8. Ibid., pp. 8–10; Coleman testified in public session before the McCarthy panel on December 8, 1953, pp. 51 et seq.
9. Ibid., p. 9.
10. Ibid., p. 23; Bernstein testified in executive session on October 22, 1953, in a hearing later printed with the public sessions.
11. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), December 16, 1953, pp. 252 et seq.; case summary in Signal Corps report, loc. cit., pp. 23–24.
12. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), November 24, 1953, pp. 27–31.
13. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), November 25, 1953, pp. 35 et seq. McCarthy asked numerous other questions of Hyman concerning espionage and hundreds of alleged Hyman phone calls to military and scientific installations (e.g., “Did you make a total of 242 calls between October of 1951 and September of 1953 to the Federal Telephone & Radio Corp., at Clifton, N.J.?,” p. 40). On all such questions Hyman took the Fifth.
14. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), December 16, 1953, p. 278.
15. “Internal Security Annual Report for 1956,” report of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, March 4, 1957, p. 64.
16. Memorandum from James N. Juliana to Francis P. Carr, December 1, 1953, McCarthy papers III.
17. McCarthy executive hearings, testimony of Gens. George C. Back and Kirke B. Lawton, October 16, 1953, pp. 2563 et seq. The generals variously testified that the Buettner report was said to be a “fabrication” and that Buettner had withdrawn it.
18. Juliana to Francis Carr, December 1, 1953, loc. cit.
19. Annual Report for 1953, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, January 22, 1954, p. 7.
20. Memorandum for the files (n.d.), James N. Juliana, McCarthy papers III.
21. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), January 15, 1954, pp. 32 et seq.
Chapter 39: A Tale of Two Generals
1. McCarthy executive hearings, October 15, 1953; excerpt published in “Army Signal Corps—Subversion and Espionage,” report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, April 25, 1955, p. 7.
2. “Special Senate Investigation on Charges and Countercharges Involving: Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens, John G. Adams, H. Struve Hensel, and Senator Joe McCarthy, Roy M. Cohn, and Francis P. Carr” (hereafter cited as Army-McCarthy hearings), May 27, 1954, p. 1634.
3. John Adams, Without Precedent (Norton, 1983), pp. 50 et seq.
4. Numerous references to Mrs. Rosenberg are in memoranda submitted to the McCarthy panel by complainants in the matter of the Signal Corps Intelligence Agency. McCarthy papers II and III.
5. Army-McCarthy hearings, April 25, 1954, p. 425.
6. William Ewald, Who Killed McCarthy? (Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 130.
7. “Say Lawton’s Talks Had ‘Political’ Tone,” Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, November 25, 1953, and “Lawton Will Be Called to Testify at Hearings,” Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, April 29, 1954.
8. “Summary of Statement by Major General George I. Back [sic], Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, present, Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Prewitt, Mr. Carr, Mr. Cohn, Mr. Juliana,” April 27, 1954, McCarthy papers III.
9. Martin S. Hayden, “Gen. Lawton Reported Ready to Help McCarthy in Army Row,” Washington Star, April 30, 1954.
10. The case of Lawton and the question of why he wasn’t called were discussed on several occasions in the hearings. Army Counsel Welch’s stated reason for not calling Lawton was that to do so would lead to more charges and countercharges and thus “would open up what seems to me a somewhat painfully wide field.” Army-McCarthy hearings, June 10, 1954, p. 2522.
11. John Adams, op. cit., p. 172.
12. McCarthy hearings (Communist Infiltration of the Army), January 30, 1954, pp.112, 113.
13. John Adams, op. cit., p. 118.
14. Hearings on S. Res. 301 (hereafter cited as Watkins hearings), September 13, 1954, p. 514 et seq.
15. McCarthy hearings (Communist Infiltration of the Army), February 17, 1954, p. 43.
16. Ibid., p. 54.
17. “Army Personnel Actions Relating to Irving Peress”(McClellan hearings). March 23, 1955, p. 370.
18. Ibid., p. 386.
19. Ibid., p. 530.
20. Nomination of Brig. Gen. Ralph Zwicker, Hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee, March 21, 1957.
21. John Adams, op. cit., p. 124.
Chapter 40: The Legend of Annie Lee Moss
1. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), February 23, 1954, pp. 310 et seq.
2. Ibid., p. 314.
3. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), March 11, 1954, p. 461.
4. Ibid., p. 462.
5. The quotes are from Jack Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker, op. cit., p. 311; Richard Fried, Men Against McCarthy, op. cit., p. 285; and Lately Thomas, When Even Angels Wept, op. cit., p. 420.
6. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), March 11, 1954, p. 447.
7. Subversive Activities Control Board, Docket No. 51–101, William P. Rogers, Attorney General of the U.S. vs. The Communist Party of the U.S., recommended decision on second remand, September 19, 1958, p. 5.
8. FBI Annie Lee Moss file, Stanley to Rosen, February 26, 1954.
9. Ibid., Nichols to Tolson, February 24,1954.
10. Ibid.
11. “New Moss Charges Cite CP Membership Book Number & Date,” Washington Daily News, August 5, 1954.
12. Symington to McCarthy, August 5, 1954, McCarthy papers II.
13. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), March 11, 1954, p. 458.
14. McCarthy hearings (Signal Corps), February 23 and 24, 1954 (appendix), p. 353.
15. McCarthy executive hearings, Vol. 5, p. xv. The sources cited for these assertions are McCarthy biographers Thomas Reeves, David Oshinsky, and Arthur Herman.
16. See, e.g., the SACB statements of December 3, 1956, that “the respondent [Communist Party] seeks to retry the Moss security hearing, and that is not a function of this board…” and December 13, 1956: “the Board will not permit a rehearing of the Moss case.”(1 SACB reports, pp. 52, 57.)
17. William P. Rogers, Attorney General of the U.S. vs. Communist Party of the U.S., modified report of board on second remand, January 15, 1959 (1 SACB reports, p. 94).
18. See SACB reports and rulings of September 10, 1956; December 13, 1956; December 18, 1956; August 25, 1958; September 19, 1958; and January 15, 1959. All these board comments repeat or paraphrase the statements about Markward and the Moss case above cited.
19. Kerry Lauerman, “The Salon Interview: George Clooney,” Salon.com, September 16, 2005.
20. Letter to William V. Shannon, December 10, 1958. Document in possession of the author.
21. Ken Ringle, “Tales from a Redbaiter’s ’50s Fishing Expedition,” Washington Post, May 6, 2003.
22. Dorothy Rabinowitz, “A Conspiracy So Vast,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2003.
Chapter 41: At War with the Army
1. Robert Stripling, The Red Plot Against America (Bell, 1949), p. 52.
2. Ibid.
3. Ewald, op. cit., p. 165.
4. “Stevens-Adams Chronology,” Army-McCarthy hearings (appendix), p. 135.
5. The formal Army charges, filed April 13, 1954, repeatedly stressed the notion that the Monmouth inquest was fueled by Cohn’s effort to get privileges for Schine. See “Charges and Countercharges,” etc., report of Mundt subcommittee, August 30, 1954, pp. 3–5. The McCarthy countercharges immediately follow.
6. Army-McCarthy hearings, April 22, 1954, pp. 47, 86–87.
7. Army-McCarthy hearings, April 26, 1954, p. 205.
8. Army-McCarthy hearings, May 25, 1954, pp. 1445 et seq.
9. Army-McCarthy hearings, May 27, 1954, pp. 1576.
10. Army-McCarthy hearings, June 14, 1954, pp. 2643–44.
11. According to Willard Edwards, a McCarthy backer, various of the McCarthy staff memos were indeed concocted ex post facto—allegedly in response to concocted memos by the Army. Untitled memorandum, Willard Edwards papers. Document provided by Lee
Edwards.
12. Ewald, op. cit., pp. 175 et seq.
13. Army-McCarthy hearings, April 23, 1954, p. 172.
14. John Adams, op. cit., pp. 210–20.
15. “Charges and Countercharges,” loc. cit., p. 126.
Chapter 42: On Not Having Any Decency
1. “Charges and Countercharges,” loc. cit., pp. 79–80.
2. Ibid., pp. 87–88.
3. Army-McCarthy hearings, April 27, 1954, pp. 256 et seq.
4. Ibid., pp. 278 et seq.; April 30, 1954, pp. 534 et seq.
5. Army-McCarthy hearings, May 4, 1954, p. 703.
6. Army-McCarthy hearings, May 5, 1954, pp. 767–70.
7. Ibid., p. 734.
8. Ibid., p. 736.
9. Army-McCarthy hearings, June 9, 1954, pp. 2386–87.
10. Ibid., p. 2426.
11. Ibid., pp. 2426–27.
12. Ibid., p. 2428.
13. Ibid., p. 2430.
14. New York Times, April 16, 1954.
15. “Army Personnel Actions Relating to Irving Peress,” report of the McClellan subcommittee, July 14, 1955, pp. 35, 32.
Chapter 43: The Sounds of Silence
1. Army-McCarthy hearings, May 14, 1954, p. 1187.
2. Ibid., pp. 1169 et seq.
3. The text of the Eisenhower secrecy order, with appendix citing asserted precedents, is widely available. The text cited here is reprinted in full in the hearings on S. Res. 301 (McCarthy censure), conducted by Sen. Arthur Watkins, p. 122.
4. Clark Mollenhoff, Washington Cover-Up (Popular Library, 1963), p. 184.
5. Army-McCarthy hearings, May 17, 1954, p. 1263.
6. Ibid., p. 1265.
7. Ibid., May 14, 1954, p. 1169.
8. Mollenhoff, op. cit., p. 41. Mollenhoff added that “seldom had there been more right on the side of McCarthy, but seldom had there been fewer people on his side.”
9. Quoted in Evans, Clear and Present Dangers (Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1975), pp. 64–65.
10. Ewald, op. cit., pp.8–9.
11. Ibid., p. 374.
12. Army-McCarthy hearings, May 25, 1954, p. 1575.
13. Congressional Record, August 6, 1954.
14. The relevant portion of the statute is cited (and dismissed) in hearings on S. Res. 301 (McCarthy censure), conducted by the Watkins committee, p. 133.
15. Nixon ruminated on the executive privilege issue in his Memoir (pp. 772 et seq.), but didn’t link it to McCarthy.
16. Quoted in Evans, op. cit., pp. 62, 63.
17. Raoul Berger, Executive Privilege (Bantam, 1975), p. 264.
18. “Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments,” hearings of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, November 17, 1953, p. 1411.
Chapter 44: Sentence First, Verdict Later
1. Congressional Record, June 1, 1954, p. 7390.
2. “Meet the Press,” NBC Television, June 13, 1954; p. 2.
3. Congressional Record, August 2, 1954, p. 12979.
4. The Flanders charges, and others, are set forth in the Watkins hearings, pp. 5–8.
5. Ibid., p. 6.
6. Ibid., p. 37.
7. Ibid., p. 38.
8. Arthur Watkins, Enough Rope (Prentice Hall, 1969), p. 210.
9. Watkins hearings, September 1, 1954, p. 57.
10. Ibid., September 8, 1954, p. 275.
11. The extensive contacts of Flanders and the NCEC are reflected in the papers of Maurice Rosenblatt/National Committee for an Effective Congress, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, loc. cit., Boxes 18, 19, and 24.
12. Ibid., Box 19.
13. Ibid.
14. Willard Edwards, “Well Heeled Group Works on Senators,” Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1954; Maurice Rosenblatt to John Howe, February 24, 1961, Benton papers, Box 5.
15. Barry Goldwater, With No Apologies (Morrow, 1979), p. 261.
*1 In discussion of these cases, there is no suggestion that officials of the National Archives have been remiss in the performance of their duties. In my experience, the archivists are meticulous in safeguarding papers entrusted to their keeping and go to elaborate lengths to prevent any tampering with or removal of such records. In the cases cited, it appears the missing papers were removed from the folders before the archivists ever saw them. (Though, as more recent events suggest, there are people who do try to take things from the Archives, and doubtless some such project could have succeeded in the past if sufficient skill and cunning were devoted to the effort.)
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*2 The L.A. Times story using this locution appeared in its Sunday book section on December 29, 2002, the Washington Post version in an obituary of a supposed McCarthy victim on July 18, 2004. Running a close third in this know-nothing sweepstakes is the New York Times, which used the same remarkable concept in its crossword puzzle. (Clue: “Sen. McCarthy’s gp.” Answer: “HUAC.” 23 down, August 11, 1999.)
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*3 The Times portrayed Shaftel as the long-suffering victim of a witch hunt, hounded from his scholarly post for no good cause and later upheld by court decrees negating the New York laws that brought his ouster. Omitted from this morality play was the fact that Shaftel had been named under oath as a Communist operative at Queens by Dr. William Withers, also a teacher at the college (and formerly head of its economics department). This neglected aspect of the record would seem to have some relevance to a story about an asserted victim dragged before a committee of Congress for no apparent reason.
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*4 Which isn’t to say that such authors are insincere in their aversion to McCarthy, but rather that they have accepted their assessment of him from the standard histories.
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*5 Valuable also are the archives of State itself, and of such interim units of World War II as the Office of Strategic Services and Office of War Information, both merged into the department at the conclusion of the fighting. Among other significant databases are the executive session transcripts and confidential records of congressional committees that looked into such matters, many also available in the archives. The files of the House Committee on Un-American Activities are the most revealing, but the records of many other panels contain important information also.
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*6 Also at Marquette, McCarthy somehow found time for other ventures, dabbling in campus politics and athletics, getting involved in all-night poker games, and developing something of a reputation as a party reptile. McCarthy was, evidently, a bit of a prankster in college and later in the military service. He was also, it seems, something of a Sergeant Bilko figure, able to round up supplies for sharing with his buddies.
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*7 Reeves, whose study of McCarthy’s early life and career is a model of exhaustive field research, in particular deflates oft-repeated tales about McCarthy’s alleged involvement in financial misdeeds with Pepsi-Cola lobbyist Russell Arundel and the prefab housing company Lustron. In both cases, Reeves concludes, the version supplied by McCarthy’s critics at the time, and echoed by Rovere et al., was mistaken. In both cases also, Reeves presents McCarthy as something of a legislative expert on the underlying issues (sugar rationing in the first case, low-cost housing in the other). These findings, and some others of like nature by Oshinsky, are more compelling in that neither writer, to put it mildly, is biased in McCarthy’s favor. Reeves and Oshinsky, for example, both debunk the alleged support of McCarthy in 1946 by the Communist Party and the alleged McCarthy quote welcoming such backing from the party. In other respects, unfortunately, these authors were less thorough and fell into errors of their own.
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*8“Malmedy” was an atrocity case from World War II in which American soldiers were slaughtered by the Nazis. Later numerous German soldiers were interrogated, put on trial, and convicted in a U.S. military court for complicity in the murders. There were allegations that the defendants had been subject to torture and inhumane treatment
to extract confessions. The issue was somewhat similar to the Abu Ghraib episode in the war against Iraq. McCarthy became the main Senate spokesman questioning the methods of interrogation of the German prisoners.
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*9 The only instances in which McCarthy tried to send someone to prison were citations for contempt before his committee, which had to be voted by the full committee and thereafter by the entire body of the Senate, then acted upon by the Justice Department and a grand jury. The federal courts in the few cases where all this happened failed for various reasons to convict, which is apparently the basis for this criticism of McCarthy; but these outcomes didn’t relate to the substantive merits of the Communist charges. William Remington, on the other hand, was a McCarthy suspect who did go to prison, although his conviction had no direct relation to McCarthy.
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*10 This is, it must be confessed, a trick quotation. Before this exchange occurred, McCarthy had been called out of the hearing and had turned the gavel over to Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) as acting chairman. So it was liberal Democrat Symington who spoke these dreadful words to victim Belfrage.
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*11 These McCarthy subcommittee hearings were in fact conducted by Sen. Karl Mundt (R-S.D.), second-ranking Republican on the panel. (McCarthy himself was at this time conducting the subcommittee’s famous investigation of Fort Monmouth.)
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*12 Similar information was provided to the Bentley spy ring by Treasury staffer Harry White.
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*13 The scope of the penetration as Chambers saw it is sometimes understated by focusing strictly on the people he named and personally dealt with. In fact, he stressed, the CP agents he managed were all leaders of cell groups, each cell including other members Chambers didn’t contact directly. Based on this, he estimated the comrades in his network as perhaps seventy-five in number. He further noted that there were undoubtedly other rings and Communist networks of which he knew nothing, but which based on his general knowledge of CP methods he was certain existed.
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*14 The Biddle memo, for instance, stated, “The American League Against War and Fascism was formally organized at the first United States Congress Against War and Fascism in New York City September 29 to October 2, 1933. The Manifesto of this Congress called attention to the ‘black cloud of imperialist war hovering over the world.’…Only in the Soviet Union, the manifesto continued, “has the basic cause of war—monopolistic capitalism—been removed; the Soviet Union, alone among governments of the world, proposes total disarmament; only by arousing and organizing the masses within each nation for active struggle against the war policies of their own imperialist governments can war be effectively combatted.”
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