Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, in his perspective piece “Rise of the Hard Right,” Chris (whom I admire) brought out that old, tired horse Joe McCarthy.
From a purely historical viewpoint, it may be time to rehabilitate Senator Joe McCarthy.
It seems that William F. Buckley was prescient in his defense of McCarthy, and we still do not know what McCarthy knew at the time – but the 1995 release of the Venona Decryptions, and subsequent releases of CPUSA, KGB and GRU Moscow files show that – despite what we were led to believe, McCarty was mostly right.
It turns out that it is not what we don’t know that kills us – it is what we are absolutely certain of that is not true!
Oh, McCarthy was a bully to be sure, but there WERE Communists literally everywhere in the government, including the co-founder of the widely despised House Un-American Activities Committee. Yes, Democrat Congressman Samuel Dickstein of New York. Talk about a ironic twist — Dickstein was a founder and co-Chairman of the Dies Committee – the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Dickstein was on the payroll of the KGB!
Surprise!
The combination of the Venona decryptions – not public until 1995 – and subsequent information from the Moscow files of the Communist party, USA (CPUSA), the KGB and the GRU (all simply snapshots and not likely to be fully disclosed for many decades), gives us a better picture than what we had in the 50s, or even much later.
A growing number of books, carefully researched, tells us why there were so few convictions – the US would have had to have revealed the breaking of the Russian code. Only in 1995 was Daniel Patrick Moynihan successful at declassifying that.
In the meanwhile, Judith Copland was Exhibit A in the legal problem. The FBI knew she was a spy for the Soviets because of Venona, followed her and SAW her turn over documents to a Russian diplomat.
She was tried TWICE.
Convicted TWICE.
Overturned TWICE.
(Her total punishment for spying for the KGB against the United States? She lost her government job!
The FBI could not reveal their initial knowledge came from the Venona decryptions, and that code-braking remained concealed for another 40 YEARS.
But many people revealed by Venona fled to Mexico, Hungary, and the Soviet Union either before they were called before the HUAC, or immediately thereafter, and others have subsequently admitted through their memoirs that they were guilty. Unfortunately, the Venona code-breaking secret kept them from being prosecuted.
Venona revealed 173 cover names with actual identities. Venona revealed 179 cover names that could not be directly linked to people – but Moscow records linked 55 more names with cover names. That still leaves us with a lot of names yet to be revealed.
Most, or all are dead, but the enormity of the conspiracy is still important for historical purposes
Without revealing some of the important names revealed – or confirmed – let me mention one name that Venona and Moscow files cleared because that is just as important: Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. He was, as accusations or the time inferred, a Communist.
He WAS a Communist, as was his wife and his brother Frank – but Oppenheimer NEVER gave a thing to the Russians! He apparently lost his leftward leanings in 1943 – and actually berated many of his former Communist students (one of whom was teaching Oppenheimer’s Quantum Theory course at Cal Berkley), and refused to let them even apply to the Manhattan project.
Venona, like fingerprints, proves guilt and proves innocence.
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