Venona Cables - McCarthy absolved?

[Hellbound]

Ah, right or left, sometime you gotta burn that old village to save it.

As long as it isn't your village

 

[Roadtoad]

Well, unfortunately, it was our village. And to this day there are people who can't get work in certain areas because of the McCarthy era blacklist. I remember quite well watching an actress being interviewed during a news broadcast which noted a particular anniversary of the McCarthy hearings. She STILL can't work in Hollywood. And at the time, the hearings had been over 40 years in the past!

What was worse was she wasn't even a Communist, or even a Socialist, but a registered Democrat. There was nothing accomplished by McCarthy, except, as has been noted, that it made is easier for the real spies to hide. And it was done at the expense of innocent people.

I'm sorry, but McCarthy should have suffered the same misery he heaped on other people. As it was, he died too soon. Sadly, Cohn never got what he deserved either. His death from AIDS was almost anti-climactic.

 

[headscratcher4]

Well, unfortunately, it was our village. And to this day there are people who can't get work in certain areas because of the McCarthy era blacklist. I remember quite well watching an actress being interviewed during a news broadcast which noted a particular anniversary of the McCarthy hearings. She STILL can't work in Hollywood. And at the time, the hearings had been over 40 years in the past!

What was worse was she wasn't even a Communist, or even a Socialist, but a registered Democrat. There was nothing accomplished by McCarthy, except, as has been noted, that it made is easier for the real spies to hide. And it was done at the expense of innocent people.

I'm sorry, but McCarthy should have suffered the same misery he heaped on other people. As it was, he died too soon. Sadly, Cohn never got what he deserved either. His death from AIDS was almost anti-climactic.

Well, he did die from drinking, censured and pretty generally reviled... that's worth something.

 

[Upchurch]

The presumption is that McCarthy was wrong about US Gov being infiltrated with communists.

Currently, the US Gov is thoroughly infiltrated with Republicans and Democrats. McCarthy's claims about communists in the government is not the basis of his infamy. It is not illegal to be a communist and be in the government. It was the tactics McCarthy used to earn his infamy.

 

[drkitten]

From what you tell me, it seems you are saying that all the 57 names were wrong? They were all innocent?

I am indeed. More accurately, I have seen no evidence to suggest that any of the people named on the lists were Communist agents.

Furthermore, the list of witnesses called to testify in front of McCarthy at his hearings, including those he formally accused, is public -- and to the best of my knowledge, not one of those people was a Communist agent, either.

Basically -- of all the names associated with McCarthy's accusations over the entire course of his carreer, none (to my knowledge) were actually Communist agents. Which makes it very difficult for me to believe that he had any effectiveness at all at finding Communist agents.

 

[drkitten]

That's interesting and I'd say, defacto: true. But it could still be true, as I posit that it could be, for the MAIN reason that it follows logically from the premise. 1. Assume there is a communist infiltration, 2. Chicken Little warns of it. 3. Chicken little gets a high profile, 4. Chicken little is correct about his warning. 5. The infiltration is powerful enough to kill Chicken Little.

That's a nice what-if scenario, but there's little evidence to support it.

So while it is true that McCarthy did damage to "anti-communism", there were also many communists who were rooted out, nevertheless.

No, there weren't.

McCarthy "rooted out" NO ONE whatsoever.

He made a lot of noise about communists agent. He tried to root out communists agents.

But he was so exceptionally bad at it that he failed to catch a single communist agent over the entire course of his career.

But I wonder how much damage to anti-communism was really due to McCarthy being bad at what he did. Could a charming person have done it and not been censured?

Possible -- but given that he did no demonstrable good whatsoever, any damage at all that he did results in him being a net loss to the cause of anti-communism.

 

[VonNeumann]

... as I suspect he wouldn't know a Communist if one bit him. McCarthy and HUAC spent most of their energies focusing on the suspected "fellow travellers" to try to get them to name names to save themselves from the blacklist. Are you arguing that this is an effective tactic? Are you arguing that it is the way our system of government should work? I think it is neither.

Good question. I wasn't making any argument of how it should be handled - I wrote the OP to stimulate discussion about the irony.

..but to answer your questions: I think that the best way to handle anything like this is to teach our heritage and culture completely and honestly in American schools. Some have brought up religion here and stated that communism is a religion - perhaps, I dunno. I think the main conflict with communism and our culture, as I've stated before, is the means of production (AKA "capital goods") should be owned by individuals. I think everyone needs to understand why. Then when someone tries to take that right away from the individual, I'd hope enough people have the education and sense to steer away from the communist/collectivist.

BTW, these fundamentals are no longer being taught and I suspect that is why Americans do not live below their means and most of them have net negative ownership of anything - certainly no ownership of capital goods. I see it as voluntary slavery. (its a free country and it is their choice)

 

[VonNeumann]

No, there weren't..

OK - not by McCarthy. But Hiss and a bunch others were and not nearly all of them.

McCarthy "rooted out" NO ONE whatsoever.
He made a lot of noise about communists agent. He tried to root out communists agents.
But he was so exceptionally bad at it that he failed to catch a single communist agent over the entire course of his career.
Possible -- but given that he did no demonstrable good whatsoever, any damage at all that he did results in him being a net loss to the cause of anti-communism.

What you say here seems to me to be just another facet of the irony. It is ironic that he resulted in what you called a "net loss to ...anti-communism". Yet I think I understand you concur there was an abundant threat to the US, within, and you also say few were rooted out? You say that a more charming kind of guy may have been more successful? Assuming I understood you (and others here saying similar things) correctly, it seems to me that it is ironic he shot himself in the foot, but more than that:
1. this one man made it so that someone else could not have come in and done it 'right'.
2. this one man made it so forevermore, none dare try to find a communist under every bed.
3. this one man was an unwilling hero, unwittingly, of the Soviet Union.
4. this man was simply a zealot for his own political gain.
See? I just wonder how one guy could have mucked all that up by himself and ended up an icon of 'ugly american' all the while when it is logically consistent that the powerful enemy he was trying to take down WAS really there (you concurred?), did NOT get taken down (you concurred?), and persisted after McCarthy's censure .

Maybe ironic is not the word. It is abyssmally incredible one man could screw up so badly. All the while the whole nation is incapable of doing anything but pointing at this one man who failed beyond comprehension and they do nothing to pick up and fix what he broke. I wonder how many times in history one guy can screw things up that bad and everyone else just says how awful it is/was and never do anything to mend it. I guess that's my main point: Did the 50s suck because of McCarthy? or did the 50s suck because of the communist takeover and nobody did anything about it except tell us how bad McCarthy sucked? Doesn't that register any kind of "by golly that is flippin' weird", with anybody? McCarthy was such a tiny piece of what happened (or what didn't happen).

 

[epepke]

I have already seen how, on this forum, asking a few questions that may imply some defense of McCarthy, quickly casts you in a domain of some sort of undesired association.

Not really. We don't think that you're an abusive sociopath, though by your statements you may be just a tad paranoid.

If anything, that is quite revealing about a powerful mind-game being played out to this day. ...and very few have the balls to open up discussion about those subjects that are politically incorrect. Jeez, what was I thinking... to suggest McCarthy was right? How insane. Wait - no, now I get it ... its OK to say McCarthy was right if I follow up with a comment about how he sucked. Seems like Orwellian 'newspeak' to me.

To me, the Orwellian character is McCarthy's own, on the basis that there were Soviet agents in the US government, apparently, doing everything in his power to divert attention away from them.

Philip K. Dick wrote a really good book about this, though it didn't mention McCarthy specifically: Eye in the Sky. One of the main points is that efforts like this always attack the innocent.

 

[VonNeumann]

Basically -- of all the names associated with McCarthy's accusations over the entire course of his carreer, none (to my knowledge) were actually Communist agents. Which makes it very difficult for me to believe that he had any effectiveness at all at finding Communist agents.

I find it hard to get the facts straight on this. This is what I read:
1. The FBI came up with the 57 names and gave them to Mc.
2. Mc never revealed the names.
3. Mc never found commies on his own, he used the FBI list.

The first question i have is why he is the icon of 'false accusation' if he didn't release the names? Why wasn't Herbert Hoover (FBI) the one called on the carpet if the names were wrong? So apparently he had no effectiveness finding names, they were given to him - do you think he was set up?

Now, that might be logically consistent: Assume that US gov is infiltrated but some people are trying to blow the whistle. The perps set up a fall guy and ruin him politically (then kill him?) so that all the 'would be whistle blowers' get the message loud and clear. Hell, the message was so loud and clear that people today still say "that McCarthy was a terrible guy" instead of saying "that McCarthy was just a fall guy - it is clear the enemy had their way with the US govt from the 30s on through the VietNam war etc etc etc". Something like that, see? ..Plausible?

 

[VonNeumann]

Not really. We don't think that you're an abusive sociopath, though by your statements you may be just a tad paranoid.



To me, the Orwellian character is McCarthy's own, on the basis that there were Soviet agents in the US government, apparently, doing everything in his power to divert attention away from them.

Philip K. Dick wrote a really good book about this, though it didn't mention McCarthy specifically: Eye in the Sky. One of the main points is that efforts like this always attack the innocent.

Thanks for the reference. OK. ...same question to you, then... is it plausible that Mc was set up as a fall guy to squelch would-be whistle blowers? Is it logically consistent?

BTW: (I'm not a tad paranoid. I am a contrarian. I sniff out where I see "thou protesteth too much" and other tell-tale signs that things may be different than they seem, or that a sacred cow is at stake).

 

[VonNeumann]

Currently, the US Gov is thoroughly infiltrated with Republicans and Democrats. McCarthy's claims about communists in the government is not the basis of his infamy. It is not illegal to be a communist and be in the government. It was the tactics McCarthy used to earn his infamy.

Yeh. Infiltrated with republicans and democrats... of which I may add there's not a dime's worth of difference between, when they get in office. Notice, too, that we live in a Constitutional Republic but you always hear reference to "our democracy". Of course it is not illegal to be a communist and be in the government. Crap! The CPUSA has a candidate every presidential election, don't they? But atleast we KNOW they are communist. HOw about they ones who don't admit it?

 

[VonNeumann]

Well, unfortunately, it was our village. And to this day there are people who can't get work in certain areas because of the McCarthy era blacklist. I remember quite well watching an actress being interviewed during a news broadcast which noted a particular anniversary of the McCarthy hearings. She STILL can't work in Hollywood. And at the time, the hearings had been over 40 years in the past!

What was worse was she wasn't even a Communist, or even a Socialist, but a registered Democrat. There was nothing accomplished by McCarthy, except, as has been noted, that it made is easier for the real spies to hide. And it was done at the expense of innocent people.

I'm sorry, but McCarthy should have suffered the same misery he heaped on other people. As it was, he died too soon. Sadly, Cohn never got what he deserved either. His death from AIDS was almost anti-climactic.

Lets be fair with McCarthy, now. That Hollywood stuff was not McCarthy. That's what I understand.

 

[VonNeumann]

Good question. Cleon is a friend who has taken time and great effort and not a little passion to debate me on issues such as this.

...

I hope this answered your questions. If I come across as too deep or philosophical it's just a phase I'm living through right now. Everything seems both deep and meaningless when you've lost someone. I'm trying like hell to get over it and folks like Cleon are helping...even participating in this old debate is helping.

Thanks for listening.
-z

Thanks for listening? Hey, thanks for the personal testimony.

I don't really have any strong convictions about McCarthy. i would not be able to debate very far on the subject. I read about McCarthy 20 years ago so I don't have much that is still fresh on my mind, but what I read was contrarian as it was in defense of Joe, while everything else was in condemnation of him. Then when Venona came out, it has bothered me all this time that no big splash on it hit the press. It started looking logically consistent to me, once again, that something very strange had happened to McCarthy.

If you or Cleon have even more to say on it, I'd like to hear it.

 

[trvlr2]

VN quote:Maybe ironic is not the word. It is abyssmally incredible one man could screw up so badly. All the while the whole nation is incapable of doing anything but pointing at this one man who failed beyond comprehension and they do nothing to pick up and fix what he broke. I wonder how many times in history one guy can screw things up that bad and everyone else just says how awful it is/was and never do anything to mend it. I guess that's my main point: Did the 50s suck because of McCarthy? or did the 50s suck because of the communist takeover and nobody did anything about it except tell us how bad McCarthy sucked? Doesn't that register any kind of "by golly that is flippin' weird", with anybody? McCarthy was such a tiny piece of what happened (or what didn't happen).


So, are you suggesting another CT? You know, where one very powerful nutcase can't screw things up.??(look around you.)
Take out the Razor-While it may be logically consistent to suppose McC was brought down by the "powerful enemy", it is much simpler to examine the man for the reasons of his downfall.
And what would make you suppose that the hunt for subversives stopped when ol'Joe got censured? Don't think so!
The hunt is just a little quieter,now.

 

[atari24]

BTW: (I'm not a tad paranoid. I am a contrarian. I sniff out where I see "thou protesteth too much" and other tell-tale signs that things may be different than they seem, or that a sacred cow is at stake).

So when are you going to start arguing that Hitler may have been right? I mean, everyone pretty much says "Hitler sucks", maybe its just programming.


(BTW, I'm not trying to say McCarthy was anywhere near the monstrosity of Hitler, I'm just trying to make a point, that sometimes we vilify someone because they deserve it, not because of groupthink.)

 

[Bronze Dog]

BTW: (I'm not a tad paranoid. I am a contrarian. I sniff out where I see "thou protesteth too much" and other tell-tale signs that things may be different than they seem, or that a sacred cow is at stake).

If you can demonstrate that McCarthy used witch hunt tactics on a much rarer basis than typically accepted, you might be getting somewhere. I don't care too much about results: The ends, even if he acheived them, do not justify McCarthy's means.

 

[drkitten]

I find it hard to get the facts straight on this. This is what I read:
1. The FBI came up with the 57 names and gave them to Mc.
2. Mc never revealed the names.
3. Mc never found commies on his own, he used the FBI list.

You got the facts wrong, then.

Regardless of which version of the list was used (as has been pointed out, there are several versions in circulation, and McCarthy cited several different numbers himself in different contexts), the list of witnesses summoned to testify before McCarthy's commitee or publically chastised by McCarthy himself for communism is public.

And none of those people, to the best of my knowledge, were communist agents.

The first question i have is why he is the icon of 'false accusation' if he didn't release the names?

Because McCarthy was the public face of the witch hunts and the one seeking headlines on that basis. He wanted to be the icon of anti-communist accusations (and he succeeded), so it's hardly surprising that when, without exception, all of his accusations turned out to be false, he became the icon of "false accusation."

Why wasn't Herbert Hoover (FBI) the one called on the carpet if the names were wrong?

Because Hoover hadn't been taking public action and making public policy on the basis of the names.

So apparently he had no effectiveness finding names, they were given to him - do you think he was set up?

No. The person who would have had to set him up was Hoover, and that was totally out of character.

Assume that US gov is infiltrated but some people are trying to blow the whistle. The perps set up a fall guy

The 'perps' being Hoover,the HUAC, and the rest of the anti-communist brigade in DC?

Nope.

and ruin him politically (then kill him?) so that all the 'would be whistle blowers' get the message loud and clear. Hell, the message was so loud and clear that people today still say "that McCarthy was a terrible guy" instead of saying "that McCarthy was just a fall guy - it is clear the enemy had their way with the US govt from the 30s on through the VietNam war etc etc etc". Something like that, see? ..Plausible?

Not at all plausible.

The reason that people today say that McCarthy was a terrible guy is because McCarthy was a terrible guy.

The idea that Hoover was involved in a subtle operation to discredit McCarthy at the same time that he was actively looking for moles in the British Secret Service (he came within a hair's breadth of catching Philby, and did catch MacLean) defies credibility. If Hoover hadn't been genuinely committed to anticommunism, he wouldn't have bothered looking for the much more valuable British moles. If he was committed to anticommunism, he wouldn't have set up McCarthy in the way you describe.

To say that the scenario you describe defies credibility is to understate it.

 

[drkitten]

Yet I think I understand you concur there was an abundant threat to the US, within, and you also say few were rooted out?

No. I understand that people believed (and some people still believe) that there was an abundant threat to the United States from foreign, communist-based espionage.

History has not been kind to the actual Communists themselves; the verdict of the historians is that the threat was in no way "abundant." But I can say that mostly with the benefit of fifty years of hindsight, including the VENONA decrypts.

You say that a more charming kind of guy may have been more successful?

A stuffed muskrat would have been more successful than McCarthy. A small patch of brown liquid in the middle of a parking lot would have been more successful than McCarthy. Yes, there were certainly Soviet spies -- Hiss, Rosenberg, MacLean, Philby, and so forth.

Someone who managed to successfully identify a single Soviet spy -- for whatever reason -- would have been more successful than McCarthy.

Assuming I understood you (and others here saying similar things) correctly, it seems to me that it is ironic he shot himself in the foot, but more than that:
1. this one man made it so that someone else could not have come in and done it 'right'.
2. this one man made it so forevermore, none dare try to find a communist under every bed.
3. this one man was an unwilling hero, unwittingly, of the Soviet Union.
4. this man was simply a zealot for his own political gain.

Yes. Idiots exist.

I just wonder how one guy could have mucked all that up by himself and ended up an icon of 'ugly american' all the while when it is logically consistent that the powerful enemy he was trying to take down WAS really there (you concurred?), did NOT get taken down (you concurred?), and persisted after McCarthy's censure.

Because he was an idiot. The world is full of idiots. Caligula made his horse into a senator....

And part of the problem was that the damage that McCarthy was doing wasn't apparent until much later. It's not that people at the time said that McCarthy was a nutcase -- he had nearly a decade's run as a raving nutcase until reality caught up with him.

But it shouldn't surprise you that someone can run amok for so long before anyone notices. Senators and Congressmen, in particular, tend to be electorate-proof as long as they can deliver the pork. How long was Strom Thurmond in office peddling his form of racism? Jesse Helms?

For that matter, think of the local political machines -- Marion Berry in D.C., the Chicago Daley "machine," or Tammany Hall in New York. How long did Huey Long have to run his state (Louisiana) like his own private fiefdom?




]

 

[VonNeumann]

But it shouldn't surprise you that someone can run amok for so long before anyone notices. Senators and Congressmen, in particular, tend to be electorate-proof as long as they can deliver the pork. How long was Strom Thurmond in office peddling his form of racism? Jesse Helms?

For that matter, think of the local political machines -- Marion Berry in D.C., the Chicago Daley "machine," or Tammany Hall in New York. How long did Huey Long have to run his state (Louisiana) like his own private fiefdom?

Yes, all that reminds me why I don't like to even think much about politics. There exists a darwinian selection process, it seems to me, that guarantees that politicians who reach the top have the greatest negative attributes - eg power attainment is more important than anything else.