McCarthy's Ghost

One of the strangest accusations in the Watergate scandal is the charge that the press has been guilty of "McCarthyism." Joe's unhappy ghost was raised most insistently by Wisconsin's William Proxmire, who inherited McCarthy's Senate seat and who has privately stated that he thinks President Nixon is "up to his ears" in the Watergate mess. Said Proxmire: the secondhand press accounts of what White House Counsel John W. Dean III told federal investigators represent a "McCarthyistic destruction of the President." Vice President Spiro Agnew followed with an attack on the publication of anonymous "hearsay" as "a very short jump from McCarthyism."

True, the press has published a number of Watergate disclosures--plainly labeled as secondhand--that would not be accepted under the rules of evidence in a court of law. But the press has no power to subpoena witnesses or to compel testimony (or, for that matter, to imprison its targets). If a reporter gets information from a reliable source who insists on anonymity he has no choice but to preserve that anonymity. When he tries to check an accusation with the official involved, that official is free to lie about it to a reporter--and sometimes does.

All this is a long jump indeed from Joe's irresponsible guerrilla tactics back in the days when McCarthyism was a kind of Washington swamp fever. He dealt in false allegations that various public officials (and distinguished private citizens too) were either Communists or dupes of Communism. He attacked not just alleged Communists but also their colleagues, friends and relatives. He almost never seriously tried to check facts. Finally, he was backed by a whole apparatus of secret interrogations and blacklists by which a victim could be deprived of reputation and livelihood without any chance to defend himself. The term McCarthyism should be used with precision--as a synonym for nothing less than demagoguery and deceit.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.