MrPopup

What will we be finding out 50 years from now?

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Cold War transcripts shed light on McCarthy hearings

Washington ? The U.S. Senate unsealed 4,000 pages of transcripts Monday from the Joseph McCarthy hearings, shedding new light on the senator?s anti-communist crusade that riveted the United States a half-century ago.

Among the roughly 400 witnesses covered in the transcripts are composer Aaron Copland, New York Times journalist James Reston and Eslanda Goode Robeson, the wife of blacklisted singer-actor Paul Robeson. There are also many writers and government officials, and secretaries that Mr. McCarthy was convinced had access to classified information.

The Wisconsin Republican was chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953 and 1954 at the height of the Cold


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Excerpts from the transcripts of the McCarthy hearings
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...International/
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War with the Soviet Union. His investigation into communists in the U.S. government, denounced by critics as a witch hunt, spawned the term ?McCarthyism? to describe smear attacks.

Senate associate historian Donald Ritchie, who assembled the volumes, said Mr. McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, used the closed-door sessions like grand-jury proceedings.

?Anybody who stood up to McCarthy in closed session, and did so articulately, tended not to get called up into the public session,? Mr. Ritchie said. ?McCarthy was only interested in the people he could browbeat publicly.?

Mr. Copland, brought before the subcommittee because he had been hired by the State Department to lecture overseas, was one of those never called back for a public session.

When Mr. McCarthy asked whether he had ever been a communist sympathizer, Mr. Copland replied, ?I am not sure I would be able to say what you mean by the word ?sympathizer.??

?These executive sessions are really trolling sessions,? said David Oshinsky, a University of Texas history professor who is the author of a McCarthy biography, A Conspiracy So Immense.

?McCarthy is looking for people who either have a spectacular story to tell, or people he thinks he can break in public, or people he was certain will take the Fifth Amendment? against self-incrimination, Mr. Oshinsky said.

McCarthy wanted to browbeat witnesses
Mr. McCarthy was angered when Eslanda Goode Robeson cited the 15th Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, as well as the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer whether she was a member of the Communist Party.

?The 15th Amendment has nothing to do with it,? Mr. McCarthy said.

Ms. Robeson replied: ?(Y)ou see, I am a second-class citizen in this country and, therefore, feel the need of the 15th. ... I am not quite equal to the rest of the white people.?

Ms. Robeson finally said a truthful answer would incriminate her. Mr. McCarthy brought her back to testify in public.

?McCarthy thrived on the Fifth Amendment,? Mr. Oshinsky said. ?He liked nothing better than to ask people very pointed questions, and they would take the Fifth, so he could call them ?Fifth Amendment communists? and talk about a larger conspiracy.?

Tide turned in 1954
The tide began to turn against Mr. McCarthy in 1954, when he looked for subversives in the U.S. Army. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired army general, worked to get the hearings televised so the public could see Mr. McCarthy?s bullying tactics, Mr. Oshinsky said.

Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, a freshman Republican who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in a statement that Mr. McCarthy had ?an obligation to use his authority in a way to make America safer, and determine the influence of communism, if it existed, in American policy.?

?Instead, he used his position to threaten, to intimidate and to destroy the lives of Americans,? Mr. Coleman said.

The volumes show that Mr. McCarthy often held hearings in New York City and Boston, subpoenaing witnesses on short notice, and would be the only senator to attend.

Sometimes even Mr. McCarthy would not attend, Mr. Ritchie said. The 26-year-old Cohn would question witnesses, and his buddy, G. David Schine, who served as unpaid consultant to the committee, would preside. Mr. Cohn addressed Mr. Schine as ?Mr. Chairman.?

Mr. Oshinsky said communists had indeed infiltrated the government during the 1930s and 1940s, but by the time Mr. McCarthy launched his investigation that had pretty much been stamped out.

Still, Republicans succeeded in portraying Democrats as soft on communism, riding that message to political gains in 1952. The GOP won the White House and Congress that year, making Mr. McCarthy chairman of the investigations subcommittee.

Republicans turn on senator
Mr. McCarthy continued hunting for communists in the State Department, Voice of America, U.S. overseas libraries, Government Printing Office and Army Signal Corps. Republicans began to turn on him when he set his sights on the Eisenhower administration.

The Senate censured Mr. McCarthy in December, 1954, and he lost his chairmanship the following month after Democrats regained the majority. Discredited and broken, he died in 1957 at 47.

That same year, the Supreme Court ruled that witnesses do not lose their constitutional rights when they testify in a congressional investigation. Some historians say that ruling is Mr. McCarthy?s most important legacy.

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rooster

maybe we will find out why Hillary Clinton had her thesis from Wellsely College put under lock and key in 1993

MrPopup

Excerpts from closed-door transcripts of Joseph McCarthy hearings in 1953-54, unsealed Monday by the Senate.


Feb. 18, 1954, New York City, McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, demanded that Lieutenant-Colonel Chester Brown discuss how a U.S. Army dentist, suspected of being a communist, had been promoted and then honourably discharged.
Cohn: Did you submit to him at any time a questionnaire, or did your office submit to him at any time a questionnaire, concerning his status in the Army?
Brown: I cannot answer that question. It is classified.
Cohn: You cannot tell us whether or not you submitted a questionnaire?
Brown: I am not permitted to tell you, sir.
McCarthy: On what grounds? May I say something to you, sir, and to the others of you offices. I will listen to communists refuse to answer; I will listen to no Army officer protecting a communist, and you are going to answer these questions or your case will come before the Senate for contempt and I intend to shove it all the way through.
... I think, may I say this, that any man in the uniform of his country, who refuses to give information to a committee of the Senate which represents the American people, that that man is not fit to wear the uniform of his country. And in my opinion he is in the same category, Colonel, as the traitor whom he is protecting.

Brown: May I say, sir, as a soldier, it is my duty to obey my military superiors.

??????

Sept. 1, 1953, New York City, Mr. Cohn and Mr. McCarthy question Marvell Cooke, who had been assistant managing editor of the People?s Voice, a Harlem newspaper, in the 1940s.
Cohn: Are you a member of the Communist Party?
Cooke: I refuse to answer. I invoke my privilege of the Fifth Amendment.
Cohn: On the ground your answer might tend to incriminate you?
Cooke: I do.
McCarthy: Incidentally, what do you have under your hand?
Cooke: The New York Post. I am through with it. You may have it if you would like it.
McCarthy: I don?t care for it, thank you.

(The New York Post was considered a liberal newspaper at the time.)

??????

July 7, 1953Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Cohn question Eslanda Goode Robeson, the wife of blacklisted singer-actor Paul Robeson, about her communist affiliations.
Cohn: Now, Mrs. Robeson, are you a member of the Communist Party?
Robeson: Under the protection afforded me by the Fifth and 15th amendments, I decline to answer.
Cohn: The 15th?

Robeson: Yes, the 15th. I am Negro, you know. I have been brought up to seek protection under the 15th Amendment as a Negro ....
McCarthy: The 15th Amendment has nothing to do with it. That provides the right to vote.
Robeson: I always understood it has something to do with my being a Negro and I have always sought protection under it.
McCarthy: Negro or white, Protestant or Jews, we are all American citizens here and you will answer the question as such. The question is: Are you a communist today? If you feel the answer will tend to incriminate you, you can refuse to answer.
Robeson: What confuses me a little bit about what you said ? you see, I am a second-class citizen in this country and, therefore, feel the need of the 15th. That is the reason I use it. I am not quite equal to the rest of the white people ....
McCarthy: You are being ordered to answer whether you feel a truthful answer will tend to incriminate you.
Robeson: Under the Fifth and 15th amendments, I refuse to answer.
McCarthy: You are ordered to answer.
Robeson: I will have to consult my lawyer. I don?t understand this ....
McCarthy: The counsel is informed I am asking the full committee to cite the witness for contempt. She has refused to give us information and taken refuge under the 15th Amendment ....
McCarthy: (Y)ou are asked the question whether or not you feel a truthful answer might tend to incriminate you.
Robeson: Well, my answer is yes ....
Cohn: Have you ever engaged in sabotage or espionage, Mrs. Robeson?
Robeson: I don?t know what sabotage and espionage are.
Cohn: Have you ever engaged in any illegal acts against the United States?
Robeson: Not to my knowledge.

??????

May 26, 1953, Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Cohn question composer Aaron Copland about his associations with communists.
McCarthy: Have you ever been a communist sympathizer?
Copland: I am not sure I would be able to say what you mean by the word ?sympathizer.? ...
McCarthy: Did you ever attend a communist meeting?
Copland: I am afraid I don?t know how you define a communist meeting ....
Cohn: What was your view of the Hitler-Stalin pact ? 1939 to 1941?

Copland: I don?t remember any specific view of it ....
Cohn: Do you feel communists should be allowed to teach in our schools?

Copland: I haven?t given the matter such thought as to come up with an answer.
Cohn: In other words, as of today you don?t have any firm thought?
B>Copland: I would be inclined to allow the faculty of the university to decide that.

The full transcripts will be available at: http://govt-aff.senate.gov/psi.htm

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foe

Wow, i actually read it.