Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies

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Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 156 ratings · 40 reviews

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 w...more 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, as veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans reveals in this groundbreaking book. The long-awaited Blacklisted by 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 completely 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 irrefutable evidence of a relentless Communist drive to penetrate our government, influence its policies, and steal its secrets. Most shocking of all, he shows that U.S. officials supposedly guarding against this danger not only let it happen but actively covered up the penetration. All of this was precisely 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 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 exposé of the forces that distorted our national policy in that conflict and our understanding of its history since.

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ebook, 496 pages

Published November 6th 2007 by Crown Forum (first published 2007)

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Sep 15, 2009 Bliss Tew rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I bought the book in the Sacramento airport and started reading it on the plane home in September 2008. Stanton Evans, a true student and researcher into the Cold War, has vindicated all those who have defended Senator Joseph McCarthy for his long and lonely effort to expose some of the communists and traitors who were inhabiting federal positions of trust.

The careful documentation of Stanton's long-researched book speaks for itself. When coupled with the excellent book "The Venona Secrets," th...more

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Mar 28, 2008 Krista rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history-ish, politics-issues

More "stuff you don't learn in school" - not only was the Communist threat to the country real and the infiltration unbelievably thorough, but thanks to documents that have been released in the last few years, we actually have (long-suppressed) evidence that McCarthy had something right. Not perfect, but he was on to something (which, incidentally, had been pursued by another congressman a few years earlier, as well).

Even more remarkable is that so many of the actual records of his hearings and...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Karl Bunker rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Evans has written a book that arch-conservatives of the Ann Coulter school can happily rally around and praise to the heavens. Indeed, Coulter herself did this quite literally when she called it "the greatest book since the Bible" (no, I'm not making that up).

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, no serious student of history will find any reason to rethink the "conventional wisdom" on McCarthy in this volume. Evans is to be credited for putting a lot of work into his research, but despite his preten...more Evans has written a book that arch-conservatives of the Ann Coulter school can happily rally around and praise to the heavens. Indeed, Coulter herself did this quite literally when she called it "the greatest book since the Bible" (no, I'm not making that up).

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, no serious student of history will find any reason to rethink the "conventional wisdom" on McCarthy in this volume. Evans is to be credited for putting a lot of work into his research, but despite his pretensions to the contrary, his labors failed to turn up anything of significance. To any rational reader with a mote of critical thinking skills, Joseph McCarthy's body still lies at the end of this book where it has lain for 50 years: In the grave of a malicious liar.

The last semi-scholarly attempt to revise history and "rehabilitate" McCarthy was Arthur Herman's "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator". In that book, Herman could usually be relied on to report the facts honestly. Only after giving the facts would he move heaven and earth to invent excuses for his hero. For example, Herman reports that McCarthy lied, often and extravigantly and on-record, about his military career. But Herman then hastens to tell us that other politicians have been known to exaggerate their wartime exploits, implying that that makes it okay. And when McCarthy launched his career as an anti-communist with his pathetic and largely fictional "lists" of 57 or 81 or 205 communists in government service, Herman tells us McCarthy "was making a good point badly".

Evans doesn't follow this game plan. His book is more deeply researched than Herman's, but it's also far less honest. Evans isn't interested in any facts that don't make McCarthy look like a hero. Thus, the sticky issue of the Great Man's military service is swept under the rug with a single misleading sentence: "There would be wrangles later about the citations he received for his wartime service and the number of missions he flew..." The only "wrangles" over these points were between McCarthy and the truth.

Similarly, Evans spends one entire chapter of his book, exerting vast and strenuous efforts of research, to establish that maybe, just possibly, McCarthy used the number "57" in his Wheeling, WV speech as the number of "card-carrying Communists" he claimed were in the State Department, rather than the number "205" that most historians believe he used. (McCarthy used "205" in the written copy of the speech he gave to reporters, but according to Evans it was disgracefully dishonest of those reporters to actually use this document.) Well that's just fine, though no historian or biographer has ever denied that this was a possibility, and in any case Evans ignores the vastly-more-important fact that either number was a complete and utter fabrication on McCarthy's part. Though he tries to hurry the reader past the issue, his own words make it clear that McCarthy didn't have anything remotely resembling a list of 57 "communists" in the State Department.

The book is comprised entirely of deceptions like this. Many more examples could be given, but the basic pattern is the same: focus on some irrelevant detail that makes McCarthy look good and his opponents look bad, and ignore the larger truth.

Early in the book, 100 pages are expended in a rapid-fire jumble of names; the names of communists in America, of people who had "contact" with communists, were roommates of communists, who had spouses with cousins who had once been seen with communists, etc., etc. It's obvious, even from Evans' own words, that the evidence against many of these people exists only in Evans' imagination (and before Evans, in the hugely overactive imagination of J. Edgar Hoover). This is all the more obvious to readers who know a little history of the time and are aware of the vast amounts of contrary evidence that Evans scrupulously avoids mentioning. Not content to simply point a finger and shout "commie!" at his host of actual and imagined villains, Evans imbues them with supernatural powers as well. Communist infiltrators, we are told, caused the fall of China to communism (the unbounded corruption and incompetence of the Nationalist Chinese apparently had nothing to do with it), the hegemony of the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe (the fact that these countries were occupied or surrounded by the vast Soviet Red Army apparently had nothing to do with it), and just for good measure (I'm not making this up), Japan's entry into WW II on the side of the Axis powers. Luckily, this section of the book can be ignored by readers interested in McCarthy, as it has nothing to do with him. To Evans, the presence of a few communists in the U.S. was sufficient to justify McCarthy and all he stood for. No matter that McCarthy could never claim credit for exposing a single one of the nefarious characters who occupy those 100 pages of "Blacklisted". No matter that the most he _could_ claim credit for was drumming up some publicity for existing allegations against a few of these people. No matter that most of those few were guilty of nothing more than being left-of-center.

A lot of things don't matter to Evans. McCarthy unjustly slandered dozens and contributed enormously to a wave of delusional paranoia that did terrible harm to literally thousands of loyal Americans. For Evans, if there were some communists somewhere, then obviously McCarthy was "right"; end of story, and to hell with the innocents.

Evans' hope is that readers will be so impressed by the bulk of his research that they'll overlook the fact that he's added nothing of any consequence to the story of McCarthy. Underneath the flood of irrelevant distractions and breathless adjectives (praising and defensive of McCarthy, brutalizing of his opponents), the same old McCarthy is still there: A lying, immoral, demagogic thug whose reign of power and popularity will forever stand as a beacon of shame in the history of the United States.
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Jun 05, 2012 Christine Hunt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: individuals who value digging out truth for themselves

In its 605 pages, veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans gives specific details and reveals confidential Communist records of Soviet spy networks within the U.S., South America, Europe, and especially their connections with China in a joint attempt to control U.S. Ameri-Asian policy.

It also details and explains documented [but not talked of by our media] legal trials of U.S. citizens found guilty--not by McCarthy but by a federal court of law--of espionage and treason. Those things don't get much a...more

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Jul 10, 2010 Regular Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I recently came across M. Stanton Evans' relatively recent book (2007) entitled Blacklisted By History (The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy--And His Fight Against America's Enemies). Having grown up during the events in this book, I was generally familiar with what came to be known as the Red Scare of McCarthyism. Suffice it to say, my impressions and recollections of McCarthy weren't very positive. After hearing about this book, I thought I would give another view of the McCarthy story a f...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ronald Reagan famously said, "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so." Of course, that's often true for all of us, and as far as Cold War topics go, I think Joe McCarthy must be near the top of the list of things about which what we know isn't so.

The author went back to look at primary materials to investigate many claims made by historians, such as "McCarthy didn't name names." In fact, one of the reasons I couldn't rat...more Ronald Reagan famously said, "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so." Of course, that's often true for all of us, and as far as Cold War topics go, I think Joe McCarthy must be near the top of the list of things about which what we know isn't so.

The author went back to look at primary materials to investigate many claims made by historians, such as "McCarthy didn't name names." In fact, one of the reasons I couldn't rate this as 5 stars was that there were so many lists of names. Absolutely essential for the point, but long lists of dead American Communists does not good reading make. Then there is the red herring that McCarthy's actions didn't lead to prosecutions. Actually, there were a couple, but prosecution wasn't his goal in the first place. He just wanted these people, many of whom were obvious security risks or simply didn't have the US's interests at heart, removed from sensitive positions in the government.

There is also a common perception that McCarthy was throwing around baseless charges. His sources were generally FBI investigations and other security information that came directly from Federal agencies like the State Department or the Army. The problem wasn't that his information was bad, but that it was generally good and very troubling.

The infamous "Have you no shame!" line was tragically ironic. It was in reference to McCarthy (having been baited) making a statement about a lawyer with past ties to known Communist front groups. The irony was that a few months previously, the man accusing McCarthy of having no shame had removed the same lawyer from his team (to oppose McCarthy) for the exact reason brought up by McCarthy. And there was a New York Times article, with a large printed picture of the lawyer, documenting all of this.

He documents many outright falsehoods made by contemporary enemies of McCarthy: Sen Tydings eventually admitted under oath that he had lied about possessing a recording of McCarthy's Wheeling speech. Tydings also made up claims about Republican Congressional committees having reviewed McCarthy's lists previously and determined the claims to be baseless.

I think this book goes a long way to vindicate McCarthy, and points out that even though the Truman and Eisenhower administrations would never admit it, security did tighten up a bit once McCarthy started shining lights on the ridiculous security practices of the Federal Government.

One of the big questions, which I think the author rightly mostly avoided, was the motives of many of McCarthy's enemies. Truman, after all, began a shooting war with communists, so why wouldn't he be interested in getting them out of the government? Eisenhower should have been able to blame a previous administration. Whatever they were, it's a tragedy, and a demonstration of the fact that today's polarized, highly charged political atmosphere is nothing new.(less)

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Apr 30, 2011 Cathy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Accused of creating a bogus Red Scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror...his name remains synonymous with witch hunts."

Was McCarthy right all along? This book explores that question and answers it in a way that may surprise some-- Yes. He was. History has proven his concerns to be true, and this book documents the communist infiltration that took place in the highest levels of our government from the 1930s on. How much damage has been done to America and t...more

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Sep 02, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-history, politics

A very detailed, carefully-sourced attempt to rehabilitate Sen. McCarthy, who was demonized by Herblock and other liberals. The OSS and State were full of communists and fellow-travelers. How much harm they did is another question.

Whether these folks "lost China," or conceived the New Deal is another matter, but they were there and some of them were spies. On those questions, McCarthy was right.

Evans heavily documents his work with quotations, references, and facsimiles of relevant documents. I...more

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May 05, 2008 Wayne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, not-finished, history

A biased, well researched book. OK, disclosure first, I didn't finsih the book. I stopped on page 151 out of 600. I just couldn't take it any more.
Evans' view is that Joseph McCarthy is undeserving of the mantle that history has laid out for him. He was simply the leading figure in the few that were properly acknowledging the enormous problem of Communist infiltration of the US Government during the 1940s and 1950s. Evans attempts to prove this by laying out the case against people that McCarthy...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

This book changed me. I swallowed rage. The evil that was perpetrated by communist spies destroyed my illusions.

You will think that I listened only to one side of the story. But that is untrue. I read McCarthy and the Fear of Communism in American Historybefore, and I read Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy after.

If the truth isn't too strong for you. Read this book. You will change.

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Aug 01, 2010 Teresa is currently reading it · review of another edition

Most everyone think when they hear the name Senator Joe McCarthy of the witchhunt type of trials exposing communists spies and sympathizers. This book reveals the other side of that now that past FBI files and Soviet files are opened to the publiic. This book exposes at least another view of that time period. I thought it very thought provoking.

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Jan 31, 2008 Atchisson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I will tell you now, if you want to be unsubscribed from everything from evite lists to goodreads lists, just tell someone that a) you're reading this b) you are loving this and c) MORE people should read this to get a better understanding of just what Joe McCarthy was REALLY all about. Nebulous terms about him and his name have been floated about from history classes to pop culture for decades, yet none of them can tell you anything about him, his methods, or his results. IF you really want to...more

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Dec 06, 2007 Varmint rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: political junkies

what is the point of re examining a fifty year old cold war incident?

every day i read of some washington scandal with no real resolution. why isn't sandy berger in leavenworth for example? guess it will take fifty years to get any answers. and stanton evans is right on time. a few people have made careers out of distorting the truth surrounding the mccarthy era. thousands more stood by and let them.

i as never really able to focus on the case before. every book and movie, there are hundreds, al...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Kat rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

M Stanton Evans was informative, convincing, and further proves that McCarthy was a good man. The book itself was a bit dry, but I guess that was unavoidable. He had a boatload of evidence defending McCarthy, everything from VENONA to what McCarthy REALLY said at Wheeling. Read it. The 600+ pages are worth it, even if you have to push yourself.

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Aug 11, 2011 Sage Streck rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very thorough examination of McCarthy. I learned a lot, and I found the Venona project especially interesting. It's nice to see a book that doesn't demonize McCarthy for his patriotism to this country!

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Jun 17, 2009 Bigmg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Exhaustive research. One can only imagine what else he would have been able to expose had no so many vial documents "disappeared".
Another subtitle could be, "The Pilfering of Truth".
THIS BOOK OFFERS JAW DROPPING REVELATIONS ON EVERY PAGE.
I went into this with the attitude that McCarthy wasn't as bad as everyone says. This book correctly frames the issues and what was at stake.

The McCarthy era wasn't about him destroying innocent people's lives or anything like that. McCarthy was the victim OF...more

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Sep 15, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fascinating stuff! Long and some parts were dry, but I learned so much!

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Feb 19, 2011 Cathy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Had to push myself to read halfway, then gave up. I think the author's point is that the Senate "investigation" was nothing but a partisan battle in which the Democrats succeeded in making McCarthy look bad. However, the author is so transparently partisan in trying to make McCarthy look good that you still have to wonder where the truth lies. Another annoying aspect, unless you are a serious McCarthy scholar, is the author's attempt to answer the details of every charge chapter and verse. I was...more

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Aug 23, 2011 Warwriter rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audible

Worship of McCarthy? Uh, no.

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Jul 30, 2011 Ruth Ann added it · review of another edition

A well-documented book.

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May 31, 2009 Mo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another one of these great histories coming out that actually delve into the subject by reviewing the latest information on the subject. Lots of new information presented, follow up on those were accused. Still reading, quite riveting, another one of those that you can read slowly setting aside and returning to...big read. Gets a tad snarky at times, but only at times when a situation arises so blatant that, in the current vernacular, one would hear pundits exclaim, "Helllo..."

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Jan 01, 2008 Moses Operandi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who can accept the unfashionable truth

People said he was lying, but it simply isn't true--no pun intended. Sen. McCarthy, as the author definitively proves, did not instigate a "witch hunt" against innocent Americans, and indeed was himself censured from the Senate for crimes he did not commit.

I'll be posting a more in-depth review of the book on my blog at some point.

Good job, Mr. Evans. A full five stars. The book is so fact-filled that it took a week to read. That's a long time for me.

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Oct 12, 2011 Teddy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

pretty dry.

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Feb 18, 2009 Jocelyn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm reading this in small doses because I'm interested in the history of this era, but it's not pleasure-reading. Evans presents a very accessible, well-researched, and thoroughly documented look at how the communist organization in America succeeded in demonizing Senator Joseph McCarthy. Debunks many myths about his personal as well as his political life. Turns out that the real "McCarthyism" was the campaign that McCarthy's enemies employed against him.

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Sep 09, 2010 Nancee rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: didn-t-finish

It started off great, but that was the end of it. There were massive amount of facts thrown out there in a random collection. He didn't tie things together and I didn't know what or whom he was talking about half the time. After about 100 pages in, I called it quits.

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Aug 08, 2010 Lynn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is another one of my long reviews which I placed here:
http://lynnfikstad.wordpress.com/2010...

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Jul 25, 2008 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the definitive historical count of the McCarthy era. Very infromative but a very tedious read. Heavily footnoted and referenced. If you interested in the true story of the involvement of Communist influence in the US government during the mid 20th century, this book will give you an unbiased and detailed version.

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Jan 26, 2008 Jake Wegman rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Impressive research, but just took too friggin' long. It's the usual media story of some historical figure gets unfairly painted with a broad brush. I think Evans could've presented a much more concise argument. There are just too many people to keep track of here.

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Feb 05, 2008 Darren rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book gives one the feeling of an X Files episode. The only difference between the two is to substitute subversive leftists for aliens. Great read if your interested in the communist penetration of the federal govt. allowed by the Democrats during the 40's and 50's.

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Dec 15, 2007 Seth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-history

Whenever the ruling elite are as unanimous about something as they are about Joe McCarthy, they're guaranteed to be wrong. They had to smear McCarthy because he saw them for who they are. Evans belongs up there with Finkelstein as a teller of unfashionable truth.

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About M. Stanton Evans

American journalist, author and educator. As an undergraduate, Evans was an editor for the Yale Daily News. Upon graduation, Evans became assistant editor of The Freeman, where Chodorov was editor. The following year, he joined the staff of William F. Buckley's fledgling National Review (where he served as associate editor from 1960 to 1973)and became managing editor of Human Events, where he is c...more

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