Smearing Of Joe McCarthy

Media Monitor ^ | May 27, 2003 | Cliff Kincaid

[Tailgunner Joe]

The release of 50-year-old hearings conducted by Senator Joe McCarthy gave the media another opportunity to charge that the Wisconsin Senator made reckless charges about communists that destroyed the lives of innocent people. M. Stanton Evans, a scholar on the subject, contacted reporters for Roll Call newspaper, the Washington Post and Reuters in a fruitless attempt to get the name of one innocent victim of McCarthy. They told him to contact Donald Ritchie, the Senate historian who edited the hearings and appeared on several shows to talk about them. Ritchie told Evans to send him a letter.

One of those appearances came on a Fox News show hosted by John Gibson, who said McCarthy was a drunk who "went around the bend" and who had a list of 1000 alleged communists that was "bogus, completely bogus, right?" Ritchie responded that McCarthy did find communists and security risks "from time to time" but no espionage agents or subversion.

McCarthy had actually cited 59 suspected communists in the State Department, and he produced that list, plus 22 others. McCarthy helped uncover a communist spy ring involving foreign service officer John Stewart Service and Phil Jaffe, the editor of a pro-communist magazine. He targeted Owen Lattimore, a key State Department adviser and communist. McCarthy’s charge against Mary Jane Keeney, a State Department, U.N. employee and Soviet agent, was proven correct. McCarthy was right about Annie Lee Moss, an Army Code Clerk who was a member of the Communist Party.

Ken Ringle, in a Washington Post story about the new release of the hearings, still insisted that Annie Lee Moss was "a frail file clerk in the State Department who had no idea who Karl Marx was…" He and John W. Dean, in a column posted by CNN.com, made the claim that the derogatory term "McCarthyism" was coined by Washington Post cartoonist Herblock. But Herbert Romerstein, an expert on the Communist Party and Soviet espionage, points out that the term was introduced by the Communist Party to discredit the movement to root communists out of government.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times insisted that, "Historians who have reviewed the documents [the hearings] say they do not support McCarthy’s theories that, in the 1950s, Communist spies were operating at the highest levels of government." But the John Stewart Service spy ring also involved Laughlin Currie, an adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, and they succeeded in manipulating U.S. foreign policy to enable the communists to seize China. Other top communists in government included Harry Dexter White at the Department of the Treasury and, of course, Alger Hiss of the State Department, a founder of the U.N.

Joel Brinkley in the New York Times said McCarthy did not hesitate "to destroy reputations and lives." In fact, some in the media wanted to destroy McCarthy. The Washington Post was preparing to publish major allegations of illegal conduct against McCarthy until it realized at the last minute that its major source was a con man. The coverage hasn’t changed that much over the years.

[JCG]

Incidentally, the speech in Reno, Nev., and that in Wheeling, W. Va., were recorded, so there is no questionabout what I said.

I'm sure you'll recall that our little fencing match got started at
the top of this thread by our responses to writings under the byline
of Cliff Kincaid. No doubt you'll also agree that Mr. Kincaid is an
archconservative and very sympathetic to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

However, in September, 2000, Kincaid also wrote the following:

It was reported by the local paper that the Senator had charged that
there were 205 card-carrying Communists employed in the State
Department. In speeches given on the next two days he said the
number was fifty-seven.

That was seen as proof that Joe McCarthy was making wild charges
without any evidence. There was no tape recording to prove whether
McCarthy had said there were 205 card-carrying Communists in the
State Department or not.

http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2000/09/13.html

So, we now have a dilemma. On the one hand we have the words of
Cliff Kincaid who, best I can tell, has no reason to misrepresent
what he knows about the possibility of a recording and on the other,
those of Sen. McCarthy himself which contradict Kincaid. Obviously
one is mistaken or, worse, lying. What do you make of it?

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8Mb File Here (Requires RealPlayer)

Who is Steve Emerson?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

My personal opinion of the 205 vs. 57 issue is that McCarthy meant to say 57, which he clearly did say at Reno, which was recorded, and from which he read the transcription into the record. If he said 205 at Wheeling, that was either a confusion on his part in a speech he gave from memory without a transcript, or it was confusion on the part of the journalists between his mention of Secretary Byrnes telegram, which does mention 205, and his own posession of 57 case files.

I don't doubt that McCarthy may have mistakenly said 205 at Wheeling (and probably also mentioned 57), but he clearly intended to say 57 as to what he possessed. The controversy post dated his actual second and third recitation of the speeches, so it was not as if he was bowing to pressure. Again, I encourage you to read the Congressional Record in full, and judge for yourself. I think it clarifies much, and it shows the method by which McCarthy spoke - extemporaneously from a pile of notes and papers. He may have made an innocent mistake in speaking, but he clearly intended to say 57, 57 was what he recalled, and 57 is what he staked himself to defending.

[JCG]

My personal opinion of the 205 vs. 57 issue is that McCarthy meant to say 57, which he clearly did say at Reno, which was recorded, and from which he read the transcription into the record.

It appears that you have full access to the Congressional Record.
Did McCarthy ever double-back and insert an admission into the
record that, in fact, no recording of the Wheeling speech existed?

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8Mb File Here (Requires RealPlayer)

Who is Steve Emerson?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

It appears that you have full access to the Congressional Record.

I just went to a Federal Depository Library a number of years ago and copied some sections I thought were of interest.

Did McCarthy ever double-back and insert an admission into the record that, in fact, no recording of the Wheeling speech existed?

I wouldn't know. The Record is, as of yet, not searchable. He claimed there was a recording, stated that he was reading from a recording of his speech in Nevada, and claimed the speeches were essentially identical. If you've ever heard a stump speech, you'll know they can vary a little here and a little there, but they are essentially the same speech given many times. I've little doubt the speech in Wheeling was close to identical to the one in Reno he read into the Record. As I said, he may have said 205 in a moment of confusion in Wheeling (though I doubt it - I think it more likely the reporters were confusing his mention of the 205 in the Byrnes Letter he reads, and the 57 he claims he has), but he certainly meant to say 57. He says this over, and over, and over again, and he said 57 before the newspapers even picked up on the 205 controversy.

[JCG]

Did McCarthy ever double-back and insert an admission into the record that, in fact, no recording of the Wheeling speech existed?

I wouldn't know. The Record is, as of yet, not searchable. He claimed there was a recording, stated that he was reading from a recording of his speech in Nevada, and claimed the speeches were essentially identical.

Actually he claimed much more than that as evidenced by your earlier posting [emphasis presumably yours]:

Mr. McCARTHY. Not until I have finished answering the question of the Senator from Illinois. The Senator called my attention to something, and I am glad he did; otherwise I might have overlooked it. Incidentally, the speech in Reno, Nev., and that in Wheeling, W. Va., were recorded, so there is no questionabout what I said.

So what do we have here? On the one hand there is sufficient evidence to believe there was no recording of the Wheeling speech. Cliff Kincaid verifies that to be so and plain logic says that if it had ever existed we would know for certain whether McCarthy said he had a list of 205 names or not.

So what can we say about McCarthy's reply to the "question of the Senator from Illinois?" It was a deceit -- if not an outright lie.

Hence, my earlier mention of McCarthy's "offenses" holds up. Add this incident to his allowing Roy Cohn to harrass the US Army to get favors for his homosexual lover, G. David Schine and McCarthy's brutal smearing of Gen Zwicker and it think it verifies my opinion of the Senator.

He was no deity, as some may wish to believe.

America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
http://video.ire.org/10650.ram (Requires RealPlayer)

Who is Steve Emerson?

[Kenny Bunk]

Joe, this book is going to revive those heady, divisive days of the 50s, when my town was split in half (more like 80-20)between the champions of McCarthy and the pinkos, parlor pinks, and out-and-out commie sonsabitches who took every opportunity to discredit him.

It was my opportunity to escape indoctrination by being summarily removed from public school, because as old Pa said, the "goddam commie sonsabitches" have already "captured" the schools.

Now let's not lose sight of the fact that Old Joe had a few quirks, himself. He was, for example, well in advance of the national movement toward ethanol fuel. The commies played the poor bastard like a violin, too. They gave up many a lowly clerk while many of the bigger commie sonsabitches escaped unscathed ... to father children who now read the news on TV, in many cases, or hold very important government and university posts to this day.

But let's not let the libs forget, as they are the spiritual descendants of these horrible folk-music-braying Clymers of the 50s, that St. John of Kennedy and his whole family, including that fat-what's-his-name in the Senate, were fervent McCarthy supporters.