McCarthy and His Enemies. - book reviews

National Review, Feb 26, 1996 by Elliott Abrams

WILLIAM Buckley is nothing if not an optimist, or he would never have founded this very magazine at a moment when liberalism dominated American political and intellectual life. That optimism is displayed again in his introduction to McCarthy and His Enemies, where he writes that "a gradual and painful process of historical rectification" is under way with regard to McCarthy and anti-Communism.

Thanks to the opening of some Soviet archives, far more information is available now than in 1954, when this book was first published, on the subject of American Communism and its ties to Soviet espionage. The guilt of the Rosenbergs, for example, has been transformed from clear (after their trial) to crystal clear (since Allen Weinstein's book) to undeniable (since Soviet files have been available). The problem for admirers of Senator Joseph McCarthy is that the guilt of American Communists has not seemed to do much for his posthumous reputation. While in the early 1950s many people seemed to believe that one could prove the innocence of McCarthy's targets by attacking his methods and morals, today incontrovertible evi

of the Rosenbergs, for example, has been transformed from clear (after their trial) to crystal clear (since Allen Weinstein's book) to undeniable (since Soviet files have been available). But the guilt of American Communists has not seemed to do much for Senator Joseph McCarthy's posthumous reputation. Whereas in the early 1950s many people tried to believe that one could prove the innocence of Joseph McCarthy's targets by attacking his methods and morals, today incontrovertible evidence of Soviet espionage efforts in America is treated as if it were unrelated to history's judgment of Senator McCarthy.

Buckley and Bozell went at the McCarthy problem in two ways. First they undertook an elaborate evaluation of the evidence in nine cases, trying to show that McCarthy's charges were persuasive. This was a laborious undertaking, and in his introduction Buckley notes that "18 months . . . is a very, very long time to spend on the question whether Esther Brunauer was ever a member of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee League." Buckley may fear that these pages read slowly, but in fact they are fascinating -- probably more so today than when they were first published. That shadowy world of wartime front organizations; of Communist agents, fellow travelers, and dupes; of Owen Lattimore and John Stewart Service, Philip Jessup and John Paton Davies, was far more familiar then; now it reads rather more like a novel. Back then these pages were yet another addition to the ongoing debate about McCarthy and his enemies. Today they provide a rare insight into what McCarthy's arguments were all about.

For as Buckley and Bozell repeatedly underline, the issue was in fact whether the State Department was running its security program well or poorly. For this, Buckley and Bozell, like McCarthy, did not need to show that specific employees were guilty of espionage; they needed only to show that there was some evidence that an employee was a security or loyalty risk, and that the State Department (or whatever agency was pertinent) had willfully overlooked it. They accused State of "criminal nonchalance" in regard to these cases -- a "total absence of will" to take the charges seriously.

What were the charges? They ranged from accusations of actual espionage -- handing secret documents over to Soviet agents -- to involvement in dozens of Communist-front organizations (the argument being that involvement in one or two might indicate carelessness, but involvement in 15 shows a certain political leaning). When someone switches his views of whether to fight Hitler from "Stay out of the fascist war!" to "Join the united front against fascism!" immediately after Hitler attacks the USSR and the Communist line changes, this is at least suggestive. And so Buckley and Bozell asked, "Did McCarthy present enough evidence to raise reasonable doubt as to whether all loyalty and security risks had been removed from the State Department?"

The verdict rendered here is that he did. In most of his cases McCarthy adduced persuasive evidence; the State Department's efforts stood condemned; and the screams of "Red scare" were efforts to occlude this truth.

But in other cases McCarthy had it wrong, the authors say, or his rhetoric exceeded what the evidence permitted. Thus he committed "an egregious blunder" when, in the follow-up to his famous speech of February 9, 1950, in Wheeling, West Virginia, he said that he had the names of "57 card-carrying members of the Communist Party" within the State Department, when in fact all he had was a list (whose length was unclear) of security risks there. Claiming that these were "new" names, when in fact they came from a House investigation, was "misleading the Senate." McCarthy told the Senate he would give it "the fullest, most complete, fairest resume of the files" but willfully failed to do so, and "on this point, McCarthy deserves to be censured." Some of the charges McCarthy made before the Tydings Committee, which was investigating his claims against State, "were exaggerated; a few had no apparent foundation whatever" and deserved censure. McCarthy was "guilty of a number of exaggerations, some of them reckless . . . they are reprehensible." McCarthy "smeared" the columnist Drew Pearson, and his charges against General George Marshall "deserve to be criticized . . . McCarthy's judgment here was bad."