9. Heroes and Villains of the Cold War: Cold War at Home: Red Scare, McCarthyism, and American Society

My Name is Joseph McCarthy: The Senator Who Gave His Name to McCarthyism

I was born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, in 1908. I grew up on a farm in a large Catholic family, and I learned early that advancement depended upon determination. I left school as a young man, returned to finish my education at an accelerated pace, attended Marquette University, earned a law degree, and entered politics. I became a Wisconsin circuit judge while still in my twenties. When America entered World War II, I joined the Marine Corps and served in the Pacific. After returning home, I set my sights on something larger: the United States Senate.

A Senator Looking for a Fight

I defeated Senator Robert La Follette Jr. in the Republican primary in 1946 and entered the Senate the following year. Washington was changing rapidly. The alliance with the Soviet Union had collapsed, communist governments were spreading across Eastern Europe, and Americans were discovering that Soviet intelligence had operated inside their own country. Cases involving Alger Hiss and others convinced many Americans that communist infiltration was not simply political rhetoric. I believed the federal government had failed to confront the danger aggressively enough.

Communists in the Government

In February 1950, I delivered the speech that changed my life. Speaking in Wheeling, West Virginia, I charged that communists had found their way into the State Department. Reports differed over the exact number I claimed, and the numbers I used changed afterward, but the accusation itself exploded across the country. I demanded investigations. I named individuals. I challenged officials to explain how people suspected of communist connections had obtained positions of influence. My critics called my evidence reckless and inconsistent. I answered that the greater recklessness was refusing to investigate communist penetration at all.

The Rise of McCarthyism

America was frightened, and there were reasons for that fear. The Soviet Union had tested an atomic bomb. China had fallen to Mao's communists. American soldiers were soon fighting communist forces in Korea. Soviet espionage had been uncovered. Against that background, my accusations attracted enormous attention. Newspapers followed me everywhere, hearings filled rooms, and political careers could be shaken by the charge of communist sympathy. My name became attached to an entire phenomenon: McCarthyism. To my supporters, I was exposing dangers others were afraid to confront. To my opponents, I was turning suspicion into a political weapon.

Enemies, Accusations, and Power

I was not a cautious politician. I attacked Democrats, diplomats, government employees, intellectuals, and even members of my own party when I believed they stood in my way. I accused the government of tolerating communists and security risks, and I frequently spoke as though Washington's failures could only be explained by incompetence or disloyalty. That style made me powerful, but it also created enemies. Critics increasingly argued that accusation itself had become my evidence and that innocent people could have their reputations damaged simply by being associated with one of my investigations.

The Army-McCarthy Hearings

My greatest confrontation came in 1954 when my investigations collided with the United States Army. The resulting Army-McCarthy hearings were televised before the American public. Millions could now watch my methods rather than merely read about them. Army counsel Joseph Welch confronted me after I raised the name of a young attorney associated with Welch's law firm. The exchange became one of the defining moments of my career. Americans who had once viewed me as a determined investigator increasingly saw a senator who had pushed his accusations too far.

My Fall from Power

Later that year, the United States Senate formally censured me for conduct it judged contrary to senatorial traditions. I remained a senator, but my influence collapsed. The reporters still knew my name, yet Washington no longer trembled when I spoke. I continued warning about communism, but the political force I had commanded was disappearing. My health also deteriorated, and on May 2, 1957, I died at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was only forty-eight years old.

The Judgment of History

I spent my final years still insisting that communist infiltration was a genuine danger, and history has confirmed that Soviet espionage inside the United States was real. But that does not prove every accusation I made or justify every method I used. Looking back, that is where my story becomes a warning. A republic must be willing to investigate those who secretly serve an enemy, but suspicion is not proof, association is not guilt, and political power carries obligations even when the danger is real. If I have an apology to make, it belongs to those whose reputations were damaged when my determination to expose communism moved faster than the evidence needed to establish guilt.

1917–1945 — Why Americans Already Feared Communism - Told by McCarthy

Long before most Americans had heard my name, they had learned to fear communism. The story begins in Russia in 1917, when Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power during the Russian Revolution. They did not simply propose another political party or economic reform. The Bolsheviks sought a revolutionary transformation of society based upon Marxist principles, overthrowing the existing government, attacking private ownership of major industries, and eventually establishing a one-party communist state. More troubling to Americans, communist leaders openly believed their revolution should spread beyond Russia. To a nation built around private property, representative government, religious liberty, and competitive elections, this was not merely a foreign political experiment. It appeared to be an ideological challenge.

America's First Red Scare

Americans soon discovered that revolutionary ideas could cross oceans. After World War I, the United States experienced strikes, political unrest, racial violence, anarchist bombings, and fears that revolution might follow. In 1919, bombs were mailed to prominent Americans, and another series of coordinated bombings targeted public officials and businessmen. Although anarchists rather than a single communist conspiracy were responsible for these attacks, many Americans grouped anarchism, Bolshevism, radical socialism, and communism together as parts of the same revolutionary danger. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer responded with what became known as the Palmer Raids, arresting thousands of suspected radicals. Some truly advocated revolutionary politics; others were swept into investigations with little evidence and inadequate protection of their rights. America had entered its First Red Scare.

Moscow Calls for World Revolution

Those fears did not disappear when the bombings stopped. In 1919, Lenin's government helped establish the Communist International, or Comintern, an organization intended to encourage communist movements around the world. Communist parties emerged in numerous countries, including the United States. The Communist Party USA remained small compared with America's major political parties, but its relationship with Moscow became an important source of suspicion. The Soviet Union was not simply another country with which Americans disagreed. It was governed by leaders committed to an ideology that envisioned capitalism ultimately being replaced by communism.

What Stalin's Soviet Union Became

Then came Joseph Stalin. By the late 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet experiment had become something even its admirers could not easily explain away. Stalin forced agricultural collectivization, while famine devastated regions of the Soviet Union, most catastrophically Ukraine and other major grain-producing areas in 1932–1933. Political opponents and supposed enemies were imprisoned, deported, executed, or sent into the expanding Gulag labor-camp system. During the Great Purge of the late 1930s, hundreds of thousands were executed and many more imprisoned. Churches and religious believers faced severe persecution under an officially atheist government. Americans who followed these developments saw a system dramatically different from their own.

Communism Finds American Supporters

Yet communism attracted some Americans, particularly during the Great Depression. With banks failing, unemployment soaring, and millions questioning capitalism's future, Communist Party organizers participated in labor movements, unemployment campaigns, civil-rights activism, and efforts to organize workers. Some Americans saw the Soviet Union as an alternative to a capitalist system that seemed to have failed them. Others joined communist organizations because they opposed fascism or racial discrimination. But there was another side to this story: Soviet intelligence agencies also sought information and recruited sources abroad, including within the United States. Later investigations and intelligence records would establish that Soviet espionage networks had indeed operated inside American institutions.

The Pact That Changed Perceptions

One event particularly damaged communism's reputation among many Americans. In August 1939, Stalin's Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. A secret protocol divided portions of Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1; the Soviet Union invaded from the east on September 17. Moscow later attacked Finland and annexed territory in the Baltic region. For Americans who had heard communists present themselves as determined opponents of fascism, Stalin's agreement with Hitler demonstrated how quickly ideological claims could yield to geopolitical interests.

An Ally America Did Not Trust

History then produced one of its great ironies. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and after America entered World War II, the United States and Soviet Union became partners against Nazi Germany. American weapons and supplies flowed to the Soviets through Lend-Lease, while Soviet armies suffered enormous casualties fighting Germany on the Eastern Front. We needed Stalin's armies to defeat Hitler, but wartime cooperation did not erase decades of distrust. Americans understood that an alliance formed against a common enemy was not the same thing as friendship.

The Fear Was Already There

When World War II ended in 1945, Americans did not suddenly wake up and invent a fear of communism. They carried memories stretching back nearly thirty years: the Bolshevik Revolution, revolutionary rhetoric, the First Red Scare, Stalin's dictatorship, political terror, religious persecution, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and concerns about Soviet espionage. Some fears had been exaggerated, and innocent people had suffered when suspicion replaced evidence. But the Soviet dictatorship and Soviet intelligence operations were real. That distinction would become enormously important after 1945, because America was about to face a difficult question: how do you defend a free nation against a genuine ideological and intelligence threat without allowing fear itself to damage the freedoms you are trying to protect?

My Name is Alger Hiss: The American Official Accused of Serving the Soviet Union

I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1904. My father died when I was young, leaving my mother to raise our family through difficult circumstances. Education became my road forward. I attended Johns Hopkins University and then Harvard Law School, where I studied under Felix Frankfurter. After graduation, I served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. I believed deeply in public service, careful reasoning, and the institutions of American government. In the 1930s, that belief carried me to Washington.

Serving the New Deal

I entered government during Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, serving in several agencies before joining the State Department. These were years of economic crisis, political experimentation, and growing danger overseas. I worked among lawyers, economists, diplomats, and reformers who believed government could address the extraordinary problems confronting the nation. Years later, associations formed during this period would be examined with suspicion as Americans searched Washington for evidence of communist influence.

War, Diplomacy, and the United Nations

My career eventually placed me near some of the most important diplomatic events of World War II. In 1945, I traveled to the Yalta Conference as a member of the American delegation and later served as secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. I considered the creation of the United Nations one of the great achievements of the postwar era. After leaving government, I became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. By outward appearances, I had reached the respected heights of the American foreign-policy establishment.

Whittaker Chambers Accuses Me

Then came Whittaker Chambers. In 1948, Chambers, a former communist and Time magazine editor, publicly accused me of having belonged to a secret communist organization during the 1930s. I denied it. I denied being a communist, and I denied participating in Soviet espionage. When I confronted Chambers before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, I treated his allegations as falsehoods that could not withstand serious examination. But Chambers produced documents he claimed I had given him years earlier, including typed government materials and handwritten notes.

The Pumpkin Papers

The controversy became a national spectacle. Some of Chambers's evidence was famously concealed inside a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm, giving rise to the name "Pumpkin Papers." Investigators examined typewriters, documents, dates, and relationships from more than a decade earlier. Congressman Richard Nixon became one of the most determined figures pursuing the case. Because the statute of limitations prevented prosecutors from charging me with the alleged espionage itself, the government instead accused me of lying under oath about my relationship with Chambers and the transfer of documents.

My Trials and Conviction

My first trial in 1949 ended with a hung jury. The government tried me again, and in January 1950 I was convicted on two counts of perjury. I was sentenced to five years in prison and ultimately served more than three years. The verdict transformed me from a former diplomat into one of the most controversial men in America. To many Americans, my conviction demonstrated that communist influence had reached frighteningly high levels of government. To others, my case became an example of the political passions overtaking the country during the Red Scare.

A Lifetime of Denial

When I left prison in 1954, I did not confess. I spent the remaining decades of my life maintaining my innocence and attempting to restore my reputation. In 1975, Massachusetts readmitted me to the practice of law, an extraordinary development for a convicted felon. Yet the historical controversy continued. After my death in 1996, historians continued examining American intelligence records, Soviet materials, and the Venona decrypts. Much of the later evidence has persuaded many historians that I secretly cooperated with Soviet intelligence, although arguments remain over particular details and interpretations.

1930s–1945 — Soviet Espionage Inside the United States - Told by Alger Hiss

If you had walked through Washington during the 1930s, you would not have seen Soviet spies hiding behind every government door. You would have seen lawyers, economists, diplomats, military officers, scientists, and thousands of new federal employees attempting to guide America through depression and, eventually, world war. Yet among those ordinary offices, Soviet intelligence agencies were quietly building networks. Their purpose was simple: find Americans with access to valuable information, recruit those willing to cooperate, and obtain secrets without attracting the attention of the United States government.

Why Washington Became a Target

The Great Depression transformed the federal government. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal brought large numbers of educated young Americans into Washington, including people attracted to radical political ideas. During the 1930s, communism appealed to some intellectuals and activists because they believed capitalism had failed, while the Communist Party presented itself as an opponent of fascism, unemployment, and racial discrimination. Soviet intelligence services recognized an opportunity. Rather than recruiting only obvious foreign agents, they sought Americans who already possessed access to government information or might eventually rise into influential positions.

The Networks Take Shape

Soviet intelligence operated through several organizations and networks rather than one enormous American spy ring. The Soviet military intelligence service, known as the GRU, and the intelligence branches that eventually became associated with the NKVD recruited sources inside the United States. Couriers and handlers served as connections between Moscow and Americans providing information. Some recruits were ideological communists who believed they were helping build a better world. Others were motivated by money, personal relationships, or political conviction. Successful espionage depended upon secrecy: the most useful source was often the person nobody suspected.

Whittaker Chambers and Washington

One man who later pulled back the curtain was Whittaker Chambers. During the 1930s, Chambers participated in the communist underground and acted as a courier connecting individuals in Washington with Soviet intelligence. He later broke with communism and eventually accused several government officials of participating in underground activities. I would become the most famous man he accused. I denied his allegations throughout my life. But Chambers's broader story mattered because it suggested something Americans found difficult to accept: people with respectable educations and government careers could secretly cooperate with a foreign communist power.

The Ware Group and the Question of Infiltration

One network later discussed extensively was the Ware Group, named for communist agricultural official Harold Ware. Its members and associates included people working within New Deal agencies, and Chambers later claimed that the group became connected to Soviet underground operations. Historians continue to distinguish carefully between Communist Party membership, participation in secret communist organizations, and actual espionage; these were not automatically the same thing. Nevertheless, later documentary evidence confirmed that Soviet intelligence successfully recruited multiple Americans with access to sensitive government information during this broader period.

The Atomic Secret

The most consequential Soviet penetration involved America's greatest wartime secret: the atomic bomb. While American, British, and other Allied scientists worked on the Manhattan Project, Soviet intelligence obtained information from people inside the program. Physicist Klaus Fuchs supplied extensive atomic information to the Soviets. Theodore Hall, another physicist at Los Alamos, also provided important material. Other individuals participated in networks that transmitted information to Moscow. Soviet intelligence did not steal the atomic bomb in a single dramatic operation, but espionage gave Moscow valuable knowledge about the weapon America was secretly constructing.

Friends Against Hitler, Spies Against Each Other

The situation became particularly strange after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The United States and Soviet Union soon became wartime allies against Hitler, and enormous quantities of American equipment were sent to the Soviets. Yet alliance did not end espionage. Moscow continued gathering American political, military, scientific, and diplomatic information. Nations can fight beside one another while simultaneously preparing for the world that will exist when the fighting stops. Soviet leaders understood that Nazi Germany might be today's enemy while the United States could become tomorrow's rival.

What America Did Not Yet Know

By 1945, most Americans had no idea how successful some Soviet intelligence operations had been. Much of the evidence emerged only afterward through defectors, investigations, prosecutions, Soviet records, and the secret American counterintelligence effort later known as the Venona project, which decrypted portions of Soviet wartime intelligence communications. Those materials identified or helped illuminate numerous Soviet intelligence contacts and operations. They also became part of the continuing historical debate surrounding my own activities. I denied being a Soviet agent until my death, although later evidence convinced many historians that I had secretly cooperated with Soviet intelligence.

The Danger of Two Extremes

My story sits uncomfortably inside this history. It would be inaccurate to claim that Soviet espionage in America was simply an invention of frightened politicians. It happened. Moscow recruited Americans, penetrated institutions, and obtained important secrets. But it would be equally dangerous to assume that every communist, left-wing activist, New Deal reformer, or accused government employee was therefore a Soviet spy. That distinction would become increasingly difficult to preserve after World War II. America had discovered a real enemy operating in the shadows. The question was whether the nation could expose the guilty without learning to suspect everyone.

My Name is Edward R. Murrow: The Journalist Who Challenged McCarthy

I was born Egbert Roscoe Murrow in North Carolina in 1908. My family later moved to Washington State, where I attended Washington State College and discovered that words, properly chosen and honestly delivered, could move people. I did not begin my career expecting to become a famous journalist. But radio was transforming how Americans understood their world, and I joined CBS in 1935. Before long, events in Europe would give me both an audience and a responsibility I could not ignore.

This Is London

When Europe went to war, I reported from London. During the Blitz, I stood on rooftops while German bombers crossed the night sky and explosions shook the city beneath me. I began broadcasts with the simple words, "This is London," and tried to allow Americans to hear the war rather than merely be told about it. There was no need to manufacture drama; the burning buildings, air-raid sirens, exhausted civilians, and distant explosions supplied enough. My responsibility was to describe what I witnessed accurately and allow listeners to understand what was at stake.

Reporting a World at War

I covered the war from the air and from the ground, accompanying Allied bombing missions and reporting the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. There are moments when a journalist discovers that language itself seems inadequate. Buchenwald was one of them. I saw bodies, starving prisoners, and evidence of deliberate cruelty on a scale difficult to comprehend. I reported what I had witnessed because the public had a right to know. Journalism, I came to believe, was not merely a profession. When events demanded it, reporting the truth became a public obligation.

A New Fear Comes to America

After the war, the enemy changed. The Soviet Union became America's great international rival, and evidence of Soviet espionage gave Americans legitimate reasons for concern. But legitimate concern can become something else. Communist influence became an accusation capable of destroying careers and reputations. Congressional investigations, loyalty programs, blacklists, and public accusations spread fear throughout American society. Senator Joseph McCarthy understood that fear very well, and he learned how effectively television, newspapers, and radio could magnify it.

Watching Senator McCarthy

McCarthy accused government officials and others of communist connections, disloyalty, or security risks, frequently making claims that went beyond what his evidence could establish. I watched his influence grow. I also watched many journalists report his accusations simply because a United States senator had made them. That presented us with an uncomfortable question: if a powerful man makes an unsupported charge, is the journalist's responsibility fulfilled merely by repeating it? I concluded that it was not. A free press cannot become simply a loudspeaker for those who possess power.

"A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy"

On March 9, 1954, my CBS program See It Now broadcast a report examining McCarthy's methods. We relied heavily upon film and recordings of the senator himself. I wanted Americans to see his statements, his accusations, and his contradictions and then judge them. We did not pretend communism was harmless, nor did we argue that Soviet espionage was imaginary. The question was whether defending America required abandoning fairness, evidence, and the principles that distinguished our society from the totalitarian system we opposed.

The Senator Answers

McCarthy was offered time to respond, and he used it to attack me. He suggested that I had associations with communist causes and attempted to place me under the same cloud of suspicion that had fallen over so many others. I expected nothing less. By then, however, the senator's methods were receiving greater scrutiny. Soon the televised Army-McCarthy hearings allowed millions of Americans to observe him directly. His influence weakened, and in December 1954 the Senate formally censured him.

Television Must Be More Than Entertainment

My concerns extended beyond Joseph McCarthy. Television had acquired extraordinary power, and I feared what would happen if that power were used merely to distract, entertain, and sell products. In 1958, I warned broadcasters that television could teach, illuminate, and inspire—but only if people were determined to use it for those purposes. A technology capable of bringing war, politics, and history into the American living room carried responsibilities alongside its opportunities.

The Responsibility of the Journalist

I died in 1965, only fifty-seven years old, after a lifetime spent speaking into microphones and looking into cameras. I was not always correct, nor should any journalist imagine himself immune from error or bias. If I owe an apology, it is for those occasions when my own judgments may have fallen short of the standards I demanded from others. But I remain convinced of the larger principle: journalists should investigate before accusing, question those who possess power, distinguish evidence from suspicion, and trust citizens with the truth. A free society does not require a press that agrees with its leaders. It requires a press courageous enough to examine them.

1947 — Truman's Loyalty Program and Loyalty Investigations - Told by Edward R. Murrow

The Second World War had ended, but Americans were discovering that victory had not produced peace. The Soviet Union was tightening its control over Eastern Europe, relations with Moscow were deteriorating, and evidence was emerging that Soviet intelligence had operated inside Western governments. In Washington, the question was no longer simply how to confront communism overseas. Americans wanted to know whether men and women serving inside their own government could be trusted.

Truman Takes Action

On March 21, 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9835, establishing what became known as the Federal Employee Loyalty Program. Every department of the executive branch was required to establish procedures for examining the loyalty of its employees, while the FBI conducted background investigations when necessary. Loyalty boards could consider information involving espionage, sabotage, treason, advocacy of violent overthrow of the government, unauthorized disclosure of confidential information, and membership in organizations classified as totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive. Washington was attempting to build a defensive wall inside its own bureaucracy.

A Real Security Problem

It is important to understand why Americans accepted such a program. Their fears were not entirely imaginary. Soviet intelligence had recruited sources in the United States, and cases involving government officials and atomic espionage would soon make that painfully clear. The United States possessed military secrets of enormous value, including information concerning nuclear weapons. No responsible government could simply ignore evidence that a hostile foreign power was attempting to penetrate its institutions. Truman himself strongly opposed communism, even while worrying that Republicans were exploiting the issue politically.

When Suspicion Becomes Evidence

The difficulty came in determining what constituted disloyalty. Investigators examined employment histories, political organizations, acquaintances, publications, and associations. The attorney general maintained a list of organizations considered subversive, and connections to those groups could bring scrutiny. But belonging to an organization, attending a meeting, signing a petition, or knowing someone with radical political beliefs did not necessarily prove espionage. The government was therefore confronting one of democracy's oldest problems: how does a nation investigate genuine threats without treating suspicion as guilt?

Inside the Loyalty Boards

Federal employees whose loyalty came into question could face departmental loyalty boards, and adverse findings could threaten their careers. The standard established by Truman's order allowed removal when "reasonable grounds" existed for believing an employee was disloyal; later rules tightened the standard further. Thousands of cases were examined during the program's existence. Relatively few produced findings of disloyalty, but many employees resigned or were dismissed during the broader loyalty-security era. For those under investigation, even an allegation could carry consequences long before anyone proved that a crime had occurred.

Washington Learns to Whisper

The effects extended beyond official hearings. Government employees increasingly understood that political associations might someday be examined by investigators. An old friendship, organization, meeting, or signature could require explanation. Some Americans believed this vigilance was necessary in an age of Soviet espionage. Others feared that it encouraged conformity and made citizens reluctant to associate with controversial organizations or express unpopular opinions. A democracy can become quieter without passing a law ordering silence. Sometimes people silence themselves because they are uncertain who may be listening.

Politics Enters the Investigation

The loyalty program also unfolded amid fierce political competition. Republicans accused the Truman administration of being too weak toward communism, while Truman sought to demonstrate that his government took internal security seriously. Congressional committees conducted their own investigations, and sensational accusations attracted headlines. The distinction between legitimate counterespionage and political theater could become dangerously thin. Once politicians discovered that an accusation of communist sympathy could destroy an opponent, there was an obvious temptation to make the accusation first and examine the evidence afterward.

The Road Toward McCarthy

Truman's loyalty program did not create McCarthyism, and Senator Joseph McCarthy did not control it. That distinction matters. The program began nearly three years before McCarthy's famous 1950 accusations and represented an executive-branch effort to address security concerns. Yet it helped establish the atmosphere into which McCarthy would step: an America already searching government files, investigating associations, debating communist infiltration, and wondering whom it could trust. When McCarthy announced that communists were hiding inside the State Department, he was striking a match in a room where political tinder had been accumulating for years.

My Name is Dalton Trumbo: The Writer Hollywood Tried to Silence

I was born in Montrose, Colorado, in 1905. I did not arrive in Hollywood with wealth, connections, or some grand family name. After my father died, I worked long hours in a bakery while writing whenever I could. I had every intention of becoming a professional writer, however long Hollywood took to recognize the wisdom of employing me. Eventually it did. By the 1930s and 1940s, I was writing novels and motion pictures, and I became one of the better-paid screenwriters in the business. Hollywood valued good words, and I happened to know how to write them.

Politics and the Communist Party

I was politically active, outspoken, and decidedly left-wing. In 1943, I joined the Communist Party USA. That fact would later become the centerpiece of the government's interest in me. Like many intellectuals and artists of the period, I concerned myself with labor, fascism, poverty, war, and inequality. I did not believe membership in a legal political organization entitled Congress to interrogate a citizen about his beliefs and associations. Washington, naturally, developed a different opinion.

Hollywood Goes to Washington

In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee summoned me and other Hollywood figures to testify about communist influence in the motion-picture industry. The committee wanted straightforward answers about Communist Party membership. I gave them arguments about constitutional rights instead. I was not interested in cooperating with an investigation I regarded as an attack on freedom of speech and association. Ten of us refused to answer certain questions and became known as the Hollywood Ten. Congress cited us for contempt.

The Blacklist Begins

Hollywood executives soon announced that they would not employ us unless we declared ourselves free of communism. Thus began the blacklist. I was convicted of contempt of Congress, sentenced to prison, and in 1950 entered the federal penitentiary at Ashland, Kentucky. I served roughly ten months. I had gone from being one of Hollywood's successful screenwriters to being a federal prisoner whose name studios considered too dangerous to place on a motion picture.

You Can Blacklist a Name

There was, however, a problem with attempting to prevent a writer from writing: the typewriter remained stubbornly indifferent to politics. After prison, I moved with my family to Mexico for a time and continued producing screenplays. I wrote under pseudonyms and through intermediaries, accepting considerably less money than I had once commanded. Hollywood could refuse to put Dalton Trumbo's name on the screen. It could not prevent Dalton Trumbo from supplying the words appearing there.

Winning Without My Name

The absurdity became increasingly difficult to conceal. Roman Holiday, released in 1953, was based on a story I had written, but my name could not officially appear. The story won an Academy Award credited at the time to another writer who had acted as my front. Then The Brave One, written under the name Robert Rich, won another Academy Award for its story in 1957. Apparently my work was unacceptable when attached to my name and award-worthy when it was not. I appreciated the irony.

The Blacklist Cracks

By 1960, the system was weakening. Director Otto Preminger publicly announced that I would receive screen credit for Exodus. Kirk Douglas also supported giving me credit for my screenplay for Spartacus. My name appeared openly on major Hollywood productions again. The blacklist did not disappear in a single dramatic instant, nor was I its only victim, but the wall surrounding Hollywood had begun to break. After more than a decade of secret work, Dalton Trumbo was once again permitted to admit that Dalton Trumbo wrote Dalton Trumbo's movies.

The Writer Returns

I continued writing, eventually receiving recognition for work that had been denied me during the blacklist years. I lived long enough to see Hollywood reconsider much of what it had done during the Red Scare. I died in Los Angeles in 1976. By then, my story had become inseparable from arguments about communism, congressional power, blacklisting, artistic freedom, and whether Americans should suffer professional punishment because of their political associations.

1947 — HUAC and Hollywood - Told by Dalton Trumbo

Hollywood had spent the Second World War producing stories about soldiers, sacrifice, democracy, and defeating dictatorship. Then Washington decided it was time to investigate the people writing those stories. In October 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities—HUAC—opened highly publicized hearings into alleged communist influence in the motion-picture industry. I knew perfectly well why they were interested. I was a successful screenwriter, politically outspoken, and a member of the Communist Party USA. In the atmosphere of 1947, that combination practically guaranteed an invitation to Washington.

Why Congress Came to Hollywood

The committee's concerns did not emerge from nowhere. The Communist Party USA had connections to the international communist movement, and Soviet espionage inside America was real. Communists and communist sympathizers had also been active in Hollywood unions and political organizations. But HUAC wanted to know something more: whether communists were using motion pictures to influence the American public. Hollywood reached millions of people every week, and a movie could carry political ideas into theaters from California to New York. If communists controlled even part of that machinery, investigators argued, movies might become instruments of propaganda.

Friendly and Unfriendly Witnesses

The hearings quickly divided Hollywood into two camps. "Friendly witnesses," including studio executives and performers such as Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, answered questions about communist activity they believed they had encountered. Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, testified that communists had attempted to exert influence within the organization, although he also expressed opposition to outlawing political parties merely because their ideas were unpopular. Other witnesses refused to cooperate with the committee's questioning. Washington called us "unfriendly." I assure you, the description was not intended as a compliment.

The Question Everyone Was Waiting For

The committee wanted witnesses to answer questions about Communist Party membership and identify other communists. I believed Congress had no constitutional right to demand an accounting of my political beliefs and associations. The committee believed it absolutely did have authority to investigate communist influence. When I appeared, the exchanges became combative. I attempted to make statements and challenge the committee's premises while members repeatedly demanded direct answers. Chairman J. Parnell Thomas and his colleagues were not interested in receiving a lecture on constitutional liberty from a Hollywood screenwriter. Unfortunately for them, I was quite interested in delivering one.

The Hollywood Ten

Nine other men joined me in refusing to answer certain questions about communist affiliation. We became known as the Hollywood Ten: Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and myself. We argued that the First Amendment protected our political beliefs and associations. Congress rejected our position and cited us for contempt. The courts ultimately did not accept our First Amendment defense against the committee's authority to ask the questions. One by one, the machinery of prosecution began moving.

Hollywood Protects Itself

The studios did not wait for the legal arguments to finish. In November 1947, leading motion-picture executives met at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and issued what became known as the Waldorf Statement. They announced that the Hollywood Ten would be fired or suspended without pay and not reemployed until cleared of contempt charges and able to demonstrate that they were not communists. The blacklist had begun. It was not formally a federal law ordering studios to fire us. It was an industry policy created under enormous political and public pressure—and that distinction did little to help anyone who could no longer find work.

A Battle Larger Than Ten Writers

The controversy spread far beyond the ten of us. Actors, directors, producers, composers, and writers discovered that past political associations could threaten future employment. Some witnesses cooperated and named people they knew or believed to be communists. Others refused. Still others attempted to distance themselves from organizations they had joined years before. Supporters of the investigations argued that Hollywood had every right to protect itself from communist influence. Critics argued that political beliefs were being transformed into a test for employment.

The Price of Defiance

I was convicted of contempt of Congress and eventually sentenced to prison. In 1950, I entered the federal correctional institution at Ashland, Kentucky. That was the rather substantial price of my refusal to answer the committee as it demanded. But the larger punishment was already unfolding in Hollywood. My name had become professionally poisonous. Studios that had once paid handsomely for my screenplays would no longer place Dalton Trumbo in the credits.

The Question Hollywood Left Behind

I was a communist, and that fact should not be concealed simply because the blacklist later became infamous. Soviet communism was also far more repressive than many American leftists of my generation were willing to acknowledge. But the question raised in 1947 remains larger than my political judgment: when does investigation of a genuine security threat become punishment for political association? HUAC uncovered real communist activity, but its hearings also helped create a system in which suspicion could destroy careers without a criminal conviction. Hollywood had spent years making films about defending American freedom. In 1947, we discovered how much harder it was to agree on what that freedom meant.

1947–1950 — The Hollywood Blacklist and Its Consequences - Told by Trumbo

The blacklist did not arrive as a law passed by Congress. No federal statute appeared declaring that Dalton Trumbo and others could never write another motion picture. Something more practical happened. In November 1947, after ten of us were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer certain questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, leading studio executives issued the Waldorf Statement. The Hollywood Ten would be fired or suspended, and the studios declared they would not knowingly employ communists. Washington had applied the pressure; Hollywood would enforce the punishment.

When a Name Becomes Dangerous

A blacklist is remarkably effective because it does not require prison bars. Studios, producers, and networks simply stop calling. Writers cannot sell scripts under their own names. Actors stop receiving roles. Directors lose projects. People suspected of communist membership, sympathy, or association discovered that a political controversy could become an employment sentence. Some had been Communist Party members. Others had supported organizations associated with the political left or refused to cooperate with investigators. The precise reasons varied, but the result was often the same: a career could disappear.

Hollywood Begins Looking Over Its Shoulder

Fear spread quickly because nobody knew exactly where the boundaries were. Political organizations that had seemed respectable during the fight against fascism could suddenly become liabilities. People examined old memberships, petitions, friendships, and meetings. Organizations such as the American Legion and publications including the anti-communist newsletter Counterattack helped publicize accusations and lists of alleged communist connections. In 1950, the publication Red Channels identified 151 people in radio and television whom it associated with communist or supposedly subversive causes. You did not necessarily need a criminal conviction to become unemployable. Sometimes appearing on the wrong list was enough.

The Choice to Name Names

For those summoned before congressional investigators, the decision could become brutal. Cooperate, answer questions, and perhaps identify other people—or refuse and risk contempt charges and professional ruin. Some witnesses eventually named individuals they knew as communists or former communists. Others invoked constitutional protections or refused to cooperate. Friendships shattered. Colleagues became suspicious of one another. Hollywood, a town famous for manufactured drama, had acquired a genuine one in which careers depended upon what people were willing to say about themselves and their acquaintances.

The Hollywood Ten Go to Prison

We fought our contempt convictions through the courts, but we lost. In 1950, I entered the federal correctional institution at Ashland, Kentucky, where I served roughly ten months. Other members of the Hollywood Ten also served sentences. Our punishment for contempt of Congress was legal and imposed by the courts. The blacklist was something different: an industry employment system that continued after the prison sentences ended. Serving your time did not mean your career was waiting outside the prison gate.

Writing Without Dalton Trumbo

There was one flaw in Hollywood's elegant arrangement: blacklisting my name did not remove my ability to write. I began working through intermediaries and pseudonyms, producing screenplays for far less money than I had earned before. Blacklisted writers sometimes used "fronts"—people who submitted scripts and appeared to be their authors. It was an underground economy operating inside one of America's most visible industries. Audiences could watch a movie written by a blacklisted screenwriter without ever knowing whose words the actors were speaking.

The Consequences Went Beyond Hollywood

The blacklist affected more than paychecks. Families lost income, marriages suffered, friendships ended, and reputations were permanently damaged. Some people left the United States to find employment overseas. Others abandoned their professions. At the same time, supporters of the blacklist argued that private companies had no obligation to employ communists and that Soviet espionage made communist influence a legitimate national concern. That argument explains why the blacklist received substantial public support. America was frightened, and not every reason for that fear was imaginary.

The Price of Fear

I will not pretend that my own politics were beyond criticism. I had joined the Communist Party, and I underestimated or rationalized realities about Soviet dictatorship that deserved condemnation. But that does not settle the larger question. Between 1947 and 1950, Hollywood demonstrated how rapidly a society facing a genuine threat can move from investigating espionage to policing associations and opinions. Some people under suspicion truly were communists; others were not. Some accusations were well founded; others were weak. The enduring lesson of the blacklist is that those distinctions matter. Once fear makes accusation sufficient punishment, discovering who is actually guilty becomes almost beside the point.

Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Question of Soviet Spies - Told by Hiss

In the summer of 1948, I was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department official who had attended the Yalta Conference and helped organize the founding conference of the United Nations. Then, on August 3, Whittaker Chambers appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and accused me of belonging to a secret communist underground during the 1930s. I denied the charge. Within weeks, a dispute between two men would become one of the most sensational political controversies in America.

Who Was Whittaker Chambers?

Chambers was no ordinary accuser. He was a journalist and former communist who admitted that he had participated in the communist underground before breaking with the movement. He claimed that during the 1930s he had known me as a fellow participant in a secret communist network in Washington. At first, his public accusations centered on communist activity rather than espionage. I appeared before HUAC and denied that I had ever been a communist. When shown Chambers's photograph, I initially said I did not recognize him. Later, after seeing him in person, I identified him as a man I had known under the name George Crosley—but I rejected his account of our relationship.

Two Men Cannot Both Be Right

The confrontation became irresistible to newspapers. Here were two educated, articulate Americans telling completely incompatible stories. I portrayed Chambers as a man making false accusations. Chambers insisted that I was lying about my past. I even filed a libel lawsuit against him. That decision forced the dispute toward evidence rather than accusation, because Chambers was now required to defend what he had said. He responded by producing materials that transformed the case.

Documents from the Past

Chambers produced documents he said I had supplied to him in 1938 for transmission to Soviet intelligence. Among them were handwritten notes and copies of State Department documents allegedly typed on a Woodstock typewriter associated with my family. Investigators examined the papers, the typewriter, dates, and details of our earlier relationship. The controversy was no longer merely about whether I had attended communist meetings. It had become a question of whether a respected American government official had secretly provided government information to a Soviet underground network.

The Pumpkin Papers

Then came the episode that gave the case its most memorable name. Chambers had hidden microfilm and other material on his Maryland farm, placing some film inside a hollowed-out pumpkin for safekeeping. The press quickly christened the evidence the "Pumpkin Papers." Congressman Richard Nixon, then a relatively young member of HUAC, pursued the investigation aggressively and became nationally prominent because of it. What might otherwise have remained a complicated argument about documents and testimony became political theater followed by millions of Americans.

Why I Was Charged With Perjury

If the government believed espionage had occurred, why was I not tried as a spy? The alleged transfer of documents dated to the 1930s, and the statute of limitations prevented an espionage prosecution based on those acts. Federal prosecutors instead charged me with perjury for statements I made under oath denying that I had passed documents to Chambers and denying certain contacts with him. My first trial began in 1949 and ended with a jury unable to reach a verdict. The government tried me again.

The Verdict

On January 21, 1950, the second jury found me guilty on two counts of perjury. I was sentenced to five years in federal prison and eventually served more than three years. I continued to insist that I was innocent. But to millions of Americans, the verdict appeared to confirm something frightening: communist influence had reached into respected levels of the United States government. My case became political ammunition for those who argued that Washington had failed to recognize communist infiltration.

What Later Evidence Revealed

The case did not end with my conviction. Decades later, historians gained greater access to the Venona decrypts—secret American efforts to decipher Soviet intelligence communications—and eventually to additional Soviet-era records. A 1945 Venona message concerning a Soviet source code-named "ALES" has been interpreted by many historians and intelligence scholars as referring to me, although that identification and some details surrounding it have been debated. Taken together with other evidence, these records have led many historians to conclude that I probably did cooperate with Soviet intelligence.

The Case That Changed America

My case arrived at precisely the moment when Americans were asking whether Soviet spies had penetrated their government. The answer to that broader question is now unquestionably yes: Soviet intelligence successfully recruited multiple sources in the United States. The harder historical task is determining guilt person by person, evidence by evidence. I maintained my innocence until my death in 1996, and history continues to examine the record I left behind. But whatever judgment you reach about me, remember what happened next. Only weeks after my conviction, Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped before an audience in Wheeling, West Virginia, claiming communists had infiltrated the State Department. America was already frightened. My case helped convince millions that the spies might be closer than they had ever imagined.

1949–1953 — The Second Red Scare Explodes - Told by Joseph McCarthy

If you want to understand why America became consumed with communism in these years, you must understand what Americans saw happening around them. In a remarkably short period, the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb, China became communist, Americans learned more about Soviet espionage, war erupted in Korea, and American soldiers were fighting communist armies. People wanted to know how so much had gone wrong so quickly. I was one of the men who claimed Washington itself deserved investigation.

The Soviet Union Gets the Bomb

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic weapon. Americans had believed their nuclear advantage would last longer. Suddenly, the nation that controlled much of Eastern Europe possessed the weapon that had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The shock became even greater as evidence emerged that Soviet intelligence had penetrated the Manhattan Project. Klaus Fuchs admitted supplying atomic information to the Soviets, while investigations uncovered additional espionage connections. Moscow's bomb had been built by Soviet scientists, but espionage had provided valuable information that helped their effort.

China Falls to Communism

Then came China. In October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China after communist forces defeated Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists on the mainland. Americans began asking, "Who lost China?" The question was politically explosive. China had not belonged to the United States to lose, of course, but critics charged that American diplomats and policymakers had misunderstood or mishandled the communist advance. With the Soviet Union dominating much of Eastern Europe and Mao controlling the world's most populous country, communism appeared to be expanding rapidly.

The Hiss Case Shocks Washington

Then there was Alger Hiss. Hiss had served in important government positions and participated in major diplomatic affairs. Whittaker Chambers accused him of involvement in a communist underground and of providing government documents. Hiss denied the accusations, but in January 1950 he was convicted of perjury for lying under oath about his dealings with Chambers. Later evidence would persuade many historians that Hiss had indeed cooperated with Soviet intelligence. To Americans at the time, his conviction raised a disturbing question: if a man with Hiss's credentials could be compromised, who else might be?

I Enter the Fight

In February 1950, I spoke before a Republican women's organization in Wheeling, West Virginia, and charged that communists had infiltrated the State Department. Reports disagree about the exact number I initially claimed, and I subsequently used different figures. That inconsistency became one of the strongest criticisms against me. But the central accusation captured national attention. I argued that America's recent setbacks could not simply be dismissed as unfortunate events abroad. Washington needed to determine whether people sympathetic to communism or presenting security risks remained inside the government.

Korea Turns Fear Into War

Only months later, on June 25, 1950, communist North Korea invaded South Korea. American troops entered the conflict under the United Nations banner. Then Chinese forces intervened on a massive scale. Now Americans were not merely reading about communist expansion in newspapers; American families were sending sons to fight it. Tens of thousands of Americans would die in Korea. Against that background, accusations that communists might also be operating within the United States became far more frightening.

The Rosenbergs and Atomic Espionage

The espionage investigation surrounding Julius and Ethel Rosenberg intensified those fears. Julius Rosenberg had participated in a Soviet espionage network that obtained military and technological information, including atomic-related material through his brother-in-law David Greenglass. Julius and Ethel were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951 and executed in 1953. Later Soviet records and Venona decrypts strongly confirmed Julius's espionage. Evidence concerning Ethel's precise operational role is more complicated, but the case convinced many Americans that Soviet intelligence networks were not theoretical—they had existed inside the United States.

Fear Spreads Through American Society

Communist investigations expanded far beyond my work. The FBI investigated suspected espionage and subversion. Congressional committees questioned witnesses. Federal employees faced loyalty and security reviews. Hollywood maintained blacklists. Universities, unions, businesses, and local governments confronted accusations of communist influence. Some investigations uncovered genuine communist activity. Others damaged people whose evidence of wrongdoing amounted to associations, political beliefs, or accusations that could not be substantiated. The distinction between identifying a spy and identifying someone with unpopular politics became increasingly important—and increasingly difficult for the public to see.

America Demands Answers

By 1953, the Second Red Scare had become a defining feature of American life. Understand the sequence: Soviet atomic bomb, communist China, Hiss, Korea, espionage cases, and continuing confrontation with Moscow. The fear did not come entirely from imagination. Soviet espionage was real, communist dictatorships were expanding their influence, and Americans were fighting and dying in Korea. But real danger does not make every accusation true. That was the line America struggled to maintain—and the line my own career would eventually cross. When fear becomes powerful enough, the man promising to expose the enemy can become almost as important as the evidence he possesses.

1950–1954 — McCarthyism: Accusations, Hearings, and Fear - Told by McCarthy

My name became attached to an era because I asked a question that frightened millions of Americans: had communists and security risks penetrated the United States government? In February 1950, I delivered a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, charging that communists were working within the State Department. Reports differed over the number I claimed, and I later used different figures. My critics seized upon those inconsistencies. The newspapers seized upon something else—the possibility that America's enemies might already be inside Washington.

Why Americans Listened

I did not create America's fear of communism. The Soviet Union had acquired the atomic bomb. Mao's communists had taken control of China. Alger Hiss had been convicted of perjury after denying key parts of Whittaker Chambers's accusations. Soviet espionage networks were being uncovered, and by June 1950 Americans were fighting communist forces in Korea. Those were facts, not fantasies. I argued that if communist intelligence had penetrated American institutions before, the government had a duty to determine whether dangerous individuals remained in positions of influence.

The Tydings Committee Investigates My Charges

The Senate responded to my accusations by creating an investigation under Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland. I presented cases involving people I considered communists, communist sympathizers, or security risks. The committee's Democratic majority ultimately concluded that my broad charges were fraudulent and unsupported. I rejected that conclusion and accused the investigation of attempting to bury the communist issue. The confrontation taught me something politically valuable: every attempt to discredit me could be presented to my supporters as further evidence that Washington's establishment feared what I was uncovering.

Accusation Becomes a Weapon

My methods were aggressive. I named individuals, questioned their associations, examined government security procedures, and made charges in public that sometimes exceeded what the available evidence could prove. A person's past memberships, friendships, writings, or political activities could become part of the case against him. I insisted that national security demanded hard questions. My opponents argued that I was reversing a fundamental American principle—forcing accused people to prove their loyalty instead of requiring their accusers to prove wrongdoing. That criticism would follow me for the rest of my career.

McCarthyism Becomes Bigger Than McCarthy

Soon my name described something much larger than anything I personally controlled. "McCarthyism" became a term for accusations of communist sympathy or disloyalty made with insufficient evidence and for tactics that used public suspicion to damage reputations. But not every anti-communist investigation was mine. HUAC was a House committee operating before my rise. President Truman's loyalty program began in 1947. The FBI conducted its own counterintelligence investigations, and Hollywood's blacklist was enforced by private employers. Yet my public prominence made me the symbol of the entire atmosphere.

I Gain Investigative Power

After Republicans won control of the Senate in the 1952 elections, I became chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953. Now I possessed greater authority to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. My investigations reached the State Department, government information programs, overseas libraries, and other agencies. Witnesses were questioned about communist connections and security concerns. Supporters believed someone was finally forcing Washington to answer uncomfortable questions. Critics saw hearings in which insinuation itself could become punishment.

Fear Enters the Workplace

Beyond Washington, Americans watched what happened to people accused of communist associations. Teachers, entertainers, government employees, union members, and others could face investigations or lose employment. Some accused individuals had genuinely belonged to the Communist Party; a smaller number had participated in Soviet espionage. Others had simply joined controversial organizations or associated with people on the political left. Americans began learning that there was an enormous difference between proving someone was a Soviet spy and suggesting that someone had once known a communist.

Then I Challenged the Army

By 1954, my investigations reached the United States Army. A bitter dispute developed involving my committee, Army officials, my chief counsel Roy Cohn, and former committee consultant G. David Schine, who had been drafted into the Army. My side accused the Army of improper treatment and of failing to address security concerns; Army officials charged that Cohn and I had pressured them to provide favorable treatment for Schine. The resulting Army-McCarthy hearings would be televised nationally. For years Americans had read descriptions of my methods. Now millions were going to watch them themselves.

The Danger I Failed to Respect

Communist espionage was real. Soviet agents did penetrate American institutions, and pretending otherwise would distort history. But another truth must stand beside it. Not every person I accused was a communist agent, and suspicion could not substitute for evidence simply because the international danger was genuine. I believed that fighting communism required relentless investigation, and for years I treated restraint as weakness. That was my failure. A senator possesses enormous power when he places a citizen's name before the public. When that power outruns the evidence, the investigation can cease protecting freedom and begin damaging it. That is why my name became not merely the name of a senator, but a warning.

1954–1960s — Murrow, the Army-McCarthy Hearings, and the Decline of the Red Scare - Told by Edward R. Murrow and Dalton Trumbo

The Television Screen Changes the Battle

Edward R. Murrow: 1954–1960s — Murrow, the Army-McCarthy Hearings, and the Decline of the Red Scare - Told by Edward R. Murrow and Dalton Trumbo. By 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy had spent years making accusations concerning communists and security risks in the federal government. I had watched him carefully. On March 9, my CBS program See It Now broadcast "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy." We relied heavily upon McCarthy's own recorded words. My purpose was not to argue that communism posed no danger. Soviet espionage was real. The question was whether fear of that danger permitted a senator to make accusations that evidence could not always sustain.

Dalton Trumbo: I watched the same America from a rather less comfortable seat. I had already appeared before HUAC, been convicted of contempt of Congress, served time in federal prison, and discovered that Hollywood could admire my writing while finding my name terribly inconvenient. Murrow was confronting McCarthy, while I was living with the larger culture of blacklisting and suspicion that McCarthy had come to symbolize. The senator did not invent the Hollywood blacklist—Congress and the studios managed that before his rise—but his name had become shorthand for an era when accusation could be professionally devastating.

McCarthy Answers Murrow

Edward R. Murrow: We offered Senator McCarthy an opportunity to respond to our broadcast. On April 6, 1954, he did. Rather than simply answering our criticism, he attacked my associations and attempted to connect me with communist causes. It was a familiar method: place the critic under suspicion and force him to defend himself. I answered later that McCarthy had failed to address the substance of our report. A journalist should not become the opposition party, but neither should he become a stenographer for power. Sometimes the evidence requires us to say that an accusation has not been proved.

Dalton Trumbo: That method was familiar to Hollywood. Once someone's name became associated with communism, the accusation developed a remarkable ability to reproduce itself. Perhaps you attended the wrong meeting, signed the wrong petition, knew the wrong person, or refused to answer the right committee's questions in the desired manner. Employers did not always wait for a courtroom to establish guilt. Why should they? Fear was quicker, cheaper, and considerably more efficient.

America Watches the Army-McCarthy Hearings

Edward R. Murrow: Then television did what no newspaper description could accomplish. Beginning in April 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings were broadcast to a national audience. The dispute involved McCarthy's committee, the Army, chief counsel Roy Cohn, and G. David Schine, a former committee consultant who had entered military service. McCarthy's side charged that the Army had used Schine as leverage against investigations of security problems; Army officials accused McCarthy and Cohn of seeking preferential treatment for Schine. For thirty-six days of hearings, Americans could observe the arguments themselves.

Dalton Trumbo: And television is unforgiving when a performance goes badly. One of the defining moments came on June 9, when McCarthy raised the past association of Fred Fisher, a young lawyer at the firm of Army counsel Joseph Welch, with the National Lawyers Guild. Welch responded with the famous challenge about whether McCarthy had any sense of decency. It was not the single moment that destroyed McCarthy—his political decline was already underway—but it crystallized what many viewers had begun to think. The prosecutor was becoming the accused in the court of public opinion.

The Senate Turns Against McCarthy

Edward R. Murrow: The hearings damaged McCarthy's standing, but the constitutional response came from his fellow senators. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67–22 to condemn him on two counts concerning his conduct toward a Senate elections subcommittee and toward a senator involved in examining his behavior. The formal term used was condemnation, although history commonly describes the action as censure. McCarthy remained a senator, but his influence collapsed. He died in 1957 at only forty-eight years of age.

Dalton Trumbo: Unfortunately, McCarthy's fall did not cause every blacklist to evaporate. Hollywood continued denying work to people whose political histories made studios nervous. I kept writing because writers are troublesome creatures to silence. I worked under pseudonyms and through fronts. In 1957, The Brave One, which I had written under the name Robert Rich, won an Academy Award for its story. There was something wonderfully absurd about Hollywood giving prizes to work produced by a man it officially refused to employ.

The Blacklist Begins to Break

Edward R. Murrow: By the later 1950s, the political atmosphere was changing. Americans remained strongly anti-communist, and the Cold War itself was becoming more dangerous, not less. But McCarthy's particular style of accusation had lost much of its prestige. Court decisions also strengthened protections in some cases involving political association and congressional investigations. The country was gradually learning that opposing communism and defending constitutional liberty did not have to be contradictory goals.

Dalton Trumbo: Then came 1960. Producer-director Otto Preminger announced that I would receive credit for writing Exodus, and Kirk Douglas supported giving me screen credit for Spartacus. My name appeared openly on major motion pictures again. The blacklist did not end everywhere at once, and many people never fully recovered the careers they had lost. But once major productions openly employed Dalton Trumbo, pretending that blacklisted writers did not exist became considerably more difficult.

What the Red Scare Left Behind

Edward R. Murrow: The decline of McCarthyism did not prove that Soviet espionage had been imaginary. We now know that Soviet intelligence successfully recruited Americans and obtained important government secrets. But discovering real spies requires evidence. That distinction is essential. A democracy becomes vulnerable when it refuses to investigate genuine enemies, but it becomes something less democratic when accusation, association, and fear are permitted to stand in place of proof.

Dalton Trumbo: On that point, Murrow and I can agree. I was a communist, and with the benefit of history I should have recognized far more clearly the brutality of the Soviet system and the blindness that sometimes infected those of us on the American left. But my political errors did not make every method used against me wise or just. That is perhaps the uncomfortable lesson of the Red Scare: America faced a real enemy, yet fear of that enemy sometimes caused Americans to injure one another. Defending freedom requires vigilance against those who threaten it—and vigilance against our own temptation to abandon it.

1954–1960s — What McCarthy Got Right About Communism and Why American Communism Declined - Told by Joseph McCarthy and Dalton Trumbo

Joseph McCarthy: Trumbo and I would disagree about almost everything concerning my methods, but history has established something my harshest critics cannot honestly erase: Soviet espionage inside the United States was real. Moscow recruited Americans, penetrated government institutions, and obtained valuable information, including atomic secrets. Alger Hiss's case raised serious concerns, Julius Rosenberg participated in Soviet espionage, and later evidence from the Venona decrypts revealed additional Soviet intelligence connections. The threat was not something I invented in 1950.

Dalton Trumbo: On that narrow point, Senator, I will not quarrel with the evidence. Soviet intelligence operated in America, and the Communist Party USA was influenced heavily by Moscow. I ought to know something about the Party—I belonged to it. Some American communists convinced themselves that the Soviet Union represented humanity's progressive future. We were particularly eager to discuss America's genuine failures involving poverty, racism, and labor conditions while being considerably less enthusiastic about Stalin's prisons, purges, political repression, and dictatorship. That imbalance deserves criticism.

How Much Influence Did Communists Have?

Joseph McCarthy: Communist influence was not measured merely by the number of Communist Party members. A disciplined minority could acquire influence through government positions, unions, universities, publications, cultural organizations, and political movements. Communists and fellow travelers participated in organizations that sometimes attracted thousands of noncommunists around causes such as labor rights, antifascism, racial equality, and peace. Soviet intelligence understood that influence did not require winning an American election. Access to information, institutions, and influential individuals could be far more valuable.

Dalton Trumbo: But there is where your argument could become dangerous. Communist involvement in an organization did not transform every person in it into an agent of Moscow. Communists participated in labor organizing and civil-rights campaigns alongside liberals, socialists, Christians, and people with no radical politics whatsoever. Yes, Party members attempted to influence organizations and cultural institutions. Yes, Moscow exercised substantial influence over Party leadership. But a communist activist, a Soviet sympathizer, and a Soviet spy were three different things. Your methods too often blurred those categories.

Hollywood and the Battle for Culture

Joseph McCarthy: Hollywood demonstrated why Americans worried about cultural influence. Communist Party members worked as writers, directors, actors, and organizers. Motion pictures could influence millions of people. During World War II, films such as Mission to Moscow presented Stalin's Soviet Union in an extraordinarily favorable light. After the war, investigators naturally wanted to know whether communists were attempting to influence American entertainment and public opinion.

Dalton Trumbo: They were attempting to influence culture; political people generally do. I certainly brought political convictions to my writing. But that is not evidence that Moscow secretly dictated Hollywood's output. Mission to Moscow, incidentally, was produced during the wartime alliance when the Roosevelt administration itself wanted Americans to view the Soviets more favorably. Communist influence existed in Hollywood, particularly within political and labor circles, but the claim that communists controlled the American movie industry went far beyond the evidence.

1956 Changes Everything

Joseph McCarthy: Then the communists themselves provided evidence more devastating than anything an American congressional committee could produce. In February 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered his "Secret Speech," acknowledging major crimes committed under Stalin, including purges and abuses of power. Then, in October and November, Hungarians rose against their communist government. Soviet tanks entered Budapest and crushed the uprising. Americans watched a government claiming to represent workers send armored forces against workers demanding greater freedom.

Dalton Trumbo: That year was catastrophic for American communism. Khrushchev's revelations forced Party members to confront crimes they had dismissed, doubted, or rationalized. Hungary made matters worse. People resigned from the Communist Party USA, friendships and political organizations fractured, and intellectual support declined. Party membership had already fallen sharply from its wartime high, pressured by government investigations, prosecutions, internal disputes, and changing political conditions. After 1956, defending the Soviet model became considerably harder for anyone claiming to value political freedom.

The Communist Party Shrinks

Joseph McCarthy: By the later 1950s and 1960s, the Communist Party USA was a shadow of the political force it had once hoped to become. Federal investigations, exposure of Soviet espionage, internal defections, and revelations about Stalinism damaged its credibility. Meanwhile, Americans could compare the prosperity and political freedoms of the United States—imperfect though they were—with the censorship, one-party government, and repression found throughout much of the Soviet bloc.

Dalton Trumbo: And American society itself was changing. Many causes that communists had tried to claim—civil rights, better working conditions, opposition to discrimination—could be pursued through organizations that rejected Soviet communism entirely. The American civil-rights movement, for example, developed enormous power without becoming a communist movement. Reform did not require allegiance to Moscow. That realization deprived the Communist Party of one of its strongest arguments: that radical social change required communist revolution.

What McCarthy Got Wrong

Joseph McCarthy: I maintain that America had every reason to investigate communist infiltration. Later evidence proved Soviet espionage more extensive than many Americans understood during my lifetime. I was correct about the existence of the danger and about the need to take security seriously.

Dalton Trumbo: But being correct that spies existed did not make you correct about every person you accused. That is the distinction history must preserve. Evidence discovered about Rosenberg does not retroactively prove an unrelated accusation against somebody else. Your tendency to publicize allegations before establishing them helped turn legitimate counterespionage into something many Americans came to associate with intimidation and political destruction.

How Communism Defeated Its Own Reputation

Joseph McCarthy: Perhaps the greatest blow to communism ultimately came from communism itself. Stalin's crimes, Soviet repression in Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall after 1961, and continuing revelations about life under communist governments made Soviet claims about liberation increasingly difficult to believe. Americans did not need me to explain what Soviet tanks in Budapest meant.

Dalton Trumbo: On that, Senator, we can agree. I opposed what was done to me during the blacklist, but that does not require me to pretend that Soviet communism deserved defending. American communists—including people like me—were sometimes terribly wrong about the regime we had viewed too generously. The larger lesson is therefore more complicated than either side preferred in the 1950s. America really did face Soviet espionage and communist influence. McCarthy really did make accusations that exceeded his evidence. Both truths can exist simultaneously. A free society must expose those secretly serving a hostile power, but it should do so with evidence strong enough that fear never has to take its place.

Let this be a warning to all the influencers out there. If you side with Russia and spin the dangers and oppression that they push, you will be supporting something that would take away your freedoms and all the things you do love about the United States.