Joe McCarthy and the historians

Evans, M Stanton

How standard references distort the record and misrepresent the evidence on subversion

We have learned a lot in recent years about the ways of Soviet subversion-long denied but now confirmed by secrets from the Kremlin archives, and our own. What was once considered unthinkable stuff about spies and agents in lofty places turned out to be not only thinkable, but true.

However, the widely held "progressive" view that it was all just Cold War paranoia retreats but slowly, clinging to dug-in defenses and staging sporadic guerrilla raids against the new disclosures. On many media-ac mic fronts, indeed, the old falsehoods march on as aggressively as ever, still spreading their confusions.

Nowhere is this more obviously so than in the case of Sen. Joe McCarthy .-Wis.), roufinely treated in our political comment as a reckless, lying bully. Despite a string of revelations that show McCarthy was correct in many of his uproarious battles (his set-to with Prof. Owen Lattimore and the amazing Amerasia scandal, to name a couple), virtually every extant book about the era repeats the tale of his tremendous evil.

Thus Oxford University Press is currently selling a multi-volume series called A History of US, by one Joy Hakim (discussed in HUMAN EVENTS, Sept. 12, 1997). This contains a venomous essay on McCarthy, firing slurs in all directions with no visible shred of fact included in the package. It's obvious Ms. Hakim knows less than nothing of McCarthy. Yet this work, it's said, is a successful textbook. Small wonder American students know so little about the history of their country.

Even worse in some respects, because much more would be expected, is English intellectual historian Paul Johnson. His History of the American People, acclaimed by many on the right, also provides some odd misstatements on McCarthy, making it plain that Johnson too is sadly ignorant of the subject. This is the more disturbing in that the prolific Briton will be believed by people who would dismiss, or nei cr read, the clueless musings of Hakim.

These ventures into Cold War pseudo-history are not unique, but merely two in an endless sequence, all bitterly hostile to McCarthy. Given the vast amount of historical error thus being heaped before the public, plenty of digging is required to find the ore beneath the rubble; not only to do justice to the man (though this is surely called for) but because the facts about these matters are crucial to any serious treatment of the epoch: Who told the truth, who was lying, and why they did it.

In contrast to earlier surveys here that reviewed a dozen or so McCarthy wrangles, this focuses on a single aspect of the storythough one of great importance: His first sensational charges of Communist or proCommunist penetration of the Federal government, and the grounds he had for these assertions. In the Hakim-Johnson books, and most others now available to readers, these are depicted as monstrous lies, conclusively shown to be such. As shall be seen, the facts of record are quite different. McCarthy first came on the national stage in February 1950 with a series of political speeches charging security breakdown in the State Department under President Harry Truman. Beginning with a speech in Wheeling, W. Va., February 9, followed by a speech in Reno, Nev., two nights later, he said a considerable number of Communists and Communist sympathizers had been holed up in Foggy Bottom, that top officials had been incredibly lax in dealing with the matter, and that the Truman White House seemed more inclined to hide this problem than to fix it.

A side dispute in the resulting fracas was exactly how many Communists or pro-Communists at State McCarthy was alleging. rn Wheeling he reportedly claimed he had a "list" of 205-though he would (persuasively) deny he said this. In Reno, where at least the numbers aren't in doubt, he referred to a group of 57, "who would appear to be either card-carrying Communists or certainly loyal to the Communist Party." Nine days thereafter, before the Senate, he claimed to read from "State Department files" (or summaries thereof) regarding 81 individuals who were working in the department (or sometimes with it), or had done so.

To judge by the usual comment, McCarthy's use of these statistics blew out the mental circuits of his opponents, unable to grasp the abstruse idea of three separate numbers-albeit applying to separate matters. While this is a subject of some interest, space constraints forbid discussion in much detail (a few aspects are touched on later). Rather, the questions to be considered here are the substance of what McCarthy said, the accuracy of the resulting message, and the sources of his data-all topics that the standard histories have buried deep in layers of denial.

In the ensuing attempt at excavation, our focus will be on the initial speech McCarthy gave before the Senate. This was the formal proffer of his charges (or as formal as it could be in the conditions), in which he laid out the individual cases, and summarized the evidence he had to back them. These data, he said, clearly showed security failure at State, and the need for strong congressional action to correct things. It is the alleged evidence of this speech that is in turn denounced in all the usual write-ups.

We begin our historical spadework with Paul Johnson's opus, which says McCarthy had no information whatever about Communists, pro-Communists, or security risks at State. The senator's comments to this effect, Johnson writes, were stale, warmed over charges, already examined and discarded. Our author goes so far as to say McCarthy "never possessed any actual names," except some he gleaned from right-wing books and pamphlets. (Emphasis, here and later, added.) The main result of McCarthy's charges, therefore, was to stir up political strife and angst and hurt the cause he claimed to honor.

Though Johnson gets even the antiMcCarthy version a bit muddled, the sources of this critique are clear enough, all cited in his end notes. The whole discourse is taken from three American writers-Ellen Schrecker, Richard Powers, and Thomas Reeves-who offer variant readings of the story. To note this, however, is but to scratch the surface; such books are secondary sources, drawing data from someplace else-documents, interviews, books by others. If we dig a little deeper, we soon discover that someplace else-at least on this particular topic-is always in the end the same: The 1950 report and hearings of a Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Millard Tydings (D.-Md.), named in the wake of McCarthy's charges to look into security affairs at State, and in its hey-day very famous.

This resort to Tydings is sometimes explicit, but even when it isn't may generally be detected somewhere lurking in the background. Thus Johnson informs us that Tydings "exposed as worthless" the cases that McCarthy brought before the Senate, while Richard Powers would have us believe that McCarthy target Owen Lattimore "was cleared of all charges" by the work of Tydings. Prof. Reeves is not quite so careless, yet footnotes various key assertions about these matters to this committee's findings.

'Destruction' of McCarthy Citations of this sort, to put it mildly, are surprising. Given the notoriety of the Tydings committee at the time, it's astonishing that any scholar, of whatever outlook, would place the least reliance on its say-so. This committee was by no means an Olympian judge of truth, but rather the reverse: A brutally partisan player in the contest, intent on doing in McCarthy. The data that go to show this are profuse, and while much in need of being aired are too voluminous for treatment here.

One brief vignette, however, may help provide the setting: A contemporaneous account in Newsweek, while the Tydings hearings were in progress (May 15, 1950). This described a secret meeting in Tydings' apartment to plot a course against McCarthy. Present at this meeting, the article said, were Tydings, chief committee counsel Edward Morgan, Deputy Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy, and other officials of the department. The object of their conclave, Newsweek reported (in offhand and un-attributed quote marks), was the "total and eternal destruction" of McCarthy.

As notable as this savage quote and the cast of characters thus depicted were the ways and means reportedly planned to bring about McCarthy's downfall. Chief among these was, precisely, the claim that he was recycling stale, hence bogus, data: "that his sensational accusations stemmed from a twoyear old list of State Department 'suspects' already examined by four congressional committees which remained unimpressed" This proved uncannily clairvoyant. When Tydings presented his report to the Senate, some two months later, this alleged proof of McCarthy's lying was cited in no fewer than ten places. It has been cited in many others since.

Central to this attack against McCarthy was a now-ancient, yellowing list of State Department personnel-past, present, and prospective-put together in the fall of 1947 and published in early '48 by the House Appropriations Committee of the 80th Congress, chaired by Rep. John Taber (RN.Y.). Staffers of this panel, under chief clerk Robert Lee, reviewed department loyalty files, compiling a list of 108 they found of interest with summaries of relevant data. Howevera point that would eventually loom large-the list contained no names; citing the cases by numbers only. In most discussions of the topic, this is called "the Lee list."

That McCarthy had this list is certain, as is the fact that it formed the principal basis for his oration before the Senate (see below). Equally certain is that it was a document of importance, well deserving close attention. In some respects, indeed, it is even more significant now than it was back then, as we have other data to go with it.

The notion that McCarthy had nothing but this numbered roster, and that his charges thus were baseless, was originally floated, it would appear, by the State Department's own researchers. The department issued a lengthy memo on the subject, which said McCarthy re-cycled this group of cases though they had been thoroughly vetted by Congress (and the FBI) "and their continued employment approved." As State Department official Carlisle Humelsine would put it: "The senator picked up an old list that was furnished to the 80th Congress. . . He is riding piggyback on the 80th Congress committee that made the investigation and cleared the department."

Tydings bought this view completely, and showcased it in his report to Congress. In the Tydings version, the list was a ho-hum affair that refuted McCarthy's Senate speech twice over: It hadn't amounted to much to start with (the entries "do not appear in any instance to be concerned with the merits of the cases") and by 1950 was obsolete (the people involved "are not necessarily now in the State Department"). McCarthy, hyping these innocuous data, had "twisted, colored, or perverted the House material" to make something bland seem evil.

To prove the harmless nature of the list, Tydings played the trump card dealt by State: Republicans of the 80th Congress had viewed these very cases -and reached no McCarthylike conclusions. On the contrary, Tydings said, the House Appropriations panel "did not regard them of sufficient significance even to submit a report concerning them or the loyalty of State Department personnel generally." As foretold by Newsweek, he further claimed that four different committees of this Congress had looked into these matters, and all had come up empty. Thus the State Department/Tydings thesis that the list amounted to nothing much, the security set-up at State was fine, and McCarthy was a liar. If we now fast forward to our historians, we find all this repeatedsometimes rather vaguely, sometimes with embellishments and variations, but always with the identical verdict: The list was no big deal, hence no security woes to speak of. In confirming the so-what description of the list, for instance, Reeves provides us numerous snippets, plus two innocuous longer quotes, contrasting these with the McCarthy phrasing. Similar treatment is supplied by Prof. David Oshinsky, another academic critic, whose book-length assault against McCarthy is frequently cited on these topics. (See "Two Historians on `the Lee List,"' page S4.)

Also, various writers echo Tydings in claiming that the Lee list cases were "cleared" by Congress (or, in some versions, the FBI): Republicans of the 80th Congress, it is alleged, were so underwhelmed by these insipid data that they gave the department a clean bill of health. In the House Appropriations drill, says Reeves, "no Communists had been discovered, but of the 108 Lee personally questioned the loyalty of 40 or 50. Hearings were held in early 1948, and the State Department defended itself sufficiently to satisfy House Republicans, who declared it free of subversives."

Examine enough assertions of this sort, and backtrack on citations, and their ultimate origin in the Tydings version becomes apparent (sometimes at one or two removes, as one author cites another). It would thus appear that those who flog McCarthy for making stale, warmed over charges are themselves engaged in the identical practice. The irony rates a note in passing, but is a relatively minor issue. Far more significant, of course, is whether these re-cycled statements about the Lee/McCarthy cases, and hence security affairs at State, are truth or fiction. And if we delve into this a bit, we soon discover that the whole elaborate tale of an innocuous-obsolete-discredited roster cleared by Congress is a preposterous fable. What Lee List Said Recall in this regard the various snippets and Lee list quotes supplied by our historians--quotes so utterly tame and soporific as to raise the question of why such a list was ever put together. Recall also that the list detailed more than 100 other cases from which our authors could thus have quoted. If we examine these, we find that they are radically different from the ones they deign to give us. Following are some Lee list entries that our historians forgot to mention:

"This former employee's file is perhaps the largest physically in the files. . . Among other things, the file reflects that he furnished material to a known Soviet espionage agent and that he has had consistent contact with a long list of Communists and suspected Soviet agents."

"Consideration is still being given this applicant, although he is a known Communist Party member, and a recommendation has been made that his brother, who is now employed in the department, be dismissed for security reasons."

"This is a case of failure to closely follow and supervise an important case. . . [an] investigative agency advised that a-reliable informant said in November 1944 ,hat a wellknown Communist in Newark, N.J., advised him that the subject was a Communist Party member:'

"`This is a case of appointment to an important position from a security standpoint without prior security clearance. . .[Soviet defector] Victor Kravchenko stated that the applicant had to be a Communist Party member, or a strong sympathizer, in order to hold a position with the Soviet Purchasing Commission as long as he did."

'"here are no indications in the file that any investigation has been conducted regarding her background; however, information was received on October 9, 1947, from a former supervisor in the War Department to the effect that she was a Communist."

"Information was obtained by a Consul General that the subject may be furnishing information to a Russian agent. . . On the Consul General's recommendation, he was relieved of his assignment, where he was a security risk, but he is still in the Department."

As appears in the sidebar on the opposite page, this is but a brief selection from numerous Lee list entries of similar astounding import. A few cases are comparatively bland and/or concern such non-Communist-related problems as drinking or finances, but these are a small fraction of the total-and, generally speaking, not cases picked up McCarthy. (E.g., innocuous No. 14, so helpfully highlighted by Oshinsky, was not one of McCarthy's cases. ) The predominant, unrelenting theme is the sheer number of individuals in some way identified as known or suspected Communists, pro-Communists or fellow travelers; contacts of suspected Communists or targets of espionage inquiries; members of Communist front groups; people formerly employed by pro-Communist (or Soviet) organizations; and the like.

A second major feature of the list is a recurring tone of discontent with lax-to-seemingly-nonexistent security methods at State: "No investigation has been conducted of the subject in this case although he appears closely tied in with the espionage suspect"This is an illustration of lack of follow-up even though subject appears to be possible security risk." "This is a case of apparent pressure from a high official in the department to employ the applicant in spite of derogatory information." And so on.

To be sure, our excerpts don't include such possibly mitigating factors as the denials of the people named, the accuracy and/or motives of their accusers, or other countervailing data-factors that proved to be of riveting interest to State Department spokesmen. The point is otherwise: namely, what the Lee list was about, the matters the security officials were addressing, and the items that would have caught the attention of McCarthy. This was emphatically not a roster of "New Dealers," people who were "a bit leftist," or enlightened friends of integration, as our historians would have it. Consider now the Republican 80th Congress to which the Lee list was submitted. How plausible is it that the Old Guard, antiCommunist stalwarts of this Congress, looking at such entries, would have summarily "cleared" the State Department, expressed their "satisfaction" with it, or done anything remotely like this? Or, to pick up the Tydings trump card, that no fewer than four separate committees of this Republican Congress, viewing these sensational data, would have been so thoroughly content with what they saw that they declined to file reports about it? If none of this seems likely to have occurred, rest assured it didn't. All these statements are stunning falsehoods-a bold invention of the State Department and Sen. Tydings, who obviously banked on gulling readers who couldn't or wouldn't go back and check the record. In fact, the Republican investigators who viewed the list (and such other related data as they could get their hands on) were appalled by the security situation at State and made innumerable comments that revealed this.

We need go no further to see the point than the committee that compiled the list, whose conduct was in all respects the opposite of that described by Tydings. In January of 1948, a subcommittee of House Appropriations, chaired by Rep. Karl Stefan of Nebraska (with full committee chairman Taber sitting in), reviewed various entries of the list and questioned State Department spokesmen John Peurifoy and Hamilton Robinson about them. These exchanges show quite clearly the charitable/legalistic view of personnel security that then prevailed at State (though sometimes nominally disavowed): That suspect employees should receive the benefit of doubt, much as in a court of law.

This stance, for good or ill, was markedly different from that of Taber and Stefan, who argued with considerable force that where any reasonable doubts existed, they should be settled the other way around (which could be done under the so-called McCarran rider, permitting suspect employees to be discharged forthwith). Even more to the present point were the comments these lawmakers made about the list and its implications for the security drill at State. Compare with the Tydings treatment, for instance, the actual views of Chairman Taber:

"... . I would say this to you, that it makes me disturbed as to whether we have any representation of the United States in the State Department. I have not been as disturbed in a long time. . . I would feel that if you are going to have anybody employed in the State Department the question of loyalty should be absolutely clear and that we should have people who are representing the United States and whose interest is first the United States."

In similar vein were the comments of Stefan, who conducted most of the interrogation. No more than chairman Taber did he suggest that he was satisfied with security goings-on at State, ready to "clear" it and its employees, or viewed the Lee list with indifference. Instead he said precisely the reverse, as follows:

"I am just a man from the prairies of Nebraska, just asking you why it is that these people are on the payroll when the people of the United States are trying to get behind the government to fight communism and the encroachment of communism in this country and all over Europe. And here we find them employed in the State Department."

Nor, be it noted, did House Appropriations neglect to file a report about these matters. A few weeks after this hearing was completed, the panel submitted a report to Congress, which, inter alia, discussed the Lee list (the report that Sen. Tydings quite specifically tells us was not submitted). This document informs us:

"Files on the prospective employees were active, and the individuals at the time of the investigation were being considered for employment, even though information of record pointed to their being poor risks. The committee does not feel that the department has been as diligent as it might have been in the selection of its personnel. . .and has not sufficiently exercised the prerogative given it under the so-called McCarran rider.... It would seem to the committee that any doubt in connection with the employment of personnel in the Department of State should be resolved in favor of the United States. . ."

While this unanimous (hence bi-partisan) report was more gently phrased than the views of the committee leaders, in no sense did it amount to "clearance" of or contentment with the department. Moreover, Chairman Taber left no doubt whatever as to his continuing intense displeasure when he and Rep. Stefan presented their findings to the House in early March. Following are some of his comments, geared directly to the Lee list, that suggest the measure of his "satisfaction": " . .the hearings which were held upon the State Department appropriations bill demonstrate beyond any question that the first thing for the United States to do is clean up the State Department and get rid of those whose incompetency or disloyalty is a menace to the United States.... The investigations of the Appropriations Committee indicated a very large number of Communists on the rolls of the State Department. . .They have employed people whose record according to their own files is not such that any loyal American could trust them."

Finally, to this grim assessment of the list Taber added some further thoughts about the State Department spokesmen who appeared before him, specifically Mr. Robinson, the Director of Controls, who had responsibility for such matters. The depth of the chairman's contentment may be gauged from these assertions:

"A thorough reading of his [Robinson's] testimony before this committee. . . would indicate total incompetence to do the job. . . There can be no excuse for the failure of the State Department to clean house-get rid of the incompetents and those about whom there is any question of loyalty. . After listening for 1 1/2 hours to the developments of the way the State Department has handled its security operations and to Mr. Robinson's answers. . . I was compelled to say: The testimony that I have heard here makes me wonder whether the United States has any representation at all in the State Department. I regret to say that nothing has happened to change my opinion." Thus the original committee that compiled the Lee list, reviewed its contents, and allegedly "cleared" the State Department on this basis! Readers may wish to go back and scan the not-to-worry description of these topics above related and ask who has been misrepresenting what. The contentions of Sen. Tydings and our historians that the list was viewed as no big deal, that Congress was "satisfied" with the security shop at State, and that there was no security problem which required addressing, were the exact reverse of what developed from these hearings. Such are the methods that have been used to prove that Joe McCarthy was a liar. This particular inversion of the record is so raw that it might seem impossible to top it; however, the liberties taken with the work of a second committee of this Congress, also invoked by Tydings, were in some respects still more bizarre than those that shaped the withering comments of Taber and Stefan into bland approval. This was a subcommittee of the House Committee on Expenditures, chaired by Rep. Edgar Chenoweth of Colorado, which held further hearings about these matters on March 10 and 12, 1948.

In the Tydings treatment, these hearings likewise showed how pleased Republicans of the 80th Congress were with security operations at State-though Tydings supplied no evidence to support this. "It is unnecessary," he suavely noted, "to relate in this report the results of their investigation and the trend of examination by the subcommittee members which indicated their satisfaction" It was indeed "unnecessary" to give such details-at least from the standpoint of Tydings. As shall be seen, he and his allies at State had plentiful reason not to recall the chill specifics of these hearings.

If we consult the remarkable record of these sessions, we find the chairman, Congressman Busbey of Illinois and others relentlessly grilling Messrs. Peurifoy and Robinson about the Lee list. Again, the difference in perspective is striking: The State Department witnesses hem and haw about the cases, stress the need for compelling evidence, the difficulty of making judgments; the GOPers as frequently insist that dubious loyalty cases be resolved in favor of security interests, no two ways about it. Further reprising the Taber sessions, Chenoweth and members of the panel ask many skeptical questions and offer numerous critical comments about the security drill at the department. (See sidebar, "What One House Committee Said," page S7.)

To this point the doings of this committee closely tracked the Taber-Stefan hearings. There was, however, a startling and well-nigh incredible difference, brought out by Congressman Busbey. It was Busbey who in fact had sparked these sessions to begin with, publicly saying that security official Robinson was totally unfit for the post he held and should be ousted (still more of that Republican contentment). The Illinois GOPer backed this up by closely questioning Robinson about his mysterious friend and kinsman, Robert Miller.

It developed that Robinson and Miller were not only second cousins but had been extremely chummy: Miller had been best man at Robinson's wedding, they had been good friends since the 1930s, their families traded visits and Christmas presents, the relationship had long persisted. It further developed that Miller had been in the State Department himself, exiting just about the time that Robinson entered.

Why all these questions about Robert Miller? The mind-boggling answer is that he was, surrealistically enough, one of the cases on the Lee list! Indeed, according to the compilers of the list, "this subject was, in all probability, the greatest security risk the department has had." He was, as Elizabeth Bentley would relate, one of her dues-paying Communist apparat in Washington, sent there by Soviet agent Jacob Golos to help out with the spying. The relatively hard line security types at State in the pre-Hamilton Robinson era had targeted Miller for ouster in July of '46, and he at last resigned in December of that year. (Miller was Lee list case No. 12, and McCarthy's case No. 16.)

Busbey's point in bringing this up was not that Robinson himself was suspect (though the congressman plainly had his doubts), but rather that this State Department security czar should have known Robert Miller for all these years and had not the faintest inkling that his long-time pal was, just possibly, subversive. (This despite the fact that Miller had hied off to Russia in the '30s and married an American woman who worked for the Moscow Daily News, a Soviet propaganda organ.) As Busbey summed up his position, "I would say that anyone that naive should not be the Director of the Office of Controls. . ."

Whether Busbey was correct in this regard, it does seem a trifle odd that the person selected by the State Department to handle matters like the Lee list should be a boon companion of "the greatest security risk" it had to offer, in the view of its compilers. For now, however, we let that pass, and content ourselves with noting that this whole staggering mass of data was simply ignored by Tydings, though his report invoked the very hearing that produced it! There is a particular word for this kind of thing; it's called "disinformation."

Senate Also Reports

If the reader will bear with me, there is, regrettably, even more: Yet another committee of Congress that Tydings cited to prove there was no security mess at State, and that McCarthy was a scoundrel. This was the Senate Committee on Appropriations, which in the period 1947-48 questioned Gen. George C. Marshall, then Secretary of State, about security problems in the department. According to Tydings, this was the third of the four Republican panels so satisfied with the security shop at State that they declined to file reports about it.

Unluckily for Tydings, it happened that Sen. Homer Ferguson of Michigan, a knowledgeable student of such issues, had been a member of this particular committee (and still was). He also chaired another panel of the 80th Congress that inquired into security problems of the era (the affair of William Remington, who was McCarthy case 19), and well knew what these committees had reported. He accordingly rose on the Senate floor and denounced the Tydings assertions about "four separate committees" as unadulterated hogwash.

In June of 1947, Ferguson noted, members of Senate Appropriations had given direct to Marshall a detailed and vigorous report about the security situation in his department. Again, far from voicing "satisfaction," this report expressed the greatest alarm about the subject, backed up with numerous specifics. Ferguson put extensive excerpts from this into the Record, and they make electrifying reading now, as they surely must have then:

"It becomes necessary clue to the gravity of the situation to call your attention to a condition that developed and still flourishes in the State Department under the administration of Dean Acheson [then Under Secretary to Marshall]. It is evident that there is a deliberate, calculated program being carried out not only to protect Communist personnel in high places, but to reduce security and intelligence protection to a nullity.. .

"On file in the department is a copy of a preliminary report of the FBI on Soviet espionage activities in the United States, which involves a large number of State Department personnel, some in high official positions. This report has been challenged and ignored by those charged with the responsibility of administering the department with the apparent tacit approval of Mr. Acheson ... Voluminous files are on hand in the department proving the connection of the State Department employees and officials with this espionage ring."

As to a further Tydings statement that no committee of the 80th Congress had so much as named a single State Department employee as disloyal, Ferguson nailed this as buncombe also. While forbearing to identify them in the Record, the Michigan solon noted that nine individuals had been specifically named in this report, and that under pressure from the Congress some of these had been removed. Ferguson then resumed reading from the report, as follows:

"[These nine] are only a few of the hundreds now employed in varying capacities who are protected and allowed to remain despite the fact that their presence is an obvious hazard to national security. . . The War and Navy Departments have been thwarted for a year in their efforts to carry out the German scientist program. They are blocked by one man in the State Department, a protege of Acheson named [blank].... who is also the chief instrument in the subverting of the overall security program. This deplorable condition runs all the way up and down the line. Assistant Secretary of State [Spruille] Braden has also surrounded himself with men like [blank] and [blank], who has a notorious international reputation. The network also extends into the office of Assistant Secretary [William] Benton."

These alarmed (and alarming) statements, it will be observed, are fully congruent with the comments we have quoted from the Lee list, and closely contemporaneous with the time that it was put together. ("Hundreds" of cases would suggest, indeed, that the Lee list was by no means a comprehensive roster.) It may be observed as well that the composite picture of dereliction emerging from the list and the many acerbic comments of Congress looks considerably more like the State Department as sketched by Joe McCarthy than it does the flattering portrait framed by Tydings.

Tydings' Web of Lies

Given the number and vehemence of these statements, the reader may well inquire how Tydings could possibly say Republicans of the 80th Congress were content with security affairs at State. The answer to this is disarmingly simple, providing us a useful lesson in the Tydings method. First, all the comments we have quoted, and others like them, were just plain ignored-dropped down the memory hole and forgotten. To fill the resulting gap in data, Tydings managed to find a single statement by a single GOPer-Rep. Bartel Jonkman of Michigan-and showcased this as the definitive comeback to McCarthy.

This statement, besides being the view of a lone individual, is peculiar to the point of weirdness-more Lewis Carroll then George Orwell. It indeed says that State had shaped up its act, and asserts that preeminent among those deserving credit for this was none other than-Bartel Jonkman. Acting as a "committee of one," the congressman had looked into security affairs at State, made some complaints, and demanded action-all of which, he said, took him about three weeks (with some follow-up visits to confirm things) . Thanks to this endeavor, he said, there were no longer any security risks in the department. His evidence for this was that John Peurifoy had told him so-directly. Such is the "report" Tydings unearthed to prove Republicans of the 80th Congress were content with the security shop at State.

In sum: It develops that of the "four committees" cited by Tydings, three said precisely the opposite of what he represented them as saying. And what they had to say was that the security situation at State was dire, that there were numerous security-loyalty risks (and worse) at large, and that measures to deal with this were shockingly deficient-in essence the identical message that would be delivered by McCarthy. The only "committee" that Tydings could find which supported his position (and the only one directly quoted) was Congressman Jonkman's one-man band. The thing speaks (eloquently) for itself. Not to bandy words about it, the Tydings performance, across the board, was a carefully woven web of lies. Yet it is the Tydings version of these events that we are given in our alleged histories. So much for the contention that McCarthy misrepresented the nature of the Lee list, that it had been viewed indifferently by Congress, and that the security drill at State had been approved by a quartet of GOP committees. Obviously, there were many deceptions involved here, but they were not deceptions by McCarthy.

However, there are still other charges about McCarthy's handling of the list that need to be considered-lesser included offenses, so to speak. These generally have to do, one way or another, with the assertion that he had nothing but the Lee list, and that particular statements he made about his evidence thus were perjured: That these data as of 1950 had any relevance to security goings-on at State, that he knew the identities of the people he was discussing, that he had independent sources of information (including "loyal employees" of the department). If in fact he had nothing but a two-year-old numbered list of cases, then all these claims were baseless.

As noted, it's tolerably plain that McCarthy and/or his researchers did have the list, and almost certainly had been working with it before, or during, his trip to Wheeling and points West. The data base required to make this judgment is more than ample: McCarthy's original statement to the Senate, the list itself, the names that go with the various numbers. Matching one thing with another, it's evident that the vast majority of the cases he then produced were also cases on the Lee list.

If we can see this now, then obviously the State Department and Sen. Tydings could see it then, and did-and also saw this was a point that could, with some rhetorical effort, be turned against McCarthy. By focusing on the question of where the data came from, while obscuring what the data said, it was possible to change the subject from substance to procedure, and to make the accuser the accused. (A scenario that would be re-enacted many times in the McCarthy drama-and some others of recent vintage.)

To this point our presentation has been supportive of McCarthy, and with good reason. In this respect, however, it's clear he made a gratuitous error which greatly aided his opponents (something else that would be repeated). At no time in these disputes did he acknowledge that he was relying on the Lee list, thus helping make disclosure of this fact an issue. This was the more uncalled for, it would seem, in that there was no apparently compelling reason not to use the list, or to say that he was doing so, and plenty of reason to think this would have strengthened the case that he was making: That these problems had been brought up before, yet persisted. (A point he otherwise did make, correctly, on numerous occasions.)

If McCarthy erred in this regard, however, it by no means follows that the multiple charges lodged against him on this score are valid. On the contrary, numerous anti-McCarthy statements made in this connection routinely turn out to be in error-and considerably more deceptive than McCarthy's sin of omission in failing to tell the Senate he was mining data from the Lee list.

It is quite untrue, for instance, that the list was obsolete when McCarthy made his charges. Far from it. In the Chenoweth hearings of March '48, John Peurifoy revealed that 57 of the Lee list people were then employed at State. As of February 1950, when McCarthy forced the issue back into the open, it developed that 41 of these people, better than two-thirds, were still in the department. (Others, moreover, had simply been hived off to other bureaus or the United Nations-as McCarthy rightly noted.) This hardly suggests that the list was ancient history.

As to those that remained with State, the standard Foggy Bottom mantra was that these had all been "cleared," and that this refuted McCarthy's charges. However, as already seen, this completely begged the question, since the clearance referred to was the State Department's doing--not, as implied by Tydings and overtly said by others (Humelsine, Reeves), that of Congress. The issue to be addressed was, precisely, whether these people should have been cleared by State, and what such clearance said about the security methods that prevailed there.

This being so, McCarthy would have rendered yeoman service had he done nothing more than what he is accused of: bring up the list again, focus attention on what it said, and demand some kind of action on the underlying problem. However, McCarthy went appreciably beyond this.

McCarthy Had 114 Names

We need only consider in this regard the strange pronouncement of Paul Johnson with which we opened our inquiry-that McCarthy, wielding his numbered list of cases, "never possessed any actual names." (Johnson gets this from Richard Powers, who tells us that "there was no list of 205 names, nor of 57, nor of any number. . . McCarthy did not have the actual names of anyone since in the loyalty reports they were identified only by case numbers. . :') If McCarthy had nothing but some numbered cases, these statements would be true, and fairly damaging to McCarthy. They are, however, absurdly false. In point of fact, McCarthy submitted a total of 114 names to Tydings (by my count, which may have missed some)-and this doesn't include several others referred to in his various speeches.

In order, the groups of names McCarthy supplied to Tydings were as follows: Nine so-called "public cases," set forward in his testimony beginning on March 8, 1950; a net of 78 other cases delivered to Tydings by letter, dated March 18; and at least 27 other names conveyed elsewhere along the way to the committee. In all these instances, it bears repeating, McCarthy identified the individuals by name, not simply by case number. Here endeth, let us hope, the curious fiction that McCarthy "never possessed any actual names."

(Actually, no one who bothers to read the Tydings hearings-as opposed to reading books about them - could make this kind of error. The first phase of the hearings consisted entirely of McCarthy's presentation of his "public cases," all named in open session. Thereafter, the hearings contained several references to an additional list of 25 names McCarthy passed on to the committee, and to the four score names attached to his letter of March 18. At least two and possibly other additional names were also supplied to Tydings. My count of 114 is arrived at by netting out certain overlaps among these rosters.)

Not only did McCarthy have the names, the quantity of names-and-cases submitted makes it apparent that he had information other than the Lee list. If we consider only the Senate speech, it's clear that, while drawing heavily on the list, he had other sources also, including other cases, though these were at the time a distinct minority of his total. (By the State Department's own, somewhat inaccurate tabulation, about a dozen of his original cases were not on the Lee list.) When all the names he gave to Tydings are examined, the non-Lee list percentage is much greater. Some 40 per cent of the names supplied to Tydings (45 of 114) were not Lee list alumni. If we consider the relative weight of McCarthy's cases, the point is even more emphatic. Virtually all of his higher-profile targets-Owen Lattimore, John Stewart Service, Philip Jessup, Gustavo Duran, John Paton Davies, Haldore Hanson-were derived from sources other than the Lee list. The only historically prominent name that makes an appearance on the list is John Carter Vincent. (Which is not to say that some of the less publicized individuals were unimportant.)

Equally to the present point, McCarthy produced additional data on at least a dozen of the Lee list cases-information that postdated publication of the list (January '48) and was not derived from its assertions. This adding of data began with the initial speech before the Senate (e.g., "this individual was still in the State Department as late as December 1949") and would continue.

In other words, McCarthy and his researchers obviously did have the Lee list (and the names), but weren't standing pat on its revelations. Rather, they were backtracking on its contents, seeking the then-current whereabouts of people on it, acquiring other data about them, and developing other cases and had to have been doing this for some indefinite time before he addressed the Senate. This continuing data build-up is congruent with the fact that the number of cases he alleged would steadily grow (not, as sometimes said, diminish).g., from 57 to 81 to 114.

(As to the question of when McCarthy came up with his information, his use of the number 57 in his speech at Reno is suggestive. Though at this point we can't be certain, it's generally thought that he derived this from the Peurifoy testimony in March of '48; if so, this would mean that McCarthy or his agents had been researching these matters with some degree of care before he departed on his junket, as this number in the Chenoweth hearings was given in almost incidental fashion, well into the proceedings.)

This process of gathering and updating information would accelerate once McCarthy was in the limelight. He rapidly became a magnet for people who had tales to tell about security dereliction at State (and elsewhere)anti-Communist researchers, frustrated counterintelligence types, congressional experts, past and current Federal employees who smuggled tips and information. Accordingly, his store of data would not only have surpassed the Lee list by a small but not insignificant margin from the outset, but would grow at a tremendous pace thereafter.

Finally, as to sources, it's clear from the internal evidence of the February 20 speech, and from collateral information, that McCarthy did have inside contacts at State, though probably not a great many at this juncture. (These principally concerned activities at the Office of Information and Education in New York, but would later extend to other venues.) As the truth or relevance of his charges depends on the evidence as such, rather than on where it came from, this is not perhaps of huge importance. It becomes an issue, however, because McCarthy said he had such contacts, and because the Tydings committee would categorically deny this ("nothing but the Lee list").

These comments as to sources and procedures do not, of course, address the individual cases-concerning which, it's often said, McCarthy badly garbled or misrepresented information from the Lee list. Detailed consideration of this topic is needed, but would require a separate essay as long as this one. For now a couple of observations are in order. First, in relating a mass of data to the Senate, subject to constant heckling and interruption, McCarthy stumbled in several places, and occasionally acknowledged that he did so. (Most obviously, he omitted several of his cases, and read another twice.) Nor do even his staunchest admirers deny that, in prosecutorial mode, he pushed his data to the utmost, drew the strongest inferences from them, or got some of his complex mass of detail wrong in the melee of the battle.

All of this, however, is quite different from saying that he made things up, "lied" to the Senate, or otherwise engaged in intentional deception about his cases. Indeed, given the inherently lurid nature of the Lee list, there would have been no need for any such deception; the list was sensational enough to begin with. Nor, given the fact that McCarthy's critics are so glaringly wrong about the general nature of the list, is there any particular reason to suppose that they are more reliable than he concerning any specific entry on it. If there is to be any presumption in the matter, it would be in the reverse direction.

In this respect, as in so many others, the argument that McCarthy lied or distorted stems from the notion that he had nothing but the Lee list; from this it is in turn concluded that whenever his presentation departed from the list, or added to it, he must have been distorting. However, if he had sources other than the list, this wouldn't necessarily follow. A convenient illustration of the point is provided by the second of the innocuous quotes that Prof. Reeves contrasts with the assertions of McCarthy, thereby conveying the strong impression that McCarthy was a shameless liar. (See page S4.)

In this case, the list asserts that information about an employee of the Office of Information and Education is "sketchy," that "there has been no investigation," and that the case "is awaiting a report from the New York Office." McCarthy, in jarring contrast, says, "according to the file he is a known Communist." (Thus notably differing from other cases in which he follows the Lee list almost verbatim.)

The juxtaposition of these statements devoid of context can only suggest to readers that McCarthy outrageously misrepresented the nature of the data. As noted, however, the Office of Information and Education in New York was the very place where from the outset he most obviously did have an independent source, or sources. It is thus not only conceivable, but more than likely, that McCarthy's categorical statement of the issue reflects the report that, as of the fall of '47, was being awaited from New York.

Subversives at State

Putting all of the above together, and sketching in some further background, we can begin to get a connected picture of what was actually happening at this time with respect to security affairs at State, and related developments in Congress. In particular, we can see how (and why) the Lee list was assembled, the pivotal role of our committees, and the linkage of these various matters to McCarthy's later charges.

As previously noted in these pages, the State Department in the years immediately after World War II was faced with an immense security problem, not entirely of its making. During the mobilization for the war, the government hastily put together a number of makeshift bureaus-the Board of Economic Warfare, the Office of War Information, the Office of Strategic Services--recruiting people where it could find them. Under the stress of war conditions and with the Soviet Union as our ally, defense against pro-Communist penetration of these outfits was seldom thought of. (This paralleled events in England, which permitted the; Philby spy ring easy entry to high official station.)

At war's end, thousands of staffers from these bureaus were dumped into the State Department, still unvetted, confronting the security agents there with a colossal headache. In the period 194547, when James Byrnes was secretary, the loyalty-security team at State, directed by J. Anthony (Joe) Panuch, coped gamely with this influx, as well as with other security problems in the department. By the standards that prevailed in wartime, and still did in many circles, the outlook of the Panuch brigade toward possible Communist infiltration was a comparatively tough one (and would get more so).

This huge transfer of personnel closely coincided with the on-set of the Cold War, and with a rapidly growing awareness that there was a big security challenge to deal with, linked to our recently favored "noble ally" in the Kremlin. In 1945, there occurred, in disturbing sequence, the Amerasia spy case (classified documents delivered to a proCommunist journal); a re-interview of Whittaker Chambers by the FBI, repeating the statements about Alger Hiss and others first made in 1939; and the decision of former Communist "spy queen" Bentley to tell her story to the Bureau. Collaterally, Igor Gouzenko bolted from the Soviet embassy in Canada, bearing data that would steer investigators to Communist agents in the atomic energy project and elsewhere. These developments gave the FBI the outlines of a formidable conspiracy at work inside the U.S. government, plus lots of clues to go on. Many of these would lead to people in the State Department-evident security risks at best, possible Soviet agents at the worst. Hiss was the obvious case in point, but wasn't going solo; his brother Donald, Robert Miller, Henry Collins, Laurence Duggan, John Carter Vincent and others would be identified under oath as cogs in the Communist apparatus. These were connected to other suspects in such important places as Treasury, Commerce and the White House, and to shadowy outside groups and individuals with a high subversion quotient.

Gathering data on this network, the FBI set off a series of alarms to the executive and Congress-as witness the report that Sen. Ferguson read into the Record. In retrospect it's reasonably plain that intel from the Bureau was being fed in to the Panuch security squad at State, forming the basis for much that would show up in the Lee list, and subsequently in the possession of McCarthy. Among the clearest instances is Miller, on whom there is a welldeveloped record. Bentley would inform the FBI, and later Congress, of Miller's connections to her spy ring. The memo on Miller drafted by the Panuch security team reflects the identical information-thereafter appearing, much truncated, in the Lee list. (It's also apparent that Congressman Busbey, in the hearings we have noted, had this security dossier before him.)

By mid-1946, armed with such information, the Panuch security forces, despite internal opposition, were making some substantial headway. They were, for instance, all over Hiss, calling for his ouster a full two years before his case became a national scandal. They targeted and moved against Carl Marzani (one of the post-war transferees), demanded the removal of Miller, and spotted a number of Amerasia types down in the woodwork. By year end, Miller and Hiss were out of the department, and Mazani had started on the road to prison. This by no means solved the total problem, but it was progress.

Beginning in 1947, however, all of this would come to a shuddering halt. James Byrnes, who had been Panuch's ultimate patron, stepped down as Secretary of State, to be succeeded by George Marshall. The latter asked the already powerful Acheson to remain and, in effect, be mayor of the palace-thus spelling the doom of Joe Panuch. As the antagonists would both attest, the now highflying deputy to Marshall made ousting the security chief a top-priority project. Acheson would later comment, savoring Panuch's abrupt dismissal, that " a new day had clearly dawned" at State. In this respect, it clearly had. The team of Peurifoy and Robinson, both Acheson proteges, took over the security drill at the department and brought with them a decidedly different way of handling cases. As Panuch would tell the Senate:

". . .we [had] applied the reasonable doubt test of loyalty. . .in the new program of 1947 they put in what I call an overt-act test. They specified that in order to dismiss a man for disloyalty or to make him ineligible on loyalty grounds, there had to be reasonable grounds to show that there was present disloyalty. . . [This] was absolutely ineffective. You can never get the evidence. . .[the security situation] was deteriorating when I came in there because of this transfer [i.e., the merger]. We tried to do something about but in 1947 they put us out of business."

Fortunately for the American people, these internal changes at State could not prevent the methodical sleuths of the FBI and Capitol Hill from pressing their inquiries. By early 1948, these faithful bloodhounds were closing in from numerous angles. Behind the scenes, the Bureau was tracking the Bentley-Chambers allegations; the cryptographers were beginning to crack the secrets of Venona, revealing the contacts of Moscow Center with various of its U.S. agents; Hede Massing would add the name of Duggan to the roster of those accused of spying. More visibly, congressional committees were now openly poring through the Lee list, and preparing for the sensational public hearings that would rock the nation in the summer.

In the unfolding of this process, the early days of March 1948 stand out uniquely from the record. This was about the time that Alger Hiss made his grand jury debut, but he was now gone from the department, and his case was not yet public. Far more immediate for State, in terms of big political trouble, were the events on Capitol Hill to which we have alluded. In early March, it may be recalled, Chairman Taber, head of the most powerful committee in the House (it controlled the money), took to the floor to denounce "a very large number of Communists" on the rolls at State, blast its security operations, and specifically put the torch to Hamilton Robinson.

This was bad enough, but what followed a few days later was arguably a good deal worse. On March 10 and 12, the Robinson-Peurifoy team went back up the Hill for yet another Leelist drubbing, with the added jolt that Congressman Busbey, already calling for Robinson's head, brought out the Miller nexus. It could scarcely get much dicier for the department than this: to have an angry congressman, obviously well informed and wielding hard intelligence data, blasting its security chief for links to an identified Soviet agent! These compounding statements and revelations had all the makings of a colossal scandal.

What happened next therefore does not appear coincidental. On March 13, President Truman issued a sweeping secrecy order that forbade officials of executive agencies to provide such material to Congress or its staffers. Henceforth, there would be no more such damaging searches of the files, interrogations, or disclosures. What congressional sleuths could learn about these matters (at least from official sources) would be whatever general statements the administration might choose to give them. Taber, Chenoweth, Busbey, et al. were now, like Joe Panuch, effectively out of business.

Department Never 'Cleared' From all of which it should be apparent that our venerable list of 108 is indeed a document of importance. Not only did congressional wrath about its contents immediately precede and probably trigger the Truman order (as he would make reasonably obvious in his memoirs); precisely because that order was issued, the list would remain the only extensive look behind the scenes at State Department security practice that Congress would come up with. From which in turn an observation follows: Not only had our congressional committees not cleared the department before this, hereafter they could not conceivably have done so-because the relevant data were denied them.

This is a fact to keep in mind when we encounter glib talk of "clearance" by Sen. Tydings or our historians, or the many assurances we read that there were no longer any security risks at State in the period just before McCarthy's advent. All the "clearances" that we hear of were strictly Foggy Bottom issue. Nor is there any plausible reason to believe that security practice in the department would somehow miraculously have gotten better behind the veil of Truman's edict. The Acheson group was riding high, most of its internal foes were banished, it no longer had the Taber-Busbey types exerting their embarrassing pressure. Logic and the historical record alike suggest that security methods after '48 would have been as permissive as those disclosed by our committees.

Indeed, we have striking evidence of this from President Truman's own Civil Service Loyalty Review Board, hardly a bastion of reaction. In 1951, when Acheson was running the show in name as well as fact, members of this panel exchanged some lively comments about the security drill at State (in proceedings later smuggled to McCarthy). These depict a State Department rather routinely resolving security questions in favor of suspect employees. (E.g.: ". . you're talking about the State Department. They're taking the attitude that they are there to clear the employee and not to protect the government. We've been arguing with them since the program began.")

To trace the effects of such procedures in detail would far exceed the boundaries of this essay. For now suffice it to observe that various of the McCarthy cases had been cleared by State (or the administration) prior to his arrival on the scene-only to be "uncleared" thereafter. Three obvious instances in this genre are John Stewart Service, arrested in the Amerasia scandal, freed by a conspiracy of high officials and then repeatedly cleared for further duties across a six-year period; William T. Stone, another Amerasia stalwart, who also managed to stay on the payroll for six full years after the Panuch security team first said he should be ousted (Stone was McCarthy's case No. 46); and William Remington (of Commerce, not of State), identified by Bentley as a Communist agent in '45 but officially cleared by the administration four years thereafter.

What was true of these McCarthy targets was true of numerous others, both on and off the Lee list. On the total record, indeed, the hardest thing to conjure up is someone who would not have been cleared by security standards this elastic, whatever the nature of the information lodged against him. However, at this stage of the proceedings, the pertinent data were deftly hidden by Truman's order, assurances that the State Department was taking care of business, and assertions that neither Congress nor anyone else need ask too many nosy questions.

In February 1950, McCarthy blew the lid off all this, and dragged the State Department security situation back into the public spotlight. In so doing, his use of the Lee list data was most appropriate, since in essence the numerous investigations he triggered were extensions of those conducted by our House committees in their examination of that roster. These and other congressional panels had been stalled out by Truman's policy of omerta. Now, thanks to the obstreperous McCarthy, the whole thing was started up again, albeit under different headings and in a different venue.

Also, as hardly needs observing, McCarthy managed to kick up a ruckus about these questions that far exceeded anything previously known, or heard of. And, as I have argued elsewhere, there is plentiful evidence that the furore he provoked had an enormous impact-not only on individual security cases that were re-opened, but on larger questions of public moment: the tangle of perjury and subversion that was Amerasia; the sinister role of the Institute of Pacific Relations, chock-full of identified Communist agents, and its leverage on our policy in China; the case of Prof. Lattimore and his blueprint for still more capitulations in Asia; and so on.

Taking it all in all, we can well believe that McCarthy hit the Acheson State Department and its allies with shattering force, thereby upsetting the plans and interests of many influential people. In which case, it's easy to see why he would be detested, and why a ferocious counter-attack against him would be mounted. It's also easy to see why elaborate measures might be taken to disguise the nature of the Lee list, the security problems it reflected, and the findings of our House committees. If the security debacle at State were to be concealed from public view (and thereafter from the lens of history), the "total and eternal destruction" of Joe McCarthy would have been a most essential project.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jan 1, 1999
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