Blacklisted By History

by M. Stanton Evans

  The FBI had reason to think otherwise, particularly in the case of Redmont and his wife, Joan, with whom Askwith was in frequent out-of-office contact. It didn’t help that Mallon failed to level with the Bureau on this, that he was Askwith’s boyfriend, or that both of them had social dealings with the Redmonts. Bureau records show a fairly constant round of contacts among Askwith, the Redmonts, the Raines, the Minter Woods, the Krafsurs, and others in the extended Bentley network.*197 Also, the Bureau would surveil Askwith attending a party at the home of Alix Reuther along with Mary Jane Keeney and David Wahl.2

  It would thus appear that Jerry Askwith was a member in good standing of the loose confederation of people who crisscrossed between the Miller and Keeney circles. At least three of the people with whom she was in social contact—Bernard Redmont, Mary Jane Keeney, and David Wahl—were named in Bureau records as Soviet agents (as were her coworkers Gregg and Miller). These linkages were significant from a security angle, as hanging out with even one identified Soviet agent—to say nothing of four or five—was, according to the official regs, a leading sign of trouble.

  However, these habitual contacts apparently did nothing to damage Askwith’s employment status in Foggy Bottom, as she was still ensconced there in 1950 when McCarthy made his charges. The case suggests the importance of the supplementary list McCarthy gave to Tydings and which thereafter vanished. Disposing of Askwith by this subliminal method meant, among other things, a further whittling down of the McCarthy caseload. She is relevant also in weighing the question of his sources and alleged sole reliance on the Lee list, as she was not a Lee list case (though making an anonymous cameo appearance as “E-18” in the case of Mallon).

  Lois Carlisle

  A transferee into State from OSS, Lois Carlisle was McCarthy’s case No. 58, and unlike Askwith a Lee case also. Among other distinguishing features, she was uniquely close to Mary Jane Keeney, living on the same floor of the Washington, D.C., apartment building where the Keeneys had their lodgings at 215 B St. N.E. (now Constitution Ave.). Based on Bureau records, Carlisle seems to have been among the closest of Mary Jane’s innumerable contacts.

  Carlisle had a track record that was itself suggestive: OSS, an active member of local #3 of the Communist-dominated United Public Workers Union (the local headed by Peveril Meigs, another McCarthy suspect), and sometime member of the Washington Book Shop, a front group cited by Francis Biddle in 1942—all this plus her tight connection to the Keeneys. Despite all of which, Carlisle successfully passed at least two loyalty/security checks by the State Department, based on data provided by “several informants interviewed by CSA [who] commented favorably on her loyalty to the United States,” per the summary in the Lee list.*198 3

  One of those commenting favorably on the loyalty of Carlisle, according to a Bureau memo of February 1947, was none other than—Mary Jane Keeney. This recommendation, however, didn’t look too good a few months later. “On July 1, 1947,” according to the Lee list, “a government investigative agency [the FBI] advised that it had received information from a highly confidential source of information, whose reliability is unquestioned, that the subject [Carlisle] had been converted to Communism by E-10 [Mary Jane Keeney].” (The unquestioned, highly confidential source was the Keeneys’ correspondence, which the Bureau obtained and copied.)4

  Based on the FBI information about Carlisle’s conversion, the case was reopened, but, as the Lee list reflects, there were “no further reports in the files as of October 1, 1947.” Given the data on Keeney-Carlisle, Carlisle’s background in general, and the statement that she was a convert to Communism by Keeney—all well known to State—it’s hard to believe that Lois Carlisle could have survived even the most cursory effort to enforce security standards in the department. Yet she was still on its payroll in 1950 when Joe McCarthy capsuled her case before the Senate and gave her name to Tydings.

  Frances Ferry

  Among the clearest indications that McCarthy not only knew the identities of his suspects but had been hunting them down with some success before his initial speeches was the case of Frances Ferry (No. 11 on the McCarthy list; No. 8 on the Lee list).

  In his opening talk before the Senate, McCarthy summarized some of the derogatory info on Ferry, including allegations that she was a good friend of a person said to be a Communist†199 and a regular reader of the Daily Worker (intel provided, according to the Lee list, by a former roommate). McCarthy then flatly asserted, “This individual is not in the State Department at this time, but has a job in the CIA as of today.”5 This categorical statement was quite correct and self-evidently wasn’t from the Lee list, as Ferry had been at the State Department, not the CIA, when the list was put together.

  In addition to noting that Ferry had moved on to the CIA, McCarthy flagged the case directly to the head of that agency, Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoeter. Though we don’t have McCarthy’s letter, we do have Hillenkoeter’s answer, dated March 2, 1950, thanking McCarthy for the heads-up on Ferry, saying the CIA took the matter seriously and had conducted an investigation, but concluding Ferry wasn’t a loyalty risk despite the derogatory info.6

  It isn’t clear how thorough an investigation of Ferry could have been made by the CIA between McCarthy’s speech of February 20 and this response some ten days later. It’s obvious, however, that McCarthy must have reached Hillenkoeter almost immediately after the Senate speech for any investigation whatever to have been conducted. It’s also obvious that McCarthy knew whereof he spoke as to Ferry’s new location, as Hillenkoeter’s letter confirms beyond all doubt that she was then on the payroll of the CIA.

  It’s noteworthy as well that this Hillenkoeter answer was one of the items McCarthy passed on to Tydings by registered letter of March 18, along with the roster of eighty names provided on that occasion, all of which would vanish from the Tydings subcommittee archive. Thus, the documentary information on the case, indicating that McCarthy knew what he did about it and promptly brought it to the notice of the CIA, would go missing from official records.

  Herbert Fierst

  Among McCarthy’s anonymous cases, arguably one of the most consequential was Herbert Fierst. McCarthy himself believed so, as he made Fierst No. 1 on his list of suspects before the Senate and referred to the case as one of the three most significant on his roster.

  As recited to the Senate, the allegations concerning Fierst included a charge that he prevailed on an assistant secretary of state to hire two identified Communists and that he had been in contact with members of a Soviet spy ring. “Nonetheless,” said McCarthy, “this individual still occupies an important position in the State Department and has access to secret material.”7

  In this instance, we note the usual McCarthy m.o. of taking the Lee material and backtracking on it to see if the individual was still in the State Department, as Fierst indubitably was. As to security specifics, the McCarthy/J. B. Matthews backup files show that the two people Fierst recommended (given only coded symbols in the Lee list) were Henry Collins and Gordon Griffith;*200 the official who did the hiring was John Hilldring, handling personnel assignments for occupied areas after World War II.

  On the Henry Collins aspect, Collins would later confirm the McCarthy information, saying it was Fierst who asked him to come to work at State on postwar occupation matters. According to Whittaker Chambers, Collins was part of the Red network in Washington that Chambers had directed. When asked if he were a member of the Communist Party, Collins took the Fifth Amendment.8

  In the case of Gordon Griffiths, he would himself confirm the allegation that he was a CP member, revealing this in a memoir relating to Robert Oppenheimer and their joint membership in a faculty Communist cell at U.C. Berkeley in the latter 1930s. In the postwar era Griffiths, like Collins, did serve with the occupation forces in Europe, though on the staff of the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) rather than the State Department.9

  As to the unnamed Soviet agents with whom Fierst was allegedly in contact, per FBI
surveillance, one such in the Bureau’s judgment was the mysterious David Wahl—“reliably reported” to be a Soviet “master spy,” according to Director Hoover. The Bureau files show repeated contacts between Fierst and Wahl, though details about these are among the most heavily blacked-out portions of the record (well over 100 pages concerning Fierst, Wahl, and the two together are redacted).

  Interestingly, McCarthy’s reference on this point was in the plural—“members”—though the Lee list said only “member.” This could have been a slip of the tongue or, more likely from the standpoint of his critics, an attempt to overstate and dramatize the issue. However, the FBI records show that Fierst had been in contact with at least two other people the Bureau spotted as members of the Soviet spy combine: Duncan Lee and Mary Jane Keeney. Thus, McCarthy’s use here of the plural form, per the FBI account, was very much on target.

  Theodore Geiger

  Geiger was the case that Tydings subcommittee assistant counsel Robert Morris thought the panel should take a look at but that Tydings dismissed out of hand because he didn’t want to waste the afternoon on topics of that nature. Accordingly, the Geiger case, along with many others, wouldn’t receive a public airing and would be ignored by Tydings and the State Department in their tabulations of McCarthy suspects.

  Geiger, as Morris knew, had been identified under oath before a New York legislative committee by ex-Communist William Canning as a member of a Communist unit in the latter 1930s. Geiger denied this and, based on this denial, got past the Truman security screeners. Later his new boss, Paul Hoffman of the Economic Cooperation Administration, would issue a ringing endorsement of Geiger. None of this was persuasive to McCarthy, who stayed on the Geiger case and later used it in a critique of Hoffman.

  McCarthy’s harping on the matter prompted Geiger’s attorney, in 1956, to write McCarthy a lengthy letter containing some belated revelations about his client. Contra earlier denials by Geiger, this missive said “there is no question that Mr. Geiger was intellectually committed to Communism in the later 1930s [the period about which Canning testified], but although he wanted to join the Communist Party and joined an organization thinking it was the party, he never actually became a member.” Thereafter, said the lawyer, Geiger became disillusioned by the Hitler-Stalin pact and had broken with the comrades. The attorney then added:

  Mr. Geiger deeply regrets one aspect of his record since his break with Communism in 1940. He regrets that he did not come forward forthrightly at an early date to inform the FBI and other agencies that, although he had not actually been a member of the Communist Party, he was involved in the Communist movement in the late 1930s. Thus when Mr. Hoffman defended him in 1949 and 1950, he did so without the benefit of full disclosure of the pertinent facts by Mr. Geiger. Mr. Geiger rectified this deficiency by telling the entire story fully, cooperatively and candidly to the FBI in 1954. He realized then and realizes now that it would have been in the national interest had he spoken at a much earlier date and that he would thereby have spared himself and others much heartache and embarrassment.10

  Indeed, it would have been better all around if Theodore Geiger—and a good many others—had told the truth in 1950, instead of spending several years in stonewalling and denial, and if such as Paul Hoffman had been less willing to clear the Geigers of the world absent all the pertinent data. Most of all, in the unfolding of the McCarthy story, it would have been extremely helpful if Millard Tydings had been concerned to learn the truth about the case rather then dismissing it as a waste of time as he rushed to castigate McCarthy.

  Victor Hunt

  Victor Hunt was McCarthy’s case No. 65 before the Senate but wasn’t stressed very much as a security problem in his own right. Rather, said McCarthy, Hunt appeared to be under the influence of another, more important suspect, who was McCarthy case No. 81 (Ruby Parsons, formerly with the Voice of America). Hunt would nonetheless provide an interesting test of McCarthy’s accuracy and due diligence—and those of the State Department—in supplying data on his cases.

  In response to McCarthy’s charges, the State Department put out, and Tydings reprinted, materials that showed case No. 65 had resigned from State in April 1949 and thus had been gone for many moons when McCarthy went before the Senate.11 McCarthy had been quite definite on the point, saying “this individual is also still in the State Department,” with no ifs, ands, or buts. So here we seem to have a case in which McCarthy fulfilled the standard image: taking outmoded data and presenting them as current, only to be caught in flagrante by the fact-checkers down in Foggy Bottom.

  Except that, as it developed, Hunt was still at the State Department, if we may credit the department’s own employee records (which McCarthy was clearly using). Thus, in the department personnel directory for February 1950, at the precise moment McCarthy made his charges, Victor M. Hunt is plainly listed, along with office location and phone number. Thereafter, in State’s Biographic Register for 1951, Victor M. Hunt is once more listed, along with a brief vita.

  How could Victor Hunt have resigned from the State Department in April of 1949 but be listed in State’s personnel directory for 1950 and in its Biographic Register for 1951? This seems to be quite a puzzle, to which a likely answer is that Hunt may temporarily have transferred out of the department to some other agency and then later come back in, the kind of thing that did occasionally happen in the early postwar era. In that event, by focusing only on the order of his going, it would have been possible to present him as a McCarthy case no longer on the rolls of the department (a tactic that could work as long as the suspect was nameless and couldn’t be checked by outside observers against the official employee listings).

  As suggested by the history of his superior, Ruby Parsons, who transferred out of State to handle communications for the Army in Europe, this appears to be a plausible scenario in the case of Hunt, though at this late date it’s hard to be quite certain. What is certain, in any event, is that the State Department treatment of the matter in its tabulation of the McCarthy cases was in direct conflict with its own employee data. Conversely, McCarthy’s wrap-up of the case was well grounded in the official records.

  David Demarest Lloyd

  Lloyd was McCarthy’s case No. 9 on the Senate floor and the case he inadvertently repeated (as case No. 77). Another Lee list alum, Lloyd was the first of the anonymous suspects to be identified in public, as McCarthy had said he was a speechwriter in the White House. Since the number of people thus employed was small, it didn’t take long for Lloyd’s name to surface, prompting a considerable outcry and much denunciation of McCarthy.

  The Lloyd case is instructive in several ways, as it shows McCarthy’s backtracking efforts prior to his initial speech and also reveals how erroneous factoids get cranked into the historical record. Both aspects involved noted journalist Jack Anderson, at the time of the McCarthy speech a reporter for Drew Pearson but also on friendly terms with McCarthy (a situation that would later change in drastic fashion).

  As Anderson would tell the tale, McCarthy on his return from Wheeling-Reno was looking for information to back his charges. Anderson mentioned the case of Lloyd, said he was working in the White House, and loaned McCarthy Pearson’s file on Lloyd—stressing, however, that the data in it were unsubstantiated and had to be checked out. Thereafter, Anderson would write, he was thunderstruck when McCarthy read to the Senate raw unchecked information from the Pearson file as though it were established fact. The episode supposedly convinced Anderson that McCarthy was completely irresponsible and could not be trusted.12

  This anecdote from Anderson’s memoirs has been recycled by other writers as showing that McCarthy would recklessly say things about alleged suspects without bothering to check the information. However, the authors repeating this account, and Anderson himself, should have done some checking of their own before going with the columnist’s story. In fact, the data McCarthy gave the Senate on Lloyd were quite plainly taken, not from some Drew Pearson file of murky
allegations, but from the entries of the Lee list. There was no substantive statement about Lloyd’s affiliations in the McCarthy speech that wasn’t derivative from the Lee material—which was official information, not unvetted Pearson gossip13 (see note below).*201

  So McCarthy didn’t need Jack Anderson or a raw Drew Pearson file to make the case on Lloyd presented to the Senate. What, then, did he get from Anderson that he found of value? The answer is that Anderson knew Lloyd was working at the White House, which information McCarthy in his usual fashion combined with the Lee list revelations. We thus see both McCarthy and his critics in typical action mode—his backtracking on the contents of the list, their passing on secondhand data to his discredit without bothering to consult the record.

  Leander B. Lovell

  Leander Lovell was another of the strangely disappearing McCarthy cases in the State Department’s 1950 tabulation, along with Victor Hunt and John T. Fishburn. In fact, the case was almost a carbon copy of the Fishburn story, arising from similar causes and exploited by State’s researchers in like fashion.

  In his opening Senate speech, discussing suspect No. 28, McCarthy clearly described the case of Lovell, who was also Lee list case No. 22. Anyone reading the two entries could see they were the same and, from the key provided with the Lee list, identify the case as Lovell. (The FBI, in its analysis, readily made this identification.) In addition, as earlier noted, McCarthy in his backtracking efforts had found out—provisionally but correctly—that Lovell was then stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, information not appearing in the Lee list.