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The main attacks on
Senator Joe McCarthy’s credibility deal
with his Lincoln Day Dinner speech to the Republican Women's Club of
Wheeling,
West Virginia February 9, 1950. McCarthy is endlessly bashed for making
wild unsubstantiated attacks on innocent public servants. McCarthy
is usually quoted as saying:
"I have here
in my hand a list of 205, a list of names
that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the
Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping
policy in
the State Department."
This set off a firestorm in the press. Some taking
McCarthy at face value
but many attacking his character and his motives but most of all his
source for
the list. The Left would have us believe that McCarthy fabricated a
list of innocent
people to further his political career. If McCarthy was telling the
truth and
really had a list from a reliable source it changes the perspective in
which
McCarthy and his career must be judged. As truth is often stranger than
fiction
the source of the McCarthy list was a small secret intelligence
operation
codenamed “The Pond”. The Pond was created by Franklin Roosevelt during
the
Second World War and run by a West
Point
grad Brigadier
General John “Frenchy” Grombach.. So their was a report by American
Intelligence officers that documented the Communist infiltration of the
US Department of State. That report made its way to the Secretary of State Dean
Acheson who disregarded the report in its entirety. Acheson had
previously been the US council to Soviet Russia (prior to Franklin
Roosevelt's recognition of the Soviets in 1932) while Acheson was at
Covington & Burling. Prior to Roosevelt
intelligence was gathered primarily by
the military and the US Department of State in what is now called The
Bureau of
Intelligence and Research (INR). As the US
edged closer to WWII President Roosevelt
set a multi-pronged approach to Intelligence. At the request of British
Agent
Provocateur William Stephenson Roosevelt set up the OSS
under William Joseph Donovan which was
strongly pro-British and in many ways functioned as a junior partner to
British
Intelligence. Attempting to counter balance the British who sought to
have us
fight their war was Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American
affairs
Adolph Berle who was a leading voice at State and was seen as
anti-British (but
not pro-German). In the middle was the Pond, Frenchy Grombach’s vest
pocket
operation. A small operation but Grombach operated under the authority
of the
President and was very effective. The Pond was able to show the extent
to which
the British were spying on the US
but was also effective in fight Abwehr.
After WWII and the Truman
Presidency the Pond lost its
impetus and most importantly its presidential protection. The State
Department was
able to absorb parts of OSS
into what became INR. Then Truman did an about face and authorized the
CIA. As
the venona intercepts have born out the Truman’s administration and
particularly The State Department were rife with Communists. Shifting
focus to
the “Red Menace” as it was called the Pond initiated Project 1641. The
conclusion of the project was a report listing 205 names that were made
known
to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and
who
nevertheless were still working and shaping policy in the State
Department. The
report was buried and would have been forgotten except the Frenchy
Grombach
handed a copy of that report to a young Senator who made a speech in Wheeling
West Virginia…
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