by J. W Lateer
Because congressional moderates were still intimidated by McCarthy, on August 24, 1954 the Congress passed the Communist Control Act. It determined that “The Communist Party is the agent of a hostile foreign power” and that it “should be outlawed.” This was a major new step toward anti-Communism.
The six-man bipartisan Watkins Committee unanimously voted to censure Joseph McCarthy on two grounds 1) his treatment of Senator Robert C. Hendrickson on the Gillette Committee and 2) his denunciation of General Ralph W. Zwicker, who had testified before his committee. They came close to adding a third count based on the violation of executive privilege over classified documents. In the elections of 1954, Democrats regained control of the Senate and the House.
At the annual Catholic War Veterans meeting Msgr. Edward R Martin, as a representative of Cardinal Spellman supported McCarthy in Brooklyn and formed a group called “Save McCarthy.” He [McCarthy] likened himself to Martin Dies. Dies was a Red-hunter driven from public life by Roosevelt and the Democrats. Senator Barry Goldwater spoke out, saying “censure would be a victory for Communism.” Senator John Stennis, noted for his basic fairness and integrity, strongly urged censure. Senator Stennis, serving as chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, later presided over the next censure of a rabid anti-Communist Catholic activist and northern state Senator, Thomas Dodd, in 1967.
On Meet The Press, Senator Sam Ervin spoke against McCarthy. Ervin called for actual expulsion of McCarthy from the Senate. Senators Dirksen and Goldwater were among McCarthy’s supporters. In the final wording, the motion against McCarthy was to “condemn” him, rather than “censure” him, for abuse of the Gillette Committee and the Watkins Committee, was only the third in Senate history.
In the summer of 1956, in Appleton, McCarthy was experiencing delirium tremens as a result of his alcoholism. In January, 1957, with the help of Cardinal Spellman, the McCarthy’s adopted a child. On May 2, 1957, Joe McCarthy died at age 48 of hepatic failure. At a requiem mass held for him, there were 72 priests, monsignors and bishops.
Notes:
The information in Chapter 11 on Senator Joseph McCarthy can be found almost entirely in the definitive and very objective classic biography of McCarthy called The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, by Thomas C. Reeves. This book is completely objective and relies on information largely gathered from Wisconsin and other newspapers. The personal papers of Joseph McCarthy have never been easily available to historians, having been only partially released almost 50 years after his death.
Other relevant information on the subjects covered in Chapter 11 can be found in The Ordeal of Otto Otepka by William J. Gill. Another, more general, but incisive source is the book Diplomat Among Warriors by Robert D. Murphy.
Chapter 12
Judge Robert J. Morris
If JFK assassination research is like walking through a haunted house at Halloween, then Robert J. Morris is the skeleton that seems to pop up everywhere.
We first met Judge Robert Morris when he was at a meeting in New York in 1954. Also at the meeting were Princess Alexandra Tolstoy, Metropolitan Anastsy of the Russian Orthodox Church and retired General Charles Willoughby (one of the Three Barons). All three of these people were either part of the JFK plot or very close to the center of it.
Judge Robert J. Morris was a virulent anti-Communist in the period from the 1940’s to the 1990’s. He served as a lawyer for various legislative and Congressional Committees from the 1940’s on. His most important Congressional Committee role was as lawyer for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee chaired at times by Senators James O. Eastland and Thomas J. Dodd.
Morris was President of the University of Dallas at the time of the assassination. He was privy to confidential information surrounding the Otto Otepka case in October, 1963. Given his long-time relationship with the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (which was in the vortex of the assassination plot) and his presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Morris was very likely involved with the assassination. At the very least, his biography tracks closely the movement which culminated in the assassination and provides a clear road-map of the forces that resulted in the JFK murder.
Early Life
Morris was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on September 30, 1914. He was raised in New Jersey and was a graduate of St. Peter’s College a Catholic Jesuit College, (now a university) located in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. After his bachelor’s degree, he graduated from Fordham University School of Law. In a book which he wrote called Disarmament, Weapon of Conquest, he sets forth his resumé at page 148 as follows:
Counsel and Chief Counsel, U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee 1951-1958. [In the text of his book, Morris states that he was Counsel or Chief Counsel from 1950 to 1953, and again from 1956 to 1958.]
Counsel U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1950 (Tydings Committee).
Advisor U.S. Senate Rules Committee 1954.
Officer-in-Charge Advance Psychological Warfare Section of CINPAC on Guam 1945.
Officer-in-Charge Soviet Counterintelligence Third Naval District 1941-1943; Officer-in-Charge Counterintelligence Third Naval District 1945. Morris reached the rank of Commander in the Navy.
Justice Municipal Court New York City 1953-1956.
President of University of Dallas 1960-1962.
Presently (1979) columnist and civil libertarian.
Like the head of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, Morris had risen to the rank of Commander in the Navy. This is probably an unfair comparison except that it illustrates that the military was not picky when it came to the extreme politics of its higher ranking officers. Another prime example would be General Edwin Walker.
After being chosen to serve as president of the University of Dallas in 1960, Morris got into conflict within the university because of his extreme right-wing anti-Communist beliefs. He left that position in 1962. Also in 1962, he served as attorney for General Walker, who was arrested and charged with inciting a riot during the insurrection at the University of Mississippi in September, 1962. Morris convinced a grand jury not to indict Walker.
Robert Morris and Joseph McCarthy
When the Tydings Committee investigated Senator McCarthy, the Republican minority members insisted that New York lawyer Robert Morris be hired as their counsel. Morris worked diligently to defend McCarthy and afterward was hired on to McCarthy’s staff.
When ex-Communist Louis Budenz appeared before the McCarthy Committee in 1950 to accuse an assortment of people of being Communist, he admitted that he had discussed the case of alleged Communist Owen Lattimore with four extreme anti-Communists: Arthur Kohlberg, Charles Kersten, Robert Morris and J.B. Matthews. Notice that Kersten and Morris, both Catholic activists were working closely with the McCarthy Committee. J. B. Matthews was the nation’s leading expert on the statistics and the technical aspects of organized Communism in the U.S. and had been employed for that purpose by the House Un-American Affairs Committee. Arthur Kohlberg had been the leader of the China Lobby which supported the regime of Chaing Kai-shek. (Chaing Kai-shek was a Methodist).
In late December, 1950, the Senate authorized another Congressional investigation into internal security matters and the Senate Judiciary named Pat McCarran, who was Chairman of Judiciary, to chair the new Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) Privately, Joe McCarthy had McCarran name his friend and staff member Robert Morris as Chief Counsel of SISS with sole right to hire the assistants of his choice. One he picked was research director Benjamin Mandel, who would go on to serve many years in that position. Mandel had held that same job title for HUAC. Also assigned to the new Committee was Don Surine, an investigator who was technically still a staff member of McCarthy’s office.
In January, 1951, Robert Morris was involved in a seizure of documents from a farm in Maine. The documents were “dead files” from an organization called the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR). The IPR was founded in 1925 and was funded by the Rockefeller F
oundation. Its purpose was to analyze and discuss issues related to countries of the Pacific rim. Arthur Kohlberg, who was previously mentioned as an associate of Robert Morris, was a dissident member of IPR. When the documents were seized, that action triggered a multi-year investigation of the IPR by SISS and other investigators. The charge against the IPR was that it was riddled with Communists and that it had been responsible for the loss of China to Communism.
One of the most thorough and valuable books about the JFK assassination is General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy by Dr. Jeffrey Caulfield. This book has nearly 800 pages of text. It represents research begun in 1992 and lasting through the book’s publication in 2015. The central thesis of General Walker is to put the blame for the JFK assassination, not so much on General Walker, but rather on the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee of which Robert Morris was the chief counsel. In General Walker, Robert Morris is cited on more than 50 pages based on the book’s index.
Dr. Caulfield studies SISS when it changed from only investigating Communism to also investigating civil rights activists and furthering the segregationist agenda of its official chairman, Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi. According to Caulfield, Robert Morris was a close friend of General Walker. As mentioned, Morris served as Walker’s attorney at Ole Miss during the 1962 insurrection there.
In 1956, Guy Banister and Hubert Badeaux of the intelligence unit of the New Orleans Police Department were both assisting Senator Eastland in his investigation of Communists in the civil rights movement. At this time, Robert Morris was Chief Counsel of SISS. In 1957, Badeaux, Banister and Louisiana “Godfather” Leander Perez testified to the Louisiana legislature on the subject of “subversion and racial unrest.” Also involved in these activities in Louisiana at the time was Kent Courtney. Morris and Courtney both wrote brief books on the subject of nuclear disarmament in 1963. The books were, in some respects, almost clones of one another in length and subject.
Dr. Caulfield has gathered some interesting information about Robert Morris. According to Caulfield at page 546, Morris told the press that on the day of the assassination, he had observed the JFK motorcade from the window of his Main Street office in Dallas, which was five blocks away from the assassination.
Robert Morris was a member of the American Security Council.
The American Security Council (ASC) was an organization established in 1955. One of the founders was General Robert Wood who at the time was chairman and president of Sears, Roebuck & Company headquartered in Chicago. The other was Col. Robert McCormick, the extreme right-wing publisher of the Chicago Tribune. Their immediate purpose was to combat Communist subversion in the U.S. Government. Some of the members they first recruited were Douglas MacArthur, Sam Rayburn, Ray S. Cline, Thomas J. Dodd, W. Averell Harriman, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Eugene V. Rostow, John G. Tower, Lyman Lemnitzer, John K. Singlaub, Lawrence P. McDonald and Patrick J. Frawley.
The ASC found strong support among companies in the defense industry. Some even described the ASC as a front organization for the military-industrial complex. Companies which funded the ASC included General Dynamics, General Electric, Lockheed, Boeing, Motorola, and McDonnell-Douglas.
Even today, the American Security Council is controversial. It is one of those conservative groups or individuals which have no Wikipedia articles. This is because right-wing extremists will take down the article as soon as it is posted. Like other such groups, we have to look to the Spartacus Educational website for a description.
Of the above members, the following have some connection to the assassination of JFK: Thomas J. Dodd, Eugene V. Rostow and General Lyman Lemnitzer. Robert Morris mentions the American Security Council approvingly several times in his book Self-Destruct. He describes it as a “civilian group which can’t be gagged.”
In General Walker, at page 105, Dr. Caulfield writes that Robert Morris and Herbert Philbrick were collaborating on a book about the JFK assassination. Philbrick was a spy upon whose life the TV show “I Led Three Lives” was based. In using factor analysis to analyze the JFK data, Philbrick’s name comes up very near the top of the list of suspects (but the reason for this cannot be determined). Caulfield reports that in Dallas in 1963, Robert Morris was in charge of screening members of the Dallas Minutemen, whose leader was General Edwin Walker.
Another discovery by Caulfield was a connection between Robert Morris and Larrie Schmidt, a young man directly involved in the events in Dallas. Schmidt was the one who placed the ads which greeted JFK in Dallas on 11-22-63. The ads were bordered in black and accused JFK of treason. Dick Russell, a JFK assassination author, relates a rumored story in Dallas that Larrie Schmidt and his brother Robert drove Lee Harvey Oswald to the home of General Edwin Walker in April, 1963, when LHO allegedly took a rifle shot at Walker. Larrie’s brother Bob was a chauffeur for Walker.
Larrie and Bob Schmidt were enlisted men from the Army who arrived in Dallas just a few months before the assassination. Robert Morris had possibly arranged a job for Larrie at an ad agency with which he had worked. He invited Schmidt to deliver a speech to a group gathered at the Morris home.
Caulfield writes [Charles] “Willoughby was a close associate of Benjamin Mandel, research director for Senator Eastland’s …[SISS] Willoughby was also close to Robert Morris, a former counsel of Eastland’s SISS, and contributed money to Morris’ failed 1958 Senate campaign.”
We read in the Ordeal of Otto Otepka by William J. Gill, that when Otepka was fired in October, 1963 as a result of a fierce battle in SISS, the first person to announce it was Judge Robert Morris in Dallas.
In writing his book Suite 3505 about the Goldwater campaign, author William J. Gill reports that Robert Morris was on the initial 25 person committee to promote the candidacy of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Gill also states that Morris was the member most often consulted on issues by Goldwater’s campaign manager early in the Goldwater campaign.
We could go on and on about the ubiquitous Judge Morris, but we will end with an overview of the issues covered in his book Self-Destruct (1979):
China runs an intelligence operation in the U.S.
Enforcement of internal security laws and procedures is being lost.
Washington planners rejected a moderate anti-Batista movement which could have prevented Castro from coming to power.
The Soviets overthrew the Afghan president in 1978 and replaced him with a former U.S. State Dept. employee who was a Communist.
The KGB controls the Russian Orthodox Church.
The FBI can’t do the work of SISS and HUAC because the FBI has to follow the law.
General MacArthur had always warned against a U.S. war on mainland Asia.
Since 1967, the ACLU has openly welcomed Communist members.
After J. Edgar Hoover died, the FBI was wrecked by its opponents.
The old imperial colonial system was mostly a constructive force.
In the JFK administration, the U.S. agreed to a U.N. world government and the transfer of the U.S. military to a Soviet-controlled U.N. directorate.
During the 8-year tenure of Robert S. McNamara, no new weapons were approved.
Presidents Nixon & Ford were indifferent about outing Communists.
Morris re-hashes the Owen Lattimore case from the McCarthy era.
Alger Hiss was an advisor to the Institute of Pacific Relations.
As counsel for SISS, Morris was the official liaison to MacArthur.
In 1950, the CIA put a “Bay of Pigs-style” exile force into Albania and, like the Bay of Pigs, it was massacred.
Lee Harvey Oswald was involved with Japanese Communists while serving in Japan in the late 1950’s.
Terrorism was, as of 1979, the major enemy of the U.S.
The U.S. should not have returned people to the U.S.S.R. who had been caught fighting alongside Hitler and wore German uniforms.
The United Nations is a threat to our sovereignty and we should remove sanctions from Rhodesia and
apartheid South Africa.
We shall leave the subject of Judge Robert Morris by repeating the rationale for the JFK assassination which was parroted both by Morris, William J. Gill in The Ordeal of Otto Otepka, and elsewhere. Morris recounts at page 54 of Self-Destruct:
…John Foster Dulles died in 1959. Then, one by one, those Senators who had been most courageous in supporting the work of internal security died or retired and they were seldom replaced by men of comparable determination. Sensing this, the Communist forces within the United States moved in for a campaign to destroy the entire national security system.
This theory was the pretext for the JFK assassination. It said that following the election of 1958 when liberals got control of the Senate and the death of John Foster Dulles occurred in 1959, things started going downhill in the fight against internal Communism. JFK switched from being a Catholic activist and anti-Communist to being soft on Communism. With a directive called “Bulletin 7277,” JFK agreed to turn the U.S. military over to the United Nations. In another symbolic act, the Senate failed to confirm Eisenhower’s science advisor and conservative voice Lewis Strauss to Ike’s cabinet.
The last straw came when the Senate approved the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty sponsored by the Kennedy Administration. The belief was that the U.S. was going to be vulnerable to a Soviet nuclear first-strike. Therefore, due to this treachery on the part of JFK, he had to be assassinated to save the nation.
More than any other individual, Judge Robert Morris was at the center of the action which led step-by-step to the JFK assassination.
Morris ran for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey in 1958 when he was still Chief Counsel for SISS. Then in 1964 and 1970, Morris ran for the Republican nomination for Senate from Texas. His opponent both times was George Herbert Walker Bush.
