The word McCarthyism according to journalist Phil Brennan "was coined in the bowels of NKVD headquarters at 3 Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow and first published in the Communist Daily Worker, Moscow’s U.S. house organ with the justified belief that it would be enthusiastically picked up and used by America’s useful liberal idiots." [1]
It is a derogatory and misleading term, based on false premises. First, Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee or the Hollywood Blacklist. Second, and more important, it was not true that all McCarthy called to testify were innocent or that liberals were merely defending civil liberties.
Americans and conservatives were deeply concerned about the loss of China, the world's largest populated state, to totalitarian communists through subversion and overt aid of liberal New Dealers and communists in the Deep State, and the impact such a catastrophe would have on future generations.
The Venona intercepts revealed that McCarthy was right about the true extent of Soviet spies in the U.S. government, the danger they presented to national security, and subversion of U.S. national interests.
Senator Joseph McCarthy led a prominent public campaign to investigate Communist Party members working in sensitive US government jobs who were in violation of the Hatch Act prohibiting federal employment of workers with membership in "any political organization which advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government." By 1950, it was widely known that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had obtained atomic weapons know-how with the assistance of American citizens, many of them government employees. The United States had spent $4 billion to develop the technology, roughly equivalent to $80 billion today. The international situation was extremely tense at the time, and public knowledge that America's Cold War enemy obtained nuclear weapons capability with the help of federal government employees, along with the perception that the Truman administration was unconcerned about it, was very worrisome to many.
McCarthy's efforts to remove security risks from government employment 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 meant as a derogatory term, and sometimes used to refer to House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) or the Hollywood Blacklist, even though those weren't really part of McCarthy's campaign.[3]
On June 6, 1945, less than a month after the War in Europe ended and while the pacific War was winding down, 6 persons, including three U.S. government officials, were arrested on conspiracy and espionage charges related to possession of roughly 1000 stolen classified Government documents in the offices of Amerasia magazine. Amerasia had published classified materials verbatim from the United States wartime intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed he had an "airtight case," and Justice Department officials were ready to prosecute. Thomas Corcoran (Tommy the Cork), a former Franklin Roosevelt personal adviser who lived in the White House at the President's side and afterward became a prominent Washington lawyer and fixer, worked with the Truman administration to cover up the case. Soviet agent Duncan Lee, who served as counsel to OSS chief General William Donovan and was the highest ranking KGB operative among nearly two dozen Soviet agents who penetrated the OSS, after the War was working in Corcoran's Washington law firm.[4]
A transmission from Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) agents in New York on June 16, 1943 to Moscow read,
Joseph Bernstein has established friendly relations with T.A. Bisson . . who has recently left BEW; he is now working in the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) and in the editorial offices of Bernsteins’ periodical Amerasia. . . Bisson passed to Bernstein . . . copies of four documents:
(a) his own report for BEW with his views on working out a plan for shipment of American troops to China;
(b) a report by the Chinese embassy in Washington to its government in China. . . .
(c) a brief BEW report of April 1943 on a general evaluation of the forces of the sides on the Soviet-German front. . . .
(d) a report by the American consul in Vladivostok. . ." [5]
Joseph Bernstein to whom Bisson gave this material is the same Moscow agent who was a contact of Philip Jaffe in the 1940s. Thus Bisson not only promoted the cause of the CCP, as Sen. McCarthy alleged, but also passed confidential data to the GRU. McCarthy made accusations against Bisson, and had certain evidence to prove it. But McCarthy was unaware of the extent of Bisson's complicity. The truth was unknown for 50 years.[6]
In November 1945 when the War was finally over, a courier from a very large CPUSA underground apparatus operating in numerous federal agencies throughout the New Deal,which included the White House, defected to the FBI. The KGB had removed Elizabeth Bentley from overseeing at least 80 KGB sources late in the war. When she realized she knew too much, was no longer of use to the KGB and her life was in danger, she told her story in a deposition to the FBI. Bentley was assigned covername "Gregory" to protect her identity, and the highly secret investigation was referred to as "the Gregory Case."
The FBI knew of 5 Soviet agents during the war, Bentley added at least another 80, some of them still employed in the government at that time. Her story at first was incredible, even embarrassing to the FBI, but it soon was determined that Bentley's allegations were borne out by information already in Bureau files.[9] By December, no fewer than 227 FBI agents were investigating in the case.[10]
For much of 1946 the suspects were surveilled, other information came from Igor Guzenko,[11] a Soviet code clerk who defected in Canada. The FBI was unaware at this point the Army Signals Intelligence Service was secretly reading KGB communications with Moscow. In the later part of February a 194-page report based upon Bentley's deposition entitled, Underground Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government [12] was transmitted to Secretary of State George Marshall an other agencies. By December 1946 leaks were developing.[13]
In January 1947, Edward Morgan of the FBI was asked to make an objective analysis of the case.[14] Morgan writes, "Coming in after the event as the Bureau did, we are now on the outside looking in, with the rather embarrassing responsibility of having a most serious case of Soviet espionage laid in our laps without a decent opportunity to make it stick. This very circumstance, however, necessitates pursuing more direct methods." Not knowing of the super secret Venona project yet, Morgan observes, "the case is no more than the word of [Bentley] against that of the several conspirators. The likely result would be an acquittal under very embarrassing circumstances." Morgan suggests it is possible “some of the lesser lights among the subjects would crack during the course of a careful and pointed interview" and concludes with the recommendation "That one of the subjects of this case, probably the weakest sister, be contacted with a view to making him an informant...Failing in this respect, that immediately the other subjects be exhaustively interviewed. Since an interview with one would virtually amount to putting all of them on notice, it would seem logical to conduct such interviews as nearly simultaneously as possible....That failing to break any of the subjects, serious consideration be given to exposing this lousy outfit and at least hounding them from the Federal Service. Several possibilities exist in this regard but this would seem to be a bridge to cross when we get to it."
Press leaks continued from an Executive Conference formed of DOJ prosecutors and FBI investigators discussing how to proceed. In a hand written margin note from a memo dated January 23, 1947, Hoover writes, "in view of all the 'gabbing' done by the Dept to the Press there is little which can be expected from any action now." [15] Four days later Hoover, in a somber tone, recommends to the Attorney General, "I am of the opinion...it will be impossible to continue the investigation....the subjects...are now all very security conscious... any attempt to interrogate them, either by Bureau agents or before a grand jury, would produce nothing. Obviously, this situation leaves only the third alternative; that is, that the Department furnish to the employing departments the basic data concerning the activities of the individual subjects as a possible means of concluding the case. It is assumed, of course, that the employing departments will take administrative action against the subjects who are employed in these departments." [16]
In June 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 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.[17]
In 1947,[18] 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.[19] There was an FBI counterintelligence investigation [20] which empanelled a grand jury in New York to look into defector Elizabeth Bentley's allegations, and the Army Signal Intelligence Service reading Soviet cipher decrypts [21] at Arlington Hall. It was a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing. Leaks in the investigation into the Silvermaster case began to threaten the successful prosecution.[22] So when McCarthy later made charges that the Truman administration knowingly protected Soviet agents, on the surface, this appeared to large sectors [23] of the American public[24] as true.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was among only a handful of people in the U.S. Government who was aware of the Venona project, and there is no indication Hoover shared Venona information with McCarthy. In fact, Hoover may have actually fed McCarthy dead end files on family relatives or close associates of real espionage suspects. Hoover told a House Committee in 3 days before McCarthy's Wheeling speech that counterespionage required "an objective different from the handling of criminal cases. It is more important to ascertain his contacts, his objectives, his sources of information and his methods of communication" as "arrest and public disclosure are steps to be taken only as a matter of last resort." He concluded that "we can be secure only when we have a full knowledge of the operations of an espionage network, because then we are in a position to render their efforts ineffective." [25] And there is no indication McCarthy might have known he was being used by Hoover in this way.
One day before McCarthy's Wheeling speech the Chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) wrote a memorandum to the Scientific Intelligence Committee complaining how they had been kept out of the intelligence sharing loop after the confession of Klaus Fuchs became more widely known. In the memorandum the JAEIC suspected the FBI and others may have counter espionage information of considerable value in making an estimate on the status of the Soviet atomic. In the summer of 1949 the FBI learned that the secret of the construction of the atom bomb had been stolen and turned over to a foreign power. An immediate investigation resulted in the identification of Fuchs.[26] The JAEIC stated had they known in June about Fuchs, it would have impacted their estimate of Soviet atomic capabilities released in July which did not foresee the Soviet Union exploding its first nuclear device at the end of August in 1949. They noted some information was obtained through HUAC, some from Canada as a result of the Igor Gouzenko case, and Hoover supplied some information but it was only of slight value. The memorandum declares, "The only real assurance we have of getting the information at present seems to be as a result of a Congressional Committee" or the arrest of suspects.[27]
In summary memorandums to Director Hoover of Venona project information begun in 1950 entitled, Operations of the MGB Residency at New York, 1944-45, Special Agent Alan Belmont reported the FBI had identified 206 persons involved in Soviet espionage activity who had been active in United States. Of this number the FBI had information from defector Elizabeth Bentley and other sources regarding espionage activity on 87 of these persons. Espionage activity on the part of 119 persons from Venona information were not known to the FBI prior to 1946 but many were identified through investigation by 1950.[28]
When the Office of Special Political Affairs (OSPA) was created in 1944, Alger Hiss became the deputy director - a sensitive and key position. In August 1944, Hiss was executive secretary of the Dumbarton Oaks conference. When he returned to Washington, all matters pertaining to the United Nations organization came under his direct supervision. With Harry Hopkins, Cordell Hull, and others, Hiss worked on the first drafts of the UN Charter.[29] Hiss negotiated privately with the ailing U.S. president, Franklin Roosevelt, and CPSU General Secretary Josef Stalin at the Yalta conference.[30] It was here that FDR agreed to allow the Soviet Union to occupy Poland and set up a Comintern affiliated puppet state—a clear violation of the principles of self-determination expressed in the Atlantic Charter, and the very cause over which Great Britain went to war with Germany in September 1939. What's more, it was the betrayal of an ally – the Polish Government – which had signed the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations Declaration.
On March 3, 1945, the director of the KGB, Lt. General Pavel Fitin instructed Ishkak Akhmerov, head of KGB Illegal operations in the United States to learn what he could about American plans for the forthcoming United Nations San Francisco Conference. Assigning top priority to the task, Fitin ordered an early report. Hiss was responsible for planning the conference. Hiss had been working with Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU), since the mid 1930s. Ordinarily security procedures dictated that a Case officer from one Soviet Intelligence organization would not contact an agent working for another, however under the extraordinary circumstances of the approaching UN organizational conference late in the war, Akhmerov did so, and reported on his contact with Hiss.[31][32][33] Akhmerov reported how after the Yalta conference Hiss traveled to Moscow where Andrey Vyshinsky passed on to him the GRU's gratitude.[34] A codename was assigned by one Soviet Intelligence agency for an agent working for another Soviet Intelligence agency which created confusion among investigators.[35][36] A Senate Internal Security Subcommittee investigation determined that Hiss was responsible for the employment of 494 persons on the United Nations initial staff.[37] With the leaks in the Silvermaster case, Elizabeth Bentley was called to testify in late July 1948, and Whittaker Chambers, a CPUSA defector from the 1930s, a few days later repeated information he had given to President Franklin Roosevelt's Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle in 1939 - firsthand knowledge of Hiss's espionage activity - information that Berle in person relayed to President Roosevelt.[38][39][40] Ambassador to the Soviet Union William Bullitt had likewise warned FDR as early as 1939 that Hiss was an agent of the Soviet Union.[41]
In May 1941 Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White met for lunch with Vitali Pavlov, KGB assistant to the Chief of Military Section for work in the United States and Canada. White had been carefully selected by Iskhak Akhmerov, who ran the Silvermaster group and knew White. The purpose was to present a series of policy initiatives for White to inject into Washington's foreign policy discussion which involved Soviet efforts to provoke tensions in U.S. Japanese relations. The strategy was to encourage Japan's war party to view the United States as Japan's main enemy, rather than Soviet Union after several recent clashes on the Manchukuo border and Comintern support to the Maoist CCP. Pavlov handed White an outline of themes to promote among key U.S. policymakers including a demand, to be wrapped in tough rhetoric, that Japan recall its armed forces from China.[42][43] The Soviet Union had occupied Xinjiang (Sinkiang) since 1934.[44]
President Roosevelt accepted White's proposals for economic sanctions against Japan and on July 26, 1941 implemented a full scale economic blockade, froze all Japanese financial assets in the U.S. which virtually ended all trade between the two countries. The chief of the Japanese Navy told the emperor that if Japan resorted to war, it would be doubtful Japan could win. The Japanese Cabinet sought desperately to reach an agreement in Washington.[45] Japan abandoned all military plans against Soviet Siberia, which had badly needed Red Army troops at that moment for the defense of Moscow pinned down, and looked to the south instead for the oil resources. Due to White's involvement and influence, the administration set up a foreign policy that placed Soviet interests ahead of the United States.[46] In August, 1941, Japanese Prime Minister Konoe made a proposal to meet with President Roosevelt. On November 18, 1941, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau sent to Secretary of State Hull a memorandum drafted by White on the terms for peace that should be presented to Japan.[47] At noon on November 25, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox met at the White House with General George C. Marshall. Stimson wrote in his diary the main question was "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition." [48] In his testimony before the Congressional Committee investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor, General Marshall said that if the 90-day truce which was the substance of the Kanoe-Roosevelt proposal had been effected, the United States might never have become involved in the World War II at all; that a delay by the Japanese from December, 1941 into January, 1942 might have resulted in a change of Japanese opinion as to the wisdom of the attack because of the collapse of the German front before Moscow in December, 1941.[49] On the afternoon of November 26, 1941, Hull put in final shape the ultimatum. In this ten-point ultimatum, eight of the drastic demands were written by Harry Dexter White, an agent of the Soviet Union. The harsh, demanding language only strengthened the position of the war party in Tokyo and Nomura found it impossible to reach an agreement because White's demands were extreme.[50] War between the United States and Japan - the lone obstacle to Comintern designs in the Far East - was the primary aim of Soviet foreign policy in the Far East.
On November 8, 1945 the FBI notified the White House with a provisional summary of defector Elizabeth Bentley's revelations.[51] President Truman, whose motto was "The Buck Stops Here," telephoned FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on November 14 and told Hoover to confer with Secretary of State James Byrnes on the various matters of Soviet espionage.[52] On May 4, 1946 Truman announced the appointment of White to head the newly created International Monetary Fund. White, like Greg Silvermaster and others, rather than be fired as a Security risk at a time when there was public support for the execution of spies, received a transfer, promotion and increase in pay grade.
An 86 year old Pavel Sudoplatov wrote in his memoirs,
“ | My Administration for Special Tasks was responsible for sabotage, kidnapping, and assassination of our enemies beyond the country's borders. It was a special department working in the Soviet security service....I was also in charge [53] of the Soviet espionage effort to obtain the secrets of the atomic bomb from America and Great Britain. I set up a network of illegals [54] who convinced Robert Oppenheimer,[55] Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Bruno Pontecorvo, Alan Nunn May, Klaus Fuchs, and other scientists in America and Great Britain to share atomic secrets with us.[56] | ” |
“ | The most vital information for developing the first Soviet atomic bomb came from scientists designing the American atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico...Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard, and Szilard's secretary were often quoted in the NKVD files from 1942 to 1945 as sources for information on the development of the first American atomic bomb. It is in the record that on several occasions they agreed to share information on nuclear weapons with Soviet scientists. At first they were motivated by fear of Hitler; they believed that the Germans might produce the first atomic bomb. Then the Danish physicist Niels Bohr helped strengthen their own inclinations to share nuclear secrets with the world academic community. By sharing their knowledge with the Soviet Union, the chance of beating the Germans to the bomb would be increased.[57] | ” |
“ | Gregory Kheifetz, our operative who had been successful in atomic espionage...described Oppenheimer as a man who thought of problems on a global scale. Oppenheimer saw the threat and promise of the atomic age and understood the ramifications for both military and peaceful applications. We always stressed that contacts with him should be carefully planned to maintain security, and should not be used for acquiring routine information.[58] We knew that Oppenheimer would remain an influential person in America after the war [59] and therefore our relations with him should not take the form of running a controlled agent. We understood that he and other members of the scientific community were best approached as friends, not as agents. Since Oppenheimer, Bohr, and Fermi were fierce opponents of violence, they would seek to prevent a nuclear war, creating a balance of power through sharing the secrets of atomic energy. This would be a crucial factor in establishing the new world order after the war, and we took advantage of this.[60] | ” |
“ | In developing Oppenheimer as a source, Vassili Zarubin's wife, Elizabeth, was essential. ...In 1941 Elizabeth Zarubina was a captain in the KGB. After her husband's posting to Washington, she traveled to California frequently to cultivate the Oppenheimer family through social contacts arranged by Kheifets. Kheifets then introduced Elizabeth to Oppenheimer's wife, Katherine, who was sympathetic to the Soviet Union and Communist ideals, and the two worked out a system for future meetings." [61] | ” |
“ | By 1943 it was agreed at the Center that all contacts with Oppenheimer would be through illegals only. Lev Vasilevsky, our rezident in Mexico City, was put in charge of running the illegal network after Zarubin left. But Vasilevsky was directed to control the network from Mexico City, not to move to Washington, where the FBI could more easily monitor our activities. Our facilities in Washington were to be used as little as possible. ...Vasilevsky told me that on one occasion in 1944 he visited Washington in order to pass to the Center materials received from Fermi. To his dismay, the embassy radio operator, who was supposed to encode his message, was missing. The next day the clerk was brought to the embassy by the American police, who had picked him up dead drunk in a nearby bar. Vasilevsky decided on the spot not to use the Washington embassy to transmit any of his sensitive messages; he would rely on Mexico City. ...In 1945, for his work in handling the Fermi line in the United States, Vasilevsky was appointed deputy director of Department S. For a short period in 1947 he was the director of the department of scientific and technological intelligence in the Committee of Information, which was the central intelligence-gathering agency from 1947 to 1951.[62] | ” |
“ | A description of the design of the first atomic bomb was reported to us in January 1945. In February, although there was still uncertainty in the report, our rezidentura in America stated that it would take a minimum of one year and a maximum of five years to make a sizable bomb.[63]....We decided that Terletsky should be sent to see Bohr .... He was to explain the problems in activating the nuclear reactor to Bohr and to seek his advice. Terletsky could not be sent alone on such a critical assignment, so he was accompanied by Lev Vasilevsky, who had run the Fermi line from Mexico and now was my deputy director of Department S. He would lead the conversation with Bohr while Terletsky would handle the technical details..... Bohr understood, perhaps for the first time, that the decision that he, Fermi, Oppenheimer, and Szilard had made to allow their trusted scientific proteges to share atomic secrets had led him to meet agents of the Soviet government.... Bohr readily explained to Terletsky the problems Fermi had at the University of Chicago putting the first nuclear reactor into operation, and he made valuable suggestions that enabled us to overcome our failures. Bohr pointed to a place on a drawing Terletsky showed him and said, "That's the trouble spot." This meeting was essential to starting the Soviet reactor, and we accomplished that feat in December 1946.[64] | ” |
On January 1, 1942, the Soviet and Chinese Nationalist ambassadors in Washington joined with President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in signing the Declaration by United Nations. Twenty-two other nations added their signatures creating the wartime alliance. The Atlantic Charter was hailed as "a common program of purposes." FDR apparently himself thought up the name "United Nations."
The order in which the declaration was signed, first by the four major powers and then the other nations, reflected FDR's belief in the moral concept of "trusteeship of the powerful" for the well-being of the less powerful. The central proposal was the prompt creation of the United Nations Authority composed of all the signers in FDR's "Great Design",[65] led by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Nationalist China. The President privately referred to these four major powers as the Four Policemen.[66] In October 1943 at the Moscow Conference the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the Kuomintang committed themselves to "the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organisation...after the termination of hostilities they will not employ their military forces within the territories of other states except for the purposes envisaged in this declaration and after joint consultation... they will confer and co-operate with one another and with other members of the United Nations to bring about a practicable general agreement with respect to the regulation of armaments in the post-war period. " [67]
Edgar Snow introduced Mao and Zhou Enlai to American readers in 1937 in his book, Red Star Over China, shortly after the Chinese Red Army’s route by Chiang Kai-shek in 1934 and their year long retreat to Yenan known as the Long March. Snow wrote, "the political ideology, tactical line and theoretical leadership of the Chinese Communists have been under the close guidance, if not positive detailed direction, of the Communist International, which during the last decade has become virtually a bureau of the Russian Communist Party." And he further declared that the CCP had to subordinate itself to the "strategic requirements of Soviet Russia, under the leadership of Stalin."[68]
KGB Agent and presidential adviser Lauchlin Currie secured for Comintern operative Owen Lattimore the appointment by Roosevelt as the American adviser for the Kuomintang and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.[69] During the Communazi period, the FBI issued a notice that Lattimore should be considered for custodial detention in the event of a national emergency.[70]
On November 25, 1941 Lattimore sent a dispatch from China to Currie in the White House arguing against a proposed diplomatic understanding between the United States and Japan. Currie's assistant in the White House, Michael Greenberg, was another Soviet operative and part of the Silvermaster group.[71] Secretary of State Cordell Hull testified later he took a tough line with the Japanese because of the cable from Lattimore to Currie reporting on Chinese morale in the Kuomintang. The cable from Lattimore to Currie was the only documentary evidence Hull presented which influenced his decision to reverse himself and send the harsh ultimatum written by KGB Agent Harry Dexter White to Japan after Congress investigated the Pearl Harbor attack.[72] Prof. Anthony Kubek has written that Lattimore, by this one act, designed to accomplish the Soviet objective of promoting war between the United States and Japan—did more to promote the Sovietization of China than in any other act of Lattimore's career. All Comintern designs for conquest of China hinged upon destroying Japan and the balance of power in the Pacific.[73]
Defector Louis Budenz testified that Lattimore had been hand picked by the Comintern "to change the thinking here in Washington and in America on the Communist activities in China and relations to the Soviet Union." Lattimore was thought to be a man "who could put out propaganda and conceal the Communist activity, but still have it carry out the policy of the Communists." According to Budenz "the weight of his discussions was always along the lines of the Soviet policy," but the language employed 'Was non-Soviet in character.' " [74] When, on June 15, 1943, Lattimore instructed Joseph Barnes[75] to replace the non-Communist Chinese of the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) with Communists, OWI did so. On July 14 Thomas A. Bisson, in the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) publication, Far Eastern Survey, referred to Maoist forces as the "democratic China." The disinformation was widely repeated among journalists and academics. Lattimore, Frederick Field and others, were later to write in the New York Times of China's "agrarian reformers." But in July and August 1943, the Maoists—in the midst of the war—joined with the Japanese armies to inflict a serious defeat on Kuomintang troops allied with the United States.[76]
In the second half of 1944, the IPR published a fifty-six-page pamphlet, Our Job in Asia, which was allegedly written by Vice President Henry Wallace after his official 3-month trip to Siberia, China, and Mongolia.[77] "The Russians," the author of the pamphlet claimed, "have demonstrated their friendly attitude toward China by their willingness to refrain from intervening in China's internal affairs." [78][79] The Senate Committee on the Judiciary was to find that in 1944 the IPR, "disseminated and sought to popularize false information including information originating from Soviet and Communist sources." [80] Some years later Wallace admitted in testimony that most of a book entitled Soviet Asia Mission supposedly written by him detailing his official Far Eastern trip actually had been written by Andrew J. Steiger, a person identified under oath as a Communist party member. The Communist party advocated the violent overthrow of the United States Government and was an agency of a foreign government.[81] To Joseph Fels Barnes, Owen Lattimore, and Harriet Lucy Moore, all identified under oath as Communist party members, the Vice President expressed his gratitude for their "invaluable assistance in preparing the manuscript." [82]
Chiang Kai-shek himself claimed that Harry Dexter White and his staff sabotaged his government's economic policies. The U.S. government made a commitment to Chiang in writing to supply $200 million in gold to Nationalist China [83] in 1943 to stabilize the Chinese currency at a time when inflation was spiraling out of control.[84] White's policy prevented the shipment until it was too late to be effective in stemming inflation. In a December 9, 1944 memo to Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, White wrote,
“ | We have stalled as much as we have dared and have succeeded in limiting gold shipments to $26 million during the past year. We think it would be a serious mistake to permit further large shipments at this time.[85] | ” |
In July 1945 U.S. War Department memorandum entitled, The Chinese Communist Movement, gave a depiction of the true nature of the CCP, reporting the Maoists allowed no opposition groups in the areas they controlled and were part of the international Comintern movement of violent revolution.[86] Chiang believed that the Truman Doctrine of containing of Moscow directed subversion would extend to China, and ordered an offensive when he heard of the new policy.[87] Truman however, made no effort to save China from enslavement. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall himself testified that such aid might have worked, but General David Barr's military mission was specifically instructed not to supply this kind of assistance.[88] General Albert C. Wedemeyer recommended this approach in his report on his 1947 fact-finding mission, but Marshall personally suppressed the report.[89] In the summer of 1946, Truman told Chiang to be more willing to compromise. Chiang replied that first the Communists must abandon "their policy to seize political power through the use of armed force, to overthrow the government and to install a totalitarian regime such as those with which Eastern Europe is now being engulfed." [90]
Secretary of State Dean Acheson, no friend of Joseph McCarthy, admitted on January 12, 1950, in a National Press Club address,
“ | What is happening in China is that the Soviet Union is detaching the northern provinces of China from China and is attaching them to the Soviet Union. This process is complete in Outer Mongolia. It is nearly complete in Manchuria and I am sure that in Inner Mongolia and Sinkiang there are very happy reports coming from Soviet agents to Moscow."[91] | ” |
Senator McCarthy repeatedly criticized IPR and its former chairman Philip Jessup, observing that Frederick Field, T.A. Bisson, and Lattimore were very active in IPR and worked to turn American China policy in favor of the CCP. John Carter Vincent, John Stewart Service, Alger Hiss, and John Paton Davies all had links to IPR. Jessup in 1949 was the principal editor of the State Department "white paper" on China that abandoned Chiang Kai-chek and the Kuomintang.
The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) looked extensively into the problem of unauthorized, uncontrolled and often dangerous power exercised by non-elected officials, specifically Harry Dexter White. Part of its report looked into the implementation of Roosevelt administration policy in China and was published as the Morgenthau Diary.[92]
The report stated in 1967,
“ | The concentration of Communist sympathizers in the Treasury Department, and particularly the Division of Monetary Research, is now a matter of record. White was the first director of that division; those who succeeded him in the directorship were Frank Coe and Harold Glasser. Also attached to the Division of Monetary Research were William Ludwig Ullman, Irving Kaplan, and Victor Perlo. White, Coe, Glasser, Kaplan, and Perlo were all identified as participants in the Communist conspiracy…." [94] | ” |
During the hearings, 46 persons connected with the IPR were identified as Communist Party members.[95][96] In the final report the SISS noted:
On Sunday morning, June 25, 1950, Communist armies of North Korea crossed the border in an invasion of the southern republic. Two days later President Truman announced: "I have ordered the United States air and sea forces to give the Korean government troops, cover and support." The next day American ground and air forces were fully engaged in South Korea in what the President called "a police action." John T. Flynn described the perplexity of the American electorate: "Thus [the U.S] became enmeshed in an obscure tangle of circumstances... involving objectives so dimly seen, stretching on to problems so insoluble, and promising stresses on our economic and political system ... in pursuit of ends no one understands and involving costs and consequences we cannot measure."[98] The Korean War disrupted the postwar economic boom with military service, shortages, restrictions and cost-of-living inflation which could not help but breed discontent. And through it all, Prof. Carroll Quigley points out, "the press kept up a constant barrage of 'Communists in Washington,' 'twenty years of treason.'"[99]
Chiang Kai-shek was caught between two wars—a war on China by Japan and a war on China by the Soviet Union. American leaders refused to see this and insisted on acting in the illusion that China was fighting the Japanese only and that Soviet Union was an ally. Then came the startling realization that the United States, too, like China, was engaged in two wars in Asia, one against a common enemy, Japan; the other against a common enemy, the Soviet Union. The United States, with its ally China, fought the Japanese. But all the time the Soviet Union, with its satellite Comintern army in China, was fighting both China and the United States. The iron curtain that, with the Yalta agreement, was rung down over American allies in Europe—Poland and Czechoslovakia and other little countries—fell on China also. And this was made possible wholly because of the Soviet Union's allies—conscious and unconscious—in America, in the U.S. government and even in the U.S. State Department.
Defector Louis Budenz stated publicly he could identify 400 members of the Communist conspiracy which had delivered the know-how to build the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. This number of 400 was closely corroborated by the 349 codenames the cryptographers in the Venona project discovered and FBI field investigators sought to identify. Defector Elizabeth Bentley also identified 81 persons involved in espionage, and Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko yielded valuable information when he defected in Canada.
In sum, some 205 total true identities of persons involved in espionage during World War II were known to the FBI by 1950, some being corroborated by multiple sources. Given the secret nature of Venona, and the unwillingness to let the Soviet Union know the US was reading its codes, the known spies were eased out of government positions, and where prosecution could occur using sources other than Venona, a few cases were attempted. But the priority was always to maintain the secrecy regarding the breaking of Soviet codes, remove security risks, and forego law enforcement while cryptographers and field investigators continued working to identify others.
So secret was Venona, that not even President Truman was informed. The revelation Truman had never been informed was the subject of much controversy and discussion when the Venona documents were declassified in 1995. Given the extent of the Soviet penetration of the U.S. Government, including virtually all the U.S. security and intelligence services, the State and Treasury Departments, and even the White House, the decision not to inform Truman appears to have been the logical and appropriate decision.[100] General Omar Bradley took it upon himself not to inform Truman, and told the few others with the knowledge of the Soviet attack on American security that he would inform the President if the need were to arise.[101]
After the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear test, and it became apparent to the public that the Soviet Union obtained the knowhow from American citizens employed by the federal government during the New Deal, with the growing tensions of the times over the Berlin Airlift, the loss of the U.S.'s wartime ally in China to the Chinese Comintern forces, and later the Korean War, those with knowledge of Venona had as an immediate priority to remove Soviet operatives from sensitive positions. President Truman instituted a system of Loyalty checks through review boards, but Truman himself was unaware of the extent of the real danger. Hoover approached McCarthy with a plan to (a) ease more security risks out of government positions, (b) put pressure on friends and relatives to reveal what they knew about Soviet operatives based upon familial relations or association in various communist front organizations, and (c) gain more knowledge of spy's contacts and operations. It took a willingness on McCarthy's part to stretch the limits of Senate Rules, and there is no indication Hoover disclosed completely to McCarthy the FBI's full knowledge of Soviet espionage activity in the United States for the prior two and half decades. The immediate crisis was so large and potentially catastrophic that McCarthy was willing to act with Hoover and the FBI to help remove the remaining security risks.
Most but not all of Senator McCarthy’s numbered cases were drawn from the “Lee List” or “108 list” of unresolved Department of State security cases compiled by the investigators for the House Appropriates Committee in 1947. Robert E. Lee was the committee's lead investigator and supervised preparation of the list. The Tydings subcommittee also obtained this list. The Lee list, using numbers rather than names, was published in the proceeding of the subcommittee.[102]
Senator McCarthy furnished the Tydings Committee the real names attached to his numbered cases, and the Tydings Committee received the real names attached to the Lee list as well.[103] Over the years that followed all of the names became public one way or another. Additionally, in a series of speeches McCarthy named others as secret Communists, spies, security risks, or participants in the Communist conspiracy.
In 1950 A. S. Brent of the FBI did a thorough review of the 54 files covering the Gregory case in response to a request for information concerning individuals who now were liable to register under Section 20 of the Internal Security Act of 1950. Brent found the facts still insufficient for prosecution under the espionage or related statutes. Brent made specific recommendations handling the cases of Joseph Katz, Mary Price, George Perazich, and Abraham Brothman. Brent noted "It is realized that we are dealing with callous individuals. However, it is felt that we should concentrate our investigative efforts at this time on trying to find a weak spot in the armors of these people"[104] and select several cases with suggestions how to do proceed. Anatole Volkov, the son of Helen Silvermaster and stepson of Greg Silvermaster he says, "if we concentrate on Volkov... All of this, it is felt, will affect the Silvermasters and may possibly persuade them to cooperate." In Lud Ullman's case Brent notes, "it is a common practice ...to contact parents and other relatives...Undoubtedly, an interview with them would disturb Ullman if it came to his attention." Of Duncan Chapin Lee he observes "there may be a way of persuading Lee to talk by interviewing his parents and relatives....If these interviews draw complaints from him then it is felt that we would be in a position to interview him thoroughly concerning the noted discrepancies." Regarding George Silverman Brent proposes, "Silverman would be very sensitive to an approach to his son...it... would disturb his father and might be the thing which will cause Silverman to cooperate with us." On Robert Talbot Miller, III "we should give consideration to closing in on Miller by talking to his father," and of Victor Perlo "we should give consideration to interviewing his parents." Brent cites the 1947 Tamm memo "That one of the subjects ...possibly the weakest member, be contacted...Failling in this respect, the other subjects should be exhaustively interviewed....it would seem logical to conduct such interviews as nearly simultaneously as possible. ...That failing to break any of the subjects, serious consideration be given to exposing this lousy outfit and at least hounding them from the federal service."
McCarthy 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 cruel, reckless, and indecent to do so. McCarthy named Welch's associate Fred Fisher as a member of the National Lawyers Guild, who Welch himself had previously outed to the ‘’New York Times’’ six weeks earlier.[8] Welch dishonestly pretended to be shocked, and famously said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"
Social commentator Ann Coulter observes,
“ | it is difficult to grasp the importance of McCarthy's crusade. But there's a reason 'Communist' now sounds about as threatening as 'monarchist' …. McCarthy made it a disgrace to be a Communist. Domestic Communism could never recover.
Liberals invented the myth of McCarthyism to delegitimize impertinent questions about their own patriotism...Liberals demand that the nation treat enemies like friends and friends like enemies...Any evidence that anyone seeks to harm America is stridently rejected as "no evidence."[106] |
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Categories: [Cold War] [Espionage] [New Deal] [1950s] [Anti-Communism]