A Conspiracy So Vast

John G. Adams, a key figure in the proceedings that effectively ended Sen. Joseph McCarthy's career, passed quietly from the scene last week at age 91. Not surprisingly, his death made no news; it's been a while since those heady days when McCarthy launched his investigations of the Army, which had, he charged, been shielding countless Communist agents at Fort Monmouth and elsewhere. It fell to Adams, the Army's chief counsel, to deal with the charges, which he did to devastating effect in the Army-McCarthy hearings that held the nation in thrall in the 1950s.

*** You can read all about McCarthy's downfall, and the alleged dupes and traitors responsible for it, in "Treason," a new book by Ann Coulter, the Maureen Dowd of the conservatives. It derides McCarthy's critics and brands the notion of McCarthyism itself as a myth and "the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times." She also thanks her publisher for his bravery -- a suggestion that it took courage to publish this work. Here we are, only up to the acknowledgments page, and already enjoying a laugh. True, at one point a book representing the Democrats as the party of treason, and Sen. McCarthy as one of the greatest heroes of the age, might have given some publishers pause. Not today -- the era that has put its money on outrage merchants and shock jocks.

Imagine the delight Ms. Coulter's publishers (Crown Forum, a division of Random House) felt as they contemplated the possibilities. "Treason" had everything -- attacks and dark revelations about eminences hitherto untouchable, such as CBS's Edward R. Murrow, author of the famous "See It Now" broadcast that struck the first blow against McCarthy, from which the senator would never recover. "On what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?" Murrow asked, in that searing indictment, delivered to a huge national audience, charging McCarthy with the reckless destruction of lives and reputations. It was, Ms. Coulter claims, a vicious and deceptive hatchet piece, "produced by Edward R. Murrow, friend of Soviet spy Laurence Duggan."

Pure gold. Could a publisher ask for more? But more there is: Ms. Coulter has not just set about rehabilitating McCarthy as a martyr destroyed by anti-American leftists -- she has also set about rehabilitating the most notorious of his cases, the kind dramatized in famous film clips of the period. Cases like that of Annie Lee Moss, a black code clerk who had lost her job at the Pentagon when she was hauled before McCarthy's committee as a security risk and Communist Party member. She had been confused with a different Annie Lee Moss, the witness explained -- and who Karl Marx was she could not even say. So evident was Ms. Moss's confusion at what she was doing there that applause erupted in the hearing room when Democratic Sen. Stuart Symington declared he believed her.

But the evidence against Ms. Moss was not insignificant, the author of "Treason" now maintains. The code clerk had said there were two other people called Annie Lee Moss listed in the Washington phone book -- whereas the two others were actually Anna Lee Moss and Annie Moss. Dynamite evidence, as far as Ms. Coulter is concerned -- case closed. After all, an FBI report had identified her as a Communist.

Also up for refurbishing is another famous McCarthy case, that against Army Capt. Irving Peress, a dentist reported to be a member of the Communist Party -- to become famous mainly for McCarthy's insistence on learning who promoted the captain to major. "Who Promoted Peress?" became his battle cry for a year. Even after the Rosenbergs had been caught, Ms. Coulter now charges, the Army had promoted the dentist reported to be a Communist. "When were they going to learn?"

Yes, a book with everything -- and we don't forget the classy prose. "Needless to say, the scrawny pinko was also a failure as a soldier," writes Ms. Coulter, about Peress.

And the book with everything has been getting precisely the kind of media attention the publishers counted on -- anywhere one turned on the TV screens last week there was the author of "Treason" happily confronting wide-eyed interviewers wanting to know how she can say the things she says -- her manner inviting them and the public to see just how bad she can be. Wait, you think that was something, her tone seems to say -- there's worse to come.

There always is, in the book, which ranges from the martyrdom of Sen. McCarthy -- without whose great fortitude and perspicacity in exposing the Communist menace, we might, Ms. Coulter suggests, all now be in the gulag -- to such matters as the Hollywood blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, which in fact had little to do with McCarthy. Here Ms. Coulter pauses to reflect on the whining of those on the blacklist, all of whom she mocks as prosperous exiles racing happily around Europe with rich friends and having a good time. In Ms. Coulter's version of this history, of course, the blacklisted are only the rich and resourceful -- a history that doesn't include the countless people destroyed because their names had popped up on some list of alleged Communists or fellow travelers, or sounded like a name on one of those lists. People like the actor Phillip Loeb, for example, unemployable and ultimately driven to suicide because he could no longer pay the bills for the care of a mentally ill son.

The portrayal of Sen. McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is "sheer liberal hobgoblinism," Ms. Coulter maintains. It is true enough that there was nothing particularly wild-eyed about McCarthy, though that eerie giggle of his which tended to erupt at odd moments did have a certain out-of-this world pitch. Matters like that aside, the senator knew what he was about -- knew how much gold, political and other, a crusading Communist hunter could mine -- particularly one who could wave lists of names, numbers of traitors and plotters against the nation. The times were ripe for his kind.

Whether Sen. McCarthy actually believed some of the more fantastic charges he made -- charges that brought him instant fame -- remains a question. In 1951 he declared that Secretaries of State George Marshall and Dean Acheson had conspired to deliver China to the Soviets; and, not least, that they and other American leaders had taken part in a conspiracy against the United States, "a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man."

In another time -- our own -- he might have found a calling as a political shock jock. It was his fate, instead, for his name to be forever associated with a reign of fear and terror all too real. In her devoted effort to redraw Sen. McCarthy's history, Ms. Coulter makes the point that the members of the elite establishment all despised McCarthy. So did most educators, intellectuals and university faculties. That last is always worth remembering, though not for the reasons Ms. Coulter thinks. It is worth remembering that during that bleak political time the universities, faculties and students understood the threat McCarthyism posed to intellectual freedom -- and, dismal to note today, that the universities which were once hotbeds of opposition to McCarthy are now little worlds of their own, where political censorship, speech codes and other ideologically driven assaults on freedom are the accepted order of things.

*** Ms. Coulter's work includes an admiring if brief biography of McCarthy's political career. One that for some reason excludes the senator's remarkable efforts on behalf of the members of the SS battle group who executed 86 American POWs in the Ardennes campaign in December 1944; otherwise known as the Malmedy Massacre. In his impassioned efforts on behalf of the accused -- one never to be repeated in his investigative career -- the senator charged that the U.S. Army had cruelly mistreated the former SS men.

All things considered, Sen. McCarthy's reputation would be hard to refurbish, but give Ms. Coulter credit for an all-out effort. The senator -- who knew something about the art of outrage merchandising -- would have understood the latest of his public advocates.

All depends on which part of the city. I should have menioned that. But you know. It was a social scene. And it still is now. The upper west side today would elect Lenin if he rose from the dead. David Horowitz quotes his father's diary in Radical Son. He wanted to leave the CPUSA but could not. All his friends were there. It was his life. Eric Alterman was on TV a while back and said he doesn't know anyone who has a gun, who opposes abortion or isn't for gay rights. Dorothy is seeing McCarthy and America through the pinko colored glasses she wore as a kid.

Your perfidious name calling is no refutation

Refutation to what? I dont like people on this forum telling others what to do. If they want something, they can damn well do it for themselves. So what did I say that you want me to refute?

Just the style of "argument" I've come to expect from you on these threads.

Just the kind of behavior I would expect out of McCarthy with someone whose screen name is Marx.

Most people, in N.Y.C., specifically Manhattan, didn't have guns in the 1950s, no matter WHERE they lived. Shop ( Mom & Pop grocercies ) owners and bars probably did; regular people didn't. There are and were " limosine liberals " on the East side and Conservatives on the Upper West side, in the 50s. They same holds true today. Horowitz and his family didn't live on the UWS and his parents' friends ( mostly all school teachers ) were card carrying Commies. They didn't mix with others.

I've read almost EVERY book David's written and was reading his disgusting articles when you were still in short pants. I know what's in ' RADICAL SON " ! LOL

So what did I say that you want me to refute?

I'm not Nopardons but you called me a "commie fellow traveler." That's a lie and you're a liar. Apologize.

You are incapable of refutation; you obviously don't know much about the topic and your opinions, though you're entitled to them, are cockeyed. I object, rabidly, to your vile, slanderous insult to another poster.

Bernard Marx, you illiterate person, is a character in a novel and has nothing to do with Karl, Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo, Chico, or anyother Marx. LOL

Seriously, if you imagine, for one moment, that you are " clever "... DON'T !

Bernard Marx has something to do with Karl only in the sense that he's fighting against a totalitarian dystopia of the kind that real Marxism led to (except the novel was supposed to be a parody of capitalist materialism carried too far with Henry Ford as the Deity). But totalitarianism is totalitarianism, whether from the Left or the Right, and they sort've blend in the middle. Huxley came closer to nailing the proclivities of the Left than the Right.

I chose the screen name thinking most people are better educated than they are and would see the irony. Wrong!! The book "used" to be standard reading in high school and college. But of course I went to school back in the "barbaric" days of McCarthyism.

Yes, I know the book well !

" Christ,Marx,Wood,and Wei

Led us to this perfect day .

Maex, Wood, We, and Christ;

All but Wei were sacrificed.

Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx

Gave us lovely schools and parks.

Wei,Christ,Marx,and Wood

Made us humble, made us good.

Was it used in schools ? I read it, when it came out and had been out of school ( including grad school ) for a number of years. LOL

Some FREEPERs are very well read; others...

Bernard, your commentary continues to expose the poppy-cock pitter-patter of jodenkoekje & Dave S ...rto

btw, their dem-witted caller-counter-parts on C-SPAN Washington Journal have that same poppy-cock pitter-patter destructive dribble

I object, rabidly, to your vile, slanderous insult to another poster.

Perhaps you would have also objected if McCarthy had done the same thing but somehow I doubt it.

you called me a "commie fellow traveler." That's a lie and you're a liar. Apologize.

My arent we thin skinned. In any event, the "commie fellow traveler" comment was supposed to be a humourous attempt to demonstrate quilt by association (e.g., Bernard Marx and Karl Marx). In case there is anyone on Free Republic actually dumb enough to believe that I literally meant that you were a fellow traveler, then I apologize for any defamation you may have suffered.

Now maybe you will demand the same apology of the person that called me all sorts of names for supposedly saying that McCarthy was homosexual when I never made any such statement. Perhaps you will also demand an apology from the poster that insinuated that I was hiding something by not posting the url for the article when in fact I got the article from a subscription only website where the url would have been unusable. Im waiting to see your support.

btw, their dem-witted caller-counter-parts on C-SPAN Washington Journal have that same poppy-cock pitter-patter destructive dribble

Your Coulter parody comes off as even more pompous than Ann. Hey bud Im still waiting for an apology for questioning my integrity for not posting a url to the original article.

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