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McCarthyism, Disinformation, New York Times, Gus Hall, dezinformatsia, The Innocence of Muslims, February 17th Martyrs' Brigade, Benghazi attack

Foggy Foggy Bottom


Mary A. Nicholas image

By —— Bio and Archives May 23, 2013

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When you hear the phrase “witch hunt” propagandists have conditioned you to make an association with “McCarthyism” a period of time when it shrieked about clearing people loyal to the Soviet Union out of government positions. Various government departments harbored traitors such as the Rosenbergs and Hiss but the nexus was at State. With the aid of the left, McCarthyism- - inaccurately- - has come to mean accusations against innocent people and smearing them in public. But to put “McCarthyism” in perspective, the word itself was coined by the KGB in Moscow and first used in The Daily Worker, the communist party’s newspaper. The campaign against “McCarthyism”was initiated by Gus Hall in 1950 at a special session of the National Committee of the Communist Party and endorsed by Stalin himself in 1952. (Budenz, The Bolshevik Invasion of the West,124) Why? There was one simple reason: McCarthy’s exposures were gaining traction with the public and the left needed to shut him down.
McCarthy was not an elitist and may also have been guilty of flamboyancy, abusive language toward his enemies, failing to “play” politics, and making some mistakes, but history has proven the overwhelming truth of his claims as documented by recently released FBI documents, Congressional records, testimony by Soviet agents or defectors such as Budenz, Bentley, Chambers and others, as well as the Venona intercepts. Just a cursory look at charts compiled by the FBI indicate not only individuals, but whole networks employed in government positions but working for Moscow. In this light it is interesting to compare reactions to the Benghazi hearings in Congress with the time of McCarthy. In many cases, the reactions are eerily similar---some verbatim! Let’s start with the word “witch hunt” itself. This was used by many character assassins of McCarthy and the press, including. The Daily Worker that constantly referred to McCarthy’s “witch hunts.” Faithful to this oldie but goodie, Democratic party line folks like Dick Durbin said of the Benghazi hearings, the “witch hunt continues,” and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Eugene Robinson, Cher, Barbara Boxer, Chris Hayes, and Donna Brazile reflexly chimed in. Another favorite critique against McCarthy was that his charges were “stale and warmed over,” there was nothing new or substantive. Many of the cases McCarthy highlighted had already been brought to light by the Dies Committee or the Lee list compiled by the House. McCarthy did not deny this and even highlighted it, questioning why people still remained in government employment when their loyalty to the country was questioned. The same charges have been brought against the Benghazi hearings—with Carney saying the Benghazi probe was “non-substantive,” Hillary Clinton with her infamous: “What difference does it make?” and John Kerry, new to Foggy Bottom, obediently nodding that the “hearings revealed nothing new.”
To say that the left smeared McCarthy doesn’t begin to describe their philippics against him. They made him-- not Hiss, or the Rosenbergs-- the most hated man in America with his punishment political death by lethal injection from the press: “McCarthy Accused of Twisting Facts” and “Tydings Charges M’Carthy Perjured Himself at Inquiry” and “Tydings Calls McCarthy’s charges ‘an unmitigated lie.’” (The New York Times) Accusations included “fraud and deceit,” “deception,” half-truths and that he was guilty of the “big lie.” (Evans, Blacklisted by History, 227, 237) Likewise, Issa and the attorney for the whistleblowers, Victoria Toensing, have been called liars by the State Department. Following this strategy, Hillary supporter, Dan Benjamin, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, put out this statement before whistleblower Mark Thompson testified to discredit him: “It has been alleged that the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau was cut out of the discussion and decision-making in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks. I ran the bureau then, and I can say now with certainty, as the former Coordinator for Counterterrorism, that this charge is simply untrue. Though I was out of the country on official travel at the time of the attack, I was in frequent contact with the Department. At no time did I feel that the Bureau was in any way being left out of deliberations that it should have been part of.” Dan Benjamin was in Germany at the time of the terrorist attack and was kept informed by Mark Thompson. The first one out of the box during the testimony itself was carefully trained Cummings who craftily raised the question of credibility about the whistleblowers’ testimony. Another favorite in the left’s playbook is to turn the person accused of wrongdoing into a victim. The people McCarthy charged “had been made the victims,”(The New York Times) or innocent people had been hounded out of office. An example of one of these “victims” was David Karr, a reporter who worked for The Daily Worker and then with Drew Pearson. McCarthy recommended that he be denied a position in government, charging that “his activities, affiliations and associations….are Communistic,” that he was a member of the party and carried “instructions and orders to Pearson.” (The New York Times) Karr and Pearson denied this, firing back that McCarthy had smeared an upstanding newsman. When the Venona intercepts were released, however, they revealed that Karr had been providing information to the Soviet agent/TASS correspondent Samuel Krafsur. (Evans, Blacklisted by History, 44-45) 1 Similarly, the left is using the victimization tactic with Hillary’s 3 AM in Benghazi. One of the most stunning specimens in this species is Rep. Maloney’s response to Hicks’ testimony which clearly contradicted Hillary’s: "I find it truly disturbing and very unfortunate that when Americans come under attack the first thing some did in this country was attack Americans, attack the military, attack the president, attack the …former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and I would like to ask some questions about these attacks to get at the real facts." And Obama added: “We’ve had folks who have challenged Hillary Clinton’s integrity, Susan Rice’s integrity, General Mike Mullen and Ambassador Tom Pickering’s integrity.” In 1950, the Senate held hearings to “conduct a full and complete study and investigation as to whether people who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State.” These were chaired by Tydings (D., Md), with McCarthy as the first witness. To call it a cover up is an understatement, this provides a flavor of the partiality: McCarthy in his “first 250 minutes on the stand was allowed to read a statement for 17 minutes and was interrupted 85 times.” (Evans, Blacklisted by History, 208). The hearings were unruly and irregular so much so that Senator Lodge (R., Ma) complained: “Mr. Chairman, this is the most unusual procedure I have seen in all my years I have been here. Why cannot the senator from Wisconsin get the normal treatment and be allowed to make his statement in his own way, and not be cross-questioned before he has had a chance to present what he has?” The result was a white wash and more---the Democrats turned it into an investigation of McCarthy himself. This they had planned and executed and leaked to The New York Times: “Democrats Plan M’Carthy Attack.” The Democrats accused McCarthy of making accusations without foundation or resulting from discredited information. After the Tydings report was released, essentially indicating that there were no security risks at the State Department, Tydings charged that McCarthy offered “no proof of Reds,” and accused McCarthy of perjury. Senator Jenner (R, Ind) accused Tydings and his party of an “interlocking directorate of Whitewash Incorporated that was trying to protect the administration at all costs…” (The New York Times) McCarthy later called the hearings a cover-up. With the Benghazi attack we know there was a cover-up. The talking points exposed through e-mail trails have disclosed the changing nature of the attack from the beginning of the e-mails to the Sunday talk shows. The testimony obtained by those on the ground during the attack clearly described what happened and contradicts the administration’s versions. Disinformation, a Soviet word (dezinformatsia), is propaganda that deliberately circulates false or distorted information and can include fabricated tapes, forged stationary with a false message, planted newspaper articles and staged “demonstrations.” (Martin Egon, The Soviet Propaganda Machine, 5, 312) With McCarthy, the left planted stories questioning his income tax reports “McCarthy Reports on Income,” which the State of Wisconsin said was “routine.” (The New York Times) McCarthy was exonerated. Another planted story was that he had welcomed support of the Communist Party when running for Senate! The Oscar-nominated specimen in this category is the adminisration’s excuse for the attack as the anti-Mohammed film, “The Innocence of Muslims,” produced by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a film that had been circulating on youtube since July of 2012. Totally missing from the early drafts of the talking point, by Sunday Rice explained that the cause of the “violence was a very hateful video on the Internet. It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.” By September 14th, three days after the attacks Clinton allegedly told the father of Tyrone Woods – the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in Benghazi – that the man behind the film would be arrested and prosecuted. Questions surrounding the Innocence of Muslims remain unanswered. Was the film the subject of Clinton and Obama’s 10 PM phone call? Unthinkable As Evans points out, the American people had no idea of the penetration at the State department. Many people didn’t believe McCarthy simply because it was too unbelievable. These were well bred people who were part of the elite, belonged to the proper clubs, went to Ivy League schools, and were personally charming. How could they possibly be working for the Soviet Union and against the U.S.? The Benghazi attack is also unbelievable, not the attack itself- - but the deliberate dereliction of duty on the part of the administration and its subsequent explanations. This is brand new territory for Americans. These unthinkable questions remain:
  • Why did the administration remove “al Qaeda,” “Ansar al Sharia,” “jihadists” and “Islamic extremists” from drafts?
  • How could the U.S. hire jihadists, the February 17th Martyrs' Brigade, a Libyan militia group with clear al Qaeda sympathies, to provide security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi?
  • How could an amateur film that had been circulating for months suddenly incite riots in Benghazi?
  • How could Hillary deny requests for extra security by American diplomats stationed in Benghazi as requested by government personnel on the ground prior to the attack? And, in fact, reduce the security for the consulate?
  • Most important, how could the President of the U.S. give a Stand Down order and NOT attempt a rescue for the forces in Benghazi fighting for their lives?
Looking at Foggy Bottom then and now, why wasn’t all of Congress concerned about the penetratiion of the State Department by Soviet spies? Likewise, why isn’t all of Congress outraged that there was so little security at the Benghazi consulate that terrorists were able to breach the walls, killing four and risking dozens more? As illustrated, regardless of the threats to the country, the playbook of the left is the same… One of the most underreported statements coming out of Benghazi was by Nordstrom, frustrated by repeated denials for security, who said to his officer: For me, “The Taliban is on the inside of the building.” 1 The Karr case alone is instructive as he was found dead at the age of 60 in Paris under suspicious circumstances. (The New York Times) Karr worked on a loan to Russia for $250,000,000 with the Bank for Foreign Trade of the USSR in 1975. Describing his finesse with the Russians, a former Democratic senator noted: “The Russians believed in him. He had credibility with them. His ability to put together deals was amazing.” Karr worked on the campaigns of Sargent Shriver and Jerry Brown and had business dealings with Edward Kennedy.



Mary A. Nicholas -- Bio and Archives | Comments

Mary A. Nicholas has a degree in medicine and a degree in theology from the John Paul II Institute and has written for American Thinker and Homilectic and Pastoral Review.



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