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I just caught the tail end of the C-SPAN presentation by Senators Collins and Levin and the associate Senate historian.

I'm not clear on their motives for the release of this information, other than the historian offered that it has been 50 years since the hearings were conducted.

Your comments about Senator McCarthy's behaviors are well-taken. But, regrettably, if not for him , no one else would have done a thing about what was an infiltration by communist influences into the government. To belittle that fact, in the end, gives those who support Big Red, the last laugh this time but not the final victory.

Also, by that time, Richard Nixon had moved on to the Vice Presidency after the successful prosecution of Alger Hiss.

I was also struck by the sh*t-eating grins on Senators Collins and Levin. To me , it looks like they did the grandstanding that senators are so prone to do in this new age of media.

The end game, again imho.. To legitimize and patronize and promote communism and the cause and show how "innocent" people were castigated in a supposed free nation respective of the rights of all to believe as they will. Sad, but not surprising, so thorough has the infiltration been into all of our institutions and the media. Coincidental, timing-wise, I think not, in light of C-SPAN and other media outlets fascination with groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. and the UN.

Been reading them since you posted this and I don't know what is more depressing: The massive infiltration and incredible arrogance of those who took the fifth, or the distortions I've seen in the media and from Levin and Collins today. One cannot comment on McCarthy without slogging through at least two volumes of the five released. We are lucky to have survived as a country and won the Cold War considering what was done and how easily most got away with doing it. There is a lot of good testimony from American Korean War POWs and from a Russian, Igor Bogolepov (volume #3), who was in the Red Army, hid out in Germany for two years after the war and then worked for Army Intelligence. When he testified before the Senate on communists in America, he was fired within a few days. His testimony has been sealed for 50 years because he begged McCarthy not to jeopardize the new job he had in government (CIA I assume). From volume two(Document from a Pittsburgh Communist Party USA meeting in 1952):

I. The present ``peace offensive'' is designed to be the last stage in the program of administering a ``sedative'' to the American people before the hammer of war falls on Continental United States. All functionaries have been alerted to concentrate on this present phase of the ``peace offensives'' for the purpose of building resistance to war and clamour for tax reduction so as to effect the defensive power of the Nation.

II. In line with the ``peace offensive,'' all trade union functionaries have been ordered to lay low, to make it appear that the class struggle has been sidetracked by the present Russian regime.

III. Actual ``operation propaganda'' is concentrating upon school, churches and children with principal reliance on front agencies, notably Civil Rights Congress.

IV. Senator McCarthy is among those listed for liquidation or murder--an American agent assigned to the job (L.B.).

V. The pending communist cases against known communist functionaries have been ordered dragged out for the purpose of diverting the attention of the American people to the `down in the mouth defendants' to make it appear that the communists apparatus U.S.A. is bankrupt, defunct and on its way to the prison, when actually, there has never been more money or more activity in the communist apparatus in the past eleven years.