Senator (R)Joseph McCarthy Was Right

by Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid on February 22, 2000

At the recent conference on “Rethinking McCarthy,” veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans disputed a number of myths about the Senator that have been accepted by leading historians and media figures. Evans, the director of the National Journalism Center who is writing his own book on Senator Joseph McCarthy, said one of the most notorious myths is that the Wisconsin Senator never named any names of suspected communists in government.

Holding up a file of material, Evans said, “Here are the names. Right here. Anybody who wants to can look at them.” He produced a letter that McCarthy sent to Senator Millard Tydings in 1950 in which he listed the names.

The original list, which included numbers of cases and not names, was obtained by McCarthy after it was put together by congressional staffers. It was drawn from the files of the State Department itself. But McCarthy provided the cases to Tydings with the names attached. Critics have said over the years that the list was either outdated, blown out of proportion, that the individuals named were cleared by congressional committees, or that they were just mildly leftist.

But none of that was true. Evans quoted from some of them: “…he furnished material to a known Soviet espionage agent…” and “…He is a known Communist Party member.”

Evans said the biggest piece of disinformation was that these cases had been cleared by congressional hearings. This was false. The chairman of one committee said the information showed “a large number of communists on the rolls of the State Department.” He added, “It makes me wonder if there is any representation of the United States in the State Department.”

McCarthy also had access to information about Amerasia, a pro-Communist magazine, and State Department diplomat John Stewart Service, who was arrested for passing classified information to its editor. In a major speech, McCarthy called the Justice Department's failure to prosecute the case a massive cover-up. “We now know that he was 100 percent correct,” Evans said of McCarthy's charges.

The FBI wiretapped the meeting where the cover-up was planned and the case was fixed to get Service off. Playing a role in the cover-up was Soviet agent Laughlin Currie in the White House. He was a key adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt.

Another McCarthy target, Owen Lattimore of the Institute for Pacific Relations, was supposedly investigated by the Tydings Committee, which found nothing incriminating in his FBI files. But Evans read from that file, page one, which said back in 1941 that Lattimore was a communist who should be detained in the event of a national emergency.

All of this mattered for two reasons. One, some of these people engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union. Two, they manipulated U.S. foreign policy to the benefit of the communists. For example, they maneuvered to cut off aid to the Chinese nationalists in order to betray China to the communists.

This betrayal left mainland China in the hands of the Communists and the nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan. More than 50 years later, the betrayal continues under the Clinton Administration. But Senator Joe McCarthy tried to prevent it.

Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid

By Redditt user Vorengard· 2017

To say whether or not McCarthy was "right" is a very difficult question due to the nature and scope of his activities. A proper discussion of whether or not he was "right" would involve discussing the ethical norms of a vast array of subjects, such as the extent of freedom of speech, personal political rights, the inherent nature of communism, and the inherent conflict (if any) between communist ideology and democracy; to name a few.

So, instead, I will address your second question of whether or not any of his concerns were justified. The quick answer is: Yes, absolutely, communist agents were working overtime to infiltrate and subvert American institutions and to steal industrial secrets, and they had a great deal of success doing so.

The U.S. government had a secret program, known to us as the Venona Papers, which involved an ultra-secret operation that ran from 1940 to 1980 aimed at decoding intercepted Soviet communications with agents in America. The program intercepted some 25,000 documents but was only able to decipher 3,000 of them.

From that small portion of documents, the government was able to uncover the names of more than 300 Americans working as spies or informants for the Soviet Union, with positions in major corporations, development boards, and government agencies, such as the State and Treasury departments.

The Venona project was instrumental in catching high-level Soviet spies such as Julius Rosenberg, who was executed, along with his wife, for giving critical information on the Manhattan Project to the Soviets, and Alger Hiss. The Hiss case is very controversial, but as a senior-level State Department employee, it goes to show the level of penetration people were fearing at the time.

The Venona Papers also indicated that the Communist Party of America was actively assisting Soviet spies in their actions against the US. This involvement is why there were so many persecutions of the Communist party in the US. Many people, myself included, would say that McCarthy went too far in oppressing a political party because political freedom is important, but it would be wrong to say that there was no direct and dangerous connection between the CPA and the KGB.

Whether or not there was any real threat to the US from the Communist party is a subject for debate. But what isn't debatable is that the Soviet Union was actively seeking to infiltrate, subvert, and damage the US as a nation and a political system and that they had been succeeding in doing so to a great extent throughout much of the Cold War. So in that regard, Joseph McCarthy was wise to be afraid of their influence. Whether or not his actions were appropriate or "right" is another story entirely.

If you want to know more about the Venona Papers, and the harm done to the US by these informants, read "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America" By John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (New Haven [Connecticut]: Yale University Press. 2000)

For a quick investigation, here is a link to a list of Americans exposed by the Venona Papers. (Yes, I know, Wikipedia is evil, but the list is supposedly taken directly from the aforementioned book).

On McCarthy’s Blacklist: Celebrating AAUW and Women’s History

AAUW member Esther Brunauer was put on Sen. McCarthy's infamous blacklist in the 1950s.

March 17, 2014

Each year for Women’s History Month, the National Women’s History Project identifies a theme and selects several honorees to celebrate. This year’s theme is “celebrating women of character, courage, and commitment.” In years past, we have been able to highlight some AAUW connections to the project’s list of honorees.

They were AAUW members, fellows, or awardees. We take pride in those connections. However, this year we have also created our own list of honorees that is uniquely AAUW. Every Friday in March, we will publish a blog post to celebrate AAUW’s very own women of character, courage, and commitment.

We start with a woman whose work with AAUW got her on the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s blacklist.

Esther Brunauer wore many hats within AAUW. Not only was she part of the staff, but she also was an AAUW member and a fellow. Her first contact with AAUW was as a recipient of a Margaret Maltby Fellowship in 1926 while she was pursuing her doctorate at Stanford University. She also served as an associate of the AAUW International Relations program from 1927 to 1944. So to say that AAUW was a big part of Brunauer’s life would be a huge understatement.

May 1954 article from the National Republic entitled “Pink Ladies of AAUW”

In 1944, Brunauer resigned from her job at AAUW to accept a position with the State Department. In his notorious five-hour speech in 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy accused Brunauer (or “Case No. 47,” as she was called) of being “instrumental in committing this organization to the support of various [communist] front enterprises.” Another AAUW member was also on McCarthy’s list, Judge Dorothy Kenyon, a well-known activist, and attorney. Kenyon was the second vice president of AAUW and also served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1930.

Following the accusations, AAUW General Director Kathryn McHale and the board of directors rose to Brunauer and Kenyon’s defense, both personally and as AAUW associates. In a letter of support, McHale wrote, “Mrs. Brunauer’s record with AAUW was marked by personal and professional integrity, devotion to the public good, and loyalty to the government of the United States.”

In a subsequent 1950 New Year’s Eve statement to the members of AAUW, the board issued a call to members to continue their important work despite the crisis and reminded members that it was only through their “practical work in education” that the nation “produce and maintain citizens who are sensitive to human values and who will strive to protect them.”

Both women vigorously defended themselves and refuted the accusations that they were tied to communist front organizations or that AAUW operated in such a manner. The charges against Kenyon were dismissed. Unfortunately, the defenses were not strong enough to exonerate Brunauer, who along with her husband, Stephen, a chemist for the Navy, was named as a security risk and subsequently dismissed from their positions — a fate that was not uncommon at the time. Brunauer’s life was forever changed by the accusations.

The attacks against AAUW continued into the mid-1950s. The AAUW archives contain records relating to this battle. The records include AAUW responses to the allegations and copies of articles from the National Republic with titles such as “The Pink Ladies of AAUW,” written by pro-McCarthy journalists who combed through the pages of the AAUW Journal and other publications for evidence of our supposed communist and socialist leanings.

BUILDING THE NEW WORLD ORDER - 1939 - Brunauer booklet

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