We don't need another Rambo OINKTELOP

"The tutu won't be cast." -Chuck Williams, 715u272v1750



I cast the sheriff, but I did not cast the deputy.

J. Edgar Hoover-in-a-tutu, once head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

William Sullivan, one of Hoover’s agents, later admitted that: “We were the ones who made Senator Joseph McCarthy's hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all the material he was using.”





Public Opinion Quarterly — and perhaps other contemporary academic journals as well — exhibited at least three important characteristics that linked the publication with the U.S. government’s psychological warfare effort during the first decade after World War II. First, POQ became an important advocate for U.S. propaganda and psychological warfare projects of the period, frequently publishing case studies, research reports, and polemics in favor of expanded psychological operations. Second and more subtly, many POQ articles articulated U.S. propaganda themes on topics other than psychological warfare itself. Examples include the magazine’s editorial line on U.S.-Soviet relations and on the Italian election of 1948.

Finally, data suggest that some members of the journal’s editorial board and certain of the authors maintained an unusually close liaison with the clandestine propaganda and intelligence operations of the day. The traces of these relationships can be found in several articles mentioned in this chapter and in the composition of POQ’s editorial board, at least one member of which — POQ’s founder DeWitt Poole — was a full-time executive of a major propaganda project organized and financed by the CIA.

This influence over the editorial board and editorial content of the field’s most prestigious academic journal was only a symptom of a deeper and more organic bond that is discussed in the next chapter. Money became one of the most important links between the emerging field of mass communication studies and U.S. military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies. Precise economic figures cannot be determined because of the lack of consistent reporting from the government, the continued classification of some projects, and the loss of data over the years. Even so, the overall trend is clear.

“The primary nexus between government and social science is an economic one,” write Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford of the Bureau of Social Science Research. It is “so pervasive as to make any crisis of relations with the government a crisis for social science as a whole.”

Therefore, US social science identified its own goals with an ad hoc strawman, Communism, seemingly creating the absolute necessity of winning its war against American institutions and citizenry and its culture in order to prevent the strawman enemy from achieving the very same goals!

Very simply, US social science hierarchy posed a left-right dilemma which was a rephrasing of a monopoly by itself as hierarchy, the equivalent of a claim to divine ordination of kings, to exclusion of hearing any voice struggling to describe practical problems From Below--leaders and issues From Below were to be co-opted as if From Above, or else destroyed--this continues until today, long after the Cold War and after the term Communism has fallen from use. Only those leaders and issues developed From Below, from practical reality being experienced by the masses, which are then baptized as sweepstakes winners and re-routed by US government-funded social hierarchy, as From Above, escape the killing of the messenger by ad hominem or death squad and ignoring of message by know-nothings From Above.

Edward Hunter, American expert on Communist brainwashing, warned in a consultation with the staff of the Committee on Un-American Activities:

“I have been watching developments under communism in other parts of the world, and now I see exactly the same developments here in America.”

These developments, he continued, “include, first of all, the penetration of our leadership circles by a softening up and creating a defeatist state of mind. This includes penetration of our educational circles by a similar state of mind, in addition to one other thing—the long-range perspective of the professor who is above anything that is happening here and now, and considers himself as an objective spectator in a long, long vista of history."

“War has changed its form,” Mr. Hunter declared. “The Communists have discovered that a man killed by a bullet is useless. He can dig no coal. They have discovered that a demolished city is useless. Its mills produce no cloth. The objective of Communist warfare is to capture intact the minds of the people and their possessions, so they can be put to use. This is the modern conception of slavery that puts all the others in the kindergarten age.

“The United States is the main battlefield in this Red war. I mean specifically the people and the soil and the resources of the United States.

“It should be obvious to anyone who has observed the so-called cold war that the United States is its principal target."

On 9th February, 1950, Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, made a speech claiming to have a list of 57 people in the State Department known to be members of the American Communist Party. The list of names was not a secret and had been in fact published by the Secretary of State in 1946. These people had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000 federal employees. Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and sexual deviants. If screened, McCarthy’s own drink problems and sexual preferences would have resulted in him being put on the list.

McCarthy also began receiving information from his friend, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). William Sullivan, one of Hoover’s agents, later admitted that: “We were the ones who made the McCarthy hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all the material he was using.”

For the next two years McCarthy’s committee investigated various government departments and questioned a large number of people about their political past. Some lost their jobs after they admitted they had been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy made it clear to the witnesses that the only way of showing that they had abandoned their left-wing views was by naming other members of the party.

This witch-hunt and anti-communist hysteria became known as McCarthyism. Some left-wing artists and intellectuals were unwilling to live in this type of society and James Baldwin went to live and work in Europe.

At first Joseph McCarthy mainly targeted Democrats associated with the New Deal policies of the 1930s.

If people refused to name names when called up to appear before the HUAC, they were added to a blacklist that had been drawn up by the Hollywood film studios. Over 320 people were placed on this list that stopped them from working in the entertainment industry. This included Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Dashiell Hammett, Burl Ives, Arthur Miller, Pete Seeger, Orson Welles, and Paul Robeson.

In 1952 McCarthy appointed Roy Cohn as the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. Cohn had been recommended by J. Edgar Hoover, who had been impressed by his involvement in the prosecution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg. Soon after Cohn was appointed, he recruited his best friend, David Schine, to become his chief consultant.

For some time opponents of Joseph McCarthy had been accumulating evidence concerning his homosexual activities. Several members of his staff, including Roy Cohn and David Schine, were also suspected of having a sexual relationship. Although well-known by political journalists, the first article about it did not appear until Hank Greenspun published an article in the Las Vagas Sun in 25th October, 1952. Greenspun wrote that: “It is common talk among homosexuals in Milwaukee who rendezvous in the White Horse Inn that Senator Joe McCarthy has often engaged in homosexual activities.”

Joseph McCarthy considered a libel suit against Greenspun but decided against it when he was told by his lawyers that if the case went ahead he would have to take the witness stand and answer questions about his sexuality. In an attempt to stop the rumours circulating, McCarthy married his secretary, Jeannie Kerr. Later the couple adopted a five-week old girl from the New York Foundling Home.

McCarthy and Roy Cohn had abused congressional privilege by trying to prevent David Schine from being drafted. When that failed, it was claimed that Cohn tried to pressurize the Army to grant Schine special privileges. The well-known newspaper columnist, Drew Pearson, published the story on 15th December, 1953.

Edward Murrow, the experienced broadcaster, used his television programme, See It Now, on 9th March, 1954, to criticize McCarthy’s methods. Newspaper columnists such as Walter Lippmann and Jack Anderson also became more open in their attacks on McCarthy.

The senate investigations into the United States Army were televised and this helped to expose the tactics of Joseph McCarthy. One newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, reported that: “In this long, degrading travesty of the democratic process McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice.” Leading politicians in both parties, had been embarrassed by McCarthy’s performance and on 2nd December, 1954, a censure motion condemned his conduct by 67 votes to 22.

McCarthy lost the chairmanship of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. He was now without a power base and the media lost interest in his claims of a communist conspiracy. As one journalist, Willard Edwards, pointed out: “Most reporters just refused to file McCarthy stories. And most papers would not have printed them anyway.” Although some historians claim that this marked the end of McCarthyism, others argue that the anti-communist hysteria in the United States lasted until the end of the Cold War.