The 90th Congress took place in the years 1967 and 1968, a time of tremendous tumult in the United States. The 1966 midterms were a backlash to the policies of President Lyndon B. Johnson, with the Democrats losing a net of three seats in the Senate and 47 seats in the House.

The National Context

In January 1967, the Marxist Black Panther Party, established only months before, formed its first headquarters. You also had the rise of the hippie movement which made itself most known in the Summer of Love that year. The Vietnam War dragged on, and 159 urban race riots occurred starting in April. It was at this time that crime was being seen to rise in the nation as well. The following year, you had the PR disaster for the United States Army in the Tet Offensive and contributed to the “credibility gap” being perceived with the Johnson Administration and Vietnam. There were also the assassinations of MLK and RFK which rocked the nation, with urban riots occurring after the former and the shape of the race for the Democratic nomination changing. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was marked by civil disturbances. By this time, on the economic front, inflation was clearly rising due to a combination of Vietnam War expenditures, Great Society spending, and the tax reductions that had come into law in 1964. All of this overheated the economy, and to make matters worse, President Johnson intervened against clamping down on inflation by the Fed as 1968 was an election year.

The 90th Congress saw a rising conservatism in its members. In 1968, for instance, Senators Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn., Frank Church (D-Idaho), Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), and George McGovern (D-S.D.) scored a 36%, 68%, 39%, and a 39% respectively. These were normally quite liberal legislators. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield scored an 11% in 1967 and a 38% in 1968. However, House Majority Leader Carl Albert (D-Okla.) stayed quite loyal to liberalism by ACA’s standards, scoring a 3% and a 4% in 1967 and 1968 respectively. Proposals for spending cuts were frequently counted by Americans for Constitutional Action especially given inflation. Also counted was the Consular Treaty in 1967 and most curiously the 1967 railroad strike agreement in the House, which saw a lot of crossover from liberals into ACA’s position of opposition, while many tried and true conservatives, such as H.R. Gross (R-Iowa) and Durward G. Hall (R-Mo.), had their votes for counted against them. Although I previously mentioned rising conservatism, an interesting phenomenon occurs. In numerous districts in which Republicans retook seats won by liberal Democrats in 1964, the Republicans are considerably more liberal than their predecessors.

Examples include, with modified ACA scores:

Illinois’ 19th District: Tom Railsback (1967: 79%, 1968: 55%) as opposed to Robert McLoskey (1963: 100%, 1964: 84%).

Iowa’s 6th District: Wiley Mayne (1967: 75%, 1968: 70%) as opposed to Charles B. Hoeven (1963: 100%, 1964: 94%).

Kentucky’s 3rd District: William Cowger (1967: 73%, 1968: 75%) as opposed to Gene Snyder (1963: 100%, 1964: 95%) (who won in the more conservative 4th in 1966).

Michigan’s 2nd District: Marvin Esch (1967: 62%, 1968: 32%) as opposed to George Meader (1963: 82%, 1964: 81%).

Michigan’s 3rd District: Garry Brown (1967: 81%, 1968: 64%) as opposed to August Johansen (1963: 100%, 1964: 100%).

Michigan’s 11th District: Philip Ruppe (1967: 48%, 1968: 45%) as opposed to Victor Knox (1963: 88%, 1964: 84%).

Nebraska’s 1st District: Robert Denney (1967: 93%, 1968: 91%) as opposed to Ralph Beermann (1963: 100%, 1964: 100%).

North Dakota’s 2nd District: Thomas Kleppe (1967: 86%, 1968: 91%) as opposed to Don Short (1963: 100%, 1964: 100%).

Ohio’s 1st District: Robert Taft Jr. (1967: 72%, 1968: 57%) as opposed to Carl Rich (1963: 94%, 1964: 84%)

Ohio’s 3rd District: Charles Whalen (1967: 36%, 1968: 32%) as opposed to Paul Schenck (1963: 82%, 1964: 84%).

Wisconsin’s 6th District: William Steiger (1967: 79%, 1968: 70%) as opposed to William Van Pelt (1963: 94%, 1964: 88%).

President Johnson does not, as you might imagine, fare well under ACA’s grading. His House scores are 4% and 6% respectively. His Senate scores are 13% and 11% respectively. Curiously, no votes surrounding law enforcement are counted in the House in either session save for providing that grants for law enforcement will be block as opposed to categorical grants in 1967. The Senate, on the other hand, had numerous votes on crime, including in 1968. Gun control is only listed in the Senate as an issue in 1968, while no gun control vote is listed for the House in 1968.

100% for 1967, House:

J. Arthur Younger, R-Calif.
Edward Gurney, R-Fla.
J. Herbert Burke, R-Fla.
James McClure, R-Idaho
Richard Roudebush, R-Ind.
William J. Scherle, R-Iowa
Thomas B. Curtis, R-Mo.
John Ashbrook, R-Ohio

100% for 1967, Senate:

John J. Williams, R-Del.
Carl Curtis, R-Neb.
Roman Hruska, R-Neb.
Strom Thurmond, R-S.C.

100% for 1968, House:

Jack Edwards, R-Ala.
James Haley, D-Fla.
J. Herbert Burke, R-Fla.
George Hansen, R-Idaho
Edward Derwinski, R-Ill.
Charlotte Reid, R-Il.
William G. Bray, R-Ind.
H.R. Gross, R-Iowa
John Rarick, D-La.
Durward G. Hall, R-Mo.
Carleton J. King, R-N.Y.
Donald Clancy, R-Ohio
Samuel Devine, R-Ohio
Frank Bow, R-Ohio
John Ashbrook, R-Ohio
George Watkins, R-Penn.
George Goodling, R-Penn.
James Quillen, R-Tenn.
Dave Satterfield, D-Va.
William Tuck, D-Va.
Henry Schadeberg, R-Wis.

No one scored a 100% in the Senate, at least from modified ratings. Three senators, however, scored a 96%:

John J. Williams, R-Del.
Bourke B. Hickenlooper, R-Iowa
Carl Curtis, R-Neb.

KEY:

+ – Voted for the ACA position.

– – Voted against the ACA position.

+ – Paired or announced for the ACA position.

– – Paired or announced against the ACA position.

? – No opinion on the vote.

Republicans are in bold italics.

Democrats are in plain text.

ACA Vote Descriptions:

1967 ACA-Index, House:

1968 ACA-Index, House:

1967 ACA-Index, Senate:

1968 ACA-Index, Senate:

The year 1966 was one of backlash to the Johnson Administration, and the midterms showed it, both in Republican gains and in Democratic primaries in the South. One of these places was Louisiana’s 6th district. Its representative, James Morrison, was a racial moderate who had staunchly backed the Great Society and even voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Out to challenge him was Judge John R. Rarick (1924-2009). Rarick as a judge had a history of racism, including telling one black lawyer who entered his courtroom, “I didn’t know they let you coons practice law” (Time). However, Louisiana’s 6th District had had enough of Morrison, and he was defeated in the primary. Rarick overwhelmingly won the election against Republican Crayton “Sparky” Hall and proceeded to become quite extreme even by Southern Democratic standards.

For him, Justice Thurgood Marshall was a “scamp”, a “cheat”, and a “user of false evidence” (referring to the admittedly questionable “doll test” presented in Brown v. Board of Education) although he clarified that “There are also Negro lawyers who are morally and professionally honest” (Spiegel). He wasn’t any kinder to MLK. For him, he was “an errand boy” for “international communism” who engaged in a “lifetime of subversions and immorality and exploitation” (Spiegel). Rarick found no civil rights measure that met his approval, and was one of the few legislators to vote against prohibiting age discrimination in 1967 and voted against prohibiting racial discrimination in juries in 1968. Rarick was a favorite legislator of Willis Carto and Liberty Lobby, speaking on multiple occasions at their events. In 1969, journalists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson reported that Carto through his United Congressional Appeal had contributed $3000 to his reelection, only two other (Republican E. Ross Adair of Indiana, possibly for his leadership in opposition to foreign aid, and Republican Jimmy Quillen of Tennessee) representatives commanding such a high contribution. Rarick would also speak before the John Birch Society on multiple occasions. He was frequently accused of racism as well as anti-Semitism. This was due to his rhetoric, his voting record on race, and his insertions into the Congressional Record. He was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan at the time he was elected to Congress (Perlstein). Rarick not only associated himself with Carto, but also Richard Cotten, a radio broadcaster with his virulently anti-Semitic publication and radio program Conservative Viewpoint, who had urged him to run for Congress. He was popular enough among the extreme right for a pamphlet to be published in 1968 titled “Stand Up! You Are An American”, a collection of his quotes and speeches with a foreword by American Independent Party politician Tom Anderson.

Assassination Attempt and Other Controversies

In 1967, after less than a year of service in Congress, Rarick challenged Governor John McKeithen for renomination, but only won 17.3% of the vote in the primary. During this campaign, he was for reasons unknown nearly the victim of a drive-by shooting, with a car speeding past him and 3-4 men firing shots at him, with him recounting, “The whole thing happened about like the flip of a finger. At first it sounded like someone threw a cherry bomb. Then I turned around and looked at this car. This fellow was pointing a gun right at me. The shots kept coming. I jumped between cars … I couldn’t even tell you how many shots were fired” (The Washington Post). That year, he introduced H. Res. 208, asking Congress to renounce the 14th Amendment and presented evidence gathered by Plaquemines parish boss Leander Perez purporting to show that the amendment was illegally adopted. In 1968, Rarick endorsed the independent candidacy of George Wallace, for which he was penalized by having his only two years of seniority stripped.

On October 26, 1969, Rarick inserted into the Congressional Record remarks from retired Lieutenant General Pedro del Valle, an associate of Willis Carto, who warned against a “one-world government dreamed up in the Protocols by the Elders of Zion” (Spiegel). In 1971, he defended Captain Jerry B. Finley, who was facing dismissal for refusing to shake a black officer’s hand, by stating that in Louisiana “it is not considered in good taste for a white person to shake hands with a black stranger” (The New London Day). On December 6, 7, and 15, he inserted into the Congressional Record quotations from a 1953 anti-Semitic diatribe, “Zion’s Fifth Column”, by Jack B. Tenney. By this time deceased, Tenney had been a California state legislator known for investigating communism in the state and in his later years out of office aligned himself with the notoriously bigoted Minister Gerald L.K. Smith. That year, he was condemned by Rep. Charles C. Diggs (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, as “the leading racist in this [92nd] Congress” for his opposition to home rule for Washington D.C. based on political activites of Black Muslims; blacks made up 77% of the city (The Baltimore Afro-American).

Yet More Controversies

In 1971, Rarick introduced an amendment to the draft extension to prohibit the prosecution of soldiers for killing during wartime in response to the conviction of 2nd Lieutenant William Calley for the My Lai Massacre, holding that “We must tell every mother we shall not let another soldier be disgraced in this manner”, adding, “Isn’t premeditated murder what war is all about?” (The Tuscaloosa News) His amendment was defeated by voice vote. He would also regularly put in the Congressional Record material about Viet Cong terror tactics and was a staunch supporter of the Vietnam War effort. That year, he was one of 19 representatives to vote against the 26th Amendment, granting 18-year-olds the vote. Rarick also later that year was one of 24 representatives to vote against the Equal Rights Amendment. However, he wasn’t against all amendments to the Constitution; he voted for the school prayer amendment that year.

Rarick on Military and Foreign Policy

Rarick was a truculent opponent of foreign aid, stating, “In my three terms in the House I have never seen a foreign aid bill that deserved passage. I have always felt that we should have Americans helping Americans first, not after they got through helping everyone else” (The New York Daily News). Curiously, Rarick sponsored with liberal Reps. Robert Leggett (D-Calif.) and Parren J. Mitchell (D-Md.) a Constitutional amendment requiring a public referendum for the U.S. to go to war, which had originally been sponsored by Rep. Louis Ludlow (D-Ind.) in 1938.

Defeat and Descent Into Obscurity

Although Rarick won reelection in 1972, 1974 was in general a bad year for conservative candidates, and the Democratic Party in the state was growing more liberal. This permitted radio broadcaster Jeff LaCaze, a liberal, to defeat him for renomination. The seat would be won by Republican W. Henson Moore in one of the few Republican pickups of that year. Rarick’s DW-Nominate score was a 0.333, making him one of the most conservative Democrats in American history. His adjusted ACA-Index average score is a 93%. The American Conservative Union only found error with his record in 1973, when he twice voted against their position, once on agriculture and the other regarding food stamps for strikers.

In 1976, he ran for the nomination for president under the American Independent Party ticket, which was won by former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. After his loss of nomination, he attempted to return to Congress by running in Louisiana’s 1st district, which almost certainly cost Republican Bob Livingston the race. However, the winner, Richard Tonry, was so scandal-plagued that Livingston would win a special election in 1977. In 1980, Rarick won the American Independent Party’s nominee for president, but he was only on the ballot in eight states. He won 40,906 votes, thus coming in seventh place. Rarick’s total was so low that he wasn’t even counted in most publicized tallies. He continued to associate with fringe movements and in 1991 he supported David Duke for governor, speaking at several of his rallies. Rarick died of cancer on September 14, 2009.

References

Fighting Wars on Credit. (1971, September 20). The New York Daily News.

Four Shots Fired at Rep. Rarick. (1967, November 3). The Washington Post.

House Approves Draft Extension. (1971, April 2). The Tuscaloosa News.

Retrieved from

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TBYfAAAAIBAJ&pg=3088,170692

Pearson, D. & Anderson, J. (1969, April 20). Hitler Fan Aids Congressmen. The Washington Merry-Go-Round.

Retrieved from

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/Y%20Disk/Yockey%20Francis%20Parker%20Movement/Item%2006.pdf

Spiegel, I. (1971, November 24). Jews Call Rarick a Costly Racist. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/24/archives/jews-call-rarick-a-costly-racist-bnai-brith-unit-says-public-pays.html

Lawyers: Harassment in the South. (1968, August 16). TIME Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,838559,00.html

Perlstein, R. (2008, May 7). Louisiana Represents. The American Prospect.

Retrieved from

https://prospect.org/article/louisiana-represents./

Rarick called worst racist in Congress. (1972, February 12). The Baltimore Afro-American.

Rarick Continues Inserting Anti-jewish Diatribes in Congressional Record. (1972, January 20). Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Retrieved from

Rarick Continues Inserting Anti-jewish Diatribes in Congressional Record

White Officer Faces Dismissal Over Handshake. (1971, February 12). The New London (Connecticut) Day.

From this Saturday to next I am on vacation, so I’ll be posting new material up until this Saturday, so I won’t have to think about writing or posting. Today’s entry is yet another episode of revealing Americans for Constitutional Action scores and their criterion.

When he was elected president in 1976, Jimmy Carter presented an opportunity for the Democratic Party to move away from the politics of McGovern and to have an appeal broad enough to keep the South. Indeed, Carter had been Georgia’s governor for four years and the voters of all states in the former Confederacy except Virginia cast a majority of votes for him. However, on balance Carter proved a liberal.

As you might expect, Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) wasn’t a fan of President Carter. They are almost constantly against him on domestic issues…they oppose public funding of Congressional campaigns, support deregulation of oil prices, oppose raising the minimum wage, and oppose bailing out New York City. They were also against pay increases for government officials while the public struggled with high inflation. ACA was a bit less opposed to him on matters regarding foreign and military policy. They counted three votes regarding the Panama Canal: the Panama Canal Neutrality Treaty and the Implementation Treaty as well as a property protection amendment. Although the House had no direct vote on the Panama Canal as a treaty, they counted Rep. George Hansen’s (R-Idaho) amendment to block any foreign aid to Panama. ACA also stood against any foreign aid, direct or indirect, to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Uganda as well as against rescinding funding for B-1 Bombers. They sided with President Carter on supporting sales of jet fighters to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, the development of the neutron bomb, and lifting an arms embargo on Turkey over the conflict between Greece and Turkey regarding Cyprus. On domestic policy, they sided with Carter on the Emergency Farm Bill and the 1977 version of the Consumer Co-op Bank. ACA opposed any funds to Uganda, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, including indirect funds.

On social issues, ACA counted votes on busing, racial quotas, and the scope of obscenity laws. Curiously, they only counted a House vote for consideration regarding the extension of the deadline of the Equal Rights Amendment. They also, as per their usual practice, included no votes on the subject of abortion.

The greatest point of interest was, for me, the counting of a vote for the Emergency Farm Bill, sponsored by Bob Dole (R-Kan.), as against the ACA position. Many conservatives voted for this, and many liberals voted against. It was the single vote in 1978 in which by ACA standards staunchly liberal Clifford Case (R-N.J.) and Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.) voted the conservative position and arch-conservative Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) voted liberal. The GOP at this time was still a profoundly ideologically diverse party as were the Democrats. Save for Reps. Bob Stump (D-Ariz.) and Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), no legislator got a 100% for the whole 95th Congress. Famous politicians with reputations as conservative such as Bob Dole (R-Kan.) (70% in 1977 and 58% in 1978) and Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) (59% in 1977 and 70% in 1978) are rather weak sauce by ACA standards, reinforcing ACA as being tough graders. Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) scores a 37% and a 29% in 1977 and 1978 respectively, while House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) scores a 4% in 1977 and a 28% in 1978. The Democratic Party was a bit of a different animal in the time of the release of Star Wars. President Carter himself scores a 22% and an 11% for 1977 and 1978 in the House respectively and a 0% in the Senate 1977 ratings, while he gets a 27% in the Senate 1978 ratings. Carter is, for the most part, playing ball with liberals.

100%: 1977

House:

Bob Stump, D-Ariz.
Eldon Rudd, R-Ariz.
Bill Armstrong, R-Colo.
Larry McDonald, D-Ga.
Steve Symms, R-Idaho
George Hansen, R-Idaho
Jim Collins, R-Tex.

Senate:

Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.
Jesse Helms, R-N.C.
Jake Garn, R-Utah

100%: 1978

House:

Bob Stump, D-Ariz.
William Ketchum, R-Calif.
Barry Goldwater Jr., R-Calif.
John Rousselot, R-Calif.
Delwin Clawson, R-Calif.
Robert Badham, R-Calif.
Richard Kelly, R-Fla.
Skip Bafalis, R-Fla.
Larry McDonald, D-Ga.
Phil Crane, R-Ill.
John Ashbrook, R-Ohio
Bill Archer, R-Tex.
Dave Satterfield Jr., D-Va.

Senate:

Harry Byrd Jr., I-Va.
William Scott, R-Va.

Below are a list of votes ACA used for their ratings as well as scoresheets.

KEY:

+ – Voted for the ACA position.

– – Voted against the ACA position.

+ – Paired or announced for the ACA position.

– – Paired or announced against the ACA position.

? – No opinion on the vote.

Given the release of what just might be film director Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, Oppenheimer, it is now a good time to take a look at him politically. J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) is foremost known in the public consciousness, and rightly so, for being the “father of the Atomic Bomb”. Also perhaps known is that in 1954, he was stripped of his security clearance after a contentious security hearing before the Atomic Energy Commission. Oppenheimer is often portrayed sympathetically on this, and indeed the U.S. government last year posthumously restored his security clearance. Journalist Kai Bird and historian Martin Sherwin concluded that he was not a communist in their 2005 biography of him, American Prometheus, for which the film is based on, holding that he “was branded a security risk at the height of anticommunist hysteria in 1954” and that he merely had “hazy and vague connections to the Communist Party in the 1930s – loose interactions consistent with the activities of contemporary progressives” (Radosh, 2012). This fits completely with what Oppenheimer said about himself, and indeed many biographers choose to take him at his word. However, the real story on him is a bit different.

There is no doubt that Oppenheimer was a man of the left, and those he closely associated with were communists, including his wife, his brother Frank (who admitted it in 1949), and his friends, one of whom was French literature professor Haakon Chevalier. He himself admitted to being a “fellow traveler” although he denied having been a member of the Communist Party at his security clearance hearing in 1954. However, was he a communist or, worse, a spy?

Affiliation with the CPUSA: Late 1930s-1942

Historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (2012) concluded based on available evidence that it “convincingly indicates that Robert Oppenheimer joined the CPUSA in the late 1930s. Exactly when he joined is not clear. Certainly by 1939 he was active in the secret Communist faculty unit at the University of California, Berkeley, remained so in 1940 and into 1941, and actively participated in public Party-related activity through the end of 1941. A corollary of this evidence is that Oppenheimer repeatedly perjured himself on government security forms he signed, in statements to security officials and his colleagues, and under oath in testimony to the AEC.” These activities included writing pamphlets. One of these, according to physicist Philip Morrison, a student of Oppenheimer’s and a young communist, was defending the USSR’s invasion of Finland and another one was attacking FDR as a “war monger” and a “reactionary” for modest measures to mobilize for war (Haynes and Klehr, 2012). Around the time of his recruitment to the Manhattan Project in 1942, he had dropped out of the CPUSA. However, there is a more disturbing charge about him…that he passed on intelligence to the Soviets.

Soviet Spy?

The Case For

In 1994, Pavel Sudoplatov, who oversaw Soviet espionage for the atomic bomb, claimed in his book Special Tasks that Oppenheimer had provided the Soviets with intelligence reports on the development of the atomic bomb (Romerstein & Breindel, 274). This was not the first time Sudoplatov had mentioned Oppenheimer in connection with espionage. In 1982, he appealed to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov for his rehabilitation (he was on the outs due to his connections with Lavrenty Beria), claiming that he had “rendered considerable help to our scientists by giving them the latest materials on atom bomb research, obtained from such sources as the famous nuclear physicists R. Oppenheimer, E. Fermi, K. Fuchs, and others” (Romerstein & Breindel, 275). There is also a letter from Boris Merkulov to Lavrenty Beria published in Sacred Secrets by Jerrold and Leona Schechter that indicates that Oppenheimer informed the USSR about the start of the Manhattan Project and that Communist Party members should distance themselves from atomic scientists so as to lessen the risk of attention being drawn to their extensive intelligence network in the United States.

The Case Against

In 1995, the FBI reviewed its files and, in the process, cleared Oppenheimer of espionage. Sudoplatov was at the time of his book’s publishing 87 years old, so it is possible that he mixed up some details or even lied about his record in his appeal to Andropov. Another issue is that the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) and the NKVD was trying to recruit Oppenheimer in 1944, which begs the question, why were they trying to recruit him if he was already engaging in espionage for them? Additionally, there were already Soviet agents at Los Alamos who were confirmed to have given atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets in Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall (Schechter et. al.). Additionally, it is not confirmed that the Merkulov letter to Beria is genuine. There is no documentation as to how the Schechters (who worked with Sudoplatov in his book) came across this document. If authentic, it proves that Oppenheimer provided intelligence to the USSR, but as it is not confirmed, we must take it with a grain of salt.

Overall

The weight of evidence reflects the conclusions of Haynes and Klehr, including their view that Oppenheimer was evasive due to a sense of pride, although it is an interesting detail that Sudoplatov had in 1982 claimed all these scientists, including Oppenheimer, were passing on information to the Soviets. At least one of the people he mentioned, Fuchs, was proven to have been an agent. Was Sudoplatov embellishing in 1982 to Andropov in his efforts to be rehabilitated and was his memory off by the time of Special Tasks given his advanced age? But what is clear is that Oppenheimer was a communist in the 1930s and up until his recruitment to the Manhattan Project. Notably, after World War II, Oppenheimer appeared to have a bit of a change in philosophy, as Haynes and Klehr (2012) write, “Whatever the initial reason for Oppenheimer’s dropping out of the CPUSA in 1942, it seems clear that by 1946 he was a firm supporter of the developing Cold War liberalism that would dominate the Truman administration and the Democratic Party in the late 1940s, ’50s, and into the mid ’60s.”

References

Haynes, J.E. & Klehr, H. (2012, February 11). J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Spy? No. But a Communist Once? Yes. Washington Decoded.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2012/02/jro.html

Letter from Boris Merkulov (USSR People’s Commissar for State Security) to Lavrenty Beria (USSR People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs), 2 October 1944.

Retrieved from

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/letter-boris-merkulov-ussr-peoples-commissar-state-security-lavrenty-beria-ussr-peoples

Radosh, R. (2012, February 15). Was the Father of the A-Bomb a Communist and Soviet Spy? Hudson Institute.

Retrieved from

https://www.hudson.org/domestic-policy/was-the-father-of-the-a-bomb-a-communist-and-soviet-spy-

Radosh, R. (2021, May 6). Secrets and Lies. Law & Liberty.

Retrieved from

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/secrets-and-lies/

Risen, J. (1995, May 2). FBI Clears Top Physicists of Passing Weapons: Allegations in ex-KGB officer’s book that Oppenheimer, Bohr, Fermi and Szilard had given postwar aid to Soviets provoked outrage. Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05-02-mn-61373-story.html

Romerstein, H. & Breindel, E. (2001). The Venona secrets: exposing Soviet espionage and America’s traitors. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing.

Schechter, J., Schechter L., Herken, G., & Peake, H. Was Oppenheimer a Soviet Spy? A Roundtable Discussion. Wilson Center.

Retrieved from

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/was-oppenheimer-soviet-spy-roundtable-discussion

When he runs for the Senate in 1976, no one initially gives State Senator Malcolm Wallop (1933-2011) a chance against three term incumbent Gale W. McGee. McGee had been a war hawk on Vietnam but was largely a domestic liberal (oil was an exception) who had opposed efforts to ease OSHA regulations on small businesses and supported environmental legislation seen as intrusive to many Wyoming voters. Wallop had previously run for the Republican nomination for governor in 1974 and took a bit of a pro-environmental stance and lost. A number of Republicans were frustrated at him for his perceived lukewarm support of the primary winner, who lost the general election. Polling in the months before the election showed McGee at 72% with Wallop at only 18% and his seat was commonly thought of as safe, but Wallop runs a campaign condemning his votes in support of legislation regulating small business (namely, OSHA) and an EPA many people in Wyoming regard as overbearing. His master class ad spots (see the link in References) contribute to his victory by nine points, a 63-point swing, on Election Day. Gale McGee to this day is the last Democrat to represent Wyoming in the Senate.

Senator Wallop

Wallop is initially staunchly conservative on economics with a couple liberal votes on social issues. For instance, there were multiple occasions in which he voted to maintain Medicaid funding for abortion and he wasn’t gung-ho about the death penalty. But Wallop’s promotion of deregulation, pushing back against overly intrusive government, and his push for lower taxes by far outdid any liberal spots he had early in his Senate career.

Height of Power: The Reagan Years

During the Reagan Administration, Wyoming, with Wallop as well as Senator Alan Simpson and Representative Dick Cheney were a powerhouse in Washington D.C., carrying a great deal more influence with Reagan than would be expected of the least populated state in the U.S. As fellow Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson stated, “It was said that was the most powerful delegation pound for pound in Washington, and I’m sure we didn’t let it go to our heads” (Moen). Wallop was active in pushing for the Strategic Defense Initiative as well as fighting communism in Central America, and his bill to cut inheritance and gift taxes was incorporated into the Kemp-Roth tax reduction in 1981. He also helped bring an end to the windfall profits tax imposed during the Carter Administration. Wallop was effective and packed a legislative punch, so to speak. As colleague Alan Simpson recalled of him, “He had rare legislative skills, and his friendship meant a great deal to me…He did his homework and he had a powerful command of English. As a legislator, he was a devastating debater because of his command of language” (Pelzer). In 1981, as chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, he presided over the Senate response regarding Senator Harrison Williams’ (D-N.J.) part in the Abscam Scandal.

In 1984, Wallop, whose grandfather Oliver Henry Wallop, was the Earl of Portsmouth, hosts Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip for four days at his ranch in Big Horn, Wyoming as part of their American visit. That year, he sponsors legislation with Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) to form the Wallop-Breaux Trust Fund, which funds state fishery and boating programs (Pelzer).

Wallop moves to the right throughout his time in the Senate and is not afraid to stand in the overwhelming minority; in 1988 he is one of only five senators to vote against the INF Treaty and in 1990 he votes against the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 1994, Wallop calls it quits, this possibly having to do with him coming close to losing reelection in 1988 (he had in 1976 promised to run for two terms), even as George H.W. Bush won the state by 22 points. A report in The Economist noted about his controversial nature, “Although his detractors have steadily grown in number, even Democrats grudgingly admitted to liking his candor and his willingness to be stupendously politically incorrect” (Fox).

After the Senate and Death

After leaving the Senate in 1995, Wallop founds Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative advocacy group. The following year, he chairs Steve Forbes’ candidacy for the Republican nomination for president, and although he wins the Arizona and Delaware primaries, Bob Dole wins the nomination. Sadly, his final years were marked by advanced Parkinson’s Disease and coronary disease, and he died on September 14, 2011 (Pelzer). Wallop’s lifetime MC-Index score is a 95%, while DW-Nominate scored him a 0.575. For his contributions to tax reduction, national defense, and expanding trade as well as his conservative voting record and his general political incorrectness, he earns his place.

References

Fox, M. (2011, September 16). Malcolm Wallop, Senator From Wyoming, Dies at 78. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/us/malcolm-wallop-ex-senator-of-wyoming-dies-at-78.html?_r=1

Malcolm Wallop for U.S. Senate Wyoming 1976 TV Ad. YouTube.

Retrieved from

Moen, B. (2011, September 14). Former Wyo. US Sen. Malcolm Wallop dies at age 78. The San Diego Union Tribune.

Retrieved from

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-former-wyo-us-sen-malcolm-wallop-dies-at-age-78-2011sep14-story.html

Pelzer, J. (2011, September 15). Former three-term Wyoming U.S. Sen. Wallop dies. Casper Star Tribune.

Retrieved from

https://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/former-three-term-wyoming-u-s-sen-wallop-dies/article_c6439289-3b33-5c43-b582-dfb65ad143e9.html

Although the 1950s is often thought of as a period of moderate Republicanism and with some good reason, by Americans for Constitutional Action standards, conservatives reside primarily on the Republican side of the aisle. Southern Democrats are particularly weak on public works, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and agriculture issues. However, on issues of organized labor, education, spending, and permitting state anti-subversive laws, there is substantial Southern Democrat support for conservative positions. There were 9 votes counted for 1957, 12 for 1958, 19 for 1959, and 10 for 1960.

Civil rights do not yet appear as an issue for Americans for Constitutional Action in the House, but agriculture votes figure significantly in the 85th Congress, with five of twenty-one votes being inherently agricultural. There is also a vote on establishing a food stamp program, which does fall into typical liberal-conservative splits and has relation to agriculture. Thus, radical Adam Clayton Powell’s (D-N.Y.) higher-than-expected scores at 25% in 1957, 44% in 1958, 13% in 1959, and 13% in 1960 and some lower-than-expected scores among Southern Democrats. Per ACA, in the second term of Eisenhower’s presidency, Republicans were overall on domestic issues quite a conservative group. In 1959 in particular, scores are quite elevated for Republicans; Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) scores his one and only 100% by the group that year, as do Republicans Howard W. Robison and Charles Goodell of New York, both who would be noted for their ideological turns later, with the latter being a far more dramatic case than the former. In that year as well as 1958 there are no foreign aid votes counted.

The GOP’s leader in the House, Joe Martin of Massachusetts, scores a 56% in 1957 and an 89% in 1958. Three of his five votes against the conservative position in that session are on foreign aid. He in the 86th scores an adjusted 93% in 1959 and an adjusted 33% in 1960. This is counting pairs for and against legislation. Although this wasn’t ACA’s practice, it is a more complete ideological judgment. Martin’s successor, Charles Halleck (R-Ind.), gets a 63% in 1957, a 92% in 1958, a 94% in 1959, and a 70% in 1960. If we are to count officially announced positions from President Eisenhower on votes, he scores a 14% in 1957, a 67% in 1958, a 92% in 1959, and a 57% in 1960. Averaging these out gives Eisenhower a 58%, which is consistent with the popular historical view of him as a moderate. I see these scores as reflecting a conservative view on what was important in the 1950s, and there are certainly some differences than with Americans for Democratic Action. Trade votes do not figure in the ACA’s scoring during the latter part of the Eisenhower presidency. Also not included are votes regarding the Mallory rule of evidence and statehood for Alaska and Hawaii.

I would evaluate the Senate as well, but I haven’t cracked the breakdown of the scores yet. The Senate is considerably harder to do than the House, because there are far more unique votes there that can effectively rule out more votes in this process of deduction.

The members of Congress who did no wrong by Americans for Constitutional Action by adjusted scores in the 85th Congress included:

H. Allen Smith, R-Calif.
Edgar Hiestand, R-Calif.
Glen Lipscomb, R-Calif.
James B. Utt, R-Calif.
E. Ross Adair, R-Ind.
Charles Brownson, R-Ind.
Howard W. Robison, R-N.Y.
John R. Pillion, R-N.Y.
Gordon Scherer, R-Ohio
William Minshall, R-Ohio

The members of Congress who did no wrong by them in the 86th Congress by adjusted scores were:

H. Allen Smith, R-Calif.
Hamer Budge, R-Idaho
Elmer J. Hoffman, R-Ill.
Noah Mason, R-Ill.
August Johansen, R-Mich.
Clare Hoffman, R-Mich.
Gordon Scherer, R-Ohio
Clarence J. Brown, R-Ohio
Samuel Devine, R-Ohio
Frank Bow, R-Ohio
Bruce Alger, R-Tex.
Richard Poff, R-Va.

Descriptions of Votes

Key for Votes:

+ – A vote for ACA’s position.

– A vote against ACA’s position.

+ – A pair or announcement for ACA’s position.

– – A pair or announcement against ACA’s position.

? – No vote.

The Votes:

1957 ACA-Index, House:

1958 ACA-Index, House:

1959 ACA-Index, House:

1960 ACA-Index, House:

On September 1, 1983, news has just reached the United States on the Soviets shooting down Flight KAL 007, killing 269 people, one being Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Ga.). Washington’s senator, known as a hawkish figure on matters regarding the USSR, at a televised press conference in Seattle blasts the Soviets for this act. Only hours later, despite publicly appearing to be in good health, he suffers a massive heart attack and despite the best efforts of cardiologists at Everett’s Providence Hospital, he is pronounced dead less than two hours later at the age of 71. This ended the 42-year long career of one of Washington’s true political giants, Senator Henry Martin “Scoop” Jackson (1912-1983).

The Start of a Career

Washington was in 1940 even more of a Democratic state than it is now…indeed Postmaster General James Farley at the time described the United States as 47 states and “the Soviet of Washington” (Will). This election, however, sends 28-year-old Jackson, a crusading prosecutor from Everett, to Congress. Although a loyal New Deal Democrat, one of his first votes is against Lend-Lease. A number of Washington’s politicians are non-interventionist, including one of its senators, Homer T. Bone. However, Jackson votes to permit U.S. merchant ships to enter belligerent ports later that year and after World War II, he would readily embrace the postwar internationalist consensus, backing the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. The approach of actively countering the Soviets abroad was the position of almost all postwar liberals, and this consensus would hold until the Vietnam War.

Defeating Cain

The 1946 midterms had gotten elected a number of Republicans who probably would not have been elected under other circumstances. One of these was Republican Harry P. Cain of Washington. Its not that he was a bad legislator, rather that ideologically he was quite to the right of the state of Washington’s consensus, and in 1952 Congressman Jackson challenged him for reelection. He had been the only Democrat up for reelection to Congress who had weathered the 1946 midterms and was highly popular. Cain didn’t benefit at all from Eisenhower’s landslide win, with Jackson winning by over 12 points. Although Jackson defeated Cain, Cain would later become supportive of him.

Senator Jackson – Domestic Policy

Senator Jackson stands as a staunch advocate of liberalism in domestic affairs, such as for the Great Society. He voted for the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 as well as Medicare. Jackson also proves a strong supporter of civil rights legislation and takes the lead on environmental causes. In 1969, he introduced the National Environmental Policy Act, which created the Council on Environmental Quality, and pushed for more lands to be protected from development and regulating surface coal mining. Jackson also stood as an outspoken foe of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) style of anti-communism, asserting that he and his committee were “hunting headlines instead of hunting Communists” and voted, as did all other voting Democrats, to censure him in 1954 (Shribman).

Although a liberal, Jackson was one who wanted to get “tough on crime”; in 1970 he voted for “no knock” warrants in drug cases and in 1974 voted to restore the federal death penalty. Along with colleague Warren Magnuson they were a powerhouse for the state of Washington. With Magnuson as chairman of Appropriations and Jackson as chairman of the Interior committee, the two, often referred to as “Maggie” and “Scoop” (Jackson’s childhood nickname) secure a great deal of federal money for the state. Jackson was also known as the “Senator from Boeing” for his pushing for Boeing being awarded military contracts; which at the time was the largest employer in Washington. Jackson’s support for Boeing also came out in his support of government funding for the Supersonic Transport. Although he supported that business, he was strongly supportive of government placing limitations on the economy overall, including backing wartime price and rent controls in the 1940s and 1950s as well as price controls, including on oil, in the 1970s.

Statehood for Alaska and Hawaii

During the 1950s, Jackson was one of the leading senators pushing for statehood of both Alaska and Hawaii, and in 1955 he introduced legislation to admit them both, which died in the House. Alaska and Hawaii statehood would both be signed by President Eisenhower in 1958 and 1959 respectively.

Foreign Policy: Anti-Communist and Anti-Detente

While Senator Jackson’s stance on aggressive anti-communism wasn’t so different from Democrats in the 1950s, indeed he critiqued the Eisenhower Administration for supposedly not doing enough on defense. He was and remained throughout his life a firm believer in internationalism and supported a number of treaties for arms control, including the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1969, and the ABM Treaty in 1972. However, on September 14, 1972, Jackson proposed an amendment to the SALT Interim Agreement, which passed 56-35, which mandated that future treaties assure each nation of rough numerical equality in intercontinental deterrent forces. Indeed, his differences with liberals on defense would become particularly notable by the Nixon Administration.

This New Deal liberal would be out of step with Northern Democrats on Vietnam and military spending, although to what degree he changed and liberal Democrats changed is disputable. In 1970, Jackson voted against the McGovern-Hatfield “End the War” Amendment and on May 31, 1973, he was one of only three Democrats to vote against Sen. Thomas Eagleton’s (D-Mo.) popular amendment pulling out all funds from Cambodia and Laos. Jackson would even after American involvement in Vietnam believe that the U.S. was right to enter. Many people who would later figure in Republican policy on foreign policy, including UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz, had started as staffers for or supporters of Jackson. Jackson in many ways remained a liberal on foreign policy despite his hawkishness, voting for barring the importation of Rhodesian chrome in 1973 and voting to advance the Treaty on the Prevention of Genocide in 1974.

Presidential Bids

In 1972 and 1976, Jackson sought the Democratic nomination for president, but was hampered by his hawkishness on the Vietnam War, a significant break from the liberals. He didn’t gain a lot of traction in 1972 and did marginally better in 1976, winning the Alaska, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington primaries. However, he was overshadowed by figures like the audacious California Governor Jerry Brown and George Wallace, who had at this point had renounced segregation. Jackson was also, despite his success in Washington state politics, not an enthusiastic national campaigner.

Jackson-Vanik Amendment

In 1974, despite the objections of the Nixon Administration and the Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, denying most favored nation status to non-market nations that refuse their citizens the right of emigration. President Nixon regarded this as hindering his efforts at detente and this was in response to the USSR imposing hefty taxes on those who wished to emigrate, especially Jews. As Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky (2004) later wrote, “…Kissinger saw Jackson’s amendment as an attempt to undermine plans to smoothly carve up the geopolitical pie between the superpowers. It was. Jackson believed that the Soviets had to be confronted, not appeased. Andrei Sakharov was another vociferous opponent of détente. He thought it swept the Soviet’s human rights record under the rug in the name of improved superpower relations. … One message he would consistently convey to these foreigners (the press) was that human rights must never be considered a humanitarian issue alone. For him, it was also a matter of international security. As he succinctly put it: “A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbors” (3).

President Carter: A Mixed Relationship on Foreign Policy

Although Senator Jackson was a strong supporter of President Carter on domestic policy, his record with Carter on foreign policy is mixed. In one of the earliest key votes in the Carter presidency, Jackson dissented. This was on the nomination of Paul Warnke as head of the SALT II talks; he had been Senator George McGovern’s (D-S.D.) advisor on defense issues during the 1972 election and had proposed reducing the military by 1/3 (Mauravchik). Jackson was able to get 40 senators to vote against Warnke, indicating that he could sink any agreement that didn’t meet his standard of rough equality between the US and USSR in intercontinental deterrent forces. Although Carter and Brezhnev signed SALT II in 1979, Jackson was staunchly opposed and Carter withdrew it from the Senate for ratification on January 2, 1980, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Glass). Both sides would adhere to the unratified SALT II until 1986. Jackson also opposes Carter’s 1978 sale of jet fighter planes to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia; it was seen as overall unfavorable to Israel, back in the day in which strong support of Israel was more indicative of liberalism than today. Jackson, however, did support Carter on barring imports of Rhodesian chrome and on the Panama Canal treaties.

Reacting to Reagan and Legacy

Although President Reagan was more in line with Jackson’s approach to confrontation rather than detente with the Soviets, the ship of detente had sailed with the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan appreciated Jackson’s stances on the Soviets and offered him he nomination as Secretary of Defense, but he declined. Instead, Jackson was mostly an opponent of the Reagan Administration and won reelection in 1982 by campaigning against “Reaganomics”. He would continue to oppose Reagan’s domestic policy while embracing confrontation with the Soviets until his death. Overall, Jackson was quite a liberal, but he has become more known for where he broke with liberalism than where he stood, which was in truth most of the time. Organized labor remembered him fondly, with president of the AFL-CIO Lane Kirkland holding that “Labor had no stauncher friend. He shared our commitment to social and economic justice and to a strong national defense adequate to protect those values against totalitarians of the left or the right” (Shribman). Yet in the process he gained the admiration of some conservatives, such as George Will; in 1987 wrote an article titled “Henry Jackson, The Greatest President That U.S. Never Had”.

References

Abrams, E. (2014, March 24). The Real Scoop Jackson. The Washington Examiner.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-real-scoop-jackson

Glass, A. (2018, January 1). Carter withdraws SALT II accord, Jan. 2, 1980. Politico.

Retrieved from

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/01/carter-withdraws-salt-ii-accord-jan-2-1980-319819

Mauravchik, J. (2012, July/August). ‘Scoop’ Jackson at One Hundred. Commentary Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.commentary.org/articles/joshua-muravchik/scoop-jackson-at-one-hundred/

Senator Henry M. Jackson, 1912-1983: Legislative Record. University of Washington.

Retrieved from

https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/henry_jackson/legislative_record

Sharansky, N. (2004). The case for democracy. New York City, NY: PublicAffairs.

Shribman, D. (1983, September 3). Senator Henry M. Jackson is Dead at 71. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/03/obituaries/senator-henry-m-jackson-is-dead-at-71.html

Will, G. (1987, May 28). Henry Jackson, the Greatest President That U.S. Never Had. Orlando Sentinel.

Retrieved from

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/1987/05/28/henry-jackson-the-greatest-president-that-us-never-had/

Quick! Who are the foremost Democrat in Name Only politicians? If you were to say Joe Manchin and up until her switch to independent Kyrsten Sinema, your response would be understandable in a present-day context but quite wrong in a historical context. Many political questions are difficult to resolve and up for much debate, but for the question of who the most conservative Democrat was to serve in Congress in American history, the answer is without doubt Lawrence Patton McDonald (1935-1983) of Georgia. Professor Donald Wilkes (2003) scathingly wrote on him, “Conservative to a psychopathic degree, the very embodiment of the lunatic fringe of the far right, chairman of the John Birch Society, Larry McDonald was the most fanatical right-wing extremist ever to sit in Congress” (1).

The 1974 midterms resulted in many new liberal Democrats in Congress, but one district in which this was decidedly not the trend was in Georgia’s 7th, centered in Cobb County. Incumbent John W. Davis was a moderate Democrat who although he had had a segregationist record in the 1960s, he was accused of being insufficiently anti-busing. McDonald, who had unsuccessfully tried to defeat him in 1972, ran his campaign on busing, which was deeply unpopular in the South as well as nationwide generally and this resulted in him winning the primary. He won election by less than a point against Republican Quincy Collins, the closest contest in Georgia that year. However, McDonald would improve his numbers on Collins, winning by over 10 points in 1976.

When it came to party loyalty, it turned out that just about the only thing that he regularly voted with Democrats on was who to elect House speaker. In his time in office, he was by DW-Nominate standards to the right of every single elected official in Congress, with a whopping 0.884. This is further to the right than Marjorie Taylor Greene. His lifetime American Conservative Union score was a 99%, while he averaged a 5% by Americans for Democratic Action. McDonald, however, regarded himself as a Democrat in the tradition of Jefferson and Jackson.

McDonald supported returning to the gold standard, backed transferring all the functions of the Great Society to states, campaigned against the Panama Canal treaties, and expressed his belief that there was a global conspiracy to implement socialism in the United States, stating, “The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the same tent, all under their control…Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent” (McDonald). This talk of conspiracy elicited comparisons to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who he was a fan of. For journalist Jack Anderson, McDonald was “Bush league McCarthy” (Dorman).

The 7th District Democratic organization censured him in 1978 over his refusal to support President Carter, his membership in the John Birch Society, his belief that the Constitution had no implied powers, and his advertising methods (Marion, 109). McDonald would win reelection by a greater margin than in 1976. Although successful in his district, political scientist Michael Barone (1984) would note in The Almanac of American Politics that “McDonald has fine credentials: a good education, a successful career as a urologist. But his politics are so far out, and his political skill so limited, that he has little impact”. On July 23, 1980, McDonald proposed to ban trade with the USSR after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but it cratered 124-284. On June 27, 1977, and again on July 22, 1980, he proposed denying any Legal Services Corporation funds for gay rights legal cases, and these amendments passed overwhelmingly, but would not get through the Senate. Of course, he opposed the very existence of the Legal Services Corporation, but he took vote wins where he could get them. McDonald also opposed all US participation in the United Nations, and in 1983 he sponsored a resolution with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) to put this into effect. Indeed, he sponsored many resolutions and bills that went nowhere, including:

. Repealing the Gun Control Act of 1968.

. Cutting Congress’ pay by 10% if the budget is not balanced.

. Barring women from U.S. service academy membership.

. Ending all federal involvement in education.

. Eliminating the income limit for Social Security recipients.

. Abolishing the Federal Election Commission.

. Repeal the Occupational Safety and Hazard Act of 1970, thereby ending OSHA.

. Recreating the House Internal Security Committee.

(Congress.gov)

McDonald and Foreign Authoritarians

Despite McDonald’s stated belief in American freedoms, he seemed quite keen on embracing authoritarians if they were anti-communist. He had a portrait of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in his office and more controversially, once suggested in a debate nominating Rudolf Hess, at one time Hitler’s number three man in Nazi Germany and incarcerated in Spandau Prison for life, for a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-communism. McDonald had a bit less controversially called for the release of Hess on account of old age. The British had been pushing for this and President Nixon had supported it in 1974 (Baker).

Quackery, Civil Rights, and MLK

As a urologist, McDonald embraced quackery in his pushing of laetrile as a treatment for cancer in late-stage patients and was ordered to pay a judgment in a malpractice lawsuit on the matter in 1976. His record was one of repeated opposition to civil rights measures, voting against extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 1975 and 1982, opposing all funding measures for the Civil Rights Commission, and he was even one of only three representatives to vote against the Equal Credit Opportunity Act Amendments, which expanded the 1974 ban on credit discrimination on sex to race. His reasons appeared to have to do with his staunch opposition to federal anything, but he was also a critic of MLK.

McDonald was one of the few legislators to consistently vote against any honors for civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., asserting that per FBI evidence he “was associated with and being manipulated by communists and secret communist agents” (The Spokesman-Review). He was also thus one of the few opponents of the MLK holiday who engaged in personal attacks against King. McDonald instead proposed honoring Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver (Congress.gov).

Western Goals Foundation & John Birch Society

In 1979, McDonald founded with General John K. Singlaub and John Rees the Western Goals Foundation, which attracted support from America but more so from abroad. Although his impact on Congress was nil, this was not an insignificant organization and he used it to conduct his own surveillance of potential communist activities. This included an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department copying records on left-wing activists to be destroyed and their addition to the organization’s database for further monitoring, for which they were sued by the ACLU. This organization’s advisory board included such figures as Singlaub, Joseph McCarthy’s counsel Roy Cohn, Congressmen Bob Stump of Arizona and Phil Crane of Illinois, General George S. Patton IV, novelist Taylor Caldwell, economist Henry Hazlitt, theoretical physicist Edward Teller, and former FBI agent and John Birch Society figure Dan Smoot. With this organization, McDonald sought to fill in the gap left from the end of the House Internal Security Committee (formerly House Committee on Un-American Activities) in 1975. Interestingly enough, a good deal of the funding came from West Germany from men who wore medals and never traveled to the United States (Dorman). The organization also provided funding for the Contras after the adoption of the Boland Amendment in 1983.

By 1983, John Birch Society founder Robert W. Welch was at 83 years old ailing, and as the only Bircher in Congress, McDonald was the natural choice to succeed him. He sought to grow the organization from 50,000-80,000 estimated members to half a million members. However, McDonald would never get to implement his vision.

McDonald’s One Way Flight

On August 30, 1983, McDonald boarded KAL 007 to Seoul, South Korea, where he was to attend an anti-communist conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately, the flight entered Soviet airspace on September 1st and the Soviet air force shot it down, killing all 269 passengers on board. Thus, he was the only member of Congress ever killed by the USSR.

There were some conservatives who afterwards thought that McDonald was specifically targeted for assassination, but this is highly unlikely given his boarding of KAL 007 was a last-minute decision. What’s more, I personally think the Soviets had better things to do than to assassinate McDonald; there were much greater anti-communist targets out there. Although his widow Kathy ran for his seat, ultimately the Democratic primary was won by Buddy Darden, who was far better suited for the state’s Democratic Party, and he then won the election. The John Birch Society reverted back to Welch as the leader until his death on January 6, 1985.

References

Baker, L. (2007, September 27). Life imprisonment of Nazi Hess a “charade”. Reuters.

Retrieved from

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-archives-hess-idUKL2785983520070928

Barone, M. (1984). The almanac of American politics. Washington, D.C.: National Journal.

Retrieved from

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_McDonald

Dewar, H. & Aplin-Brownlee, V. (1983, September 2). Rep. McDonald Hailed As Right-Wing Martyr. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/09/02/rep-mcdonald-hailed-as-right-wing-martyr/7f259583-8990-416e-b23b-e92500068ebe/

Dorman, Z. (2018, February 2). The Congressman Who Created His Own Deep State. Really.
Politico.

Retrieved from

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/02/larry-mcdonald-communists-deep-state-222726/

Griffin, G.E. (1983). The subversion factor: a history of treason in modern America.

Retrieved from

Marion, N.E. & Oliver, W. (2014). Killing Congress: assassinations, attempted assassinations and other violence against members of Congress. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

McDonald, L.P. Introduction for Allen, G. (1976). The Rockefeller File. Seal Beach, CA: 76′ Press.

McDonald’s peers note tragic irony. (1983, September 2). The Spokesman-Review.

Representative Lawrence P. McDonald. Congress.gov

Retrieved from

https://www.congress.gov/member/larry-mcdonald/M000413

Wilkes, D.E. (2003, September 3). The Death Flight of Larry McDonald. School of Law University of Georgia.

Retrieved from

https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=fac_pm

I’m going to level with you: I love it when the Supreme Court issues rulings as it gives me immediate thought on what to write about and given the recent of news of momentous Supreme Court decisions on a number of hot button issues including affirmative action, it reminds me of a time past in which the Supreme Court shook up the administration of criminal justice 51 years ago. Richard Nixon had run for president in 1968 on platform involving cracking down on crime and appointing “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court and by 1972, he had picked four justices: Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and William Rehnquist. That year, the Supreme Court issued its conflicted ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which ruled all death penalty laws in the United States as having violated the 8th (“cruel and unusual punishment”) and 14th Amendments on account of the “arbitrary and capricious” manner of imposition (Justia). The facts of the case were that William Furman, a black house robber, had killed a homeowner in 1967 while fleeing by either firing blindly behind him or accidentally firing after tripping. A mental evaluation of him found that he had “well below the average of IQ of Texas prison inmates” (Justia). Possibly playing a role in his being sentenced to death rather than a term of imprisonment were his race and intelligence, the former as he was convicted in a state that had elected as its governor Lester Maddox, a man who had closed his diner rather than serve black customers.

The decision issued on June 29, 1972, was 5-4, but every justice had their own opinion, and the majority were not agreed on what the future of the death penalty should be. Justices Byron White and Potter Stewart thought that the death penalty could be constitutional but that the current laws were unconstitutional given disproportionate imposition on people who were poor, black, and young. As Stewart wrote, “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual” (Glass). Justice William O. Douglas found the death penalty to contravene the 8th Amendment but he didn’t necessarily call for its abolition. Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, on the other hand, were opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and regarded all such instances as unconstitutional under the 8th and 14th Amendments given the “evolving standards of decency” (Justia). In dissent were all of Nixon’s picks to the court, who disputed that a law existing in 40 states was against “evolving standards of decency”. Chief Justice Burger contested the application of the 8th Amendment while Justice Rehnquist contested the application of the 14th.

Nixon and Congress Respond

President Nixon was not pleased with the Furman decision and pushed Congress to pass a substitute federal death penalty to address the Supreme Court’s objections. Heading up this effort in the Senate was Roman Hruska (R-Neb.) who brought forth a bill restoring the death penalty for treason and murder as well as if a death occurred because of kidnapping, hijacking, escape from custody, and blowing up public buildings (Weaver). The bill passed the Senate 54-33 on March 13, 1974, with Democrats splitting 25-25, Republicans voting 27-8 for, and the Conservative and Independent senators both voting for. The bill got the support of all the Senate’s conservatives, many of its moderates, and even a few noted liberals such as Abe Ribicoff (D-Conn.) and Birch Bayh (D-Ind.). Also of note, Joe Biden, a longtime opponent of the death penalty, voted against and no Southern Democrats voted against. This bill, however, didn’t get through the House and a federal death penalty would not be restored until 1988.

Return of the Death Penalty

The death penalty’s support was meandering at the time of Furman, as in 1972, the death penalty’s approval among the public stood at 50%, but by 1976, absence appeared to make the heart grow fonder among the public as it stood at 66% (Politico). Although the death penalty met its demise in Georgia, it was also there it would be resurrected. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia, 7-2, that the death penalty itself didn’t constitute a violation of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” as all states had death penalty laws at the time of its adoption and set conditions that the death penalty must meet to be constitutional, with Brennan and Marshall in dissent. Interestingly, Justices Blackmun, Powell, and Stevens would later express their regrets for the vote, coming to believe that there is no way to achieve a just death penalty law.

References

Frommer, F.J. (2022, June 29). Three justices backed the death penalty – then changed their minds. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/29/death-penalty-furman-blackmun-stevens/

Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). Justia.

Retrieved from

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/408/238/

Glass, A. (2017, June 29). Supreme Court strikes down death penalty, June 29, 1972. Politico.

Retrieved from

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/29/supreme-court-strikes-down-death-penalty-june-29-1972-239938

Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). Justia.

Retrieved from

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/428/153/

To Pass S. 1401. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/93-1974/s663

Weaver, W. (1974, March 14). Death Penalty Restoration Is Voted by Senate, 54-33. The New York Times.

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