Fried v. Coulter

1. Fried v. Coulter • Coulter argues that “liberals” have insisted there was “no evidence” of Soviet spies in the United States.(36) Taking Fried’s book as an example of both a c. 1990 liberal centrist view and as a source into past views, is this accurate? • Fried, 23: “Not withstanding the flaws that cropped up in Chamber’s testimony and despite the dirty tricks employed by Hiss’s pursuers, the preponderance of evidence still points to Hiss’s guilt.” • Fried, 115: “Julius (Rosenberg) was no hapless “progressive” entrapped by government scheming . . . A Party activist until entering “secret work,” he was deeply involved in a spy ring.” • Fried, 65: “In 1947 anti-communist liberals founded Americans for Democratic Action.” • Fried, 66: “Liberal critics of McCarthy and of other extremists did not question the validity of anti-communism. Rather, they often began any exposition with the phrase, ‘I am anti-Communist too, but . . .’” • Fried, 171: In 1954 Liberal Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey proposed a bill “that would punish anyone who ‘knowingly and willfully’ joined [the Communist Party]. After years of anti-Red palaver, said Humphrey, it was time “to quit ‘horsing around’ and act.”

2. Fried v. Coulter • Coulter, 37: “McCarthy was accused of labeling ‘anyone with liberal views’ a Communist. As we now know, that wouldn’t have been a half-bad system. Contrary to Caute’s preposterous claim that Communists were innocent idealists, the American Communist Party was linked to Stalin like an al-Qaeda training camp to Osama bin Laden.” • Lacking evidence, Fried does not specifically connect the CPUSA to the Soviet Union, yet as he says of Julius Rosenberg, “he was no hapless “progressive” entrapped by government scheming . . . A Party activist until entering “secret work,” he was deeply involved in a spy ring.” • More importantly, note the bait and switch above: Coulter asserts that liberals were akin to communists, yet she goes on to argue something wholly different: Communists were under the control of Moscow.

3. Fried v. Coulter • Arguing that Communist infiltration in the past would be akin to al-Qaeda infiltration today, Coulter writes (43): “Bush would explain that his posture toward al-Qaeda was, “In order to make a friend, one must be a friend.” President Roosevelt, who called Stalin ‘Uncle Joe,’ said of the Soviet Union in his fourth inaugural address: “In order to make a friend, one must be a friend.” • When would FDR’s fourth inaugural address have been? Indeed, is it not true that bin Laden WAS supported by the United States during the Afghan battle against the Soviet Union occupation? • Fried, 15, “Always suspicious of schemes to create “Utopia in a day” and horrified at the human price paid for Soviet progress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt remained skeptical about the Soviet system. Yet he also thought he could deal man to man with Stalin. By offering friendship and yielding to Soviet claims in areas of traditional Russian (and Soviet) national interest in Europe and Asia, he believed he could maintain Big Three unity and bring the USSR into the postwar system of collective security he sought to build. . . . Among policy makers, a comparable balance existed between those hoping for the best from the Soviets and those fearing the worst.”

4. Fried v. Coulter • Equating any piece of evidence she can find with all “liberals,” Coulter (54) points to a 2002 newspaper book review that suggested the case against accused spy Judith Coplon was “entirely circumstantial.” Coulter thus claims, “Liberal refusal to accept any evidence that any person ever spied for the Soviet Union would be exasperating if it weren’t so comical.” • Fried, 91: “Coplon’s case was the first to implicate an American spying for the Soviets. Her job in the Justice Department gave her access to secret FBI reports, some pertaining to Soviet espionage. She apparently shared her gleanings with Soviet intelligence.” BUT, Fried goes on to note that, “illegal acts by the FBI destroyed the cases. In the first trial the defense demanded to see the contents of Coplon’s purse. These embarrassed the FBI, showing it had investigated such menaces as Henry A. Wallace supporters, Hollywood leftists, even the author of a thesis on the New Deal in New Zealand. It later emerged that FBI agents had wiretapped illegally, lied about it at the first trial, and destroyed some records. . . . The indictments stood and Coplon’s guilt seemed obvious, but she was set free by the demands of due process.”

5. Fried v. Coulter • Coulter writes that (56), “Liberals use animal-like logic to string together irrelevancies from Hollywood blacklisting to the Smith Act all under the rubric of “McCarthyism,” irrespective of whether McCarthy had ever heard of them and certainly irrespective of whether they were Soviet spies.” • Note that in Fried, McCarthy’s role in the Red Scare is not even examined until page 120. Fried, 121: “If McCarthy were factored out of the equation, the features of the age named for him would have looked much the same.” And 142, “[McCarthy] was but one of numerous figures who manipulated the Communist issue.” • Are the broader aspects of “McCarthyism,” as a term used to define a broader period, really “irrelevancies”?

6. Fried v. Coulter • The neurotically repeated claim that McCarthy ‘did not discover a single communist anywhere’—as one massive biography of McCarthy states—is akin to the claim that Ken Starr never proved a single crime committed by Bill Clinton. Among the Soviet operators who had been in government jobs and named by McCarthy were T.A. Bisson [list of seven other names] and William Remington.” • Note the slight of hand here: Coulter says these people were “named by McCarthy” not “discovered” by him. Fried, 81, notes that in August of 1948, Elizabeth Bentley testified that William Remington of the Commerce Department was a spy. • If you read Coulter carefully, she will never provide you with a single name of an actual spy [or even a potential security risk] who had not already been identified or investigated in the many pervious security inquests well before McCarthy. • Fried, 125, “Those [McCarthy] named . . . were a mixed bag. Not all currently worked at the State Department; some, like academicians Shapley and Schuman, never had; Kenyon’s connection was tenuous; Ambassador Jessup was a major figure. All had been butts of past Republican charges.”

7. Fried v. Coulter • Coulter writes (56): “[McCarthy’s campaign lasted only a few years, from 1950 to 1953, until liberals immobilized him in 1954 with their Army-McCarthy hearings and censure investigation.” • Fried, 132, “Eisenhower never had anything but a profound distaste for McCarthy. However, his sense of political proprieties and tactics prevented him from publicly confronting the Senator.” • Fried, 138, “In January 1954, a gathering of key Eisenhower advisers urged Adams [Army’s general counsel] to make a record of McCarthy and Cohn’s entreaties and threats. When Adam’s chronology reached the press in March, ti led inexorably . . . to the Army-McCarthy hearings.” • Fried, 139, notes that following the televised debacle of the Army-McCarthy hearings: “Senator Ralph Flanders now summoned the Senate to judgment. Joe’s antics and the alarm they caused abroad troubled the Vermont Republican. . . . The Senate Republican Policy Committee revealed its own concerns about McCarthy by studying rules of procedure for investigating committees.” • Fried, 140, “Many Republican professionals had come to see McCarthy as a liability to the GOP, and this shift in opinion was crucial.” • Fried, 141, “All forty-four Democrats present voted for censure, as did twenty-two Republicans and the Independent Wayne Morse. All twenty-two nay votes were Republican. Senate Republicans were split down the middle.” • Fried, 141, notes that following censure, McCarthy attacked Eisenhower for being insufficiently anti-communist, and “Other Republicans repudiated the outburst, confirming Joe’s isolation on the GOP’s conservative fringe.”

8. Fried v. Coulter • Coulter concludes from her penetrating analysis that (71), “McCarthy’s fundamental thesis was absolutely correct: The Democratic Party had fallen to the allures of totalitarianism.” • Not surprisingly, in her eagerness to defend McCarthy she ends up using McCarthy’s own tactics of blatantly partisan smears, exaggeration, and lies.

9. Fried v. Coulter • Given the huge reliance Coulter has on the Venona documents as reported by such real historians as Ronald Radosh and Harvey Klehr, it is important to note their response to those who would use their work to vindicate McCarthy: • “...[the] two of us stated that “[i]n McCarthy’s hands, anticommunism was a partisan weapon used to implicate the New Deal, liberals, and the Democratic Party in treason. Using evidence that was exaggerated, distorted, and in some cases utterly false, [McCarthy] accused hundreds of individuals of Communist activity, recklessly mixing the innocent with the assuredly guilty when it served his political purposes. . . . Precisely because Senator McCarthy was reckless and made false charges, actual Communists who engaged in and contemplated espionage sought to claim the status of victims.”

10. Should a book like Coulter’s be bought by public and university libraries?

11. The REAL Questions • Coulter is correct that, on balance, liberals and Democrats were less likely to aggressively pursue communists than were conservatives and Republicans. Setting aside the ridiculous assertion that they were traitors with totalitarian goals, why was this the case? • Political Factor: Democrats were vulnerable to attack from Republicans who wanted to use the issue to rollback the New Deal and regain power • Civil Liberties Factor: Basic issue is one of balance between competing goods of Civil Liberties v. Security. Democrats tended to emphasize protecting civil liberties, Republicans emphasized Security. • Naiveté Factor: Failure to fully recognize the ability of a totalitarian government to potentially due the US great harm • Foreign Policy Factor: Although Democrats were the architects of Containment, tended to still look for ways to co-exist peacefully with USSR, PRC, etc., rather than seeing them as implacable foes who must be eliminated. Who was more correct?

12. Wisconsin citizens mesmerized by McCarthy’s dire warnings of communist infiltration

13. The Appeal of McCarthyism • Suggested US foreign policy failures (“Who Lost China?”) were not the fault of wrongheaded policies, but rather because of spies in the State Department • Allowed Americans to ignore the reality that many former colonial nations did not trust the US or Europe (or capitalism), and thus were tempted by the promises of Communism • To understand this reality, Americans would have had to grapple with the uncomfortable truth that their nation had not always stood on the side of freedom, democracy and self-determination • Appealed to the Manichean, simple-minded view of the world as a struggle between good and evil, lightness and darkness • Opposite of the complex geopolitical and historically grounded understanding and approach Kennan argued for

14. America’s Permanent Global Military • Responding to charges of being soft on communism, Republican attacks, and his own ideology, Truman begins massive permanent military build up • Army increased by 50%, air groups doubled • Defense spending quadruples: $95 million in 1948 to $408 million in 1952 • In part because of Korean War • But remains at more than $300 million throughout the decade • Begins constructing American military bases around the globe: • Rearm Western Germany and station US troops • Japanese allowed defensive rearmament • Secure new bases in exchange for economic support in nations of suspect democratic credentials: Morocco, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and fascist Spain • Increase aid to other western powers supposedly fighting communism around the globe: • Most notably, support French attempts to reassert colonial power in Indochina—better know today as Vietnam