by J. W Lateer
For the JFK researcher, the Davis case could have much wider implications. Some have suggested that Lee Harvey Oswald may have been acting as an agent of SISS in 1963. This case proves that, at least in 1951, a Senate committee was willing to employ its own spies in Europe. Further, in the Davis case, SISS and McCarthy showed interest in Davis because he was believed to be a Communist and therefore was particularly useful to them. Also, in working through attorney Farrand, SISS and McCarthy showed they would gladly conspire with private right-wing extremists and apparently use their money to fund their spy operations. In the opinion of McCarthy biographer Thomas Reeves, this activity amounted to subversion of the U.S. Government. The story of Charles Davis is found at page 365 of the Reeves biography.
Lee Harvey Oswald was involved with the U.S. State Department in his defection. He received funds from the State Department to finance his return from the Soviet Union. The case of Charles Davis looked like a clear precedent for this type of activity.
In April 1951, President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur. The Republican Policy Committee unanimously approved a declaration asking “whether the Truman-Acheson-Marshall triumvirate was preparing for a ‘super-Munich’ in Asia.” The Committee consultant who made this assertion was Julius Klein. The name of Julius Klein keeps popping up in many of the important books about the Kennedy assassination. Later on, we will devote an entire chapter discussing General Klein. He was involved with Senator Thomas Dodd in the 1960s. His name was tied to the Kennedy assassination conspirators in a magazine called the Executive Intelligence Review. There is testimony by Klein before the Senate Ethics Committee which corroborates this connection.
Senator William Burnett Benton, a Rhodes Scholar, was an outspoken enemy of McCarthy. He had served in the State Department as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs before being appointed to the Senate. Benton filed charges with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections. This became known as the Gillette Committee and this committee investigated McCarthy. The Gillette Committee eventually filed a report known as the Hennings report finding McCarthy guilty of several (mostly insignificant) infractions.
In a Massachusetts Senatorial election contest between Republican Henry Cabot Lodge and John F. Kennedy, McCarthy Committee Council Roy Cohn reported to sources that Joseph P. Kennedy asked Joe McCarthy to steer clear of Massachusetts. Despite the fact that Joe McCarthy was in many ways a creation of Joseph P. Kennedy, Kennedy felt that since McCarthy would be campaigning for the Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, that the presence of McCarthy and his activities would hurt, not help, his son JFK in Massachusetts. This proves how convoluted the McCarthy anti-Communist crusade had become. It overlapped party lines and wound up pitting Republican McCarthy against his mentor Joseph P. Kennedy who had himself helped launch McCarthyism.
At the beginning, JFK was a very strong anti-Communist. In January, 1949, more than a month before the February Wheeling speech by McCarthy, Congressman Kennedy had lashed out, attacking the policies of “the Lattimores and the [China expert John King] Fairbanks” of the State Department. JFK blasted the Yalta accords and Secretary of State General George C. Marshall. At that time, JFK strongly supported the McCarran Committee. JFK was clearly on the side of McCarthy at that time.
In Mid December, 1952, a panel of the Civil Service Loyalty Review Board recommended the dismissal of China expert John Carter Vincent (a 25-year veteran of the Foreign Service), despite Vincent’s having been cleared four times by the State Department’s Loyalty-Security Board.
Eisenhower Becomes President And The Eisenhower-McCarthy Feud Begins
Following the Republican victory in the Senate in 1952, in late November of that year, McCarthy announced he would chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a/k/a the McCarthy Subcommittee. Republicans on the Subcommittee would be McCarthy, Karl Mundt, Everett Dirksen, and Charles Potter. Democratic floor leader Lyndon B. Johnson appointed three freshmen Democrats: W. Stewart Symington, Henry M. Jackson and John L. McClellan.
John Foster Dulles became the new Secretary of State under the incoming Eisenhower Administration. One of the first acts of Dulles was to dissolve a State Department Committee which had cleared John Carter Vincent on the loyalty question. But then Republican appointee Dulles personally cleared Vincent of all charges. As Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles had to confront the realities facing his State Department employees. He did not have the luxury (which the McCarthyites had) of wallowing in the anti-Communist mud.
Dulles was warned by right-wing millionaire Alfred Kohlberg about John Carter Vincent. Kohlberg was the financial backer of a right-wing publication called Plain Talk. Three days after the 1954 elections, Dulles fired another State Department employee by the name of John Paton Davies, Jr. The grounds cited were a “lack of judgment, discretion and reliability.”
The first bill passed by the new Eisenhower Administration was from the Foreign Relations Committee. This bill created a new post at the State Department. The title was Under Secretary of State for Administration and Operations. Designed, in part, to guard against subversive infiltration of the Foreign Service, this post went to Donald B. Lourie, President of Quaker Oats Corporation. The post of Chief Security Officer went to McCarthy’s friend, Scott McLeod. McLeod was a former FBI agent and former Senate staff member in the office of Senator Styles Bridges (R.NH)). McLeod became the anti-Communist enforcer at the State Department.
In the McCarthy Subcommittee, McCarthy appointed his friend Robert J. Morris as Chief Counsel. There was already a General Counsel by the name of Francis Flanagan (a former FBI agent), so the Committee would have two head lawyers (which was apparently acceptable to McCarthy).
Joseph P. Kennedy asked that Robert F. Kennedy become Chief Counsel of the McCarthy Committee. Instead of working for the McCarthy committee, Morris decided to remain with the SISS committee. However, McCarthy then hired attorney Roy Cohn as the Chief Counsel of his committee instead of Robert Kennedy. RFK became Assistant Counsel. Joseph P. Kennedy was promised that RFK would soon become Chief Counsel. This never happened.
When he was attending the University of Virginia Law School and serving as the President of the Legal Forum there, Robert F. Kennedy had invited McCarthy to be a speaker. Politically, RFK could easily qualify as a McCarthyite. The University of Virginia still possesses a paper he wrote while at law school attacking Roosevelt’s “sellout” at Yalta. Robert Kennedy also had a strong personal fondness for McCarthy that would continue for many years. Cohn brought in a whole new atmosphere to the committee. He was friends with Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, Walter Winchell and George Sokolsky (a Hearst columnist). At that time, these four men were the most influential contacts possible for a person to have in Washington.
Don Surine was named Assistant Counsel on the McCarthy Committee. He was joined on the McCarthy staff by Daniel G. Buckley, ex-Communist Howard Rushmore (a Hearst reporter), and the Cohn-hired “unpaid Chief Consultant” G. David Schine. McCarthy began to battle with the rival McCarran Committee over jurisdiction in the war against Communism. McCarthy at first proposed three “Sub-Sub” Committees (which never came to pass). He then made a partnership with the McCarran Committee for sharing information. This agreement also included a third committee, HUAC.
By mid-April, 1953, there were 8 probes in progress. McCarthy wanted access to IRS and classified FCC files. McCarthy began opposing the nomination of James B. Conant, former President of Harvard University as High-Commissioner of Germany. John F. Kennedy announced that he would vote in favor of Conant. William F. Buckley began writing speeches for McCarthy. Buckley was both a CIA asset and would also become the nation’s leading conservative journalist/publisher.
As an example of the dysfunction created by McCarthy and his activities, McCarthy opposed the nomination of Chip Bohlen as ambassador to the Soviet Union. When Stalin died on March 5, 1953, there was no U.S. Ambassador in Moscow to deal with the serious events which soon followed. As we have noted before
, injury to the State Department in situations like this would likely cause harm to America.
John Foster Dulles approved Chip Bohlen personally as a candidate after reviewing his FBI files. The Foreign Relations Committee approved Bohlen unanimously. On the Senate floor, McCarthy charged that Dulles had cleared Bohlen over the objections of Scott McLeod, the State Department’s Security Officer. Scott McLeod would become the lightning rod of the State Department war that may have ultimately contributed heavily to the assassination of JFK. This will be explained in the chapters dealing with the case of Otto Otepka, an employee of the State Department.
As the Eisenhower Administration was becoming more and more frequently pitted against McCarthy and McCarran, Vice President Richard Nixon began to act as Eisenhower’s liaison with the radical right. The opposition to Bohlen was based in part on the fact that Bohlen had been present at the Yalta conference with Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. Everett Dirksen famously told reporters “I reject Yalta and I reject Yalta men.” Though later in his career Dirksen would be promoted as a moderate, the wise old man type, at this stage Dirksen was as radically right-wing as McCarthy and his allies. As we shall see, Dirksen was the Republican closest to the actual assassination plot itself.
In the Senate, voting against Bohlen were McCarthy, Bridges, Bricker, Dirksen, Dworshak, Welker, Goldwater, Hickenlooper, Malone, Mundt, and Schoepel, joined by the two Democrats, McCarran and Edwin Johnson. These names represented the sinister extremist opposition to the Eisenhower Administration. This group seemed to oppose virtually every act of the executive branch (of either party) right up into the administration of LBJ and even beyond. Apparently the purpose of these Senators in voting against Bohlen was to require the appointment of a right-wing candidate to each and every important State Department position around the world. We will see how this irresponsible pattern of confrontation would ultimately end in tragedy and disaster for the country.
When the Republicans gained control of the Senate in 1953, Senator William Jenner (R. IN) became Chairman of SISS. SISS traveled to N.Y. to probe U.N. employees, then to Washington and Boston to probe private schools. HUAC began to probe for Communists in New York education and Hollywood. They summoned Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam and grilled him for 10 hours. In early February 1953, the McCarthy Subcommittee began hearings on State Department files.
In mid-summer of 1953, Joe McCarthy reached the height of his political career. In that period, he got an endorsement from Francis Cardinal Spellman. In 1953, there emerged into the spotlight a large-scale data analyst named Joseph Brown Matthews. Matthews started as a Methodist minister, switched to being a Communist and then back to being an ultra-right wing McCarthyite. He was, however, an expert on Communism, having worked for the Dies Committee and was the creator of the huge filing system of the House Un-American Affairs Committee. Matthews had written an outrageous article to the effect that the greatest number of Communists in the U.S. were to be found amongst the Protestant clergy.
Shortly after Matthews was hired the word got out to the public and the Protestant clergy began to protest from the pulpit and otherwise. At this time, many historians feel that McCarthy was at the absolute apex of his popularity. Dr. A. Powell Davis, minister of All Souls Church in Washington, D.C. finally voiced the opinion that McCarthy was, “to a great extent,” the de facto ruler of the United States. It is hard for the reader 70 years later to evaluate the degree to which McCarthy was in fact running the country. It is significant, however, that the first person to come out and make that claim would be a Protestant religious leader, which indicates that McCarthy was unpopular among a spectrum of American citizens.
Who was motivating McCarthy besides McCarthy himself? At this stage around 1953, McCarthyism had spread from its beginning with McCarthy and the three Catholic activists. Its base in Congress now included right-wing conservative Republicans like Sen. Everett Dirksen (R.IL), and Sen. Karl Mundt (R.SD) and former Congressman, Senator and now Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Southern Segregationists were also included; Senators like Strom Thurmond.
In May 1953 came Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450 which eliminated the distinction between “loyalty” and “security.” The effect of this order was to blur the difference between firing someone for subversion on the one hand, and for something like homosexuality on the other. This allowed McCarthy to claim that there were a large number of subversives being uncovered because this definition conflated communism, alcoholism, homosexuality and any other type of behavior perceived to be dangerous.
The Censure And Death Of Senator Joseph
McCarthy
McCarthy spoke out against Allen Dulles for refusing to allow CIA agents to testify before his committee. McCarthy and his staff were planning to investigate the CIA. That would have been ugly. On July 10, 1953, the three Democrats on the McCarthy Committee resigned in protest. Arthur Eisenhower, brother of Dwight Eisenhower, publicly equated Joe with Hitler.
The armistice with North Korea was announced on July 27, 1953. In June of 1953, McCarthy formed plans to investigate the U.S. Army, an ill-fated decision as we shall soon see. “Moderate” Everett Dirksen introduced legislation barring government employment to anyone taking the 5th Amendment.
Joe McCarthy married Jean Kerr on September 29, 1953. Some thought that this was a way to combat rumors that McCarthy, 45, was gay. Pope Pius XII sent “paternal and apostolic” blessing to the new couple. And then (per committee counsel Roy Cohn), there came new information on Communists in the Military.
Joe tried to accuse the highly respected General Maxwell Taylor and diplomat John J. McCloy of being involved in a reported plot. This supposed plot was designed to place 125 German Communists in the Office of the High Commissioner of Germany. Joe had gone out further and further on a precarious limb. At this time, the McCarthy committee staff had grown to include 11 investigators.
McCarthy granted the minority Democrats the right to choose their own counsel. They chose Robert F. Kennedy. When the Democrats took over the Senate, Robert F. Kennedy would become the Chief Counsel of the McCarthy Subcommittee in 1955. The Committee continued the investigation into espionage at Fort Monmouth, N.J. Then, under the direction of Kennedy and Senator McClellan, it merged with a Senate labor-related subcommittee to allow a change of direction and to delve into the issue of organized crime and labor racketeering. When the McCarthy Committee merged with the Labor Committee to form the McClellan Committee, the stated mission of the newly merged committee was to investigate Communists in the labor movement. Both JFK and RFK were involved in this new mission. Barry Goldwater was also a member.
The two Kennedy’s hijacked the new McClellan Committee and took it off the tracks it had previously followed. It was supposed to investigate Communists in the labor movement. Instead, it became focused on labor issues, financial corruption and mainly on labor leader Jimmy Hoffa. Although they didn’t know it at the time, the two Kennedys were playing with fire. The McCarthy Committee was the nerve center of the world-wide battle against Communism. To run that committee into the ditch was unforgivable according to the special-interest adversaries of Communism.
Toward the end of 1953, McCarthy had vacationed in the mountains of Mexico with actor Ward Bond and Clint Murchison. Murchison was very close to J. Edgar Hoover. He paid for Hoover’s annual vacation to his California race track. Perhaps significantly, Murchison was also a Texas oil millionaire. According to an LBJ mistress named Madeleine Brown in her book Texas In The Morning, Murchison hosted a party for the Kennedy assassination conspirators at his home the night before the assassination.
On February 24, 1953, Everett Dirksen was called to the White House and told by Ike to 1) get Roy Cohn fired, 2) end the practice of one-man committee hearings and 3) strip McCarthy of his power to unilaterally issue subpoenas.
Ike and his counselors had decided to force a change. Ike had concluded that the attacks on the Army by McCarthy were caused by Roy Cohn’s gay relationship wi
th G. David Schine. Cohn had tried to force special treatment of Schine by the U.S. Army where Schine was a private serving on active duty.
The Army had appointed attorney Joseph Welsh as its counsel in the hearings. McCarthy had tried to smear a young law firm colleague of Welsh as being involved somehow in pro-Communist activities. In defense of his young colleague, Welsh uttered the famous words “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?”
After the hearings, Cohn and minority counsel Robert F Kennedy almost came to blows over Cohn’s threat to “get” the junior Senator from Washington, Henry Jackson. Cohn claimed that Jackson had written something that was pro-Communist. McCarthy sensed trouble. He swiftly transferred one of his favorites, Don Surine, away from SISS and back to his personal staff for protection.
LBJ Favors The Censure Of McCarthy
Favored by minority leader Lyndon Johnson, a special committee of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats was picked to decide on a censure of McCarthy. The members were picked by majority leader William Knowland and Lyndon Johnson, who was thought to be much smarter than Knowland and was thus able to put his own allies on the Committee. The members were:
R-Arthur Watkins (Utah)
D-Edward C. Johnson (Colo)
R-Frank Carlson (Ks)
D-John C. Stennis (Miss)
R- Francis Case (SD)
D-Samuel Ervin (NC)
