The Three Barons

by J. W Lateer

  Despite being somewhat obscure, this committee nevertheless played a crucial role in the assassination of the President.

  In this chapter, we will discuss the numerous issues and cases which involved this committee in the years before and including 1963.

  Most people in middle age or older have heard of Senator Joe McCarthy. Few have heard of Senator Pat McCarran. Those who have studied McCarthyism, however, recognize that Senator Pat McCarran was almost the equal of Joe McCarthy in fomenting the Red Scare atmosphere of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.

  McCarran was a Senator from Nevada, first elected to the Senate in 1932. McCarran grew up on a ranch in that state. His parents were immigrants from Ireland. McCarran’s father was an Irish nationalist, displaying the flag of Sinn Fein at his ranch. Sinn Fein was the infamous Irish terrorist organization which worked for Irish independence during that period.

  McCarran was 30 years older than Senator Joe McCarthy, but the similarities between the two were striking. Both men went through their early school years four grades behind their classmates. McCarran graduated from high school at age 21. Both men were forced by circumstances to spend their adolescence raising livestock by themselves. McCarthy raised chickens, McCarran raised sheep.

  Adolescence is the time when a young person builds connections to his peer group. Almost everyone went through this experience in their early teens. McCarthy and McCarran were deprived of a normal adolescence. Being four years older than their classmates would likely cause them some degree of ostracism. This could well explain why both men became senators who totally disregarded the peer pressure of the Senate. Both McCarthy and McCarran seemed to enjoy being the odd man out.

  Senator Pat McCarran was a Democrat, but he sided with conservative Republicans on most issues, particularly in foreign policy. Although McCarran grew up on a ranch far from any city, he was a devout Catholic. It is not clear how often he was even able to attend church. Nevertheless, his parents trained him well when it came to supporting his Catholic religion.

  McCarran had five children. Two of them were nuns. It was undoubtedly true that McCarran’s opinions on foreign policy were dictated by the hierarchy of his church.

  McCarran was generally supportive of worker’s rights. Most people would not identify Nevada as a place where worker’s issues and unions would be particularly important. It was, however, just the opposite. The mining industry in Nevada was the largest employer and labor strife was rampant. McCarran was a defense lawyer and largely supportive of the underdog. He was not a particularly strong critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal. He had, however, one issue in his mind which dominated all others. That issue was his rabid opposition to Communism.

  Students of the anti-Communist movement of the 1940’s and 1950’s (usually called McCarthyism) realize that anti-Communism was led by people who had a special stake in the international battle against Communism.

  First there was the China Lobby. This was a group who had a special interest in China. The most ardent proponent of the China Lobby was Arthur Kohlberg. He at one time had a business that imported Chinese textiles, which was threatened by the Chinese Communists. Others in the China Lobby were sympathetic to Protestant missionaries who were very active in Nationalist China.

  In Europe, however, it was a different story. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Although that war pitted a democratically elected government against the anti-democratic fascist Francisco Franco, President Roosevelt failed to support democracy in Spain out of fear of the political power of the Catholic Church in the U.S.

  After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, Communism and Catholicism squared off in a fierce confrontation. The Soviet policy was to suppress Christianity in any form. Even in countries outside the iron curtain such as Italy and Spain, Communism was strong. Many worried that Communists would be elected in Italy following the war.

  It was against this background that Pat McCarran (along with Joe McCarthy) began their crusade against Communism. Although they both claimed that their mission was to eliminate Communists from employment in the U.S. Government, their real target was the U.S. State Department. The wanted to dictate U.S. foreign policy as it related to Communism.

  There were obvious situations where U.S.interests coincided with the interests of Communists abroad. The most important was the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin for the purpose of defeating Hitler. It is to the everlasting credit of Franklin Roosevelt that he recognized Fascism as the greatest danger to American freedom. There was little chance that the U.S. would ever go Communist. The power and influence of Fascism in the U.S. was another story.

  While Joe McCarthy used a vicious form of libel and slander against his perceived enemies, Pat McCarran used an entirely different strategy. McCarthy and McCarran actually did not get along very well as personalities and had a somewhat conflictive relationship as Senators. McCarran, for his part, was able (because of seniority) to gain the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

  Forty percent of bills in Congress went through the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was responsible for processing appointments of all Federal judges including the Supreme Court.

  McCarran used two vehicles to reach his anti-Communist goals. One was the Internal Security Act of 1950, usually called the McCarran Act. The other was the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee which was a subcommittee of the parent Senate Judiciary Committee.

  The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was created on December 21, 1950 by a Senate resolution. Its purpose was to study and investigate 1) the administration, operation and enforcement of the Internal Security Act of 1950, 2) to study and investigate the extent, nature and effects of subversive activities in the United States. This included not only espionage and sabotage. It also included infiltration into the government of persons under the domination of the organization controlling the world Communist movement. Beyond that, it also covered any movement which sought to overthrow the Government of the United States by force or violence. This subcommittee was given the power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

  The chairmen of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), were Patrick McCarran (D, Nevada 1950-1053), William Jenner (R, Indiana 1953-1955) and James O. Eastland (D, Mississippi 1956-1977). For some as yet unknown reason, Eastland appointed Senator Thomas J. Dodd as acting chairman and Dodd ran the Committee during the Kennedy Administration.

  The initial composition of SISS was extremely significant. Pat McCarran, as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appointed himself as the first chairman. He then picked the three most conservative Democrats James O. Eastland (D. MS), Herbert O’Connor (D. MD) and Willis Smith (D. NC). For the Republicans there was Homer Ferguson (R. MI), William Jenner (R. IN), and Arthur Watkins (R. UT).

  The overview of the power of Committees of Congress in the period 1947-1965 has been presented in the chapter which dealt with the Warren Commission. That prior explanation of committees in general also precisely applies to the establishment of SISS.

  One important fact should be mentioned, however. After the takeover of the Judiciary Committee by the Republicans because of the election of 1952 and then the death of Pat McCarran in 1954, James O. Eastland became the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This gave him the power to appoint the members of SISS. Eastland was arguably the most conservative member of the entire Senate, with the possible exception of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

  In his memoir True Compass, Sen. Edward Kennedy described how Eastland (in 1963) personally appointed him to the Judiciary Committee and to all of the other committees on which he, Kennedy, served. To find out his committee assignments, Kennedy had to make a pilgrimage to the office of Senator James O. Eastland.

  There was, however a personal-preference factor to Senate appointments. Senators had to have some interest in serving on the committee to which they were appointed and so there was some degree of self-selection. Kennedy wrote that East
land happened to appoint him to exactly the committees which he already desired.

  The Internal Security Act of 1950 established the Subversive Activities Control Board to investigate a limited, though important, number of subjects. One was subversive activities and another was the promotion of the idea of a totalitarian dictatorship in the U.S. In theory, this included a dictatorship of either a Fascist or Communist nature. However, the aim was clearly at the Communist threat. Persons engaged in these activities could be detained and jailed if engaged in espionage or sabotage. An example of the tenor of this Act, made picketing a Federal Courthouse a felony if intended to influence jurors or trials.

  SISS was very much like both the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), usually known as the McCarthy Committee. One can see by the appointment of these multiple redundant committees that anti-Communism was “big business” in the Congress at that time.

  Earlier, the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 had substantially strengthened the power of Congressonal committees. Prior to this Act, Congressional Committees had only limited clerical staff and no professional staff or experts.

  Under the Act, the Committee was allowed four professional staff members and six clerical staff members. Because of the new allocation of professional staff, SISS was able to hire multiple experts as attorneys, researchers and investigators.

  From the very beginning of SISS, attorney Jay Sourwine served as the counsel for SISS. Sourwine was from Nevada and was a protégé of Senator Pat McCarran. Research director Ben Mandel also began working for SISS from its inception. Not only did SISS have its own professional staff, it had its own office. And for all practical purposes, a subcommittee like SISS was entirely the creature of the Chairman of the parent Judiciary Committee. This was a setup for potential disaster.

  SISS could operate entirely in secret if McCarren so chose. It could investigate anything without limitation. It could call anyone as a witness and swear them in under oath. And most of its minutes and records were not available to the public, and have still never been, after more than 50 years at the time of this writing!

  There was perhaps an even more extreme practice. The necessary quorum for a committee meeting was one. Thus McCarran or anyone designated chairman could travel around the country by himself operating as a one-man SISS committee (which happened often).

  Under the Legislative Reform act of 1946, a House member was limited to one committee (not necessarily one subcommittee) and a Senator was limited to two committees, with certain exceptions for both bodies. An interesting quote found in the casebook Cases and Materials on Legislation, 4th Edition 1969 by Nutting, Elliot and Dickerson at p. 78 is as follows:

  Abuse of power by the invisible power-wielders … is a natural hazard of the staff system. There are at least 250 separate committees, subcommittees, special committees, select committees and joint committees in Congress today [1963]. The total fluctuates, usually upward, as new subcommittees are named. Each of these panels has a chairman and each chairman has a staff which is wholly responsible to him-except for a scattering of staff men named by the minority party. The staff of the Judiciary Committee and its 14 subcommittees in the Senate, for example, numbers about 180-patent experts; immigration experts; internal-security experts; experts on “charters, holidays and celebrations,” on juvenile delinquency, on refugees and what-have-you.

  It is interesting that this was written in 1963. This passage was quoted from an article by Roland Evans, Jr. in the Saturday Evening Post, June 8, 1963 titled “The Invisible Men Who Run Congress.” The Saturday Evening Post was the journal of author William J. Gill who will be discussed in depth in a later chapter. This article was written 6 months before the JFK assassination. Note that the article happened to mention the Senate Judiciary Committee. And it highlights the topic of juvenile delinquency. As we shall see, the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency was chaired at that very time by Senator Thomas J. Dodd who is a major focus of our research and of this book.

  What kind of investigations did SISS engage in? They could be listed in part (as examples) as follows:

  ) The loss of China to the Communists.

  ) The Institute of Pacific Relations.

  ) Suspected Soviet activity in the United States.

  ) Infiltration of the Federal Government, especially the State Department.

  ) Immigration.

  ) The United Nations and Americans employed by the U.N.

  ) Youth organizations.

  ) Television, radio and the entertainment industry.

  ) The defense industry.

  ) Labor unions.

  ) Schools, Colleges and Universities.

  In the 1960’s the scope was expanded to include:

  1.) Civil rights and racial issues.

  2.) Campus disorders.

  3.) Drug trafficking.

  The current estimate of the amount of microfilm in the U.S. Government or Senate Archives which captures the records of SISS is 547 feet. That statistic dwarfs that of, for instance, the Subcommittee on Patents and Trademarks. The latter committee has 34 feet of film over a similar period. To your author, it is a horrible commentary on our system of government if a secret committee could be engaged in this many activities, yet virtually no one in the U.S. had ever heard of them.

  After the fall of Senator McCarthy and his Personal Subcommittee on Investigations, SISS was working almost single-handedly in the arena of rabid anti-Communism in the Senate. We can look at some of the covert activities that SISS began in this period.

  The most exteme claim against SISS is probably the following quote from the book Where Rebels Roost by Susan Klopfer at p. 205. She writes:

  Over the years, rumors have raged about the ability of SISS to form concentration camps for “emergency” situations … and having its own SISS secret commandos who at the time made raids on alleged Communist organizations fully equipped with silenced machine guns and grenades. [Wikipedia]

  Following the death of McCarran and the downfall of Joe McCarthy which began in March, 1954, the committee activity in the Senate relating to the extreme anti-Communist cause became relatively dormant. The work of the House Un-American Affairs Committee (HUAC) continued. HUAC had become well known in the 1940’s in the heyday of Richard Nixon and his “pumpkin papers” revelations. But by the mid-1950’s, HUAC had not made any new or sensational headlines. It is interesting to note that HUAC was well known and is well known to this day. But by contrast, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was and has always been basically invisible to students of U.S. history.

  Another false legend is that RFK turned the committee toward investigating organized crime instead of Communists. Actually, the McCarthy Committee was merged with the Labor Committee so that both RFK and JFK were working together on what then became known as the McClellan Committee, named after Chairman John L. McClellan (D. AR).

  The reason for the merger was that the Republicans were told the committee would investigate Communists in the Labor movement, of which there were many. What followed was what some would call a “Kennedy double-cross.” After a cursory probe of Walter Reuther and the CIO (which was limited to financial issues), RFK took the investigation off-track to investigate Jimmy Hoffa. And that was because Hoffa was considered to be a Republican labor leader.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy was and continued to be a close personal friend of RFK right up to McCarthy’s death in 1957. And the rest of the story is that the Kennedy brothers and their father all agreed that both open and clandestine Congressional investigations were a perfectly good way to run the U.S. Government and that Congressional investigations were “where the action is.”

  With the takeover of Cuba by Castro and the activity of the Pathet Lao Communists in Laos and nearby Vietnam, the menace of Communism flared up anew. These events along with the liberal trend of the 1958 Congressional elections, caused McCarthy-type anti-Communist hysteria to re-emerge in the
Senate. This new higher priority of the fight against Communism began during the years from 1959 to 1963 and continued at a higher level after that. This period came at the end of the Eisenhower administration. It carried over into the beginning of the administration of JFK.

  The role of “special interests” in the fight against Communism should never be overlooked. In Vietnam, there were the French colonialists. In Cuba, there were any number of special interests ranging from the Mafia, to millionaire American property owners to the Catholic Church itself. In both Vietnam and Cuba, Communism threatened entrenched Catholic and colonial interests. Therefore, this led to the involvement of influential Catholics in the Senate such as Thomas Dodd and, indirectly, other influential Catholic party leaders such as Joseph P. Kennedy. This type of liberal politician was especially powerful in the Democratic northeast where they often controlled powerful Democratic party machines and city governments.

  Although President Dwight Eisenhower had only just begun to plan covert operations to remove Castro, it was John F. Kennedy who became President at the actual time when Castro made his sharp turn to the left and towards Communism. Following this worrisome and potentially dangerous takeover of Cuba by Fidel Castro, SISS also emerged with an assortment of covert and other activities aimed at destroying the Communist regime of the Castro brothers.

  This menu of covert activites would eventually include the bizarre plan to weaponize cancer as described by authors Judyth Vary Baker and Ed Haslem. Judyth Vary Baker, for those who don’t know, was the girlfriend of Lee Harvey Oswald during the months prior to the assassination.

  The main actors in the weaponized cancer plan were activists like the very famous Dr. Alton Ochsner of New Orleans. Dr. Ochsner had a relationship with SISS, at least in the week after the JFK assassination when Oswald was being framed. But in addition to the cancer plan, there were other such covert operations. Some of these activities came close to the type of plans that were supervised by Robert Kennedy. These Robert Kennedy plans had the code name Mongoose.