Free Republic

Disbelief is the instinctive reaction to the double life of Anthony Blunt. One of the sons of the quite conventional chaplain of the embassy church in Paris. Attentive to his mother. Marlborough and Cambridge. Frequent long spells in France and Germany, fluent in the languages. Art historian and homosexual. Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, a natural for the Queen Mother’s circle. This is close to a novelist’s parody of a certain sort of highbrow career. And then betrayer of all that reassuring English stuff in favor of Stalin, foulest of murderers. The man, the Establishment he adorned, the country in...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Pushing an anti-communist crusade that riveted America a half century ago, Joseph McCarthy manipulated his Senate hearings by calling witnesses he could intimidate and ignoring those likely to oppose him, newly released transcripts show.</p> <p>Among the roughly 400 witnesses covered in transcripts of closed door meetings, made public Monday by the Senate, are composer Aaron Copland, New York Times journalist James Reston and Eslanda Goode Robeson, the wife of blacklisted singer-actor Paul Robeson. Some 4,000 pages of newly released documents also show that McCarthy was convinced that many writers, government officials and secretaries had access to classified information.</p>