Blacklisted By History
Page 88
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†293 CPA = Communist Political Association, the interim name given to the party by Earl Browder as part of the wartime effort to present the Communists as indigenous and patriotic.
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*294 As to the business about info “not previously available,” this reads like a lame alibi, given the data long since supplied to Henry Jackson by the Bureau (unless Jackson, for some perverse reason, had failed to share this information with his Democratic colleagues).
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*295 If the accuser-facing reference is to the film clip in which McClellan lambasted Cohn for mentioning other witnesses who would testify to the CP status of Mrs. Moss, that appears to have been still more humbug, and a bit of playacting by McClellan. The matter of such additional witnesses had been discussed in McClellan’s presence by McCarthy, Scoop Jackson, and Cohn in the two previous hearings, the latter attended by Mrs. Moss and her attorney. On those occasions, McClellan hadn’t said boo about the unfairness of alluding to these other unnamed parties. It was only after McCarthy left the hearing of March 11 that McClellan jumped Cohn for referring to this already mooted subject.
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*296 Though ultimately averted, this effort reached the point that the committee files had been moved out into the halls of the House Office Building, ready for transfer to the Library of Congress. It was the threat of such dispersal that prompted publication of Appendix IX.
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*297 On December 7, 1941, Miller was thirty-one years old and Hiss had just turned thirty-seven. In 1940, Hiss had been classified 1-A but subsequently was the beneficiary of deferment requests by the State Department, filed in November 1940 and May 1941. Stripling would return to the House Committee from military service and play a substantial part in the investigation that brought both Miller and Hiss to public view.
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*298 It was in these opening sessions that McCarthy became known for his droning interjection “point of order,” the device by which it was possible to get the floor. Others used it also, but none so frequently as McCarthy.
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*299 Carr would eventually be dropped as a target of the Army charges, in exchange for the similar dropping of Cohn-McCarthy countercharges against Defense official H. Struve Hensel.
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*300 In particular, as reflected in the monitored calls, and as McCarthy brought out in detail, Symington had recommended that Stevens seek counsel in the matter from leading Democrat Clark Clifford. As Clifford had been a high-level adviser to President Truman—and, as seen, a key participant then in security cases such as that of Robert Oppenheimer—he arguably was not the best counselor on such issues from a Republican standpoint.
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*301 Welch liked it to be known that he worked at a stand-up desk in the Victorian manner. As to his methods of expression, the following is a fairly typical passage: “Hearings on Saturday are…repulsive because the chair knows my lovely habit of going back to my home…I am just as opposed as the dickens to night sessions. But I have said before, mine is a small voice. If I have to do it, I will hitch up my suspenders one more notch, etc.” Welch later used his acting talents to more constructive purpose, playing a judge in the Jimmy Stewart movie Anatomy of a Murder.
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*302 This style of interrogation might be called, for want of a better term, “John Stewart Service syndrome.” As has been seen, the fact that Service had absconded with confidential papers and handed these over to the Communist Philip Jaffe was of small concern to high officials, who dismissed the matter as an “indiscretion,” kept Service on the payroll, and rigged the grand jury process to protect him. However, when somebody in the government leaked information about John Service to McCarthy, that called for instant firing. Communists running barefoot through official papers were no big deal, but informing McCarthy about such matters was a scandal. In the case of Monmouth, with obvious differences in detail, the identical drill would be repeated.
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*303 As with the “doctored” photo, there were other Welchian solecisms that cried out for challenge. The most obvious of these is how he reconciled the very different positions he took within the span of a few minutes—that the memo was a “perfect phony” and “a carbon copy of precisely nothing,” but that the mere act of possessing and reading it was a grave security dereliction. How reading a document that was a “perfect phony” and a “copy of precisely nothing” could violate security regulations Welch did not explain, nor was he asked to.
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*304 A main substantive distinction between the documents, as earlier noted, was that the shorter version contained the designations “derogatory” and “no derogatory” [data], these evidently interpolated by someone in the Army. In terms of format, the main difference was that the shorter version had a typed signature, “J. Edgar Hoover,” which the original did not.
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†305 According to McCarthy, such reports had been provided at some time in 1949; on September 15, 1950; October 27, 1950; twice in December 1950; January 26, 1951; February 13, 1951; June 5, 1951; February 19, 1952; June 1952; September 1952; January 1953; April 1, 1953; and April 21, 1953.
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‡306 Brownell’s designation to this effect was in a public speech, rather than via the Attorney General’s list.
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*307 In these musings by the Washington Post, there was no inkling that “the President’s authority under the Constitution to withhold from Congress confidences,” et cetera, “is altogether beyond question.” Apparently, questions that hadn’t suggested themselves in 1954 had become visible two decades later.
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*308 This action, according to Mundt, brought great distress to Peurifoy, as he was thus going counter to the line on Hiss generally followed by Dean Acheson, Peurifoy’s once and future boss. This and similar moves by Peurifoy garnered him kudos from anti-Communists on the Hill—including Joe McCarthy. On the other hand, Peurifoy would in other settings vouch for Hiss, suggesting the conflicted role he played in these mysterious matters. As seen, his part in the Hamilton Robinson business with Robert Miller and otherwise obscuring the State Department’s security problems was more in line with the Hiss defense mode.
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*309 Such rhetoric wasn’t unusual on the anti-McCarthy side of the conflict. As earlier noted, Senator Tydings had made somewhat similar charges against GOP senator William Jenner of Indiana. President Truman had likewise described McCarthy as the Kremlin’s “greatest asset” in America. Columnist Joseph Alsop would charge that McCarthy, plus Senators Kenneth Wherry and Robert Taft, among others, “have voted the straight Communist Party line in every major issue of foreign policy as laid down in the Daily Worker since the end of the war.”
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†310 These innuendos would later be supported by revelations concerning Cohn in books by Nicholas von Hoffman and Sidney Zion. There was never any credible evidence of such nature concerning either McCarthy or David Schine.
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‡311 One McCarthy biographer commends Flanders as a conservative but “with a broader concern for social values,” another as “a deeply contemplative and spiritual man,” qualities that presumably guided him in his combat with McCarthy. These tributes suggest that, as with Annie Lee Moss or Gustavo Duran, there was perhaps a second Ralph Flanders on the scene besides the one who addressed the Senate.
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*312FLANDERS:“I accept every item on the list. It came from the Committee for a More Effective Congress [sic].”
*312WELKER:“The senator received them from the Committee for a More Effective Congress?”
*312FLANDERS:“That I have already said.” (August 2, 1954)
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*313 On
this aspect, as on others, later disclosures by Maurice Rosenblatt and the records of the NCEC would confirm the curious—and helter-skeltèr—nature of the project. Flanders had made his original charges against McCarthy without citing any specifics. When other members of the Senate demanded a bill of particulars to support the accusations, Rosenblatt and Co. hastily patched together whatever charges they could think of and provided the resulting list to Flanders.
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†314 At the end of this logic chain lay the unavoidable conclusion that McCarthy deserved to be censured because he had been censured—the censure process itself leading to still further interruptions in the work of his committee.
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*315 As NCEC official George Agree put it in a memo to his colleagues Rosenblatt and Larry Henderson, “initial build-up has to be in establishing Republican character of the move.” Agree said it was essential to keep arch-liberal Herbert Lehman quiet, and that Frank Carlson or some other GOPer “make statement favorable to the [censure] resolution.” (This memo was titled “Ideas on Strategy and Timing re Operation Nut-Cutting.”)
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*316 The one Democrat who almost unquestionably would have voted in favor of McCarthy, Pat McCarron, died in September 1954. The one Democrat who, rather famously, didn’t vote at all was John F. Kennedy, who was in the hospital when the roll call was taken.
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*317 McCarthy’s main physical complaint was a chronic sinus condition, painful and sometimes debilitating but not life-threatening.
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†318 McCarthy’s most likely successor in the internal security wars, his close friend Sen. William Jenner (R-Indiana), himself retired from the Senate the year after McCarthy’s death.
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*319 Stevens initially said he didn’t know exactly where the charges had come from, while Adams clearly intimated that they proceeded from the high-level January meeting with top officials. After the May 17 secrecy order, and no doubt a good talking to by such officials, both got the message and changed their stories to read that the charges had been filed on the sole initiative of the Army.
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Appendix
THE McCARTHY LISTS
A frequent refrain of Joe McCarthy’s critics was that the senator “had no names.” But McCarthy supplied Senator Millard Tydings with the names of more than 100 suspects, as shown in the documents on the following eight pages. Source for all: McCarthy Papers I
Acknowledgments
It’s customary in book acknowledgments to say that the people being thanked bear no responsibility for the findings, errors, or opinions of the author.
In the case of a book that takes a favorable view of Joe McCarthy, such a disclaimer perhaps isn’t needed. It can be assumed a priori that very few people, if any, would want to be connected to words in praise of so demonized a figure. On the other hand, the potential taint of “McCarthyism” is so great that maybe the usual disavowal is more requisite than ever. Either way, suffice it to note that the individuals mentioned here are in no way to blame for my effusions, unless somebody for some eccentric reason cares to step forth and endorse them.
That said, there are indeed many people to be thanked for their help in what has been a long and at times seemingly endless journey. Foremost among these is the late Ralph de Toledano, who shared with me his vast experience covering internal security issues of the late 1940s and early ’50s, along with much documentary information concerning McCarthy’s early cases. This material, including the data referred to in the notes as “McCarthy Papers I,” is in a sense the foundation of the book, as it reveals the kind of information McCarthy had in his possession in 1950 and supplies the basis for tracking his cases in other long-neglected records.
Equally deserving of thanks, for similar reasons, is former McCarthy staffer James N. Juliana, who for five decades preserved vital remnants of McCarthy’s papers from the period when McCarthy was a committee chairman. These files, referred to in the notes as “McCarthy Papers III,” provide invaluable information on the investigation of Fort Monmouth and the ensuing conflict with the Army. They are to the later period what the Toledano information is to the era of the Tydings hearings. (As observed in the citations, “McCarthy Papers II” are records of the McCarthy committee held in the National Archives.) Jim also shared with me his personal recollections of McCarthy—these often in dramatic conflict with standard versions of the story.
In terms of detailed expertise on security matters, Communist infiltration of the government, and related topics, my principal thanks go to Herbert Romerstein, whose information on such questions is encyclopedic, and known to be so by everyone conversant with the subject. Herb has been an inexhaustible source of security data, insight on particular cases, and general background on the Soviet networks and pro-Red conniving through the ages. Any mistakes I may have made in dealing with such matters will have occurred despite his heroic efforts to inform me.
Likewise deserving of profoundest thanks is my office mate and long-time colleague, Allan Ryskind, himself a knowledgeable student of Cold War issues. On countless occasions he has provided me with documents, security hearings, and thoughtful counsel relating to my project, often at the expense of his own endeavors. Most of all, he is the person who more than any other helped crystallize the contents of this book, discussed in minute detail just about every day for more years than either of us cares to remember. I am grateful for his friendship.
Others who have assisted my researches make up a considerable roster. At the head of this lineup is Lee Edwards, another long-time valued friend and colleague and eminent historian of the American conservative movement. Lee kindly shared with me the files, memoranda, and voluminous newspaper stories of his father, Willard, the most knowledgeable journalist of the 1950s on the doings of McCarthy and the Communist infiltration problem in general.
A special word of thanks is owing as well to the late Anthony Kubek, who made available the results of his in-depth research on the Amerasia case, the Morgenthau diaries, and the ill-fated course of American policy in China. Tony served as editor of the Amerasia papers and the diaries for the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, and wrote the most comprehensive of all studies of the China meltdown—How the Far East Was Lost. (All these volumes may be read with profit today by scholars seeking insight on such matters.)
Contributing likewise to my researches—and here the disclaimer certainly needs stressing—are several Cold War experts and historians of intelligence issues from whom I derived significant data. One such is my former schoolmate, the distinguished biographer-historian Ted Morgan (no McCarthyite he), with whom I traded security dossiers of one sort or another. Others include Cold War/Venona scholars John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, historian Maochun Yu, and McCarthy biographer Arthur Herman. While I doubt that any of them will agree with me about McCarthy (I’m pretty sure they won’t), all have provided, by their writings and/or directly, information that shaped my understanding of the subject.
In the matter of disagreement, I have some rather awkward thanks to tender to Professor Thomas Reeves, generally regarded as the leading contemporary scholar of McCarthyana. Not only have I learned much from his comprehensive study of the McCarthy epoch, he was most generous in directing me to his research materials at the Wisconsin State Historical Society. His courtesy makes it painful for me to differ with him on key aspects of the record, which I have been constrained to do in several places. Anyway, though it probably doesn’t help much, I do thank him for his kindness.
In terms of institutional sources of information, the main ones are obvious from the text and notes. By far the most extensive and revealing of such sources, as mentioned frequently in the book, are the massive counterintelligence archives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As I have no doubt made sufficiently clear, the scope and nature of these files have given me new appreciation for the Bureau and
for J. Edgar Hoover, who were faithfully standing watch, and keeping excellent records, while many of their official colleagues were at best indifferent to the infiltration problem and at worst complicit in it.
Next to the Bureau, the agencies that have contributed most to my pursuit of Cold War knowledge are what have to be two of the greatest research facilities on the planet—the National Archives and the Library of Congress. I can’t begin to estimate the number of hours (and copy cards) expended at both places, the reams of data thus obtained, or the acts of expert assistance rendered by the archivists and library staffers. Particular thanks are owing to archivists Ed Schamel, Bill Davis, and John Taylor, who not only guided me to essential data but answered many research questions.
The databases I have relied on also include the Truman Library, where Dennis E. Bilger was an unfailing source of expertise and guidance, and the Wisconsin State Historical Society, where Dee Grimsrud was the same. Thanks as well to the librarians and archival staffers at the University of Maryland, West Virginia University, Hanover College, Syracuse University, and Duke University (where independent researcher Ira Katz, based in Durham, ably assisted my endeavors).
Others who have improved my understanding of McCarthy and his doings include the late Ruth Matthews (widow of J. B.); William Rusher, yet another long-time friend who among his many other achievements is an authority on security matters; Thomas Bolan (former law partner of Roy Cohn); Patricia Bozell (widow of L. Brent Bozell); Mrs. Patricia S. Gerlach (daughter of Don Surine); John Hoving of the Mil-waukee Journal; and the witnesses from Wheeling: Mrs. Eva Lou Ingersoll, Douglas McKay, and Ben Honecker—all of whom shared with me their reminiscences of McCarthy. A special word of thanks is owing to the late Bob Ramsey, a great stalwart in the cause, and his wife Dorothy, who were my gracious hosts in Wheeling.
Among others who have supplied me with information, and/or encouragement in the task, are Ann Coulter, who has courageously (and truthfully) defended McCarthy in her writings and speeches; broadcaster/ columnist Wes Vernon, a first-rate student of McCarthy and security issues; John Gizzi, whose extensive knowledge of political personalities has aided me in several places; the late Reed Irvine, who helped out on numerous McCarthy-related topics; former FBI agent John Walsh, who loaned me his detailed research on the Venona decrypts; Daniel Flynn, an astute collector of McCarthyana; and Jon Utley, who made available the considerable expertise about these matters of his mother, Freda. (Her excellent early volume, The China Story, is, like the works of Tony Kubek, required reading even now for students of these issues.)