Blacklisted By History
Page 87
*247Most notably, Benton’s claim that he was the man responsible for the McCarran rider—an assertion he tried, without success, to get James Byrnes to verify.
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*248An inaccurate index to the hearings prepared by the Gillette committee staff shows 25 exhibits—not 24—which seems to be the source of the error. The identical misinformation is contained in the files of the National Committee for an Effective Congress. As Griffith relied heavily on these files in writing The Politics of Fear, he may have gotten his erroneous factoid from this source.
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*249The investigator further disclosed that he had been questioned about the Wheeling matter by Tydings—who as an ex-senator was of course not a member of the committee—and that when Tydings was told “the Benton version of the 57-205 controversy would not hold water” became “highly indignant and irritated.” Buckley further noted that Drew Pearson was feeding material to the committee and had access to certain of its confidential records. When he mentioned this to committee member Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), said Buckley, “her answer was, in substance, that we should forget about it.”
*249Omitted from this discussion are various other peculiarities in the doings of the Gillette committee—including the resignation of one other staffer alleging bias, the fact that all but one of the original senators on the panel also resigned before the probe was over, and well-documented machinations behind the scenes by Pearson and others to push the project to completion.
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*250McCarthy also retained his seat on the all-important Senate Appropriations Committee, which controlled the budgets for executive departments.
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*251Taft died of cancer on July 31, 1953.
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*252Plus a fifth Vice President-and President-to-be just off stage in the U.S. House, Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Mich.).
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†253It’s of note that so many of these came through the Senate, as at this writing no member of that body has been elected President since this group departed.
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*254McCarthy’s work as committee chairman was to all intents and purposes ended by April of 1954, when he would become embroiled in the Army-McCarthy hearings.
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*255Though the procedure wasn’t 100 percent adhered to—for instance, when someone was named in an open hearing by a witness who hadn’t been vetted in executive session—McCarthy made a particular point of emphasizing this stricture in public hearings.
*255A further aspect of the hearings, in contrast to the usual picture, was McCarthy’s concern not to intrude on the turf of other panels or duplicate their efforts. This emerged quite clearly, in hearings on the State Department files, when he told his staff not to delve into security aspects as such but to stick to the question of how the files were handled. (For example, “If we find that [the] internal security [subcommittee] is planning to make an all-out investigation of Communist influence, I think we should give them all the cooperation we can, but I do not like to have parallel investigations running at the same time.”)
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*256McCARTHY: I would like to compliment, at this time, if I may, the senator from Washington for the tremendous help he has given us in helping dig out the facts in regard to Baker West. I think he is better informed perhaps than any other senator on the situation out there.
*256JACKSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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*257McCarthy gave a very accurate summary of this executive session testimony in a public hearing—which explanation has been ignored by historians in favor of the Mandel version.
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*258For readers familiar with the New York Post as owned and directed by Rupert Murdoch, it should be pointed out that this newspaper in the 1950s was of the opposite political outlook.
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*259It was on such grounds, for instance, that the Marshall-Acheson State Department had dismissed some ninety-one people from the ranks in 1947 before McCarthy ever got in the picture.
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*260In these passages, he made only a fleeting reference to the FBI report, and singled out Scott McLeod for praise as having recently removed a number of security risks from the State Department (among them Thayer, though his connection to Bohlen wasn’t mentioned).
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*261This Bohlen chapter is titled “The Defeat of Joseph McCarthy.”
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*262“The Communist Party relies heavily upon the carelessness or indifference of thousands of prominent citizens in lending their names for propaganda purposes. Here I find you have another good example, and I am not trying to make these persons’ names stand out in any odious manner whatsoever…. The Communist Party owns outright the newspaper which is regarded by many as the swankiest newspaper published in France at the present time. The name of the newspaper is Ce Soir. It is little more than a year old. On the occasion of its first anniversary recently, this Communist paper featured greetings from Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, James Cagney, and even Shirley Temple. The League of Women Shoppers [an officially designated Communist front per the Attorney General’s list] boasts of the membership of Miriam Hopkins and Bette Davis. A list of such persons could be expanded almost indefinitely. No one, I hope, is going to claim that any one of these persons in particular is a Communist….”
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*263Nor are historical references to this episode a great deal better. Thus, in what purports to be a biography of Martin Dies, we read that, among its other failings, “this committee was charged with having accused Shirley Temple of being a Communist,” no other explanation offered.
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*264In purely mathematical terms, the basis for this comment was an earlier Matthews estimate that, over the previous seventeen years, some 3,500 professors in U.S. educational institutions had lent their names to or otherwise supported Communist causes—“many of them as dues paying members, many others as fellow travelers, some as all-out espionage agents, and some as unwilling dupes of subversion.” In that same span, said Matthews, the number of Protestant clergymen involved with such activities was twice as large—totaling more than 7,000.
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†265 Beyond this, Matthews had made a study of such curious groups as the Methodist Federation for Social Action, the work of such leftward-tilting preachers as Harry Ward and Jack McMichael, and others topics of like nature. Based on his seminary training, he was familiar with the doctrine of the “social gospel,” the way some theologians tried to cross-breed this with Marxism, and confusions promoted on this basis concerning “peace” or “social justice.” (To see these linkages in our own day, we need only consider the strange political antics of the National and World Councils of Churches, or the “liberation theology” movement in some Latin nations.)
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‡266Matthews quoted from The Protestant an editorial titled “God’s Red Army”: “It is not because Russia has saved us that we thank God for the Red Army….It is simply because of what Russia is and because of the quality of the Red Army itself, the spiritual quality of its soldiers, the way its soldiers feel toward its people, the way its soldiers feel toward their enemies. This is why, listening to our innermost voice, we hear ourselves thanking God for the Red Army.”
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*267According to Rosenblatt and his admirers, the Coordinating Committee began as a kind of guerrilla theater operation devoted to neighborhood wartime projects in New York (with an affiliate in Boston). Among these were broadsides attacking, and street confrontations with, the allegedly anti-Semitic followers of Father Coughlin, a Catholic radio priest of the 1930s. In due course, the Committee would go national with its efforts, a process aided by its merger with yet another outfit called Friends of Democracy, headed by the mystery writer Rex Stou
t. In various Coordinating Committee/Friends of Democracy publications, the political targets ranged from anti-Semites like Gerald L. K. Smith on the one hand to more mainstream figures such as Cabot Lodge and Joseph Kennedy on the other.
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*268It had made its way to the desk of Ike aide Bernard Shanley, who wasn’t in on the plot, and was holding the letter for discussion.
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*269Reviewing the record on this episode, of pivotal importance in the relations of McCarthy to the White House, the comments of Sherman Adams are of interest, as he was by the report of both Alsop and Hughes the triggerman in the scheme to go after Matthews. In his own account of the affair, Adams would make his grim hostility to McCarthy plain, but otherwise provide a study in obfuscation. Nobody relying on his treatment would know the cooked-up nature of the “protest,” the ersatz nature of the Ike response, or the role of Adams himself in causing this to happen. The whole thing is presented by Adams at face value as a spontaneous venture in righteous outrage.
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*270As to the changes in regulations and the removal of the old loyalty board, Blattenberger said: “The new security regulations issued by the Attorney General, in my opinion, are far superior to the old loyalty proceedings which formerly existed. The actions which have been taken remove from key security positions all of the top officials who were concerned with the former loyalty program. Since the new security regulations present a completely different approach, I believe that our security practice can be administered best by persons who were not trained to think in terms of the old loyalty procedure.”
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*271 Inserted in place of these original entries were the terms “derogatory” or “no derogatory” [data]. (This presumably was done by the Army, as the standard practice of the FBI was to supply information on such cases but leave evaluation to the receiving agency.)
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*272 Sheehan’s role in the McCarthy probe was somewhat ironic, as when he was first called before the panel in executive session he refused to provide any information, citing the usual secrecy orders. Later he had a change of heart, mostly prompted per his description by the serious nature of the security problem at the complex and the inadequacy of measures relating to it. His information accordingly wouldn’t be provided until 1954, by which time McCarthy was bogged down in other issues.
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*273 Bernstein’s secret clearance was suspended a week before he appeared at the McCarthy hearings.
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*274 As a result of the McCarthy investigation, Ms. Levine would be removed from her job at the Telecommunications Lab. She would thus take her place as a minor victim in the pantheon of McCarthy martyrs. McCarthy would subsequently praise the management of the Lab for its cooperation with the committee, despite the adverse publicity that resulted.
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*275 Like information would be provided by Aleksandr Feksilov, one of the Soviet bosses in charge of high-tech spying, concerning an “unknown radar source” in the United States who transmitted thousands of pages of secret data to Moscow.
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*276 On this point, as on others, later revelations would indicate McCarthy was right in his perception of the problem but underestimated its extent. In subsequent hearings Col. Ronald Thomas, former Chief of Counter-Intelligence for G-2, would testify that adverse security recommendations were routinely overturned by the Pentagon Review Board. “Under the previous [pre-1953] security regulations,” said Thomas, “out of say approximately 100 cases, 90 of these would be returned by the Loyalty Board as reinstated cases rather than getting them out of the service.” (Emphasis added.)
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*277 In this respect, the figures on security suspensions would tell the story pretty clearly. Prior to the McCarthy probe, suspensions on such charges had been few and far between; but once the investigation started, the pace picked up briskly. In all, some forty-two employees were suspended—all but seven after the McCarthy hearings started. Conversely, once the hearings were over, most of the people suspended would be quietly reinstated. The before-and-after correlations jibe closely with the Lawton comment.
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*278 McCarthy’s countervailing point, of course, was that there were plenty of indications of potential espionage that had been disparaged or ignored.
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*279 This Stevens comment was suggestive as to his understanding of the cases—or, more accurately, lack thereof. As he would tell the Senate, he had no direct knowledge of the security files at Monmouth—which was only to be expected, given his many high-level duties. His description of the suspensions as unjustified, and one as absurdly trivial, would have been based on what someone told him. And the someone most likely to have told him something of this nature was John Adams (who thought, e.g., that Aaron Coleman was not a security risk but the victim of a witch hunt).
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*280 The main reason alleged by Stevens for his pique with Lawton was the comment about the universities, this allegedly showing that the general had “bad judgment.” This explanation seems lame, considering the things that had preceded—disagreement over the security drill, praise for McCarthy, refusal to restore suspended workers. All of this predated the briefing in which the universities were mentioned.
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*281 Given the fact that Lawton’s “medical disability” was of mysterious nature, and believed by many to be merely an excuse and not a reason for the handling he received, the short-term meaning of such denial is unclear. On the other hand, as everyone needs medical benefits sooner or later, the short-term meaning may not have mattered. At all events, the threat conveyed was clear and may have involved other benefits as well.
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*282 Discussions of this case invariably raise the question as to why anyone should have been concerned about a Communist dentist, in the Army or anywhere else. A parenthetical answer, slightly off the main point, is that oddly enough a dentist’s office could be a very good cover for clandestine operations, as all sorts of people might come and go there without attracting much attention. It’s noteworthy that a central figure in the Elizabeth Bentley spy ring in New York was a dentist, as was another such named by Whittaker Chambers. However, the main thing about Peress wasn’t this, but rather what the case revealed about security procedures.
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*283 Which he was. (See below.)
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*284 Sen. Styles Bridges (R-N.H.) put it this way to Zwicker: “It was very curious to me why you were so cooperative and so friendly in your relations one time, and all at once after Mr. Adams went to see you, your attitude changed, you bristled up. You certainly, as I read the testimony…were almost a new man in attitude. What did Mr. Adams tell you?”
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*285 Mrs. Markward would identify many party functionaries to the Bureau, then to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, then later to McCarthy. Among those she named as CP members, to pick a few already mentioned, were Travis Hedrick, Andrew Older, and Ruth Rifkin. Hedrick, it may be recalled, was the OWI employee assailed by spokesmen for the AFL and CIO back in 1943. Older would be of special interest to McCarthy, as he preceded David Karr as reporter/legman for Drew Pearson. Ruth Rifkin—named by Elizabeth Bentley also—had twice worked for one of McCarthy’s major targets, the State Department’s William Stone. These were all significant security cases of more than local interest.
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*286 This false start by Symington was one of several indications that there was some prearrangement of these questions, but that he had gotten matters garbled. In the normal course of things, there would have been reason for somebody else to look up Mrs. Moss’s telephone number, but no reason for Mrs. Moss herself to do so.
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87 Mrs. Moss had been suspended by the Army following the Markward testimony to McCarthy.
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*288 McCarthy, who might have protected Cohn from this onslaught, had by this time left the hearing room, relinquishing the gavel to Karl Mundt.
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†289 As a matter of fact, there were not three Annie Lee Mosses in the D.C. phone book, but as this is a secondary issue, consideration of it is for the moment deferred. See below.
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*290 That she had perhaps unknowingly signed up for membership in the Communist Party was hinted at by Moss both in her McCarthy appearance and in testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
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†291 Having already nailed down all this, the Bureau later went through the drill of confirming that this Mrs. Moss wasn’t some other Mrs. Moss, checking out the alibi about other people in the phone book with similar names and other alleged sources of confusion (e.g., variant spellings of the first name, including “Anna” and “Annie”). There was of course zero possibility that two people of identical name both lived at 72 R St. S.W., but the Bureau checked up anyway. The report on this says: “Based on information available in city directories and telephone directories, WFO [Washington Field Office] conducted investigation, results of which appear to indicate that none of the individuals with names similar to the employee’s resided at the addresses for Annie Moss, reflected in the CP records.”
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*292 A Bureau report concerning this says “the Chief Signal Officer made the first indorsement of the file on June 30, 1951, recommending that she be removed from the government as a security risk. On July 5, 1951, the Military District of Washington placed a second indorsement on her file concurring with the Chief Signal Officer and recommending that she be removed as a security risk. On July 18, 1951, G-2, Department of the Army concurred on previous recommendation and recommended to the Loyalty Security Screening Board (LSSB), that subject be removed for security reasons.” Despite all of which, “on October 23, 1951, after a hearing in the subject’s case, the [Pentagon Review] Board recommended that she was cleared and that she be restored to her duties and be paid her back salary.”