Posted on 07/13/2003 8:34:11 PM PDT by hsmomx3
Edited on 05/07/2004 5:21:28 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
He used the number 57. Know why, liberal? It was the number--the exact number---reported back by the State Dept. to the Congress of individuals in the State Department identified as possible security risks still employed by the Department in 1947 (three years before McCarthy's speech), pursuant to Truman's establishment of a Federal Employee Loyalty Program (thanks to Republican pressure). What McCarthy stated was that these 57 individuals identified by State were still in the employ of the Department.
Following his speech four different committies conducted five investigations into the Senator's charges,without success. Even the Senator was unable to provide the name of one Communist within the Department of State.
Gee, I thought the Senator's problem was that he "named names" and "ruined lives"---wasn't that the charge you originally made?
The Hiss case and its ramifications were at this point already two years in the past.
This point makes it obvious that you haven't read Ann's book---no wonder you're not prepared to refute it. McCarthy made his speech at Wheeling a few weeks after Hiss' conviction for perjury---something Ann is at pains to emphasize.
The Senator had charged the Sec. of State with implied treason, by the Secretary's failure to identify communists within the Department of State. The totality of the Senator's statements must be questioned since he claimed that he and the Sec.of State knew the idenity of communists within the department when he in fact had no such knowledge, nor could he provide evidence that the Secretary had such knowledge.
Wow, is that why both houses of Congress in 1949 (a year before McCarthy's Wheeling speech) overwhelmingly resolved that the Sec'y of State (that's your "isolationist Republican" George C. Marshall serving under a Republican-baiting Democrat Harry Truman) had lost the confidence of the country, could not regain it, and should be fired by Truman? (Truman of course showily tore up the resolution for reporters when it reached its desk). Maybe it was because Marshall kept using the wrong fork at state dinners?
In large part the entire House Committee on Un-American Activites was a political animal created to to support the Dewey campaign against President Truman. Committee chairman J.Parnell Thomas said that, ".... the chairman of the Republican National Committee "was urging me in the Dewey campaign to set up the spy hearings...in order to put the heat on Truman." [N.Y.Times, Feb. 8, 1954]
HUAC was set up long before the Dewey campaign, Mr. "I've-studied-history." Where in the DNC are you getting these "talking points"?
I assume the communists were successful in placing agents or informants within our federal government just as I know we were successful in placing our agents within communist government arms.
Oh, you don't need to just "assume," liberal. The declassifying of the Venona cables in the mid-'90's thanks to sometime Republican Pat Moynihan proved they did. But it doesn't sound like that was any concern to you---after all, we spied on the Russians too, right?
In my reading of history I haven't been able to find that McCarthy was unable to ameliorate the threat to our nation. Rather his grandstanding created a giant red herring that took resources from the pursuit of actual communist agents and misused those resouces to further his political career.
BS. If that's so, why are so many people bitching about the "blacklist"? People accused by Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers, and Joe McCarthy of being Communists and traitors were frickin' communists and traitors---the Venona cables and KGB files proved it decades later.
Do you actually believe that a loyality oath stopped a foreign agent for one second? Such idiotic panaceas simply allowed foreign agents to become more entrenced within the structures of America while exposing loyal Americans to a withering assault if they stood for their rights.
To quote "Danny" in "Prince of the City," "Oh, God, I'm trying so hard not to hate you!" What the hell is the problem with demanding that people working for the government take a "loyality" oath???? Don't you know that enough communists and subversives did fail to take the oath, and were exposed that way?
And as for "idiotic panaceas" that "allowed foreign agents to become more entrenced," none was more effective than the witch-hunt organized by a treasonous party, the Democrats, along with their media and academic co-dependents, helped out as always by "moderate, bipartisan" Republicans, against a genuine American hero, Senator Joseph McCarthy. No WONDER modern-day traitors counsel us not to "re-fight this battle" of so-called "McCarthyism": once leftists win "battles"---no matter what deceitful, lying, destructive, treacherous, treasonous means they use---their "victory" is permanent, unassailable by facts or the truth. Especially as useful a "victory" as the one over "McCarthyism." Too bad an uppity blond like Ann has come along to "take back the night" and expose the truth finally about the traitors in our midst, eh, liberal?
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