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McCarthy looks for the Commies
Part of Dick's
Guide to
American history
Return to Truman sets up a Loyalty
Review Board in 1951 to fight Communism at home
Forward to Dwight D. Eisenhower
Joseph McCarthy, spurred on by Harry
Truman, was looking for Commies.
To be precise, he was looking for American commies, the very worst Commies.
These terrorist commies smelled bad, wore old clothes, drank a lot and were always
conspiring to overthrow America's two party system, and make Joseph Stalin president.
These rotten, godless commies did not think the USA was perfect! Their
thinking was a lot like that of the mass murderer of the late 1990's, Timothy McViegh. Like the Commies, McVeigh never realized how
important it was for America too support the two party system of adulterous, womanizing
liars -- like Bill Clinton, John Kennedy and Gary
Condit. Joe McCarthy rose up to protect the United States of America from
the politically incorrect thinking commies. In many ways, Joe McCarthy was a
protector of the right thinking in the 1950's just as Janet Reno was a protector of right
thinkers in the 1990's. But, Joe had a weakness. He was a much gentler and
kinder protector than Janet Reno. Joe was never able to bring himself to killing
women and children, as the tough minded Janet Reno was willing to do at Waco, Texas.
Joe would only destroy a person's reputation. Forceful Jan would destroy a
person's life.
McCarthy's rise and fall first started with one more political law that sounded good,
seemed to be needed, but set the stage for a slippery stage that would destroy McCarthy
and many others. "The Alien Registration Act passed
by Congress on 29th June, 1940, when a war was on the horizon, and it wasn't clear
that gool old Joe Stalin would be a friend or join with Hitler. This Act was a
disgusting as John Adams, Alien and Sedition Act. It "made it illegal for anyone
in the United States to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the
government." The law was the antithesis of what America's founding fathers had
wanted and done. Revolution, according to our founding fathers, was justifiable.
But the 1940 government, tightly dominated by the two party system was quite
willing to discard American Values to protect their own political situations. The
law was popular in the 1940's. This law "also required all alien residents
in the United States over 14 years of age to file a comprehensive statement of their
personal and occupational status and a record of their
political beliefs. Within four months a total of 4,741,971
aliens had been registered." The thought police, and later Joe McCarthy
had their weapon!
"The main objective of the Alien Registration Act was to
undermine the American
Communist Party and other "wrong thinking "political groups in the
United States. It was decided that the House of Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), that had been set up by Congress in 1938 to investigate people
suspected of unpatriotic behaviour, would be the best vehicle to discover if people were
trying to overthrow the government.
In 1947 the House of
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, began an
investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people
who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as
"friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named nineteen people who
they accused of holding left-wing views.
One of those named, Bertolt
Brecht, an emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten
others: Herbert Biberman,
Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to
answer any questions.
Known as the Hollywood
Ten, they claimed that the 5th Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them
the right to do this. The House
of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all
were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve
months in prison.
Larry Parks was the only
actor in the original nineteen people named. He was also the only person on the list who
the average moviegoer would have known. Parks agreed to give evidence to the HUAC and
admitted that he had joined the Communist Party in 1941
but left it four years later. When asked for the names of fellow members, Parks replied:
"I would prefer, if you would allow me, not to mention other people's names. Don't
present me with the choice of either being in contempt
of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an
informer."
The House of Un-American Activities
Committee insisted that Parks answered all the
questions asked. The HUAC had a private session and two days later" underhanded,
disgusting politicians -- or their hanger ons -- "leaked to the newspapers
that Parks had named names. Leo Townsend, Isobel Lennart, Roy Huggins, Richard Collins, Lee J. Cobb, Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan, afraid they would
go to prison, were willing to name people who had been members" of wrong
thinking groups. At this time, as opposed to the 1990's in AMerica, it was left-wing
groups whose thoughts needed to be controlled.
In June, 1950, three former FBI
agents and a right-wing television producer, Vincent Harnett, published Red Channels, a pamphlet
listing the names of 151 writers, directors and performers who they claimed had been
members of subversive organisations before the Second World War but had not so
far been blacklisted. The names had been compiled from FBI files and a detailed
analysis of the Daily Worker,
a newspaper published by the American Communist Party.
A free copy of Red Channels
was sent to those involved in employing people in the entertainment industry. All those
people named in the pamphlet were blacklisted until they appeared in front of the House of Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) and convinced its members they had completely renounced their radical
past.
Edward Dmytryk, one of
the original Hollywood
Ten, had financial problems as a result of divorcing his first wife. Faced with having
to sell his plane and encouraged by his new wife, Dmytryk decided to try to get his name
removed from the blacklist. On 25th April, 1951, Dmytryk appeared before the House of Un-American Activities
Committee again. This time he answered all their questions including the naming of
twenty-six former members of left-wing groups.
Dmytryk also revealed how people such as John Howard Lawson, Adrian Scott and Albert Maltz had put him
under pressure to make sure his films expressed the views of the Communist Party. This was
particularly damaging to those members of the original Hollywood Ten were at
that time involved in court cases with their previous employers. If these people refused
to name names, they were added to a blacklist that had been drawn up by the Hollywood film
studios.
Over 320 people were placed on this list that stopped them from working in the
entertainment industry. This included the following: Larry Adler, Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Joseph Bromberg, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Hanns Eisler, Carl Foreman, John Garfield, Howard Da Silva, Dashiell Hammett, E. Y. Harburg, Lillian Hellman, Burl Ives, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Philip Loeb, Joseph Losey, Anne Revere, Pete Seeger, Gale Sondergaard, Louis Untermeyer, Josh White, Clifford Odets, Michael Wilson, Paul Jarrico, Jeff Corey, John Randolph, Canada Lee, Orson Welles, Paul Green, Sidney Kingsley, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright and Abraham Polonsky.
It was now decided to use the Alien
Registration Act against the American Communist Party.
Leaders of the party were arrested and in October, 1949, after a nine month trial, eleven
members were convicted of violating the act. Over the next two years another 46 members
were arrested and charged of advocating the overthrow of the government. Other high
profile spy cases at the time involving Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, helped
to create a deep fear in the United States that a communist conspiracy was taking place.
On 9th February, 1950, Joseph
McCarthy, the senator from Wisconsin, took front stage. He would later become
the whippping boy for those who finally came to realize that stifling thought is not an
American value. Poor Joe, just another rotten politician willing to discard values
for political opportunity, "made a speech claiming to have a list of 250 people
in the State Department known to be members of the American Communist Party.
The list of names was not a secret and had been in fact published by the Secretary of
State in 1946. These people had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000
federal employees. Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and
sexual deviants. If screened, McCarthy's own drink problems and sexual preferences would
have resulted in him being put on the list.
McCarthy also began receiving information from his friend, Edgar J. Hoover, head of
the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). William Sullivan, one of Hoover's agents, later admitted
that: "We were the ones who made the McCarthy hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all
the material he was using."
With the war going badly in Korea and communist advances in Eastern Europe and in China,
the American public were genuinely frightened about the possibilities of internal
subversion. McCarthy, was made chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of
the Senate, and this gave him the opportunity to investigate the possibility of
communist subversion.
For the next two years McCarthy's committee investigated various government departments
and questioned a large number of people about their political past. Some people lost their
jobs after they admitted they had been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy
made it clear to the witnesses that the only way of showing that they had abandoned their
left-wing views was by naming other members of the party."
This witch-hunt and anti-communist hysteria, initiated in 1940 by a Democrat president,
furthered by the Democrat Party and Harry
Truman, now "became known as McCarthyism." This was liely
because McCarthy alienated the party that had legalized witch hunting. At first, Joseph McCarthy mainly
targeted Democrats
associated with the New
Deal policies of the 1930s. Harry S. Truman and members
of his Democratic administration such as George Marshall and Dean Acheson, were accused
of being soft on communism. Truman was portrayed as a dangerous liberal and McCarthy's
campaign helped the Republican
candidate, Dwight
Eisenhower, win the presidential election in 1952.
"After what had happened to McCarthy's opponents in the 1950 elections, most
politicians were -- at first -- unwilling to criticize him in the Senate. As the
Boston Post pointed out: "Attacking him is this state is regarded as a certain method
of committing suicide." One notable exception was William Benton, the owner
of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a senator from Connecticut. McCarthy defended
himself against Benton's smears. It was claimed that while Assistant Secretary of
State, he (Benton) had protected known communists and that he had been responsible for the
purchase and display of "lewd art works". Benton, who was also accused of being
disloyal by Joseph McCarthy
for having much of his company's work printed in England, was defeated in the 1952
elections.
In 1952 McCarthy appointed Roy
Cohn as the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate.
Cohn had been recommended by Edgar
Hoover, who had been impressed by his involvement in the prosecution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg. Soon
after Cohn was appointed, he recruited his best friend, David Schine, to become his
chief consultant.
McCarthy's next target was what he believed were anti-American books in libraries. His
researchers looked into the Overseas Library Program and discovered 30,000 books by
"communists, pro-communists, former communists and anti anti-communists." After
the publication of this list, these books were removed from the library shelves.
Because Joe was on firm legal ground, and because he had public support, those who feared
him (as opposed to those who had always believed witch hunting was Uu-American) began
"accumulating evidence concerning his homosexual relationships. Several members of
his staff, including Roy Cohn
and David Schine, were
also suspected of having a sexual relationship. Although well-known by political
journalists, the first article about it did not appear until Hank Greenspun published an
article in the Las Vagas Sun in 25th October, 1952. Greenspun wrote that: "It is
common talk among homosexuals in Milwaukee who rendezvous in the White Horse Inn that
Senator Joe McCarthy has often engaged in homosexual activities." In the
1950's even the most sexually aggressive Senators were given their "right to
privacy" by the Washington reporters. But, the media needed to break its
"privacy code" in this case, because they- like others in Washington -- feared
McCarthy. Self interest in Washington always seems to warp politicians and media
beliefs. The Washington media returned to its "no see, no tell" approach
when John Kennedy became president. Kennedy cheated on his wife Jackie and was a
real womanizer who makes William Clinton look like a simple high school lecher.
"Joseph McCarthy
considered a libel suit against Greenspun but decided against it when he was told by his
lawyers that if the case went ahead he would have to take the witness stand and answer
questions about his sexuality. In an attempt to stop the rumours circulating, McCarthy
married his secretary, Jeannie Kerr. Later the couple adopted a five-week old girl
from the New York Foundling Home.
In October, 1953, McCarthy began investigating communist infiltration into the military.
Attempts were made by McCarthy to discredit Robert Stevens, the Secretary of the
Army. The president, Dwight
Eisenhower, was furious and now realised that it was time to bring an end to
McCarthy's activities.
The government, now unleashed by President Eisenhower began its sneaky game of lies and
deception. The "United
States Army now passed information about Joseph McCarthy to
journalists known to be opposed to him. This included the news that McCarthy and Roy Cohn had abused
congressional privilege by trying to prevent David Schine from being
drafted. When that failed, it was claimed that Cohn tried to pressurize the Army to grant
Schine special privileges. The well-known newspaper columnist, Drew Pearson, published
the story on 15th December, 1953.
Dwight Eisenhower
also instructed his vice president, Richard Nixon, to attack Joseph McCarthy. On 4th
March, 1954, Nixon made a speech where, although not mentioning McCarthy, made it clear
who he was talking about: "Men who have in the past done effective work exposing
Communists in this country have, by reckless talk and questionable methods, made
themselves the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply."
Some figures in the media, such as writers George Seldes and I. F. Stone, and
cartoonists, Herb Block
and Daniel Fitzpatrick,
had fought a long campaign against Joseph McCarthy. Other
figures in the media, who had for a long time been opposed to McCarthyism but were
frightened to speak out, now began to get the confidence to join the counter-attack. Edward Murrow, the
experienced broadcaster, used his television programme, See It Now, on 9th March, 1954, to
criticize McCarthy's methods. Newspaper columnists such as Walter Lippmann and Jack Anderson also became
more open in their attacks on McCarthy."
Good old Joe, too sure of his own political popularity,
and the firm legal footing of the Democrat's acts, like the Alien Registration Act, now
made a mistake that was fatal to his future. He agreed to hold a public, on TV
session of the "senate investigations into the United States Army"
These sessions were televised and "helpful" media commentators and
TV reporters helped Americans undertstand "tactics of Joseph McCarthy. One
newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, reported that: "In this long, degrading
travesty of the democratic process McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in
malice." Leading politicians in both parties, had been embarrassed by McCarthy's
performance and on 2nd December, 1954, a censure motion condemned his conduct by 67 votes
to 22."
McCarthy lost the chairmanship of the Government Committee on Operations of the
Senate. He was now without a power base and the media lost interest in his claims of a
communist conspiracy. As one journalist, Willard Edwards pointed out: "Most
reporters just refused to file McCarthy stories. And most papers would not have printed
them anyway." Although some historians claim that this marked the end of McCarthyism,
others argue that the anti-communist hysteria in the United States lasted until the end of
the Cold War."
Source: Encyclopedia of American
History
Books about Joseph
McCarthy
 Joseph McCarthy : Reexamining the Life and Legacy of
America's Most Hated Senator
by Arthur Herman
Average Customer Rating: 
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Amazon.com
"Today [Joseph McCarthy] exists in most people's imagination almost solely as an
established icon of evil," writes biographer Arthur Herman. His very name has become
an epithet: McCarthyism. Yet Herman believes it's time to...
2.
The
Life and Times of Joe McCarthy : A Biography
by Thomas C. Reeves
Average Customer Rating: 
Our Price: $15.96
Book Description
This excitingly readable biography will be remembered. . . a complete
page-turner. -- Publishers Weekly
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