Historian David A. Nichols left out the real Joe McCarthy in "Ike and McCarthy." Read the Book Review on Amazon by Peter B. Hrycenko

Why would expert historian David A. Nichols in his “Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower’s Secret Campaign against Joseph McCarthy,” avoid acknowledging the finest book ever written on McCarthy? That is M. Stanton Evans’ “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies.” A slight oversight perhaps?

What about the vast liberal network of NGO’s, of Big Education, of Big Media that worked hand in glove with Ike’s liberal confidants to prod a Republican president to attack a great American patriot, a Republican champion in McCarthy? Nichols doesn’t bother with those important details.

Let me be clear; headlines of that day show many media and education people just the same supported McCarthy and his work. He would not have gained such power without them.

Before anyone endeavors to read the entire “Ike and McCarthy” hoping for historical truth, please start elsewhere. Yet I have some good things to say about this book as we go.

What we don’t read in the book is that McCarthy’s primary goal was to rid the federal payroll of Reds and fellow travelers which since Roosevelt were subverting foreign policy and ultimately empowering Stalin and Mao to imprison and kill our people overseas.

Consider the backdrop of McCarthy’s early 1950’s. Severe economic recession. A million casualties from WWII. A see-saw bloodbath in Korea raging, 37,000 American men and women to die, and another 100,000 wounded in a “conflict” we weren’t supposed to be seen as winners lest we offend Stalin.  Thanks, Truman-Acheson.

There were some men coming home from overseas, couldn’t find a job, so re-enlisted rather than starve.

These same Americans had been reading the newspapers and listening to radio. Nasty Joe McCarthy dared to expose the Truman White House, State and Treasury country-clubbers who created a policy of appeasement and squandered our wealth.

Nichols writes that the Left never forgave Eisenhower for defeating Adlai Stevenson in 1951.

Well, Eisenhower was a product of the New Deal Roosevelt-Truman continuum, a consensus man and he aimed to please. He could have run as Democrat or Republican, indistinguishable. He was drafted by the Establishment, the reluctant old soldier, and groaned throughout “Ike and McCarthy.” Surrounded by a staff of lib-mods with the best of intentions.

Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy burst onto the scene with his 1950 Wheeling WV about 57 red security risks in the U S State Department. Detractors to this day try to change 57 to 81 or 205, to confuse us. Eyewitnesses never recalled a number. There is no existing record of the number other than McCarthy’s personal statement. Two of those numbers originated in State Department security risk findings from 1946.

The State Department, later investigating itself – yes, investigating itself -- agreed in the end McCarthy was right and that State was loaded with subversives needing immediate attention.

Meanwhile, Democrat Senator Pat McCarran’s own committee would go over the same charges and more, forcing out 81 security risks from State by 1954.

A Truman-controlled Millard Tydings senate committee began an investigation that turned against McCarthy, slandering him, white-washing some big-name subversives, declaring there were no communists in government.  Maryland’s Tydings was soon voted out of office but not before the Democrats began an illegal overreaching investigation into McCarthy’s life that would go on for years.

 Nichols sets the tone in his Preface with “Beginning in 1950, Wisconsin’s junior senator, Joseph R. McCarthy, threw the United States into turmoil with his reckless, unsubstantiated charges that a variety of citizens, especially government employees, were Soviet agents. McCarthy’s disregard for the truth, his insatiable appetite for headlines, and his willingness to damage reputations turned ‘McCarthyism’ into an enduring epithet in our political language.”

He has it wrong. Not surprising, the last thing the Eastern Establishment wants broadcast is that Joseph R. McCarthy is truly America’s Cold War Conscience.

Biographies on McCarthy usually admit that McCarthy, on the social scene off the political stage, was liked by many, owing to his wit and surprising gentleness. Historian Nichols doesn’t mention that.

What historian David A. Nichols does abundantly reveal, most likely unintentionally, through many of McCarthy’s own words, is a shrewd and eloquent speaker with delicate humor, hardly a raving caveman. Something of a Patrick J. Buchanan of old White House fame.

The conventional notion, the news soundbite, that McCarthy called everybody who opposed him a communist is not true. On television and radio, he was clear to praise rank and file Democrats as good Americans in general.  Yet, like any fighting politician, he used hyperbole, particularly in response to vicious colleagues.

McCarthy ruined no innocent people. Rather, in his short time, he kept the nation safer. That’s why he carried the 50-29 Gallup approval into early 1954.

Real history now shows McCarthy was right.  We know this from the Army’s Venona ultra-secret decrypts of USA-Russian-Chinese cable traffic, Russian defectors, the FBI, a brief opening of the KGB archives, communist party escapees, executive session senate hearings releases. Further, a treasure trove of hidden notes and stories guarded by their retired US investigators came to light only a few years ago.

Pat Buchanan's cousin Meredith Gardner (far left) renowned code breaker

US government secrecy shrouded that extensive record, warping the vital understanding of our nation at war with communism.

Establishment types would have us believe McCarthy cooked up charges on the run. Hardly. Whistleblowers came to McCarthy. His subcommittee work -- which lasted less than two years and ended when the Democrats seized Congress in 1954 -- as well as the work of other committees like McCarran (who died in 1954), used carefully examined evidence covered up by the Establishment.

Regarding George C. Marshall, Eisenhower’s former mentor and boss. A number of observers have called Ike a “coward” and “yellow belly,” for several things,  most notably for not speaking up for Marshall.

On June 14, 1951 McCarthy in a rambling 70,000 word senate speech exposed “Yalta” Marshall for his role in giving Eastern Europe to Stalin and China to Mao. Right away, the news wire gatekeepers in The Swamp had in a number of instances passed along false reports on the speech, further outraging the American reader. Further, who would take the time to read the whole speech.

Yet anti-McCarthy historian Richard Rovere had to concede that most of it was true.

An absolute must read: to enlighten the public on the above, McCarthy spun off that speech with books “America’s Retreat From Victory” and “The Fight For America” which expanded the speech with superb documentation.  Of course, both books are out of print.

An open question: how many McCarthy critics have actually read the entire speech and the McCarthy books?

Russians in Korea

Facts are, Marshall was on the ground during the Marshall Mission to China, executing foreign policy, sabotaging nationalist Chiang Kai-Shek repeatedly and building up comrade Mao.  US Lend-Lease funds were going to the Russians, funding the Siberian Soviets who swept Manchuria and Korea. What a marvel to see the 1949 victor’s parade of Russian-trained Red Chinese, Manchurian, Korean and Japanese enter Beijing in US vehicles.

Historian David A. Nichols mentions several times Eisenhower worried about having mingled with communists in Berlin (after Patton was held back from taking it) after the war, with political insiders warning that McCarthy might use the red card on him. I don’t know what details Nichols had on that, he didn’t elaborate.

We do know by way of history, that Marshall was warned in early 1945 in a letter signed by 50 US military intelligence officers with rank of colonel and above, to not follow through with the then-secret Yalta accords which favored Stalin at every turn, including Manchuria.

Both Generals Marshall and Eisenhower executed parts of Yalta in 1945, Marshall in China later.

Eisenhower nervous? He was less than honest in 1945 to inquiries about the estimated 20.000 US servicemen and women then in Russian captivity. Again, not to upset the Russians. Reports from survivors decades later placed a number of the forgotten victims in Siberia having mined radioactive ore and mercury by hand.

General Eisenhower launched “Operation Keelhaul” which forced up to 4,000,000 anti-communist men, women and children mainly in Europe back to Joe Stalin at gun and bayonet point. There was even a bloody fight at Fort Dix and refugees were buried there. Although Marshall and Eisenhower were following orders from above, the record shows thank God that some US Army officers on the ground opposed it and rescued refugees by hiding nationality.

McCarthy talked about the war crime of Operation Keelhaul in his June 14, 1951 speech.

I had wanted to elaborate much on Nichol’s handling of the saga of the Chip Bohlen confirmation Ambassador to Moscow hearing before the senate. I’ll leave out extensive detail on what the FBI had on Bohlen which could have disqualified him. At the same time of Bohlen’s ordeal the State Department had quietly unloaded his brother in law.

Bohlen was opposed by former ambassador to Moscow, William Bullitt, and Arthur Bliss Lane, former ambassador to Poland.

Lane’s searing book, “I Saw Poland Betrayed: An American Ambassador Reports to the American People,” blasts Chip Bohlen in 1946 for pushing a $60,000,000 loan to communist Poland while the Poles were screaming don’t do it. Then it happened -- funding the hidden communist terror police (the mask came off so to speak) which committed mass murder in purging nationalists and deporting minorities to the USSR.

As one opposing senator Everett Dirksen said so well, “I reject Yalta, so I reject Yalta men.”

Edward Bennett Williams

Historian Nichols has another omission about as unforgivable as leaving out M Stanton Evans’ work. Little said about McCarthy’s famed attorney Edward Bennett Williams at the McCarthy censure hearings.

The senate kangaroo court was not a court of law. Edward Bennett Williams knocked down all the charges so there were none standing. After – yes, after -- the hearings concluded, the senate piled on one charge “conduct unbecoming” to make the “condemnation” stick.

Credit goes to historian Nichols for including, elaborating, on his source material that accidentally puts McCarthy in a good light. The networks grudgingly gave McCarthy airtime November 24, 1953, to defend himself against “Trumanism.” When, shockingly, Attorney General Brownell had exposed Truman, an accomplished liar, for lying about having appointed Soviet super agent Harry Dexter White to the International Monetary Fund ignoring FBI protests, Truman attacked McCarthy and the Republicans.

Here’s the best way to know the real Joe. Listen to the McCarthy speech take apart the lying Truman. Listen to McCarthy responses to Edward R. Murrow. Start with the Wheeling WV speech.

Inside those speeches, McCarthy points out unerringly in detail how the Communist Party and its organs made McCarthy public enemy number one. Establishment politicians sometimes incorporated the communist editorials verbatim in attacking McCarthy!

That Truman choose to not seek re-election in 1951 was largely influenced by McCarthy.

That the Republicans lost both houses of Congress to the Democrats in 1954 was largely attributed to the Establishment persecuting Joe McCarthy and trying to cover up for 35 red moles at Fort Monmouth complex.

Like Samson in the pagan temple, McCarthy took many with him on the way out.

Trump's ideal running mate: Pat Buchanan

A Donald Trump presidency would be defined by the company it keeps. Voters would expect his administration to deliver on immigration cleanup, America First economic nationalism, a re-evaluation of foreign aid and a reversal of the moral decline blamed on the Beltway critters. We could use a strong vice president to keep an eye on the chief executive. Somebody with solid right credentials, who knows the landscape, who can speak well with struggling Americans and help counter establishment attacks.

Enter my choice in Patrick J. Buchanan, a Republican icon and prolific commentator. He recently wrote that while the GOP appears headed for a train wreck in Cleveland, the principal ingredients of a Republican victory and a Republican future will all be present there: Ted Cruz conservatives and tea party types, Trump nationalists and populists, Rubio-Kasich-Bush centrists and moderates.

 

The big tent needs new acts and Buchanan has been working toward this most his life. He was a newspaperman championing the rising Barry Goldwater in 1964 when party leader lib-mods Rockefeller-Romney-Scranton withheld support. Out of the ashes of Goldwater's November defeat came the rebirth of conservatism. Buchanan as a speechwriter and adviser would go on to serve Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

 

I supported Buchanan in his three presidential insurgencies and remember how many conservatives were fearful of “wasting” a vote for an underdog. So look what we've had in office since 1992.

Buchanan and Stockman Under Putin's Spell

My long-time friend Pat Buchanan said in the 1992 presidential race that Ukraine was the first country he would visit if elected president. Back then, he had many Ukrainian American supporters  in his Cold War support of freedom for Ukraine and its people, a support seen  in many of his columns, some exposing for example the KGB’s disinformation campaigns against ethnics home and abroad.  

Peter B. Hrycenko

I am still a fan of Pat, but not for his Putin worship. See his July 25 column (and others) Is Putin Worse Than Stalin? It seems odd when he shows up on Moscow TV being interviewed by Shevardnadze’s daughter, in the heart of an oppressed criminal state, telling the world that the US should turn its back on Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland, Georgia – while saying little derogatory about the latest evil empire.

How has his thinking changed on that struggling nation? He praises Russia’s mobster-in-chief Putin regularly in columns, saying we need to better understand this messianic dictator because he is historically entitled to his murderous takeover of neighbors.

For starters, our Western intelligence services have been heavily in Ukraine since before the Soviet breakup. (Don’t anybody mention that.) Of course the EU has a financial interest in Ukraine and its resources. A Ukraine that doesn’t look backward like Russia is a bonus to all the world.

Let us not forget that the US and bankers were heavily involved inside Russia itself in the 1990’s. We weren’t just there for the greatest plundering of an empire in history. Our FBI was battling with the Red Mafiya which had gained a foothold in the US. Ask Louie Freeh about that.

Without Western help, Ukraine would have been Russia twenty years ago.

Yet even with all the on-the-ground humanitarian and para-military aid, we saw Moscow this past winter ready to topple Ukraine. Putin’s mobsters both in and out of Ukraine had drained away enough wealth and bought out enough politicians, assassinated enough journalists and activists.

One would think the Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Russian citizens would give up in the face of unimaginable poverty and persecution. They did not, have not, and today we see the re-organized military of Ukraine pounding away at Putin’s terrorists. Our CIA, God bless them, is providing us daily images of the truth.

Now David Stockman (July 25: My Thoughts On Pat Buchanan’s Brilliant And Incisive Take on Washington’s Ukrainian Fiasco) fell into the Pat Buchanan scheme nicely. He writes that Putin “is no totalitarian menace even remotely in the same league as his Soviet predecessors. In that regard, Hillary Clinton’s sophomoric comparison of him to Hitler is downright preposterous.” Just wait a little longer, David, there is more to come in mobsterland. See if you change your tune.

Last Christmas, Putin barred our Russian expert journalist David Satter from re-entering Russia. See, Mr Satter has a different take on Putin. Watch his film “Age of Delirium” to see what the Soviet Man did to the oppressed nations and most importantly how the Putin mindset of lying, cheating, grubbing at all costs is expected over there today.

One more thing. I can’t imagine if Pat is able to sit still in his McLean chair, while reading David’s column in praise of him. David praises whatever non-intervention in Eastern Europe since the times of FDR. FDR however was not only unfortunately enfeebled by polio, he gave away the store to Stalin. In FDR’s last years of life, the White House foreign policy was run by the likes of Soviet agents of influence Harry Hopkins (the Lend-Lease give-away), Alger Hiss, Lauchlin Currie and Harry Dexter White. China and Eastern Europe fell. Tens of millions were murdered then, now 150 million and counting. East European American commandos were betrayed to Stalin and tortured on television. Pat Buchanan knows this.

 Next order of business: send Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell and Jimmy Carter to Moscow to suggest it is time for a change.

A Joe McCarthy We Should Know

A restless world tired of traditional faith came to embrace a new religion in international socialism. That affair cost 150 million lives.  While a hostile world intelligentsia and a liberal media, the likes of the NY Times, worked hard at covering up the atrocities through the decades, there would be those young correspondents who risked their lives and reputations to expose them.  Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones for example travelled into the Ukrainian famine and smuggled out stories to the West.  For this, Muggeridge was sacked by his newspaper the Manchester Guardian. Jones was later assassinated by the NKVD.  George Orwell, a lifelong democratic socialist and anti-Stalinist, captured that era in “Animal Farm” and worked Jones into the book.  Societal persecution dogged all three men for speaking the truth when it wasn’t chic to suggest the Russian Revolution shouldn’t happen in the West.

Peter B. Hrycenko

But that top-down revolution was indeed unfolding here.

As Ukrainians worldwide commemorate the 80^th anniversary of Holodomor, the forced Soviet famine of 1932-33 that killed 10 million, with a December 4 monument unveiling in Washington, I’d like to say a few things about a hero who shed greatest light on communist infiltration and deception in America.  Joe McCarthy.

Loathed by many in the big media yet loved by the common man, Wisconsin Senator McCarthy for a scant five years went to the media to share what was going on in a federal government having a devil of a time cleaning out national security risks.  Warring with the Eastern Liberal Establishment got him packaged into the most hated politician in American history.  

He is the eternal face of the misunderstood and poorly explained Red Scare.  

A prime example of conventional treatment today of McCarthy and the period can be seen in the columns of The Morning Call's Paul Carpenter.  A couple times a year he drags out old Joe for a drubbing.


But first about the national security nightmare under Roosevelt and Truman.   Thousands of moles nosed their way into US government.  A maturing FBI grew aware of that cultural phenomenon but was hampered  because of the lax attitude under Roosevelt who himself could have summed up  the Stalin age when he quipped “ give Uncle Joe what he wants.”  We’re not talking about cute moles your dog digs up in the yard or the silly youth who paints a basement bathroom walls in black gloss along with a glowing hammer and sickle.  We’re talking intellectuals who clubbed together for years to overthrow American life and were often on the Kremlin payroll. Highest placed agents of influence, such as the State Department’s Alger Hiss, the White House’s Lauchlin Currie and Harry Hopkins,  and Treasury’s Harry Dexter White, helped seal the fate of Eastern Europe – and China. The atom bomb project under the mysterious J. Robert Oppenheimer had true believers delivering Los Alamos secrets.

By 1945, our Army’s Signal Corps had the ultra-secret Operation Venona decoding cable message traffic between the US and Moscow.  They found 349 US citizens and resident aliens active in espionage, while thousands more could not be fully identified, according to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr in their book “Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.”  Prosecutors had a dilemma: they couldn’t use Venona nor sometimes the best FBI evidence in courts without tipping off the Soviets.  Instead they had to settle on nailing many of the traitors and fellow travellers on lesser perjury charges. Untold numbers were quietly ushered out of government service by loyalty boards and personnel security officers.

Back to America’s astounding cold warrior.  In 15 months his investigative committee accomplished a decade’s work by Senate standards. Great energy was expended battling the White House just to get records out of various agencies such as the State Department and Army.  Famed prosecutors Roy Cohn and Robert F. Kennedy added star appeal. However the Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower continuum didn’t take well to McCarthy’s growing power. Veteran journalist and educator M. Stanton Evans in his unequaled “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and his fight against America’s Enemies” explained McCarthy in retaliation would help to bring down several  prominent Democrats, most notably  Truman.  Curiously, Ike and his lib-mod Beltway advisors had weighed in against McCarthy.  VP Richard Nixon -- the hero who nailed Alger Hiss not long ago while a California congressman -- had been tasked in lining up votes in the Senate to censure him for his scalding arguments with senators. The Army hearings and the censure battle would cost the Republicans control of Congress. 

One of the best attorneys in America, Edward Bennett Williams, defending McCarthy, found out the censure hearing was no court of law. The Senate gave the sentence first, the verdict later.  Of those 46 charges against him, none was left standing. That led Nixon to strike off the word "censor" and replace it with "condemn." Satisfied that blowback wouldn't burn them should there be blowback, the establishment "condemned" McCarthy on just one laughable count, "conduct unbecoming." Williams pointed out that a number of current senators were already guilty of much more against McCarthy and society in general. Hypocrisy prevailed.

Declassified Operation Venona and the brief opening of KGB archives in post-Soviet Russia proved McCarthy right about his charges. Of course the mainsteam media and many knowing historians have ignored that.