"Joe [McCarthy] was at least 90% right"
thomasfroeser@sbcglobal.net writes:
TomRoeser.com ::
Give Joe McCarthy Some Credit-but Easy on the Total Rehab Stuff.
Posted: 14 Dec 2007 05:46 AM CST
Joe McCarthy.
Just because a revisionist conservative mood is in vogue to rehabilitate those discarded into the dustbin of history whose value sorely need to be burnished and more greatly appreciated... Robert A. Taft being one, my old boss Walter H. Judd another, my friend the late Jim Farmer of CORE, the only Republican in the civil rights quartet otherwise composed of Martin L. King, Whitney Young and Roy Wilkins... meticulous care should be applied to another-Joe McCarthy. A comic book-like partial rehab job has been tried by Ann Coulter but it is wafer-thin. Now, a correspondent urges I review the latest book about him, "Blacklisted by History" by M. Stanton Evans [Crown Forum, 672 pp., $29.95] which undertakes a full-scale re-presentment.
I did not know McCarthy, having come to Washington shortly after he did-but I did know a great many people who had reason to appraise his work including the legendary Tom "Tommy the Cork" Corcoran who moved from being FDR's top political operative to stalwart anti-Communist and friend of Chiang kai-Shek. Tom Corcoran's belief was that Joe was at least 90% right. Judd's view was that any good Joe did was vastly overshadowed by the general disrepute he brought to the issue of pro-Communism in government. But all the same he-and I-steer clear from the popular media rap on McCarthy--that he was an incorrigible liar and that anyone fortunate enough to have been assailed as a Communist by him has an a-priori case for secular sainthood. That is not remotely the case. Much of the truth is in the middle and Joe McCarthy did not deserve his name made into a curse which is the contribution Owen Lattimore made to obscuring the truth.
Just one incident. As we all know, Joe had nothing whatsoever to do with Alger Hiss although Hiss' conviction for perjury seemed to confirm in some minds that there was definitely smoke in the kindling. Second, Joe didn't go around making charges that lots of people were Communist but used other descriptives. Third, his biggest case involved the long forgotten name of Lattimore whom Joe called "an articulate instrument of the Communist conspiracy in America." There he was indubitably right. Lattimore was cleared by the political whitewash without doubt by the Republican ex-governor of Minnesota Hubert Humphrey convinced President Truman to appoint to the federal bench, Luther Youngdahl. Joe was correct about Lattimore. Lattimore was a shill, a fellow traveler of and an apologist for the USSR and Mao. But later, by insisting that Lattimore had been Hiss' boss Joe was in error.
Evans' book errs when it seeks to completely exonerate McCarthy from charges of political overkill and when it fails to give due academic credit to others including Ron Radosh, adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute whose scholarship Evans appropriates without citation. Also,. Gen. George Marshall was totally wrong on his evaluation of Mao but that doesn't make him a com-symp. Edward R. Murrow was totally wrong in his documentary when he accused McCarthy of zeroing in on the wrong Annie Lee Moss who worked near the Pentagon's code room and whom Joe said flatly was a Communist. Murrow showed there were two Annie Lee Mosses and claimed Joe had the wrong Annie Lee Moss: Murrow was the one who was wrong-the Annie Lee Moss Joe cited was, in fact, a Communist and was the right one to designate and should never, ever had clearance to work near the code room.
In his zeal to clear everything about McCarthy, Evans errs in trying to whitewash Cohn and Schine. Their excursion through Europe had them spending the moon on the taxpayers' dime and their trip was a rather futile one, seeking to find pro-Commie books in embassy libraries. But Evans is right-on when he moves to the Joseph Welch-McCarthy confrontation (although without showing indebtedness to others). Welch was a blowsy, phony Boston lawyer who could wipe away a tear faster than he could excessively bill a client. This tripe about Joe naming a young lawyer on Welch's staff as a member of the pro-Red National Lawyers' Guild and thus ruining the kid is the stuff of fiction and was done by Welch entirely for the TV cameras since Welch himself had told the same thing to the "New York Times" earlier. Probably the most unsatisfactory elements of the book are two: failure of Evans to acknowledge other sources whose material he takes credit for... and his attempt to whitewash Joe when a brief scrubbing of inaccuracies would have served the cause of truth better.
posted by Fred Martinez @ 10:21 PM
1 Comments:
Mr Martinez:
In reference to the late Senator Joe McCarthy, you write that “a correspondent urges I review the latest book about him, ‘Blacklisted by History’ by M. Stanton Evans….” But you don’t say whether you actually read the book.
You write that “Tom ‘Tommy the Cork’ Corcoran … moved from being FDR's top political operative to stalwart anti-Communist and friend of Chiang kai-Shek. Tom Corcoran's belief was that Joe was at least 90% right.”
If you read the book, you know that Evans’ estimate of McCarthy’s accuracy matches the one you ascribe here to Corcoran. But in mentioning Corcoran, it seems odd that you do not refer to the book’s extensive discussion of the FBI wiretap logs that record Corcoran’s 1945 conspiracy -- with FDR White House aide and Soviet agent Lauchlin Currie -- to fix the grand jury in the Amerasia case, in order to get anti-Chiang Kai-shek State Department official John Stewart Service off the hook for passing government documents on China to the pro-Red Philip Jaffe.
You credit McCarthy with labeling Owen Lattimore “an articulate instrument of the Communist conspiracy in America.” If you read the book, you know that in this, McCarthy was merely quoting the report of William Jenner’s Senate Internal Security subcommittee (not McCarthy’s own Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations).
You write that “by insisting that Lattimore had been Hiss' boss Joe was in error.” If you read the book, you know that Evans agrees with you on that point.
You write that “Gen. George Marshall was totally wrong on his evaluation of Mao but that doesn't make him a com-symp.” As you know if you read the book, Evans agrees with you on this point as well.
You write that “Murrow showed there were two Annie Lee Mosses.” If you read the book, you know this is false: There was only one Annie Lee Moss in Washington, DC: the Pentagon code clerk who was identified by the Communist Party’s own records as a member of the Communist Party.
You write that Evans tries to “to whitewash Cohn and Schine.” This is false. Evans shows that Cohn’s intervention regarding Schine was a major misstep. You write of these two that “their trip was a rather futile one, seeking to find pro-Commie books in embassy libraries” This is a reversal of the record, noted in the book. The committee found the USIA libraries in liberated Europe -- established by Congress as a psy-ops program to counter Soviet disinformation – had been stuffed by officials like Theodore Kaghan with some 30,000 pro-Soviet, anti-American works, by such titans of American letters as Earl Browder and William Z. Foster.
You write that “Evans' book errs when it seeks to completely exonerate McCarthy from charges of political overkill,” that Evans displays “zeal to clear everything about McCarthy,” and that he attempts “to whitewash Joe,” but you do not quote where Evans does this. In fact, he does not. Evans does not flinch from describing McCarthy’s many flaws and errors.
You write that Evans writes “without showing indebtedness to others,” fails “to acknowledge other sources whose material he takes credit for,” and “fails to give due academic credit to others including Ron Radosh, adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute whose scholarship Evans appropriates without citation.” This is utterly false. In a tendentious review in National Review, Radosh falsely accuses Evans of plagiarizing a 1996 book on Amerasia by Harvey Klehr and Radosh. If you read Evans’ book, you know that this charge is false, because Evans’ work is cited directly from the FBI’s Amerasia file, which he obtained in 1986. Indeed, in that 1996 book, Klehr and Radosh criticize Evans for citing this very file as “vindication” of McCarthy, in an article in Human Events – in 1986! It is hard to imagine how Evans plagiarized their book a decade before it was written.
This last charge is far too serious to be made in such an off-hand way, without evidence. I hope you post a correction.
Best wishes,
Mark LaRochelle
Manager of Information Services
Education and Research Institute
http://Ultra-Secret.info
P.S. Sorry for the anonymous post. Blogger rejects my comments unless I click "anonymous." Probably because I have cookies or Java turned off, or something.
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