Before Joseph McCarthy, There Was Robert Stripling

We never won the Cold War as decisively as we should have.
-- blogger "Fjordman," posted at Gates of Vienna

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Before there was Joseph McCarthy there was Robert Stripling.

The chapter whose excerpts appear at the end of this post is found in Robert Stripling's The Red Plot Against America. The Red Plot was published in 1949, but has long been forgotten due to the liberal memory hole that dictates our popular recollections of that era. Having served ten years as Chief Investigator of the bipartisan House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Stripling provided a substantive primer on the precise nature of the Communist threat against the United States of America -- specifically, the threat from within the United States of America. The Red Plot narrates HUAC's meticulous work -- names and dates, details and wranglings  -- which had been underway since 1938 and in which Stripling had been a prime mover.

With America touched by the same totalitarian trends that had been blowing through Europe since the 1920s, HUAC was the premier governmental body to wage what I suggest we  regard as the "culture war" of what (perhaps too hastily) has since been lauded as "the Greatest Generation." More to the point, HUAC was the scene of that generation's most charged political theater. Congress had created the Committee in the 1930s to publicly gather information on, primarily, American Nazis, Klansmen, and other homegrown fascists. Only later, as Communism's wide scope and insidious nature became apparent, did HUAC set out to expose the vast leftwing conspiracy of its American operations, a conspiracy propagated by both card-carrying members and fellow-traveling sympathizers. (Above: Robert Stripling and HUAC member Richard Nixon examine subpoenaed documents)

Then -- as now -- moments of battlefield sacrifice and triumph could not, by themselves, efface grave civilizational uncertainties. On one hand, in 1946 Winston Churchill had delivered his Iron Curtain speech demarcating the line between the free and Communist worlds. Beginning in the summer of 1948 Whittaker Chambers had delivered ("more or less by chance," as Stripling relates) damning testimony about the Communist cell that had operated within successive Roosevelt Administrations and even in the newly-formed United Nations. On the other hand, that same fall breakaway Democrat Henry Wallace's presidential campaign with the "Progressive Party," which fronted for the American Communist Party, had received over 1.1 million votes (more than half, not surprisingly, coming from New York and California). Similar to today's neoconservative priorities -- of overhauling post-Cold War American attitudes to one-time geopolitical partners such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Palestinian Authority, and the Saudi royal family -- Stripling sensed, during his own era of unsettling realignments, a gap in our discourse vis-a-vis Communism. And he raced to fill it.

Note well that when The Red Plot was being written, the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, was still just a blip on the national radar. Goaded, perhaps, by the force of Stripling's argument -- which voiced frustration at the many obstacles placed in HUAC's way, including those from the Roosevelt White House -- McCarthy went on the offensive in the year following the book's publication, delivering his famous "Enemies Within" speech in February 1950.

Yet The Red Plot Against America contains nothing that is "McCarthyite" and everything that is "Striplingite." It is a substantive rendering in plain, everyday English of the hard, often thankless, often vilified investigation into the American social fabric when European civilization was collapsing for the second time in 30 years. This work was undertaken -- transparently and vigorously -- by a small group of freedom-loving Americans in Washington, DC in order to preserve the integrity, viability, and endurance of the land Lincoln described as "the last best hope of Earth."

Similarities to today's fight against Islamist infiltration and subversion of the West, a fight waged in large part on the Internet -- and just a portion of the Internet at that -- will, or should, be self-evident. (If not, then click through the links in the "Top Shelf Reads" category in the right column, including the brave, trail-blazing online work of Cinnamon Stillwell, Debbie Schlussel, Pamela Atlas and more.) A revival of HUAC in our time, in spirit and perhaps also in form, should be on the table. It's a matter of hard-nosed common sense and good governance. My principal concern, frankly, would be not for the mission of such a federal committee, but for the mettle of the members selected (or who would offer) to serve on it.

Lifetime conservatives (of which I'm not) typically trumpet America's Cold War victory against the Soviet Union, a victory won despite decades of liberal opposition. Such conservatives have bragging rights, I guess. Thus Ann Coulter can pose for a photo at Senator McCarthy's grave and suggest, as she did at CPAC 2007, that student Republicans form "Joe McCarthy clubs" on college campuses. But bragging rights bring with them even bigger responsibilities. During our post-Cold War era there are many parallels to be observed and lessons to be learned from the "culture war" that was underway before the Cold War had even begun.
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From "Conclusions," Chapter 13 of The Red Plot Against America
[emphases and links added to suggest comparisons with contemporary issues]:

In this concluding article of my series I'd like to get a few things off my chest, things I could not say while working for the House Un-American Activities Committee.

I don't regret any of the years I spent with the Committee, though the work was neither easy nor rewarding. It was work that somebody had to do, and from its seed has sprung two tremendous Government programs, the $17,000,000 [1949 dollars] inquiry into the loyalty of Government employees and, directly or indirectly, the multi-billion dollar Marshall Plan....

But the House Committee, pioneers and forerunners in this work, at a meager fraction of the cost of subsequent development, has never known a period when it was not under attack. Vilification from Communists is understandable, for the Committee wields a tremendous weapon against them: exposure. Criticism from honest liberals has hurt the Committee much more. I know the morale of my own staff reached an all-time low when, after we unearthed the "pumpkin papers" which conclusively corroborated the spy-ring testimony of Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, President Truman repeated his charge that it was all a red herring.

Yet Mr. Truman emphasized in his vigorous Inaugural Address the very differences between Communism and Democracy which the Committee had been revealing -- through the lips of willing or reluctant witnesses -- for more than ten years. Labor leaders who condemned us a decade ago for suggesting that their unions were being contaminated by Communism have since reluctantly conceded that we were correct.

President Roosevelt made at least two determined efforts to wipe out the Committee. Failing, for the simple reason the people want the Committee, he demanded of Martin Dies that the Committee thereafter confine its inquiries to Fascist activities. Committee members who tended to regard Communism with the same cold eye as they regarded Nazism were signaled out for especial scorn by pet columnists and commentators. The Committee was forbidden to reveal, six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the scope of Japanese subversion in Hawaii and on the Pacific Coast. It is unimportant but relevant that I, after being instrumental in exposing the fact that Joe Lash and other pro-Communist youth leaders were enjoying White House hospitality, was "railroaded" into the Army. I quote the word "railroaded" because it is not mine. It was said by two Army colonels in discussing with me the curious phases of my induction.

The legend has grown and has been carefully nurtured by clandestine and well-meaning interests, that the Committee has ignored Fascism to concentrate on Communism. That is a lie, as our records will prove. As the one more familiar with those records than anyone else, I know there are still many Fascists and fellow scum in the country, ready to pollute the American bloodstream. All they lack is a Fuehrer. Martin Dies fought the Ku Klux Klan in the face of six-shooters. My father campaigned against the Klan when it meant that he must face political ruin in his district and danger to himself and his family.

The Nazis lack a Fuehrer and a purpose. The Communists have both, and combine the fanaticism of Hitler's followers with remarkable guile. They are irrevocably charged with fighting almost every ideal which made this country great. In event of a war with Russia they will be infinitely more destructive saboteurs than were the comparatively clumsy Nazi subersives.

It is not easy to fight Communism. Communism, contrary to a popular phrase, IS something new under the sun. Its members and champions, many of them misguided liberals, can infiltrate, contaminate and dominate almost any field -- including the pulpit, though Communism is by rule a Godless calling. Graduates of Russian training schools are the world's leading authorities in the practices of disorder. It is incontrovertible that every key point, strategically, in the United States has been studied faithfully against the day when peaceful-looking American Reds will be called upon to come into the open and fight for Mother Russia. We have shown through testimony that they are past masters at working within the warp and woof of the United States Constitution. We have seen Henry Wallace, their befuddled sympathizer, come within a heartbeat of the Presidency [the Soviet dupe and "spiritual window-shopper" had served as vice president up until three months before FDR's death]. We know from the testimony of ex-Communists Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley that many Communists and distinguished followers have risen high in Government circles.

We further know that between January 1, 1947 and December 16, 1948, 151 State Department people were removed from the Federal payroll, 91 of whose cases were classified as "of acute significance." And that is only one department. Coincidentally or not, it was State Department policy which abandoned China's 400,000,000 humans to the advances of Russian-controlled Chinese Red armies, and it is the considered opinion of men like Gens. Claire Lee Chennault [commander of the Flying Tigers, which included the author of God Is My Co-Pilot] and Patrick J. Hurley that we may one day be confronted by many of these millions, armed and thoroughly indoctrinated [one word: Korea]. Coincidentally or not, it was the State Department -- admittedly contaminated at that time -- which sold Poland, another ally, down the river.

One of the chief criticisms directed at the House Committee is that we have smeared the reputations of good citizens. As I said earlier, I am not the official apologist of the Committee. It has made its mistakes. But whenever I hear anyone use the word "smear" in connection with the Committee's efforts I must ask him to name those persons we have smeared (of the hundreds of witnesses we have heard and the thousands of names introduced).

The name of Dr. Edward U. Condon, director of the National Bureau of Standards, usually is brought up. Beyond his name there is usually silence. As I have pointed out, I made an effort to have Condon called as a witness in answer to his request. That he wasn't called, however, is comprehensible. This friend of many pro-Communists, who was not cleared by the Atomic Energy Commission to share A-bomb secrets at the time he was in charge of the Bureau's atomic scientists, was not heard because the Committee could not obtain from the White House the letter which J. Edgar Hoover had written suggesting that Condon was a poor security risk. I hope the Committee eventually gets that letter. I hope it hears Condon.

If Americans believed all they have read in anti-Committee papers they must believe we used rubber hoses to extract testimony. The Committee is not a judicial body and never will be by law. It cannot operate under the rules of evidence, cannot issue indictments, cannot hand down verdicts. It was established solely to hear witnesses and, from their testimony, to recommend legislation.

The Committee absorbed considerable punishment during its investigation of Communism in Hollywood, where the ideology has taken such a foothold that there are figures to prove that Party collections from members and their followers amount to $32,000 a week [1949 dollars]. It was held in many quarters that we had no right to ask witnesses whether they were Communists. It was said that a man's politics are his own business, as indeed they are.

But we were not asking for information on a political affiliation. We simply asked these people, by asking them if they were Communists, whether they were members of a conspiracy determined to overthrow this form of Government. The fact that ten of them refused to answer on constitutional grounds, knowing, perhaps, that the Committee was in possession of 33 Communist Party cards of Hollywood celebrities, is, I will continue to believe, most significant.

It is equally significant that ten of the 40-odd witnesses we questioned in the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers case stood on their constitutional tights, and that in his own testimony Hiss made 198 uses of the phrase "to the best of my recollection" or its qualifying counterparts.

The Committee hears, by and large, a type of witness completely foreign to other Congressional committees in search of information. More often than not it is faced with subversives and fellow travelers who are superbly well trained and well advised in the incitement of public sentiment. The reactions of some members to their type of testimony have been provoked very artfully.

What the Committee has revealed over the last ten years is hard for many Americans to believe. The average citizen cannot comprehend that one of the top officials of the super-important Board of Economic Warfare was a gamboling nudist whose literary output had to be confined to the pornographic division of the Library of Congress; that his successor was a kind of male strip-teaser dancer; that pressure enough was put on respectable authorities to cause the shipment out of this country of more than 1,300 pounds of uranium products at the time we were attempting to develop the A-bomb; that the chief Russian spy in the A-bomb espionage ring was impervious to arrest....

Ten years ago Joe Curran, of the Maritime Union, denounced the Committee vitriolically when we tried to bring out that his union was saturated by Communism. In 1946 he had to fight for his life against he Communists he had nurtured. We have seen the same things happen in many unions. But when one of our first witnesses warned against that peril, [HUAC member Martin] Dies was called to the White House and castigated by President Roosevelt for picking on the CIO on the eve of an election.

Leon Josephson, one of the few witnesses we've had who was prosecuted by the Justice Department and imprisoned for the contempt he displayed for Congress, once said to an American consular officer, "I consider the orders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party above the laws of the United States, and I would do anything short of murder to carry them out." Many others the Committee has heard might have been as frank.

The Committee, as constituted, is not equipped to deal with Communism. Communism has brought into being new techniques and tactics never envisioned by the founders of our Government. It may well be necessary to streamline even our judicial processes if we are going to cope with the menace. Gerhart Eisler's case is pertinent. He functioned for 20 years in this country, carrying out some of the most treasonable acts imaginable. The most closely organized group ever to appear on the American scene was at his command. He traveled back and forth to the U.S.S.R. on false passports; defied Congress. Yet he is still out of jail, and travels extensively over this country making speeches under the auspices of various front organizations whose leaders are dedicated to the destruction of this Government. [He would flee the U.S. clandestinely in 1950.]

Committee investigators were long encouraged by the White House to exterminate Nazis by exposing them, which we did to a great extent. But when two of our men raided Communist headquarters in Philadelphia and seized records of great concern to the interests of the people, they were arrested on the orders of a Federal judge and the Committee was ordered to return the files.

The F.B.I., if left alone, could clear up Communism in this country. I'd trust my life and the lives of my family in the hands of the F.B.I., if no political considerations were involved. It should be an independent bureau. Instead, it is hitched to the Department of Justice whose top men, politically appointed, are sometimes guided by political considerations. As extensive as are the files of the House Committee (files consulted by 20,000 accredited Government agents in the last decade) the F.B.I. files are of much greater magnitude. J. Edgar Hoover's men could round up at least 25,000 potential Communist saboteurs in short order, if war broke out with Russia. Some F.B.I. men, however, have discovered that their most comprehensive investigations of Communist subversives have been ignored when recommendations were urged for their prosecution. We know, for these men have come to us for support, and so have Civil Service Commission investigators, State Department men and others -- their morales cracked by frustration....

Personally, I seem to have committed the crime of attempting to expose people who seek to destroy our way of life. It is a job for which I was hired by chosen representatives of the people of the United States; a job to which I attended to the best of my ability. It is not a very good job, really, for the simple reason that it is now unfashionable, if that is the word, to be primarily interested in America and the preservation of its liberties. Apparently it is bad taste to expose the fact that Government documents of great importance are being stolen; that a President demanded the admission to this country of Mrs. Earl Browder [Earl Browder: socialist anti-draft agitator during World War I; Communist Party candidate for president of the United States, 1936 and 1940; imprisoned for passport violations, 1939; sentence commuted by FDR, 1942; died, 1973], over the protests of the State Department, because he did not want to be embarrassed by Joe Stalin's questions; that a number of Government officials, by their admission or refusal to answer, have been mixed up with a gang of cold-blooded subversives; that choice military secrets, including A-bomb data, have been passed on to the leaders of a country which since V-E day has overrun Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Albania and most of China.

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FTR, like almost every single book that has been decisive in my political maturation, no one and nothing in our contemporary American experience pointed me to The Red Plot Against America -- not one friend (many of whom are former friends), not one relative, not one teacher or college professor, nothing in popular or intellectual culture nor in the MSM -- nothing except my own disillusionment with leftwing politics, and my consequential efforts to come to terms with their legacy.

Comments

[x_dhimmi]

I had not heard of the book until you brought it to my attention. Thank you. It will soon be an addition to my library.

[JMK]

He's unsung no more.

[Mick]

Thanks for this post. I learn something new about this neglected and misunderstood side of our history every time I drop by. Keep spreadin' the news. Can't seem to get enough of it.

[JMK]

Thanks, Mick. It's a great topic, which certain historians have pursued in recent years. See Encounter Books and the footnotes to Coulter's Treason.

[Cinnamon]

Great post, my friend! And thank you for the kind mention. We remain comrades (so to speak) in arms...

[JMK]

Thanks. Well said, Cinn.

[anonymous]

I really dont understand why you think a public congressional hearing is a better way to catch criminals than, say, the police, the FBI, and the court system. Robert Hansen didn't get caught by politicians in congress, he got caught by professionals in the CIA.

I dont understand why you think its a good thing.. if there were a HUAC right now, Nancy Pelosi would have control over it. I mean, is that what you want? Politicians investigating crimes, instead of the intelligence community and police and the courts? I dont understand it.