Authors, Publishers, and the McCarthy Era: A Hidden History

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We are just learning how many manuscripts were rejected for fear that they were too controversial and might provoke Congressional or FBI scrutiny.

Herblock's famous cartoon depicting Sen. Joseph McCarthy emerging from a Washington, D.C., sewer carrying a bucket of tar and a broad brush introduced a new term into America's political vocabulary - McCarthyism. Yet, the resulting focus on McCarthy has served to confine understanding of the repressive politics of the 1950s to the tactics and charges of the junior senator from Wisconsin. In point of fact, as recently released FBI files reveal, a more serious threat to political liberties - and to the freedom of authors to publish "dangerous" thoughts - stemmed from the often covert, behind-the-scenes efforts of conservative academics, members of Congress, and FBI and Justice Department officials.

This point is particularly highlighted by hearings, initiated in 1951-52 by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), on the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR). The IPR's - and, more notably, Johns Hopkins University professor Owen Lattimore's - "subversive" influence in shaping the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations' China policy, SISS concluded, had brought about the "loss" of China and the "betrayal" of the Chinese Nationalist government. As documentation of this subversive influence, SISS interrogated IPR officials and Lattimore (basing their questions on seized IPR documents and the FBI's covert assistance) and further invited the expert testimony of such self-styled patriotic academicians as Northwestern University's Kenneth Colegrove and William McGovern; Yale University's David Rowe; and Karl Wittfogel, George Taylor, and Nicholas Poppe of the University of Washington.

Admitting ignorance of whether Lattimore ever had been a member of the Communist Party, these conservative intellectuals nonetheless dissected his writings and IPR activities as procommunist, pro-Soviet, or Stalinist and testified to his "deceit" and subtlety as a conspirator. Lattimore's style, Wittfogel proclaimed, "proceed[ed] in a pro-communist way without |exposing [him]self'"; his writings, McGovern asserted, "always" followed the Stalinist line; and his influence in shaping U.S. policy …