An article in Wall Street Journal by Ronald Kessler on April 22, 08 entitled, "The Real Joe McCarthy" is quite amazing in its total disregard for facts that are now fully documented about McCarthy. All the old liberal historian's and left wing politician's smears against McCarthy are recited by Kessler. It is embarrassingly obvious Kessler never read or even opened M. Stanton's 2007 Book , Blacklisted by History-the untold story of Sen. Joe McCarthy" let alone Arthur Herman's evenhanded "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's most Hated Senator" 2000 or Ann Coulter's very meticulous and footnoted chapters on McCarthy in her book, "Treason" of 2003. The first 100 pages of Coulter's book addresses the Cold War, McCarthy and the "red scare" Alger Hiss etc. Several books on the Venona Cables were written in the 90's as well as articles and books by former KGB officials that were running spies in this country during that time.
Though Kessler sites the Venona cables it is also obvious he didn't read the documentation that nailed many of the spies- including Hiss- that McCarthy was simply trying to get the State Department and the Army to investigate. Kessler mentions McCarthy's Executive sessions in which he gave people the oportunity to testify freely without their names being revealed. A huge number of people who testified in Exec session were never called into open session and never suffered damage to their reputations. Kessler missed that point also.
Even the Army McCarthy hearings were turned into an investigation of McCarthy while minimizing the solid evidence of the Army being heavy with spies. The Rosenbergs got much of their materials from the Army researchers after all.
Amazing that in this day with all of the new books and documentation through Venona, the writings, books and testimony of former KGB operatives of spies in the State Department, Treasury, and Army the many people will not accept any change in the McCarthy as a wrong headed bully- even if the facts supported his asking for investigations of obvious spies.
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