The rehabilitated reputation of senator Joseph McCarthy.

During the 1950's Senator Joseph McCarthy spent much time attacking the infiltration by communists of American public institutions. For this he was widely attacked by American liberals and the American left. He was described as a demagogue, and his efforts were mocked as looking for "reds under the bed", as an offensive example of fascism and as an erratic and unprincipled persecution of many good, conscientious and patriotic Americans.

It now appears that Senator McCarthy was correct in his assertions. This has been spelt out in detail in Ann Coulter's recent book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. (1) In describing attacks by liberals as "a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name", Coulter comments, (2)

"But after a half century of liberal mythmaking, it would be Judgement Day for liberals on July 11, 1995. On that day, the U.S. government released a cache of Soviet cables that had been decoded during the Cold War in a top-secret undertaking known as the Venona Project. The cables proved the overwhelming truth of McCarthy's charges. It was a mind-boggling discovery. Professors would be compelled to retract their theses about the extent of Soviet espionage. Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, even American journalist I.F.Stone, were exposed as agents of Moscow. And yet, most people reading this book are hearing about the Venona Project for the very first time. The release of decrypted Soviet cables was barely mentioned by the New York Times. It might have detracted from stories of proud and unbowed victims of 'McCarthyism'. They were not so innocent after all, it turns out."

The unjustified attacks on Senator McCarthy are to be viewed in the context of American politics of that time. After the end of the Second World War Stalin was viewed with trust and admiration by many liberals. President Roosevelt himself was friendly towards the Soviets. One of his critical advisers, Alger Hiss, was a Soviet agent, who was influential in turning Roosevelt against Churchill and having Roosevelt approve at Yalta of the subjugation of many countries of Eastern Europe. A principled ex-communist, one Whittaker Chambers, informed Roosevelt's assistant secretary of state, Adolf Berle, of the names of at least two dozen Soviet spies working for the Roosevelt administration, including Alger Hiss and his brother Donald. Berle passed on this information urgently to Roosevelt, who laughed and told Berle to go f--himself. (3) Far from removing Hiss, Roosevelt actually promoted him, and kept him as a trusted aide despite warnings about him from other sources.

Nor did President Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt, overcome the left's instinct to protect friends of the Soviets. Truman denounced a Congressional investigation of Hiss as a "red herring" and a cheap political ploy. (4) Other democrats were quick to add their voices. Felix Frankfurter and Adlai Stevenson actually offered to be character witnesses for the Soviet spy, and Eleanor Roosevelt asserted that she believed him. The secretary of state Dean Acheson (whose reputation has not improved with time) passed government secrets furtively to Hiss's lawyers to help them with his case. The Department of Justice prepared to indict, not Hiss the Soviet agent, but Whittaker Chambers who had revealed Hiss's clandestine role. Whittaker Chambers was vindicated by the production of further evidence, but the New York Times (which consistently attempts to undermine United States security) continued to support Hiss nonetheless.

Under Truman Alger Hiss had enormous influence. He was director of the Office of Political Affairs at the State Department, and was secretary-general of the San Francisco Conference, which drafted the United Nations Charter. Despite his subsequent conviction and imprisonment for perjury, Hiss continued to be feted by liberals: his first speech after leaving prison was at Princeton, where he was given a standing ovation. (5)

In 1991 Paul Johnson stated, without the advantage of extensive subsequent evidence from Soviet archives: (6)

"The Soviet agent Harry Dexter White was the most influential official in the Treasury, the man who created the post-war international monetary system, with the help of Keynes ... In 1945 Elizabeth Bentley, a former Communist spy, told the F.B.I. of two Soviet networks in the United States, one headed by the Treasury economist Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, another by Victor Perlo of the War Production Board: classified information was also transmitted from the Justice Department, the Foreign Economic Administration and the Board of Economic Warfare. F.B.I. and Office of Strategic Services raids also disclosed leakages from the Army and Navy departments, the Office of War Intelligence and the O.S.S. itself ... In the atomic field Soviet agents included Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, J. Peters (alias Alexander Stevens) to whom Whittaker Chambers acted as courier, and Jacob Golos, as well as Klaus Fuchs, who had been cleared by British Security."

Many other Soviet agents have been revealed by Soviet records and by the Venona Project, such as Lauchlin Currie, Laurence Duggar, Frank Coe, Solomon Adler and Duncan Lee.

Joseph McCarthy had been a circuit judge in Wisconsin before becoming a senator. In 1950 he made a speech in West Virginia in which he said that he had in his hand the names of fifty-seven card-carrying communists in the State Department. Although (and to some extent because) his information was accurate he was immediately attacked by the liberal establishment, including its flag-bearer, the New York Times. (J. Edgar Hoover stated in March 1947 that there were more Americans (about one million) registered to vote for the Communist Party than there had been In Russia in 1917.)

In retrospect, with knowledge possessed today--and only a small proportion of Soviet cables have yet been decoded--Senator McCarthy underestimated the number and the importance of Soviet agents active in U.S. government. Hundreds of Soviet spies honeycombed the U.S. government through the forties and fifties. Many of these had acquired their positions during the Roosevelt era. Roosevelt, who called Stalin "Uncle Joe", said of the Soviet Union in his fourth inaugural address, "In order to make a friend, one must be a friend". (7) Likewise Truman said, "I like old Joe. Joe is a decent fellow." (8) These two American presidents gave support to the liberal state of mind whereby criticisms of communists or communist agents were in bad form.

In fact, as Coulson notes, (9)

"McCarthy's contribution to 'McCarthyism' consisted exclusively of his investigation of loyalty risks working for the federal government. He was not even particularly interested in the Communists themselves. His targets were government officials charged with removing loyalty risks from sensitive public jobs. His campaign lasted only a few years, from 1950 to 1953, until liberals immobilised him in 1954 with their Army-McCarthy hearings and censure investigation. He conducted his investigations from the Senate Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations, the express mandate of which was--surprisingly enough--to investigate the federal government."

An example of improper attacks on McCarthy is found in the Annie Moss case. Annie Moss was a cleaner who worked in the Code Room at the Pentagon. Democrats defended her vigorously, although it later was learned that she was a member of the Communist Party. Democrat Senator Stuart Symington shielded her, mocking the case against her, but she was ultimately moved by her employer, the Army, away from the Code Room. Liberals thereafter attempted to use the Moss case to discredit McCarthy. In fact, the case was one of many in which government departments had acted rashly, employing in sensitive positions people who, in retrospect, can be clearly seen to have been Soviet agents.

Indeed, McCarthy set out strictly not to reveal publicly the names of those whom he was investigating. He stated that although he had enough evidence to convince himself that they were either members of the Communist Party or had given great aid to the Communists, he would not publish their names, since it was possible that some of them would eventually receive "a clean bill of health". (10) However it was the Democrat grouping in the Senate that compelled him to reveal the names. Democrat Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas said, "I want to remain here until he [Senator McCarthy] names them." And so McCarthy was compelled against his wishes to name the persons in question. Then the Democrats and their liberal supporters used the fact of naming as the most odious aspect of what they chose to call McCarthyism. The naming and consequent loss of reputation (in fact, a loss that was almost invariably justified by the evidence) of a Soviet agent or communist was a consequence of the insistence of McCarthy's liberal detractors. (These detractors included, incidentally, Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger bitterly denounced those who stated that Richard Duggan was a spy, until finally in addition to other overwhelming evidence to this effect, the Venona decrypts provided further corroboration that not even he could ignore.)

McCarthy was a hate-object of Democrat and liberal groups. Many of the latter had been to Harvard or other Ivy League institutions, where tolerance of the extreme left was fashionable. Their attitudes were represented by the liberal newspapers, and particularly by the New York Times, which has commonly been viewed as an instrument of decomposition: it continuously supports causes that undermine American security and the preservation of American values. But McCarthy was supported by the great majority of the American people; opinion polls continually showed majority backing. He was supported also by ex-servicemen, who were particularly concerned by actions that reduced national security: (11)

"In the summer of 1951, the Truman administration planned an all-out attack on McCarthy, going directly to his base--The Veterans of Foreign Wars. At the dedication of the new American Legion building, both Truman and his not coincidentally Catholic labor secretary, Maurice Tobin, gave speeches attacking McCarthy. Truman spoke darkly of 'hysteria' and 'fear' about Communism. Tobin denounced 'slanderers' in Congress undermining the public's trust in government. Though neither had mentioned McCarthy by name, the point was clear.

When Tobin mentioned 'slanderers', one of the V.F.W. organisers had had enough. He leapt from his chair, grabbed the microphone out of Tobin's hand, and announced to the crowd that maybe the V.F.W. should let McCarthy speak for himself. The audience roared its approval. McCarthy flew in the next day to address an enthusiastic V.F.W. crowd. For more than an hour, he laid into Truman. Acheson and 'the whole motley crew'. His reception was noticeably more positive than Truman's and Tobin's had been. A cheering audience chanted, 'Give them hell, Joe!' and 'McCarthy for President'."

But the liberal press had its own agenda. In a classic tactic the San Francisco Chronicle attacked "McCarthyism" by reference to the experience that befell the children of Soviet spies, such as Robert Meeropol, the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. There were "phone taps, F.B.I. surveillances, subpoenas and ostracism". (Coulter comments ironically: "To be sure their parents were giving atomic technology to the Soviet Union. But the F.B.I. had no right to watch them!" (12)) The Chronicle reported tendentiously that "these testimonies chill us to the bone, making it clear what totalitarianism once looked like within our own borders". This far-fetched comment encapsulates the liberal myth that developed. Much of that myth had its origin in the complaints of the very Soviet agents who were being exposed. Almost without exception those agents denied their guilt and claimed innocent victim status. They themselves coordinated propaganda that was readily assimilated by the Democrats and their liberal allies.

Coulter's analysis of the McCarthy controversy is perceptive, in view especially of the role of the liberal media and the attitudes that have been entrenched during the past fifty odd years. She comments, after discussing similar issues: (13)

"Similarly, having ceded the lie of 'McCarthyism', now no-one is allowed to call liberals unpatriotic. Liberals relentlessly attack their own country, but we can't call them traitors, which they manifestly are, (14) because that would be 'McCarthyism', which never existed.

By now the Left's mind-boggling self-righteousness about Senator Joe McCarthy is so overwhelming, so hegemonic, it seems the record could never be set straight."

In this assessment Coulter is nonetheless unduly pessimistic. One of the lessons to be learnt from the last century, when communism and nazism flourished for so long but were finally entirely discredited, is that there is always a prospect--although unfortunately never a certainty--that truth will prevail. Any false assessment, however acceptable at a particular time, is always subject to an assessment of later history.

Accordingly the essential question about Senator McCarthy is, was he substantially correct in his statements?

The Venona Project and the subsequent release of information from Russia indicate that in fact Senator McCarthy's statements were substantially correct, and that his liberal critics were substantially wrong. It appears also that there was an organised campaign against him, in which many senior Democrats who ought to have known better unfortunately joined.

There is hence reason to be more optimistic on this subject than Coulter allows. In regard to Senator McCarthy we have only recently seen the public release of facts that support his statements. In view of the accumulated prejudice of fifty years, it could hardly be expected that liberals would at once cede their position. But as that position receives critical examination, and is seen to be defective, there will doubtless be a gradual change. Those in the centre will be the first to acknowledge errors of assessment, and intransigence will increase as one moves further to the left. But facts are facts.

Senator McCarthy was evidently moved by patriotic considerations. He saw himself as defending America. Of course good motives would not excuse a misguided approach. But the Venona Project and Soviet archives indicate that Senator McCarthy was, as a matter of fact, substantially correct. He should be now defended by persons with honest intentions, although this will, in the short term, attract criticism from liberals and from the uninformed.

(1.) Ann Coulter, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, 2003, Crown Forum, New York. This book was reviewed by Mr. Charles Francis Q.C. in National Observer, 2005, Issue 64, pages 67-70.

(2.) Ibid., pages 10-11.

(3) Ibid., at page 18.

(4) Ibid., at page 21.

(5) Ibid., at page 28.

(6.) Modern Times, Harper Perennial Classics, page 456.

(7.) Coulson, op.cit., page 43.

(8.) Ibid., page 44.

(9.) Ibid., page 56.

(10.) Ibid., at page 65.

(11.) Ibid., at page 70.

(12.) Ibid., at page 74.

(13.) Ibid., at page 75.

(14.) In Australia one recalls the reluctance of the left to criticise the Soviet Union, and acts of Australian unionists preventing the sending of munitions and supplies to Australian Armed Forces abroad, and the support by the left of illegal immigrants hostile to Australia.