(2 of 2)
McCarthy and Furry played a game with the names of the M.I.T. Communists, identifying them as No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, et al. Furry said No. 1 was now teaching in a U.S. university, No. 2 was in private industry, No. 3 was at a British university. The U.S. Senator and the Har vard professor finally tired of what Furry called "a game of 20 questions." Black v. Grey. Another Harvard— employee. Leon J. Kamin. research assistant in the department of social relations, had gone around with Communism like a man in a revolving door. He was a party member, he told McCarthy, from November 1945 to January 1946, and again from November 1947 to June 1950, when he suffered his final disillusionment while studying psychology at Harvard. Said McCarthy: "You mean to say Harvard converted you against Communism?" Replied Kamin: Yes, in a sense, by teaching him that the world was not all black, that there "were varying shades of grey." Like Furry, Kamin refused to identify others he had known as Communists.* By their stand, the two witnesses gave McCarthy a chance to 1) threaten them with contempt citations, and 2) continue his feud with Harvard and Pusey. He would, he said, with obvious satisfaction, "hate to decimate the Harvard faculty" by sending Furry and Kamin to jail, but that might be the only way of dealing with "Pusey's Fifth Amendment Communists."* Later, asked by newsmen if he might call Dr. Pusey to testify, McCarthy sneered: "I don't see why. He has already made his position quite clear that he will go on maintaining a privileged sanctuary for Fifth Amendment Communists." Next Week: East Lynn. The following day, it was harder to stay with McCarthy than to avoid him. Three men were ejected from the hearing room, among them a suspended General Electric employee from Lynn, Mass, named Nathaniel Mills.
who was playing a return engagement; he had been thrown out by McCarthy once before. In last week's hearing, Mills arose suddenly in the back of the room and shouted: "McCarthy, I accuse you of conspiring with the company and getting the jobs of General Electric people.'' Most of the other spectators shouted.
"Throw him out!" and five marshals did just that, with Mills still yelling, wriggling, kicking and squirming.
Like any good showman, McCarthy scheduled some comic relief. He brought on one Alexander Gregory, also of Lynn, who protested quietly: "I'm not an evil man. No one in Lynn thinks I am evil." In fact, said Gregory, he had never met an "evil Communist." All the party members he knew were "very gentlemanly, honest, conscientious, security-minded persons." McCarthy was surprisingly gentle toward the gentle Mr. Gregory.
By week's end McCarthy's critics could accurately say that he had again failed to dig up any evidence of actual espionage; on the other hand, he had had an admission that a group of Communists worked on a secret M.I.T. project during the war.
* The Harvard Crimson, in an editorial titled "Mismanaged Heroics," this week called on Furry and Kamin to give the FBI the names of Reds they know. * Harvard's faculty numbers some 3,000; to decimate it, Joe would have to multiply his two by 150.