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He bored in, hitting low blow after low blow. He set up a barrage of new accusations which caught the headlines, drawing attention away from the fact that he had not made good on his original charge. He even began to produce some names. But most of the men he has named never were in the State Department. His most sensational charge was that he knew the name of "the top Soviet espionage agent" in the U.S. The man so accused turned out to be Owen Lattimore, a Johns Hopkins professor and writer on Far Eastern affairs. Lattimore, in fact, had great influence in U.S. academic and journalistic circles dealing with the Far East. He was an important factor in leading the U.S. toward policies which many Americans regard as tragically wrong.
But that was not what McCarthy said about Lattimore. He said that Lattimore was "the top Soviet espionage agent"—and to this day McCarthy has not produced a scrap of evidence indicating that Lattimore was a spy or in any way disloyal. The question of whether Lattimore's analysis of the Far East was correct or incorrect—which is still a highly relevant and important question—does not interest
Joe. Such questions have no appeal to demagogues.
The Files. Before the Tydings committee, Joe demonstrated the technique that he still uses: kicking up a storm of denunciation and then shifting his ground. When he first made his charges, he explained: "Everything I have here is from the State Department's own files." When the Tydings committee asked for proof, Joe set up a chant: "Get the files. If you do, you will find that every word I have said is the truth." Harry Truman refused to let the committee have the files, on the sound ground that it was necessary to protect the reputations of those who might be subsequently cleared.
Joe's chant became deafening. How could he supply the proof without the files? Then Truman changed his mind. Before McCarthy even saw what the State Department turned over to the committee, he pronounced it "a phony offer of phony files." The files had been "raped," he cried. Tydings had the FBI send over a copy of all investigative reports it had; two security officers checked, and found everything there. But Tydings carelessly announced that the FBI had checked the files. McCarthy promptly got a letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover saying that the FBI itself had not made the check. Tydings then had the FBI check in person. But Joe insisted that, by the time the FBI got there, the damning papers had been sneaked back.
Finally, when the Democratic majority brought out a report denouncing his charges as "a fraud and a hoax on the American people," Joe was ready. "Whitewash," he cried.
Tydings made the mistake of underestimating Joe McCarthy. He bickered impatiently with Joe, defended the Administration at every turn, including some points where it was not readily defensible.