McCarthyism: myth and reality.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Tilting at Windmills

I recently reviewed Shooting Star, Tom Wicker's excellent new book about Joe McCarthy, for the New York Observer. In the review, I made a point that I would like to share with Monthly readers.

There is no question that McCarthy and the larger movement that came to be called McCarthyism did immense harm. Innocent people lost their jobs, talented actors found themselves blacklisted for more than a decade, with few people bothering to ask what difference does it make whether an actor is a communist or not?

There was a time when communism seemed attractive. I am sure some young people in Hollywood and in Greenwich Village became communists because it was hip enough in the '30s and early '40s that they thought it might help them get laid. Certainly similar thoughts passed through my mind as I bought my first copy of the Daily Worker at a Sheridan Square newsstand in 1945. And many other liberals were sympathetic to Communism for more elevated reasons: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was a siren song for idealists.

The result was that liberals have always had a soft spot for McCarthy's victims and have not only understood the harm he did but have also written books and made movies about it.

What they have not understood as well is the harm done by the myth of McCarthyism--the myth that all the charges made by McCarthy and his allies were false.

There were real spies--not only Alger Hiss at State but Harry Dexter White at Treasury, Lauchlin Currie at the White House, and David Greenglass at Los Alamos, who had been recruited by another Soviet agent, Julius Rosenberg.

We know these spies were real because of what are called the Venona intercepts. These are secret Soviet intelligence messages that were decoded by our government in the 1940s but not made public until 1995. Tom Wicker is a good enough reporter to acknowledge the intercepts, but the fact that he does so only in footnotes tends to minimize their importance. Wicker also cites a Soviet report that 40 of their top...