Joseph McCarthy

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 to communist infiltration of the United States goverment. 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.

Tensions of the times

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, and the Army Signal Intelligence Service at Arlington Hall reading Soviet cipher decrypts 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 of the American public 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.

• 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".[2]

• 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.

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.”

McCarthy compiled a list of 57 security risks and publicly named Robert Service, Gustavo Duran, Mary Jane Keeney and Harlow Shapley as being on the list. These names came from the "Lee List" of unresolved State Department security cases compiled by the earlier investigators for the House Appropriates Committee in 1947. Robert E. Lee was the committee’s lead investigator and supervised preparation of the list.

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 his aggressive use of legislative investigatory powers to probe the Communist sympathies of various government officials.^{[Citation Needed]} 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. The VOA hearings involved the content of broadcasts and transmitter difficulties, and found serious problems. Critics say that McCarthy did not prove deliberate sabotage. Critics also say that McCarthy only uncovered a few Communists in the United States Army Signal Corps Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. McCarthy also 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 indecent to do so.

A teacher named Julius Hlavaty testified at the VOA hearings, and refused to answer whether he had been a Communist or had tried to recruit students to the Communist Party. He lost his job as a distinguished public school teacher and had to take a job at Columbia University. Critics say that McCarthy should have ignored Communists making broadcasts on VOA because exposing them might have personally embarrassed them.

McCarthy questioned the security clearance for a Communist named Annie Lee Moss who worked in the US Army Signal Corps. Critics say that she was just a low-level clerk, and she may not have actually been a Communist spy.

Critics blame McCarthy for objecting to the state department stocking subversive novels that have nothing to do with its mission. They also blame McCarthy for exposing the Communist propagandist Dalton Trumbo, even though McCarthy had nothing to do with it.

McCarthy never had access to secret Venona evidence about Communist spying, and did not successfully expose the extent of Communist influence in the US government.

McCarthy's support and popularity peaked in early 1954. CBS broadcast a TV documentary attacking McCarthy. A special Senate committee was appointed to study and evaluate McCarthy's methods and actions. The committee exonerated McCarthy on all substantive charges. 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 , making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. [3] McCarthy died of acute hepatitis in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48.

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 , Director of Division of Monetary Research, U.S. Treasury; Technical Secretary at the Bretton Woods Conference; International Monetary Fund
• William Ludwig Ullman , delegate to the United Nations Charter Conference and Bretton Woods Conference;
• Nathan Gregory Silvermaster , 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;
• Solomon Adler, U.S. Treasury Dept., went to China and joined government of Mao Zedong;
• Leonard Mins, Russian Section of the Research and Analysis Division of the Office of Strategic Services.
• Cedric Belfrage , British Security Coordination; founder the National Guardian.
• Gerald Graze, U.S. State Department; Lee List #29, confirmed in KGB Archives;
• Stanley Graze, U.S. State Department intelligence; Lee List #30, confirmed in KGB Archives;
• David Karr, Office of War Information; chief aide to journalist Drew Pearson.

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.

McCarthyism

McCarthy is remembered today with the terms McCarthyism, McCarthyist, and McCarthyite. McCarthyism refers to Sen. McCarthy's campaign to investigate problems associated with Communists working in sensitive US government jobs. His campaign 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 HUAC or the Hollywood Blacklist, even though those weren't really part of McCarthy's campaign.

Support from Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter said of McCarthy,

""A half century later, when the only people who call themselves Communists are harmless cranks, it is difficult to grasp the importance of McCarthy's crusade. But there's a reason 'Communist' now sounds about as threatening as 'monarchist' -- and it's not because of intrepid New York Times editorials denouncing McCarthy and praising Harvard educated Soviet spies. McCarthy made it a disgrace to be a Communist. Domestic Communism could never recover." -- Treason, Ann Coulter, P. 33. [4]

See also

• War Production Board
  
• Board of Economic Warfare
  
• Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
  
• Office of War Information
  
• Foreign Economic Administration
  
• Advisory Committee of Postwar Foreign Policy
  
• Agricultural Adjustment Administration
  
• Office of Strategic Services
  
• Office of Price Administration
• Institute of Pacific Relations
• Amerasia

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. In the Enemy’s House: Venona and the Maturation of American Counterintelligence, John F. Fox, Jr., FBI Historian, Presented at the 2005 Symposium on Cryptologic History, 10/27/2005.
6. McCarthy to Truman 11 February 1950, telegram.
7. Communist Control Act of 1954 U.S. Statutes at Large, Public Law 637, Chp. 886, p. 775-780.
8. Operations of the MGB Residency at New York, 1944-45
9. Time Magazine
10. McCarthy Hearings, 1953-54
11. The life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves
12. McCarthy Hearings, 1952-54, Vol. 1
13. McCarthy Hearings Vol. 3, Findlaw.com
14. American Rhetoric.com