McCarthyism

The word McCarthyism "was coined in the bowels of NKVD headquarters at 3 Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow and first published in the Communist Daily Worker, Moscow’s U.S. house organ with the justified belief that it would be enthusiastically picked up and used by America’s useful liberal idiots." [1]

It as a derogatory and misleading term, based on false premises. First, Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee or the Hollywood Blacklist. Second, and more important, it was not true that McCarthy was persecuting the innocent or that liberals were merely defending civil liberties.

The Venona intercepts prove that McCarthy was right about the extent of Soviet spies in the U.S. government.

Pretext

Senator Joseph McCarthy led a prominent public campaign to investigate Communist Party members working in sensitive US government jobs in violation of the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act forbade federal employment of workers who had membership in "any political organization which advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government." By 1950, it was widely known that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had obtained atomic weapons know-how with the assistance of American citizens, many of them government employees. The United States had spent $4 billion to develop the technology, roughly equivalent to $80 billion in today’s money. International relations were extremely tense at the time, and the knowledge that America's Cold War enemy had obtained atomic weapons capabilities with the help of American government employees, along with the perception that the Truman administration did nothing about it, was very worrisome to many.

McCarthy's efforts to remove security risks from government infuriated the American Left, and they often use the term to mean aggressive questioning of someone's background or personal beliefs, or making accusations of disloyalty. It is a derogatory term. It is often used to refer to House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) or the Hollywood Blacklist, even though those weren't really part of McCarthy's campaign.

Amerasia cover up

McCarthy at a fund-raising dinner in 1954

On June 6 1945, 6 persons, including three U.S. government officials, were arrested on conspiracy and espionage charges related to possession of roughly 1000 stolen classified Government documents in the offices of Amerasia magazine. Amerasia had published classified materials verbatim from the United States wartime intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed he had an "airtight case," and Justice Department officials were ready to prosecute. Thomas Corcoran (Tommy the Cork), a former Franklin Roosevelt personal adviser who lived in the White House at the President's side and afterward became a prominent Washington lawyer and fixer, worked with the Truman administration to cover up the case. Soviet agent Duncan Lee, counsel to OSS head General William Donovan, was the the highest ranking KGB operative among nearly two dozen known Soviet agents who penetrated the OSS, worked in Corcoran's Washington law firm.

The Silvermaster case

In November 1945 a courier from a very large CPUSA underground apparatus which had operated in numerous federal agencies throughout World War II, including the White House, in fear for her life defected to the FBI. The KGB had removed Elizabeth Bentley from overseeing at least 80 KGB sources late in the war. When she realized she knew too much, and was no longer of use to the KGB, she told her story to the FBI in a deposition.

The FBI knew of 5 Soviet agents throughout the war, Bentley added at least another 80, some of which were still employed in the US government at that time. Her story at first was incredible, but the FBI soon determined Bentley’s allegations were born out by information already in Bureau files. By December, no fewer that 227 FBI agents were involved in the case.

For much of 1946 the suspects were surveilled, and other information came from elsewhere. By December 1946 leaks began to develop, the press ran stories, Congressional interest was piqued, and the investigation compromised.

Failure to discharge security risks

In the later part of February 1946, the FBI transmitted to Secretary of State George Marshall a 194 page Report based upon Soviet defector Elizabeth Bentley's deposition three months earlier entitled, "Underground Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government." Preliminary investigations and other information in Bureau files gave support and credence to the providential value of Bentley's serious allegations. Bentley had been assigned a covername by the FBI, "Gregory," and the highly secret investigation was referred to by investigators as "the Gregory Case."

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.

In 1947 , 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 which empanelled a grand jury in New York to look into defector Elizabeth Bentley's allegations of espionage regarding high government officials, and the Army Signal Intelligence Service reading Soviet cipher decrypts at Arlington Hall. It was a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing. Leaks in the investigation into the Silvermaster case began to threaten the successful prosecution. So when McCarthy later made charges that the Truman administration knowingly protected Soviet agents, on the surface, this appeared to large sectors of the American public as true.

Hoover

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was among only a handful of people in the U.S. Government who was aware of the Venona project, and there is no indication Hoover shared Venona information with McCarthy. In fact, Hoover may have actually fed McCarthy dead end files on family relatives or close associated of real espionage.Template:Fact-political Hoover told a House Committee in February 1950 that counterespionage required "an objective different from the handling of criminal cases. It is more important to ascertain his contacts, his objectives, his sources of information and his methods of communication" as "arrest and public disclosure are steps to be taken only as a matter of last resort." He concluded that "we can be secure only when we have a full knowledge of the operations of an espionage network, because then we are in a position to render their efforts ineffective." And there is no indication McCarthy might have known he was being used by Hoover in this way.

Iulii Khariton with a copy of the first Soviet atomic bomb, detonated on August 29, 1949.

The Chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) wrote a memorandum to the Scientific Intelligence Committee complaining how they had been kept out of the loop in intelligence sharing after the confession of Klaus Fuchs had become more widely known. In the memorandum the JAEIC suspected the FBI and others may have had considerable counter espionage information which would have been helpful to them in making an estimate on the status of the Soviet atomic energy program, but they had not been aware of it until after Fuchs arrest They noted some information was obtained through HUAC, some from Canada as a result of the Igor Gouzenko case, and Hoover supplied some information but it was only of slight value. The memorandum declares, "The only real assurance we have of getting the information at present seems to be as a result of a Congressional Committee" or the arrest of suspects.

In summary memorandums to Director Hoover of Venona project information begun in 1950 entitled, Operations of the MGB Residency at New York, 1944-45, Special Agent Alan Belmont reported the FBI had identified 206 persons involved in Soviet espionage activity who had been active in United States. Of this number the FBI had information from defector Elizabeth Bentley and other sources regarding espionage activity on 87 of these persons. However, espionage activity on the part of 119 persons from Venona information were not previously known to the FBI prior to 1946 but were mostly identified through investigation by 1950.

Extrajudicial means

Defector Louis Budenz stated publicly he could identify 400 members of the Communist conspiracy which had delivered the know-how to build the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. This number of 400 was closely corroborated by the 349 codenames the cryptographers in the Venona project had discovered and FBI field investigators were working to identify. Defector Elizabeth Bentley also identified 81 persons involved in espionage, and Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko yielded up names too when he defected in Canada.

In sum, some 205 total true identities of persons involved in espionage during World War II were known to the FBI by 1950, some being corroborated by multiple sources. Given the secret nature of Venona, and the unwillingness to let the Soviet Union know the US was reading its codes, the known spies were eased out of government positions, and where prosecution could occur using sources other than Venona, a few cases were attempted. But the priority was always to maintain the secrecy regarding the breaking of Soviet codes, remove security risks, and forego law enforcement while cryptographers and field investigators continued working to identify others.

So secret was Venona, that not even President Truman was informed. The revelation Truman had never been informed was the subject of much controversy and discussion when the Venona documents were declassified in 1995. Given the extent of the Soviet penetration of the U.S. Government, including virtually all the U.S. security and intelligence services, the State and Treasury Departments, and even the White House, the decision not to inform Truman appears to have been the logical and appropriate decision.^{[Who says?]} General Omar Bradley took it upon himself not to inform Truman, and told the few others with the knowledge of the Soviet attack on American security that he would inform the President if the need were to arise.

After the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear test, and it became apparent to the public that the Soviet Union obtained the know how from American citizens employed by the federal government during the New Deal, with the growing tensions of the times over the Berlin Airlift, the loss of the U.S.'s wartime ally in China to the Chinese Comintern forces, and later the Korean War, those with knowledge of Venona had as an immediate priority to remove Soviet operatives from sensitive positions. President Truman had instituted a system of Loyalty checks through review boards, but Truman himself was unaware of the extent of the real danger. Hoover approached McCarthy with a plan to (a) ease more security risks out of government positions, (b) put pressure on friends and relatives to reveal what they knew about Soviet operatives based upon familial relations or association in various communist front organizations, and (c) gain more knowledge of spies contacts and operations. It took a willingness on McCarthy's part to stretch the limits of Senate Rules, and there is no indication Hoover disclosed completely to McCarthy the FBI's full knowledge of Soviet espionage activity in the United States for the prior two and half decades. The immediate crisis was so large and potentially catastrophic that McCarthy was willing to act with Hoover and the FBI to help remove the remaining security risks.

Most but not all of Senator McCarthy’s numbered cases were drawn from the “Lee List” or “108 list” of unresolved Department of State security cases compiled by the investigators for the House Appropriates Committee in 1947. Robert E. Lee was the committee’s lead investigator and supervised preparation of the list. The Tydings subcommittee also obtained this list. The Lee list, also using numbers rather than names, was published in the proceeding of the subcommittee.

Senator McCarthy furnished the Tydings Committee the real names attached to his numbered cases, and the Tydings Committee received the real names attached to the Lee list as well. Over the years that followed all of the names became public one way or another. Additionally, in a series of speeches McCarthy named others as secret Communists, spies, security risks, or participants in the Communist conspiracy.

Tensions of the times

• President Truman issued Executive Order 9835 on 22 March 1947 intended to tighten protections against subversive infiltration of the US Government, defining disloyalty as membership on a list of subversive organizations maintained by the Attorney General.

• 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 20 July General Secretary Eugene Dennis and 11 other CPUSA leaders were arrested and indicted under the Smith Act of conspiring to advocate violent overthrow of the US Government.

• On 31 July Elizabeth Bentley testifies before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), publicly accusing Harry Dexter White and White House adviser Lauchlin Currie of being Soviet agents.

• 3 August Whittaker Chambers names Harry Dexter White and the first General Secretary of the United Nations Charter meeting,, former State Department employee and confident of President Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference, Alger Hiss as Communists in testimony before the HUAC.

• 13 August Harry Dexter White, the first head of the International Monetary Fund, a keystone post war institution, denies charges he is a Soviet agent before HUAC.

• On 16 August Harry Dexter White, died of a heart attack three days after denying involvement with KGB. His involvement was later positively determined by the FBI through evidence gathered by the Venona project as a Soviet agent code named "Jurist".

• 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.

• On 23 September 1949 Truman announces that the Soviets have exploded an atomic bomb.

• 19 October Meredith Gardner and Robert Lamphere secretly meet at Arlington Hall and formally inaugurate full-time FBI/Army Signals Intelligence Service liaison on coded Soviet messages.

• 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 was convicted of perjury for testimony before HUAC regarding espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union.

• 24 January 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.

• 22 May FBI arrests Harry Gold for espionage.

• 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.

• 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.

The Korean War disrupted the postwar economic boom with military service, shortages, restrictions and cost-of-living inflation which could not help but breed discontent. And through it all the press kept up a constant barrage of "Communists in Washington," "twenty years of treason."

Hypocrisy regarding McCarthy's

McCarthy had a confrontation with Boston attorney Joseph Welch in televised hearings. Welch demanded that McCarthy name someone who had belonged to a Communist front organization, and then complained that it was cruel, reckless, and indecent to do so. McCarthy named Welch's associate Fred Fisher as a member of the National Lawyers Guild, who Welch himself had previously outed to the NY Times six weeks earlier.[2] Welch dishonestly pretended to be shocked, and famously said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"

See also

• Institute of Pacific Relations
• Soviet spies in America (1921-1948)

Further reading

• FBI Silvermaster file, Morgan to Clegg, Janaury 14, 1947
• FBI Silvermaster file, Brent to Hennrich, October 30, 1950