Manufacturing Hysteria

by Jay Feldman

  The Republican senator William Langer of North Dakota called the Internal Security Act of 1950 “one of the most vicious, most dangerous pieces of legislation against the people that has ever been passed.” A New York Times editorial said it represented “a potentially serious threat to American civil liberties” in that it endangered “the freedom of thought and speech that is a vital part of the American tradition and that is, in fact, essential for the proper functioning of democratic government.” The Washington Post feared that the new law was so vague it “might easily be applied to many organizations guilty of nothing more than a loyal opposition to Government policies or to prevailing popular opinion.”51

  The Post also correctly identified the nature of the driving impulse behind Cold War paranoia. “Subversion,” said the editorial, “is a neurotic nightmare.”

  The 1950 elections saw the Republicans cut into the Democratic majority in both houses. By maintaining a focus on the red threat and on the Democrats’ alleged softness toward that threat, the GOP was able to pick up five Senate and twenty-eight House seats. In California, Nixon moved up to the Senate by smearing his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, with accusations that she harbored Communist sympathies. McCarthy singled out Tydings, McMahon, and the Democratic Senate leader, Scott Lucas of Illinois, for retribution for their roles in attempting to expose his chicanery, and he actively supported their opponents. McMahon was politically unassailable and easily won reelection, but Tydings and Lucas were both defeated.

  The Maryland campaign against Tydings featured an assortment of dirty tricks, including a doctored composite photograph of Tydings talking to the former Communist Party chief Earl Browder. The results of McCarthy’s active role in the contest terrified Senate Democrats, who saw in the defeat of the influential Tydings a warning to each of them. As one powerful Democratic senator, quoted anonymously, put it, “For whom does the bell toll? It tolls for thee.”52

  The Washington Post accused McCarthy of “exploiting the popular anxieties of these fevered times … What he is trying to do is not new. It worked well in Germany and in Russia; all voices except those officially approved were silenced in those lands by intimidation … [T]he public must demand an end to the kind of thought control that Senator McCarthy is creating.”53

  By the beginning of 1951, the phenomenon that the political cartoonist Herb Block dubbed “McCarthyism” was sweeping the country. McCarthy himself, however, was merely an opportunist who hijacked an already moving train, one that had left the station soon after the end of World War II and that had been given a large boost of fuel by Truman in 1947. As the journalist and author Carey McWilliams wrote in 1950, “McCarthyism is merely a second chapter in the loyalty program which the administration officially sanctioned three years ago.” With the loyalty program, McWilliams said later, “witch-hunting ceased to be a form of Congressional rabble-rousing and became a formally sanctioned aspect of the Administration’s foreign policy. The loyalty programme was simply the domestic counterpart of the Truman Doctrine which was proclaimed at the same time.”54

  In 1951, four years after he privately expressed “the opinion that the country is perfectly safe as far as Communism is concerned,” Truman’s own view of domestic Communism had not changed.55 In April 1950, speaking to the Federal Bar Association, he had reiterated his conviction that “the internal security of the United States is not seriously threatened by the Communists in this country … They are noisy and they are troublesome, but they are not a major threat.”56

  Nevertheless, just as political expediency had prompted him to establish the original Employees Loyalty Program, now, in April 1951, the Republicans’ gains in the 1950 election and their continued attacks on his administration for being soft on Communism led Truman to tighten the loyalty program criteria. Whereas the initial basis for dismissal from or refusal of employment had been “reasonable grounds”57 indicating disloyalty, the new standard became “a reasonable doubt”58 regarding loyalty. This change, as the historian Athan Theoharis has written, “was a complete reversal of the burden of proof” and “legitimized the tactics of McCarthy,” thereby contributing to “an escalatory process that could not be reversed.”59

  Ironically, Truman never appeared to understand the precedent set by his loyalty program or its connection to what followed. Speaking to the American Legion in August 1951, he declared, “Real Americanism means that we will protect freedom of speech—we will defend the right of people to say what they think, regardless of how much we may disagree with them.”60

  He went on to condemn those who were “chipping away our basic freedoms just as insidiously and far more effectively than the Communists have ever been able to do,” by attacking the “basic principle of fair play that underlies our Constitution.” In the strongest language, he denounced “the scaremongers and hatemongers” and called upon “every American who loves his country and his freedom to rise up and put a stop to this terrible business.”

  When Truman made this speech, McCarthy had been carrying out his political pogrom for a year and a half, and by the time Truman finally saw fit to take a stand against him, it was without ever mentioning McCarthy by name.

  • • •

  The outcry over the Republicans’ campaign tactics in the Maryland senatorial race prompted the Rules and Administration Committee to appoint a subcommittee to investigate whether the winner, John M. Butler, should be unseated, and to determine McCarthy’s role in the election. The subcommittee’s August report, which was unanimously endorsed by the three Democrats and two Republicans on the panel, found no grounds to unseat Butler but strongly condemned “the despicable ‘back street’ type of campaign … conducted by non-Maryland outsiders … designed to destroy the public faith and confidence in the basic American loyalty of a well-known figure … The implication of such tactics as a threat to our American principles should be obvious and frightening.” The report also concluded that McCarthy had been a “leading and potent force” in the campaign against Tydings.61

  William Benton, McMahon’s fellow Democratic senator from Connecticut, called for McCarthy’s resignation. Knowing that he would not step down, Benton also introduced a resolution calling for a committee to investigate not only McCarthy’s participation in Butler’s campaign but his entire Senate record in order to determine if expulsion proceedings should be brought against him.

  Benton was a political neophyte; he had been appointed to the Senate in December 1949 as a replacement for a senator who had resigned, and he was elected a year later to serve out the remaining two years of the term. When he offered his resolution to investigate McCarthy, not one other senator of either party spoke out in support of it.

  Characteristically, McCarthy immediately tore into Benton, hurling personal insults and making an implicit threat about his political future: “Benton has established himself as the hero of every Communist and crook in and out of government … Connecticut’s mental midget … will learn that the people of Connecticut do not like Communists and crooks in Government any more than the people of Maryland like them.”62

  In September, a subcommittee was appointed to consider Benton’s motion. For the next year, McCarthy attacked Benton mercilessly and relentlessly, calling him “the chameleon from Connecticut,” who, as assistant secretary of state, had surrounded himself with “a motley, Red-tinted crowd” of “fellow travelers, Communists and complete dupes” who were “very, very bad loyalty and security risks.”63 He brought a $2 million libel suit against Benton, conceding that he couldn’t win but wanted to make Benton “sweat.”64 He attacked Benton on national television, had his tax records investigated, and charged that Benton, rather than himself, was the one who should be expelled from the Senate.

  McCarthy succeeded. By the end of the summer of 1952, Benton acknowledged, “There couldn’t be a better example anywhere to illustrate why experienced politicians don’t get mixed up with fellows like McCarthy. Instead of pursuing McCarthy—I am the fellow who is
being pursued.”65 The ultimate proof of the efficacy of McCarthy’s strategy came when Benton was defeated for reelection in 1952.

  Equally important, McCarthy’s tactics and Republican stonewalling succeeded in tying up the subcommittee appointed to pursue Benton’s resolution. Just before Benton left the Senate, the subcommittee issued a report saying, “Senator McCarthy deliberately set out to thwart any investigation of him by obscuring the real issue and the responsibility of the subcommittee by charges of lack of jurisdiction, smear and Communist-inspired persecution.”66 The report did not, however, recommend expulsion or even censure.

  The 1952 election, in addition to putting Eisenhower in the White House, gave the Republicans slim majorities in both houses. When the new Congress was seated in January 1953, the newly reelected McCarthy was appointed chairman of both the Senate Committee on Government Operations and that committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He was now, said The New York Times, “in a position of extraordinary power—in the country as well as the Senate … He is in undisputed control … of the Senate’s most powerful investigative organ … And the Senate now knows … Senator McCarthy is a very bad man to cross politically.”67

  From his new position of power, McCarthy met with Hoover to request “closer cooperation and more extended use of the FBI and its facilities.” Hoover instructed his assistants to covertly provide McCarthy with the information he needed, and asked Assistant Director Louis B. Nichols to act as a “close liaison” with the senator.68 According to William C. Sullivan, a top assistant who later became the FBI’s third-ranking official after Hoover and Associate Director Clyde Tolson, “We gave McCarthy all we had.”69

  McCarthy’s first actual target, in February, was the State Department’s communications arm, the International Information Administration, and its shortwave propaganda radio network, Voice of America. McCarthy charged that his staff had found thirty thousand books by Communist authors in IIA’s overseas library catalogs. The list was actually a compilation of multiple copies by fewer than 425 “un-American” writers, some who were or had been Communists or fellow travelers, and others who clearly were not. The list included such “subversives” as the educators John Dewey and Robert M. Hutchins; the novelists Edna Ferber, Dashiell Hammett, and Lillian Hellman; the poets W. H. Auden and Stephen Vincent Benét; the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre; the head of the NAACP, Walter White; Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s cousin Foster Rhea Dulles; and the best-selling authors Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore H. White.

  In response, the State Department informed VOA that it could use no material by “Communists or other controversial authors” in its broadcasts.70 A list of titles was circulated; hundreds of books were removed from IIA library shelves, and in some cases they were even burned or pulped.

  Equally serious, hundreds of VOA and IIA employees were fired with no evidence, as McCarthy’s aides David Schine and Roy Cohn toured Europe, cultivating a network of informers within the agencies. The VOA’s deputy administrator, Reed Harris, and the acting director for public affairs of the U.S. High Commission for Germany, Theodore Kaghan, were both forced to resign as a result of words they had spoken or written in the 1930s. One VOA employee, the electrical engineer Raymond Kaplan, committed suicide, saying in a farewell note to his wife, “Once the dogs are set on you, everything you have done since the beginning of time is suspect … I have never done anything I consider wrong but I can’t take the pressure.”71

  After the IIA/VOA investigation, McCarthy announced that he would soon be undertaking further extensive investigations of a number of other governmental agencies, including the Army, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Government Printing Office, and the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. In essence, he was serving notice of his intention to take on the Eisenhower administration directly, thereby positioning himself for a run at the presidency in 1956.

  During the summer of 1953, McCarthy threw down the gauntlet by denouncing the administration for carrying on trade relations with Communist countries. Although Eisenhower disliked McCarthy intensely and made a point of maintaining his distance from the senator, McCarthy’s usefulness to the Republican Party made the president reluctant to lock horns with him. “I just will not,” he told one of his close advisers, “I refuse—to get into the gutter with that guy.”72 (Eisenhower’s brother Arthur, however, called McCarthy “the most dangerous menace to America” and lamented, “It’s too bad we have such a man in public life.”)73

  Throughout the fall, McCarthy’s “investigations” became increasingly crazed. One after another, the members of the subcommittee stopped attending hearings, until they became a one-man show. In October, McCarthy began a closed-door probe of the Army, claiming to have discovered a spy ring therein. Thirty-three civilian employees were suspended, but after a monthlong internal investigation Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens announced that all thirty-three had been exonerated.

  As McCarthy continued his attack on the Army, it became clear to Eisenhower that he was going to have to intervene. In November, he attempted to undercut McCarthy’s influence by remarking that he hoped the issue of Communists in the government would be a moot point by the midterm election. McCarthy disputed Eisenhower’s contention, changing, as was his wont, what the president had actually said and claiming instead in a nationally broadcast speech that Eisenhower had “expressed the hope that by election time in 1954, the subject of communism would be a dead and forgotten issue. The raw, harsh fact is that communism is an issue and will be an issue in 1954.”74 White House aides interpreted McCarthy’s challenge as a declaration of war on the president.

  McCarthy continued his investigation of the Army for four more months, accusing, badgering, insulting, demeaning, and terrorizing dozens of innocent civilians and Army personnel, many of whom lost their jobs as a result. In February, while questioning Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker, a highly decorated World War II veteran, McCarthy said that Zwicker “lacked the brains of a 5-year-old child” and was “not fit to wear that uniform,” and had the effrontery to tell him, “General, you should be removed from any command.”75 He then gave reporters a distorted account of Zwicker’s testimony.

  The day after McCarthy’s impertinent bullying of Zwicker, Secretary of the Army Stevens issued an order prohibiting any more Army officers from testifying at McCarthy’s hearings. Furious, McCarthy called Stevens on February 20 and threatened him. Stevens was unmoved. “I am going to try to prevent my officers from going before your committee,” said the secretary, “until you and I have an understanding as to the abuse they are going to get.”76

  “Just go ahead and try it, Robert,” McCarthy shot back. “I am going to kick the brains out of anyone who protects Communists. If that is [your] policy …, you just go ahead and do it. I will guarantee you that you will live to regret it.”

  Vice President Nixon stepped in, urging a meeting between Stevens and the subcommittee Republicans—McCarthy, Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Karl Mundt of South Dakota, and Charles E. Potter of Michigan. Entering the meeting room, one observer noted, Stevens was like “a goldfish in a tank of barracuda.”77 Invoking party unity, the senators browbeat the secretary into publicly retracting his order.

  In a public statement on March 3, 1954, Eisenhower decried the “disregard of standards of fair play” by certain congressional committees. Within the hour, McCarthy issued a defiant response, declaring, “If a stupid, arrogant or witless man in a position of power appears before our committee and is found aiding the Communist party, he will be exposed. The fact that he might be a general places him in no special class so far as I am concerned.”78 The following day, he claimed to have established “beyond any shadow of a doubt by sworn testimony that certain individuals in the Army have been protecting, promoting, covering up and honorably discharging known Communists.”79 In The New York Times, James Reston wrote, “President Eisenhower turned the other cheek … and Senato
r Joseph R. McCarthy, always an obliging fellow, struck him about as hard as the position of the President will allow.”80

  With McCarthy’s defiance of the president, the press and broadcast media—which to a great extent had remained neutral or supported him in the past—now perceived the genuine threat he represented and began to turn against him. In what was perhaps the turning point in McCarthy’s stranglehold on America, the television journalist Edward R. Murrow devoted the entire March 9 installment of his nationwide See It Now program to exposing the senator. The show broadcast films of McCarthy humiliating and intimidating witnesses, and Murrow repeatedly refuted McCarthy’s “facts” with hard evidence, exposing the deceit and fabrications for what they were.

  Murrow’s celebrated closing monologue was a powerful indictment of McCarthy’s agenda and tactics. “The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one,” said Murrow,

  and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.81

  The momentum against McCarthy was given a further push when the Army released a report on March 11 accusing him and the subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of attempting to secure preferential treatment for David Schine, another McCarthy aide, who had been drafted the previous November. Two days later, Nixon signaled the White House’s stance by criticizing McCarthy in a nationally televised speech, saying, “Men who have in the past done effective work exposing Communists in this country have, by reckless talk and questionable method, made themselves the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply.”82