When Joe McCarthy came to national attention in February 1950, he pieced together his evidence of communist subversion within the State Department by exaggerating greatly or misrepresenting the alleged subversives’ past political activity. In February 1953, McCarthy used another strategy to substantiate charges of communist subversion within the Voice of America (VOA), the State Department’s short-wave radio agency that broadcast news and features overseas. Rather than dwell only on the supposed political beliefs and actions of the accused, the Wisconsin Republican also targeted lifestyles and religious beliefs. Along with chief counsel Roy Cohn and assistant David Schine, McCarthy used two unstated syllogisms to characterize communist infiltration of the VOA. The first worked like this: communists believe in anti-family, collective living; the head of the VOA’s French desk tried to recruit an employee for a collective (or so we are told); therefore, the head of the VOA’s French desk must be a communist. McCarthy built the second subversive syllogism, if you will, from atheism. Communists are atheists; the head of the VOA’s religious programming doesn’t believe in God (or so we are told); therefore, that VOA employee must be a communist. In the latter example, the final connection was left dangling, giving observers the opportunity to complete the syllogism themselves.

    By constructing accusations out of  personal values and behavior, McCarthy increased greatly the burden of rebuttal for the accused. Instead of explaining memoranda written years ago or long-lapsed membership in left-leaning political organizations, the accused were now forced to prove that they did, indeed, believe in God, or else deny trying to recruit an unmarried woman to bear children for a suburban New York Marxist collective.

    Although biographers of McCarthy and scholars of the VOA have provided narratives of the 1953 Senate Committee on Government Operations’ hearings, these accounts dwell on the ridiculous nature of the charges made and McCarthy’s heavy-handed tactics. In other words, the hearings are presented as business as usual for McCarthy.  Without a doubt, gross exaggerations, wild speculation, and blithe regard for facts and fairness still accompanied McCarthy’s new approach. But beneath the sensation lay a strategy. McCarthy’s use of the syllogism to package charges of subversion reveals a reverse relationship between cultural and political anti-communism. Elaine Tyler May has persuasively explained how political and diplomatic notions of containment shaped ideal notions of the family, but, we might ask, was there a reverse process?  Did normative standards of socio-cultural behavior shape notions of anti-communism within a distinctly political environment?

    For the most part, considerations of this question have focused on the tactics long used by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—the reflexive equation of personal beliefs and behavior with dangerous political subversion.  Through his investigation of the VOA, McCarthy shifted closer to the tactics of Hoover. But while Hoover preferred secrecy and avoidance of the public eye, McCarthy thrived on public attention. Through his adroit use of television and press releases to newspaper reporters, McCarthy brought right into America’s living rooms his charges that anti-family, anti-God communists worked for the VOA. In the process, he erased further the already fading border between the personal and the political in the assessment of what constituted subversion.

    Let me provide brief background information. In his investigation, McCarthy targeted an agency that had a troubled history with Congressional conservatives. Since the VOA’s debut in February 1942, conservative Congressional Democrats and Republicans had attacked the radio agency as a waste of the taxpayers’ money, `big government’ encroachment into private media, and a haven for New Deal liberals, even fellow travelers and communists. President Truman kept the VOA on the air after WWII, moving it from the Office of War Information, which was disbanded, to the State Department in August 1945. Between 1945 and 1947, Republicans in Congress slashed the VOA’s budget, blocked enabling legislation, and used the powers of committee to search for personnel they considered subversive.

    The VOA soon benefited, however, from the aggressive efforts of the President and the State Department to win Congressional support for aid to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan. In a view heartily encouraged by State Department officials, Republicans began to perceive of the VOA as a necessary corollary to global containment of communism.  In January 1948, the Republican-controlled 80th Congress passed the Smith-Mundt Act, providing the VOA with permanent legislative standing.

    Yet conservative concerns about the VOA did not abate. Persisting was the belief that the VOA and the State Department harbored left-leaning employees and communists. A month after his Wheeling, West Virginia speech, McCarthy himself had attacked the VOA, claiming that communists dominated the VOA and the Far State Department’s Far Eastern desk.  In June 1950, McCarthy informed an acquaintance that he had hired the former head of Lucius Clay's Intelligence Staff to collect material on three VOA officials in Germany.  And in August 1952, a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began an investigation of the VOA’s parent office within the State Department, the International Information Administration.
It appears that McCarthy’s 1953 investigation of the VOA was initiated by certain VOA employees. In July 1952, conservative columnist Howard Rushmore of the New York Journal American reported that "[a] group of patriotic State Department employees have formed what they ironically term "an underground cell" in the Voice of America on 57th St." Rushmore claimed that these employees were prepared to tell the FBI and Congress about "left-wingers" and "pro-Reds" in the VOA and could provide dozens of examples of broadcasts being slanted to the favor of the Soviet Union.  This "underground cell" came to be known as the Loyal Underground,  and members began forwarding information about "subversive" VOA employees to Rushmore, McCarthy, and Rep. John Taber (R-NY).

    After the Republicans gained control of the Senate in the November 1952 elections, McCarthy assumed chairmanship of the Committee of Government Operations and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Hearings on the VOA were scheduled after the new Congress convened. Committee Counsel Roy Cohn and assistant David Schine went to New York, where the VOA broadcast studios were located, and took a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Here the two McCarthy aides collected accusations and stories from various members of the Loyal Underground.  These stories formed the line of questioning pursued at the hearings.

    Why did VOA employees help McCarthy? The motives of the Loyal Underground mixed the personal and the political. One witness who cooperated with McCarthy reputedly did not get along well with the colleague he testified against.  While testifying on the religious views of VOA Director of Religious Programming Roger Lyons, Alice P. Shephard mentioned that she had once dated Lyons, a reference that almost escaped the Subcommittee's attention. "You would not have your testimony colored by the fact he did not go out with you any longer?" asked Stuart Symington (D-MO). "Oh, no," Shephard answered.  Before the hearings began, Shephard had reported that production engineer Howard Hotchner, a Loyal Underground member, was disgruntled that he did not receive a promotion. According to Rep. John Taber’s (R-NY) record of a conversation with Shephard, she had said that Hotchner "used to be in charge of all production and [was] now given a very small corner to work in and not much to do . . .."

    Others in the Loyal Underground were frustrated that the VOA neither broadcast their normative views of American foreign policy nor was, in their opinions, sufficiently anti-communist. At the hearings, Persian Desk Chief Gerard Dooher described four instances in which anti-communist programming was obstructed or cut and complained that Public Affairs Officials in "country X" [Iran] told him to tone down the anti-communist content of broadcasts.   Dooher wanted the VOA to portray Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in an unfavorable light. In an interview, former information policy officer Wilson P. Dizard told me that Dooher tried to alter VOA programming in order to attack Mossadegh.  Virgil Fulling, Chief of the VOA's Latin American News Service, testified at the hearings that the phrase "anti-communists" had been replaced by "citizens" in a script about Guatemalans cheering Eisenhower's inauguration.

    Though the revision seems inconsequential, Fulling's complaint highlights a common challenge in the VOA newsroom: maintaining journalistic standards of objectivity. As Barry Zorthian, the former Chief of News for the English Section, remarked in an interview, objectivity for the VOA was often measured by how anti-Russian or anti-communist the programming was.  For individuals such as Fulling, the McCarthy hearings offered an opportunity to not only make anti-communist language standard in the news, but also punish those who disagreed. For McCarthy, these grudges and dissatisfaction with the VOA’s anti-communist tone offered the raw material with which to construct his charges of subversion.

    The first public session of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations convened on February 16th, 1953, several days after executive sessions were held in which many of the witnesses had already been questioned. NBC broadcast the public hearings live on television for two hours each day, from 2 to 4 PM. The Republican members of the Subcommittee were Karl Mundt (SD), Everett Dirksen (IL), and Charles Potter (MI); representing the Democrats were Henry Jackson (WA), John McClellan (AK), and Stuart Symington (MO). Given the Loyal Underground’s cooperation with McCarthy and the friction among VOA employees, it is not surprising that witnesses at the hearings produced titillating, occasionally bizarre stories.

    Troup Mathews, Chief of the VOA’s French Desk, was the target of several accusations made by Dr. Nancy Lenkeith, a former writer for the French Desk. Though a cooperative witness, Lenkeith gave rambling, sometimes incoherent answers, prompting McCarthy to turn questioning over to Cohn. Lenkeith managed to state that when she worked for the French Desk, "detrimental programming" was aired. Lenkeith, who had been fired, also claimed that Mathews maintained lax supervision of broadcasts. And in the charge that drew the most attention, she said that when Mathews had interviewed her, he tried to get her to join a collective and begin having children as a member, even though she was unmarried. At this point McCarthy interrupted her, stating that because children might be watching the televised hearings, she should not continue.  McCarthy made sure to mention that he had already heard Lenkeith’s full story during the Subcommittee’s executive sessions, and he released excerpts to the press. According to Lenkeith’s account, Mathews had said he was thinking of forming “in an old Dutch house a group dedicated to collective living, which would embody the good aspects of Marxism.” Lenkeith also claimed that Mathews had also said he wanted people “who have no dogmatic religious beliefs.”

    The Marxist, `free love’ collective was actually a cooperative housing venture in suburban New York; Mathews had simply asked Lenkeith if she was interested in buying into the cooperative.  However, the distinction between collective and housing cooperative was a long time coming. Lenkeith had repeated her accusations during the public hearings, but McCarthy did not allow Mathews to take the stand to rebut the charges. Mathews, a veteran who had lost his left leg during World War II, was heard only in closed executive session. To reporters he said, “[Communism] embodies all the aspects of nazism, against which I fought.” He also said, “I’m a firm believer in monogamy, and I’ve got a wife and four kids to prove it.” However, Mathews’s rebuttal was printed nearly a week after McCarthy released Lenkeith’s executive session testimony and was buried at the bottom of page 12 of The New York Times.

    Like Troup Mathews, Director of Religious Programming Roger Lyons was also the target of a syllogism connecting him to communism. Dr. John Cocutz, a writer for the Rumanian desk, testified on March 2nd that he heard New York Policy Officer Edwin Kretzmann say that Lyons was an atheist.  When called to the witness stand, Kretzmann explained that what he had actually said was that he was not aware of Lyons' specific religious beliefs and that for all he knew, Lyons might be an atheist.  Kretzmann's clarification of his humorous aside did little, however, to correct the immediate impression that the head of the VOA’s religious programming did not believe in God.

    Lyons was not present when Cocutz gave his testimony; he was at work in the New York studios. At first Lyons and his co-workers laughed when a VOA writer returning from Washington brought the news. Then Lyons was shown a wire from Washington reporting Cocutz’s claim. Lyons was preparing a rebuttal statement when Roy Cohn called, asking Lyons if he wanted to testify before the committee. In his rush to the airport, Lyons did not even have time to call his wife and tell her what was happening.

    Why did the Subcommittee give Lyons the chance to confront the charges made against him after denying the same opportunity to Mathews? Just that morning, Subcommittee Democrats Stuart Symington and Henry Jackson had observed that the subjects of negative charges did not have the opportunity to defend themselves before the newspapers went to press, prompting Cohn’s call to Lyons.  Symington and Jackson weren’t the only Subcommittee members concerned about the fairness of questioning. The week before, Republican Karl Mundt, a friend of McCarthy’s, had asked Cohn to call witnesses supportive of the VOA and State Department in order to keep the hearings balanced.  That a Republican made this request is revealing. According to a VOA announcer who was called by McCarthy to testify, Jackson had intimated privately that because of the Alger Hiss case, the Democrats on the Subcommittee were reluctant to denounce McCarthy's and Cohn's tactics.

    When he arrived in Washington, Lyons had finished his statement. "I do believe in God, and I would have never accepted the position as Director of Religious Programming if I did not realize the religious and moral factors in Voice of America broadcasts."  Though given the chance to clear his name, it quickly became apparent that the Subcommittee was not going to make it easy for Lyons. McCarthy, Jackson, and John McClellan (D-AK) brusquely questioned him at length about his religious beliefs and the conversation that Cocutz overheard. McClellan asked that Lyons provide proof of his belief in God, while McCarthy wanted to know if Lyons had stated whether or not he believed in a “Divine Being” in his graduate thesis. Lyons emphasized that he was a deeply religious man, that Cocutz was mistaken. Asserting that he was neither an atheist nor an agnostic, Lyons even offered that he had attended a church service in New Jersey and put $10 in the collection plate.
After Lyons finished testifying, however, Alice Shephard appeared before the Subcommittee and stated that when she first knew him, he seemed confused and in the midst of a personal crisis. She also said that Lyons did not believe in God when they were dating in 1944.   The Subcommittee and observers were left with the sworn testimony that Lyons had not believed in God.

    Despite the differing treatment of Troup Mathews and Roger Lyons, a distinct pattern is apparent. First, Cohn and Schine drew accusations from stories or statements given by friendly witnesses, in these two cases, Nancy Lenkeith and Alice Shephard. Second, the line of questioning taken by Cohn and McCarthy led directly to the revelations of free love advocacy and atheism. Third, the stories were carefully crafted so that the syllogisms supposedly proving the communist leanings of Mathews and Lyons did not have to be spelled out for observers. In the case of Mathews, Lenkeith used the words “collective” and “Marxism” to prompt observers to the necessary connections of logic. In the case of Lyons, the charge of atheism sufficed. With the syllogisms, McCarthy didn’t have to accuse Mathews and Lyons of being card-carrying communists. The burden lay on Mathews and Lyons to prove that they weren’t communists by proving that they weren’t anti-family or anti-God. McCarthy, it seems, had learned well the lessons of Wheeling and its unexpected wake. For Lyons, the burden of rebuttal was particularly high. How does one definitively prove one’s belief in God? Finally, and most importantly, in hearings devoted to showing the existence of political subversion within the VOA, McCarthy had skirted the issue of  Mathews’ and Lyons’ political beliefs. Yet the charges made against the two men, based on their supposed lifestyle choices or lack of religious beliefs, created instant and lasting impressions about their politics—they were subversive. Here is shown the reverse relationship between normative socio-cultural standards and the construction of categories of political subversion.

    Did McCarthy or Cohn and Schine coach witnesses like Lenkeith, Cocutz, and Shephard in their stories? Not surprisingly, Cohn and Schine did not leave records of what transpired at the Waldorf-Astoria. Evidence exists, however, that suggests the witnesses were coached. In turning the questioning of Nancy Lenkeith over to Cohn, McCarthy pointed out that Cohn had interviewed her several times.  McCarthy’s use of television cameras also shows a conscious effort to shape witnesses’ testimony. As mentioned earlier, McCarthy held several days of closed session hearings before the Subcommittee’s public hearings were held, giving him the opportunity to rehearse witnesses’ testimony.  Once the television cameras were present, McCarthy was able to bring out statements and stories calculated to draw maximum attention, as he did with Lenkeith’s claims about the free love collective. By cutting short her description, McCarthy left viewers wondering exactly what Mathews had asked Lenkeith to do.

    Other evidence of coaching comes from Barry Zorthian, who was Chief of News for the English Section. Dismayed at the battering the VOA was taking and the treatment his co-workers were receiving during the hearings, Zorthian asked to meet with Cohn and Schine at the Waldorf. To his surprise, VOA production engineer Howard Hotchner ushered him into the hotel suite. Zorthian tried to convince Cohn and Schine that the VOA was doing the best job possible. But that’s not what the two McCarthy aides wanted to hear. As Zorthian said in an interview with me

“I really came out feeling both scared and evil. Their pitch was that look, it's not our job to say what's good, could you testify to us that 100% of the time the newsroom hasn't made a mistake, and I said of course not. Any news operation particularly with the volume we're running is going to make mistakes. "That's what we want you to testify on, who made those mistakes, what was the cause of them. If you want to come down to Washington and testify on that we'd be happy to have you. We don't want you to come down and say the news room is doing a good job.”

    It wasn’t as if Zorthian’s testimony was needed. Throughout the hearings, McCarthy continued to receive support from VOA and State Department employees. Leaks to McCarthy were frequent. According to the US embassy in France, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith complained that high-ranking State Department officials were being summoned before the McCarthy committee in the afternoon to explain things they had said that morning during supposedly secret conferences. The embassy also reported that confidential information about the hearings had appeared in a French magazine article.  Frances Knight, who worked as a Special Assistant in the VOA’s parent organization, the International Information Agency (IIA), acted as a liaison between McCarthy and conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler. Immediately after televised coverage of the hearings ended for the day on 3 March 1953, Knight called Pegler to say she would have Schine or Cohn send over the transcripts.  And according to Wilson Dizard, a secretary attached to the information policy planning section of the Near East desk forwarded classified telegrams to McCarthy.

    Enhanced by the Loyal Underground's cooperation, the hearings had immediate and dramatic effects on the VOA’s operations. Wilson Compton resigned as IIA Administrator on 18 February 1953, the day after he appeared before the McCarthy Subcommittee. Also on 18 February, Information Bulletin #272 was issued: "no repeat no materials by any communists, fellow travelers, etc., will be used under any circumstances by any IIA media."  The order, which was prompted by the VOA's occasional reference to the writings of novelist Howard Fast, coincided with the appearance of Fast before the subcommittee.

    The ban on controversial materials caused an uproar. VOA commentator Raymond Swing protested that the order forbade him to quote from the statements of Communist officials when drafting responses.  Gerard Dooher, who had testified about interference with anti-communist programming, complained that the order was "a reduction to absurdity of the sense of Congressional criticisms of previous policy guidances . . .."  The head of the International Broadcasting Service, Alfred Morton, even refused to obey Information Bulletin #272. He was suspended from his job.  Despite these vociferous protests, the order was upheld.

    The McCarthy Subcommittee ended its Washington hearings the first week of April, though Cohn and Schine continued the investigation by visiting United States Information Service libraries in Europe throughout April and May. The spectacle of the McCarthy investigation confirmed the belief shared by President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that the VOA and other media units did not belong in the State Department. In June 1953, Eisenhower presented a reorganization plan that pulled the VOA and the other international media units out of the State Department and placed them in the newly-created United States Information Agency, where they remain today.

    It is important not to overlook another result of McCarthy’s hearings: the definition of political subversion based upon socio-cultural norms. Underneath the sensationalists charges and unfair treatment of witnesses lay a strategy. Crafted and presented to not only attract attention, the syllogisms connecting Mathews and Lyons to communism also tapped into public fears about the nonpolitical aspects of communism; specifically, its supposed anti-family and anti-God leanings.