-Caveat Lector- from alt.conspiracy ----- As always, Caveat Lector. Om K ----- <A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.conspiracy:536866">Wm. F. Buckley and Robt Morris BOTH worked for McCarthy AND Draper </A> ----- Subject: Wm. F. Buckley and Robt Morris BOTH worked for McCarthy AND Draper From: "Kenneth W. Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 14 July 1999 12:22 AM EDT Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Thin Line Between Fact and Fiction by Robert Bryce Thursday, July 08, 1999 Comments: 145 posts Book Review: The Finish Line is Color Blind : Robert Bryce reviews Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race by John Hoberman. Search A review of The Redhunter: A novel based on the life of Senator Joe McCarthy by William F. Buckley Jr. Little Brown and Company $24.50, 421 pages The Redhunter The line between fact and fiction is so blurry in William F. Buckley's Redhunter that it is impossible to tell where truth begins and ends. But given the topic, the melding of fact and fiction may be appropriate. After all, the book's hero, Sen. Joe McCarthy, had a strained relationship with the truth. As Buckley notes, McCarthy often lied about his opponents to gain political advantage. Buckley's novel is based on an odd concept: write a fictional book about McCarthy, but fill it with true material. Further, include descriptions of numerous real-life events and people and use direct quotes from them. It is a daunting task. But by and large, Buckley is up to the task. And since Buckley worked for McCarthy for several years, he had a front-row seat to many of the events described in the book. Plus, given his close association with McCarthy, Buckley is able to paint a compelling portrait of the man from Wisconsin who, within the span of 12 years, went from being a nobody to being one of the most famous men in America to being censured by the Senate, then to drinking himself to death. The man behind the menace Buckley captures McCarthy's tragic side. Visiting the senator at his home in 1957, just before McCarthy died, Buckley describes McCarthy looking for a bottle of liquor in the kitchen, a bottle that his wife, Jean, had hidden. "Joe bent over and opened the cabinet drawer under the sink. He ran his hand about the empty space. He stood up. His face was contorted. Surprise, indignation, resolution." After prevailing on his wife to give him the bottle, McCarthy turned to his guest and said, "Let's go back in the study now, have a little good-old time." Buckley recounts well McCarthy's personal history. He tells of McCarthy's boyhood, growing up on a farm in Wisconsin, how he failed in the chicken business, and how he got into Marquette University. He discusses McCarthy's foray into politics, winning his first political race, his stint with the Marines during World War II, how he quit the Marines and returned to Wisconsin to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Buckley does not flinch in recounting how McCarthy lied about the age of his opponent when he was a candidate for local judge. But the lying worked. McCarthy won the election. Buckley describes the secret meetings between McCarthy and the power-obsessed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. In one passage, Hoover encourages McCarthy to continue his hunt for Communists, saying that McCarthy is "onto the most important challenge in the history of the United States." Later, Hoover meets with McCarthy to provide names of suspected Communists. And Hoover warns McCarthy that president Harry Truman "doesn't believe the Communist infiltration is that deep." Buckley gives an intriguing account of a meeting attended by McCarthy and former President (and rabid anti-Communist) Richard Nixon when the two senators met with Whittaker Chambers, the man who accused Alger Hiss of being a spy. The Redhunter details the now-famous moment when McCarthy got his comeuppance. It came in 1954, while McCarthy was investigating Communist infiltration of the Army. During a hearing, McCarthy had a heated exchange with Joseph Welch, an attorney representing the Army. It was Welch who finally stood up to McCarthy. "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness," Welch said. "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" What to think? Passages like those make Buckley's book worth reading. And the author does a good job of explaining the context for the Army hearings, including his depiction of Roy Cohn, McCarthy's ruthless general counsel. But throughout the book, the reader is continually questioning Buckley's veracity. How, for instance, could Buckley have possibly known about the dialogue that occurred between Hoover and McCarthy? Yet in interviews about the book, Buckley says the facts are "true to life" in "every conventional sense." The reader cannot help wondering what exactly that means. Where does the truth end and the novelization begin? Still, The Redhunter is entertaining. But make no mistake, it is an effort at revisionist history, an attempt to remake McCarthy into a patriot, rather than a power-mad neo-fascist who trampled the Bill of Rights in his effort to root out a problem that may not even have existed. Although the book goes on for more than 400 pages, Buckley does not make room to mention the many lives that were ruined by McCarthy's anti-Communist jihad. In a recent appearance on CNN's "Crossfire," Buckley said McCarthy's fatal flaw was his demagoguery, that McCarthy continually had to raise the stakes of his anti-Communist quest so that the American public would stay interested. And while Buckley happily discusses McCarthy's demagoguery on the talk-show circuit, he largely ignores that issue in his book. Instead of writing a novel that tells both sides of the Communist inquiry, Buckley has written a hagiography. Buckley's desire to make McCarthy into a hero is clear in the press materials distributed with the book. In an interview, Buckley is asked, "Isn't it true that McCarthy never actually named one member of the Communist party?" Buckley replies without a trace of irony, "He gave the names of a half-dozen people who, in my judgment, any American jury surveying the facts would conclude were on the side of Moscow." It is a strange statement for Buckley to make, particularly since it comes more than four decades after McCarthy's death. But it is also a good example of the mix of fact and fiction in this odd, but interesting, book. Robert Bryce is a freelance writer in Texas. Related Links Read some of the most recent columns of William F. Buckley Jr . Read an interview of Buckley by Brian Lamb of C-SPAN. Watch and listen to multiplevideo and audio clips of Joseph McCarthy online. Read a recent article by Walter and Miriam Schneir evaluating McCarthyism and Buckley's book in The Nation. Read about Buckley's television career in Salon Magazine online. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Was McCarthy a tragic figure? Did his quest to root out Communists, from the U.S. government, do the country more good than harm? Is Buckley guilty of hagiography? Below are the last ten comments in chronological order. Click here to view the full comment history. [Post your comments] [View all comments] 7/13/99 1:42:12 PM alanH Pluto: you say "PB is a convienant target because he is outrageous."...well yes, that's what we're saying. He's outrageous because he says outrageous things...perhaps we are actually in agreement? And I think we've already shown that while Demjanjuk was not a head honcho, he was not an innocent either. 7/13/99 2:09:24 PM Plutocracy Watch alanH: PB is hardly fixated. His opposition to the Persian Gulf War, the war to make the world safe for absolute monarchy, sent him off in a series of attacks which included criticizing American policymakers for placing Israel under America's protection. I've read lots of his material, IMHO, he is not obsessive. He smelled a story with the Dumjanjuk case and followed it which in the end proved the US govt. wrong. Israel freed the man. The evidence that was still another Ivan the Terrible, apparently, did not interest them. That is not support for ex-Nazis. Few journalists had the courage to point out the unpopular realities of a program that sounds good like deporting ex-Nazis. Your outrage should be directed at the US Justioce Dept. for chasing headlines instead of properly doing their job, and the Swiss who willingly profited from the misery of the victims. BTW, I don't agree with PB on much, but I like him. Through the years he has shown the capacity to chang his mind and deviate from the Republican line. For a plutocratic supplicant, that is impressive. I've also heard Ben Wattenberg and Michael Kingsley defend PB during the WFB smear. 7/13/99 2:18:33 PM alanH Pluto: I just wonder how it is that of all the people "unjustly accused", he always manages to lock onto the former Nazis....also as I recall during the Gulf War, the US specifically asked Israel NOT to retaliate against Scud attacks. Israel was more than eager to defend themselves...and indeed they did us all a favor when they destroyed the Nuke plant in Iraq some years earlier. 7/13/99 2:33:04 PM Plutocracy Watch alanH: I wish PB was a civil libertarian. I wish he supported the Bill of Rights. I wish you were a civil libertarian. I wish you supported the Bill of Rights. Is there a distrubing pattern developing here? It is my guess he jumped on that deportation story because few other journalists would. In northeast Ohio, this was a big story. Rep. Trafficant also supported Demjanjuk.He also opposes aid to Israel and other foreign nations. I wish he was a civil libertarian. I wish he supported the Bill Of Rights. Mmmmmm! /// Diane Rabonovich is another example of a courageous journalist. She blew the lid off the daycare child abuse inquisition that ravaged many innocent lives a few years back. From there she looked into how the charge was distorting divorce proceedings in this country. That's what a conscientious and courageous journalist can do - expose the evil and disconcerting to public view. 7/13/99 2:34:56 PM alanH Pluto: your point escapes me. 7/13/99 5:01:56 PM Kevin C Alan H: jumping back to your response to my 7/09/99 post: "Heinz 57" is a reference to "the Manchurian Candidate" in this movie the unltra-conservative candidate for president (modelled on McCarthy) is fretting over dinner over what number he's going to give the senate regarding exactly how many communists there are in the US Government. He looks down at his bottle of Heinz 57 Sauce, and the movie then cuts to him testifying to Congress that "there are exactly 57 communists working in the government." Basically, I take to task your assertion that Communism was either pervasive, or substantially tied to Moscow. The most damaging spies working for Moscow were actually not communists, but American capitalists trying to pocket a few hundred thousand dollars. Apeepo is right on target. Most of us don't understand the enormity of McCarthy's crimes. He made us afraid of ideas and he destroyed people's lives. How Communism became "unAmerican" is one of the great stories demonstrating the deterioration of American political life during the last half of this century. The Articles of the Constitution constitute a democracy, they say nothing about economic systems, so how can the Marxist political theory be "unAmerican"? Can anyone riddle me this? 7/13/99 6:34:46 PM alanH Kevin: we were founded as a republic, not a strict democracy and the constitution is incompatible with communism. And the issue of whether there was really Communist attempts to infiltrate this country was pretty much settled when the KGB opened their files a few years back. That said, McCarthy WAS a criminal, if perjuring himself in those hearings constituted a criminal act, and he single-handedly gave the Far Left a means to dismiss all anti-Communist efforts during that era. 7/13/99 9:42:00 PM dhill alanH: maybe I'm confused but I thought you were going to find out names of people incorrectly accused by McCarthy. It was that to which I was referring when I said you wouldn't find any. APEEPO: first, thank you for your civility. McCarthy concerned himself with the Reds who had infiltrated our government during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and who were being protected by Harry Truman. To my knowledge he never said it was a crime to be a communist outside of government, or even inside it, as long as it was publicly known. If Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White came out of the closet, so to speak, a lot of this would have been diffused. As far as attacking people for their beliefs two things: 1. Most of the red-hunting was done by HUAC in the late 40's, before Joe was even a factor in Washington, and a private business should have the right not to hire people who they feel might hurt their business. 2. Read any biography of Charles Lindbergh and see how he and other American Firsters were treated by Feckless Franklin and his gang. They were smeared as Nazis and many, like John Flynn, editor of the Saturday Evening Post, lost their jobs. Funny how we never heard about that "scare". 7/13/99 10:34:05 PM apeepo dhill: I don't think it was ever constitutional to require or expect any American to devulge their political affiliation. On that point alone, McCarthy was off base. The HUAC was not a legal body as I understand the constitution. It is one thing to say you are unamerican because you are a spy, but quite another to say because I don't agree with your political philosophy you are a criminal. I don't know how old you are but what you can learn from reading history and actually experiencing it live are not the same. ... You should know, at the time those HOAC hearings were going on, I was a Republican so I had no predispositon in favor of Socialists or Communists. Keep in mind that the tyranny of HUAC was not contained. The fear of speaking ones mind about our government spread through the land and caused many injustices. ... I know a few folks who argue that there was good reason for the inquisition because they don't like people like Ronald Reagan (I believe he was a Democrat at the time), Robert Taylor, Kazan and some of the others who informed on their fellow actors, directors, writers and producers to have to wear the stigma of being a squealer, but that is what they were. I hope before you close the book on this subject, you seek out and ask older Americans what they thought about those hearings and the accusations. .... Aloha 7/13/99 10:41:28 PM alanH dhill: the names of people incorrectly accused by McCarthy? Unfortunately we'll never know that, as McCarthy proved NOT A SINGLE ONE of the accusations he ever made. People were accused on very little basis and subsequently their careers were ruined (though McCarthy didn't do that directly). No doubt some of his names were Communists or sympathizers, no doubt some weren't. What made McCarthy such a slime is how he DIDN'T look carefully at what was what...he threw names out, he railed when he didn't have names...and all to his own career advancement. He had 57 names, then he had 200, and whatever the number was, he never proved his charges against a single person he named. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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