HOW CRIES OF 'MCCARTHYISM' AIDED PHILBY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220005-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2007
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: November 25, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

. Approved For Reknee 6WO-dQ907 : CIA-F4pf?a7r @Qs338R000300220005-6
0
Back in 1953 Rebecca West did a
pair of articles for the London Sunday
Times in which she sought to inform
the Bri Dish public that all the talk they
had been hearing of how the U.S.A.
was in the grip of hysteria in the course
of which "people of liberal opinions
are dragged before inquisitorial commit-
tees t_ be defamed and insulted on the
uns.dported evidence of informers of the
lowest character," was a lot of bilge.
In the course of her articlc?Miss West
reviewed the successes which the Com-
munists had had in penetrating the Amer-
ican "power structure," and then raised
the question: Why do people in America
and Britain denounce those who seek to
expose the Communists as "witch
hunters"
Miss West's answer was this: "The
immediate reason is the hypnotic power
of the word `McCarthyism': the belief
that the United States is at present
practically governed by a dictator named
Joe McCarthy, that he invented and
controls the investigations and uses them
as the instruments of his tyranny."
Miss West went on to demonstrate
the absurdity of this myth and added
that the myth has been of tremendous
use to the Communists, for one reason
because it caused a large section of the
public to "regard persons called before
the committees as delicate Davids brav-
ing a gross Goliath, and such of them
as were Communists would get the bene-
fit of the doubt."
Despite Miss West's thoughtful
analysis-to say nothing of what
those of us who "lived through Mc-'
Carthyism" could see with our own
eyes-the myth is still routine doe-
trine among liberals and is taken
seriously by too many others who
ought to know better.
It is no surprise to find Archibald
MacLcish blasting off with the plain
yfabrication that in the "McCarthy era"
?
British/Soviet double agent Harold
(Kim) Philby's disclosure , of his
espionage activities may help awaken
even doctrinaire liberals to the Com-
munist threat.
to dedicate a public library was "an
act of defiance and protest-defiance
not of a demagogue in Congress alone,
but of the whole miasma of suspicion
and censorship he had let loose on the
country." This is the kind of fiction
which liberals feed each other.
And _how! Now we have the Philby.
case, and with it the revelation that the
belief in "McCarthyism" is not just
something to argue about with liberals,
but, as Miss West predicted, a weapon
which the Communists have used most
effectively in their effort to paralyze' the
will of the anti-Communist West.
Who doesn't recall the obscene per-?
formances of liberal columnists doing
their best to be "persecuted" by Sen.
McCarthy in order to pose as heroic
fighters in the battle for free speech?
But how many of us then recognized
these exhibitionists as instruments, will-
ing or deluded, in the Communist plan
bl
to
unt public authority in its far from
determined effort to thwart- the con-
spiracy?
The extent of the damage caused and
the number of lives lost because of the
success of Soviet agent. Harold Philby
in worming his way to the top in British
Antclligence may never be fully known.
Through the virtually unimpeded oper-;
ations of Philby, George Blake and the
two dipsodiplomats Burgess and Mc-
Lean, the. Soviet apparatus doubtless ..~
possesses an impressive dossier on Wes`t-
ern an ti - R c d activity, supposedly
"secret" and otherwise.
We do not know, of course, how
many other Communist agents and
their local subordinates have man
aged to carry on without interfer-
ence because government official
More disturbing is to find a careful dom has been hesitant to act lest
historian like A. L. Rowse in The the cry of "McCarthyism!" be
Churchills comparing the anti-Papist hys- raised.
teria in 17th Century England to "that ? '
which the United States experienced In Great Britain, the former Tory
under McCarthy." However, in the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan used
American edition of the book the phrase McCarthyism . to explain the outcry
"under McCarthy" is changed to "a against Philby, after our own CIA had
short while ago," and Mr. (Rowse con-, tipped off the British on Philby's - ac-
cedes that "there was a certain amount tivities. This, was as earl
s 1955
y a
,
of justification for this fear." but Mr. Macmillan fatuously dismissed
 the matter with thcA D d ft r EI3&ease 2007/01/17: CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220005-6
was "no reason to conclude that Mr.
Philby had at any time betrayed the
interests of this country."
Old Boy network? Well, Philby and
Macmillan are both "public school"
Old Boys, but the more probable answer
is the same one that Mr. Macmillan
gave in another crisis over a suspected
spy (Vassall): fear of being sneered at
as a McCarthyite. As Peter Simple of.
the London Telegraph put it, "the word
McCarthyism [has] the paralyzing effect
of nerve gas."
It is indeed a shocking indictment of
liberalism that its major contribution to
"social advance" was to hand the Com-
munist conspirators a defensive weapon
probably more potent than the 5th
Amendment's provision against self-
The fiction of "McCarthyism,"
which deluded even some of Joe
McCarthy's colleagues in the Sen-
ate, has become a sort of Terror
operating against anybody in pub-
lic life, or in the press and educa-
tion system, who undertook to ex-
pose or frustrate the Communist
drive to take over the world.
It has been, as Miss West wrote
14 years ago, "much easier, much more
popular, much safer, to follow the
middle-class fashion of today and repeat
what may or may not be true, but is
certainly irrelevant: that we are all much
superior to Sen. McCarthy."
It's all pretty humiliating, but.Ameri-
cans have a distaste for being "had"
twice and we may be fortunate enough
to experience a New Wave of McCarthy-
ism. Should that happen, the Commu-
nists m.ght conceivably find their erst-
while liberal errand .boys really terrified,
this time terrified enough to refuse to
pull more Communist chestnuts out of
the fire: Or is , that just too naive?
NOV 2 5 '067