McCarthyism, the Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History

238 Pages·1996·4.258 MB·English

by  Albert Fried

McCARTHYISM
The Great American
Red Scare
A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
Edited by
ALBERT FRIED
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1997
I want to thank those who helped bring the book to fmition: Oxford University Press,
and in particular my editors, Nancy Lane and Thomas LeBien, for their splendid sup­
port from start to finish; the great New York Public Library and Columbia University
Library, so notable for their generosity and wonderful courtesies; all the friends, too
many to mention, who heard me out and offered advice, some of which I accepted; the
students of SUNY Purchase who took my classes on McCarthyism over the years; and
above all Edith Firoozi Fried, most demanding, trenchant, and loving of critics.
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Fried, Albert. McCarthyism : the great American Red scare :
a documentary history / Albert Fried,
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-19-509701-7
1. Anti-communist movements—United States—History.
2. McCarthy, Joseph, 1908-1957.
3. Internal security—United States—History—20th century.
4. Radicalism—United States—History—20th century.
I. Tide. E743.5.F668 1997 973.9-^dc20 96-7280
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Printed in the United States of America
on arid-free paper
Contents
1 Introduction: Definitions, A Précis, 1
2 Intimations of Things to Come, 10
1. The Sin of Advocacy, June 28, 1940, 15
2. HUAC Gets Under Way, January, 1945, 16
3. J. Edgar Hoover Alerts the Nation, October 28, 1945, 17
4. The Right to Wiretap, July 17, 1946, 19
5. Un-Americanism in California, October 31, 1946, 20
3 McCarthyism in Earnest, 22
1. Defining Loyalty, March 22, 1947, 28
2. Two Case Studies, 31
O. Edmund Clubb, 1951-1952, 31
Case Number 16, 1955, 33
3. Cleaning Out the Unions, June 23, 1947, 38
4. The Ordeal of John Howard Lawson, October 27, 1947, 39
iv CONTENTS
5. In Defense of the Hollywood Ten, October 1947, 44
6. Hollywood’s Response, December 3, 1947, 46
7. Trying the Communists, January 16, 1949, 47
4 Liberal Response and Counterresponse, 48
1. Liberal Idealism: Contra Loyalty Reviews,
September 1947, 52
2. Liberal Realism: Pro Loyalty Reviews, November 1947, 54
3. In Defense of Liberal Anti-Communism, 1949, 56
4. A Communist Advises Anti-Communist Liberals, 1949, 58
5. Throwing the Communists Out of the CIO,
November 1949, 60
6. Liberal Anti-Communism in Extremis, 1953, 64
7. The Case of the American Civil Liberties Union,
1950-1953, 67
5 McCarthy the Man; McCarthyism Triumphant, 70
1. McCarthy Anticipates McCarthyism, April 3, 1947, 76
2. Versions of the Wheeling Speech, February 10
and 20, 1950, 78
3. Mrs. Smith’s Declaration of Conscience, June 1, 1950, 81
4. Democratic Rebuttal, July 20, 1950, 83
5. Total Security Through the McCarran Act, September 23, 1950, 85
6. McCarthy Unbound, May 24, 1951, 89
7. McCarthy’s Assault on General Marshall, 1952, 90
8. McCarthy in Full Stride, April 29, 1953, 93
9. McCarthy as Hero, 1954, 99
6 Judicial Acquiescence, 102
1. The Court Gives the Go-Ahead, May 8, 1950, 104
2. Defining the Fifth, February 26, 1951, 106
Contents v
3. Loyalty, Past, Present, and Future, June 4, 1951, 108
4. Suppression Legalized: Dennis v. United States, June 4, 1951, 110
5. New York Leads the Way, March 3, 1952, 113
7 Inquisition Triumphant, 115
1. Blacklisted at Work: Red Channels, June 1950, 119
Larry Adler, 119
Leonard Bernstein, 120
Paul Draper, 120
WUl Geer, 121
Arthur Miller, 122
2. The California Loyalty Oath, September 1950, 124
3. Reagan Versus the Reds, July 30, 1951, 125
4. The Industry Goes Along, 1951, 127
5. How to Get Off, or Avoid Getting On, the Blacklist, 1952, 129
6. The Pathos of Larry Parks, March 21, 1951, 131
7. Kazan Explains Why, April 12, 1952, 135
8. Heilman’s Cry of Conscience, May 19, 1952, 138
9. The Rights and Responsibilities of Universities and Their Faculties,
March 1953, 140
10. Stander Confounds HUAC, May 6, 1953, 143
11. Dr. Oppenheimer’s Disgrace, April 12-June 20, 1954, 148
12. The Butterfly and the Committee, October 14, 1955, 153
13. Paul Robeson Takes on the Committee, June 12, 1956, 154
8 Expulsions and Imprisonments, 157
1. Adler’s Lament, 1948-1949, 158
2. The Fruits of Defiance: Lardner, 1947-1950, 160
3. The Fruits of Defiance: Bessie, 1950, 163
4. The Travails of a Communist, 1948-1955, 165
5. Getting Dashiell Hammett, et al., 1951, 168
6. “Sedition” in Pittsburgh, 1950-1952, 172
7. Harrassing a Labor Radical, 1954, 175
vi CONTENTS
9 McCarthy’s Fall, 178
1. Assailing Eisenhower, November 23, 1953, 182
2. McCarthy and His Nemesis, April 29, 1954, 185
3. Defiance to the Bitter End, November 10, 1954, 188
4. Condemned! December 2, 1954, 191
5. Liberals Seek Cover: The Communist Control Act, August 24,
1954, 192
10 A Measure of Redress, 194
1. End of the Lattimore Affair, January 18, 1955, 198
2. Freedom for Steve Nelson, April 2, 1956, 200
3. Matusow Confesses, 1955, 201
4. The Fifth Vindicated, April 9, 1956, 203
5. The Smith Act Disabled, June 17, 1957, 205
6. HUAC’s Wings Clipped, June 17, 1957, 207
7. The Right to Travel Abroad Affirmed, June 16, 1958, 211
8. Faulk Breaks the Blacklist, 1962, 213
11 Afterword, 216
1. COINTELPRO in the Flesh, July 17, 1968, 219
2. Breaking and Entering, September 20, 1975, 221
3. Tom Huston’s Try, Early July 1970, 223
4. J. Edgar Hoover Still Sees Red, June 1971, 226
Bibliographical Essay, 228
1
Introduction: Definitions, A Précis
i
The word “McCarthyism” became a public epithet—exacdy who invented
it is unknown—soon after February 9, 1950, the day U.S. Republican
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, scarcely a household name outside his own
state of Wisconsin, delivered a speech to a small Republican gathering in
Wheeling, West Virginia. According to the paragraph-long summary car­
ried by newswires—it was unrecorded and those who heard it later gave
confused or conflicting versions—he accused the State Department of har­
boring precisely 205 Communists, i.e., traitors. The rest of his remarks
were evidently unexceptional: the customary Lincoln Day Republican at­
tacks on the Truman administration. But instead of disappearing into the
void, where such dispatches usually end up, McCarthy’s accusation began
making headlines, especially when it provoked angry cries of foul from the
administration and Democrats in general.
He now had to prove his case, behind which lay the ugly inference that
State Department functionaries, perhaps high-ranking ones, were respon­
sible for handing China over to Communism the year before and Eastern
Europe to the Soviet Union before that, and were obviously plotting more
betrayals. With breathtaking audacity, however, McCarthy offered not
proof but fresh accusations, accompanied this time by names. He was thus
destroying the reputations of specific individuals, who, in self-defense,
could never get the media attention he did; the charges stuck. McCarthy’s
growing legion of critics, from the president down, responded with savage
1
2 McCARTHTISM, THE GREAT AMERICAN RED SCARE
denunciations of the man and his methods. How savage is exemplified in
master satirist Herblock’s remarkable cartoons in the Washington Post*
They invariably showed McCarthy climbing out of a sewer, a five o’clock
shadow giving his face a sinister mien, and carrying a can of mud or pitch
and a brush to smear innocent people with. The savagery is further
brought out in a long screed, McCarthy, the Man, the Senator, the <(Ism,” by
investigative reporters Jack Anderson and Ronald W. May (Boston: Bea­
con Press, 1952). They attributed his success as a demagogue to his shame­
less opportunism, which, they revealed in endless detail, he displayed
throughout his political and personal life. For Anderson and May and
Herblock and most of McCarthy’s early critics, the ism they now routinely
invoked was merely the man writ large, broadened to include all such
bullies and miscreants who used the Communist issue to tarnish those they
disliked or disagreed with, no matter how hostile to Communism the
falsely accused might be.
And yet the more savagely his enemies denounced him the more popu­
lar he seemed to be. He was riding so high that he adopted their epithet as
his own. McCarthyism, the Fight for America was the tide of his 1952
campaign book. He (and his supporters) proudly conceded that he and
the lesser paladins of anti-Communism did not play by the Marquis of
Queensberry rules, but that was because the satanic foe manipulated those
rules to its advantage. At stake, he held—and so, apparendy, did a sizable
share of the electorate, maybe even the majority—was the survival of the
United States and Christendom itself.
McCarthy’s spectacular fall setded the debate over definition. By the
end of 1954 he was disgraced, and by 1957, when he died, all but fogotten.
It is as though Americans had become ashamed of themselves for having
permitted such a man to speak for them, to exploit their credulity in their
moment of vulnerability. By 1957 the word McCarthyism signified noth­
ing of the virtues he and his apologists imputed to it, only the vices
associated with the man and his career. The official verdict, as it were, can
be found in the standard dictionaries, the most influential of them being
Webster's Third International, which came out in 1961. “McCarthyism,” it
states, is a
political attitude of the mid-twentieth century closely allied to know-noth-
ingism and characterized chiefly by the opposition to elements held to be
subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals
by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations, esp. on the basis of
unsubstantiated charges.
This labored definition, it should be noted, pretty much reflects the way
McCarthy’s earliest critics, Herblock and others, understood the term,
which, after all, they invented and popularized. And it is how the term is
still used in everyday parlance. Regardless of who we are and where we
* See some of them in Herbert Block, Herblock’s Special fir Today (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1958).
Introduction: Definitions, A Précis 3
stand politically, it springs immediately to our lips when those who accuse
us of a wrong do not provide the evidence—and even if they do provide
it—entitling us to accuse them of incivility and unfairness at the very least
and to demand that they receive the comeuppance McCarthy himself did.
2
In the years since his fall the ism has taken on new meanings. No longer can
it be defined only, or even primarily, as the misconduct of demagogues
who blacken reputations, destroy livelihoods, etc. It has also come to
embrace affairs of state, large areas of domestic and foreign policy, and an
entire historical period. How this transformation came about can be briefly
told.
Until the 1960s a tight national consensus of opinion held sway.
Americans overwhelmingly approved of their government’s tough-minded
opposition to the Soviet Union and Communism (though some or most of
them might have disagreed with this or that facet of it), and they celebrated
with scant demur the social order under which they enjoyed such freedom
and abundance and security. That consensus, however, suddenly, cata­
strophically, fell apart in the wake of the civil rights revolution, the anti-
Vietnam War insurgency, the massive campus unrest, and the flowering of
a quite fantastic counterculture.
Meanwhile, young historians, social scientists, and liberal artists re­
belled against the consensus that had dominated their disciplines. They
challenged the dogma according to which America fought the Cold War,
namely that it was a struggle to the death between good and evil and that
the good would prevail only if the evil was suppressed at home and con­
tained or rolled back abroad, whatever the cost. The challenge to that
dogma has been vindicated by the test of time in the sense that they, the
radical scholars who emerged in the 1960s, have made their revised views
the prevailing orthodoxy, thanks to their prolific output and the status they
have achieved in their professions.
Nowhere has their effect been more striking than in their work on
McCarthyism. In their hands, the dictionary definition, so quaint and
moralistic, so redolent of the man and his adversaries, has given way to the
open-ended conception of the subject described above. What they have
done with McCarthyism may be summed up in the following definitions.
1. McCarthyism can be defined as thegreat American red scare. Previous
red scares were fierce and punitive, but they were mercifully brief. The
Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 proved extremely unpopular and withered
away even before Thomas Jefferson, their chief opponent, became presi­
dent three years later. Hostility toward radicals from the 1870s through
the early twentieth century, an age of violent industrial warfare across the
country, was episodic and confined to localities. And the most famous of
pre-McCarthyism red scares, the one that jailed or deported or otherwise
persecuted thousands of suspected “Bolsheviki,” lasted less than two years,
4 McCARTHTISM, THE GREAT AMERICAN RED SCARE
dying out in 1921. But the McCarthyism red scare went on and on for
decades, and became a whole way of life. It was indeed the great American
red scare.
There is a grim irony in this to which revisionist scholars like to call
attention.
No sooner did World War II end than the far right, frustrated by
America’s four years of friendship with the Soviet Union and (relative)
solicitude toward Communism, began testing anti - Communist waters.
Republicans denounced the late President Roosevelt and the liberal
Democrats who served in his administration for kowtowing to Stalin,
sanctioning his conquests. The Republican sweep in the 1946 Congres­
sional election, the first since 1928, convinced President Truman, if he still
needed convincing, that he had to be conspicuously tough on Commu­
nism, lest the Republicans further exploit the issue to their benefit and his
detriment. His bold move to provide economic and military support for
the Greek and Turkish governments—the Truman Doctrine—may have
been justified from a narrowly strategic point of view; certainly the Greek
government would have fallen to Communist-led insurgents. How Tru-
num justified the move bears directly on any inquiry into the genesis and
development of McCarthyism. He presented his doctrine to the American
people in ideological terms, as the necessary defense against a totalitari­
anism whose aim, like Hitler’s, was nothing less than the enslavement of
mankind. And while Truman did not deliberately time the doctrine to
coincide with his promulgation of a “loyalty review” program to root out
Communists from among the millions of federal employees—he an­
nounced them within days of each other in March 1947—the linkage was
no coincidence. Could he be tough on enemies abroad and indifferent to
them and their sympathizers at home—especially in the face of burgeoning
criticisms of him and the Democrats?
Thus was launched America’s red scare nonpareil. Loyalty review
boards on the Truman administration model sprung up across the nation,
scrutinizing the personal lives and political beliefs not only of government
workers, but many private ones as well. Subject to such scrutiny were those
who at any time in their lives belonged to any of the organizations that the
attorney general deemed subversive, or who knew or were related to
anyone who ever belonged to any of them. Numerous legislative and
administrative committees held highly publicized inquisitorial hearings,
the object being to defame and humiliate their victims. Prestigious liberal
organizations hastily purged themselves of alleged Communists. After a
year-long trial, a New York jury convicted eleven Communist party leaders
of advocating the violent overthrow of the government, the prelude, once
they exhausted their appeals, to wholesale arrests of other party officials.
The point is that this orgy of repression occurred during Truman’s watch,
and to a measurable extent by his initiative. McCarthy had not yet made his
appearance.
It can be argued on Truman’s behalf that he, the Democratic party.