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Ordeal by Slander: The First Great Book of the McCarthy Era

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In March 1950, Joseph McCarthy accused Lattimore of being the "top Soviet agent" in executive session of the Tydings Committee. The committee, chaired by Senator Millard Tydings, was investigating McCarthy's claims of widespread Soviet infiltration of the State Department. When the accusation was leaked to the press, he backed off from the charge that Lattimore was a spy, but continued the attack in public session of the committee and in speeches. Lattimore, he said, "in view of his position of tremendous power at the State Department" was the "'architect' of our Far Eastern policy," and asked whether Lattimore's "aims are American aims or whether they coincide with the aims of Soviet Russia." At the time, Lattimore was in Kabul, Afghanistan, on a cultural mission for the United Nations. Lattimore dismissed the charges against him as "moonshine" and hurried back to the United States to testify before the Tydings Committee.[20]

Lattimore was a combative witness and waged verbal duels with McCarthy. In April 1950, the surprise witness, Louis F. Budenz, former editor of the Communist Party organ Daily Worker. testified Lattimore was a secret Communist, but not a Soviet agent, that is, he was a person of influence who often assisted Soviet foreign policy. Budenz said his Party superiors told him Lattimore's "great value lay in the fact that he could bring the emphasis in support of Soviet policy in non-Soviet language."[21] The majority report for the Tydings committee cleared Lattimore of all charges against him; the minority report accepted Budenz's charges.

In February 1952, Lattimore was called to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (S.I.S.S), headed by McCarthy's ally, Senator Pat McCarran. Before Lattimore was called as witness, investigators for the S.I.S.S. had seized all of the records of the Institute of Pacific Relations (I.P.R). The twelve days of testimony were marked by shouting matches which pitted McCarran and McCarthy on one hand against Lattimore on the other. Lattimore took three days to deliver his opening statement; the delays were caused by frequent interruptions as McCarran challenged Lattimore point by point. McCarran the used the records from the I.P.R. to ask questions that often taxed Lattimore's memory. Budenz again testified, but this time claimed that Lattimore was both a Communist and a Soviet agent. The Subcommittee also summoned scholars. Nicholas Poppe, a Russian émigré and a scholar of Mongolia and Tibet, resisted the committee's invitation to label Lattimore a communist, but found some of his writings superficial and uncritical. The most damaging testimony came from Karl August Wittfogel, supported by his colleague from University of Washington, George Taylor. Wittfogel, a former Communist, said that at the time Lattimore edited the journal Pacific Affairs, Lattimore knew of his Communist background; even though they had not exchanged words on the matter, Lattimore had given Wittfogel a "knowing smile." Lattimore acknowledged that Wittfogel's thought had been tremendously influential, but said that if there had been a smile, it was a "non-Communist smile." Wittfogel and Taylor charged that Lattimore did "great harm to the free world" in his disregard of the need to defeat world communism as a first priority. The influence of Marxism was shown by Lattimore's use of the word "feudal." Lattimore replied that he did not think that Marxists had a "patent" on the word feudal.[22]

In 1952, after 17 months of study and hearing, involving 66 witnesses and thousands of documents, the McCarran Committee issued its 226-page, unanimous final report. This report stated that "Owen Lattimore was, from some time beginning in the 1930s, a conscious articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy", and that on "at least five separate matters," Lattimore had not told the whole truth. One example: "The evidence . . . shows conclusively that Lattimore knew Frederick V. Field to be a Communist; that he collaborated with Field after he possessed this knowledge; and that he did not tell the truth before the subcommittee about this association with Field . . ."[23]

In 1952, Lattimore was indicted for perjury on seven counts. Six of the counts related to various discrepancies between Lattimore's testimony and the I.P.R. records; the seventh accused Lattimore of seeking to deliberately deceive the S.I.S.S. Lattimore's defenders, such as his lawyer Abe Fortas, claimed that the discrepancies were caused by McCarran deliberately asking questions about arcane and obscure matters that took place in the 1930s out of the hope that Lattimore would not be able to recall them properly, thereby giving grounds for a perjury indictment. Within three years, the charges against him were dismissed."[24] His book Ordeal by Slander is his own account of this episode.

Owen Lattimore was my uncle. He was not a liar, nor a communist. Anyone in doubt should read more of his wide body of work, to understand that he was a scholar, not a subversive.

This is one of the most important books ever written about the horrible social and psychological consequences of being a slander victim. "Tail Gunner" Senator Joe McCarthy radicalized his Communist paranoia hysteria to such an extreme in the 1950's that he attempted to destroy the lives of some very innocent people.

A Traitor is a person who changes to the enemy's side or gives away information to the enemy; this is Owen Lattimore. I cannot believe some of the Pro-Lattimore reviews here. #1, it is not out of ignorance. These reviewers are Communists! There is so much evidence out there. You cannot deny his traitorous guilt. I had to read up on him when I found out he was A DEFENDER OF THE STALIN PURGE TRIALS. In an infamous statement made in 1938, Owen L. declared that the judicial massacres in Moscow "sound like democracy to me". And here's what Mr. "Red" Lattimore believes in ... the arrest, beating, drugging, forced confessions, and summary executions of thousands of Soviet political and military leaders ... all in the Name of the Communist end-dream-utopia. Owen L. should have been executed for treason ... they should have dropped him with lead bullets from some fine sturdy US military rifles .... I wonder if that would have "sounded like democracy" to him?

McCarthy Rules!!! Ann Coulter is Right!

Owen Lattimore's own testimony confirms that he used a Soviet Diplomatic pouch. A leading Soviet General who escaped to the
West confirmed also that Owen Lattimore was a Soviet Spy.

Only idiots and communists believe the lies.
Senator Joseph McCarthy was right about Owen Lattimore !

Writing this book was completely unnecessary; there are more than enough books out there falsely denouncing McCarthy as a "witchhunter." The people McCarthy accused of communism- people like Lattimore, Irving Peress, John Carter Vincent, Gustavo Duran, Mary Jane Keeney, Annie Lee Moss, Haldore Hanson, George Marshall, and Dean Acheson- were all either communists, pro-communists, or at the very least communist sympathizers. McCarthy did not commit 'slander,' his enemies did- against him. It's funny how not one critic of McCarthy in a thousand has ever even read any of his speeches. And if McCarthy was such a bad man, why was he listed as the fourth most admired man in America on a 1954 Gallup Poll? Why did so many people mourn his death? Even today, many liberals are forced to admit- however grudgingly- that McCarthy was right. And recently released Soviet archives confirm that there were indeed numerous spies in the government. And by the way, Lattimore's reputation wasn't harmed in the slightest by McCarthy's (accurate) accusations, nor were any of the other Reds he exposed. Overall, this book is slanderous, poorly researched, pro-communist, and disgusting.

Anyone stumbling on this book at this late date might be forgiven for falling for it's whiny self-justification, but only until the latest records are consulted. When this book was released Lattimore, like Alger Hiss and a number of others, had the reputation of being innocent,New Deal spawned intellectuals caught up in the whirlwind of the so-called red scare. However, since their workers paradise(the USSR) fell, the evidence is now in, clearly showing that Lattimore, Hiss and virtually all of the other fifth amendment communists WERE spies. Don't waste your time on the justifications and excuses until you know what these traitors actually did. Chances are,at that point,you won't even care what the traitors went through at the hands of McCarthy and HUAC....It wasn't nearly enough.