As telling as the number of interruptions was their aggressive nature, obviously meant to rattle McCarthy and knock him off balance. Before he could read a word of his prepared remarks, Senators Tydings and Green launched a salvo of preemptive questions about one of the fourscore cases given to the Senate. This led to an involved exchange in which Tydings and McCarthy cross-talked about different numbers—Tydings referring to case 14, McCarthy for some reason to case 57. Why McCarthy answered as he did remains a puzzle, but motives for the Tydings stress on case 14 are readily unraveled.
Case 14 involved an allegation that an official in the State Department had intervened to have charges against a security suspect dropped. Tydings and Green wanted to know if McCarthy had the name of this meddlesome official and if he would reveal it then and there for all the world to know of. The matter was so urgent, they said, not a further second should be lost in exposing the wrongdoer. To this McCarthy replied that he was prepared to discuss things in a certain order and didn’t have information on all cases with him. He would handle that particular case when it came up in proper sequence.
This drew a sharp rebuke from Tydings. “You are,” the chairman said, “in the position of being the man who occasioned this hearing, and so far as I am concerned in this committee you are going to get one of the most complete investigations ever given in the history of this republic, so far as my abilities will permit. Now what I am asking you is: Do you or do you not now know the name of this man?”3
This raised some eyebrows, as it seemed to say the purpose of the hearings was to investigate McCarthy. It also provoked a strong reaction from the GOP contingent—Hickenlooper and Lodge observing that there were plenty of other cases on McCarthy’s roster that looked as serious as this one, and that the sudden clamor to name the wayward official seemed strange considering that the case had been read into the Congressional Record two weeks before this. With Lodge, especially, the Tydings-Green preemptive strike turned out to be a grievous error. After McCarthy had been badgered several times without being able to begin his statement, Lodge protested:
Mr. Chairman, this is the most unusual procedure I have seen in all the years I have been here. Why cannot the senator from Wisconsin get the normal treatment and be allowed to make his statement in his own way, and not be cross-questioned before he has had a chance to present what he has?…I think the senator from Wisconsin ought to have the courtesy that every senator and every witness has, of making his own presentation in his own way and not be pulled to pieces before he has had a chance to offer one single consecutive sentence….I do not understand what kind of game is being played here….4
Lodge’s bafflement was shared by others, but such confusions would be resolved once the facts about the case were known. The official allegedly sinning in case 14 was Joe Panuch, on whom McCarthy had showered praises in his speech before the Senate. (The charge of interference was based on a State Department memo from Robert Bannerman, an intramural critic of Panuch.) Naming Panuch would presumably have embarrassed McCarthy, showing that one of his cases involved someone he had lauded as a hero.
Beyond embarrassment on Panuch, there was a further point to the Green-Tydings questions—to smoke out, and make an issue of, the sources of McCarthy’s information. Green, especially prone to candid moments, made this fairly plain, asserting: “The point is, what basis has the senator for his charges on the floor of the Senate?” And again: “I am not asking whether the name is there or not, I want to know how you know it.” McMahon came at the matter in even more peremptory fashion: “Will you produce for my inspection,” he demanded of McCarthy, “what you have about case No. 14?” When McCarthy demurred from this, McMahon hammered at the issue again: “Will you or will you not produce them [papers relating to case 14] for my inspection right now?”5
In fact, it’s clear from these exchanges and collateral data that Tydings and Co. knew very well where case 14 and other McCarthy cases—or most of them—had come from. As had by now become apparent to Tydings-Green-McMahon and others, the vast majority of the dossiers McCarthy recited to the Senate were taken from the so-called Lee list, compiled for the House Committee on Appropriations in the fall of 1947 and the subject of House committee hearings in early ’48. McCarthy plainly had a copy of this list and based much of his oration on it.
Establishing this, indeed, took no great powers of detection. The similarity between the lists may be seen today by anyone who has both rosters and bothers to compare them. If we can see this now, then obviously Tydings, Green, et al. could see it then. (And if they didn’t, then certainly the State Department, which knew all about the list, would inform them of it. See Chapter 17.) Armed with such knowledge, one could easily check McCarthy case 14 against the matching Lee list entry and there find the name of Joe Panuch repeatedly mentioned. Hence material ready-made to stage an ambush.
The tactic was suggestive of much to follow. Though professing a stance of judicial impartiality, Tydings indicated by word and deed that he planned to make short work of the upstart from Wisconsin. Going after Panuch and McCarthy’s reliance on the Lee list was the equivalent of trying to score an early knockout. It didn’t, however, work out in quite the way Tydings intended. In addition to tipping the chairman’s hand, offending Lodge, and shocking some observers initially in his corner, his opening gambit proved to be a serious underestimation of McCarthy.
In his prepared comments, when he at last got to make them, McCarthy served up a few surprises of his own—fending off the Tydings onslaught on the Lee list and wrong-footing his opponents in general. Once launched on his charges, McCarthy didn’t as expected confine himself to Lee-list suspects but went down another rabbit hole entirely. Over the course of four days on the stand, he would lay out a group of nine public cases, using information drawn from sources other than the Lee list. In the order of his presentation, these cases were as follows:
Judge Kenyon; Ambassador Philip C. Jessup (mentioned briefly in the Kenyon session), a main link between the State Department and the Institute of Pacific Relations; State Department officials Haldore Hanson and Esther Brunauer; Prof. Owen Lattimore of Johns Hopkins University, wheelhorse of the IPR and all-round Asian policy guru; U.N. official and former State Department employee Gustavo Duran, discussed in Chapter 12; State Department UNESCO appointee Harlow Shapley; John Stewart Service, of Amerasia fame; and Dr. Frederick Schuman, who had been used by the State Department in 1946 as a lecturer on foreign policy.
Of this group, Duran, Service, and Shapley had been named by McCarthy in his speech before the Senate and elsewhere, but none of them was on the Lee list. In fact, the only one of the nine included in that lineup was Brunauer (who had been McCarthy’s case 47 on the Senate floor), and even in this instance McCarthy used non-Lee sources in his stint before the panel. Thus, a showdown on the list was temporarily averted (though Tydings and Co.—and the standard histories—would have much to say about it later).
Generally speaking, McCarthy proved to be a formidable witness, well capable of holding his own against the veteran Tydings. For one thing, he converted the flap about case 14—and many others—into his favorite, long-playing aria: If Tydings really wanted to know about loyalty suspects, the evidence that existed on them and/or officials who failed to do their duty, the subcommittee should subpoena State Department security records, where information of this type abounded. Thus, when Green pressed him about his sources, McCarthy answered: “…I think the senator should be more concerned with finding out whether the information I have given is true or not, than trying to find out my sources of information, if any. He can find out whether the information is true by getting the [State Department] files.”6
As suggested by this comment, McCarthy took the position that he was providing clues, leads, and names of suspects to be followed up by the subcommittee, in keeping with its Senate mandate. Though their statements varied, the stance of Tydings-Green-McMahon was essentially the reverse: It was up to McCarthy to pro
ve his charges, while they would function as a kind of jury to weigh the evidence presented, rather than an investigative body actively pursuing cases. As Green put it when McCarthy said the panel should check out a cited front group called the League of Women Shoppers, “That is not the job of the committee.”7 (Emphasis added.)
When McCarthy finally got to the substance of his charges, he produced far more evidence than expected, and certainly more than was wanted. In the matter of Judge Kenyon, he recited a long list of asserted Communist-front connections on her part, presenting photostats of letterheads, meeting notices, and other documents that showed her affinity with the groups in question. He brought forth similar data on Esther Brunauer, whose alleged front affiliations were fewer in number but of like nature. He further stressed that the case of Brunauer’s husband Stephen, an employee of the Navy, was even more significant than hers.
In the case of Haldore Hanson, McCarthy dealt mainly with Hanson’s book Humane Endeavour, based on the author’s activities in China in the 1930s. With Professor Lattimore, the presentation was a mix—citations from his writings, plus considerable background on his linkages to both Amerasia and IPR. (In this discussion, McCarthy made it clear he thought the IPR was a security problem requiring serious scrutiny in its own right.)
Measured by sheer quantity of information, McCarthy’s most impressive case was that of Gustavo Duran, who had been cleared by the State Department in 1946 over the protests of the FBI, resigned, and then moved on to the United Nations. McCarthy read into the record many documents on Duran drawn from military intelligence, embassy reports, and eyewitness accounts from Spain attesting to Duran’s status as a Soviet agent.
In terms of current security practice, McCarthy’s main case, once more, was that of Service. Here McCarthy provided background on the Amerasia scandal and the mysterious way it had been dealt with, and also supplied an update on what was happening with the case in loyalty/security channels at that moment. As for Professors Schuman and Shapley, both marginal figures, McCarthy stressed that their significance lay in the phenomenal number and/or nature of Communist fronts that they had joined, which didn’t seem to deter the State Department from utilizing their talents.
Taken at face value, McCarthy’s testimony on this bloc of cases was a densely packed, well-documented effort, for which Tydings and Co. were manifestly unprepared. Poised to grill McCarthy on the Lee list, they now faced a confident, loquacious witness wielding documents in profusion and making charges based on non-Lee sources. Accordingly, they could do little to challenge him on points of substance and had to settle for counterpunching measures. (In fact, as in his speech before the Senate, McCarthy got certain details wrong, but nobody on the dais knew enough to catch this.)
One Tydings gambit was to drag discussion of Communist front groups down to a reductio ad absurdum. When McCarthy mentioned an egregious and officially cited front (the National Council of American Soviet Friendship) and some of the leading comrades in it, Tydings insisted on reading into the record the names of all other people connected to the council. As these numbered upward of 100, the process was tedious and time-consuming, and didn’t prove anything one way or another unless more was known about the people mentioned. (Responding to this, Hickenlooper sarcastically suggested that when data on a particular suspect were read from the Register of federal employees, perhaps Tydings intended to read all the other names in the Register also.)8
Beyond such improvisations, the majority opted for a sweeping tactic that provided a kind of blanket refutation to all McCarthy charges whatsoever. Green, in yet another flash of candor, would state the method clearly. “The purpose of these hearings,” he said, was “to give an opportunity to those who had been charged on the floor of the Senate with disloyalty in the State Department, and who asked to be heard, to reply to those charges.”9 (Emphasis added.) This bore no faint resemblance to the wording of S.R. 231 but was indeed the purpose of the hearings, judged by the way that Tydings ran them.
IN THE spirit of Green’s comment, the sessions developed a kind of rhythm. McCarthy would make his charges, the person named would come before the panel, deny his allegations, denounce him as a scoundrel, and present a sheaf of endorsements from eminent people saying the accused was a patriot and outstanding public servant. Thereafter the subcommittee, without exception, would adopt these responses as the “facts” about the matter, treating the denials in themselves as conclusive refutation of McCarthy.
Obviously, a right of reply in all such cases was proper and essential, in fairness to the people named and as a first step in any true investigation. But, in the Tydings version, it was virtually the only step that would be taken. Among the clearest illustrations of the method was the case of Philip Jessup, then U.S. Ambassador at Large and the highest-ranking official on McCarthy’s roster. What made the case still more distinctive was that, in contrast to the others, the panel never heard any evidence to speak of directly from McCarthy, other than a passing reference to an “unusual affinity…for Communist causes”—this said parenthetically in the Kenyon session.10
This fleeting mention was enough to trigger an invitation to the globe-trotting envoy to appear before the panel, an opportunity quickly seized. Jessup flew back to the States from Asia and proceeded to give the subcommittee a lengthy rundown of his ancestry and career, famous people who trusted in his judgment, anti-Soviet speeches he made at the U.N., and the a priori absurdity of any charges McCarthy might bring against him, though none had as yet been offered. From the standpoint of the Tydings panel, this would be all the evidence needed to reach a verdict on Dr. Jessup.
McCarthy never got a chance to present it, but he had a fairly good rap sheet on Jessup, as he would prove before another Senate panel. Hickenlooper, knowing nothing of the matter, suggested that McCarthy be allowed to cross-examine. This was rejected out of hand by Tydings, who did say, however, in yet another oddball comment: “I think Mr. Jessup might be entitled to interrogate Sen. McCarthy.”11 To this strange remark McCarthy answered that he would be glad to let Jessup ask him any questions he cared to.
Though Tydings himself had just suggested this very process, McCarthy’s mild rejoinder provoked another angry outburst. “Just a minute,” said Tydings, “we have not asked you as yet, Senator McCarthy.”12 The chairman then proceeded to berate McCarthy for alleged disparities in his numbers (the 205 and 57) and for not having yet produced any proof of card-carrying Communists at State. McCarthy should be questioned on these matters, said the chairman, before he could have the privilege of being quizzed by Jessup.
The non sequiturs in this were dazzling, but Hickenlooper correctly deduced from it that McCarthy certainly wasn’t going to question Jessup. Hickenlooper then tried to do so himself, using materials borrowed from McCarthy. Predictably, this didn’t amount to much, and the hearing soon wound down into a kind of testimonial session in praise of the distinguished witness. “Dr. Jessup,” said Green, “…let me congratulate you on the way you have so thoroughly cleared whatever charges, so called, have been made against you.” McMahon was equally effusive. “Mr. Jessup,” he said, “I am proud to have you as a constituent of mine.” (Jessup was a resident of Connecticut.)13 Thus, in its entirety, the Tydings investigation of Philip Jessup.
It might seem things couldn’t get more surreal than this, but Tydings and Co. were resourceful in such matters. The appearance of Professor Lattimore was, if anything, even more peculiar. In his star turn before the panel, Lattimore was treated with utmost deference, in sharp contrast to the handling of McCarthy. Throughout, Tydings would refer to the witness as “Dr. Lattimore” (and he would be so denominated in all aspects of the record), though Lattimore held no doctorate or any earned degree whatever from any institution of higher learning.14 As he began his testimony, Lattimore asked, “May I read uninterrupted?” and Tydings assured him he could.15 Lattimore then read into the record an enormous statement of about 10,000 words that took an estimated two and a half hours
to deliver and consumes some thirty pages of printed transcript.
In the course of this prodigious speech, Lattimore unlike McCarthy encountered zero interruptions, except for pauses to have supporting material entered in the record and occasional prompts and solicitous comments from Tydings (e.g., “Doctor, if at any time you would like to rest for a minute, your statement is long, so do not hesitate to ask for it”).16 Lattimore thus delivered a soliloquy on his life, career, and writings—plus a fierce attack against McCarthy—with no impediment whatever. Only when he concluded were substantive questions permitted, and these, despite some further Hickenlooper efforts, were of a cursory nature.
However, things would get less comfortable for the good doctor a few days later. In a démarche Tydings hadn’t planned for but McCarthy had, ex-Communist Louis Budenz would appear before the panel—one of several witnesses brought forward by McCarthy/Morris, and by all odds the most important. A former managing editor of the Daily Worker, Budenz had broken with the Party about the same time as had Bentley (October 1945) and had appeared in numerous federal court proceedings against it. His information was extensive, as his job had required him to know who was who, promote the party line at any given moment, and ensure that the pages of the Worker reflected the proper Moscow view for guidance of the faithful.
When Budenz came before the subcommittee, he obviously stunned the Democratic members who had sat placidly (or perhaps dozed) through the monologue of “Dr. Lattimore” and heard nothing that disturbed them. Budenz matter-of-factly testified that, in the course of his Communist duties, CP top brass had told him Lattimore was an agent of the party and should be so treated in the Worker. Budenz recalled four separate episodes of this sort concerning propaganda assignments and related services Lattimore had rendered.17 This testimony was by far the biggest blockbuster of the hearings, and the most unwelcome.*107
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