aevans176,

Not to worry. Anybody known to have associated with Al Qaeda and within reach is now behind bars. Might I add without due process as well and probably with torture as an info-gathering technique.

Let's see, Al Qaeda is not a political philosophy. It has no legal presence anywhere. There is no Al Qaeda manifesto. There is no country with a government based on Al Qaeda ideals. The organization exists only to destroy the US and anything like the US. So might we call Al Qaeda an apple and communism an orange?

After all, China and Vietnam are trading partners with the US, and their governments are based on communism. It is impossilbe that Al Qaeda will ever become a trading partner because there isn't anything to trade.

You mention Libertarians as not being a threat to our government. Oh, but Libs are! Just read Browne's book on the matter (I have). They are as much a threat as communists. Imagine, shrinking the defense down to only what we need for actual defense. That's subversive! Selling off government property to pay off the debt. Crazy! Eliminating corporate welfare along with public, it's almost like the withering away of the state, isn't it? Oh, and legalizing drugs, my word.

So let's compare oranges to oranges. What if John Sununu decided to go after Libertarians? I'd be targeted, having been a member some years ago, and I still get their money-begging mass mailings. A good number of people who participate on this board would be targets. Would it matter if any real threat existed? Who cares once the witch-hunt mentality takes over. Nothing has to make logical sense.

That isn't an equivalent example. An equivalent example would be going on a witch hunt for muslims in our government because they might be sympathizers with Al Qaeda. Or perhaps making it more specific such as going on a hunt for wahabists.

If there was someone working for Al Qaeda in our government then they would legitimately be a spy and should be dealt with appropriately.

In McCarthy's day they used the fact that our enemies of the day happened to call themselves "communists" when in truth they didn't believe in one single principle that the real communist party stood for.

And I'll state again that you must have completely missed the purpose of the movie because it wasn't meant to decide whether what McCarthy did was right or wrong - they don't even really comment on that. All they did was present the accepted history of that period and they sexed up Murrow's character a bit to make their point which I explained in detail in my previous post.

Congress could try and "investigate" the fact that there are libertarians in government, but I don't think the public would go for it. Remember that Congress has no power to force anyone out of a job. All they can do is expose the problem, and thereby put public pressure on the executive branch to take action. If the public isn't going to be alarmed at the fact that there are libertarians or greens or whatever in government, then such efforts will be fruitless. But it's entirely to be expected that they would be alarmed at the presence of Communists in government, just as they would have been justifiably alarmed at the presence of Nazis and Fascists in our government during WWII, if such had been the case. Or would you have said that they too should have been left in their government positions unless they could be proven to have committed a crime?


So we have one leftist, who may have been disguntled with the Comintern for any number of reasons, and Chomsky (who's far from a disinterested observer in all this) cites his opinion as historical authority, and gives no further supporting evidence in support of the notion that the Comintern abandoned the goal of world Communist revolution.

Tell me, when the Comintern was infiltrating organized labor in the U.S., was it doing it "to preserve the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Republic"? Keep in mind, that the United States of the 1930s was a country that presented no threat to anyone. Aside from a small degree of competition with Japan over influence in the Pacific, we were a country that wanted to be left alone and was willing to leave everyone else alone. Two years before the State Department issued a formal protest to the U.S.S.R. for its interference in our internal affairs, we had opened diplmotic relations with them, and were showing a willingness to have friendly relations. FDR's administration was hardly what you'd call rabidly anti-Communist. And the American people had had their fill of foreign military adventurism following our experiences in WWI. We betrayed no intention of making trouble for the Soviet Union, yet they insisted on pushing our buttons. Why?


How about Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty? The author of this piece is reporting on documents unearthed from Soviet archives, and notes:

"The newly published documents will make such assertions impossible for all but the most ideologically driven. They show, in the words of Soviet operatives themselves, that Moscow viewed its support for the anti-Franco forces not as support for democracy but rather as a means to establishing a communist dictatorship.

One early document in the collection demonstrates this. Saying it would be 'a fatal mistake' to 'try to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat' immediately, the directive nonetheless says that 'when our positions have been strengthened, then we can go further.'"


Nope, because I didn't make any assertions about McCarthy. No point in backing up an assertion I never made. My point still stands, however, that asking someone with a government position if he'd ever been a member of the Communist Party was not an inappropriate question to ask.


You'd think that the "real" Communist Party would have been out in the streets denouncing as fervently as anyone the hijacking of Communism's good name by the "fake" Communists running the U.S.S.R. You'd think they would have been the most anti-Soviet of all Americans back then. For some reason, it didn't quite work out that way, to put it mildly.

Nobody but nobody documents his work more than Chomsky does. Outside of this country he is probably known as the preeminent political intellectual in the world. Beyond that he is simply giving focus to what was already well known, that the international revolutionaries led by Trotsky were left out in the cold by the Stalinist nationalist wing of communism.


Your assertions are so general and unspecific I don't know where to start. There were communist groups in this country that felt a strong affinity to the Soviet Union and the Comintern. These were mainly union based. The Communists for instance were a major player in the formation of the CIO. The IWW and the West Coast Longshoreman were heavily proCommunist in orientation. How does that translate into the Soviets "pushing our buttons" whatever that means? As long as laws weren't broken the Soviets were free to use sympathetic groups to develop political influence here just as we did in other countries.

The idea that we were just minding our own business in the 30s can only be argued in terms of degree of interference with other countries. After all we were in a depression and so the general ruthless acquisition of the resources of smaller 3rd world countries was in lower gear.

By the way you do know that we participated in an invasion of the Soviet Union shortly after their 1917 revolution to defeat the Bolsheviks. I think the Russians lost about 4 million people in that conflict and they didn't forget. Maybe in addition to wanting a lot of friendly unions in this country they wanted a few intelligence folks around to make sure we didn't pull that invasion stunt again.




I wouldn't call these folks serious historians. They seem like extreme rightwingers with a bone to pick. The legitimate parts don't say anything new. The Soviets wanted to Sovietize the Spanish resistance and they joined with their Spanish allies in eliminating the opposition. Who could ever imagine a Stalinist government as being friendly to democracy? This has nothing to do with their having post war control of Spain. Just from a pragmatic standpoint this would have been an impossibility, but certainly they would have liked to leave a sympathetic government in place. Who wouldn't? My earlier points stand.

The article also makes reference to George Orwell and his book 'Homage to Catalonia.' If you have read the book you will recall one of his biggest ideological criticisms of the Soviets was their "Popular Front" stance with the allies. The Soviets were continually eliminating the "Internationalists" because, among other reasons, they didn't want to upset their capitalist potential allies who they knew they needed to take on the Axis.

Infiltrating unions seems like an awfully inefficient way to influence our foreign policy. On the other hand, it seems like a far more effective way of exploiting worker discontent to organize a mass revolt to topple our system of government and society. I don't think anyone could honestly have any trouble figuring out what they were trying to do here.

And yes, I'm aware of our intervention in the Bolshevik Revolution. We were at war and we didn't want Russia to pull out becuase of an internal revolt. Given the circumstances of the time, the revolutionaries were the enemy of our ally, so they became our enemy for the purposes of the war. It's easy to look back on it now and say that we were fighting against "the U.S.S.R" (even though it hadn't been formally organized as such until after the Allies departed), but at the time, most people would have understood it as helping an ally stay afloat, especially if, as it appeared to be the case, Germany had been helping the Bolsheviks. It's essentially no different from when Finland became our enemy in WWII for having the misfortune to have been invaded by our Soviet allies.

Once that intervention was over, and it was clear that the U.S.S.R. had come into being in its own right, we lost all interest in trying to topple it, and in 1933, had opened diplomatic relations with it and we had a government that showed no hostility to it at all. What I'm seeing from you here is something of a double standard. You point to the fact that we intervened in the Bolshevik Revolution in a moment of crisis for us, and conclude that it marks us for all time as being irrepressibly anti-Soviet. And yet at the same time, you dismiss the fact that when the U.S.S.R. formed, it made no secret of its intention to forcibly establish its system of government over the entire world, simply because Stalin said that that was no longer his goal. Never mind the fact that his actions told a very different story.


LOL! I can pretty much guarantee that they're considerably less right-wing than Noam Chomsky is left-wing. And regardless of whatever reputation he has as a scholar in Western Europe, he utterly failed to back up his conclusion about Comintern. But RFE backed up what it had to say about Soviet involvement in Spain, unless you're going to accuse them of making up facts out of thin air. The fact is, these quotes go completely against your assertion that they wanted to maintain foreign capitalist interests in Spain, except on a very temporary basis in order to fool the West long enough to get critical support. In both cases (Spain and America), they were relying on a "kinder, gentler" image to provide cover to continue doing what they had always been doing.

Believe it or not there were folks in this country who believed in some version of the Communist ideal. They didn't need a bunch of infiltraters to manipulate them. The CPUSA was out front proSoviet. Secret conspiratorial infiltration paranoia is not necessary to describe the fact that there were some who thought the Soviet Union was the vanguard force for a better world and had friendly contacts with Soviet party folks. I'll also go back to a previous point. Know any democracies that were infiltrated and overthrown by communist groups? Sounds like you are in full McCarthyite mode. Lots of sinister overthrow talk without any specifics to back it up.


Newsflash, the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. Like it or not they were the government, albeit not a fully consolidated one. Before the revolution the head of state was Czar Nicholas. After the revolution the head of state was Lenin (Well there was a brief interum leader named Kerensky). I thought most interested folks knew that. As for us fighting the "Reds" and supporting the "Whites" my understanding is we simply did not like Communists getting a foothold in government. Sending an expenditionary force off to Russia to restore the Czarists so they would go back to fighting the Germans is one I hadn't heard before. It sounds like your off the wall Spanish satellite theory. But if you have further information on that angle I'm certainly willing to take a look. Oh and you overlooked the bit about Finland playing footsie with the Nazis.


There was no moment of crisis. We simply intervened to protect our capitalist interests against a power we perceived as politically anti-capitalist. As far as our not persisting in invading the Soviet Union that is somehow suppose to make us kindly pacifists? They didn't try to invade us either so why not give them a pat on the back. In any case Stalin had made it clear, your comments to the contrary, he was turning inward and mainly courting support from the outside for the purpose of building up the Soviet Union. From a cost benefit standpoint why keep invading? Oh yes, and what actions showed that Stalin was trying to impose his system all over the world?




LOL, you are clearly out to lunch. You supplied a professional anti-Communist radio propagandist. Chomsky, a very independent highly respected political analyst who is very meticulous in his sourcing(Sorry his article didn't come with footnotes), devoted a good portion of that article to attacking the Soviet Union and classical Communism generally. Some extreme leftist!


I noticed you did a nice piroet around my following comments having to do with the Trotskyite split with the Stalinists, something well known by historians, and which completely backs up Chomsky. Your Mr. Goble simply claimed sources and provided nothing specific. A commonsense understanding of the crisis the Soviet Union faced would make it clear they were in no position to impose satellite status on Spain. They were trying to defeat the fascists in Spain rather than have to do it on their own soil and of course supported whatever Spanish forces served that purpose as they saw it. And once again they were trying desperately to encourage a "Popular Front" involvement in the war with anybody who would take on the fascists. I notice you end with a nice irrelevant diversion about the Soviets selling themselves as being nicer folks than they were. That's what all countries do. Perhaps you hadn't noticed. As to "what they had always been doing" referring to some nebulous something or other, I guess that is suppose to make some concluding point - whatever.

And yet they got it anyway. This wasn't just a matter of having "contacts" with people in the Soviet Union. This was a deliberate attempt by the Comintern to subvert our whole economic and political system. Check out this Time magazine article from 1935. If someone as pro-Soviet as Ambassador Bullitt obviously was could see the undeniable nature of Soviet infiltration of labor unions, how is it that you can't?


Well, there was Russia itself. As you mentioned in your post, there was an interlude between the abdication of the Romanovs and the rise of the Communists to power, and that was the period of the provisional government headed by Kerensky, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which among other things favored the confiscation of all land and distributing it to the peasants according to need (in other words, he was hardly a reactionary yahoo). And the government was scheduled to have elections. Communist parties were tolerated, except when the Bolsheviks began calling for the overthrow of the government.

Then there was the German state of Bavaria, which was taken over and declared an independent country (briefly, until the central government reestablished authority) by Communists following World War I, during the period of the Weimar republic. And it wasn't taken over by electoral means, despite the fact that the Weimar republic had a reasonably democratic constitution.


...albeit not a fully consolidated one, indeed. Like I said, hindsight is 20/20, and it's easy to look back now, after seven decades of Soviet history, and say that that was the beginning of the U.S.S.R. and that everyone should have known at the time that the government had changed. But when you're looking at events at the time they happen, without the benefit of foreknowledge, it's easy to think that this was a temporary usurpation of power by a bunch of violent upstarts acting in the service of Germany.


Here you go, from Regiments.com. As they summarize, there were four objectives that the Western Allies had:

(1) prevent Japan from creating an empire in the East
(2) prevent massive Allied stores originally sent to the tsarist armies from falling into German and subsequently Bolshevik hands
(3) assist the White Armies in overthrowing the Bolshevik regime and bring Russia back into the war against Germany
(4) rescue the Czechoslovak Legion trapped in central Asia so that they could rejoin the war against Germany.

So now it's your turn. Provide some sources to say that the overriding (or even secondary) goal of the Western governments was to protect their "capitalist interests" or whatever. Earlier in your post you were castigating me for allegedly indulging in vague sinister talk about communism without supporting facts. Well, I accuse you of doing the same in regard to capitalism, assuming that if we intervened in Russia it must have been in pursuance some evil capitalist plot to keep the downtrodden downtrodden. You can exculpate yourself of that by posting some facts to back up your prejudice.


Just like the bit about the Bolsheviks playing footsie with the kaiserist Germans.


They were largely incapable of invading us, but that apparently didn't stop them from trying to put themselves in a position to. The Soviet-Polish war following WWI was an attempt by the Soviets to cross through Poland and link up with Communist revolutionaries in Germany to take advantage of the dire economic situation there and estabish there a Soviet government. From there, it would have been on to France, Britain, and beyond. Fortunately, Polish General Pilsudski hadn't figured into the Bolsheviks' plans.


And of course, you believed him. That's your prerogative, but I wouldn't expect such credulity to resonate among too many Americans, either liberal or conservative.


First of all, you've provided no evidence that this person is a "propagandist" for any particular ideology, aside from the fact that you don't like what he has to say. Secondly, are you saying that his quotes are bogus? If not, then it doesn't matter what he is.


Yes, I looked over his piece. He attacked the Soviet Union for not being revolutionary enough for his tastes. That's why, as a political analyst (as opposed to a linguist), he's "highly respected" pretty much only among leftists.

So yes, I'm fully aware that it's part of the mythology of the radical Left that Stalin abandoned the goal of World Revolution and left all of his willing footsoldiers out in the cold (Howard Zinn even went so far as to call Stalinism a form of capitalism, which gave me a bit of a chuckle). But as the article I linked to at the top of the post indicated, his actions told a different story. You may not be willing to accept this, but I'm pretty sure most Americans would have no trouble at all grasping how he could say one thing in order to keep the West pacified, and do something completely different.

I will acknowledge that in this one area I had not really studied the rationale for the invasion but my point still has some merit. Here is a further reading of your linked historical analysis.

This not only adds my point into the equation but suggests the Allied intervention may have been the foundation of the Cold War and may help explain why the Soviets felt the need for defensive alliances with parties in other countries.

As for the rest, substantively I feel my points stand. Yes I knew that the Kerensky to Lenin transition would possibly be offered as an exception, but I was assuming a post World War ll world where the US by contrast has been behind the overthrow of quite a number of popular or democratic governments; try Iran, Guatemala and Chile for starters. It's late. I'll try to get back to the other stuff later but you post something because I am not allowed to post back to back posts on AD I understand.

That's a fair point, but the "in part" was definitely only on the part of lesser players within Western governments, not the main players. As Britain's National Archives website explains:


And by the mid-1930s, I think it was clear to any serious observer that we no longer had any wish to make trouble for the Soviet Union, provided it didn't wish to make trouble for us. By having the Comintern infiltrate organized labor, it was increasing, not decreasing, the likelihood that we might change our minds on that.

And furthermore, I'd still say that getting involved in organized labor is not an efficient way of influencing foreign policy. The far more logical explanation is that they were doing it in order to alter our internal policy to something more to their tastes; that is, to impose a Soviet-style sytsem on America.


I don't know what you're referring to with regard to Iran, because the only post-WWII overthrow that country experienced (that I'm aware of) was in 1979, when the pro-U.S. government was overthrown by a bunch of people who despise us. As for the other two, the coups you mention happened after the main period of McCarthy's investigations. And in any event, whatever transgressions we've committed internationally do not alter the facts of what the Soviets had been trying to do.

As for post-WWII examples of them extinguishing self-government, there's all of Eastern Europe to consider. They made a show of having elections in most of those countries, but then they rigged them so that only Communists would win. You could say, as they did from time to time, that it was "necessary" for them to have like-minded governments on their frontier, but then where does this logic end? I'm sure they'd have considered it mighty convenient to have a like-minded government here in the U.S. as well. Remember that our very existence as a free society was a standing rebuke to their ideology.

3. Considering the idea that many disagree with Clooney's stance, will this film spawn other historical movies related to the McCarthy era?

I have a question. What do you mean by many? Do you mean a majority, a sizeable minority or a small vocal minority?

I did not want to comment on this thread until I actually saw the movie. Seeing it was hampered because it opened in Dallas/Plano, then moved West to Grapevine, then further West to Arlington and finally Fort Worth.

I finally got to see it last night.

If I had relied on a critic from the local paper, I probably wouldn’t have seen it at all. Christopher Kelly of the Fort Worth Star Telegram seems to reflect the “many” you mention.



http://ae.dfw.com/entertainment/ui/dfw/mov...=12%2F23%2F2005

If Kelly finds middle-age liberals so boring, then perhaps he should stick to reviewing movies about pink flying elephants with green wings.

I wrote a paper in the mid 60s about the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation into the Hollywood movie industry. I have never thought much of “commie hunting” be it the HUAC, Joseph McCarthy or Richard Nixon. I think Murrow crew more or less defanged a monster.

For those of you interested in another source, I would suggest Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Although written against the backdrop of the Salem witch trials, it was aimed at the witch hunting of McCarthy and others.

To answer your question. If movies like Good Night, and Good Luck are good draws at the box office, then more like them will be made. If not, then no. Money, not political opposition, is the key.

As far as the Soviet Union your assurance that we had no wish to make trouble for them is simply wrong. Our opposition to any communist state, particularly the Soviet Union, was quite consistent to the point of hoping we could channel the energy of fascist Germany against them. In fact the willingness to accept the buildup of the axis had a lot to do with their anti-communist orientation. Our refusal to help republican Spain was a stark example of our greater fear of the left than the fascists. The Russians were scared with good reason.

Soviet oriented American communists of course tried to influence the unions. And they had working contacts with Soviet operatives. But the close ties of the cpusa with the Soviets was not imposed upon them from outside anymore than an American Catholic has his Catholicism imposed on him by the Vatican. You can call that infiltration if you want or political influence. Whatever you call it the Soviets, based on our past invasion policy and implicit cooperation with anti-Communist fascist states, had far more to fear from us than we did from them.

Your business about them trying to "impose a Soviet-style system on America" seems like McCarthyite scare spin. Western European countries had huge communist parties and I don't know of any example of any of those countries being threatened by some Soviet-style imposition.


Funny how you write off so easily what we did and get so exorcised about what you imagine the Soviets tried to do. As for Iran I was talking about the CIA helping to overthrow the popular leader Mosedegh and impose the Shah as dictator. Why? Because we thought he was too friendly with the Soviets. This was in the late 50s.


The Soviet Union came out of a Czarist tradition and had to fight for its life repeatedly, in part because of US policies. Democracy simply was not in the cards, given those kind of conditions. And it was not going to tolerate in the postwar period, unfriendly bordering states that might once again be turned against them. Later these states transitioned towards democracy without anybody having to invade anybody; an interesting point to consider in Iraq. Communism appears to not be necessarily written in totalitarian stone and communist parties have participated fairly and legally throughout the democratic world so I simply don't accept your simplistic implication that they were all simply totalitarian agents for some Soviet style superstate.

There was a belief at one time that the Soviets represented the best hope for the poor working slob and the colonized and racially oppressed, at least their rhetoric reflected that and there were in fact demonstrable opportunities for education and some other benefits like pensions and health care made to the working poor and peasants in Russia. However the negatives ultimately became too obvious and as a result most thinking communists left the party. And no communists are known, for instance, to have engaged in espionage in this country after the 2nd world war as far as I know.

The Christmas season kinda kept me away from serious Internet activity, so I'm trying to get caught up. That's why I'm a little late in replying here.


So, because we didn't actively intervene to help the Communists out, we were therefore making trouble for them? Sorry, not buying it.


The CPUSA was trying to influence the unions, you say. And the Soviet Union was assisting in this endeavor. To what end, exactly? Do you really think that Stalin cared about the welfare of the poor worker? Is that what motivated him to slaughter so many of his own people?


The reason I'm not giving my full attention to what we did is that this is not a debate about the comparative merits of U.S. versus Soviet foreign policy. This is a thread examining whether there really was a Soviet threat to us. Whether there was or was not (there was, actually) is not changed by whatever it was we were doing. If you want to examine what you felt we did wrong during that time, start another topic.


Just to keep the discussion in perspective, you had asked me if I could provide examples of the Soviet Union subverting democratic societies, with the superadded qualification that they be postwar examples. I provided such examples to you. I also, if you look back at my post, predicted that there would always be an excuse put forth in an attempt to justify it, and so I asked how far the logic extends. If they're so insecure about themselves that they can't abide having free neighbors, how much of a leap would it have been for them to conclude that they'd be best off if the entire world was under Communist domination?


"Stalin publicly disbanded the Comintern in 1943. A Moscow OGPU message to all stations on 12 September 1943 detailed instructions for handling intelligence sources within the CPUSA after the disestablishment of the Comintern." Source

If he was using American Communists as intelligence agents against us at the height of our alliance during WWII, what would have caused him to stop doing that once the Cold War got underway?

If you don't mind my saying so that strikes me as a disingenuous response. You have nothing to say about our wish to turn the fascists against the Soviets and you equate Republican Spain with being no more than a Soviet Communist outpost not worthy of being defended against a ruthless fascist takeover, with our principal future enemies, Germany and Italy, being squarely on the side of Franco. When Hitler showed he really did mean business and we couldn't stay out of the conflict then we were happy to have the Soviets as allies. We could have saved a lot of lives if we helped the Soviets put the fascist's lights out in Spain. But then mindless commie hating by definition wasn't rational - witness McCarthy, witness Vietnam etc. etc.


Hmmm, a little apples and oranges here. The CPUSA was very union oriented and believed naively in my opinion in the international brotherhood of workers as a political alternative to the evil capitalist class. They looked at the Soviets as their big brother. That's the way I observed it. How the Soviets saw it was clearly far more cynical and opportunistic. The point is both sides were free operatives and inclined to use each other for their own ends. In this country if you read CPUSA publications, worker strikes, civil rights actions and anti-imperialist socialist organizing is what you saw on the front pages.


You've been all over the landscape on the respective countries foreign policies. I'm afraid you're a little late in playing that card. The foreign policy matters are in fact relevant to the topic because they directly relate to the degree of threat we were under from Soviet operatives and in addition how much of their action was defensive in nature. Strange that you ask you me a question about Iran; I answer it and you disingenuously blow me off. Not good arguing technique.


Apparently the Soviet demons didn't match your endless imaginative hypotheticals about them. Most of the rest of the world were not potential buffer states in a region that had launched a war that had left over 20 million Soviets dead. To switch to your earlier comment, my point about subverting democratic societies related to countries that had established democracies in which communist parties were free to participate. Know of any coups or even attempts under those conditions? In France and Italy after the war the communists were for a time the biggest single parties in those countries and were mayors of cities and even part of a coalition that won the 1980 election in France.


You offer a theoretical, now lets see your evidence. As far as I can see the intelligence that the Soviet's got after the war came from folks who were commonly right wing government insiders who needed the money, like Ames and Hannsen. Maybe we ought to profile greedy people, particularly if they are conservatives.

Let's just cut to the chase here. What is it you're saying that we did during the 1930s that allegedly made the Soviet Union fearful of us? Is it that we did nothing at all? That minding our own business was equivalent to making trouble for them? If that's the case, then I simply can't take this seriously.


And what were these cynical and opportunistic goals you speak of? This is only the second time I'm asking now.

By the way, read over my link in #62 some more to see just how "naive" the CPUSA was.


It might be relevant if all these things took place before Soviet attempts at infiltration began in earnest. And either way, whatever their reasons were for doing what they were doing, they don't alter the fact of what they were doing, and the implications it had for our own security.


I already gave you two pre-WWII examples of this, although for some reason you insist that it be postwar examples. It's a bit odd that you can never let go of our intervention in the Bolshevik revolution during WWI, even though we were at war at the time, and the Soviet Union hadn't even come into official existence. And yet pre-WWII examples of Communists taking over or attempting to take over democratic societies can be breezily brushed aside. Another manifestation of this phenomenon: as my link showed, all throughout WWII when we were supposedly allies, the Soviet Union was using the CPUSA to spy on us, and you say that doesn't matter because that was all in the "past" (at most about half a decade in the past by the time the Senate investigations got underway, and that's being extremely generous to them).


From my link: "Many party-linked espionage operations were exposed and neutralized by American counterintelligence in the late 1940s and 1950s." In other words, the CPUSA didn't "see the light" and decide to cease its treasonous behavior. All that happened was that our authorities finally caught on to them. That's hardly a sign that anyone involved with that organization was no longer a security risk.

They spied, we spied. Spying always involves potential security concerns. But we all do it anyway to anticipate the others actions.


I understand my point of no postwar attempts to overthrow democratic governments which is not matched by us is of no interest to you. It doesn't serve your case obviously.

During the second world war both sides I assume spied on each other. Anybody who didn't expect the CPUSA leadership to help an American ally that they shared presumably ideological sympathies with at a point of extreme peril for the Soviets would have to be retarded. Your remark about the past is disingenuous once again in characterizing my remarks. They were our allies is the key point.


I'll take your point about postwar CPUSA espionage under advisement. Any names you'd like to share? I read through your wikipedia piece and found it interesting and given the usual balanced presentation I expect from them, unusually partisan in tone. I also note that my point about who were the Americans who did the real espionage damage to our country after the 2nd world war blew right by you.

Let me clarify my point on how I felt communists or sympathizers should have been treated in government. I think anyone who has a background that would raise the question of a conflict of interest in a particular government job should not hold that job. For instance I don't think in the early part of the BA's administration Cheney should have headed up an energy task force. His leadership of Halliburton created in my mind and many others a conflict of interest. Likewise I don't think Richard Perl should have had any policy responsibilities with regard to the ME because of his strong Israeli biases.

Following that line of thinking I don't think it would have been appropriate to hire communists in government to deal with issues involved with Russia or other communist countries. That doesn't make any of the above traitors, just folks with a potential built in bias that would not necessarily serve this country well. Interesting that even if we do include the 2nd World War involvement I haven't as yet heard of any vital interest, other than the atom bomb secrets, that was compromised by Soviet oriented espionage agents. In the case of the bomb it is interesting that Doctor Teller the father of the H bomb estimated that the information passed from the Manhattan Project probably only cut the development time of an atom bomb by one year. I will also go back to the point that a probable communist sympathizer, Oppenheimer, headed the project and there is no evidence he passed any information. In addition it is interesting that one of the principal secret passers had no special sympathy for the Soviets but felt it was dangerous for one side to have a monopoly on the nuclear bomb.

We extended diplomatic relations to them in 1933, on the explicit condition that they not attempt to interfere in our internal affairs (So much for that).

And what fascist reference are you referring to? I looked over your recent posts on this thread and I didn't see a link to anything. I'm looking for evidence that the U.S. of the 1930s was actually out to make trouble for the Soviet Union. Are you really saying that our non-interventionist policy at the time was sufficient cause for them to consider us a threat?


So it was just a PR move on Stalin's part? Even though we know that he was using the CPUSA for espionage purposes, as my link showed?


It's not just that they spied, but that they issued directives to the CPUSA for conducting espionage, despite your claim that the CPUSA had only a tangential relationship with the U.S.S.R. That's what this discussion is all about.


Well, maybe when you can explain how these alleged incidents, which took place well after the Soviets began attempting to infiltrate our society at all levels, somehow lessened the seriousness of the Communist threat to us (that is what this thread is about, remember?), then I could seriously begin to take a closer look at them here. Otherwise, they're subjects for another thread.


This one is a little bit of a head-scratcher. If we truly were allies, then why would they have needed to spy on us? We would have provided each other with the information needed, aboveboard, legally. The only explanation for it not happening that way is if we weren't really allies, except in name. And that being the case, one would have to choose sides. It's clear which side the CPUSA chose.


Thank you for noting Wikipedia's impartial nature. At this point, the burden doesn't remain on me to keep verifying this information. Given that probably about 0.1% of the U.S. population would find it surprising that the U.S.S.R. had global ambitions, the burden really should be on you to show that that wasn't the case, and specifically to refute any information in the Wikipedia article that you don't approve of.

By the way, the fact that I don't respond to every one of your comments (such as the one about Ames and Hanssen) doesn't mean I've conceded anything. These posts have been getting quite long, so I usually just let the beside-the-point points flap in the breeze.


There's no comparison between an Israel sympathizer and a Soviet sympathizer. Israel may have goals that at times are at variance with ours, but to call them a hostile foreign power the way the Soviet Union was doesn't pass the smell test. Israel has no equivalent of the CPUSA that tries to organize the masses in its favor, or to carry out espionage, or to subvert our institutions in any other way. Ideologically, they share the same basic belief in democratic self-government that we do. Though there are some small differences in our approaches (they don't have an equivalent of the First Amendment, for example), they've shown no desire to remake us in their image. They're not in any kind of ideological conflict with us at all.

I'm saying Germany and Italy were notably anti-Communist fascist states and the Soviets assumed their intention was to wipe them out. With that in mind Stalin attempted to develop a "popular front" with the west to oppose Hitler. What he got was a refusal to cooperate when the Fascists backed Franco in Spain and Chamberlain's sell out at Munich. He made a reasonable assumption that the allies were taking the position that as long as Hitler concentrated on the communists he would have a free hand. Logically he responded in 1939 by trying to beat them at their own game and signed the Soviet-Nazi pact.
Collective security rejected by west


Munich

And you want to know why the Soviets needed espionage networks in the west.

Well I'd say the original discussion was about whether a government body should go out and have public hearings on whether or not some individual in our society was or had been a communist or a member of a communist front group. It was a witch hunt of people who might entertain unpopular ideas either in the present or the past. The more specific question we are addressing is what is the basis for removing someone from government employment if they have not broken the law. You seem to think, as I understand you, that someone who had in some way been associated with the label communist should have been removed from government. I don't agree except with the qualification I made earlier.

I never said the CPUSA had only a tangential relationship with the Soviets. In fact I think I said quite the opposite. They felt an extremely strong bond with the Soviet communists. What I understand is that many of their officials cooperated with the Soviets during world war 2, when they were our allies. I don't happen to think they saw themselves as messenger boys receiving "directives" from the KGB but as political friends who were cooperating.


I don't know of any attempts to overthrow us. Perhaps you could elaborate. By the way, statements like "the Soviets began attempting to infiltrate our society at all levels" is simply meaningless propaganda talk. Did they try to infiltrate professional sports? They spied on us in a few key areas with the cooperation obviously of some Americans just like we did with them and they had a working relationship with officials in the CPUSA, a miniscule organization that was openly proSoviet. Let's get over this grand conspiracy nonsense.


You've got to be kidding? You don't think we don't spy on allies? Get over it. We do and they do on us. Ask the Israelis. My point was a communist or sympathizer could rationalize that he was helping the Soviets and still be a loyal American because at that juncture both were in an alliance to defeat the axis.


As to the USSR's global ambitions I would guess most people don't even have an opinion on the matter. Of those who do if you were to transfer the question to the 3rd world and asked which country, the USA or the Soviets, had greater global ambitions I think you but not I would be surprised at the answer. On the Wikipedia business I'm time short but I'll try to get back to it later.


The movie dealt with McCarthy, as chairman of a Senate investigating committee, publically searching out nonexistent espionage agents because of their leftist past associations. In the mean time the Soviets were hiring good old conservatives like Ames and Hanseen to do their dirty work. We chase after nonexistent boogy men, terrorize folks from expressing honest opinion and let the true culprits run free. Sorry, Ames and Hanssen are right to the point.


In many ways the Soviets were a hostile foreign power because we treated them in a hostile way. When the chips were down the Soviets came through against the axis when we needed them too. Remember, again, the bulk of the spying that went on by American communists and their sympathizers was when we were allies.

I would also say AIPAC, the principle lobbying group in this country for Israel, in many ways plays very much the same role for Israel in this country that the CPUSA played for the Soviets; including I might add being involved in State Department espionage recently. I would guess if the CPUSA had been a powerful political body and lobby in this country we would be talking about them in a very different way. Sort of like the French and Italians talk about their communist parties which were much much larger. As far as the former Soviets being under a dictatorship, hell we got along fine with dictators all over the world. We even helped to create a few when the democratic tendencies in some countries weren't consistent with our strategic interests. By the way, Zionism in no way is ideologically in tune with the American constitution.

OK, so in all of that, there not only is nothing to show that we were actively working againt the U.S.S.R. or Communism in general, but nothing to even show that our government had any motive for minding our own business other than a desire to mind our own business. I don't suppose you've ever heard of this thing called the Monroe Doctrine. It means we stay in our hemisphere, and the Old World stays in its. The crisis of WWI notwithstanding, it was still our policy in the 1930s. So you're basically saying that the Soviet Union had legitimate cause to spy on us because we were resolving not to get involved in Europe's problems. That somehow made us a threat to them?



I already told you what my position is. People who are involved in groups that have an overweening loyalty to a foreign power that is not only hostile to us geopolitically, but also to our entire way of life, do not belong in government. Whether they're spying, or facilitating spying, or undermining our policy in some other way on behalf of this foreign power, common sense dictates that they simply don't belong there.


Whether they saw themselves as in a subordinate position or in a mutually cooperative position is largely academic for our purposes. The salient fact is that CPUSA was working hand-in-glove with the Soviet Union, which meant that we were justified in treating them as though they were the Soviet Union's instrument in the U.S.


The size of the organization is irrelevant. Its members, however many or however few of them there were, did not belong in government. As for the conspiracy business, you first. You're still insisting that the Soviets were somehow justified in thinking that we had some kind of grand design against them in the 1930s, even though the evidence for it is nonexistent.


Only when the alliance isn't as complete as it should be. Then, you'd have to decide whose side you're on, because you can't be on both when that happens.


I think you'd guess wrong about American opinion. And third-world opinion has no bearing on this discussion. Even if what you're saying about that is true (which I'm not conceding), it doesn't change the threat that was posed to us.



Ames and Hanssen did their dirty work well after the McCarthy era, first of all. Secondly, the fact that people sell out their country for money has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that people also betray their country over ideology. Third, here's a quote from Hanssen:

"The U.S. can be errantly likened to a powerfully built but retarded child, potentially dangerous, but young, immature and easily manipulated." Source

Some "conservative", huh? Or is that just a term you throw around against anyone who does something disreputable? If so, it's typical of the projectionism so often put on display by those who are quickest to play the "McCarthyism" card.


What was it you were saying above about "meaningless propaganda talk"? Because there are one or two points of discrepancy, Israel's political principles have nothing in common with ours? They're just as alien to our Constitution as Soviet Communism is? Reasoning like that is why you fail to understand the issues being discussed on this thread.

First off you are obviously unacquainted with the Monroe Doctrine. It established the Americas as being outside the natural sphere of interest of nonAmericans. It put no restraints on the USA, anywhere. We have evoked that doctrine repeatedly to insist on our hegemony in that region.

I'm finally getting used to your game of cutely parsing words and cherry picking points to avoid an obvious fact. "OK, so in all of that, there not only is nothing to show that we were actively working against the U.S.S.R. or Communism in general." The fascists made their move in Spain. We and the Europeans refused to stand up against them. In fact we had an embargo on the region. Why? Because we didn't like the communists even more than we didn't like the fascists. And lets say we had investment considerations. When the Axis finally landed on our doorstep then we finally came to the realization that maybe we were wrong. When Stalin offered a popular front approach to achieve collective security against the Axis, WE, not just the Europeans, turned him down. We weren't actively working against the Soviets? Complete nonsense.


"Entire way of life" of course is one of those propaganda lines that evoke lots of emotion and mean nothing. The people who were brought before the committee were mostly folks who had a past association with the communist party or what was claimed by the committee to be a communist front group. Are you saying only active membership in the CPUSA should have been disqualifying or do you think any past association, direct or indirect, should have been disqualifying? Where do you draw the line? Oh yes, and assuming someone was an active member of the party, should that disqualify them from delivering the mail?


I'd say it makes a difference. My understanding is that in answer to questions about their loyalty to the Soviet Union the party members would insist that they didn't want to immitate the Soviets. They claimed they wanted to build their own communist society based on American traditions. They felt they shared a common vision with the Soviets about building a nonexploitive worker based state. You can call them naive, and I do, but I knew some of these folks and found them quite sincere on that point. I'd say reducing American communists to being strictly a tool of the Soviets is simply a hangover from cold war propaganda and paranoia.