Joe Mccarthy's Real Enemies

Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies K. R. Bolton ________________________ “I think the Communist conspiracy is merely a branch of a much bigger conspiracy.” Bella Dodd1 Joseph Raymond McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin, is now re- membered mostly as an uncouth bully who recklessly destroyed the lives of decent people in the pursuit of his political career. The very term “McCarthyism” refers to a modern-day witch-hunt, and is a label held in as much contempt as the designation “Quisling.” The so-called “McCarthy era” is painted as the blackest period of American history, and anyone who raises a voice against anything of a Left-wing nature continues to be branded as a “McCarthyite” and is himself quickly condemned to disgrace and ruin. Yet recent declassified files have started to show that McCarthy was correct in his supposedly “reckless” and “fraudulent” accusations. This essay is not however primarily concerned with reassessing McCarthy’s accusations as with whether McCarthy was coming too close to other forces which set the course for his destruction. Indicative of the ongoing reassessment of McCarthy even in res- pectable quarters, a recent BBC Radio 4 programme is described by Radio Times as follows: David Aaronovitch thinks the unthinkable about the McCarthy period. The hunt for the so-called “Reds under the beds” during the Cold War is generally regarded as a deeply regrettable blot on U.S. history. But the release of classified documents reveals that Joseph McCarthy was right after all about the extent of Soviet infiltration into the highest reaches of the U.S. government. 1 Bella Dodd was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA, leaving the party in 1948. Comment to W. Cleon Skousen, former FBI special agent and Police Chief of Salt Lake City. W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist (Salt Lake City, UT: Ensign, 1970), 1. 76 The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 4, Winter 2010–2011 Thanks to the public release of top secret FBI decryptions of So- viet communications, as well as the release under the fifty-year rule of FBI records and Soviet archives, we now know that the Communist spying McCarthy fought against was extensive, reaching to the highest level of the State department and the White House. We reveal that many of McCarthy's anticommunist investigations were in fact on target. His fears about the effect Soviet infiltration might be having on US foreign policy, particularly in the Far East were also well founded. The decrypts also reveal that people such as [Julius] Rosenberg, Alger Hiss and even Robert Oppenheimer were indeed working with the Soviets. We explore why much of this information, available for years to the FBI, was not made public. We also ex- amine how its suppression prevented the prosecution of sus- pects. Hearing from former FBI, CIA and KGB operatives as well as formerly blacklisted writers, David Aaronovitch, himself from a family of communists tells the untold story of Soviet influence and espionage in the United States.2 McCarthy began his investigations against Communist infiltration when on February 9, 1950, he spoke before a Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, at which he said that there were at least 57 known Communists in the U.S. State Department, and that the State Department knew it.3 It has been the common charge that McCarthy launched his anticommunist campaign for no other reason than to serve his own political career by whipping up hysteria. Yet other facts show him to have been a man of principle regardless of his career: In 1949 McCarthy had taken up the cause of German POWs held for allegedly gunning down 2 “McCarthy: There Were Reds Under the Bed.” BBC Radio 4, aired July 25, and August 9 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t7hhf 3 Scott Speidel, Florida State University, “The Destruction of Joe McCarthy, Part 1.” http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/2009/07/the-destruction-of-joe-mccarthy/ Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies” 77 American prisoners during the so-called Malmedy Massacre. McCar- thy exposed the fact that the Germans had had their POW status re- voked so that the Geneva Convention did not protect them, and that they were being tortured to extract confessions. Obviously this was not the type of cause that was designed to win friends. This had indeed already resulted in McCarthy being condemned by the news media.4 It was the Senate that insisted that McCarthy make his list of 57 names of subversives public, although he did not himself think it proper, yet it is McCarthy who has since been damned as the man who destroyed the innocent by public inquisitions.5 McCarthy’s elimination had been guaranteed, not because he was going after Soviet spies and subversives, but because he was getting too close to the centers of financial and political power. CENSURE The deathblow to McCarthy’s campaign was instigated not by some Party hack at the Daily Worker, but by Sen. Ralph E. Flanders who introduced the resolution for Senate censure of McCarthy. This was backed by Sen. Herbert Lehman, son of Mayer Lehman, founder of Lehman Brothers international investment bank, of which Herbert became a partner. In its introduction to its collection of the Lehman Papers, Columbia University describes the august Senator Lehman as follows: Having served as Governor of New York State between 1933 and 1942, in 1949, at the age of 71 Lehman was elected United States Senator to fill the unexpired term of Robert F. Wagner, Sr. Re- elected for a full term in 1950, Senator Lehman gave six years of distinguished service to the people of his state and nation. His courage, moral integrity and unfaltering dedication soon made Senator Lehman one of Washington’s most respected sena- tors; just as they had won him affection and honor in New York6 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. McCarthy was never permitted to make full disclosure of his evidence. That he referred to three separate lists of subversives was distorted by the media and portrayed as inconsistency on McCarthy’s part. 6 Considering Lehman’s New York constituency, he would have gained its es- teem regardless. 78 The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 4, Winter 2010–2011 and on the world scene. He became known as “the conscience of the Senate” as he led those who stood for liberal principles and for the rights of accused individuals in the early 1950s when Senator McCarthy’s influence was at its peak. Utterly fearless and disdainful for his own political fortunes, he fought, at times almost alone, against tremendous opposition.7 Stating that Lehman stood fearless and “at times almost alone” is nonsense. It was McCarthy who stood fearless and alone, while Leh- man had the full weight of the US Administration up to the presiden- cy, the Washington and Wall Street elites, and the most influential of the news media. Columbia University describes the battle between Lehman and McCarthy as “bitter.” According to Lehman’s biographer, Allen Ne- vins, on at least one occasion senatorial colleagues feared that the ver- bal combat between Lehman and McCarthy would lead to blows on the floor of the Senate.8 Lehman, like the Warburgs and the Schiffs, et al., intermarried within the exclusive world of Jewish banking dynasties, marrying Edith Louise Altschul, the daughter of the head of the New York branch of Lazard Freres, the Paris-based banking house. He was awarded the Presiden- tial Medal of Freedom in 1963 for his campaign against Sen. McCar- thy,9 but died on December 5 as he was about to go to the White House to receive his reward. Another anti-McCarthy figure, cartoonist Herbert Block, discussed below, was awarded the same honor by President Clinton in 1994. Sen. Flanders also had an interesting background, not as some “progres- sive” or liberal Democrat, but as a Republican, an industrialist and a banker. Under the guise of being an anti-communist, Flanders stated that McCarthy was misdirecting efforts against communism by looking inward, at subversion in the USA, whereas the fight must be directed outward against Soviet expan- 7 Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, “Materials for the Study of McCarthyism at the Herbert H. Lehman Suite and Papers,” http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/rbml/units/lehman/guides/mccarthy ism.html 8 Allan Nevins, Herbert H. Lehman and His Era (New York: Scribner, 1963). 9 “Herbert Henry Lehman,” Jewish Virtual Library. http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:kt24GqyEyfYJ:www.jewishvirtuallibrary. org/jsource/biography/lehman.html Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies” 79 sion.10 This line fitted entirely with that of the US Establishment: Ever since Sta- lin foiled the US attempt to create a “new world order” immediately after World War II via the United Nations and the “Baruch Plan” for the internatio- nalization of atomic energy — both measures which, in the opinion of the So- viets, would have assured US global hegemony, the wartime US-Soviet accord had been replaced by a Cold War.11 The US Establishment sought to recruit influential anti-Soviet Leftists, whom the CIA depicted as “anti-communists.” This ideological offensive was undertaken by the CIA, with backing from wealthy and influential elites, in particular the Rockefellers, primarily under the banner of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, led by pro-Trotsky “Men- shevik” intellectual Prof. Sidney Hook, another recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.12 McCarthy’s most dangerous enemies were, in this writer’s opinion, not the Soviet spies and American Communist Party functionaries he was exposing, but those whom he had not even yet targeted, the power elite and their agents.

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