Tail gunner
Talk about an uphill battle: M. Stanton Evans has been busy trying to rehabilitate the reputation of none other than “Tail Gunner” Joe McCarthy, the notorious red-baiting senator from the 1950s.
In his book, “Blacklisted by History,” which comes out this week, the conservative author and contributing editor at Human Events presents the product of seven years of research. Beginning in the late 1990s, he said, de-classified FBI documents and Freedom of Information Act requests produced “this wave of information that no one had looked at.” This was much of the same material circa 1940s that Evans says McCarthy himself had looked at — primarily reports on communist activity within the U.S. government.
“I pulled about 100,000 FBI files,” Evans said. “It was quite a chore, [but] going through the list of cases was like getting the Rosetta Stone.”
His conclusion? “There was really extensive penetration of the government” by Communist Party members and Soviet sympathizers. So was McCarthy correct in his accusations? “He was right on the essence of it, and right on many of the cases” — at least 90 percent of them, according to Evans.
When asked whether he expects a backlash for defending the vilified McCarthy, Evans points to a negative review from Publishers Weekly, which he says appears as if the reviewer hadn’t actually read the book. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and I expect more of it,” he said.
The book hits shelves Tuesday.
