However, McCarthy’s office helpers didn’t do so well in providing the suspect’s name to Tydings. In the Lee list key sequence, Lovell’s name immediately followed that of one Hans Lansberg, who wasn’t a State Department employee but an applicant. Evidently the McCarthy typist, in matching names and numbers, strayed up a line and typed Lansberg in place of Lovell. Thus, Lansberg’s name was supplied to Tydings, though for anyone with a copy of the Lee list the case was obviously that of Lovell.
Exactly as occurred with Fishburn, the State Department pounced on this clerical error to get rid of the case entirely, ostensibly taking the Lansberg designation at face value. Its tabulation says of McCarthy case No. 28, “applicant never employed in the Department of State,” which was true of Hans Lansberg but untrue of Leander Lovell, as State’s researchers knew better than all others. The department was thus once more able, rather adroitly, to use a McCarthy office typo against him.
Ironically, McCarthy would later flag Lovell’s name to the attention of the FBI, trying to confirm the whereabouts of the suspect he had tentatively established. This is reflected in a Hoover memo of April 10, 1950, that quotes a document forwarded by McCarthy asking, “Is Leander Lovell with the State Department in Frankfurt, Germany?” The Hoover memo adds: “Reference is made to him in the Alger Hiss trial. The Taber committee has information on Lovell [e.g., as reflected in the Lee list].”14
Lovell thus appeared—like Fishburn—in two different guises in the McCarthy casebook: First in the substantive case presented to the Senate, thereafter in this missive to the FBI. As the Hoover memo suggests, Lovell was known to the Bureau and other security units (the name was one of those Whittaker Chambers gave to Adolf Berle). In February 1950, Lovell was definitely on the State Department payroll, as the department listings show he was then a member of the Foreign Service, and State’s Biographic Register for this period confirms he was indeed in Frankfurt. So, despite the error by his typist, McCarthy was in substance right about the case of Lovell.
Peveril Meigs
Though no longer in the State Department in 1950, Peveril Meigs was one of McCarthy’s stronger cases—vindicating his critique of security practice then prevailing and suggesting his own appreciable impact in getting this corrected.
Meigs, McCarthy case No. 3 (No. 2 on the Lee list), was yet another transferee from OSS. He had an extensive record of radical activities, as capsuled in the Lee list and thereafter to the Senate by McCarthy. Meigs was accordingly on the radarscopes of State Department security types in 1947, but action on the case had been withheld because he was head of the State Department employees’ union and the security sleuths were monitoring his contacts.*202
When efforts were at last made to get Meigs out of the State Department, the subliminal methods we’ve reviewed were once more employed. Rather than being fired outright, he was permitted to resign, which he did in 1948. He then moved on to a position with the Army—the kind of thing McCarthy constantly deplored and would specifically stress in the case of Meigs.†203
Though he had been prominent on the State Department watch list before he was permitted to resign and make the transfer, Meigs would be cleared for employment under the Truman loyalty program on April 14, 1949.15 By this action he was “retained” as an economist and educational specialist for the Army. He thus joined the numerous ranks of those with copious derogatory information in the files who stayed on the federal payroll. However, the case would also reveal the sharp reversal in security practice that could occur when McCarthy turned up the heat.
This is reflected in a Bureau memo of March 22, 1950, regarding an inquiry from an Army officer about the case. This says Meigs “has been identified as ‘case No. 3’ cited by Senator McCarthy…It appears [from the Army officer’s] closing remarks that the Army is aware of this and may be concerned over the fact that he is apparently still employed by the Army….It appears that the only purpose for [the] call is the probability that the Army is concerned over Senator McCarthy’s allegation regarding [Meigs] and is looking for an out.”16
Thereafter, the Army got Meigs off its hands, this evidently as a result of the McCarthy pressure. The episode is suggestive both as to the workings of the loyalty setup before McCarthy came on the scene and the effect he had when he went public with his charges.
Richard Post
Along with Frances Ferry, the case of Richard Post (McCarthy case No. 53) is among the clearest indications in the record that McCarthy had some good non-Lee sources of security data when he first addressed the Senate.
The case suggests, again, the laxness of State Department standards across the years and McCarthy’s ability to come up with information concerning this performance. As it developed, Post was one of the cases on which McCarthy had not yet correctly nailed down the whereabouts of the suspect, initially thinking Post was still in the department when he wasn’t. This deficiency, however, would be more than compensated by what McCarthy did know (and would be corrected in the roster supplied to Tydings).
In his public résumé of the case, McCarthy gave the Senate the essence of what was in the Lee list—that a “government agency had received information to the effect that he [Post] was a recognized leader in the Communist underground.” This was identical to the Lee list information. However, McCarthy then made the still more sensational charge that No. 53 “has been named by a confessed Communist spy as part of his spy ring.”17 (Emphasis added). The Lee list had no statement to this effect, its summary of the case containing no mention of a “confessed Communist spy” being the source of the intel on Post or having any connection to the case whatever.
According to the standard treatment, this McCarthy embellishment must mean he was lying, trying to hype the case to make it seem more vivid. However, as shown by now-available records, McCarthy was telling the truth about the case, accurately adding substantive data to the file that weren’t taken from the Lee list.
As we now know, the “confessed Communist spy” who named Post as a sometime member of his network was Whittaker Chambers. In fact, Chambers so identified Post on no fewer than five occasions—initially in the statement he gave to Adolf Berle, thereafter in interviews with Raymond Murphy of the State Department in 1945 and ’46, then in executive hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in December of 1948 and at last to a U.S. grand jury. Thus, McCarthy’s melodramatic addition to the file was not only accurate but known to be so by security agents (including those at the State Department).18
Rowena Rommel
While it might not have appeared so at the time, and McCarthy himself didn’t say it, Rowena Rommel may have been among the most significant of all his cases, equaling if not surpassing other more famous suspects.
Ms. Rommel had drawn intensive notice from State Department security types at an early date, following the Bentley revelations. A transferee into State from the Bureau of the Budget, she was identified as someone who had a lot to do with reorganization of the department and placing other people in its workforce. The point was stressed, for instance, in early 1946 by security expert Ben Mandel, then working with Raymond Murphy at State, in an interview with Bureau agents.19
Thereafter, Rommel would show up on the roster of cases compiled by the Panuch investigators and, according to State Department records kept by Sam Klaus, was recommended for dismissal by security screeners. However, this didn’t happen, and she thereafter emerged as one of the suspects on the Lee list. Rep. Fred Busbey then spotlighted her case in a lengthy statement in March 1948, again with emphasis on her role in placing others with dubious security records.20
By far the strongest evidence for this critique—in essence admitted by Rommel, according to the Lee list—was that she was the person responsible for bringing Robert Miller to the department. As Miller was a Bentley-identified Soviet agent, this aspect of Rommel’s record was in itself sufficient to put security investigators on alert. Add the fact that it was Rommel who discussed Miller’s security tr
oubles with him in December of 1946 and tried to intervene with John Peurifoy in his behalf. Finally, it was Rommel’s link to Miller that caused Sam Klaus to flag her to the notice of Hamilton Robinson during the changeover at the security office in February of 1947.
So there was quite a paper trail on Rommel, mostly tying her to Miller—“the greatest security risk” the department had harbored, according to the Lee list compilers. As Miller’s sponsor at State, confidante while he was there, and champion when he was being ousted, Rommel was obviously thick with this Bentley-identified apparatchik. All of which would have been enough to suggest she was a security risk herself under the most forgiving standards. Yet, like many other cases mentioned, Rommel was still on the State Department payroll in February 1950. She was McCarthy’s case No. 51.
Charles W. Thayer
The final case to be considered here is indicative both as to McCarthy’s sources and the much-controverted question of his methods. Thayer was yet another transplant from OSS who had become the head of VOA, a frequent target of McCarthy. He wasn’t, however, on the list of McCarthy suspects presented to the Senate or the supplementary list supplied to Tydings. (Nor was he a Lee list alum.) His was nonetheless a most revealing McCarthy case.
On at least two occasions in 1950, McCarthy called attention to Thayer, but strictly on a confidential basis. In one instance in March, he mentioned the case in an executive session of the Tydings panel; in another, he flagged it to the notice of the FBI. According to Bureau agent Mickey Ladd, in a memo of March 30, McCarthy “informed me that next week he intends to call on the State Department to fire Charles W. Thayer. In this regard he stated he was not going to call him by name but indicated that in his, McCarthy’s opinion, Thayer was one of the worst types of [blacked out].”21
These comments are the more noteworthy as McCarthy had in his possession an extensive dossier on Thayer, comprising charges of two different types: allegations that as an officer in OSS in the middle 1940s, Thayer had consorted with and aided pro-Soviet and pro-Tito agents in Yugoslavia, and charges of a more personal nature, concerning alleged homosexual conduct. As earlier noted, this was apparently a State Department loyalty file, and a fairly complete one, running to better than forty pages. That such a file was in the possession of McCarthy says a lot about the kind of information he was then receiving and the inside nature of his sources.22
The other point about the Thayer file is that McCarthy, so far as the available records show, never went public with this information, though it was of abundant nature. This says something about his methods and his reluctance to name a suspect using data on personal matters. The Thayer case was of interest also in that he was the brother-in-law of Charles E. Bohlen, a much more imposing State Department figure on whom McCarthy would likewise obtain security data, leading to an historic showdown in the Senate. That famous episode, however, wouldn’t happen until three years later.
CHAPTER 26
Some Public Cases
THE McCarthy cases involved in the State Department loyalty hearings ranged from his written lists of 100 or so anonymous suspects, who stayed mostly in the shadows, to big-name targets such as Owen Lattimore, Philip Jessup, and John Service, who got the bulk of the headlines at the time and most of the historical notice later.
Between these extremes of fame were a half-dozen intermediate cases McCarthy read out in open sessions of the Tydings panel and are thus part of the public record, though usually treated in cursory fashion in retrospectives of the era. These cases, as it happens, are of considerable value in gauging the merits of McCarthy’s charges, as he provided fairly extensive information on them at the time and more would subsequently be revealed about them.
The cases are of interest also anent the charge that McCarthy was simply recycling data from the Lee list, as virtually none of the documentation he used was derivative from that roster. From a survey of this group of suspects, it’s possible to learn something about the evidence McCarthy had, where this in all probability came from, and how accurately he construed it. The cases also reveal a thing or two about State Department security practice of the day and the methods of the Tydings panel in clearing each and every McCarthy suspect.
Dorothy Kenyon
The first name McCarthy brought before the subcommittee, after all the initial sparring, was a surprise to most observers. The case was that of Dorothy Kenyon, a former New York City judge and State Department appointee to a U.N. commission on the status of women. It seemed a curious selection. Judge Kenyon wasn’t a well-known or high-ranking official, and her connection to the State Department had recently concluded. She was in all respects a less important case than Jessup, Service, or John Carter Vincent, any one of whom McCarthy might plausibly have led with.
However, some clues as to the choice of Kenyon may be found in the type of information McCarthy was using. His case consisted entirely of a recitation of the numerous Communist-front groups with which the judge had been connected. McCarthy said there were twenty-eight of these, though he didn’t actually present this number and a check of the records suggests there were others he could have cited. One obvious feature of this approach is that it was a matter of public information, if one knew where to find it. This would have been for McCarthy a most useful aspect. He couldn’t get at the State Department files, but he could, with proper guidance, document the case of Kenyon.
Also, the necessary guidance was now available in the person of J. B. Matthews. Most of the material McCarthy had on Kenyon came from or related to Appendix IX of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and Matthews was the main compiler of that volume. Matthews would have known a lot about Judge Kenyon and would have had access to or in his possession the documents on which Appendix IX was founded. Putting all of that together not only makes the choice of Kenyon less mysterious but gives us some notion of how McCarthy was at this point proceeding. Having hooked up with Matthews, he would make extensive use of Appendix IX, information on Communist-front affiliations, and the expertise of Matthews in general. And Matthews, as shall be seen, would be a crucial figure in later chapters of the story.
For the moment, the most significant thing about the case was the reaction of Judge Kenyon to the documentation McCarthy presented. To read some sketchy treatments of this affray, one might suppose her appearance was a huge success—that she courageously faced down McCarthy, denounced his charges as spurious and demeaning, and more or less mopped the floor with him in a ringing defense of her views and reputation. An examination of the hearing record, however, does little to support this verdict.
In fact, once Kenyon got through her prepared remarks and was subject to cross-examination by Bourke Hickenlooper, her performance must have left her supporters cringing. An embarrassing episode unfolded as Hickenlooper walked her through a lengthy roster of officially cited Communist fronts and asked about her involvement with them. In this sequence, the clarion tones of her opening statement faded into halfway admissions, hedges, and—most of all—an apparently total loss of memory. Some of her responses—each concerning a separate, officially cited front activity—were as follows:
• “I remember nothing about it…. [then, experiencing some recall] I got out very early and washed my hands of it.” (Consumers National Federation)
• “I think I made a speech there…I had nothing to do with it, according to my records, except to serve for a short period on the Committee for Free Public Education.”(American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom)
• “I haven’t the faintest idea. I can’t even remember it…”(Greater New York Emergency Conference on Inalienable Rights)
• “I haven’t any recollection….I don’t remember anything about this…. I haven’t any recollection of it.” Hickenlooper: “Your name is on the second page.” Kenyon: “I don’t recall having attended the dinner.” (Testimonial dinner for the prominent Communist Ferdinand Smith)
• “I have no recollection of anything except t
he Gerson controversy itself….I have no recollection of it and this seems to me incredible….” (Public group letter defending the naming of well-known Communist Simon Gerson to a staff post with the New York City Council)
• “I have absolutely no recollection of having done anything of the sort….”(Group letter in behalf of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade)
• “I have very little recollection of it myself…. I have no recollection of it….So far as I am concerned, I have forgotten everything about it….”(Political Prisoners Bail Fund Committee)
• “I have absolutely no recollection of that whatever, Senator….”(Groupletter in behalf of convicted Communist Morris Schappes)
• “I have absolutely no recollection…. I have no recollection whatever….” (Films for Democracy)
• “I have absolutely no recollection….” (Citizens Committee to Aid Striking Seamen)
• “I have absolutely no recollection….I have difficulty remembering even this connection with it….” (Conference on Pan American Democracy)
• “I have absolutely no recollection of any such thing….” (Milk Consumers Protective Committee)1
From these and similar answers, Ms. Kenyon appeared to be a chronic amnesiac who had trouble remembering much of anything whatever. In which case, it’s hard to see how she could have carried out the duties of a judge or those of a State Department appointee to the United Nations. (On the other hand, while experiencing almost total lack of recall about her own involvement with such groups, she did much better in remembering exculpatory data about certain eminent people connected to them.)
Blacklisted By History Page 43
