On McCarthyism

[SW85]

I just watched Breach, a movie released earlier this year that details the FBI's efforts to nail Robert Hanssen, one of their own agents who had been selling government secrets, first to the Soviet Union and then to free Russia for 16 years (beginning 1985 and lasting until his arrest in 2001). His efforts caused countless millions of dollars in damages, compromised dozens of American intelligence officers (including two turned KGB agents who were summarily executed when Hanssen tipped off Moscow to their betrayal), and may have indirectly benefitted al-Qaeda, as Russia sold pilfered US intelligence software to Osama bin Laden. (Hanssen was caught, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to life in prison; he now spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement).

Overall, it was a great movie, and definitely worth the four- or five-month wait I had to endure between now and the first time I heard about it. The only thing that bothered me about the film was that the producers hawked it as "the story of the worst intelligence breach in American history." I had to chuckle when I heard that, because, at various times, there were Soviet spies advising the President of the United States directly (Lauchlin Currie), leaking information on our nuclear weapons program (Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, the Rosenbergs, and possibly even J. Robert Oppenheimer himself), and, in the case of Harry Dexter White, placed so high in the government that he was almost in the Presidential line of succession. To be sure, Hanssen's betrayal was epic, but it was peanuts compared to some of the miserable bastards that sold out their country during a time of war, handing sensitive military and diplomatic secrets over to the enemy in exchange for money (and sometimes for free).

Only most people hear about them, because the dominant meme of Cold War historiography is "McCarthyism." (For those who may not be up on American history, Joseph McCarthy was a U.S. Senator in the late 1940's and early 1950's who launched a highly-publicized campaign against the employment of loyalty risks in the federal government and the shoddy government security protocols that allowed them to betray their country without detection, and was roundly criticized by the media, academic, and political establishment for thuggishness). This is ludicrous, because Soviet espionage in the United States pre-dated McCarthy's rise to power, it continued long after he was gone, and in every case it was extensively well-documented -- and yet we are still told that he seized on a fabricated myth of foreign espionage, sharpening people's paranoia (which is, by definition, irrational) and preying on their fears for political gain.

The decision of historians to focus their writings about Cold War-era espionage more heavily on McCarthy and less on the sorts of people he pursued is a very strange one, and reflects the degree to which the American left successfully whitewashed the treasonous complicity of many of its members with a hostile, violent regime in a time of war. To that end, I think McCarthy has become a bit of a scapegoat. Vilifying him enables leftist professors and historians to paint a picture of history that was both politically favorable for them and yet still consistent with the themes of the time that painted McCarthy as an unacceptable deviation from the American crusade for justice and freedom against Soviet oppression.

In the interests of enlightening people who have been failed by this politically-motivated revision of American history, I submit the following list of American traitors, who provided aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war and who, due mainly to the kind of security failures in the government that McCarthy railed so strongly against, have gone largely unnoticed by history. It is not comprehensive; I exclude those who, for reasons of conscious, defected from the Soviet espionage network, as well as those whose guilt is in question. Needless to say, there are possibly hundreds or even thousands more spies who remain unnamed, and at least one to two hundred more whose names I have certainly overlooked.

• Abraham Brothman
• Aldrich Ames
• Aleksandr N. Petroff
• Alexander Koral
• Alfred Sarant
• Alger Hiss
• Allan Rosenberg
• Amadeo Sabatini
• Anatole Volkov
• Anna Colloms
• Anne Sidorovich
• Arthur Adams
• Arthur Moosen
• Augustina Stridsberg
• Bela Gold
• Bernard Schuster
• Bernice Levin
• Boris Morros
• Burton Perry
• Cedric Belfrage
• Charles Flato
• Charles Irving Velson
• Charles Kramer
• Christina Krotkova
• Clarence Hiskey
• Daniel Abraham Zaret
• David Greenglass
• David Karr
• Demetrius Dvoichenk-Markov
• Donald Hiss
• Donald Wheeler
• Donald Wheeler
• Duncan Lee
• Earl Browder
• Edmund Stevens
• Edward J. Fitzgerald
• Enos Wicher
• Esther Trebach Rand
• Eufrosina Dvoichenko-Markov
• Eugene Dennis
• Eugene Frank Coleman
• Eugenie Olkhine
• Flora Don Wovschin
• Floyd Cleveland Miller
• Frank Coe
• Frank Dziedzik
• Franz Neumann
• George Gorchoff
• George Perazich
• George Samuel Vucinich
• George Silverman
• George Zlatovski
• Gregory Silvermaster
• Harold Glasser
• Harold Ware
• Harrison George
• Harry Dexter White
• Harry Gold
• Harry Samuel Magdogg
• Helen Grace Scott Keenan
• Helen Koral
• Helen Silvermaster
• Helen Tenney
• Henry Collins
• Herman R. Jacobson
• Ilya Elliott Wolston
• Irving Kaplan
• Isaac Folkoff
• Jack Fahy
• Jack Soble
• Jacob Albam
• Jacob Golos
• James Callahan
• James Walter Miller
• Jane Foster Zlatovski
• Jerry Whitworth
• John Abt
• John Anthony Walker
• John Scott
• Jones Orvin York
• Josef Peters
• Joseph Bernstein
• Joseph Gregg
• Joseph Katz
• Judith Coplon
• Julian Wadleigh
• Julius Heiman
• Julius Joseph
• Julius Rosenberg
• Kim Philby
• Kitty Harris
• Klaus Fuchs
• Lauchlin Currie
• Laurence Duggan
• Lee Pressman
• Leonard Mins
• Linn Markley Farish
• Lona Cohen
• Louis Adamic
• Louis Budenz
• Louis D. Horvitz
• Maria Wicher
• Marietta Voge
• Marion Bachrach
• Marion Davis
• Marion Schultz
• Mark Zborowski
• Mark Zilbert
• Martha Dodd Stern
• Mary Jane Keeney
• Mary Price
• Maurice Halperin
• Michael Burd
• Michael Greenberg
• Michael Sidorovich
• Michael Walker
• Mikhail Tkach
• Milton Schwartz
• Morris Cohen
• Morton Sobell
• Myra Soble
• Nadia Morris Osipovich
• Nathan Einhorn
• Nathan Witt
• Nicholas Dozenberg
• Nicholas W. Orloff
• Nicola Napoli
• Noel Field
• Norman Bursler
• Otto Alleman
• Peter Rhodes
• Philip Jaffe
• Philip Keeney
• Rebecca Getzoff
• Robert Hanssen
• Robert Osman
• Robert Owen Menaker
• Robert Soblen
• Robert Switz
• Robert T. Miller
• Rosa Isaak
• Rose Browder
• Rudy Baker
• Ruth Greenglass
• Ruth Wilson
• Samuel Krafsur
• Saville Sax
• Sergey Nikolaevich Kurnakov
• Sol Leshinsky
• Solomon Adler
• Sonia Gold
• Sonia Gold
• Stephen Laird
• Sylvia Callen
• Theodore Bayer
• Theodore Hall
• Thomas Arthur Bissin
• Thomas Babin
• Thomas Lessing Black
• Tsutomu Yano
• Valentine Burtan
• Victor Perlo
• Vladimir Aleksandrovich Pozner
• William Alfred Plourde
• William Edward Crane
• William Gold
• William Henwood
• William Mackey
• William Marias Malisoff
• William Perl
• William Pinsly
• William Taylor
• William Ullmann
• William Weisband
• Winston Burdett
• Yotoku Miyagi
• Zalmond David Franklin

 

[vyo476]

So not only do you admire McCarthy, you wish to be like him (or you just share his love of lists). That's pretty special.

Let's get something straight. The interpretation of McCarthy isn't what's politically motivated, it was McCarthy himself who was politically motivated. His position in Washington was threatened so he seized on something everyone was afraid of (communism) and used it to bolster himself - that is, until everyone realized he was a sleaze.

I mean, sure, he exposed some weaknesses in how the government treats itself and society, but those weaknesses only existed because America wasn't and isn't a police state.

 

[SW85]

So not only do you admire McCarthy, you wish to be like him (or you just share his love of lists). That's pretty special.

In what way do you assume I "wish to be like him"?

And in this case, unlike many involving McCarthy, there are actually mountains of empirical evidence stating plainly that these people were not just loyalty risks but actual, honest-to-god spies, who handed over information to the enemy.

Let's get something straight. The interpretation of McCarthy isn't what's politically motivated, it was McCarthy himself who was politically motivated. His position in Washington was threatened so he seized on something everyone was afraid of (communism) and used it to bolster himself - that is, until everyone realized he was a sleaze.

I didn't say McCarthy's aims weren't politically motivated (although he did not, as you say, seize on the issue only when his poll numbers were down -- he ran on the issue during his first Senate bid in 1946, four years before his investigations began in earnest, saying openly that he wanted to "get the communists out of government"). He was a Senator; reelection was a concern for him. It is not a concern for historians; they have no excuse to indulge in such politicking.

At any rate, insofar as McCarthy was fundamentally right about the degree to which the American government was compromised, I am not interested in the politics of his motives. But his detractors, then and now, are not only motivated by politics, but wrong on top of that. Keep in mind people at the time were not only saying McCarthy's methods were wrong, they were saying there were no spies in government, period. Most people believe that today, too.

I mean, sure, he exposed some weaknesses in how the government treats itself and society, but those weaknesses only existed because America wasn't and isn't a police state.

There is absolutely nothing incompatible with freedom and democracy about enforcing basic security procedures in a time of war and in the face of an enemy who has already proven highly adept at compromising government secrets.

Employment in the government is a privilege, not a right, and the government rightly holds its employees to higher standards of loyalty and behavior than most private companies would (I thought that had been settled during the big civil service debates back in the days of President Arthur). That's why Truman penned the executive order establishing mandatory loyalty screenings. All McCarthy did was hold the government's feet to the fire about enforcing them.

 

[KBunker]

Umm... wrong.

"I submit the following list of American traitors, who provided aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war."

I haven't researched your whole list, but some, and probably most, of the people on don't fit your description. The time period in question for some/most of these people is WWII, and the country for whom some/most of them were agents was the Soviet Union. If you take a little peek at a history book, you'll see that the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States during that little conflict.

And if some of those on your list were agents after the war, then for your description to fit you have to pretend that the cold war was a "war".

But I expect pretending is something you spend a lot of time doing -- enjoy it!

 

[Mr. Shaman]

At any rate, insofar as McCarthy was fundamentally right about the degree to which the American government was compromised, I am not interested in the politics of his motives.

....Even if his motives were all about Politics??

In the meantime McCarthy appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek and campaigned in support of Republican candidates and against Tydings, going so far as to fabricate a photo purporting to show Tydings huddled with communist leaders. "The Democrats attempted desperately to fend off these assaults," Stone explained, and Truman responded that those claiming the domestic United States was in peril had lost all sense of restraint and decency.

http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2004_spr/mccarthy.htm​

I'd like to think Americans will (eventually) get-over their fondness for tales spun, by the local-drunk, regarding Homeland Security. Yeah, their stories are quit entertaining, but those stories are the artform of delusional-alcoholics, worldwide. What's really scary is when people avoid the inconvenience of a trip to the local-bar, by putting one o' these icons in The Oval Office (so the rantings & ravings are readily-available on cable-T.V.).

Born at the earliest fringe of the baby boom, Mr. Bush was pressed during his years at Yale, 1964 to 1968, to take sides in the great battles then unfolding over politics, civil rights, drugs and music. Mostly he was a noncombatant in those upheavals, but when forced to choose, he ultimately retreated to the values and ideals established by his parents' generation, and to their accepted methods of rebelling.

In short, while some students took to the barricades, Mr. Bush took to the bar.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/061900wh-bush.html​

 

[heyjude]

....Even if his motives were all about Politics??



I'd like to think Americans will (eventually) get-over their fondness for tales spun, by the local-drunk, regarding Homeland Security. Yeah, their stories are quit entertaining, but those stories are the artform of delusional-alcoholics, worldwide. What's really scary is when people avoid the inconvenience of a trip to the local-bar, by putting one o' these icons in The Oval Office (so the rantings & ravings are readily-available on cable-T.V.).

Well said. McCarthy was responsible for the deaths of innocent people he falsely accused, who were driven to suicide. And he was, btw, aided and abetted by his friend and spy, Ronald Reagan.

 

[Libsmasher]

.

"I submit the following list of American traitors, who provided aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war."

I haven't researched your whole list, but some, and probably most, of the people on don't fit your description.

I've seen the list from the Venona papers, and you are wrong, they DO fit the descritpion.

The time period in question for some/most of these people is WWII, and the country for whom some/most of them were agents was the Soviet Union. If you take a little peek at a history book, you'll see that the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States during that little conflict.

What does that have do to with anything? The US made an alliance of convenience with a dictatorship, the same thing you libs whine about incessantly unless it's a communist dictatorship. Due to lib media pre WWII brainwashing (eg, read up on Walter Duranty from the NYT if you know nothing about this era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty) the american people didn't recognize the threat posed by the soviet union, but the soviets understood perfectly that the US would be next on their list, and had many american spies working for them. This is no longer disputed by any reputable historian.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Well said. McCarthy was responsible for the deaths of innocent people he falsely accused, who were driven to suicide. And he was, btw, aided and abetted by his friend and spy, Ronald Reagan.

Seeing-as-how ReRon Reagan's efforts were mostly self-promotional (in esssence), I'd say Roy Cohn had a lot more, to do, with the more-crude side of McCarthy's alcohol-fueled efforts at relevancy.

Cohn was most famous for his prominent role in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn's direct examination of Ethel's brother David Greenglass produced the testimony (in which the brother later claimed he perjured himself) that was mostly responsible for the Rosenbergs' conviction and execution.

Cohn took great pride in the Rosenberg case, and claimed to have played an even greater part than his public role: he said in his autobiography that his own influence had led to both Saypol and Judge Irving Kaufman (a family friend) being appointed to the case, and that Kaufman had imposed the death penalty on Cohn's personal advice.

It was Cohn who invited G. David Schine, an anti-communist propagandist, to join McCarthy's staff as a consultant. When Schine was drafted into the army in 1953, Cohn made repeated and extensive efforts to procure special treatment for Schine. He contacted military officials from the Secretary of the Army down to Schine's company commander, and demanded that Schine be given light duties, extra leave and not be assigned overseas. At one point, Cohn is reported to have threatened to "wreck the Army" if his demands were not met.

Rumors of Cohn's homosexuality began to spread throughout Washington shortly after Joseph McCarthy appointed him chief counsel to McCarthy's subcommittee. When he brought on the wealthy and handsome G. David Schine as chief consultant, it became widely speculated that Schine and Cohn had a sexual relationship, although some historians have more recently concluded it was just a friendship. During the Army-McCarthy hearings, he denied having "special interest" in Schine or being bound to him "closer than to the ordinary friend."

Joseph Welch, the Army's attorney in the hearings, made an apparent reference to Cohn's homosexuality. After asking a witness if a photo entered as evidence "came from a pixie," he defined "pixie" for McCarthy as "a close relative of a fairy." (Fairy was, and is, a common derogatory term for a homosexual male.) The people at the hearing recognized the allusion and found it amusing; Cohn later called the remark "malicious," "wicked," and "indecent."

Cohn and McCarthy targeted many government officials and cultural figures not only for suspected Communist sympathies but — in a move of some hypocrisy on Cohn's part — also for alleged homosexual tendencies, sometimes using sexual secrets as a blackmail tool to gain informants. The men whose homosexuality Cohn exposed often lost jobs, families, and homes; some committed suicide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

What does that have do to with anything? The US made an alliance of convenience with a dictatorship, the same thing you libs whine about incessantly unless it's a communist dictatorship.

Yeah.....right.....Democracy is the dividing-line, between our interests.

Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan), Teodoro Obiang (Equatorial Guinea), Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Algeria)

Comment: A measure of our new commitment to spreading democratic politics. Some have oil, one is Stalinist, all have corruption. None have democracy. Like old friends in the Gulf, they have been advised not to take GWB's freedom and democracy speeches seriously.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/26/1072308674898.html​

 

[SW85]

Wow, talk about thread necromancy. Whatever, it's a good thread and I'm happy to participate in the disinterment and continued flogging of its corpse.

I haven't researched your whole list, but some, and probably most, of the people on don't fit your description. The time period in question for some/most of these people is WWII, and the country for whom some/most of them were agents was the Soviet Union. If you take a little peek at a history book, you'll see that the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States during that little conflict.

Irrelevant with a capital I. A nominal, short-lived alliance of convenience against a mutual enemy in no way reduces or eliminates the incentives to conduct espionage.

And are you suggesting that no espionage took place at all? Not even McCarthy's harshest critics say that.

And if some of those on your list were agents after the war, then for your description to fit you have to pretend that the cold war was a "war".

Worthless pedantry.

....Even if his motives were all about Politics??

There's a good reason to believe they weren't: case in point, he pursued his goals to the point that it ended his career.

But again, even if his goals were entirely political and self-interested, he was still right. His opponents, by contrast, were not only motivated by political self-interest, they were wrong on top of that.

Re: your quotation about Tydings, I don't care. Tydings was a segregationist jackass. His defeat was only marginally relevant to McCarthy (who, as I recall, was still largely unknown in the US at the time).

I'd like to think Americans will (eventually) get-over their fondness for tales spun, by the local-drunk, regarding Homeland Security. Yeah, their stories are quit entertaining, but those stories are the artform of delusional-alcoholics, worldwide. What's really scary is when people avoid the inconvenience of a trip to the local-bar, by putting one o' these icons in The Oval Office (so the rantings & ravings are readily-available on cable-T.V.).

Your ability to use real words to say nothing at all astounds me, like some kind of anti-Jabberwocky.

Well said. McCarthy was responsible for the deaths of innocent people he falsely accused, who were driven to suicide.

The only "suicide" I've read about in connection with McCarthy was Ray Kaplan, who was called forward as a friendly witness (not a suspect) and was, in fact, rather eager to testify about some of the VOA's bizarre and inexplicable behaviors. And the method of his suicide was startlingly coincidental with the means by which many enemies of communist government met sudden and otherwise inexplicable deaths. I'm entirely unconvinced this had anything to do with McCarthy. And I don't believe anyone besides the bleating fool William Mandel took it seriously at the time.

And you know what? McCarthy's methods weren't even new or particularly controversial even by the standards of the time. They'd been used before by Estes Kefauver and again, later, by Bobby Kennedy (a big fan of McCarthy) during his investigations of organized crime.

As for Cohn, he was the worst thing that McCarthy ever allowed to happen to himself, and its a testament to his routine bad judgments that he stuck up for the kid. (Also a testament to the fact that gay-baiting is perfectly acceptable on the left as long as it's directed towards someone on the right!) Doesn't change the fact that McCarthy was right -- the US government was compromised, heavily, to an extent that cost American lives, and people in the government who knew better did nothing.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Doesn't change the fact that McCarthy was right -- the US government was compromised, heavily, to an extent that cost American lives, and people in the government who knew better did nothing.

Gee.....do you suppose it had something to do with the fact he had nothin'???

There is some dispute about the number of Communists McCarthy claimed to have known about. Though advance copies of this speech distributed to the press record the number as 205, McCarthy quickly revised this claim. Both in a letter he wrote to President Truman the next day and in an “official” transcript of the speech that McCarthy submitted to the Congressional Record ten days later he uses the number 57. Although McCarthy displayed this list of names both in Wheeling and then later on the Senate floor, he never made the list public.

I've gotta wonder why anyone would be so anxious to dig-up McCarthy's legacy.....when we've presently got a burnt-out alcoholic (in The Oval Office) falling-back on the Politics-Of-Fear (in a desperate attempt at relevancy).

"Ladies and gentlemen, can there be anyone tonight who is so blind as to say that the war is not on? Can there by anyone who fails to realize that the Communist world has said the time is now? . . . that this is the time for the show-down between the democratic Christian world and the communistic atheistic world?

Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who wait too long." - McCarthy

*​

"American citizens must understand, clearly understand that there's still a threat on the homeland. There's still an enemy which would like to do us harm," Bush said. "We've got to give our professionals the tools they need, to be able to figure out what the enemy is up to so we can stop it."

"By blocking this piece of legislation, our country is more in danger of an attack." - Lil' Dumbya

If we're really fortunate, Bush will be the last raging-alcoholic that'll be put in a position-of-power.....you know.....'cause so many people thought it'd be such a delight, sittin'-around and slammin' beers with him.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901.html?hpid=opinionsbox1&sub=AR

 

[SW85]

Gee.....do you suppose it had something to do with the fact he had nothin'???

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say here, so I can't really comment.

There is some dispute about the number of Communists McCarthy claimed to have known about. Though advance copies of this speech distributed to the press record the number as 205, McCarthy quickly revised this claim. Both in a letter he wrote to President Truman the next day and in an “official” transcript of the speech that McCarthy submitted to the Congressional Record ten days later he uses the number 57. Although McCarthy displayed this list of names both in Wheeling and then later on the Senate floor, he never made the list public.

Four points:

One, there is actually some basis for asserting either number. Communist infiltration of the U.S. government had been investigated previously by Congress and differing numbers had been reported. As I recall one had stated explicitly that there were 57 people who had been identified as loyalty risks but were still employed (in contravention of the law at the time, signed by Truman, requiring that loyalty risks be fired immediately). Another identified 205 or so people who were still pending loyalty screenings. This may be inaccurate; I'll pick up some books from the library later for citation purposes. Suffice to say he didn't merely pull numbers out of his ass.

Second, the kerfluffle over whether he said 205 or 57 is vastly overstated. As I recall (again, I will dig up books later to cite for this), the only time he was alleged to have said 205 was at a speech in Wheeling, WV, of which no copy or transcript survives. He insists he said 57 there, as well.

Third, we know now that either number (57 or 205) is inaccurate because they vastly underestimated the extent of communist infiltration. Go pick up a copy of Haynes' and Klehr's book Venona: the index listing identified Soviet intelligence assets stretches on for nearly 50 pages -- single-spaced, in size 8 font. And this, despite the fact that we identified only a tiny fraction of the total volume of spies.

And four, I never said McCarthy was right down to every detail (and I defy you to point out where I did). What I said was that he was fundamentally right about communist infiltration, even if he was wrong on specifics -- which is to be expected, since he didn't know half of what we do today. His opponents, by contrast, were not only wrong on specifics but wrong overall. McCarthy's 57 (or 205) was far closer to the real number than Tydings' 0.