M. Stanton Evans
 | Tuesday, September 23, 2008  Accused of creating a bogus Red Scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror, Senator Joseph McCarthy is universally remembered as a demagogue, a bully and a liar. History has judged him such a loathsome figure that even today, a half century after his death, his name remains synonymous with witch hunts. But that conventional image is all wrong, veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans reveals in his groundbreaking book, Blacklisted by History. This long-awaited history, based on six years of intensive research, dismantles the myths surrounding Joe McCarthy and his campaign to unmask Communists, Soviet agents, and flagrant loyalty risks working within the U.S. government. Evans's revelations overturn our understanding of McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the Cold War. Drawing on primary sources--including never-before-published government records and FBI files, as well as recent research gleaned from Soviet archives and intercepted transmissions between Moscow spymasters and their agents in the United States--Evans presents evidence of a relentless Communist drive to penetrate our government, influence its policies, and steal its secrets. Most shocking, he shows that U.S. officials supposedly guarding against this danger not only let it happen but actively covered up the penetration. This was just as Joe McCarthy contended. Blacklisted by History shows, for instance, that the FBI knew as early as 1942 that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the atomic bomb project, had been identified by Communist leaders as a party member; that high-level U.S. officials were warned that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy almost a decade before the Hiss case became a public scandal; that a cabal of White House, Justice Department, and State Department officials lied about and covered up the Amerasia spy case; and that the State Department had been heavily penetrated by Communists and Soviet agents before McCarthy came on the scene. Evans also shows that practically everything we've been told about McCarthy is false, including the conventional treatment of the famous 1950 speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, that launched the McCarthy era ("I have here in my hand . . ."), the Senate hearings that casually dismissed his charges, the matter of leading McCarthy suspect Owen Lattimore, the Annie Lee Moss case, the Army-McCarthy hearings, and much more. In the end, Senator McCarthy was censured by his colleagues and condemned by the press and historians. But as Evans writes, "The real Joe McCarthy has vanished into the mists of fable and recycled error, so that it takes the equivalent of a dragnet search to find him." Blacklisted by History provides the first accurate account of what McCarthy did and, more broadly, what happened to America during the Cold War. It is a revealing expos? of the forces that distorted our national policy in that conflict and our understanding of its history since. (From the dust jacket of the book.) Watch the video of the lecture. M. Stanton Evans is chairman of the Education and Research Institute, visiting professor of journalism at Troy University, and a contributing editor and columnist for Human Events. Evans served as director of the National Journalism Center from 1977-2002, and was chairman of the American Conservative Union from 1971-77. From 1960 to 1974, he was the editor of the Indianapolis News. During the seventies and eighties, Evans worked as a syndicated columnist as well as a political commentator for Radio America and CBS Radio and Television. He is the author of numerous books including Revolt on Campus, The Liberal Establishment, The Politics of Surrender, The Future of Conservatism, The Lawbreakers, Clear and Present Dangers, The Theme is Freedom, and most recently Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy. Evans has also been a plaintiff in Federal Court cases involving First Amendment issues and freedom of information. M. Stanton Evans graduated from Yale University in 1955, with a B.A. in English. He did graduate work in economics at New York University and holds an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Syracuse University |