlen critics. Attention switched to the third tranche of the FBI report, involving issues more discussable in public and dovetailing with other facets of Bohlen’s record: his suitability for the Kremlin post in terms of general outlook and performance. Numerous sources raised questions on these grounds, far more than any other. Among the most vehement of the critics was former Ambassador to Moscow William Bullitt, himself a onetime confidant of FDR, for whom Bohlen as a junior diplomat had worked in the 1930s. As the FBI report expressed it:
He [Bullitt] related that Bohlen was in the Embassy from one to two years and that his conduct became “intolerable.” He related that Bohlen, during this period, was drinking excessively and that he personally asked for his recall to the Department of State…. Bullitt said there is no question concerning the appointee’s loyalty to the United States or his moral character…[But] he advised that he has the utmost contempt for Bohlen and has told him so to his face. He related that approximately several years ago he called Bohlen a “cheap profiteer on American disaster.” He stated that the above related to what he considered a lack of ethics on the part of the appointee. He advised that during the war years the appointee “went along with the theme of Harry Hopkins that the Soviet Union was a peace loving democracy and he has certainly furthered his career by so doing.”15
Similar comments about Bohlen’s views and policy influence were provided by ex-Communist Jay Lovestone and the anti-Communist expert Isaac Don Levine. Among the more knowledgeable of such critics, having served in the State Department and worked with Bohlen directly, was former Ambassador to Poland Arthur Lane. In 1946, Lane had tried to head off a State Department policy providing a hefty loan to Communist-dominated Poland. Lane linked this and other Moscow-appeasing policies to Bohlen. As the FBI reported:
Lane stated it never occurred to him that Bohlen, “who had been the personification of our appeasement policy, should be appointed to Moscow.” He said Bohlen was personally responsible for the policy which was repudiated in the elections last November. He advised it was Bohlen who suggested to Averell Harriman to go to Moscow in 1945 and make concessions to the Russians…Lane stated that in 1946, when he was Ambassador to Poland, Bohlen was the force behind the ninety-million dollar loan to Poland. He stated that it is inconceivable to him that an individual could recommend the economic build-up of a Communist enemy of the United States…and advised that he thinks the appointee’s assignment is a grave mistake and that “to put an apologist of the Soviet Union, Yalta and the appeasement policy to the Soviet Union in the position of Ambassador to Moscow is wrong.”16
These comments by two seasoned diplomats refocused the debate back to where it started: whether appointments under the new GOP regime would be continuous with, or divergent from, policies of the preceding era. This was the point most often stressed by McCarthy and other foes of the nomination. In fact, McCarthy in his speech concerning Bohlen said little on security issues, though not omitting them entirely.
In these remarks, McCarthy as usual paid tribute to Ike and Dulles, said they were doing a good job in general and that he supported them wholeheartedly in the positive steps that they were taking.*260 Having made this obeisance to party unity, McCarthy then moved into his critique of Bohlen. The centerpiece of this was Bohlen’s role at Yalta and his defense of the decisions made there. McCarthy reviewed the Yalta provisions concerning Poland, Yugoslavia, and China, and the ensuing communization of these countries. He also reprised some other issues of that time, such as the demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan, efforts to get the Soviets into the Pacific war, and Bohlen’s role in these discussions.
Ultimately, however, it came down to Yalta. This was the sticking point for McCarthy, as it was for Dirksen, Bridges, Mundt, and several others. The Republican platform of 1952 had been quite definite on the subject, saying “the Government of the United States, under Republican leadership, will repudiate all commitments contained in secret understandings, such as those at Yalta, which aid Communist enslavement.”17 It would be hard to get more anti-Yalta than that, yet here was one of the main holdovers from Yalta being appointed to a key position by the new Republican leader in the White House.
This caused much grief for conservatives backing the nomination, who tried to get Bohlen to make some kind of face-saving gesture on Yalta (face-saving for them, if not for Bohlen). Bohlen wouldn’t give them the satisfaction, instead rubbing their noses in the capitulation they were making in the name of unity with the White House. A particularly painful exchange occurred between Bohlen and Sen. Homer Ferguson, who pressed the nominee to say the Yalta agreements were in some sense mistaken, but failed badly in the effort.
FERGUSON: You claim now…that these agreements were correct governmental agreements so far as America was concerned, but that the interpretation put on them by Russia is what caused the…
BOHLEN: I would say, sir, I would go further than that, saying it is not so much interpretation as violation…
FERGUSON: Why did we have to surrender the rights of these people and be a party to the surrender?
BOHLEN: I don’t consider the agreement at Yalta involved a surrender. It involved the opposite.18
These comments and resulting news accounts couldn’t have been welcome to Taft and Knowland. One headline read: “Bohlen Backs Yalta Pact and the Truman Foreign Policy.” The subhead was even worse—a turn of the screw for conservatives backing Bohlen: “Choice as Soviet Envoy Also Defends Acheson at Senate Group Meeting.” All of this, of course, merely confirmed McCarthy and other Bohlen critics in their opposition. Everett Dirksen would put it that “I reject Yalta, so I reject Yalta men.” McCarthy’s version was “in November, 31,000,000 people told us to clean house. That means getting rid of Acheson’s lieutenants, including Bohlen.”19
That Bohlen was completely unapologetic about his role at Yalta and service with the FDR/Truman/Acheson State Department would be made clear in his memoir published two decades later. In this volume, he continued to defend the Yalta pact
and the merits of Acheson’s days at State, while gloating over the outcome of his nomination battle.*261 He likewise made plain his disagreements with Dulles, and even more so with the traditional policy stances of the GOP: “…it was clear that my views on relations with the Soviet Union did not coincide with Dulles’ and that of the Republican Party.”20 Styles Bridges, or Joe McCarthy, couldn’t have said it any better.
THERE is a last detail about the Bohlen struggle requiring mention. This concerned a report from three respected former officials of the State Department—Norman Armour, Hugh Gibson, and Joseph Grew—who had allegedly signed off on the selection and given Bohlen their endorsement. In testifying to the Senate, Dulles said this distinguished trio “unanimously concurred in the view that Mr. Bohlen was uniquely qualified for this particular post.” In support of this, the State Department supplied Senator Knowland a copy of the report for use in floor debate on the appointment.
While McCarthy was giving his speech of opposition, he became embroiled in a dispute with Knowland about this report—which turned out to be an omnibus cover memo with a list of names attached—and what it had to say about Bohlen. When Everett Dirksen inquired as to whether the three officials had in fact all given Bohlen their endorsement, McCarthy suggested Dirksen be allowed to see the report, “so there could be no question.” This outraged Knowland, who said McCarthy was “challenging my veracity…on the floor of the Senate.”21
This episode is often cited as a deserved rebuke to McCarthy, showing that his slash-and-burn tactics were so extreme even a conservative like Bill Knowland was offended. As may be seen by reading the debate, this is a complete inversion of the record. McCarthy, the transcript shows, wasn’t challenging the veracity of Knowland, but did think the Senate should know more about the State Department report in question. In so thinking, he was quite correct, as the well-meaning Knowland had been inveigled into carrying water for the department in one of its patented ventures in confusion. The three-wise-man endorsement of Bohlen was indeed open to serious challenge.
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