FACES AND PLACES: McCarthyism and the Venona files (04/28/96)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

McCarthyism and the Venona files

Webster's Dictionary defines McCarthy-ism as "a paranoic fear of Communists leading to government oppression and persecution of all persons of other than ex-treme right-wing conviction and manifestation of complete disregard for civil and ba-sic human rights of those falsely accused."

Peculiar to the United States, this awful "malady" is named after Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who between 1950 and 1954 worked to expose Communist infiltration of the U.S. government. When he couldn't substantiate his accusations, he was condemned by a special session of the U.S. Senate. He died in disgrace in 1957 at the age of 48.

Significantly, among those who defended the senator was William Buckley who authored a book titled "McCarthy and His Enemies."

If the first set of U.S. history standards (developed by the UCLA National Center for History in the Schools) are accepted by our public schools, American highschoolers will devote more time learning about the "malevolence" of Sen. McCarthy (mentioned 19 times) than they will on the contributions of Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers who are not even listed by the standards as people worthy of study.

Were America's Communists merely idealists who wanted to build a better world, as academics such as Maurice Isserman, Ellen W. Schrecker, Mark Naison and N.J. Carley still argue? Was Sen. McCarthy the "great evil" many liberals have vilified for so many years?

The first suggestion that Sen. McCarthy may have been correct came last April with the publication of "The Secret World of American Communism." Compiled and edited by Prof. Harvey Klehr of Emory University, John Earl Haynes, manuscript historian at the Library of Congress, and Fridrikh I. Firsov, a Russian archivist and a leading authority on the history of the Comintern, the book confirms that: 1) the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) operated a clandestine apparatus that worked closely with Soviet intelligence and contributed to the Soviet theft of U.S atom bomb secrets; 2) the CPSUA maintained a secret underground apparatus during the 1930s and 40s, confirming the revelations of Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley; 3) Moscow heavily subsidized the CPUSA in its early years; 4) Armand Hammer (called the "pimp of the Politburo" by his former secretary) laundered Soviet monies to the CPUSA.

More recently, the U.S. government disclosed the existence of the so-called Venona files, which consists of coded messages Soviet agents in the United States transmitted to their superiors in Moscow. The messages were intercepted by the U.S. Army, but their contents remained secret so as not to tip the Soviets off that the U.S. had broken their code.

"It is now beyond dispute," writes syndicated columnist William Rusher "that at least 200 strategically placed Americans were providing information to the Soviets on everything from war production and diplomatic strategy to details of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. Soviet agents were active in such key areas as the State Department, the FBI and nuclear research and production complex at Los Alamos, N.M."

Mentioned in the file was Alger Hiss (known by the code-name "Ales") who traveled to Yalta with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was one of four members of the American delegation to return home via Moscow. Also included were Duncan Lee, legal assistant to William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's predecessor; Lauchlin Currie, special adviser to F.D.R.; and Dexter White of the Treasury Department.

Most of those identified as Soviet spies have died paying no legal penalty, according to Messrs. Haynes and Klehr. "Some (a minority) were accused during the 'MacCarthy era' of having been spies, and they either indignantly denied the charges or refused to answer them, citing the Fifth Amendment. While they often lost government jobs and were criticized in the press, they had the satisfaction of seeing their accusers denounced as 'red-baiters' and 'McCarthyites.'

Some of those identified as spies, however, are still alive. Theodore Hall, a Los Alamos physicist now living in England, told reporters that he is old and just wants to be "left alone." Others still alive are Alger Hiss, Morton Sobell, Victor Perlo, Harry Magdoff, Donald Niven Wheeler, and Judith Coplon who is living off the capitalist system as manager of a trendy restaurant in New York.

The Venona disclosure began on the front page of the Washington Post followed by a long account inside the newspaper. As might be expected, The New York Times, which still defends its own Soviet agent of influence, Walter Duranty, delayed the story for a few days and then published it in a small item on page 10. The files were described as "uncorroborated" and "in fragments."

The New York Times also remains solidly behind the innocence of Alger Hiss. According to an article by John Corry in The American Spectator, New York Times reporter Tim Weiner wrote that Alger Hiss was "probably" a Soviet agent, but that an unidentified "senior intelligence officials" said "the evidence against him was inconclusive and always should be."

Mr. Hiss and those of his ilk will forever have their defenders within the liberal camp. Having vilified Sen. McCarthy and his supporters for so many years and still believing that the USSR was a benign entity with only peaceful intentions, many American liberals can never bring themselves to admit that they were so wrong for so many years and that maybe, just maybe, Sen. McCarthy was on the right track.

Americans and others who worked so diligently for the Soviet Union will probably never be indicted for their treasonous acts. But they deserve to be exposed so that their past is no longer a secret and their present influence and stature is permanently destroyed. It is unthinkable that the very people who helped perpetuate the worst evil, the most horrendous malevolence the world has ever witnessed, will be viewed as the 'victims of anti-Soviet paranoia" while the much maligned "cold-war warriors" will be treated as pariahs, perpetrators of oppression and hate.

Will the truth about America's Communists and the slander they visited upon the Ukrainian American community ever become common knowledge? Perhaps. But it will be a long time coming. Having suffered a setback, America's Left is already regrouping and rewriting the past to fit its nefarious agenda.

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