INVESTIGATIONS: Stand or Fall

• Share

Like a desperate gambler, Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy was doubling his bet every time he took a loss. Shaken up by angry rebuttals from his victims, McCarthy reached deep and produced the most tremendous sensation yet. He would name a man "now connected" with the State Department who was "the top Russian espionage agent" in the U.S. Said McCarthy: "This man I'm talking about was Hiss's onetime boss in the espionage ring. He has a desk in the State Department and has access to the files—or at least he had until four or five weeks ago."

McCarthy hustled his alleged "57 card-carrying Communists" out of sight (after naming not a single one), and declared: "I am willing to stand or fall on this one. If I am shown to be wrong on this, I think the subcommittee would be justified in not taking my other cases too seriously."

Where to Find It. To the investigating Senators, he confided the name and presented his charges. Commented Chairman Millard Tydings: "He didn't give us evidence, but told us where he thought we could find it."

Where McCarthy apparently hoped his evidence would be found was in the files of the FBI, which Harry Truman had steadfastly refused to open. Snapped Joe McCarthy: "It is up to the President to put up or shut up."

McCarthy sat in his Senate office wearing an air of conspiratorial secrecy. He tapped a pencil on his desk and kept the tap water running in the washbasin to foil, said he, any hidden microphones. McCarthy confided the name of the "Russian agent" to only the committee, and to a few newspapermen. Soon, every cab driver and casual Washington visitor knew that McCarthy's "top Russian agent" was Owen J. Lattimore, director of Johns Hopkins' School of International Relations.

Harry Truman steadfastly refused to let the committee see the FBI files on Lattimore. But this week he authorized FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—a man in whom Congress has unbounded confidence—to testify before the subcommittee. Hoover said that opening his dossiers would result in a "complete collapse" of FBI procedures. It would dry up sources. Besides, the files contained many un checked rumors. But he said flatly that the FBI had no proof to support Mc Carthy's charges. After .that, McCarthy could only say lamely that he knew some thing the FBI didn't.

The Accused. Lattimore was in Afghanistan last week on a U.N. mission. As the State Department promptly pointed out, he had been employed by State only once, five years ago, when for four months he "was associated with a mission outside the U.S." — the Pauley reparations mission in Japan. Occasionally, State conceded, he had also been called in as an adviser on Far Eastern affairs.

The son of a schoolteacher, 49-year-old Owen Lattimore grew up in China. He roamed the high, bitter steppes and the burning deserts of Asia's hinterlands, became the familiar of Uzbek traders and Mongolian camel herders, and his honeymoon was a trek by camel, sled and shaggy pony through Chinese Turkestan.