Documents Show Joe McCarthy Was Right, Author Says

Exclusive Interview (CNSNews.com) - Journalist and author M. Stanton Evans argues in his new book, "Blacklisted By History," that declassified files from the United States and the Soviet Union prove that Sen. Joe McCarthy was right about the communist threat and that liberals have ignored the evidence and distorted history.

In an exclusive videotaped interview with Cybercast News Service Editor-in-Chief Terry Jeffrey and Managing Editor Michael Chapman, Mr. Evans detailed the evidence in McCarthy's favor and explained why it is necessary to set the historical record straight about the so-called "Red Scare" of the 1950s, and why young researchers and writers should continue to cull the material now available and write more news articles and books about this important period of Cold War history.

(Editor's note: The questions and answers below are truncated or paraphrased from the interview - to view the complete questions and answers, click on the video.)

Cybercast News Service: Why did this book on Sen. Joe McCarthy need to be written?

M. Stanton Evans:"A whole segment of American history has been misreported or misunderstood in the existing history books. ... The truth needs to be told. ..." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: Would you talk a little bit about where this story really started because, as you set up in the book, it didn't really all start with Senator Joe McCarthy?

M. Stanton Evans: "It starts in the 1930s and then intensified in the 1940s, during World War II. These were the periods when there was heavy infiltration of our government by communist and Soviet agents. ..." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: In the 1930s and 1940s, wasn't it the case that there were shifting attitudes about the Soviet Union and the degree to which the Soviet Union might be a threat to the United States?

M. Stanton Evans: "There was a lot of back and forth, and then there was the Hitler-Stalin pact, 1939 to 1941, and everyone during that period recognized the danger of the Soviet Union." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: The Roosevelt administration was actually interested in getting communists into the U.S. government?

M. Stanton Evans: "... Yes, and there was a reason why and how these communists were recruited. ..." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: This policy of allowing communists into the Merchant Marine extended to the State Department? ... Beyond espionage, stealing documents, the communists also had another aim in mind?

M. Stanton Evans:"It did, ... and yes, they wanted to engage in espionage and got thousands of documents to the Soviets. ... But they had another goal, and that was influencing policy ... influence, guide, and direct policy from the United States favorable to the Soviet interest. ... China was a good example, and before that, Yugoslavia." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: Who was John Stewart Service and did he help steer U.S. policy favorably toward the Soviet Union?

M. Stanton Evans: "Service was a U.S. diplomat serving in China in the 1940s, during World War II, and a little bit thereafter. ... He was living in Chungking with not one, but two Soviet agents. ... They were sending back dispatches basically saying we needed to get rid of Chaing-Kai-shek and embrace the communists."

Cybercast News Service: So, before Joe McCarthy arrives on the scene, the government has actively recruited some communists - and some Soviet agents had infiltrated the U.S. government - to the point that it aids the aims of the Soviet Union? And then our views shifted towards the Soviet Union?

M. Stanton Evans: "When World War II concluded, the Cold War started, and a lot of people who had been out there doing this stuff tried to backtrack and cover it up, and there was a lot of cover-up. ... A case in point is J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: During World War II, when there was a little bit of a romance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the FBI didn't seem to be duped? And then one day Elizabeth Bentley walked into the FBI to talk - who was she and why is she important?

M. Stanton Evans: "The FBI never believed a word of it [pro-communist propaganda]. They had too much information. ..." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: Elizabeth Bentley was naming the names of specific people in the U.S. government that she had collected information from for the Soviet Union?

M. Stanton Evans: "Correct. Her main contact for information was Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, who was in the Treasury Department .... When she was done, she had named about 150 people." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: Another example of how these people could affect U.S. foreign policy was Harry Dexter White, in the Treasury Department, and there was aid supposed to be going to Chiang Kai-shek? What happened to that?

M. Stanton Evans: "... The secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, was asking why we weren't getting the aid to the anti-communist government in China and the three people counseling him were Soviet agents. And the communist Lauchlin Currie, in the White House, was very close to all these people."
(Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: The FBI had all this information. So then they sent out the FBI with handcuffs and arrested these people and took them down to the jail and arraigned them and indicted them for espionage against the United States of America?

M. Stanton Evans: "Unfortunately, no. There was one case, the AmeriAsia case. ... But it was all fixed by Lauchlin Currie, in the White House, and others .... And it was fixed to get John Stewart Service off. ... " (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: And this was all setting the stage for Joe McCarthy?

M. Stanton Evans: "Yes, and there were other riggings and fixings and cover-ups. It was a constant process of trying to stuff all this FBI information back under the rug. Here is a chart ... There were hundreds of reports sent by the FBI to the White House and the attorney general ... I counted 370 reports sent to 14 federal agencies beginning in late 1945 ...." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: There were a good number of people in Washington who weren't communist or communist sympathizers, but they didn't want to get pinned with political responsibility for letting this [infiltration and espionage] go on?

M. Stanton Evans: "You had this whole era from the Depression through the end of World War II, when almost nobody was paying attention to this stuff except for the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was constantly under attack .... Then you had the Republican Congress come in, in 1946 - it had been Democratic since the 1930s - and a lot of communists left [the government] then."
(Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: President Truman was saying (in a 1948 secrecy order) that the documents behind this (communist conspiracy) could not be given to Congress?

M. Stanton Evans: Not any more - no more documents. ... That was March 13, 1948. Well, then the Hiss case and Remington case played out in the summer of 1948, and there were cover-ups about both of those too. But those were only two of many, many cases that should have come to the surface but didn't because of the secrecy order. And those cases ... sat there for two years, 1948 to 1950, and some time in 1949, 1950, Joe McCarthy ... came along and found these dossiers."
(Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: Joe McCarthy was a self-made man?

M. Stanton Evans: "Very much so, an old boot-strapper. ... He completed four years [of high school] in nine months, and graduated with honors ... then he went to Marquette, a Jesuit university in Milwaukee and got his law degree ...."
(Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: In February 1950, McCarthy goes on a little barnstorming trip across the country - and gives the famous "list" speech in Wheeling, West Virginia - what happened there?

M. Stanton Evans: "... He went to give a talk, to build up the Republican Party faithful. ... One of the places he went, to give his Lincoln Day address, was Wheeling, West Virginia. ... where he talked about communists in the State Department ...." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: When McCarthy gave his speech, did he say he had a list of 57 card-carrying communists or people who are loyal to the Communist Party?

M. Stanton Evans: "That's what he said, he said - all his critics say that was false, and that he actually used the number 205. ... This then became the subject of an investigation, by the U.S. Senate. ... And they were very explicit in their goal: the total destruction of McCarthy." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: So, Congress went to all that time and expense to prove that Joe McCarthy committed perjury, and then they found out he did not commit perjury?

M. Stanton Evans:"Right. ... The report is there. ... I went through every box in the Gillette Committee archives - 21 boxes - and it was misfiled. ..." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: The phonograph record presented by Sen. Tydings of Sen. Joe McCarthy's speech was a lie? It was phony?

M. Stanton Evans: Correct. "Tydings brought it on the floor of the Senate. ... Here's a picture [in my book]. ... Tydings finally admitted, 'I did not have a radio recording.'"
(Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: Sens. Tydings and Benton were bent on destroying McCarthy rather than investigating who the communists were in the State Department? Who won in the short-term and who won in the long-term, McCarthy or Tydings?

M. Stanton Evans: "They certainly were, absolutely. ... McCarthy won in the short-term. ... But he paid a terrible price [later]. ... He was only 48 when he died. ... Conservatives need to know what happened, what Joe McCarthy did or didn't do - he wasn't perfect, he made mistakes - as opposed to letting liberals write the history of this struggle and then internalizing that in our own rhetoric and discourse." (Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: What was Joe McCarthy's ultimate contribution in the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union?

M. Stanton Evans: "He hosed out the Augean stables. ... He got many of the communists out of there .... The nest of Stalinists in the State Department. ... McCarthy got most of them out. ... The figure today in their [liberals'] terminology most like McCarthy is Dick Cheney. Cheney is the new McCarthy, and they treat him - and they try to do to him what they did to McCarthy."(Click here for Video)

Cybercast News Service: One thing today that's different is that there's more alternative media and more conservative media.

M. Stanton Evans: "That's a big thing - yes and no. Back in the 1950s there were lots of daily newspapers that were conservative. ... And they were big supporters of Joe McCarthy."(Click here for Video)Make media inquiries or request an interview about this article.

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