Cold War History Recovered — M. Stanton Evans

This is a great discussion with journalist and author M. Stanton Evans who wrote the book Blacklisted by History, which examines the history of the McCarthy hearings, and the infiltration of known communists into the highest levels of the U.S. government. I often plug the book because I have found it to be one of the most complete and thorough investigations into the whole McCarthy affair, and what came to be known as the “Red Scare.” Mr. Evans spent some 10 years pouring over thousands of pages of F.B.I. documents related to the McCarthy hearings—which, in my mind, exonerates Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Bella Dodd—an ardent member of the Communist Party USA in the 1930’s and 1940’s, who later left the party and became a vocal anti-communist—once said she believed the attack on Sen. Joseph McCarthy was one of the “worst smear jobs in history.”

Evans also coauthored the book Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government with the late Herbert Romerstein, which uncovers some of the activities of known communist operatives within the U.S. government. Herbert Romerstein also wrote the book The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors, revealing how the Soviets operated their intelligence service against the United States.

Yet, to this day, the derogatory term “McCarthyism” is still often used to describe a person who ruthlessly and maliciously maligns and impugns innocent people. WikiPedia defines McCarthyism as “the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence.”

In Ann Coulter’s book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, she devoted a chapter to Sen. Joe McCarthy stating “McCarthy was right.” According to M. Stanton Evans, she consulted him on this part of her book. Evans warned her that she would be attacked for taking a pro-McCarthy stance. But Evans provided Coulter with some ammunition. Evans told Coulter (paraphrase), “If people claim that McCarthy harmed and smeared all these ‘innocent people,’ then have them name one.”

Ann Coulter did just that when she appeared on the Bill O’Reilly show. According to Evans, O’Reilly made the tiresome charge that McCarthy only hurt “innocent people.” Coulter then asked O’Reilly to name one. Bill was stumped, but he finally said, “Dalton Trumbo.”

Mr. Evans explains in the video above that Trumpo was a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1940’s who was a Soviet, Stalinist sympathizer—a hardcore communist—hardly an “innocent,” nor was he a McCarthy case. He was a House Committee on Un-American Activities’ case. McCarthy had nothing to do with him.