The Unreal Ronald Kessler
AIM Column | By M. Stanton Evans | May 6, 2008
The hearings that began 54 years ago this April weren’t hearings conducted by McCarthy, but hearings in which he was the main defendant…
Like many other critics of Joe
McCarthy, Ronald Kessler would be more persuasive if he knew something of the
subject.
Kessler's Wall Street Journal essay ("The Real Joe McCarthy,"
April 22), attacking the Wisconsin senator and taking a sidewise shot at my
recent book about him, is an odd amalgam of unverifiable hearsay and a handful
of items checkable from the record. It's noteworthy that, on the checkable
matters, Kessler is repeatedly, and egregiously, in error.
For openers, there is the bizarre
assertion in Kessler's lead that, 54 years ago this April, McCarthy
"started his televised hearings on alleged Soviet spies and Communists in
the Army." The point is twice repeated in subsequent paragraphs referring
to these sessions as McCarthy hearings.
In fact, the hearings that began 54
years ago this April weren't hearings conducted by McCarthy, but hearings in
which he was the main defendant, brought on by charges lodged against
him by the Army. Kessler has obviously confused these sessions with the Fort Monmouth
inquest of the previous year run by McCarthy. Anyone who doesn't know the
difference between these two sets of hearings can't be taken seriously as an
authority on such topics.
Scarcely better is Kessler's
repetition, as supposed fact, of the discredited notion that McCarthy claimed a
list of "205 Communists" in the State Department, then crawfished and
changed the number to 57. (McCarthy's version was that he never claimed 205,
but had said 57 all along.) I devote two chapters to this issue, showing (a)
that the alleged documentation of McCarthy's supposed lying about the numbers
was a backstage concoction of the State Department, and (b) that the charge of
McCarthy's having claimed 205 was debunked in 1951 by investigators for a
Democratically controlled committee of the Senate. (Curiously, after the
investigators turned in a 40-page report that in essence backed McCarthy, their
memo would abruptly vanish—to be recovered later.)
Likewise with the face-value quote
of Army Counsel Joseph Welch's lachrymose denunciation of McCarthy for
allegedly having outed Welch assistant Frederick Fisher as a former member of
the National Lawyers Guild, an officially cited Communist front. Omitted from
this Welchian morality play—and apparently unknown to Kessler, since he says
nothing of it—is that Fisher had already been outed to the press and
public as a former member of the Guild—by none other than Joe Welch, six weeks
before this set-to with McCarthy.
As to Kessler's hearsay accounts of
what FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover supposedly said to William Sullivan or what
Robert Lamphere then said to Kessler, suffice it to note that these windy
generalizations about deceased third parties are uncheckable by their nature.
Somewhat more susceptible to proof are comments that McCarthy made false
accusations against a host of innocent people (specifics, please) and that the
FBI couldn't find any Communists in the State Department to back his charges.
If that were true (which it isn't),
then the Bureau was more incompetent than its worst enemies have imagined, as
there were indeed Communists in the State Department when McCarthy came along,
as shown by the official records. In my book I give a complete list of
McCarthy's early suspects, plus now accessible data on many of these cases that
show Communist affiliation, hanging out with Moscow spies, identification as Soviet agents
in the Venona papers, and so on.
In one notable instance, it's
possible to check out Kessler's hearsay stories from the grave, as he quotes a
third-party account in which Willard Edwards of the Chicago Tribune allegedly said McCarthy picked up the
"205" number concerning Communists in the State Department from a
rumor relayed by Edwards. This, however, is also wrong, as shown by a
memorandum on the matter from Edwards himself (provided by his son, Lee). This
says McCarthy may have picked up the number 57 (not 205)
from an Edwards article listing this number of suspects in the Federal
government—a speculation that supports McCarthy's version of the numbers and
contradicts the Kessler version.
A final instance to be noted is
Kessler's reliance on Senate associate historian Donald Ritchie, who edited the
McCarthy executive hearings for publication. Though Kessler quotes Ritchie as
an impartial expert, the facts of the matter are quite different. In numerous
comments, Ritchie has routinely stacked the deck against McCarthy—most
conspicuously and most often in McCarthy's most famous case, that of Annie Lee
Moss.
Mrs. Moss, who appeared before
McCarthy in March of '54, has been portrayed for 50 years as a
mistaken-identity victim because the committee supposedly collared the wrong
suspect. Ritchie's treatment of the case, cited to secondary sources,
reinforces the standard image of Moss as victim and McCarthy as browbeating
tyrant. All of this, however, again is false, as shown by the extensive
archives of the FBI and other official records.
When I got Ritchie on the phone I
asked if he had by any chance checked out these official sources, rather than
simply citing other academics. When I offered to sum up the relevant data
proving McCarthy was right about the case, the historian grew irate, said
"I am growing very tired of this conversation" and quickly ended our discussion.
Such is the supposedly impartial authority quoted by Kessler—all too typical of
the recycled error that passes for historical knowledge of McCarthy.
M. Stanton Evans is a veteran journalist and author whose latest book is Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies.
7 Comments | Post a Comment
MY DREAM IS TO OPEN THE JON THE MONKEY STEWART SHOW ON COMMUNIST CENTRAL WITH A PRAYER VIGIL. LIGHTING A CANDLE UNDER THE ICON OF BLESSED JOSEPH MCCARTHY.
I today have learned something new. Thanks for reporting with honesty and integrity, something liberals and the mainstream media lack.
McCarthyism and its use to silence voices who have identified communist traitors, is perhaps the most potent success of communist propaganda. Point to a traitor as did Senator McCarth and you are vilified and ultimately destroyed.
Mr. Evans, in his scholarly work, has done an enormous service to his country and to the search for truth. It took a great deal of courage, but step by step the truth is becoming known.
Ron:
I have always thought that as a Republican is born, someone who gives out HEARTS always forgets to give one to them!
Your story about Kennedy’s daughter is one that was un-called for. People have read over the years about this un-fortunate woman, but you just HAD to write it again with that popular Repub twist given to it!
While we all saw a 4 hour program last week on c-span about allthe corrupt lies and doings of the George Bush administration and as it continues NOW,I don’t see you writing about THAT.
Don’t tell me that you don’t believe it, because just as everyone else had watched for 7 years as this all took place, Republicans turned deaf ears and wore blinders to it all, but if a young girl is mentaly distubed,and happens to be the daughter of a Democrat..you are NOT deaf or blind to THAT,though.are you?
Tim Russert,along with all other Republicans took Hillary Clinton after she had already been put through the grinding mill and then knocked her down some more and stepped on her!
Well, I hope you enjoy being a Republican,since
after reading your story about a sick young woman.I realized more and more that THIS is not the REAL person who was sick..
It is the ones who write such stories when they,themselves live in a glass house with corruptness from a sick and incompetent president.. and corrupt administration and therefore have No right to throw stones at anyone else!
Now that this conspiracy from day one to “STOP HILARY” is over and a very knowledgeable,experienced woman has been dissolved, putting relaxed smiles on all the Republican’s faces, who couldn’t say and DO enough all through the campaign to go against her, we NOW see Republicans giving their full support to John McCain..the person whom most of them do NOT even LIKE, just to hopefully get into the White house!
The political party of Republicanism means MUCH MORE to them than anything else! They will take ANYONE as long as it is a Republican, as they have shown, and just look at what this one in there NOW has done, due to their not caring WHO they put into office. They tell us that Bill Clinton was too termperamental during this campaign.
What would ANY of those saying this had done if THEIR wife/husband had been maligned as he/she was running for this office? .I wouldn’t want to hear them say that they ALSO would not have lost their cool, since THAT is the reason that Bill Clinton lost his! Repubs CAUSED most of it!
We had NEVER heard of him being temperamental before..nor saw it in his years of service!
John McCain is said to be a temperamental person, but if you notice, no one is mentioning that anymore since he is running for President,though,do we?
So if he wins, we would not only get that re-run of George W. Bush, we would get a man who would get mad at everything that would not go as he wanted it to go,whether it is at home or abroad,and possibly cause us to lose even MORE of our allies!
Bush caused just about ALL of them to leave us now, as they continue to chase him out of their countries as he visits! But do we need a temperamental one like McCain to add to this list?
May 7 at 9:03 am | #1 | Link
For years, Stan Evans has done an outstanding job of detailing just how wrong McCarthy’s critics are. It’s most understandable why much of the mainstream media - which has an interest in maintaining the McCarthy myths - pretends Stan Evans and his stubborn facts don’t exist.