Published on Thursday, April 12, 2007 by Reuters
Some White House E-Mails on Fired Attorneys May be Lost

by Reuters staff

WASHINGTON - Some White House staff wrote e-mail messages about official
business on Republican Party accounts, and some may have been wrongly
deleted, the administration said on Wednesday in an embarrassing
disclosure tied to the probe into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.The
White House said it could not rule out the possibility that some
official e-mails relating to the firings had been deleted and are lost.

Democrats in Congress have been seeking copies of e-mails from the
Republican National Committee as part of an investigation into whether
the firing of the prosecutors last year was politically motivated.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters 22 White House
officials were allowed to maintain e-mail addresses through the
Republican National Committee. They included President George W. Bush's
senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and several of his deputies.

Democrats have been seeking information that might tie Rove to the
decision to fire the attorneys.

Some White House aides trying to avoid violating the Hatch Act, which
prohibits using government property for certain political activities,
may have used the political account to communicate about official White
House business, Stanzel said.

Some of those official e-mails may be lost because the RNC had a policy
of deleting e-mails about every 30 days from its accounts. That policy
was changed in 2004 to exclude White House officials, who are required
to retain records and correspondence and everything e-mailed from a
White House account is automatically archived, Stanzel said.

"Some official e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake
the White House is aggressively working to correct," he said.

Asked whether some of the lost e-mails could be related to the firings
of the U.S. attorneys last year, Stanzel said: "That can't be ruled out."

The White House admission came as the Democratic-led Congress moved to
obtain additional documents from the administration in its investigation
of the firing of eight prosecutors, a case that has prompted bipartisan
calls for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

Gonzales received a subpoena on Tuesday from the House Judiciary
Committee for documents related to the firings.

The White House said Bush had asked the Justice Department to be "fully
responsive" to the request.

Gonzales, who with Bush's public support has rejected calls to resign,
is to appear next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which
plans to authorize subpoenas of its own on Thursday for administration
documents.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/12/473/

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The Politics of Anticommunism
Like a seasonal allergy, anticommunism has recurred at regular intervals
throughout twentieth-century history. The Red Scare of 1919-20 helped to
quell the labor revolts of that period, as well as to provide an outlet
for frustrations left over from the war. In the middle of the twenties
women's groups committed to social welfare were depicted as part of a
"spider web" conspiracy emanating from Moscow and determined to subvert
the American family. The New Deal, not surprisingly, was seen by many as
a new incarnation of the Red Menace. It was all right, Al Smith said in
1936, if the intellectuals around FDR wished "to disguise themselves as
Norman Thomas or Karl Marx or Lenin," but it became blasphemy when they
attempted to "march under the banner of Jefferson, Jackson or Cleveland."
By 1944 the charge had taken on new vigor. FDR's friendship with "Uncle
Joe" and American propaganda supporting the "democratic" people of the
Soviet Union fit neatly the preconceptions of those who saw the New Deal
and communism as indistinguishable. "First the New Deal took over the
Democratic Party and destroyed its very foundation," Republican
vice-presidential candidate John Bricker charged in 1944. "Now these
Communist forces have taken over the New Deal and will destroy the very
foundations of the Republic." By the end of the 1944 campaign Thomas
Dewey had a new definition of a communist-anyone "who supports the
fourth term so our form of government may more easily be changed." After
1941, one writer charged, federal bureaus became "roosting places for
droves of Communist termites who utilized their position ... to advance
the interest of Soviet Russia."
In the years after World War II, the politics of anticommunism achieved
a new pitch of hysteria. The House Committee on Un-American Activities
(subsequently HUAC), first established in 1938 to investigate
anti-American propaganda, was made a permanent standing committee. The
Smith Act, passed in 1940, provided a vehicle for prosecuting anyone who
even advocated communism. (At the time, the New York Times characterized
the Smith Act as drawing together "most of the anti-alien and
anti-radical legislation offered in Congress in the last twenty years.")
In a postwar atmosphere suffused with fear and suspicion, opportunities
were rife to use these acts for political persecution and intimidation,
as well as legitimate inquiry.
Reason for legitimate inquiry did exist. Many young idealists had been
drawn to communism during the depression, some of them moving on to fill
government positions. Although most had left the party in the aftermath
of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, a few remained, some still holding
sensitive government offices. Moreover, two episodes in 1945 and 1946
offered reason for concern. In June 1945 a government raid on the
editorial offices of Amerasia, a journal friendly to the Chinese
communists, uncovered a series of classified documents. Although some of
these had come into the magazine's possession through the time-honored
practice of government "leaks" and background briefings, others appeared
to have arrived through less conventional avenues. The revelation ten
months later of an atomic spy ring operating out of Canada, with
American connections, provided additional credence to those who
expressed concern that some individuals working for the government might
be serving two masters.
Yet legitimate concerns could easily spill into political paranoia and
exploitation. Republican campaigners in 1946, for example, had a field
day asking voters: "Got enough inflation? . . . got enough debt? . . .
got enough strikes? , . . got enough communism?" Even as distinguished a
person as Robert Taft accused Truman of seeking a congress "dominated by
a policy of appeasing the Russians abroad and of fostering communism at
home." A young candidate in California named Richard Nixon denounced his
opponent as a "lip service American" who consistently voted the Moscow
line in Congress and who "fronted for un-American elements ... by
advocating increased federal control over the lives of people." The
insidious character of such thinking was dramatized in congressional
hearings on the appointment of David Lilienthal, former head of the
Tennessee Valley Authority, to become chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission. One senator questioned Lilientha'ls loyalty because his
family had been born in Austria-Hungary in an area that later became
part of Czechoslovakia, and, after all, Czechoslovakia had come under
Soviet influence.
Ironically, the Truman administration itself bore partial responsibility
for the outrages that would occur in the name of anticommunism over the
next few years. Although Truman himself appeared not overly concerned in
learning about the operations of the Canadian spy ring, he did appoint a
temporary commission on employee loyalty in November 1946 to inquire
into government procedures. That commission's report was vague and
inadequate, resting almost entirely upon a single letter from the FBI
that affirmed the existence of a loyalty problem. Nevertheless, Truman
now moved quickly. Just nine days after the Truman Doctrine on Greece
and Turkey was proclaimed, the president issued Executive Order 9835
creating a Federal Employee Loyalty Program and giving government
security officials authorization to screen 2 million employees of the
federal government for any hint of political deviance. The order also
authorized the Attorney General to draw up a list of "totalitarian,
fascist, or subversive organizations." Membership, affiliation, or even
sympathy with such groups could then be used as a basis for determining
disloyalty.
Truman's response reflected a combination of concerns. Clearly, there
was at least some connection with the Truman Doctrine. If the country
were to wage a crusade against atheistic communism abroad, a strong
commitment to clean out communist subversives at home seemed a logical
parallel. As late as December 1946, public opinion had been divided on
the wisdom of seeking an accommodation with the Soviet Union, and
recently negotiated treaties concerning Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, and
Italy offered some hope that international tensions could be relaxed.
If, as Senator Van-denberg said, the only way to get the Truman Doctrine
through Congress was to "scare hell out of the American people" about
Soviet expansionism abroad, a vigorous anticommunist program at home
would serve as an appropriate complement. Just as important, leading
members of the new 8oth Congress launched a vehement attack on domestic
subversives. Styles Bridges and John Taber, chairmen, respectively, of
the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, were convinced that
communists (often defined as New Dealers) riddled the federal
bureaucracy. If Truman wished to get his foreign aid appropriations
approved, it seemed, he would need to acknowledge the political
conservatism of such power-brokers.
In so doing, however, Truman helped legitimize a form of political
inquisition. All the later abuses of McCarthyism were fully anticipated
by Seth Richardson, the first president of the Loyalty Review Board,
when he declared that "the government is entitled to discharge any
employee . . . without extending to such employee any hearing
whatsoever." Indeed, any "suspicion of disloyalty, . . . however remote"
could provide justification for such dismissal. Using these procedures,
civil servants who at any time in their lives had expressed criticism of
their society became subject to disciplinary action without the right to
confront their accusers. The Attorney General's list of subversive
organizations, in turn, made people objects of suspicion if they had
ever belonged to such a group as the Soviet-American Friendship
Society-even though during World War II such associations were perfectly
consistent with national policy. Nor could civil libertarians take
solace from the fact that, during most of the Truman administration, the
Attorney General was J. Howard McGrath, a man who declared that
communists "are everywhere-in factories, offices, butcher stores, on
street corners, and private business. And each carries in himself the
death of our society." CIO president Philip Murray reflected the concern
of many when he asked: "What sudden threat can warrant our throwing
overboard the democratic principles of fair hearing and fair trial?"
The House Committee on Un-American Activities quickly demonstrated its
own readiness to disregard civil liberties in the name of anticommunism.
Acting in concert with officials such asj. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, the
HUAC began in 1947 to "ferret out" communist sympathizers in the federal
government, expose communist influence in the American labor movement,
provide research and names to other agencies concerned with the same
problem, and, in general, investigate the presence of communist
sympathizers in America's educational, religious, and entertainment
activities. With flamboyant politicians like John Rankin among its
members (Rankin had claimed that World War II was started by "a little
group of our international Jewish brethren"), the HUAC investigations
inevitably attracted widespread media attention.
The committee's methods could have been a model for Joseph Heller's
fictional "Catch-22," where any action one takes becomes a trap.
Witnesses were called who, at one point or another, may have belonged to
an organization that appeared on the Attorney General's subversive
activities list. It mattered little whether or not they had been, or
remained, sympathetic to communism. The purpose was to inquire about
their prior associations. If they admitted being part of such groups,
they were then asked to list other people with whom they had been
associated. Once a witness started to answer questions, he or she was
required under the rules of Congress to continue. If witnesses refused,
they were subject to contempt of Congress charges and to federal
prosecution. Once that pattern became clear, many witnesses invoked the
Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer any questions on the grounds that to
do so might force them to incriminate others. In this way, they could
protect their friends and prevent the smear tactics of guilt by
association that inevitably followed public identification before the
committee. On the other hand, "taking the 5th" quickly became synonymous
in the eyes of anticommunists with confessing complicity in subversive
activities. It was a no-win situation. If witnesses cooperated, they ran
the danger of exposing their associates to retribution, including social
ostracism and the loss of jobs. Yet if they invoked their constitutional
rights and refused to cooperate, they appeared to be offering proof of
their guilt.
The HUAC's investigation of communist influence in Hollywood typified
the process. When witnesses like Millard Lampell (author of the folk
cantata about Lincoln's funeral, The Lonesome Train) or Lillian Hellman
(the distinguished playwright) refused to provide names and dates of
meetings they had attended during the late thirties and early forties,
they suddenly found themselves on a "black list," barred from employment
by any major studio. Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture
Association, announced that no one would be hired who did not cooperate
with the HUAC. New movies like The Iron Curtain exhibited the orthodoxy
of the day, teaching the American public, as New York Times film critic
Bosley Crowther said, to "hate the Reds." With voluntary groups like
Alert, Inc. cooperating with the HUAC, hundreds of artists defined as
"liberal" or "left" found themselves out of work. The dissident writer,
Bertolt Brecht said, was "not deprived of his life, only of a means of
life." Everyone had to conform to the anticommunist line; no one dared
deviate. The effect on free political debate was chilling.
Ironically, the Communist Party itself had fallen on hard times. With
the end of the war and the enunciation of a new party line from Moscow,
the communists renounced the "popular front" strategy of the New Deal
and the war years. By purging former party leader Earl Browder and
giving unreserved support to all Soviet actions, the party, in effect,
cut itself off from the noncommunist left. As the New Republic declared,
"[the Communists have] lost all their following in the United States
except for the humorless hard-core fanatics." A majority of delegates at
the Socialist Workers Party Convention of 1946 condemned the Soviets for
outdoing the Nazis in their denial of human freedom. Although the party
remained active in some areas of American life, it represented only a
shadow of its former strength and influence.
Such distinctions mattered little, however, to the politics of
anticommunism. As the presidential election of 1948 approached, the Cold
War at home loomed even larger than the Cold War abroad. Although
President Truman denounced the tactics of the HUAC and charged it with
"having recklessly cast a cloud of suspicion over the most loyal civil
service in the world," he himself had helped to initiate the process.
Now the question was what would happen to the liberal, New Deal
tradition in a context where strong advocacy of viewpoints to the left
of center all too often meant being labeled a supporter of communism.

Page 93 from
The Unfinished Journey, America Since World War II, William H. Chafe