McCarthyism: Gatekeeping the narrative (2)

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., unlike these other reviewers, was never part of the Marxist or Stalinist left. He was a liberal -- a Democrat in the vein of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. He was an anti-communist: he helped found Americans for Democratic Action to oppose the fellow-traveling progressives who were effectively pro-Stalin. In 1948 he worked tirelessly for Harry S. Truman and against Henry Wallace and his Progressive party.

And yet he described McCarthy and His Enemies as a "sick book".

Schlesinger, like his ADL colleagues, was naïve about the extent of Soviet penetration of the New Deal. They were solicitous of those accused by Bentley and Chambers. In 1948 the ADL called for the abolition of HUAC just as that committee was unmasking Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White.

At the end of his life Schlesinger was still defending Laurence Duggan despite new evidence that he was part of the Soviet network in DC. He still described Duggan as "a man whom many knew as an able public servant.”

Schlesinger served as a court historian for FDR and JFK. His loyalty to the Democratic party was deep. His anti-communism became muted and "nuanced" when investigations threated to embarrass the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Truman and his Attorney General had vouched for Duggan. The AG even declared he was "a loyal employee of the United States Government".

If Schlesinger had admitted that Duggan was part of a spy ring, then he would have had to admit the truth to McCarthy's charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were lax on security issues.

That was a bridge too far for the Democrats' favorite historian.

Schlesinger also had personal reasons to oppose a thorough search for Stalin's agents. During WWII he worked for the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Both organizations were deeply penetrated by Soviet spies .

In 1949, Arthur Schlesinger confidently announced that “we are changing from a market society to an administrative society.” For twenty years urban progressivism was in the driver's seat. FDR had won four elections while he expanded the federal government and staffed his alphabet agencies with intellectuals and the graduates of the best universities. Then unsuitable men like McCarthy and Nixon had garnered public support by attacking the competence, honesty, and loyalty of these same progressive avatars. (Here)

He clearly saw himself as a natural leader in that administrative class. The spy scandals threatened to call into question both the legitimacy of that regime and Schlesinger's own powers of perception.

The rise of Joe McCarthy was propelled, in large part, by the refusal of progressives and New Dealers to admit to any mistakes. Having claimed that social scientists and academic experts were better guides than the Founding Fathers, they were now revealed to be inept at the most important obligations of government. (here)

Hugh Trevor-Roper announced that he had been "convulsed with mirth" at the buffoonish investigation of the Voice of America by Roy Cohn in Europe in 1953. Recalling that episode he had no interest in looking at the evidence laid out by Buckley and Bozell. As Trevor-Roper was a historian, this refusal to take a look at the evidence is puzzling.

Trevor-Roper was a historian but he was also a former intelligence officer who served alongside Kim Philby in MI6. His most famous book, The Last Days of Hitler, was the result of research undertaken at the behest of British intelligence. He enjoyed a close and cordial relationship with those intelligence agencies.

Like his former colleagues in MI6, he was more worried that a former communist might be unfairly accused of disloyalty than that a spy would betray his nation's vital secrets.

My own view, like that of most of my contemporaries, was that our superiors were lunatic in their anti-communism. Many of our friends had been, or had thought themselves, communists in the 1930s; and we were shocked that such persons should be debarred from public service on account of mere juvenile illusions which anyway they had now shed: for such illusions could not survive the shattering impact of Stalin’s Pact with Hitler in 1939. We were therefore pleased that at least one ex-communist should have broken through the net and that the social prejudices of our superiors had, on this one occasion, triumphed over their political prejudices. (Here)

British intelligence had good reason to fear and disparage McCarthy and other investigators. Not only had they placed spies in sensitive positions in Washington, they lied to their allies about their investigations. A thorough inquiry had the potential to destroy the "special relationship" ("special" to the US; absolutely vital to the UK if it wanted to remain a Great Power).

Dick White, now Chief of SIS, suggested that Trevor-Roper should write about the notorious spy himself. Once again it was White, the moving force behind The Last Days of Hitler, who appreciated that Trevor-Roper possessed both special insight into a topical problem and the literary skill to do it justice. Trevor-Roper’s The Philby Affair first appeared in a cultural magazine and then as an independent book. Like The Last Days of Hitler, The Philby Affair would never have been written without White’s prompting. His suggestion was part of a wider effort by British intelligence to deploy historians to offset the damage caused to the intelligence services by the media spotlight on security failures. (Here)

Even as Trevor Roper was downplaying the importance of the Cambridge spies and railing against unsophisticated American and their "malevolent" politicians, he was falling prey to Soviet disinformation. He was one of the first serious scholars to fall for the conspiracy theories swirling around the JFK assassination. His long exposure to the world of intelligence and traitors left him as naive as he was when he was a young don under the spell of Kim Philby.

Clio's final revenge was stunning. The man who first came to public attention for a book on Hitler, became a joke when he was conned into "authenticating" the forged Hitler Diaries in 1983.