Blacklisted By History

by M. Stanton Evans

  The person who nailed this was Dirksen, who happened to be a good friend of Hugh Gibson, one of the alleged endorsers, and had tracked Gibson down to check the matter out directly. Dirksen quoted Gibson as saying that, “as a matter of fact, he, Mr. Grew and Mr. Armour were not asked to pass on Mr. Bohlen…in the instant case, namely the vacancy at Moscow, they were not actually asked, so he made no recommendation whatsoever.”22 (Emphasis added.) This Dirksen update would be amplified by Gibson himself in an interview with the Boston Post, explaining that he had never been asked to sign off on Bohlen.

  “Apparently,” said Gibson, “there was the grandest lot of shenanigans about words and meanings on the floor of the Senate you ever heard of. As I recall it…the day I talked to Mr. Dulles, together with Mr. Grew and Mr. Armour, Dulles told us that certain appointments had already been made—those for London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, and Moscow…Well, now it comes out that we recommended Bohlen. We certainly did not. At least I did not. We certainly did not consider the names of the persons down for the jobs in the places I mentioned—London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, and Moscow…”23 (Emphasis added.) So, whatever the case with the other signers, Hugh Gibson obviously hadn’t endorsed Chip Bohlen.

  Thus McCarthy was entirely right in suggesting that the document Knowland was wielding needed a careful look-see, and Knowland was totally out of line in blowing his stack against McCarthy. In studying this exchange, one senses that the honest, earnest Knowland was embarrassed and flustered by the spot he was in, fronting for the always tricky State Department and making a case with a document about which he knew nothing. Throughout all this, McCarthy was quite civil, patient, and complimentary toward Knowland. So McCarthy was not only right in the point he was raising but very much the injured party. Yet the whole thing is portrayed by the usual historians-biographers as yet another outrageous episode in the shameful saga of McCarthy.

  None of this, of course, made any difference in the final outcome, as Bohlen would be confirmed by a vote of 74 to 13, to great hosannas from the liberal press. The fledgling Ike administration, however, had learned a valuable lesson about being prudent in its personnel decisions. A telephone log for March 19 reflects a talk between Dulles and White House majordomo Sherman Adams, wherein a cautionary note was sounded about the appointments process, as “Gov. Adams asked how the secretary [Dulles] happened to pick him anyway.” Considering all the trouble that had occurred, the question was a good one. These second thoughts about selection methods concerned, however, not Ike’s new ambassador to Moscow, but the troublesome security officer, McLeod, who had to be sequestered from the Senate.24 Obviously, the administration would have to be more careful about such appointments in the future.

  CHAPTER 37

  The Getting of J. B. Matthews

  FOR J. B. Matthews, it was déjà vu all over again, only more so. He had been through the whole thing before, with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Now he would relive the identical nightmare with Joe McCarthy. Except this time it was worse.

  His name was Joseph Brown Matthews, but everybody called him J.B. He was circa 1953 the world’s foremost expert on the subject of Communist fronts, and had been for years before this. His expertise stemmed from the fact that he had been a fronter himself, indeed something of a legend in that department. As he said in testifying to Congress, “I hope it will not appear immodest, but I was probably more closely associated with the Communist Party’s united front maneuvers than any other individual in this country.”1

  All told, Matthews had been directly linked with twenty such maneuvers, and indirectly with many more. Most conspicuously, he had been the first chairman of the Francis Biddle–cited American League Against War and Fascism (aka League for Peace and Democracy). He had been connected, too, with the Friends of the Soviet Union, the Student Congress Against War, the Tom Mooney Committee, and many similar outfits, and well knew the tie-in between such groups and the formal CP operation then headed by Earl Browder.

  In 1935, witnessing the takeover tactics of an alleged Communist faction in a bitter strike at Consumers’ Research in Washington, New Jersey, and becoming otherwise disenchanted, Matthews by degrees broke with the movement and then turned against it. A record keeper and document hound by instinct and training, he began compiling the most extensive roster of Red front groups ever assembled. He was a natural to testify before (and later work with) the House Committee, just as he would be a natural ally down the road for Joe McCarthy.

  In what was in its day a famous episode, Matthews appeared before Dies and Co. in 1938, conducting a tutorial on why the fronts existed, how the CP controlled them, and how unknowing people were inveigled into cooperation. It was on this occasion that he provoked the “Shirley Temple” furor, much trumpeted by foes of the committee both then and later. The incident provides an instructive tale about the debating tactics of certain New Deal stalwarts, as well as a prelude to the travail of Matthews and McCarthy in the 1950s.

  In essence, Matthews told the House committee, naive and busy people could be hoodwinked into lending their names to Red causes that looked good on the surface but were something else on close inspection. He cited the fancy Communist newspaper Ce Soir in France (a Willi Munzenberg production), which on the approach of its first anniversary solicited and received greetings from some big Hollywood names—Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, James Cagney, “and even Shirley Temple.” “No one, I hope,” said Matthews, “is going to claim that any one of these persons in particular is a Communist.”2

  This statement is quoted in extenso below to make sure the context is clear.*262 What it obviously said was that the Reds were adept at fooling innocent people into endorsing their endeavors. In the case of the child star Shirley Temple, of course, the endorsement would have come through some adult agent, who perhaps thought sending greetings to the swanky Ce Soir might be a shrewd PR move. All in all, a good object lesson in why movie stars and other famous people, or their agents, needed to be careful about the things they lent their names to.

  So far, so sensible. But not at all the way the matter would be played by various liberal politicians and writers of alleged Cold War history. In these precincts, the story became, and would remain, the House Committee on Un-American Activities had called Shirley Temple a Communist. The way was led by the voluble Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior, who explained the matter as follows: “They’ve gone into Hollywood and there discovered a great plot. They found dangerous radicals there, led by little Shirley Temple. Imagine the great committee raiding her nursery and seizing her dolls in evidence.”

  Not to be outdone in clueless indignation was FDR’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins. In denouncing Dies and his committee, Perkins declaimed: “Perhaps it is unfortunate that Shirley Temple was born an American citizen and that we will not have to debate the preposterous revelation of your committee in regard to this innocent and likable child.”3 So, having made the valid point that famous people in Hollywood (and elsewhere), including a noted child star, needed to watch out for Red deceptions, Matthews and Dies were accused of making charges of subversion against Shirley Temple.*263

  Fast-forward fifteen years, to the summer of 1953. In an effort to smooth out tensions between Kennedy and Cohn and other office problems, Joe McCarthy got the notion of turning to J. B. Matthews as subcommittee staff director. It was a good idea in theory. Matthews had been helping McCarthy all along, starting with the Tydings probe and the data on such as Esther Brunauer and Dorothy Kenyon that McCarthy had read into the record. Matthews, then fifty-nine, was roughly the age of Cohn and Kennedy put together, with a few years to spare, had spent six years as research director for the House Committee, and was universally respected in anti-Communist circles as an expert’s expert.

  What seemed good in theory turned out to be less good in practice. Some months before this, Matthews had penned an article for The American Mercury, a conservative journal of the era, titled “Reds in Our Churches.�
� Given the lead times of such publications, the article would be published in the July 1953 issue, just as McCarthy was appointing Matthews. This proved to be a godsend to McCarthy’s foes, a cause of infinite grief for Matthews, and a critical episode in the further tribulations of McCarthy.

  Having had his Shirley Temple moment, Matthews perhaps should have known better than to write a magazine piece that—however accurate—would lend itself to similar exploitation. “Reds in Our Churches” began with the arresting statement: “The largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States today is composed of Protestant clergymen.”4 Though apparently few people read any further, this was a comment Matthews would back up, as was his fashion, with a lot of documentation.*264

  As Matthews was a diligent researcher, the rebuttable presumption would be that, when he made such an assertion, he knew whereof he spoke. And on this subject he knew more than on others. Not only was he a specialist in Communist agitprop, he was also an ordained Methodist minister. He held the bachelor of divinity degree from Drew University and the sacred theology degree from Union Theological Seminary, and had been a missionary-teacher. Among other pursuits before becoming a Red-hunter, he had translated the Methodist hymnal into Malaysian. (He was also a linguist of some note, with a specialty in Oriental languages.)†265

  Drawing on his extensive knowledge of religious-political matters, Matthews in his Mercury essay listed the names of Protestant clergymen who had wittingly or unwittingly lent support to Communist-front groups. The article also highlighted such weird outfits as the People’s Institute of Applied Religion, which promoted Marxism to rural churches, and a magazine called The Protestant, whose twin specialties were vicious anti-Catholic invective and thinly veiled Red propaganda.‡266 5 While offering a mass of data on such topics, he stated in his wrap-up: “It hardly needs to be said that the vast majority of Protestant clergymen are loyal to the free institutions of this country, as well as loyal to their solemn trust as ministers of the Gospel. In a sense, the overwhelming majority is embarrassed by the participation of a minority in the activities of the most sinister conspiracy in the history of the world.”6

  In sum, a heavily empirical piece, dealing with a serious problem. It could and should have provoked questions, not only about the sources of the Matthews data for those who might have wondered about them, but about the thing he was describing, why it existed, and what the people engaged in such activity had to say about it. However, virtually no such discussion would happen. Instead, as with the Shirley Temple furor, the response would be a deafening mix of demagoguery and misinformation.

  Ironically, the Matthews points about Red attempts to manipulate the clergy had earlier been made by him in his memoir, Odyssey of a Fellow Traveler (1939), and in testimony before the House committee.7 But most McCarthy-Matthews critics apparently hadn’t read these earlier efforts, so the Mercury article struck them as a thunderbolt—and a most welcome opportunity. In short order, a huge outcry was fomented to the effect that Matthews had attacked all Protestant ministers, was smearing an entire group of people, and was an anti-Protestant bigot. Such comments would be offered from press and pulpit and echo from many official places, including the U.S. Senate and—ultimately—the White House.

  As the reader may have guessed, this outcry was in no way spontaneous, and would never have occurred at all if Matthews hadn’t been named to his new position with McCarthy, who was, of course, a Roman Catholic. In and of itself, an article in the The American Mercury, whatever people might have thought about it, wouldn’t have sparked a national uproar. But if it could be linked to McCarthy—the Roman Catholic McCarthy—that was a different matter. Accordingly, an extensive effort was now made by McCarthy’s foes to manufacture a wave of protest about the Mercury piece and exploit the “anti-Protestant” religious issue against him.

  In this respect, there were some other continuities between the salad days of the HCUA and the McCarthy epoch. In the early 1940s, numerous left-wing groups had been mobilized to attack and if possible defeat more conservative members of Congress. One such outfit was called the Coordinating Committee for Democratic Action, the executive director of which was a leftward activist named Maurice Rosenblatt. The thesis of this group, attuned to the exigencies of the war years, was the need to expose and root out “pro-fascist” elements in American life—a worthy object, no doubt, but one that got defined in malleable terms capable of much expansion.*267

  The elasticity of the “pro-fascist” charge was noted by Martin Dies, who drew attention to the work of the Coordinating Committee in a floor speech in early 1943. Dies read into the Congressional Record excerpts from a Coordinating Committee pamphlet titled “Your Congressman and Pearl Harbor,” which sought to tag certain members of Congress as pro-fascist. This broadside alleged that some of the solons “felt a kinship for the attackers,” that “various senators and representatives cooperated intimately with fascist groups,” and that in monitoring “all pro-fascist groups” the Coordinators had noted efforts to use “the floor of Congress as a forum for working against democracy.”8

  Dies further said Maurice Rosenblatt had been running some of his fascist-spotting activities out of the government office of one Gardner Jackson, a New Deal appointee. (In support of this, Dies cited long-distance phone records of Rosenblatt calls made and received through Jackson’s office.)9 Gardner Jackson, as it happened, was one of the better-known activists in Red-front doings of the 1930s and early ’40s—including the Washington Committee for Democratic Action and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties (both on the Francis Biddle list) and the Washington Tom Mooney Committee, a spin-off of the Peace and Democracy operation.

  Fast-forward once more to the 1950s, and the emergence on the political scene of a lobbying group called the National Committee for an Effective Congress. A main thesis of this committee was that Joe McCarthy was another Hitler who urgently needed to be stopped before he spread the pall of fascism any further. The executive director of the NCEC turned out to be the selfsame Maurice Rosenblatt, and serving on its board of advisers, along with a numerous cast of others, was the selfsame Gardner Jackson. Still more déjà vu for J. B. Matthews, and still more incipient trouble for McCarthy.

  While the NCEC had other functions, mostly backing liberal candidates for office, its top priority in the early 1950s, bar none, was its campaign to bring down McCarthy. To this end it ran something called the (McCarthy) Clearing House, nerve center of a wide-ranging anti-McCarthy mechanism connected to divers liberal journalists, labor officials, leftward lobbies, and politicians. (In a further parallel with the earlier Rosenblatt group, the NCEC conducted some of its operations out of government quarters—an office of Sen. Earl Clements [D-Ky.], then head of the Democratic senatorial campaign committee.)

  The NCEC was linked in one way or another with just about every major opponent of McCarthy, including William Benton, Millard Tydings, Drew Pearson, authors Jack Anderson and Ronald May, staffers of the Milwaukee Journal, and many others. Members of this loose backstage alliance included Senate Democratic staffer Kenneth Birkhead, liberal activist Robert Nathan, Benton aide John Howe, and Benton attorney Gerhard Van Arkel. (As that roster suggests, it was very much a Benton-connected setup, and Benton himself was active in raising money for it.) Also important, the NCEC had entrée to the new GOP administration, mainly through liberal businessman Paul Hoffman, an Ike supporter and confrere of Rosenblatt’s committee.

  By 1953, the NCEC had succeeded in securing funds from such wealthy donors as Chicago millionaire Marshall Field, and had hired a researcher, working out of the Clements office, to press its agenda on a full-time basis. It got a letterhead printed up indicating that an “effective” Congress meant an extremely liberal one, which featured on its advisory board, along with Gardner Jackson, a number of McCarthy foes and targets—including such noteworthy figures from earlier Cold War battles as Paul Appleby, Michael Straight, and Telford Taylor.
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br />   When McCarthy first named Matthews staff director, the NCEC sprang into action, assembling a dossier on the appointee that, to judge from the group’s description, was none too flattering to Matthews, and sought to get this to members of the Senate. When the Mercury piece appeared, Rosenblatt and Co., sensing a golden chance to stir up a really massive protest, redoubled their efforts to lobby against McCarthy with his colleagues. The NCEC also launched a concerted drive to reach newsmen, liberal activists, and clerical contacts to fan the flames of indignation against Matthews as an anti-Protestant bigot.10

  The NCEC would later claim credit for having stirred up the Matthews furor, and at least some of that credit, if such it be, was deserved. The group had extensive press contacts and undoubtedly helped provoke a lot of the hostile media comment about Matthews-McCarthy. Still more significant, perhaps, were its efforts to put pressure on Michigan senator Charles Potter, a Republican member of the McCarthy subcommittee, through contacts with high-ranking Protestant clergy in Detroit. The committee also made particular efforts to get its materials into the hands of John McClellan, the ranking Democrat on the McCarthy panel.

  In the event, the media outcry and political firestorm resulted in Matthews’s resignation—and much else besides. The Democrats on the PSI demanded that Matthews be ousted and upbraided McCarthy for having hired him in the first place. More critical yet, under the orchestrated pressure from back home, Charles Potter joined the anti-Matthews chorus, and by combining with the three Democratic members made a majority against McCarthy on his own subcommittee. There was thus no alternative for McCarthy now but to unload Matthews.