The Potters Herald

Lattimore Labeled Russian Spy To Sue Senator McCarthy For Libel
By ALVAINE HAMILTON

Washington (LPA)—Faced with a libel suit by the man he'd labeled as the "top Russian spy in the State Dep't" and a demand that he retract, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R Wis.) is fighting hard to extricate himself from his web of accusations of Communist infiltration of the department now under investigation by a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee. Two additional McCarthy targets, Esther Caukin Brunauer and Haldore Hanson both department employees, appeared before the subcommittee to deny the accusations, and make impressive documentation of their loyalty.

In addition Chairman Millard Tydings (D, Md.) announced that the committee had agreed to receive written questions from "any person" bearing on the Communist charges, and to permit those accused by McCarthy to ask questions by submitting them in writing to members of the subcommittee.

Some days after Sen. McCarthy had revealed the name of his "top Soviet spy in the State Dep't" to the subcommittee and "off the record" to reporters, several radio commentators and newspaper writers finally let the public in on the big secret—that the big "spy" was none other than Owen Lattimore, now a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and at present in Afghanistan on a United Nations Mission. Lattimore was a State Dep't adviser for four months five years ago, but has not been on the department payroll since then.

Mrs. Lattimore announced that she had retained the law firm of three prominent anti-Communist liberals—Paul Porter, one-time OPA administrator, Abe Fortas, former under-secretary of the Interior Dep't, and Thurman Arnold, former assistant Attorney General—to defend her husband's reputation. They wrote McCarthy terming the charges a "colossal lie," called on him to withdraw them, and warned that in any case this wouldn't free him from a possible libel suit when Lattimore returns to the US.

In addition, talk that charges of improper conduct might be made in the Senate against the gyrating McCarthy began to receive wide currency in the Capitol. So far, McCarthy, despite early protestations that he'd repeat any of his direct accusations of individuals off the Senate floor, where they wouldn't be libel-proof, hasn't made one such charge.

Citing precedents dating back to George Washington's day, Attorney-general J. Howard McGrath and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover appeared March 27 to explain why they left to President Truman any decision on making available the "raw" files of the FBI cases of suspected subversives. Most telling point was made by McGrath, when he said that 98 per cent of the cases in which firm evidence of illegal action is found are turned over to the proper law-enforcement agency for prosecution. The other two per cent are cases where the FBI is seeking a "ring" and they string along with the suspect to find his accomplices. Neither the Senators nor the Justice Dep't officials said directly that this proved Lattimore innocent, but the strong impression was left that the FBI didn't consider it had any type of "spy" case against him, as McCarthy has insisted the files would reveal.

On both sides of the aisle, leading Senators hailed a letter to the New York Times from former Secretary of State Henry Stimson, charging that the McCarthy accusations are not aimed at ridding the State Dep't of Communists, but "to cast discredit upon the Secretary of State." Stimson, a member of the William Howard Taft, Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt cabinets, said "the man who seeks to gain political advantage from personal attack on a Secretary of State is a man who seeks political advantage from damage to his country."

In a stinging rebuke to McCarthy's whole performance, the elder statesman warned that "This is no time to let the noisy antics of a few upset the steady purpose of our country or distract our leaders from their proper tasks. This is rather a time for stern rebuke of such antics and outspoken support of the distinguished public servants against whom they are directed."

Meanwhile, another of those accused by Sen. McCarthy of disloyalty, Mrs. Esther Caukin Brunauer, a member of the State Dep't UNESCO staff, appeared before the subcommittee to deny that she is or has ever been a Communist or a sympathizer. She said she had confidence in the ability of the government to keep Communists out of federal jobs "without violating the traditional American principles of decency and fair play."

"Before I was given a hearing," she told the Senators, "my name was first divulged as one who was about to be attacked and then I was publicly branded as disloyal without having had an opportunity to speak in my own defense. In fact, Sen. McCarthy said on March 13 that I presented such a danger to the country that my case should be the 'very first case' to be investigated by this committee." She added quietly that, "after this statement had reverberated in the headlines for a few days I lost my priority and there is now another case which Sen. McCarthy claims is the number one case, upon which he is willing to stand or fall."

Letters from Admiral Standley, former chief of naval operations, ex-Republican Senator Joseph Ball President Milton Eisenhower of Penn State College, and Kathryn McHale, executive director of the American Association of University Women, were presented attesting to Mrs. Brunauer's integrity and loyalty. Ball added that Stephen Brunauer her husband, a Navy weapons expert, "is perhaps the most violently anti-Communist person I know." In his youth, Brunauer, a native of Hungary who came here at 17, was for several years a member of the Young Workers League, but rapidly broke with the Communist youth group, and in 1932 he was denounced as a "deserter" of the Communist cause, she told the committee. She also described attempts that were reported to her by friends inside the Hungarian Embassy to frame the Brunauers and thus discredit their work against the communist-run regime that came to power in 1947 in that country.