Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt

by Michael J. Ybarra

IN THIS SWEEPING, monumental work of American history, journalist Michael J. Ybarra tells the story of Senator Pat McCarran’s extraordinary career for the first time, and he vividly re-creates a passionate era of politics that reshaped America and echoes to this day. Brilliantly researched and energetically written, Washington Gone Crazy makes a significant new contribution to our understanding of the United States in the twentieth century.
McCarran was one of the most shrewd and powerful — and vindictive — lawmakers ever to sit in Congress. Joe McCarthy gave his name to the cause of zealous anti-Communism, but it was McCarran, a lifelong Democrat, who actually wrote the laws, held the hearings, and bullied the State and Justice Departments into doing his bidding. McCarran was consumed with looking for Communists in Washington and his obsession almost consumed the country.
The son of illiterate Irish immigrants, McCarran was born in 1876 in Nevada, where he grew up to be a sheepherder who taught himself the law around the campfire, becoming a legendary defense attorney and judge. After struggling for years against the local Democratic political machine, McCarran rode Franklin Roosevelt’s landslide into the U.S. Senate in 1932 — and broke ranks with Roosevelt during the New Deal’s first week. But it was President Harry Truman who would become McCarran’s real nemesis. A master of parliamentary procedure, McCarran turned his Senate Judiciary Committee into a virtual government within the government. McCarran worked with J. Edgar Hoover to undermine the Truman Administration before McCarthy even got to Washington. He created the most far-reaching anti-sedition law ever enacted in America (the McCarran Internal Security Act), which filled Ellis Island with immigrants alleged to be subversives and set up concentration camps to hold suspected traitors in the case of a national emergency. McCarran’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee cowed the State Department into sacrificing the careers of diplomats accused of helping the Communists take over China. McCarran virtually blackmailed more than one attorney general into carrying out his policies. From Capitol Hill to the United Nations, from union halls to Hollywood, McCarran’s wrath broke careers and lives and ultimately, in a self-destructive fit of pique, cost his party control of the Senate. Ybarra’s even-handed narrative shows that McCarran was ultimately half There really were Communists in Washington — but it was the hunt for them that did the real damage.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

818 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Michael J. Ybarra graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in political science and received his M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a former staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Ybarra also contributed articles to the New Republic, The Washington Monthly and Upside Magazine.

"Washington Gone Crazy" was a finalist for the annual book prize awarded by the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times Book Review listed the biography among the 100 Notable Books of the Year and was shortlisted for the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies. It won the D.B. Hardeman Prize for best book on Congress from the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation in 2004.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A valuable contribution to the history of mid-century anti-Communism, albeit somewhat overwhelming in its scope. Ybarra is even-handed in his treatment: he admits that there were indeed Communists employed by the federal government, especially during the New Deal years, but he roundly criticizes Senator Pat McCarran's monomaniacal pursuit of Reds in the 1950s, "willing to pull down the whole structure of government to satisfy his pique." (p. 748)

FDR's reputation is somewhat tarnished by the book (illicit wiretapping, p. 247); Senator Hubert Humphrey is portrayed in nuanced fashion, finding himself on the wrong side of history in some of the legislation he sponsored. The hero of the book, if any, is Harry Truman, defender of civil liberties and frequent McCarran antagonist.

Ybarra juggles more characters than a Russian novel, tracing the stories of labor unrest in the west, court intrigues in the Alphabet Soup agencies, the parade of "professional ex-Communists" Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers, Harvey Matusow.

The book would have profited from tighter editing, as there are infelicitous spellings and lapses into colloquialism. And what possessed Ybarra to describe pre-Pearl Harbor Washington as a "sleepy southern town with one theater and a half dozen movie houses"? (p. 280)

[David Corleto-Bales]

The author--in this thoroughly researched and exhaustingly long book--never really decided whether he was doing a biography of Senator Pat McCarran or a history of the red scare of the '30s, '40s, and '50s, or some other book. The book's premise is built around McCarran, (1876-1954) a professional contrarian who grew up raising sheep in Nevada and became one of the most powerful (and reviled) senators of his time, a Democrat who opposed most of the New Deal and had a distinctive Joe Manchin vibe. Ybarra takes nothing for granted. We're told of McCarran's spartan and hardworking childhood in arid, remote Nevada, and its unique politics and politicians (most with a connection to mining) and his relations with his family. Although McCarran destroyed many lives with his zeal to expose "the reds" in the government and elsewhere, the senator often appears sentimental and soft in his dealings with his wife and children. McCarran often disappears for wide swathes of the this book while the author discusses the politics of the time, Roosevelt, Truman, etc., and most chapters are a back and forth between that and the story of various left-leaning figures who served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. A few were communists, others became enticed by communism but never took the plunge, and a very small minority were outright spies. Thus was the catalyst for the red scare. I think this book could have been edited down to about half of what it eventually became.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful book for Nevadans who want to understand more about McCarran, who was a driving force in the state's growth. It's also a good overview of the people who became the focus of what we typically call "McCarthyism" (maybe we should call it McCarranism?) The author is commendably even-handed about this. There were Communists in government, but did they effectively undermine the United States? No, he says, and the reaction by the likes of McCarran was actually more harmful than the Communists themselves. There is also some illuminating stuff about "professional ex-Communists" and quite a bit about the entanglement of communism with the labor movement.

McCarran does not come off as a nice man. Nor does he fill one with enthusiasm for the institution of the US Senate. There are no doubt plenty of Nevadans who owe a debt to McCarran for favors done within a small state with the expectation of political support, but his xenophobia, rabid conservatism, anti-interventionism, anti-Semitism, anti-Black, anti-Native, and pro-Franco views are appalling.

This is one of the best books you'll find about Nevada history, even if much of the action takes place in Washington and China.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even if you're not a Nevada resident and like "behind the scenes" political books, I would recommend this book. It deals with the McCarthy era but the book centers around Nevada's long-time Senator Pat McCarran who was as influential and one of McCarthy's cohorts. If you find Nevada politics fascinating, this is the book for you.