“We were anxious,” said Adams of this visit, “to make Zwicker understand that neither names nor security information would be revealed [in testifying before McCarthy]. We left the meeting with the impression that Zwicker had already made substantial revelations about Peress to McCarthy’s staff, starting off with the disclosure of his name. This would make McCarthy’s interrogation of Zwicker awkward, since Zwicker might now feel that he could not testify at the hearing concerning any information he had already informally told McCarthy’s people.”21 (Emphasis added.)
That says it rather plainly—not only as to the once more decisive role of Adams and the peculiar change that came over Zwicker, but the “impression” that Zwicker had already shared data he would now be reluctant to confirm. That made for a very “awkward” scene indeed—for which read, angry confrontation. It was thus fairly obvious what had happened. Zwicker started out cooperating with the committee and in all probability did provide the Peress security data to Anastos. But after his visit from Adams, he got the message: Provide no further information. Hence the stonewalling before McCarthy; hence the blowup.
To all of which there are a couple of footnotes. As Zwicker’s sworn denials were in direct conflict with the testimony of Anastos/Morrill, the McClellan committee in 1955 would refer the matter to the Attorney General for consideration of possible perjury charges. And since it would have been two witnesses against one, Zwicker was the obvious target. For some unknown reason, it took Eisenhower Justice nineteen months to respond to this referral, finally answering in December 1956 that the matter didn’t meet the “technical” requirements of a perjury indictment. The case was thus considered closed.
Then, a few weeks later, the final chapter of the story would be written. On January 17, 1957, Ralph Zwicker was nominated for promotion to full permanent rank as brigadier general and temporary major general. When he arrived for confirmation hearings, he was accompanied by Ike’s new Army Secretary, Wilbur Brucker, and a full array of Pentagon brass, an impressive show of high-level support for someone who scant weeks before had been a candidate for a perjury indictment. After a ringing endorsement by Brucker, the promotion was approved, and Zwicker would go into the history books as a vindicated martyr. General Lawton, to judge by the silence of the record, still wasn’t available for comment.
CHAPTER 40
The Legend of Annie Lee Moss
McCARTHY martyrs weren’t so thick on the ground in 1954 as they had been in 1950, when he inflicted his reign of terror on the State Department and reaped a bumper crop of victims. However, the later group of suspects would compensate for their relative lack of numbers with extra pathos. This was mainly owing to the newly risen influence of TV, which showcased several of these cases as pitiful targets of McCarthy’s bluster.
There were several dramatic examples of this type, stemming from the VOA, Monmouth, and Army-McCarthy hearings—Reed Harris, Frederick Fisher, and some others. But the case that probably came closest to exhibiting the main features of McCarthy victimhood, and the lasting fame this conferred, was that of Annie Lee Moss, a black woman then working for the Army. Called before the subcommittee in early 1954, she was depicted at the time, and still is, as the quintessential McCarthy martyr. The most famous of all McCarthy cases, it’s also a case that says a lot about McCarthy, his critics, and standard histories of the era.
A pivotal player in the Moss affair was FBI witness Mary Markward, an unsung foot soldier in the silent war conducted by the Bureau against the Kremlin’s U.S. helpers. In 1942, Markward was recruited by the FBI as a deep-cover agent inside the Communist Party, a task she gamely carried out for seven years. In this guise she would become treasurer of the party in the District of Columbia, with responsibility for membership rolls and records of dues payments. This information she passed on to the FBI, keeping Hoover’s men apprised of who was who inside the local party apparatus.*285
In due course, Markward was considered so well informed about the doings of the comrades that the government would use her as an expert witness before the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), set up by Congress to monitor the party and its agents. This led the Communists to stage a vigorous counterattack against Markward, a dispute that dragged on before the board and in the courts for roughly a decade.
The immediate relevance of Mrs. Markward here is that she would identify Annie Lee Moss to the FBI as a Communist Party member in the District, information the Bureau passed on to the Civil Service Commission and the Army. This intel became the more important when Mrs. Moss, previously a cafeteria worker, somehow got appointed as a code clerk for the Signal Corps and was given security clearance for this duty. On the face of it, this seemed to be a security gaffe of huge proportions.
As such things had a way of doing, the case came to the notice of McCarthy, and, in a spin-off from the Monmouth probe, he would summon both Markward and Moss to appear before him to sort out the facts about the matter. This was in the immediate wake of the Peress-Zwicker confrontations, and in McCarthy’s mind raised all the same disturbing issues. Given the Markward evidence, Civil Service data, and FBI reports, he wondered, how was it possible for Mrs. Moss to get clearance as an Army code clerk?
Markward testified before McCarthy in late February ’54, a week after the Zwicker blowup. She said Annie Lee Moss had been known to her as a member of the D.C. party, based on its membership and dues-paying records, and a recipient of the Daily Worker. In 1945, Markward added, Mrs. Moss had been dropped from the formal CP rolls when she went to work for the General Accounting Office, as it was party policy to treat members holding official jobs on a separate, more confidential basis. (Mrs. Moss worked for the GAO from October 1945 until 1949, obtaining her code clerk post in 1950.)1
When Mrs. Moss appeared to answer Markward, she seemed a frail, distracted figure, not fitting the usual picture of a party apparatchik. Also, unlike many other suspects, she didn’t plead the Fifth Amendment but proceeded to deny all: She wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, never had been, didn’t know anything about it. It was, she said, a mistaken-identity problem. There was some other Annie Lee Moss who must be the culprit they were after. This Moss explanation is featured in all the usual histories, which, with no known exceptions, have treated her testimony as conclusive on the subject.
A somewhat novel aspect of the case was that the mistaken-identity idea was first surfaced, and later pushed hard, by various subcommittee members. During the Markward testimony, before Moss came on the scene in person, the issue was raised by John McClellan. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “…may we determine whether the Annie Lee Moss that is now employed in the government is the same Annie Lee Moss about whom you speak, and whom you know to be a Communist?”2 This wasn’t an unreasonable thing to ask, as Markward had apparently never seen Moss in person, knowing of her through party records. It was, however, a bit unusual for the point to be made by a committee member before such a plea was entered by the suspect.
Then, when Mrs. Moss did appear, on March 11, Stuart Symington, aided by Scoop Jackson, went after the mistaken-identity theme in avid fashion, serving up leading questions the witness seemed well prepared to answer.
SYMINGTON: Do you know anybody else in this town named Moss? Have you ever looked up a telephone number*286 —are there any Mosses in Washington besides you?
MOSS: Yes, sir, there are three Annie Lee Mosses.
JACKSON: Will you state that again?
MOSS: There are three Annie Lee Mosses.3
These responses were apparently all the proof required in certain circles to reach a verdict of not guilty. Symington announced himself persuaded by the mere statement of the Moss denial. “Mrs. Moss,” he said, “I want to say something to you, and I may be sticking my neck out here, and I may be wrong…But I have been listening to you testify this afternoon and I think you are telling the truth…If you are not taken back into the Army (employment) you come around to see me, and I am going to see that you get a job.”†
287 4
This brought an outburst of audience applause, and for reasons that have never been quite clear was assumed to have settled the issue. Helping spread this notion was that the hearing including the Moss denial and Symington gesture was televised, most famously by Edward R. Murrow of CBS on his TV show, See It Now. Reinforcing the image of grievous wrong to Moss, when Roy Cohn brought up the previously noted point that still other witnesses could confirm the Markward statements, he was rebuked, and silenced, by McClellan.*288
Such was the full extent of the story then broadcast to the nation, and such is the version appearing in all the standard write-ups, media retrospectives, and, most recently, entertainments. To cite the many books of alleged history in which this oft-told tale appears would be tedious for both the author and the reader. However, a few samples will suggest the prevalence of the treatment:
“…Joe’s old trouble of mistaken identity had cropped up again: as he had before indicted the wrong Anna Rosenberg, so now he indicted the wrong Annie Lee Moss, a Pentagon code clerk.” (Jack Anderson) “He [McCarthy] claimed—erroneously—that the employee had access to decoded messages and belonged to the Communist Party. She had received Communist mailings, but hers seemed to be another case of mistaken identity—there were three Annie Lee Mosses in the Washington telephone directory.” (Richard Fried) “To the dimmest intelligence it seemed clear that the case hinged on a bungle over identity—there were several Annie Lee Mosses listed in the Washington telephone directory—and it focused attention on the slipshod work of McCarthy’s staff.” (Lately Thomas)5
Unfortunately, what seemed clear to the “dimmest intelligence” wouldn’t be clear at all to anyone who actually checked the records—as these authors obviously didn’t. In fact, there was no mistaken identity in the case, no good reason to think there was, and plenty of reason to think there wasn’t. Symington, the McCarthy critics of that day, and numerous facile commentators since would prove to be the bunglers.
Central to the Moss mistaken-identity plea was the contention that there were “three Annie Lee Mosses” in the D.C. phone book and that the McCarthy probers had simply collared the wrong suspect.†289 This led to considerable back-and-forth in the hearing record about the several addresses of Mrs. Moss, to verify that the same person was being talked of. On this point, Mrs. Moss herself would give the game away in an unguarded moment, volunteering one of the addresses where she lived in the 1940s. In an exchange with McCarthy about the Daily Worker being delivered to her home, she said: “…we didn’t get this Communist paper anymore until after we had moved southwest to 72 R St.”6 (Emphasis added.)
This comment would be of key significance later, when the SACB weighed arguments from the Communist party in its attack on Markward. Among the issues raised by the comrades were Markward’s statements concerning a regional CP bigwig and whether she had received payment from the FBI for her undercover duties. To these counts, in response to the publicity given Moss, the party opportunistically added the charge that Markward had perjured herself in branding Moss a CP member.
This challenge caused the SACB to call for the FBI reports concerning Markward-Moss and examine the records of the Communist Party of the District. After this review, in a 1958 report, the SACB concluded: “The situation that has resulted on the Moss question is that the party’s own records, copies of which are now in evidence, and the authenticity of which it does not dispute,…show an Annie Lee Moss, 72 R St., S.W., as a party member in the mid-1940s.”7 (Emphasis added.)
These findings about Mrs. Moss and her R Street address made the matter quite open-and-shut, rendering moot attempts to discredit Markward, conjure up three different Mosses, or other such rhetorical smoke screens. Whether Mrs. Moss was as befuddled as she appeared, or had been recruited into the party without knowing what she was doing, are debatable topics.*290 What isn’t debatable is that this particular Annie Moss, and no other, had been listed in the Communist records as a party member. The Markward testimony to McCarthy was, per the SACB account, 100 percent on target.
That was the state of available information on the case in the fall of 1958, when the SACB released its findings. Decisive as these comments were, the record would get still more so when the underlying FBI reports about Mrs. Moss and the Communist records were later made available to researchers. These files show the accuracy of the SACB account, hence the veracity of Markward, but yield a number of other disclosures also, some of startling nature.
For one thing, as suggested by the SACB discussion, the FBI in its Moss reports wasn’t simply relying on updates from Markward. It had also obtained, directly, copies of the membership, dues, and other records of the D.C. Communist Party via highly “confidential sources,” which in Bureau lingo meant some variant of a bag job. As reflected in numerous Bureau summaries of these records, the Markward info about Moss—dues payments, shifts from one party unit to another, places of employment—was confirmed in systematic fashion. It was all the same information, all pertaining to the same person, all involving the same moves from one job or residence to another. (In which respect, the 72 R St. address was often featured.)†291 8
These were, however, among the least astonishing aspects of the Bureau records. A good deal more so was the revelation that, well before the McCarthy hearings, this same Annie Lee Moss had repeatedly been recommended for demotion or removal as a security risk by officials of the Army. Such recommendations had been made at least three different times in 1951 at different levels of the service, only to be overridden by the same review board that had been reversing security suspensions at Monmouth.*292 (Information that was in the possession of the McCarthy staffers.) Little wonder, then, that McCarthy considered the case to be part of a larger pattern.
Finally—the most jolting disclosure of them all—the FBI file reveals that the Democratic contingent on the McCarthy panel knew all about the Bureau data on the case well before the famous hearing in which Symington-Jackson-Moss floated the legend of multiple Annie Mosses. This is spelled out in a Bureau memo of February 24, 1954, the day after the Markward testimony, by FBI official Lou Nichols. In this update, Nichols said he had just discussed the case with Henry Jackson and minority subcommittee counsel Robert Kennedy, and had gone into minute detail about it with Jackson, as follows:
I then told Senator Jackson that in addition to the Mary Markward testimony, we had secured through confidential sources access to an examination of membership records of the Communist Party of the District of Columbia in May of 1944, that these reflected the name of Annie Lee Moss of 72 R St. We had observed other records relating to members who had been dropped by the party and transferred to the party with the District; that the name of Annie Lee Moss appeared as transferring into the Party December 1, 1943.
I further told the senator that a list of names had been observed believed to be…Group Captains in connection with the 1944 registration of Party members and the list contained the name of Annie Lee Moss. In 1944, it had been ascertained that her name appeared on a list of CPA†293 members; that another list in the summer of 1944 reflected her name on a list of CPA members under the heading “Unassigned”…Further, that a list had been observed dated January 2, 1945, wherein the name of Annie Lee Moss appeared under the heading of Cash Receipts for Daily Worker subscriptions.9
NO MISTAKEN IDENTITY
As revealed in this FBI report of February 24, 1954, the Democratic contingent of the McCarthy panel had been informed of the Bureau’s extensive data on Annie Lee Moss well before the March 11 hearings in which they pushed the mistaken-identity theory of the case.
Source: FBI Annie Lee Moss file
This memo makes it crystal clear that Scoop Jackson was thoroughly briefed about the Moss affair on February 24, two weeks before the hearing in which the mistaken-identity plea was surfaced. The memo further shows Jackson was persuaded by what he heard, adding that “Senator Jackson stated that this certainly was enough for him and that there could be no doubt abou
t Annie Lee Moss’ Communist Party affiliations…”10 Despite this, Jackson and his fellow Democrats on March 11 would act out the “three different Annie Lee Mosses” charade, thus obscuring before the nation the data that Jackson was given by the Bureau.
In fact, though Jackson kept quiet about what he was told and the SACB report wouldn’t be published until four years later, there was ample reason in 1954 to know the Moss on the witness stand and the Moss in the party records were one and the same. Close study of the hearing records would have been enough to show this. For instance, the Moss named by Markward had been a cafeteria employee, lived for a time with a Hattie Griffin, and received the Daily Worker—all this testified to by Markward on February 23. The Moss appearing before McCarthy, by her own account, had been a cafeteria employee, lived for a time with Hattie Griffin, and received the Daily Worker. Anyone comparing the transcripts could see there was no identity mix-up.
Meanwhile, as the authorities knew but the public didn’t, there was a long paper trail on Mrs. Moss and her security record with the federal government, first at the GAO and then with the Army. The trail would get even longer in August 1954—six months after Symington, Murrow, and others depicted Moss as a victim of McCarthy’s slipshod methods—when the Army suspended her from her duties. This action was based on a series of charges addressed to Moss that tracked closely with the intel provided Jackson—but with one riveting addition: “You [Moss] are reported to have been given Communist Party membership book number 37269 for 1943.”11
When these Army charges were made public, Stuart Symington, who had praised Mrs. Moss and generously offered to get her a job if she lost her post as code clerk, had a sudden change of heart. On August 5, 1954, he wrote McCarthy: “The press reports that the Army has suspended Mrs. Moss on the basis of information which was not previously available, pending further investigation…I think it is absolutely essential that we get to the bottom of Mrs. Moss’ case…If Mrs. Moss is innocent that should be established. If she testified falsely before us, the matter should be referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”12
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