Joe McCarthy and the historians

Human Events, Jan 1, 1999 by Evans, M Stanton

Central to this attack against McCarthy was a now-ancient, yellowing list of State Department personnel-past, present, and prospective-put together in the fall of 1947 and published in early '48 by the House Appropriations Committee of the 80th Congress, chaired by Rep. John Taber (RN.Y.). Staffers of this panel, under chief clerk Robert Lee, reviewed department loyalty files, compiling a list of 108 they found of interest with summaries of relevant data. Howevera point that would eventually loom large-the list contained no names; citing the cases by numbers only. In most discussions of the topic, this is called "the Lee list."

That McCarthy had this list is certain, as is the fact that it formed the principal basis for his oration before the Senate (see below). Equally certain is that it was a document of importance, well deserving close attention. In some respects, indeed, it is even more significant now than it was back then, as we have other data to go with it.

The notion that McCarthy had nothing but this numbered roster, and that his charges thus were baseless, was originally floated, it would appear, by the State Department's own researchers. The department issued a lengthy memo on the subject, which said McCarthy re-cycled this group of cases though they had been thoroughly vetted by Congress (and the FBI) "and their continued employment approved." As State Department official Carlisle Humelsine would put it: "The senator picked up an old list that was furnished to the 80th Congress. . . He is riding piggyback on the 80th Congress committee that made the investigation and cleared the department."

Tydings bought this view completely, and showcased it in his report to Congress. In the Tydings version, the list was a ho-hum affair that refuted McCarthy's Senate speech twice over: It hadn't amounted to much to start with (the entries "do not appear in any instance to be concerned with the merits of the cases") and by 1950 was obsolete (the people involved "are not necessarily now in the State Department"). McCarthy, hyping these innocuous data, had "twisted, colored, or perverted the House material" to make something bland seem evil.

To prove the harmless nature of the list, Tydings played the trump card dealt by State: Republicans of the 80th Congress had viewed these very cases -and reached no McCarthylike conclusions. On the contrary, Tydings said, the House Appropriations panel "did not regard them of sufficient significance even to submit a report concerning them or the loyalty of State Department personnel generally." As foretold by Newsweek, he further claimed that four different committees of this Congress had looked into these matters, and all had come up empty. Thus the State Department/Tydings thesis that the list amounted to nothing much, the security set-up at State was fine, and McCarthy was a liar. If we now fast forward to our historians, we find all this repeatedsometimes rather vaguely, sometimes with embellishments and variations, but always with the identical verdict: The list was no big deal, hence no security woes to speak of. In confirming the so-what description of the list, for instance, Reeves provides us numerous snippets, plus two innocuous longer quotes, contrasting these with the McCarthy phrasing. Similar treatment is supplied by Prof. David Oshinsky, another academic critic, whose book-length assault against McCarthy is frequently cited on these topics. (See "Two Historians on `the Lee List,"' page S4.)