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Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public figure to stand up against the insidious communist infiltration of the United States. He was noted for claiming that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government. Ultimately, his aggressive anticommunist tactics led to his being censured by the United States Senate. The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar dogmatic pursuits.

Early life

Born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, McCarthy earned a law degree at Marquette University in 1935 and was elected as a circuit judge in 1939, the youngest in state history.

At age 33, McCarthy volunteered for the United States Marine Corps and served during World War II, although he was still a circuit judge at that time. He maintained his post even while he was away for years. He served mainly as a briefing officer, who was responsible for informing pilots of their mission. (4) McCarthy was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1952, but it was later discovered that he had exaggerated the number of missions he had flown in order to be eligible for this award. It was later revealed that he had exaggerated other aspects of his service as well (1,2).

While serving in the Pacific he ran in the Republican primary for Senate in 1944, but lost to Alexander Wiley, a longtime independent incumbent. He successfully ran again two years later defeating Robert M. La Follette, Jr.

It was McCarthy's charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department that shot him into prominence in 1950. On February 9th speech in Wheeling, West Virginia at the Colonnade Room of the McClure Hotel he stated:

“And ladies and gentlemen, while I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as active members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205 – a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”^[1]

The State Department denied McCarthy’s claims. In a radio interview in Utah the following day, McCarthy had changed the number to 57, and on February 11, in Reno at the Mapes Hotel, McCarthy again invoked the number 57 instead of 205, and named Robert Service, Gustavo Duran, Mary Jane Keeney and Harlow Shapley as being on the list. Several days later, when McCarthy was speaking to the Senate in Washington DC, the number had changed to 81. ^[2]

The source for the original number McCarthy offered, “205,” turned out to be a letter written in 1946 by Secretary of State James Byrnes in reply to a question from Democratic Congressman Adolph Sabath about the screening of several thousand federal employees in the wake of post-war reassignments. There was no mention of either Communist party membership or names in that letter. The names McCarthy later offered in Reno came from a 1948 report by an ex-FBI agent Robert E. Lee on “incidents of inefficiencies” in the state department that had subsequently been passed on to the HUAC.

Thomas C. Reeves painstakingly well-documented 1982 biography of McCarthy includes part of the exchange in the Senate between Senator McCarthy and Democratic Majority Leader Scott Lucas on February 20th, during which McCarthy offered evidence for his claims by going through the Lee list. There were marked differences between what the Lee report actually said, and what Senator McCarthy claimed on the Senate floor. For instance, the Lee list read:

“The subject was described in reports by various witnesses as interested in communism as an experiment but his political philosophy is in keeping with liberal New Deal social reform under democratic processes of government; ‘he is a very ardent New Dealer; he is a live liberal;’ but an informant who also lived in the International House at one time said ‘He was one of those accused of being a Red here but the people who do get up and talk communism are refuted.’”

McCarthy read this as “He was described in reports by various witnesses as interested in communism and by his roommate at the International House as a communist.”

Where the Lee list read "This employee is with the office of Information and Educational Exchange in New York City. His application is very sketchy. There has ben no investigation. (C-8) is a reference. Though he is 43 years of age, his file reflects no history prior to June 1941. Case is awaiting a report from the New York Office."

McCarthy read: "This individual is 43 years of age. He is with the Office of Information and Education. According to the file, he is a known Communist. I am not evaluating the information myself, I am merely giving you what is in the file. This individual also found his way into the Voice of America broadcast. Apparently the easiest way to get in is to be a known Communist." ^[3]

Tensions of the times

In 1947^[4], it was apparent that no individual in the U.S. Government realized that evidence of massive Soviet espionage within the government was developing on twin tracks. There was an FBI counterintelligence investigation^[5] which empanelled a grand jury in New York, and the Army Signal Intelligence Service at Arlington Hall reading Soviet cipher decrypts^[6] It was a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing. So when McCarthy later made charges that the Truman administration knowingly protected Soviet agents, on the surface, this appeared to large sectors^[7] of the American public^[8] as true."

• In June of 1947, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee sent a confidential report to Secretary of State George Marshall, in which they stated:

"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 large numbers of State Department employees. . . this report has been challenged and ignored by those charged with the responsibility of administering the department..."

The memorandum listed the names of nine of these State Department officials and said that they were "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." On June 24, 1947, Assistant Secretary of State John Peurifoy notified the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that ten persons had been dismissed from the department, five of whom had been listed in the memorandum. But from June 1947 until McCarthy's Wheeling speech in February 1950, the State Department did not fire one person as a loyalty or security risk. ^[9]

• Beginning 24 June 1948 the first major crisis of the Cold War exposed the rift in the Alliance of World War II which had defeated Germany, when Soviet troops blockaded access points to Berlin, sparking the first Berlin Crisis, and lasting a year.

• On 16 August Harry Dexter White, the first head of the International Monetary Fund, a keystone post war institution, died of a heart attack three days after denying involvement with KGB during World War II before the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). His involvement was later positively determined by the FBI through evidence gathered by the Venona project as a Soviet agent code named "Jurist".[1]

• In late summer of 1949, on 29 August the Soviet atomic bomb project was revealed when it exploded a replica of Fat Man; the Soviet Union had gained nuclear technology by espionage from the United States, which spent $4 billion dollars (about $48 billion in today's dollars) to develop during World War II.

• Later that fall, on 1 October Maoist forces were victorious after the effective subversion of President Roosevelt’s support for the Chinese Nationalist government during World War II.

• On 21 January 1950, Alger Hiss, the General Secretary of the United Nations Charter meeting, was convicted of perjury for testimony before HUAC regarding espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. That same month, physicist Klaus Fuchs confessed in Great Britain to espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the War.

• On 25 June, the Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea; President Truman authorized deployment of American troops while the Allied Powers provided little or no assistance. The United States essentially stood alone in a confrontation that had the prospect of nuclear weapons being used — nuclear weapons technology that had been given to the enemy by US citizens, some within the government. Three weeks later, on 17 July, Julius Rosenberg was arrested on charges of espionage regarding the transfer of technology to the Soviet Union to build the atomic weapon.

• In May 1951, two members of the Cambridge Five — Donald MacLean, Second Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Guy Burgess — defected to Moscow after it was discovered MacLean transmitted information on the atom bomb from the British Embassy to the Soviet Union during World War II.

In a six hour speech on the Senate floor on February 20, 1950, McCarthy raised the issue of some eighty individuals who had worked in the State Department, or wartime agencies such as the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW).

McCarthy sought to characterize President Truman and the Democratic party as soft on or even in league with the Communists. McCarthy's allegations fell flat with Truman who was unaware of Venona project decrypts which corroborated Elizabeth Bentley's debriefing after her defection from the Communists. While innocent persons may have been abused, many of the truely guilty walked away free under the cloak of "McCarthyism".

Criticism of McCarthy's methods

McCarthy has been widely criticized for abusing his legislative investigatory powers to perform quasi-executive and judicial functions. McCarthy's Committee, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) only had jurisdictional authority to investigate United States Government (USG) Departments, Agencies, or contractors doing business with the USG. From the evidence it appears the FBI under Hoover fed McCarthy primarily dead end files of persons and associates to prime suspects in espionage cases in hopes of gaining some leverage or further information to prosecute known suspects without revealing secret Venona evidence.

McCarthy made charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department, the administration of President Truman, Voice of America, and a United States Army research laboratory. In 1953 McCarthy claimed that employees at Voice of America, were engaging in deliberate sabotage, selecting sites for transmitters that would make it easier for the Soviets to jam signals. Attention was also focused on the content of VOA broadcasts, which in Truman’s time had a policy of “balanced presentation” that did not exclude communist writings. VOA overseas libraries were scrutinized, and among the several hundred books that ended up being purged from the libraries at the urging of McCarthy’s staff were works by Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Jean Paul Sartre, and Theodore H. White.

The VOA hearings often involved closely questioning witnesses about their past and present political or religious orientations. Director of Religious Programming Roger Lyons was asked if he was or had ever been an unbeliever. Lyons insisted “I am not an atheist. I believe in God.” When he mentioned that he studied in Switzerland under associates of Carl Jung, McCarthy asked if “this professor” attended a church or a synagogue. ^[10]

Reed Harris, acting chief of the IIA, was repeatedly questioned over three days about a book he’d written twenty one years before as a college student at Columbia University. (The offending passage was the assertion that communists had the right to teach in the public schools.) Harris resigned from his job shortly after appearing before the committee. ^[11]

Dr. Julius Hlavaty, a teacher of Mathematics at Bronx High School and the first Chairman of that prestigious target school’s mathematics department, was called as a witness because of a broadcast he’d made in 1952. After being questioned about personal beliefs and asked if he were a Communist, Dr. Hlavaty refused to answer, which resulted in his dismissal from the New York School system. ^[12]

One potential witness, Voice of America engineer, Raymond Kaplan, was so frightened to testify that he committed suicide. In a lengthy suicide note which specifically referenced the placement of VOA transmitters he wrote, "I guess I am the patsy for any mistakes"...."You see, once the dogs are set on you everything you have done since the beginning of time is suspect," and “I have never done anything that I consider wrong but I can’t take the pressure upon my shoulders any more.” ^[13]

No evidence of sabotage of VOA tranmitters were found, but hundreds of employees were fired, some overseas libraries were closed, and some foreign language programming discontinued.

McCarthy’s 1953 investigation into the United States Army Signal Corps Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, was prompted by a defecting East German Scientist’s claim of having seen microfilmed documents from that center.” ^[14] An investigation had led officials to the conclusion that he was unreliable, but Senator McCarthy’s subcommittee still began holding hearings on the case, suspending, among others, researcher Aaron H. Coleman. Coleman had been suspended in 1946 for not keeping classified documents he’d taken home in a safe with a three combination lock. Army officials had determined that the documents, which were of little importance, had been used for personal study rather than any attempt at passing on information, but McCarthy declared that Coleman, who was guilty of having been a college classmate of Julius Rosenberg, “may have been the direct link between the laboratories and the Rosenberg Spy Ring. ^[15]

The Army averred that no documents were missing and its own investigation had found no evidence of a spy ring, maintaining that what the defecting scientist had seen had probably been Signal Corp data that had been shared with the Russians during the War under Lend Lease. Still, the investigation went on. When electrical engineer Carl Greenblum, whose mother had died two days before, broke down and wept during Roy Cohn’s cross-examination and had to be led, visibly upset, from the closed door session, McCarthy announced to the press that “I have just received word that the witness admits he was lying the first time and now wants to tell the truth.” Greenblum’s name was leaked to the press and he and his family were harassed, a hammer and sickle painted on the door of their home. Greenblum explained that after he’d broken down he’d “sent word that I wanted to go back and tell my story from the beginning. That may have been interpreted to mean I was lying but that certainly was not the case.” Greenblum was fired from his job, but reinstated in 1958. ^[16]

The fifteen hearings resulted in no indictments of any individuals, and established only that a few Communists had worked at Fort Monmouth from 1941 to 1947 – something that was already known by the Army -- and there had been a small communist cell at one of their subcontractors in Nutley New Jersey. There was no substantive evidence to connect these groups or individuals to espionage. ^[17]

He tried to expose government employees as CPUSA members and security risks. During Senate debate on the Communist Control Act of 1954, Senator Hubert Humphrey proposed making membership in the CPUSA a felony. ^[18][19] If implemented this proposal would have resulted in the United States openly prosecuting individuals strictly for their political views.

What ultimately destroyed McCarthy’s public career were the famous Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. The focus of the Army-McCarthy hearings was the accusation that McCarthy had sought special treatment for an army private named David Schine, a friend of Roy Cohn’s who had been added to McCarthy’s committee as an unpaid consultant and who, it was claimed, had through this association enjoyed special privileges. It is unclear what Schine’s qualifications were for being on McCarthy’s committee other than his friendship with Cohn.

The most famous exchange from the hearings is the “have you no decency” speech that many people today see as the fatal blow to Senator McCarthy’s public career. It happened while Boston attorney Joseph Welch was cross-examining Roy Cohn about the work Schine had had done with Cohn for the committee. When the interrogation seemed to be going badly for Cohn McCarthy, contrary to an agreement earlier made with Welch that he would not bring up the subject if Welch did not bring up Cohn's military history, launched into an attack on a young law associate of Welch’s, Fred Fisher:

“In view of Mr. Welch’s request that the information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing any work for the Communist party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher whom he recommended, initially, to do work on this committee, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh, years and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party…I am not asking you t this time to explain why you tried to foist him on this committee. Whether you knew he was a member of that Communist organization or not, I don’t know. I assume you did not, Mr. Welch, because I get the impression that, while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh, I don’t think you have any conception of the danger of the Communist party.”

“Until this moment,” Welch responded, “I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…” Welch went on to explain that he had discussed Fred Fisher’s membership in the Lawyer’s Guild with Fisher, and had decided not to recommend him for the committee because he feared that membership would be used against Fisher. "Little did I dream you would be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you..." Welch added the now famous words, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” ^[20]

McCarthy's support and popularity began to fade due to his lack of actual evidence and defendant convictions. Later in 1954, a special Senate committee was appointed to study and evaluate McCarthy's methods and actions. The committee exonerated McCarthy on all substantive charges (citation needed). Following the recommendations of this committee, the full Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 65 to 22 (the votes for censure included all the Democratic senators and about half the Republican senators) for failing to cooperate with the subcommittee that was investigating him, and for insults to the committee that was trying to censure him ^[21], making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. [2] McCarthy died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The cause of his death was acute hepatitis from smoking and drinking.

VENONA files

In 1995, when the VENONA transcripts were declassified, further detailed information was revealed about Soviet espionage in the United States. It is generally believed that McCarthy had no access to VENONA intelligence, and VENONA corroborates some of the individuals investigated by McCarthy were indeed Soviet agents. VENONA specifically references at least 349 people in the United States—including citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents—who cooperated in various ways with Soviet intelligence agencies. 83 persons plead the fifth amendment right against self incrimination in public hearings conducted by McCarthy. An additional 9 persons refused to testify on constitutional grounds in private hearings, and their names were not made public. Of the 83 persons pleading the fifth ammendment, several have been identified by NSA and FBI as agents of the Soviet Union in the Venona project involved in espionage. These are several prominent examples:

• Mary Jane Keeney, a United Nations employee, and her husband Philip Keeney, who worked in the Office of Strategic Services;
• Lauchlin Currie, a special assistant to President Roosevelt;
• Virginius Frank Coe ^[22], Director of Division of Monetary Research, U.S. Treasury; Technical Secretary at the Bretton Woods Conference; International Monetary Fund
• William Ludwig Ullman ^[23], delegate to the United Nations Charter Conference and Bretton Woods Conference;
• Nathan Gregory Silvermaster ^[24], Chief Planning Technician, Procurement Division, United States Department of the Treasury and head of the Silvermaster network of spies;
• Harold Glasser, U.S. Treasury Representative to the Allied High Commission in Italy;
• Four staff members of the LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee, a Senate subcommittee on labor rights.
• Allan Rosenberg, Chief of the Economic Institution Staff, Foreign Economic Administration; Counsel to the National Labor Relations Board;

Venona transcripts confirm the Senate Civil Liberties Subcommittee, chaired by former Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr., whom McCarthy defeated for election in 1946, had at least four staff members working on behalf of the KGB. Chief Councel of the Committee John Abt; Charles Kramer, who served on three other Congressional Committees; Allen Rosenberg, who also served on the National Labor Relations Board, Board of Economic Warfare (BEW), the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) and later argued cases before the United States Supreme Court; and Charles Flato, who served on the BEW and FEA, all were CPUSA members and associated with the Comintern.

While the underlying premise of Communists in the government was true, many of McCarthy's targets were not complicit in espionage. Recent scholarship has established of 159 persons investigated between 1950 and 1952, there is substantial evidence nine had assisted Soviet espionage using evidence from Venona or other sources. Of the remainder, while not being directly complicit in espionage, many were considered security risks.^[25]

Support from Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter has argued that McCarthy was "a great American patriot. [3]"

Notes

1. ↑ The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pg 224."
2. ↑ The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pgs 222-238
3. ↑ The life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pg 240."
4. ↑ NSA Archives, National Cyptological Museum, Venona Chronology; "~September 1: Col. Carter Clarke briefs the FBI's liaison officer Robert J. Lamphere on the break into Soviet diplomatic traffic. September: Carter W. Clarke of G-2 advises S. Wesley Reynolds, FBI, of successes at Arlington Hall on KGB espionage messages."
5. ↑ Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, Appendix A, 7. The Cold War; "In November 1945 Elizabeth Bentley informed the FBI of her activities as a Soviet courier, which in turn led to renewed interest in Chambers. In late August or early September 1947, the FBI was informed that the Army Security Agency had begun to break into Soviet espionage messages".
6. ↑ National Security Agency, Venona Archives, Introductory History of VENONA and Guide to the Translations,The VENONA Breakthroughs; "An Arlington Hall report on 22 July 1947 showed that the Soviet message traffic contained dozens, probably hundreds, of covernames, many of KGB agents, including ANTENNA and LIBERAL (later identified as Julius Rosenberg). One message mentioned that LIBERAL's wife was named "Ethel." General Carter W. Clarke, the assistant G-2, called the FBI liaison officer to G-2 and told him that the Army had begun to break into Soviet intelligence service traffic, and that the traffic indicated a massive Soviet espionage effort in the U.S.
7. ↑ National Counterintelligence Center (NACIC), Counterintelligence Reader, Vol. 3, Chap. 1, pg.47, "Polls taken at the time revealed that a majority of Americans believed that Communism at home and abroad was a serious threat to US security".
8. ↑ Margareet Chase Smith, Declaration of Conscience, pg. 2, 1 June 1950, U.C. Congress, Senate, Congressional Recoird, 81st Congress, 2nd sess., pp. 7894-95. "The Democratic administration has greatly lost the confidence of the American people by its complacency to the threat of communism here at home and the leak of vital secrets to Russia through key officials of the Democtaric administration. There are enough proved cases to make this point without diluting our criticism with unproved charges"; "..there have been enough proved cases, such as the Amerasia case, the Hiss case, the Coplon case, the Gold case, to cause nationwide distrust and strong suspicion that there may be something to the unproved, sensational accusations".
9. ↑ John Emil Peurifoy, Foreign Service Office & United States Ambassador, Arlington National Cemetary Website, retrieved 21 March 2007.
10. ↑ Time Magazine, March 16, 1953
11. ↑ ”McCarthy Hearings, 1953-54 Vol 1. February 23, 1953
12. ↑ “Time Magazine, March 23, 1953"
13. ↑ The life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pg 485
14. ↑ McCarthy Hearings 1952-54, Vol 1.
15. ↑ The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves Pg. 521
16. ↑ ”McCarthy Hearings, Volume 3, files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/mccarthy/hearingsvol3.pdf."
17. ↑ “McCarthy Hearings 1952-54, Vol 1.
18. ↑ McAuliff, Mary Sperling (1978). Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947-1954. University of Massachusetts Press, 142. ISBN 0-87023-241-X.
19. ↑ Art Preis, A Case of “Midsummer Madness”? Police-State Liberals, From Fourth International, Vol.15 No.4, Fall 1954, pp.111-114. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
20. ↑ ”http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/welch-mccarthy.html."
21. ↑ Senate Report 104-137 - Resolution For Disciplinary Action. Library of Congress (1995). Retrieved on 2006-10-19.
22. ↑ McCarthy Hearings, Testimony of V. Frank Coe, Executive Session, Vol. 1: 147-50, Vol. 4: 3403, 3413, 3417-18, 3421, 3428-29 testimony of, Vol. 2: 1349-72.
23. ↑ McCarthy Hearings, Testimony of William Ludwig Ullman, Executive Session, Vol. 3: 2146, 2147, 2152, Vol. 4: 3403, 3411-14, 3418, 3421, 3426-29, testimony of, Vol. 3: 2345-49.
24. ↑ McCarthy Hearings, Testimony of Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Executive Session, Vol. 2: 1349, 1361, 1362, Vol. 4: 3403, 3412-14, 3425-29.
25. ↑ Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Lists and Venona

References

1. Herman, A. (1999). Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator. Free Press, p 30. ISBN 0-684-83625-4.
2. Morgan, T. (Nov./Dec. 2003). Judge Joe: How the youngest judge in Wisconsin's history became the country's most notorious senator. Legal Affairs.
3. Anticommunism's Two Faces, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Foreign Affairs, January/February 1996; as review of Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism. Richard Gid Powers. New York: The Free Press, 1995.
4. Wicker, Tom. Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2006.
5. McCarthy to Truman 11 February 1950, telegram.
6. Communist Control Act of 1954 U.S. Statutes at Large, Public Law 637, Chp. 886, p. 775-780.
7. Operations of the MGB Residency at New York, 1944-45
8. Time Magazine
9. McCarthy Hearings, 1953-54
10. The life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves
11. McCarthy Hearings, 1952-54, Vol. 1
12. McCarthy Hearings Vol. 3, Findlaw.com
13. American Rhetoric.com

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