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Budenz' testimony against Lattimore—undocumented and uncorroborated as it was—might be impossible of proof. Lattimore's task of disproving it seemed equally difficult. He could show when & where he had differed from the party line, but Budenz had already anticipated that by saying that such divergences were sometimes a party tactic. Stachel or other members of the party hierarchy might be called to testify, but—whether they substantiated Budenz or Lattimore—few were likely to believe them.
And so the matter stood: Owen Lattimore had not been proved a Communist, but he had not proved that he was not one. The shadow of the Hiss case made all men uneasy. Said Vermont's cautious Senator Ralph Flanders: "I find it disturbing."
Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy went rushing madly on. To the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he declared that the security clearance of Ambassador at Large Philip Jessup was "almost a deliberate mischievous playing with American security," that General George Marshall had been "pathetic and completely unfitted" to be Secretary of State, and his appointment "little short of a crime." The editors applauded when he sat down.
Two nights later, before the same audience, Secretary of State Dean Acheson replied to McCarthy's attack for the first time. He spoke informally, after his discussion of the world situation There was a right way and a wrong way of combating disloyalty, he said. "It is as though you said to yourself that the best way to find a fire is to ring every fire alarm in the city; not that you know of any fire, but if you get all the apparatus out and have it wheeling around through the city, you might find one."
But what was going on was "much madder and more vicious." It reminded him of "that horrible episode in Camden, N.J. when a madman came out on the street in the morning with his revolver. With no purpose, and with no plan, as he walked down the street, he just shot people, without sense, without purpose, without direction."
Neither he nor his department asked for sympathy or for help, said Acheson, but merely asked understanding. "The department is manned today by able, by honorable, by loyal and by clean-living American men & women." He pointed to Under Secretary James Webb and his fine war record ("There you really have a marine," said Acheson). There was Jack Hickerson of Texas, Ed Barrett of Alabama, Dean Rusk of Georgia, Walton Butterworth of Louisiana—"Southern Communists of the Hull-George-Connally type," said Acheson with a laugh. There was Willard Thorp, a onetime partner in Dun & Bradstreet. The chief of the department's loyalty board was Republican Conrad Snow, "an old-fashioned New Hampshire Communist." Then he had called in those "obvious Communists," Republicans John Foster Dulles and John Cooper. ("Pour it on, Mr. Secretary," cried dignified Joseph Pulitzer, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)
When Acheson finished, the editors stood and cheered. Only one man sat glowering at a side table, his hands jammed in his pockets. He was Senator Joe McCarthy.