The CIA VS Joe McCarthy Part 3

If saving bureaucrat's jobs can be considered saving the Republic!

Lyman Kirkpatrick decided to directly confront Grombach over the names. Grombach made no secret of providing names to McCarthy and had also been urging him to set up a permanent, public committee that would investigate employees of the U.S. government. Grombach was quick to point out that due to clause in his contract with CIA he owned the information he had and could make it available in any way he saw fit. This was enough for Kirkpatrick.

The CIA would end its association with the Pond. My guess is it wouldn't work with people who owned the work they did ever again. McCarthy was left with the bad info which had taken him off the trail of CIA. Now the question became how to stop McCarthy now that his source was gone. How to turn this from being about a cover up of gross neglect to the spin on McCarthy that exists to this day.

  It will be good to re-check the end of McCarthy here at this post. So, what have we learned? We learned that almost all the things accused of McCarthy were actually the actions of a Democrat from Nevada, Senator Pat McCarran. That a secret group within CIA, The Pond, had been turning in names for ten years and out of frustration of nothing being done went to McCarthy. That more often than not Joe was right. The CIA fed McCarthy false info (which is still classified) and ended the Pond. McCarthy was then badgered out of his campaign.

According to the New York Times, the sloppiness of catching spies continues to this day.

On the other hand my hate mail ended when it was discovered that the head of the FBI brought down Nixon. Suddenly the charge I made way back at the beginning, is no longer considered outlandish.

And McCarthy was right. The smear to destroy him is now our version of history. Reality, however, has torn this version apart. Only college Professors, Hollywood and students can possibly still believe the nonsense we were taught in school.

What warnings do we draw from this?

1. The CIA since it's inception has meddled in our political affairs.

2. Intel agencies still refuse to share information with each other and have a way of dealing with subversion within that is sloppy, slow and well, stupid.

3. Government agencies can bring down elected officials by using a spin instead of the courts or elections. This is a very serious threat to our Democracy. Far more than Joe ever was.

4. The FBI clearly failed at stopping communist spies. As did OSS. CIA. The White House. And they destroyed a man rather than admit the truth.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

If I were in the White House, the CIA and FBI would no longer be invited to my morning meetings. And if they refused to share Intel or set up an appartus for dealing with spies within I'd dismantle the groups. Just as Truman did to OSS when he discovered how infiltrated it was.

We have discovered a true hero, who tried for ten years to get spies thrown out of our government. Grombach. Odd that the McCarthy Era crumbles when we examine McCarren
(see link at top of site) who actually did the things Joe is accused of, and McCarthy himself ceases to loom large over the period.

Joe McCarthy was a whistleblower who believed the public could stop the problem. He was neither evil, wrong or anything more than a guy who discovered the problems and tried to tell us. We killed the messenger. The message, is still sadly, very real.

Next a nasty holdover from that period is that Americans have been told for 50 years that searching for spy cells is a witch hunt. Al Qaeda knows this. They adopted the Stalin model. They have cells here, which none of us know how to look for. Second the Soviets hid Weapons of Mass destruction here- I believe the Al Qaeda has done the same. We had better learn from the mistakes of our government during that period to understand what to do now.

Finally the people that spied, that dreamed of nukes destroying us, that supported the Stalin trials, the banning of free elections, over 50 million killed are not heroes. Anymore than someone who supports Hitler would be a hero. They are not victims. Of the 56 in hearings with McCarthy, the vast majority were spies. Grombachs lists were from KGB sources at the time. They should know. So we can't go on making these people heroes. It is the wrong message.

I am sadly convinced the mistakes made then have continued. If we can't face what really happened, they will continue still. It's still all about covering your ass.