McCarthyism


Michael Stuart Kelly

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How McCarthyism Worked

by Alia Hoyt

How Stuff Works

In 1947, Ayn Rand testified before HUAC on communist inflitration in Hollywood. This was a forerunner to Senator McCarthy's Senate hearings on subversion, which ended in charges of "witch hunt." So it is interesting to get an overview of what McCarthy was all about. Hollywood has widely publicized one version since many in Hollywood were persecuted, but demonizing McCarthy is not enough for a full picture. I found this overview fascinating. From the article:

By the '50s, communism wasn't exactly a new worry for the United States. In the aftermath of World War I, the country had experienced the First Red Scare ("red" is slang for communism). Russia had a new communist government as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and dictator Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) had brutally slaughtered about 9 million of his people for resisting his ideals [source: The History Guide]. All of this upheaval upset Americans, so lawmakers decided to prevent the spread of communism to the United States by enforcing the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act.

. . .

McCarthy took advantage of the mounting fear, but because it isn't actually illegal to be a communist, he started charging people with the act of subversion -- the "systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working from within" [source: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law].

. . .

In 1944 he ran for U.S. Senate, parlaying his military service into the patriotic persona of "Tail Gunner Joe." He didn't win that time, but did take the ticket in 1946 when he became Wisconsin's junior senator.

McCarthy burst onto the national scene several years later. In 1950, during a highly controversial speech at a Lincoln's Birthday luncheon, he waved around a list of 205 names of supposed active communists holding jobs in the State Department.

McCarthy was a relative unknown, but once he lit the fire under America's fear of communism, there seemed to be no stopping it.

. . .

Americans became frantic to identify and remove communists from positions of power. Many believe this hysteria to have been generated not completely by McCarthy, but rather by the events that preceded his speech. Communists, led by Mao Zedong, had gained control of China two months earlier. The Soviet Union had exploded an atomic bomb in 1949. And leaders of the Communist Party of the United States had recently been convicted of conspiring to violently overthrow the U.S. government. McCarthy's speech was the icing on the cake.

. . .

Transcripts of the Senate hearings, which became available in 2003, confirm what the American public eventually realized about McCarthy's interview tactics. He used severe intimidation, and often the threat of prison, when trying to get information -- and he often had little or no solid evidence on which to base his claims. The names of many witnesses and suspects were released publicly, resulting in defamation of character and guilt by association. Careers and reputations were irreversibly damaged. And when all was said and done, there were no convictions for subversion.

. . .

The term "McCarthyism" was coined in a Washington Post cartoon by Herbert Block that ran on March 29, 1950. It showed Republicans forcing an elephant, their party symbol, to stand on a precarious pile of tar buckets. The highest bucket was tagged "McCarthyism," and the caption quoted the elephant saying, "You mean I'm supposed to stand on that?"

. . .

Entertainment industry blacklist: This is the list of members of the entertainment industry who had suspected or real ties to communism. Those on the blacklist were refused employment based on their political ties. A full list of the artists blacklisted is available at Bookrags.com.

The Hollywood Ten: The first 10 members of the Hollywood film industry questioned by McCarthy decided not to cooperate with the investigation, choosing instead to claim their First Amendment right to free speech. Unfortunately for them, they were not successful. Eight were sentenced to a year in prison for contempt of Congress. The other two received six-month sentences. A full list of the Hollywood Ten and their credentials is available at the Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

. . .

As it turns out, many of the people McCarthy targeted actually did have communist ties, but much of the proof wasn't revealed until years later.

. . .

The irony of the whole McCarthy scandal is that, despite his highhandedness, lack of evidence and general recklessness, there definitely was a communist presence in the United States at the time, as illustrated by the Rosenbergs and others. In fact, a number of the people McCarthy interrogated were later identified as communists and even Soviet agents. The evidence he had so desperately sought became available in 1995 with the release of the Venona intercepts. These secret Soviet intelligence messages had been decoded in the 1940s but didn't become public knowledge until 1995.

. . .

Television, the medium that makes or breaks so many, was ultimately McCarthy's downfall. McCarthy had been viciously interrogating suspects in public and private hearings for some time, but the American people witnessed his brutal methods firsthand when the Army-McCarthy hearings were broadcast on live TV in 1954 (the doing of President Eisenhower, who wanted the public to see McCarthy's misdeeds).

. . .

In 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy on 46 charges for abuse of legislative powers. He was eventually censured on only two of the charges because the Senate didn't want to project the image of being "soft" on communism. Instead, the censure resolution stated that he had abused his power as a senator. He remained in office but was left with virtually no power or clout.

McCarthy died on May 2, 1957, of acute hepatitis, which resulted from alcohol abuse. He was 48 years old.

The 1995 release of the Venona intercepts caused some to view McCarthy's legacy differently. Maybe he had, in fact, been a crusader against communism in a country that wasn't taking a tough enough approach. But most remember him as violating the civil liberties of too many innocent people -- and even some guilty people. He is still generally considered a reckless bully who used whatever means necessary to obtain the information he wanted.

The biggest lesson we can learn from all this is that "the end justifies the means" is not only a poor procedure, it actually causes the opposite effect by outraging good people against any truth involved. Here is an example from the article:

President Harry Truman, who reportedly ignored warnings by the FBI that Harry Dexter White had communist ties. Truman promoted him to a top-level position at the International Monetary Fund. White was later revealed to be a Soviet agent.

There is a reason we have a rule of law. There is a reason we operate on principles. There is a reason we do not accept being ruled by any one person's inspired wisdom.

Michael

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How McCarthyism Worked

by Alia Hoyt

How Stuff Works

In 1947, Ayn Rand testified before HUAC on communist inflitration in Hollywood. This was a forerunner to Senator McCarthy's Senate hearings on subversion, which ended in charges of "witch hunt." So it is interesting to get an overview of what McCarthy was all about. Hollywood has widely publicized one version since many in Hollywood were persecuted, but demonizing McCarthy is not enough for a full picture. I found this overview fascinating. From the article:

By the '50s, communism wasn't exactly a new worry for the United States. In the aftermath of World War I, the country had experienced the First Red Scare ("red" is slang for communism). Russia had a new communist government as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and dictator Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) had brutally slaughtered about 9 million of his people for resisting his ideals [source: The History Guide]. All of this upheaval upset Americans, so lawmakers decided to prevent the spread of communism to the United States by enforcing the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act.

. . .

McCarthy took advantage of the mounting fear, but because it isn't actually illegal to be a communist, he started charging people with the act of subversion -- the "systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working from within" [source: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law].

. . .

In 1944 he ran for U.S. Senate, parlaying his military service into the patriotic persona of "Tail Gunner Joe." He didn't win that time, but did take the ticket in 1946 when he became Wisconsin's junior senator.

McCarthy burst onto the national scene several years later. In 1950, during a highly controversial speech at a Lincoln's Birthday luncheon, he waved around a list of 205 names of supposed active communists holding jobs in the State Department.

McCarthy was a relative unknown, but once he lit the fire under America's fear of communism, there seemed to be no stopping it.

. . .

Americans became frantic to identify and remove communists from positions of power. Many believe this hysteria to have been generated not completely by McCarthy, but rather by the events that preceded his speech. Communists, led by Mao Zedong, had gained control of China two months earlier. The Soviet Union had exploded an atomic bomb in 1949. And leaders of the Communist Party of the United States had recently been convicted of conspiring to violently overthrow the U.S. government. McCarthy's speech was the icing on the cake.

. . .

Transcripts of the Senate hearings, which became available in 2003, confirm what the American public eventually realized about McCarthy's interview tactics. He used severe intimidation, and often the threat of prison, when trying to get information -- and he often had little or no solid evidence on which to base his claims. The names of many witnesses and suspects were released publicly, resulting in defamation of character and guilt by association. Careers and reputations were irreversibly damaged. And when all was said and done, there were no convictions for subversion.

. . .

The term "McCarthyism" was coined in a Washington Post cartoon by Herbert Block that ran on March 29, 1950. It showed Republicans forcing an elephant, their party symbol, to stand on a precarious pile of tar buckets. The highest bucket was tagged "McCarthyism," and the caption quoted the elephant saying, "You mean I'm supposed to stand on that?"

. . .

Entertainment industry blacklist: This is the list of members of the entertainment industry who had suspected or real ties to communism. Those on the blacklist were refused employment based on their political ties. A full list of the artists blacklisted is available at Bookrags.com.

The Hollywood Ten: The first 10 members of the Hollywood film industry questioned by McCarthy decided not to cooperate with the investigation, choosing instead to claim their First Amendment right to free speech. Unfortunately for them, they were not successful. Eight were sentenced to a year in prison for contempt of Congress. The other two received six-month sentences. A full list of the Hollywood Ten and their credentials is available at the Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

. . .

As it turns out, many of the people McCarthy targeted actually did have communist ties, but much of the proof wasn't revealed until years later.

. . .

The irony of the whole McCarthy scandal is that, despite his highhandedness, lack of evidence and general recklessness, there definitely was a communist presence in the United States at the time, as illustrated by the Rosenbergs and others. In fact, a number of the people McCarthy interrogated were later identified as communists and even Soviet agents. The evidence he had so desperately sought became available in 1995 with the release of the Venona intercepts. These secret Soviet intelligence messages had been decoded in the 1940s but didn't become public knowledge until 1995.

. . .

Television, the medium that makes or breaks so many, was ultimately McCarthy's downfall. McCarthy had been viciously interrogating suspects in public and private hearings for some time, but the American people witnessed his brutal methods firsthand when the Army-McCarthy hearings were broadcast on live TV in 1954 (the doing of President Eisenhower, who wanted the public to see McCarthy's misdeeds).

. . .

In 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy on 46 charges for abuse of legislative powers. He was eventually censured on only two of the charges because the Senate didn't want to project the image of being "soft" on communism. Instead, the censure resolution stated that he had abused his power as a senator. He remained in office but was left with virtually no power or clout.

McCarthy died on May 2, 1957, of acute hepatitis, which resulted from alcohol abuse. He was 48 years old.

The 1995 release of the Venona intercepts caused some to view McCarthy's legacy differently. Maybe he had, in fact, been a crusader against communism in a country that wasn't taking a tough enough approach. But most remember him as violating the civil liberties of too many innocent people -- and even some guilty people. He is still generally considered a reckless bully who used whatever means necessary to obtain the information he wanted.

The biggest lesson we can learn from all this is that "the end justifies the means" is not only a poor procedure, it actually causes the opposite effect by outraging good people against any truth involved. Here is an example from the article:

President Harry Truman, who reportedly ignored warnings by the FBI that Harry Dexter White had communist ties. Truman promoted him to a top-level position at the International Monetary Fund. White was later revealed to be a Soviet agent.

There is a reason we have a rule of law. There is a reason we operate on principles. There is a reason we do not accept being ruled by any one person's inspired wisdom.

Michael

Michael; A quick look at this article show the article has a bunch of mistakes. Ayn Rand never testified before Senator McCarthy. She testified before the HOUSE Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy was a US Senator.

For a much more balanced discussion please read " Blacklisted by History" by M. Stanton Evans.

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Michael; McCarthy had nothing to do with the Hollywood Ten. That investigation was done by HUAC.

Take a look at Stan Evan's book. He has pages of notes and references.

"Blacklisted by History" is published by Crown Forum. It is a serious history which I will not say about the piece you printed.

Edited by Chris Grieb
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Chris,

You should click on the link and read the excerpts in context. I think you might be making an assumption based on what you see here as if it were the whole article. (The article is not very long.)

I have no doubt your book is good, but I have other priorities than reading an entire book on congressional blacklisting of the 40's and 50's right now. I am merely posting something quick for general information on the periphery of Objectivist history.

The article is accurate from what I have seen so far with some Google checks.

Michael

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You want inaccuracies, I'll give you inaccuracies. You want misleading rhetorical techniques, I'll give you them, too. Hoyt's is hardly the worst example of the disinformation abroad about the period, but it's a good place to start.

I start with open-and-shut matters of fact.

In 1944 he ran for U.S. Senate...He didn't win that time, but did take the ticket in 1946 when he became Wisconsin's junior senator.

McCarthy was elected to the House in 1946 and to the Senate in 1948. The 1944 run was news to me (I thought he was still in the military), and, for reasons that should in due time become clear to the reader, I'm not inclined to take Hoyt's word for it.

The first 10 members of the Hollywood film industry questioned by McCarthy

As Chris has already pointed out, McCarthy had nothing to do with the HUAC movie hearings. Since the McCarthy hearings and the HUAC hearings are the two big events in this part of history, Hoyt's confusion on the point pretty much destroys her credibility as a historian.

choosing instead to claim their First Amendment right to free speech

Some witnesses (perhaps some of the Hollywood Ten) invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Taking the Fifth is not the same as refusing to answer questions (thereby risking contempt charges), and the people who did one are not the people who did the other. Dalton Trumbo, for example, was among the latter.

...continuing to a likely falsehood...

Transcripts of the Senate hearings, which became available in 2003

No idea what this is about. As far as I know Senate hearings have always been public record, as public as the senators running them can contrive. Pubilicity is precisely why they hold hearings. A congressional committee or subcommittee generates a lot of paperwork, and maybe there were some documents that nobody got around to examining for 50 years, but Hoyt needs to tell us what these might have been. A point worth noting is that, although her article bristles with links, she gives no source for this puzzling claim.

...finally arriving at the merely dubious:

the Bolshevik Revolution [led lawmakers to try] to prevent the spread of communism to the United States by enforcing the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act.

This is a far-from-obvious reading of history. The legislation dated from America's entry into WWI, before the Bolshevik takeover. The postwar Red Scare, by accounts I've seen, was due to a couple of factors. One was the Wilson administration's and the progressives' desire to continue to police political expression as they'd been able to during the war; the other was crimes in the US by various socialists and anarchists, such as the killings by Sacco and Vanzetti and the mailing of a bomb to Sen. Talmadge. If it was a reaction to events in Russia, you'd expect it to have continued. Instead, it ended abruptly when Harding took office.

because it isn't actually illegal to be a communist, he started charging people with the act of subversion [emphasis in original]

This bears a second look. The murderer wore a green shirt when he shot his wife. Because it isn't illegal to wear a green shirt, the DA charged him with murder instead. To say this isn't to say much. McCarthy said people were committing subversion, and, as Hoyt admits, he was often (always, according to his admirers) right. (Lesser point: McCarthy didn't charge anyone, in the strict legal sense, with anything. Prosecutors do this.)

once he lit the fire under America's fear of communism, there seemed to be no stopping it

There was a stopping of it: the censure Hoyt herself mentions. This is an extraordinary punishment that has only been invoked a few times in history. More broadly, you have to wonder what was to stop. Most people who throw this kind of language around in connection with McCarthy at least try to show that he had some real effect and some serious support and serious political prospects, but she doesn't even do that. Mainstream Republicans and conservative intellectuals and media people never respected him.

Americans became frantic ... hysteria ...

What Hoyt says in the rest of this cliché-studded paragraph is that people were acting on good evidence and had been doing so for some time. These are odd grounds indeed for concluding that

- it was groundless;

- McCarthy started it.

He used severe intimidation, and often the threat of prison, when trying to get information

Congress, like the courts, has subpoena powers. McCarthy was neither the first nor the last to invoke them. Whether or not this is justified is a separate question. For Hoyt to omit this legal/historical context is so misleading as to be effectively false.

he often had little or no solid evidence on which to base his claims. The names of many witnesses and suspects were released publicly, resulting in defamation of character and guilt by association. Careers and reputations were irreversibly damaged. And when all was said and done, there were no convictions for subversion

This, again, is more controversial than you might gather from Hoyt. Others at least as credible as she is maintain that the accusations were accurate and the accused richly deserved their disgrace.

Those on the blacklist were refused employment based on their political ties.

This is naive. Show business and the arts are highly competitive, full of people convinced that they have unlimited talent, that this talent is just what the public wants now and that they've made just the right career moves. If they don't reach the top, the only possible explanation is deliberate, malicious sabotage on somebody's part. The would-be star who's all self-confidence and no talent, full of blame and excuses, is a stock comic character. Rita Moreno played one in The Ritz; I Love Lucy did an episode on this. Fill in your own examples. When a failed actress says she could have gone places if she'd been willing to put out for parts, the sophisticated listener figures she put out for every part she ever got, and finally her lack of talent caught up with her. If her career sputtered out ca. 1950 and she says she was blacklisted, however, lots of people, emperor's-new-clothes-style, fall for it, reveling in frissons of righteousness.

The postwar years were bad ones for the movie studios and for anyone trying to make a living there. TV was taking their audience away, and antitrust had taken their theaters away. With this in mind, follow Hoyt's UC Berkeley link. There you will see a couple of hundred movies. How many of them have you seen? Heard of? One feature of these blacklist stories have in common is that the people in them are B-teamers, kind of people who can do well when demand is heavy but not so well when the going gets tough. Same with the actors. Gale Sondergaard won a supporting Oscar for National Velvet in 1944 and (like so many who win this award) didn't go much further. Larry Parks made a splash once in The Jolson Story but not again. If the blacklist stories were true, some of the big stars with communist associations in their pasts would have fallen, too, but this didn't happen. Lucille Ball, Melvyn Douglas, Katherine Hepburn in acting and the Mankewicz brothers in screenwriting all come to mind. Lloyd Billingsley's Hollywood Party has a lot of history you won't find in the "mainstream" sources. Radosh's Red Star Over Hollywood has a good reputation, too, though I haven't read it.

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Pete,

I don't have time to go through this item by item. I merely took the first one:

You want inaccuracies, I'll give you inaccuracies. You want misleading rhetorical techniques, I'll give you them, too. Hoyt's is hardly the worst example of the disinformation abroad about the period, but it's a good place to start.

I start with open-and-shut matters of fact.

In 1944 he ran for U.S. Senate...He didn't win that time, but did take the ticket in 1946 when he became Wisconsin's junior senator.

McCarthy was elected to the House in 1946 and to the Senate in 1948. The 1944 run was news to me (I thought he was still in the military), and, for reasons that should in due time become clear to the reader, I'm not inclined to take Hoyt's word for it.

I ran a Google check. Here is what I came up with right near the beginning: Biography: Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) from the Appleton Public Library. From the article:

While still on active duty in 1944, McCarthy challenged incumbent Alexander Wiley for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate, but was soundly defeated. In April, 1945, having resigned his military commission, McCarthy was re-elected without opposition to the circuit court. He immediately began planning for the 1946 Senate campaign.

If you want to call that an "open-and-shut" inaccuracy, go right ahead, but it now has two quoted sources (and I am sure How Stuff Works is vetted before going up) while your difference is merely a personal statement that it is all wrong.

Sources and quotes would be appreciated, but that's up to you.

I probably can find other stuff, but I just don't have the time. I'm rather surprised this is causing such an accuracy problem.

Michael

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Reidy; A couple of small corrections. McCarthy was elected to the Senate in 1946. He never served in the House. He ran in the GOP primary in 1944 while serving in the military as a US marine intelligence officer.

On the Hollywood 10 in addition to Hollywood Party may I also recommend Red Star Over Hollywood by Ronald and Allis Radosh.

I have come to the conclusion that almost everything printed about Joe McCarthy and HUAC needs to be read with a grain of salt.

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I'm so embarrassed. I try to take comfort in the fact that getting all one's facts straight when talking about McCarthy is against the law, but somehow that doesn't help.

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Pete,

I suggest leaving the embarrassed stuff to people who value it. I don't, but if you do, then carry on.

Wishes don't change facts. Neither do evaluations, negative or positive. If evaluations are not based on facts, they are merely opinions—and not particularly good opinions at that.

McCarthy = Bad Guy.

Does that mean we can rewrite facts to our heart's content? I am only focusing on this because I see Objectivists doing it time and time again. Looking at facts is not a competition, except maybe in goofball-land of Objectivist snark-duels. Like I said, for those who value these things...

May they drink their fill. I prefer to look in wonder at the world and soak it all up. I want to keep doing that until I die. I found the information on McCarthy interesting because I only had a vague overview before. Now I know more about the whole issue.

Hurray!

:)

Michael

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  • 6 years later...

I have no idea who Josh Jones, this writer is, or, his qualifications[http://about.me/jonesjoshua].

Curiously, many critical treatments of It’s A Wonderful Life have said more or less the same thing of that work, calling the film “sentimental hogwash,” for example, and a representative of “American capitalist ideology.” These readings seem persuasive to me, but for those like Rand and her followers, as well as J. Edgar Hoover and his paranoid underlings, no film it seems—no matter how celebratory of U.S. nationalist mythology—could go far enough in glorifying heroic capitalists, ignoring class conflict, and minimizing the struggles of “the little man.”

So, good ole Josh threw Ayn in with an alleged cross dressing paranoid...guess there is no "hidden" agenda!


The 1947 HUAC hearings, writes the blog Aphelis, led to “the systematic blacklisting of Hollywood artists.” Among the witnesses deemed “friendly” to capitalism were Gary Cooper, Walt Disney, and Ayn Rand. Prior to her testimony, the FBI had consulted Rand for an enormous, 13,533-page report entitled “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (find it online here), which quoted from a pamphlet published by her group:

'The purpose of the Communists in Hollywood is not the production of political movies openly advocating Communism. Their purpose is to corrupt non-political movies — by introducing small, casual bits of propaganda into innocent stories and to make people absorb the basic principles of Collectivism by indirection and implication. Few people would take Communism straight, but a constant stream of hints, lines, touches and suggestions battering the public from the screen will act like drops of water that split a rock if continued long enough. The rock that they are trying to split is Americanism.'

http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/ayn-rand-helped-the-fbi-identify-its-a-wonderful-life-as-communist-propaganda.html''>http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/ayn-rand-helped-the-fbi-identify-its-a-wonderful-life-as-communist-propaganda.html'>http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/ayn-rand-helped-the-fbi-identify-its-a-wonderful-life-as-communist-propaganda.html

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McCarthy was brought down not as a result of his excessive "witch-hunting," but because he was undermining public confidence in the carefully polished foreign policy establishment, particularly the CIA. From Wikipedia:

Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, and was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA. The organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA's views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA . . .

In August 1952, the Office of Policy Coordination which dealt with covert-action such as paramilitary or psychological influence operations, and the Office of Special Operations which dealt with espionage and counter-espionage, were merged under the Deputy Director for Plans (DDP), Allen W. Dulles. When Dulles became head of the CIA in 1953, Frank Wisner became head of this new organization and Richard Helms became his chief of operations. Mockingbird became the responsibility of the DDP.[10]

J. Edgar Hoover became jealous of the CIA's growing power. Institutionally, the organizations were very different, with the CIA holding a more politically diverse group in contrast to the more conservative FBI. This was reflected in Hoover's description of the OPC as "Wisner's gang of weirdos". Hoover began having investigations done into Wisner's people. He found that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to Senator Joseph McCarthy who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also gave McCarthy details of an affair that Frank Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent.[11]

McCarthy, as part of his campaign against government, began accusing other senior members of the CIA as being security risks. McCarthy claimed that the CIA was a "sinkhole of communists", and said he would root out a hundred of them. One of his first targets was Cord Meyer, who was still working for Operation Mockingbird. In August 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance," without referring to any evidence against him. Allen W. Dulles and Frank Wisner both came to his defense and refused to permit an FBI interrogation of Meyer.[12]

With the network in authority in the CIA threatened, Wisner was directed to unleash Mockingbird on McCarthy. Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson, Walter Lippmann and Ed Murrow all engaged in intensely negative coverage of McCarthy. According to Jack Anderson, his political reputation was permanently damaged by the press coverage orchestrated by Wisner.[13]

See also Hugh Wilford's The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America on the close ties between the CIA and McCarthy dragon-slayer Ed Murrow's employer, CBS.

As to Ayn Rand and J. Edgar Hoover, the Goddess of the Market once attempted to bring the FBI head into her circle:

January 8, 1966

Mr. J. Edgar Hoover
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. Hoover:

In the article "Hoover of the FBI," in the September 25,
1965 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, there appears
the sentence (page 32): "Hoover disavows the ultraconservative
political label, terms himself an 'objectivist,' etc. . ."


I would like very much to know whether you meant that you
agree with my philosophy of Objectivism -- or whether you
used that term in some different meaning. Forgive me for

attaching any sort of even provisional credence to that
article, which I regard as extremely unfair, in a magazine
for which I have no respect at all. I would like to know
the truth for obvious reasons - since an Objectivist such
as yourself would be more than welcome.


Regardless of your answer, that is, without presuming that
that statement is necessarily true, I should like very much .
to meet you -- to discuss a personal-political problem. If
you find it possible to give me an appointment, I would com/~
to Washington at any time at your convenience.


Sincerely yours,

Ayn Rand

In response, Hoover denied ever calling himself an "objectivist" and told Rand to get in touch with one of his underlings at the Bureau for help with her "personal-political problem."

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Rand herself had a bad experience with the Saturday Evening Post. They ran a profile in 1961, and she wrote to them with intimations of a libel action (Letters 586 - 591). I can't believe she would have had a case, even before the public-figure doctrine.

I wonder what that problem was and what she thought Hoover could do about it.

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When I wrote a ferocious defense of Sen. Joe McCarthy in Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism , liberals chose not to argue with me. Instead they posted a scrolling series of reasons not to read my book, such as that I wear short skirts, date boys, and that "Treason" was not a scholarly tome.

After printing rabidly venomous accounts of McCarthy for half a century based on zero research, liberals would only accept research presenting an alternative view of McCarthy that included, as the Los Angeles Times put it, at least the "pretense of scholarly throat-clearing and objectivity."

This week, they got it. The great M. Stanton Evans has finally released Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies . Based on a lifetime's work, including nearly a decade of thoroughgoing research, stores of original documents and never-before-seen government files, this 672-page book ends the argument on Joe McCarthy. Look for it hidden behind stacks of Bill Clinton's latest self-serving book at a bookstore near you.

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2007-11-07.html

A...

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