Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies
K. R. Bolton
________________________
“I think the Communist conspiracy is merely a branch of a much
bigger conspiracy.” Bella Dodd 1
Joseph Raymond McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin, is now remembered mostly as an uncouth bully who recklessly destroyed the
lives of decent people in the pursuit of his political career. The very
term “McCarthyism” refers to a modern-day witch-hunt, and is a label
held in as much contempt as the designation “Quisling.” The so-called
“McCarthy era” is painted as the blackest period of American history,
and anyone who raises a voice against anything of a Left-wing nature
continues to be branded as a “McCarthyite” and is himself quickly
condemned to disgrace and ruin.
Yet recent declassified files have started to show that McCarthy
was correct in his supposedly “reckless” and “fraudulent” accusations. This essay is not however primarily concerned with reassessing
McCarthy’s accusations as with whether McCarthy was coming too
close to other forces which set the course for his destruction.
Indicative of the ongoing reassessment of McCarthy even in respectable quarters, a recent BBC Radio 4 programme is described by
Radio Times as follows:
David Aaronovitch thinks the unthinkable about the McCarthy
period.
The hunt for the so-called “Reds under the beds” during the
Cold War is generally regarded as a deeply regrettable blot on
U.S. history. But the release of classified documents reveals that
Joseph McCarthy was right after all about the extent of Soviet infiltration into the highest reaches of the U.S. government.
Bella Dodd was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party
USA, leaving the party in 1948. Comment to W. Cleon Skousen, former FBI special
agent and Police Chief of Salt Lake City. W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist (Salt
Lake City, UT: Ensign, 1970), 1.
1
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Thanks to the public release of top secret FBI decryptions of Soviet communications, as well as the release under the fifty-year
rule of FBI records and Soviet archives, we now know that the
Communist spying McCarthy fought against was extensive,
reaching to the highest level of the State department and the
White House.
We reveal that many of McCarthy's anticommunist investigations were in fact on target. His fears about the effect Soviet infiltration might be having on US foreign policy, particularly in the
Far East were also well founded.
The decrypts also reveal that people such as [Julius] Rosenberg,
Alger Hiss and even Robert Oppenheimer were indeed working
with the Soviets. We explore why much of this information,
available for years to the FBI, was not made public. We also examine how its suppression prevented the prosecution of suspects.
Hearing from former FBI, CIA and KGB operatives as well as
formerly blacklisted writers, David Aaronovitch, himself from a
family of communists tells the untold story of Soviet influence
and espionage in the United States. 2
McCarthy began his investigations against Communist infiltration
when on February 9, 1950, he spoke before a Republican Women’s
Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, at which he said that there were at
least 57 known Communists in the U.S. State Department, and that the
State Department knew it. 3
It has been the common charge that McCarthy launched his anticommunist campaign for no other reason than to serve his own political career by whipping up hysteria. Yet other facts show him to have
been a man of principle regardless of his career: In 1949 McCarthy had
taken up the cause of German POWs held for allegedly gunning down
“McCarthy: There Were Reds Under the Bed.” BBC Radio 4, aired July 25, and
August 9 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t7hhf
3 Scott Speidel, Florida State University, “The Destruction of Joe McCarthy, Part
1.”
http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/2009/07/the-destruction-of-joe-mccarthy/
2
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
77
American prisoners during the so-called Malmedy Massacre. McCarthy exposed the fact that the Germans had had their POW status revoked so that the Geneva Convention did not protect them, and that
they were being tortured to extract confessions. Obviously this was
not the type of cause that was designed to win friends. This had indeed already resulted in McCarthy being condemned by the news
media. 4
It was the Senate that insisted that McCarthy make his list of 57
names of subversives public, although he did not himself think it
proper, yet it is McCarthy who has since been damned as the man
who destroyed the innocent by public inquisitions. 5
McCarthy’s elimination had been guaranteed, not because he was
going after Soviet spies and subversives, but because he was getting
too close to the centers of financial and political power.
CENSURE
The deathblow to McCarthy’s campaign was instigated not by
some Party hack at the Daily Worker, but by Sen. Ralph E. Flanders
who introduced the resolution for Senate censure of McCarthy. This
was backed by Sen. Herbert Lehman, son of Mayer Lehman, founder
of Lehman Brothers international investment bank, of which Herbert
became a partner.
In its introduction to its collection of the Lehman Papers, Columbia
University describes the august Senator Lehman as follows:
Having served as Governor of New York State between 1933 and
1942, in 1949, at the age of 71 Lehman was elected United States
Senator to fill the unexpired term of Robert F. Wagner, Sr. Reelected for a full term in 1950, Senator Lehman gave six years of
distinguished service to the people of his state and nation.
His courage, moral integrity and unfaltering dedication soon
made Senator Lehman one of Washington’s most respected senators; just as they had won him affection and honor in New York6
Ibid.
Ibid. McCarthy was never permitted to make full disclosure of his evidence.
That he referred to three separate lists of subversives was distorted by the media
and portrayed as inconsistency on McCarthy’s part.
6 Considering Lehman’s New York constituency, he would have gained its esteem regardless.
4
5
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and on the world scene. He became known as “the conscience of
the Senate” as he led those who stood for liberal principles and
for the rights of accused individuals in the early 1950s when
Senator McCarthy’s influence was at its peak. Utterly fearless
and disdainful for his own political fortunes, he fought, at times
almost alone, against tremendous opposition. 7
Stating that Lehman stood fearless and “at times almost alone” is
nonsense. It was McCarthy who stood fearless and alone, while Lehman had the full weight of the US Administration up to the presidency, the Washington and Wall Street elites, and the most influential of
the news media.
Columbia University describes the battle between Lehman and
McCarthy as “bitter.” According to Lehman’s biographer, Allen Nevins, on at least one occasion senatorial colleagues feared that the verbal combat between Lehman and McCarthy would lead to blows on
the floor of the Senate. 8
Lehman, like the Warburgs and the Schiffs, et al., intermarried within
the exclusive world of Jewish banking dynasties, marrying Edith Louise
Altschul, the daughter of the head of the New York branch of Lazard
Freres, the Paris-based banking house. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 for his campaign against Sen. McCarthy, 9 but died on December 5 as he was about to go to the White
House to receive his reward. Another anti-McCarthy figure, cartoonist
Herbert Block, discussed below, was awarded the same honor by
President Clinton in 1994.
Sen. Flanders also had an interesting background, not as some “progressive” or liberal Democrat, but as a Republican, an industrialist and a banker.
Under the guise of being an anti-communist, Flanders stated that McCarthy
was misdirecting efforts against communism by looking inward, at subversion
in the USA, whereas the fight must be directed outward against Soviet expan-
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, “Materials
for the Study of McCarthyism at the Herbert H. Lehman Suite and Papers,”
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/rbml/units/lehman/guides/mccarthy
ism.html
8 Allan Nevins, Herbert H. Lehman and His Era (New York: Scribner, 1963).
9 “Herbert Henry Lehman,” Jewish Virtual Library.
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:kt24GqyEyfYJ:www.jewishvirtuallibrary.
org/jsource/biography/lehman.html
7
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
79
sion.10 This line fitted entirely with that of the US Establishment: Ever since Stalin foiled the US attempt to create a “new world order” immediately after
World War II via the United Nations and the “Baruch Plan” for the internationalization of atomic energy — both measures which, in the opinion of the Soviets, would have assured US global hegemony, the wartime US-Soviet accord
had been replaced by a Cold War.11 The US Establishment sought to recruit
influential anti-Soviet Leftists, whom the CIA depicted as “anti-communists.”
This ideological offensive was undertaken by the CIA, with backing from
wealthy and influential elites, in particular the Rockefellers, primarily under
the banner of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, led by pro-Trotsky “Menshevik” intellectual Prof. Sidney Hook, another recipient of the Presidential
Medal of Freedom.12
McCarthy’s most dangerous enemies were, in this writer’s opinion, not the
Soviet spies and American Communist Party functionaries he was exposing,
but those whom he had not even yet targeted, the power elite and their agents.
Flanders had been president of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank for two
years prior to being elected Senator for Vermont. In 1942 he was appointed to
the Committee for Economic Development, which was established to formulate US post-war economic policy, including the role of the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. 13
When Flanders introduced his resolution of censure against McCarthy, Time
reported:
From outside the Senate, Flanders won the support of a group of
23 top businessmen, labor leaders and educators, e.g., Publisher
John Cowles (Des Moines Register & Tribune), Movie Producer
Samuel Goldwyn, Financier Lewis W. Douglas (chairman, Mutual Life of New York). They wired every U.S. Senator (except
McCarthy himself) urging a favorable vote “to curb the flagrant
abuse of power by Senator McCarthy.”14
10 Ralph E. Flanders, “Activities of Senator McCarthy—The World Crisis.” Congressional Record—Proceedings and Debates of the 83rd Congress, Second Session (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office), March 9, 1954.
11 K. R. Bolton, “Origins of the Cold War: How Stalin Foiled a ‘New World Order,’ Relevance for the Present,” Foreign Policy Journal, June 1, 2010,
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/
12 Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts
and Letters (New York: The New Press, 2000).
13 Ralph E Flanders, Senator from Vermont (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), 179-180.
14 Time, National Affairs: “The Dispensable Man,” August 2, 1954.
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Note the line-up against McCarthy was that of the Left combined with big
business and capital, precisely the nexus that any student of the inner workings
of history and politics would expect. Flanders’ resolution read:
Resolved, that the conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin ... is
unbecoming a member of the United States Senate, is contrary to
senatorial traditions, and tends to bring the Senate into disrepute, and such conduct is hereby condemned.
Keep in mind at this stage that both Flanders and Lehman 15 were
members of the Council on Foreign Relations, which CFR official historian Peter Grosse described as “the US foreign policy establishment.” 16 Flanders had been involved in a CFR study committee on
post-war US foreign policy set up in 1940. Flanders was also a member of the Business Advisory Council, another association of significance that will be considered shortly.
Other CFR study group members included Lauchlin Currie 17 and
Benjamin V. Cohen, both from the US State Department, Asia expert
Prof. Owen Lattimore, 18 and economist Leo Pasvolsky, special assistant for post-war planning to the US Secretary of State. 19 All of these
CFR advisers were to come to the attention of Sen. McCarthy’s investigations into subversion.
This CFR connection is a primary key to understanding McCarthy’s
political destruction, as will be considered below.
When a Senate committee voted for censure, Time magazine enthused that the Senate had regained the “dignity” intended by the
Founding Fathers:
Peter Gross, Continuing the Inquiry, “Basic Assumptions.” (New York: Council
on Foreign Relations. 2006).
http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/assumptions.html
16 Ibid.
17 Joseph R McCarthy, America’s Retreat from Victory: The Story of George Catlett
Marshall (Boston: Western Islands, 1965), 57. Originally published by Devin-Adair,
1951. This book by McCarthy on how China was delivered to Mao via the USA is an
example of how McCarthy’s arguments were meticulously documented.
18 Laurence H Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and the United States Foreign Policy (Lincoln, NE: Authors Choice Press,
1977), 120-121.
19 Ibid., 124.
15
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
81
When the constitutional foundation of the U.S. Senate was built
in 1787, the builders believed they were constructing a citadel of
deliberation and dignity. Said James Madison: "The use of the
Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with
more system, and with more wisdom than the popular branch."
One hundred and sixty-seven years later, when the floodlights
blazed on the Army-McCarthy hearings, wisdom, system and
coolness seemed to have vanished in the glare. But this week,
out of a tidy office on the fourth floor of the Senate Office Building, came a ringing reassertion of the U.S. Senate's dignity.
A Select Committee of the Senate recommended the censure of
Wisconsin's Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and thereby erected a
new landmark in U.S. government. The report was carefully
constructed by six shirtsleeved men in the office of Utah's Senator Arthur Vivian Watkins, a man little known in the past who
should be long remembered in the future. Unanimously, firmly,
unequivocally. 20
Of course Time presented the Watkins committee as consisting of
the heroic and the fearless, rather than as typical careerists who had
the backing of most of the Senate up to the presidency, and what can
generically be called the “US Establishment.” It is notable that of the
dozens of counts that were originally levelled against McCarthy, after
much deliberation the stalwart six found only two counts they felt
confident they could make stick: McCarthy’s reaction to an investigation on electioneering in 1951–52, which comprised an allegation subsequently found to be without merit; and McCarthy’s “inexcusable”
and “reprehensible” manner before Brig. Gen. Ralph Zwicker at the
McCarthy-Army hearing into communist influence in the military.
The Watkins’ committee based its censure of McCarthy’s on his robust
reaction to the attempted 1951 impugning of his character (even then)
in regard to an investigation of funding. He reacted by characterizing
the investigation itself as dishonest, and he described one senator, Robert C. Hendrickson (R–New Jersey), as having “neither guts nor
brains.” The Watkins’ committee sought to censure McCarthy because
in 1952 he had impugned a senator’s character, which surely amounts
to arrant humbug and hypocrisy on the part of the committee and all
20
“The Censure of Joe McCarthy,” Time (October 4, 1954).
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who voted for the censure of McCarthy considering the years of abuse
he had ensured.
The Times reporting on the second count (regarding McCarthy’s
questioning of Brig. Gen. Zwicker) states that the Watkins’ committee
condemned McCarthy for having stated to Zwicker that he was not fit
to wear a uniform, and should be removed from command. The controversy concerned McCarthy’s investigation of the circumstances
around the promotion of Maj. Irving Peress and his honourable discharge, even though he had refused to sign loyalty forms. Zwicker
had refused to answer McCarthy’s questions on the matter, and
McCarthy responded by not having the deference towards the General which was apparently expected of him. In condemning McCarthy’s
attitude, the Watkins committee stated that McCarthy knew that
Zwicker had been “ordered by a higher authority” to issue the honorable discharge, which one might conjecture was the real problem:
McCarthy’s having gotten too close to “higher authorities.”
Yet Time reported on the antics of Sen. Flanders in its analysis of the
Watkins committee deliberations as being completely fair and charitable towards McCarthy, saying of Flanders:
Careful Reasoning. When it [the Watkins committee] considered
the charge that McCarthy had unfairly attacked Vermont's Senator Flanders, the committee made another careful distinction.
McCarthy's comment on Flanders had been brutal; “I think they
should get a man with a net and take him to a good, quiet
place.” But this was an attack on an individual senator, because
he had made “provocative speeches” about McCarthy on the Senate floor and had marched into a televised session of the ArmyMcCarthy hearings to serve notice that he was about to make
another one. It was not an attack on a Senator for an official action he had taken as a member of a committee, as in the Hendrickson case. While McCarthy's remarks were “highly improper,” the committee ruled that the circumstances did not justify a
recommendation for censure. 21
Time, presumably unwittingly, depicts the atmosphere surrounding
the “McCarthy era” and the picture emerges that it was McCarthy
who was subjected to the abuse and theatrics of the type his detractors
21
Ibid.
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
83
have continued to project onto him down to the present. One wonders
whether the supposed “charity” the Watkins committee was bestowing upon McCarthy was in fact motivated by the flimsiness of their
own position. Why hadn’t Flanders been censured for what the
Watkins committee itself conceded was Flanders’ “provocative
speeches” against McCarthy in the Senate? Why wasn’t Flanders censured for his attempts to disrupt the hearings of McCarthy’s investigations? Double-standards were being applied against McCarthy, the
hypocrisy of which is compounded by the double-standards being
called “charitable.”
As events transpired, soon after the Time report, the Watkin’s
committee censure dropped the count of McCarthy’s having been disrespectful to Zwicker, since there was contention as to Zwicker’s own
attitude towards McCarthy.22
SOVIET AGENTS OR SCIONS OF THE SYSTEM?
The primary contention of this article is that the individuals and associations that McCarthy was going after were not Soviet agents so
much as Establishment scions. Hence when McCarthy attacked US
policy in China as favouring the Maoists,23 it was assumed that the
interests being served were those of the USSR. It has more recently
been confirmed that McCarthy was correct in pointing the finger at
Far Eastern advisers such as Prof. Owen Lattimore and others of the
Institute on Pacific Relations. However the policy that was being pursued was on behalf of the American plutocratic cabal, while Stalin did
his best to resist a communist takeover and indeed backed Chiang
right up until the General’s final defeat. 24 Instead the Watkin’s committee substituted as the second count that McCarthy had been disrespectful to their own committee! Of the dozens of original counts
the Senators’ sought to use on the Senate Floor to censure McCarthy,
they were only left with one original count — that McCarthy several
years previously had refused to co-operate with the Gillette committee investigating financial irregularities. The investigation of McCarthy had been in reaction to the Senator’s condemnation of Secretary of
State George C Marshall for his having supported the recall of Gen.
Medford Evans, The [Political] Assassination of Joe McCarthy (Boston: Western
Island, 1970), 243.
23 McCarthy, America’s Retreat From Victory.
24 Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1970), 304–311.
22
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Douglas McArthur who had wanted to press for victory in Korea. Sen.
William Benton (D., Conn.), instigated the creation of the Gillette Subcommittee on Privileges to enquire as to why McCarthy had not cooperated with the Tydings committee into finances. The committee was
ineffectual in its efforts to get McCarthy.
What did McCarthy in was his getting too close to the real power
centers of the USA. The eminent American historian Prof. Carroll
Quigley of Harvard, acknowledged by President Clinton as his academic mentor, wrote of an international “network” controlled by international bankers, which seeks to establish a system of world political and economic control. Quigley was primarily referring the Council
on Foreign Relations and its offshoots, and claimed inside knowledge,
having been permitted in the 1960s to examine its papers and
records. 25 Although Quigley only writes of this “network” in a scant
dozen or so pages in his more than 1300 page magnum opus Tragedy
and Hope, which he used as a text for his Harvard courses, this was
sufficient to suddenly bring Quigley’s long and distinguished career
to an abrupt halt, despite his impeccable credentials and an Establishment liberal-internationalist. 26
Quigley does however provide much clarity on the origins of the
real power that McCarthy and others were up against in supposing
that they were simply fighting Communism and Soviet espionage.
Quigley explained: “It is this power structure which the Radical Right
in the US has been attacking for years in the belief that they were attacking the Communists.”
It must be recognized that the power that these energetic Left-wingers exercised was never their own power nor communist power but ultimately the power of the international financial coteries, and once
the anger and suspicions of the American people were aroused, as they
were by 1950, it was a fairly simple matter to get rid of the Red sympathisers. Before this could be done, however, a congressional committee followed backward to their sources the threads which led from admitted
Communists like Whitaker Chambers, through Alger Hiss, and
the Carnegie Endowment to Thomas Lamont and the Morgan
Bank, fell into the whole complicated network of tax exempt
Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope (New York: MacMillan Company, 1966), 950.
Robert Eringer, The Global Manipulators (Bristol: Pentacle Books, 1980), 9.
Comments by Quigley to Eringer.
25
26
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
85
foundations. The Eighty-third Congress in July 1953 set up a
Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations .... It
soon became clear that people of immense wealth would be unhappy if the investigation went too far and that the “most respected” newspapers in the country, closely allied with these men
of wealth, would not be excited enough about any revelations to
make the publicity worthwhile, in terms of votes or campaign
contributions. 27 (emphasis added)
One such example of the power of the “international financial coteries” mistaken as communist influence, was the aforementioned Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), which was held responsible for pushing
China toward communism by a 1951 Subcommittee on Internal Security under Sen. Pat McCarran. Quigley commented on this: “The influence of the communists in IPR is well established, but the patronage of Wall Street is less well known.” 28 He goes on to state that the
financial backing for the IPR came from Rockefeller and J P Moragn
interests, from Standard Oil, ITT, International General Electric, National City Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank, etc.
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Much of the influence of the “network” referred to by Quigley on US Administrations is exercised by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), established in 1921 by President Wilson’s chief adviser Edward Mandel House out
of a previous think tank called The Inquiry, formed in 1917–1918 to advise
Pres. Wilson on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and another group of
bankers and academics that had already been named the Council on Foreign
Relations. CFR historian Grosse writes of the CFR in regard to the “McCarthy
era”:
Concerns that seemed more pressing bore down at the turn of
the 1950s. The nation was in danger of succumbing to a redbaiting frenzy, marked by the rise into the headlines of Senator
Joseph R. McCarthy. Not surprisingly, the Council’s membership seemed solidly united in contempt for the Wisconsin demagogue; under his provocative rhetoric, after all, was a thinly
veiled attack on the entire East Coast foreign policy establish27
28
Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, 954–955.
Ibid., 946.
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ment, whose members gathered regularly in the closed conference rooms of the Harold Pratt House. 29
Here Grosse is saying in an official CFR history that:
1. The entire “network” was “solidly united against” McCarthy in what
he saw as nothing other than a fight against communism and Soviet
influence;
2. That what McCarthy thought was communism and Soviet infiltration
was actually the “entire East Coast foreign policy establishment” centred on the CFR.
While a large proportion of the subversives McCarthy was turning the nation’s attention to were CFR members such as Owen Lattimore, Lauchlin Currie, et al., there were three individuals in particular who were too wellconnected to the US Establishment for McCarthy to be allowed to continue. He
was unwittingly too close to the centre of the US power structure. These individuals were Cord Meyer, John J. McCloy and Robert T. Stevens.
Robert T. Stevens was Secretary of the Army at a time when
McCarthy was involved in his final campaign before he was silenced
— an investigation into communist activities in the military. Stevens
of J. P. Stevens & Co., Charles E. Wilson of General Motors as Secretary of Defense, and George M. Humphrey of M. A. Hanna Co., as
Treasury Secretary had been elevated to these posts after a meeting
between Pres. Eisenhower, international banker Sidney Weinberg, and
Gen. Lucius Clay. Those involved were members of the Business Advisory Council (BAC), Weinberg and Clay being on the executive
committee.
The BAC had been formed in 1933 to advise Pres. Roosevelt on business
matters, just as the CFR advised on foreign policy. The BAC was the brainchild
of Sidney Weinberg of Goldman, Sachs & Co., who recruited most of the key
members.30 In September 1960 Harper’s Magazine published an expose of the
Peter Grosse, Continuing the Inquiry, “X Leads the Way.”
http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/x_leads.html
30 Dan Smoot, The Invisible Government (Dallas: The Dan Smoot Report, 1964), 81.
Smoot, a former Harvard professor joined the FBI as a special agent. His book is one
of the first exposing the CFR, and is meticulously researched.
29
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
87
BAC, which it described as “America’s most powerful private club.”31 The article includes some pertinent insights into the forces that destroyed McCarthy:
The Business Advisory Council meets regularly with government officials six times a year.... On two of these six occasions ….
the BAC convenes its sessions at plush resorts, and with a halfdozen or more important Washington officials and their wives as
its guests, it indulges in a three-day ‘work and play’ meeting....
The guest list is always impressive: on occasion, there have been
more Cabinet officers at a ... BAC meeting than were left in the
Capital.
After the 1952 election, the BAC was having its fall ‘work and
play’ meeting at the Cloister, just off the Georgia coast and a
short distance from Augusta, where Ike [President Eisenhower]
was alternating golf with planning his first-term Cabinet. [Sidney] Weinberg and [General Lucius D.] Clay [members of the
BAC executive committee] hustled to Augusta, conferred with
Ike [a “close, intimate, personal friend” of both men]....
The result was historic: Ike tapped three of the BAC leaders ...
for his Cabinet. They were Charles E. Wilson of General Motors
as Defense Secretary; [George M.] Humphrey, then boss of the
M. A. Hanna Co., as Treasury Secretary; and Robert T. Stevens of
the J. P. Stevens & Co., as Army Secretary....
The BAC, powerful in its composition and with an inside track,
is thus a special force. An intimation of its influence can be
gleaned from its role in the McCarthy case.... BAC helped push
Senator Joe McCarthy over the brink in 1954, by supplying a bit
of backbone to the Eisenhower Administration at the right time.
McCarthy’s chief target in the Army-McCarthy hearings was the
aforementioned Robert T. Stevens — a big wheel in the BAC
who had become Secretary of the Army. The BAC didn't pay
Hobart Rowan, “America’s Most Powerful Private Club: How a semi-social organization of the very biggest businessmen — discretely shielded from public scrutiny — is ‘advising’ the government on its top policy decisions,” Harper’s Magazine
(September 1960, 79–84).
31
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much — if any — attention to Joe McCarthy as a social menace
until he started to pick on Bob Stevens. Then, they burned up.
During the May 1954 meeting at the Homestead [expensive
resort hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, where the BAC often holds
its 'work and play' sessions with high government officials and
their wives], Stevens flew down from Washington for a weekend
reprieve from his televised torture. A special delegation of BAC
officials made it a point to journey from the hotel to the mountaintop airport to greet Stevens. He was escorted into the lobby
like a conquering hero. Then, publicly, one member of the BAC
after another roasted the Eisenhower Administration for its
McCarthy-appeasement policy. The BAC’s attitude gave the
Administration some courage, and shortly thereafter Senator
Ralph Flanders (a Republican and BAC member) introduced a
Senate resolution calling for censure.
The Business Advisory Council continues to exist under the name
of The Business Council. 32 The BAC/BC seems even more enigmatic
and secretive than the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers,
Trilateralists, et al. Apart from the Harper’s 1960 report and Dan
Smoot’s section on the BAC in his 1964 book on the CFR, the BAC/BC
is a name that seems to have been seldom mentioned despite its immense influence considering that it had been founded in 1933 for the
specific purpose of advising government on policy and being attached
as advisers to the Department of Commerce. 33 Some interesting information however can be gleaned from its website.
The Council's first major assignment was to form the Industrial
Advisory Board for the National Recovery Administration, to
advise and assist in resolving pressing problems of the nation's
recovery from the Great Depression. Simultaneously, the Council established a number of committees to address such issues as
the Securities and Exchange Act, the Banking Act and the Social
Security Act.
The Business Council, “Background.”
http://www.thebusinesscouncil.org/about/background.aspx
33 Ibid.
32
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
89
Council members worked closely with public officials responsible for those milestone policy enactments to help resolve the
challenges of implementing the new laws. Another field in
which the Council became active was labor relations, providing
insights on policy and administrative issues. 34
Its role is obviously similar to that of the CFR, and there has always
been a large overlap of membership between the two bodies. 35 In 1961
the BAC was renamed The Business Council with the intention of
broadening the scope of the council to encompass all departments of
the Administration and not just the Department of Commerce, a decision that the council states was welcomed by President Kennedy. 36
The council is quite open about the nature of its influence, again similar to that of the CFR and Trilateralists:
Since its formation, the Council has been called upon by Presidents in turn for counsel and advice. The Council has also served
regularly as a de facto reservoir of experienced talent to assist an
administration in carrying out its public mandate. During the
critical years of the Second World War, for example, more than
50 Council members were called into government service to assist in meeting the tremendous challenges facing the nation.
Subsequent years have seen many Council members leave private life to serve in critical positions within government at the
request of Presidents from both parties. Today, as it has for
many years, the Council numbers among its members many
business leaders who are serving in various roles as public servants. And from its membership the Council has provided experienced business leaders as voluntary leaders for a variety of
special panels and commissions that help develop policy for the
federal government.
Its closed, elitist nature is also stated, having a limit as to numbers
and on recommendation in regard to influence, in this respect being
reminiscent of the original structure of the CFR:
Ibid.
Smoot, The Invisible Government.
36 The Business Council, “Background.”
34
35
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The Business Council limits itself to 150 active members, each of
whom is selected on the basis of personal qualities and position
as the chief executive officer of a leading private sector business
from commerce and industry. The Council seeks a wide representation of business leaders, both from a broad range of industrial and service sectors as well as from a geographical basis.
There are no political qualifications for membership. 37
Although the membership list is public, Council bylaws, accounts
and conference details are not. The current membership includes the
following corporations: Bechtel, American International Group, Amazon.com, Goldman Sachs, American Express, J. P. Morgan Chase,
Mattel,38 Thomason Reuters, Morgan Stanley, Washington Post Company, 39 General Electric, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Coca
Cola, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, Macy’s, Procter and Gamble, The
McGraw-Hill Companies, Boeing, Bank of America, Ford, Citigroup,
The Carlyle Group, AT & T, US Steel, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell,
Chevron. There are many others, showing that The Business Council
represents the highest echelons of the international financial elite.
The current chairman is James W. Owens (CFR), Caterpillar Corp.;
Vice Chairmen are from J P Morgan Chase, Exxon Mobil, Aetna, and
Archer Daniels Midland. Executive committee members include those
from Bechtel, Dow, Boeing, et al. Owens is on the Board of Directors
of the CFR.40
The other particularly important Establishment figure that McCarthy was
coming close to investigating was John J. McCloy, chairman of the CFR, Wall
Street lawyer, adviser to Presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan, Military Governor and US High Commissioner of post-war West Germany, chairman of the
Chase National and then the Chase Manhattan Bank, etc. The New York Times
writes of McCloy:
Ibid.
Mattel’s CEO Bob Eckert is also with the Trilateral Commission. The influence
of this toy company on young minds is a subject that merits attention; suffice it to
say here that Mattel brought out the “Bratz” dolls aimed at pre-teen girls. See:
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/blog-Bratz.htm
39 Represented by CEO Donald E. Graham. The role of flagship newspaper of the
Establishment in the destruction of McCarthy will be considered.
40 Council on Foreign Relations, Board of Directors,
http://www.cfr.org/about/people/board_of_directors.html
37
38
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
91
Between times and often concurrently, he was board chairman of
the Ford Foundation, chairman of the powerful Council on Foreign Relations and board chairman of a dozen or so other entities, including the Salk Institute and of E. R. Squibb & Sons. As a
lawyer, he represented scores of corporate clients, including 23
oil companies dealing with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
“Chairman of the Establishment”
Mr. McCloy was chairman of so many boards and had his hands
in so many ventures that the political writer Richard Rovere
once proposed that he was the informal “chairman of the Establishment,” a group that ”fixes major goals and constitutes itself a
ready pool of manpower for the more exacting labors of leadership.” 41
McCloy came to McCarthy’s attention when his committee began investigating communist influences in occupied Germany under McCloy’s authority.
Some of those questioned by the McCarthy committee declined to answer under the Fifth Amendment regarding self-incriminating testimony, or were evasive. Wes Vernon states:
Senator McCarthy at one point cited a “secret order” McCloy
had issued in 1944 as Assistant Secretary of War wherein Communists and their sympathizers were not to be discriminated
against by the Army unless a “specific finding” of disloyalty
could be made.
Writing about this in the 1992 book The Chairman, McCloy’s leftwing biographer Kai Bird concedes that “McCarthy had his facts
right, and given the current climate [1954], McCloy was aware
that he was vulnerable.”
Bird shows step-by-step how McCloy buttonholed Ike [Pres. Eisenhower] at every opportunity to take decisive action against
McCarthy. The occasions for exerting such influence included —
“John J. McCloy, Lawyer and Diplomat, Is Dead at 93. New York Times (March
12, 1989).
41
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but by no means were restricted to — the cozy camaraderie of a
“stag party” at the White House. 42
Vernon in his series on the destruction of McCarthy, cogently describes the
situation:
Thus, what was going on behind the scenes was in fact a
“strange bedfellow” coalition whereby extremely powerful
forces on Wall Street were pushing in the same direction as the
Communist Party USA — the goal being the destruction of the
Wisconsin senator and the termination of his investigations.
While the Communists were using their transmission belt apparatus to get the party line on McCarthy out on the street, Wall
Street titans managed the power plays. There was surely no evidence of a knowing alliance between the two or that anyone anywhere was pushing buttons to coordinate it, but the goal was
identical — once again certifying that — as has often been said,
“Not everybody who hated McCarthy was a Communist, but
every Communist hated McCarthy.”43
Another major figure about to be investigated by McCarthy was Cord
Meyer, an omnipresent CIA operative who was responsible for special operations involved with recruiting and using anti-Stalinist Leftists. Meyer for example had recruited to the CIA-sponsored, phony “New Left revolution” LSD
guru Timothy Leary and seminal radical feminist Gloria Steinem.
In 1948 Timothy Leary, a psychology graduate student, met Cord
Meyer at a Milwaukee convention of the Left-wing American Veterans
Committee, of which Meyer was a founder. Leary credited Meyer with,
“helping me understand my political cultural role more clearly.” In 1950
Meyer was assigned to the CIA’s International Relations Division,
which included the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 44 the aim of which
was to support, fund and infiltrate Left-wing movements.
Wes Vernon, “McCarthy — the Censure.” RenewAmercia (December 3, 2007).
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/vernon/071203
43 Ibid.
44 Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: the CIA and the World of Arts
and Letters (New York, The New Press, 2000).
42
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
93
An informative press obituary quoted by the Arlington National
Cemetery, the US Government resting place for military veterans,
states that Meyer served with the CIA for 26 years, and was sometimes criticised for his role in subsiding [Leftist] student and labor
groups as a counter to the USSR. Despite what is called his “anticommunism” (sic), which should read anti-Stalinism, “Mr. Meyer
faced accusations at the height of the McCarthy era that he was a
Communist sympathizer.” 45
Meyer was a co-founder, with James P. Warburg of the Warburg
banking dynasty, of the United World Federalists in 1947, to promote
a World State, and he became president of the World Federalists in
1948. 46
The Arlington obituary continues that Meyer was a special assistant
with the US founding delegation of the United Nations in 1945. “He
was young and idealistic and very much involved in the one world
movement, said Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a former American delegate to
the United Nations.” 47
In regard to Meyer’s role in the founding of the United Nations as
part of the American Delegation, it is important to note that according
to the 1948 Times interview: “There he saw the United Nations born.
He deplored the veto, which left U.N. virtually powerless to prevent
aggression.” It is highly significant that it was Joseph Stalin who
wrecked these globalist plans, by insisting on a veto. 48
McCarthy described the CIA as a “communist sinkhole.” Information had been given to him by the FBI on Leftists in the CIA. The socalled “Communism Fighter,” Cord Meyer, had already been considered a communist by the FBI but was protected by the CIA, which
according to Meyer’s own account refused to permit the FBI to interrogate him. 49 In 1953 McCarthy stated he intended to expose 100
communists in the CIA, and one of the first was to be Cord Meyer.
45 “Cord Meyer Jr., Communism Fighter at C.I.A., Dies at 80,” “Contemporary
Press Report” cited by Arlington National Cemetery, Cord Meyer Junior,
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:k_VSlYl_5rgJ:www.arlingtoncemetery.net
/cordmeyer.htm
46 “Opinion in a drawing room.” Time Magazine (February 16, 1948).
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794188,00.html.
47 “Cord Meyer Jr., Communism Fighter at C.I.A., Dies at 80,” op.cit.
48 K. R. Bolton, “Origins of the Cold War.”
49 Cord Meyer, Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 1980), 60–84.
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A media smear was launched under the direction of Frank Wisner,
the head of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, who marshalled
CIA-connected journalists Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson,
Walter Lippmann and Ed Murrow.50
Another influential CFR member who was exposed by McCarthy but ultimately called to account by Richard Nixon, was Alger Hiss, who also enjoyed
high-level patronage.
Helen Lehman Buttenwieser, daughter of Arthur Lehman and niece
of Sen. Herbert Lehman, was a lifelong, tireless defender of Hiss, a senior official of the US State Department, and General Secretary at the
United Nations Founding Conference, convicted for perjury in 1950.
Helen Buttenweiser was married to Benjamin Buttenwieser, a senior
partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Her sister Frances married into the Loeb
family. 51
THE SMEAR CAMPAIGN
As noted, the CIA instigated a smear campaign against McCarthy by calling
in their pet journalists. However, the smears against McCarthy had previously
been launched, headed up by the Establishment mouthpiece, the CIA connected Washington Post.
This was at a time when the Post was run by Katharine Meyer Graham,
daughter of the international banker Eugene Meyer. Katharine’s husband Philip, the publisher, was a CIA operative. Biographer Deborah Davis writes:
Katharine’s husband, Philip Graham, publisher of the Post until
his suicide in 1963, also up until that year served as director of
the CIA’s Project Mockingbird, whose object was to infiltrate the
corporate news media. The CIA apparently bought around 600
journalists. Philip Graham boasted that “you could get a journalist
cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple of hundred dollars a
month.”52
50
Jack Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker (New York: Random House, 1979),
208.
Susan Heller Anderson, “Helen Buttenwieser, 84, Lawyer and Civic Leader.”
New York Times (November 23, 1989).
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/23/obituaries/helen-buttenwieser-84lawyer-and-civic-leader.html?pagewanted=1
52 Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991), p.
131.
51
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
95
Katharine boasts that her paper coined the term ‘McCarthyism’.
While Ms Graham concedes that the Communist “party had succeeded in
establishing a surprising network of infiltrators and even spies,” the
Washington Post had already in 1947 started attacking the pre-McCarthy
House Committee on Un-American Activities. Graham cites one editorial as “putting the Post’s position succinctly,” stating that the congressional committee was “more dangerously un-American than that of
any of the groups or individuals that it had investigated.” What the Establishment feared was not McCarthy’s attacks on Soviet spies and agents,
but that an American nationalism would be generated as a by-product.
Both Katharine and Philip Graham were members of the CFR.53
When in early 1950 McCarthy launched his investigations, Phil
Graham was from the start antagonistic, and his antagonism cannot
be seen as anything other than a reflection of the attitude — and fear
— by the CIA and the US Establishment towards this upstart. Katharine remarks that, “much of Phil’s time was taken up with the McCarthy menace.... Most effective of all probably was Herblock’s series of
cartoons depicting McCarthy and his various outrageous activities. It
was Herblock who had coined the term ‘McCarthyism’.”54
Herblock or Herbert Block worked as the chief editorial cartoonist for The
Washington Post for 55 years, right up until the time of his death in 2001. While
McCarthy is of course now recalled by the US Establishment and its kept media as having created the USA’s darkest period of history, Herblock is eulogised as a hero. He won three Pulitzer Prizes (1942, 1954 — the year of McCarthy’s censure — and 1979, possibly for his smears against Nixon). He was
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. The Library of Congress
continues to feature an ongoing Herblock exhibition of editorial cartoons. 55 In
1999 he was awarded a Doctor of Arts from Harvard University. In the year
2000 the Library of Congress named him a “Living Legend.”56
The other Establishment media flagship is The New York Times,
which did not neglect its duties as part of the smear-campaign to destroy McCarthy. A pamphlet written during those times, by the AmerCFR membership lists: http://www.scribd.com/doc/29338152/Council-onForeign-Relations-Brochure
54 Katharine Graham, Personal History (New York: Knopf, 1997), 193.
55 “Enduring Outrage: Editorial cartoons of Herblock,” Library of Congress.
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/enduringoutrage/pages/objectlist.aspx
56 “Herblock’s History: political cartoons form the crash to the millennium,” Introduction. Library of Congress.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/intro-jhb.html
53
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ican patriot Joseph P. Kamp gives an alternative view of the so-called
“McCarthy era,” the time during which McCarthy supposedly held
Americans in fear. Kamp stated of The New York Times campaign: “The
Times has pursued Joe McCarthy with a hysteria of invective far outdoing the statesman whom it falsely brands as master of the smear.”57
Kamp stated that the New York Times had described McCarthy as a
“traducer of reputations and mud-slinger extraordinary,” in its issue
of July 10, 1952. 58 Later the Times editorialized that McCarthy “preys
on fear, he stirs up hatred ... via the route of wild charges, gross distortions, and assorted form of demagoguery.” 59
On March 22, 1953 the Times editorialized:
If these attacks have not yet reached a point of grave danger, it is
because they are mainly conducted by men of small intellectual
stature. … They are little men who might otherwise be overlooked. They are little men who are intoxicated with a bit of
power and splash of publicity. We cannot indefinitely have these
arrogant upstarts prying into matters which are no affairs of
theirs, including the private opinions of our citizens. 60
As Kamp commented, this was “pure propaganda. It included not
a name or fact.” 61 However, it is typical of the nonsense that has continued to this day to be heaped upon the memory of McCarthy.
In contrast, one of McCarthy’s prime subjects of interest, Prof.
Owen Lattimore, was heralded as a hero by the Times, 62 including a
feature article with Lattimore’s photo on page one accompanying a
glowing review of his book Ordeal by Slander. Kamp states, however,
that McCarthy’s own book McCarthyism: The Fight for America was
blacklisted by The Times, as were all other books by McCarthy’s publisher, Devin-Adair. 63
Jospeh P Kamp, How the New York Times Betrayed its Readers on “McCarthyism”
(New York: Headlines, 1954), 2.
58 Ibid., 4.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid., 5.
62 Times Sunday Review of Books (July 30, 1950), 1.
63 Kamp, How the New York Times Betrayed Its Readers on “McCarthyism,” 5.
57
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
97
The Times was published during this period by Arthur Hays Sulzberger, whose other associations included serving as a trustee of the
Rockefeller Foundation (1939–1957) and membership in the CFR. 64
CLIMATE OF INTOLERANCE
The cliché-ridden descriptions of the “McCarthy era” have become
part of popular American mythology in which decent and intelligent
citizens were “blacklisted” and subjected to “witch-hunts.” Given that
it was the US Establishment that mobilised against “McCarthyism,” a
more critical consideration of this myth is warranted. American scholar and poet E. Merrill Root of Harvard, a self-declared “McCarthyite,” and hardly the stereotypical “little man who would otherwise
be overlooked,” as the Times portrayed “McCarthyites,” described
something of the atmosphere of this era for those who supported the
Senator:
The “Age of McCarthy, as the Little Orphan Annie “intellectuals” report it, is an artifact, an illusion of bad consciences, a lie.
There was no such thing. I lived in those years and through
them, and I know. I was a conservative college professor then,
and I know the climate of that time. One “Liberal” colleague
would pass me in the corridors of my college and would never
speak. My seven “Liberal” colleagues in the English department
sought to discourage my best students from taking more courses
with me… Hostility, criticism, opposition, did all they could to
keep me from writing my book Collectivism on the Campus. As
Ludwig Lewisohn well said, it was a time when: “The only scholar, the only type of student who is still forced into a defensive
position on American campuses ... is the conservative teacher or
student.”
I know the truth of that by my own experiences. I said publicly
that Joe McCarthy was one of my three favorite Senators (The
other two were William Jenner of Indiana and Robert Taft of
Ohio), and so I was regarded in academic circles as one who had
CFR membership lists: http://www.scribd.com/doc/29338152/Council-onForeign-Relations-Brochure
64
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The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 4, Winter 2010–2011
intellectual leprosy. I became a tin can for intellectuals to shoot
at. 65
Interestingly, Prof. Root also mentioned that the president of his
college, who was fortunately resistant to the pressures to get rid of
Root, when seeking out funds for the college from “among the rich
and powerful,” stated that he was told: “Go home and fire E. Merrill
Root first,” to which he replied: “Gentlemen, Earlham College is not
for sale.” 66 Prof. Root continued:
I tell this with no bitterness, with no concern for myself, with no
complaint; that, in Academe, it was those who supported Senator McCarthy who were ostracized, attacked, and in danger.
Meanwhile at my college, as at all colleges I knew (and I knew
many) the majority of the faculties spoke openly, and freely, and
with venom, of Senator McCarthy.
They said they were afraid; but, as God is my witness, they had
nothing to fear! To attack McCarthy — virulently, venomously
— was merely to be a good little gilded weathervane, showing
which way the prevailing academic wind was blowing. It was
smart. It was chic. It was the cliché of the academic hour. It was
to add your conventional yip, yip, to the chorus of the hounds.
… It was the holy cow of the “intellectuals.”… You were not on
the inside unless you were anti-McCarthy. I know, I was there. I
was a McCarthyite, and I learned how ancient lepers in Jerusalem felt when the good citizens cried out, “Unclean, unclean!” 67
A major part of the mythology of the “McCarthy era” was that
those who were targeted by “McCarthyism” were “blacklisted” and
could not work in the professions. Much weeping and wailing is
made over this. Yet the Establishment maintained its own blacklist
that included for example, Lillian Gish, for having supported the
America First Committee. Consequently Gish could not get work in
E. Merrill Root, “Joe McCarthy: Why the “Liberals” Hate Him Still.” American
Opinion 16(3) (March 1973), 86.
66 Ibid., 87–88.
67 Ibid., 88.
65
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
99
the movies or on stage. 68 Ayn Rand, the novelist and scriptwriter, recounted the atmosphere in Hollywood:
Everyone who has testified for the Committee 69 — not the big
stars, but the lesser-known actors and writers who were considered dispensable, and those who were free-lancing and were
not under contract to a major studio — lost their jobs. Morrie
Ryskind had more work than he could handle; he never again
worked in Hollywood. Adolphe Menjou, who was also freelancing, got fewer and fewer jobs; after about a year, he could
find no work at all. I was not victimized, because of The Fountainhead, and because I had a contract with Hal Wallis.
The people whom McCarthy thought he was exposing as part of a
Soviet conspiracy had associations with the highest echelons of US Establishment think tanks such as the CFR and BAC, and also threatened to upset the CIA Cold War operations involved in recruiting anti-Soviet Leftists, including communists, whom McCarthy is likely to
have regarded as at most “Soviet infiltrators” whose well-placed patrons were naïve rather than conspiratorial. On June 22, 1954, in the
course of the Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy charged that the
CIA was infiltrated by communists. What was not known at the time
was that Paul F. Hellmuth, who channelled funds to CIA operations,
was a member of the law firm of Hale and Dorr, the firm of Joseph
Welch, 70 who was counsel for the Army during the McCarthy enquiry
into communist subversion. While McCarthy was censured and has
been forever vilified as an abusive inquisitor, like the abuse and theatrics he had endured from the hypocrite Sen. Watkins, Establishment
lawyer Welch damned McCarthy to his face as “reckless” and “cruel.”
Welch just could not find it in himself to “forgive McCarthy.”71
Nevertheless, if one reads the transcript of the Army-McCarthy
hearings, it should be conceded that it was Welch who acted in a
posturing, bullying manner when questioning McCarthy aide Roy
“Lillian Gish Online Tribute and Memorial Website,”
http://www.respectance.com/Lillian_Gish/
69 House Un-American Activities Committee. The HUAC investigations into Hollywood were not part of the McCarthy investigations; they were begun several years
prior to McCarthy’s investigations which focused on government institutions.
70 Medford Evans, op.cit., 240.
71 Ibid., 187.
68
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Cohn, who was deferential to Welch throughout the questioning; and
it was when McCarthy brought up Welch’s having sought to bring into the hearings Fred Fisher, a young lawyer with Hale and Dorr,
whom McCarthy pointed out had been a member of a Communist
Party front, the National Lawyers’ Guild, when Welch not only got
abusive towards McCarthy, but refused to discuss the matter further
when McCarthy attempted to prove his assertions. 72 The televised
confrontation is said by modern mythology to have undermined
McCarthy’s reputation, but this is not how the transcript of the hearing reads. McCarthy merely questioned the wisdom of placing someone in such a position who had been associated with a Communist
Party front.
Paul F. Hellmuth was exposed by Sol Stern in 1967 as one of the
CIA operatives involved in Establishment manipulation of the New
Left via the National Students Association. The NSA had been formed
in 1947 in response to Soviet predominance at an international, students conference held at Prague in 1946, and in 1950 an anti-Soviet international student organization was formed in Stockholm centered
around the NSA. Stern in his Ramparts article exposed the multifaceted ramifications of the CIA Cold War operations, from which
emerged the New Left and such enduring spin-offs as feminism via
Gloria Steinem. Stern found that the address for several fronts used to
channel CIA funds to the New Left had the same address as “the prestigious law firm of Hale and Dorr.” Hellmuth of Hale and Dorr, was a
co-trustee of one source, The Independent Foundation, and sole trustee of the J. Frederick Brown Foundation. Funding from the likes of
the Rockefellers et al. was provided separately from the CIA channels.
This control of the NSA was part of the broader Cold War offensive
that included the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Steinem enterprise.73
Whatever the association that exists between the CIA and the Boston law firm, Stephen Preston of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and
Robert D. Marcus and Anthony Marcus (Eds.) “The Army-McCarthy Hearings,
1954,” On Trail: American History Through Court Proceedings and Hearings, Vol. II (St.
James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1998), 136–51.
73 Sol Stern, “A Short Account of International Student Politics and the Cold War
with Particular Reference to the NSA, CIA, etc.,” Ramparts (March 1967). 29–38.
http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa.html
72
Bolton, “Joe McCarthy’s Real Enemies”
101
Dorr was nominated by Pres. Obama to be CIA chief counsel. 74 Is it
just coincidence that the man chosen by the US Administration for the
job of ridiculing McCarthy before the publicly broadcast ArmyMcCarthy hearings was a partner in a law firm that also had connections with the CIA and whose Paul F. Hellmuth was involved in the
same CIA Cold War operations that McCarthy was apparently about
to expose with the intentions of investigating “communist infiltration”
of the CIA and in particular the activities of Cord Meyer?
CONCLUSION
McCarthy was finished off by a coalition of Big Business, the CFR,
the Business Advisory Council, the US Administration, the New York
Times, the Washington Post, and CIA. He carried on as Senator for a
further several years during which time he was ostracized and his
speeches boycotted in the Senate. McCarthy was wrecked emotionally
and physically by the campaign against him, Fred J. Cook describing
him as “a pale ghost of his former self.” He died in 1957 at the age of
48, having turned to increasingly heavy drinking and in a state of depression after his censure. 75 E. Merrill Root cogently described the situation with which McCarthy was probably unknowingly confronted:
I do not think that the Senator ever quite saw the real nature of
the enemy within, the full scope of the Conspiracy in New York
and Washington. 76
Ironically, during the same period a Congressman, Carroll Reece,
was trying to investigate the source of the power that McCarthy had
not even yet reached in his investigations, that of the tax exempt
foundations and the role they play in channelling funds from the oligarchy to Leftist causes. 77 If McCarthy had been aware of the findings
of the Reece Committee, and there does not seem to be any evidence
that he was, he would have come realized who and what were behind
The Blog of Legal Times, “Wilmer Partner chosen for CIA Legal Counsel”
(April 16, 2009).
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/04/wilmer-partner-nominated-for-ciageneral-counsel.html
75 Fred J. Cook, The Nightmare Decade: The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy
(New York: Random House, 1971), 537.
76 E. Merrill Root, “Joe McCarthy,” 93.
77 See Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, 955.
74
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the subversion he was trying to expose. The manner by which Congressman Reece was thwarted was quite different from the frenetic
climate that faced McCarthy — that of the silent treatment rather than
the smear. Perhaps for a time the hysteria generated both for and
against McCarthy served to distract public attention away from the
Reece findings, and McCarthy was allowed to pursue “Soviet agents”
until he started coming close to the same influences that Reece had
being attempting to uncover?
At any rate, in 1954, the year of McCarthy’s Senate censure, the
Reece committee report “showing the left-wing associations of the interlocking nexus of tax-exempt foundations” was released “rather
quietly,” as Establishment historian Prof. Carroll Quigley states it.78
The committee had begun in 1953, originally prompted by questions
on Rockefeller funding for Alfred Kinsey’s sexology studies. Quigley
describes the leftists of the period as not exercising their own power
but “the power of the international financial coteries.” And he notes
that it would have been a simple matter to make these Left-wingers
inconspicuous had it not been for the Reece committee tracing their
influence back to the foundations. It is notable that Quigley refers to
public “anger and suspicions” being directed towards the “energetic
Left-wingers” beginning in 1950, 79 the year that McCarthy launched
his campaign. In tandem. Reece and McCarthy, albeit with very different styles, could have brought the real conspirators and subversives
to justice.
K. R. Bolton, Ph.D. (Hist.Th.), D.Div., Th.D., Ph.D. (h.c.), is a Fellow
of the Academy of Social and Political Research, Athens. He is also
Contributing Writer, Foreign Policy Journal; Board of Governors,
Global Academy, India; assistant editor, Ab Aeterno. He is a widely
published author in academic journals and popular press.
78
79
Quigley, Tragedy & Hope. 95.
Ibid.