News - 12-07-05
McCarthy and spies
The writer of the Dec. 3 People's Forum letter captioned "Awake, journalists" keyed on the film "Good Night, and Good Luck," which
depicts CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow as a hero for confronting Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunt" against suspected Communists in
the U.S. government. The letter writer said "his attacks on government employees never produced one, not one, Communist."
Scholars are now aware that, ironically, McCarthy was right -- probably by accident, but right nonetheless as verified by the
declassification of the government's Venona Files in 1995. The Venona operation was instigated in 1942 and continued until the
mid-1960s to intercept coded messages from the Soviet Union to American spies working in the U.S. government.
The data demonstrate deep infiltration by American spies in every government department. At the recent Raleigh International
Spy Conference, Harvey Klehr, Cold War scholar and former chairman of the Political Science Department at Emory University,
stated that the number of agents identified by Venona is now at 350. Venona also verified the guilt of the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss,
former assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, Lachlan Currie and other infamous Americans who continually denied they
spied for the Soviets.
At
www.raleighspyconference.com we have posted Klehr's talk. And I recommend his book "In Denial," co-written by National Archives
senior official John Earl Haynes. It addresses the refusal of academics to admit the now-available facts about what really went on
during the Cold War.
Bernie Reeves
Editor & Publisher
Raleigh Metro Magazine
Raleigh