Joe McCarthy was over the top, and right
Frequent contributors to the Opinion page are often overzealous beyond facts. One obviously sincere contributor trumpeted that “Democrats ... stopped Republican McCarthyism, the malicious evil practice of destroying the lives of political opponents by publicizing false accusation, distortions and lies.”
If Sen. Joe McCarthy was overzealous, he was also a solid patriot, many of whose “Communist accusations” have been verified by the recently declassified Venona Project. Venona was a super-secret Cold War decryption unit whose heroes were often younger ladies, such as Meredith Gardner, who in 1946 discovered the existence of Soviet spies in the State Department, Treasury Department, Office of Strategic Services (now the CIA) and the White House.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s personal aide, Maurice Halperin, has been accused of passing information to the Soviet Union, as has Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest aide and architect of the New Deal.
Other offices found to contain Soviet spies: the War Production Board, Board of Economic Welfare, coordinator of American Affairs, the Office of Wars Production, as well as Los Alamos National Laboratories (Manhattan Project). Soviet archives corroborate the existence of Venona exposures. (References: National Security Agency, Venona archives.)
McCarthy was hesitant for Venona to be made public, fearing that Communist supporters would reveal our government knew the existence of Communist sympathizers and spies. The Venona Project was declassified in 1995, and apparently hushed up, or found not to be newsworthy by most news services.
Perhaps McCarthy was overzealous. Maybe he just knew too much. Either way, it is interesting to see the feared backlash of “McCarthyism hatred” used again as harassment against Fox News and others who do not think the other side’s way. The above contributor listed who should not be trusted (Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, the Rev. Billy James Hargis) sounded just like McCarthy.
Gerald Spencer
Orthodontist
Sedalia
