The Foreign Service Journal, October 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2020 61 The McCarthy Years Inside the Department of State From the FSJ Archive BY JOHN W. FORD The following is excerpted from an article by the same title in the November 1980 Foreign Service Journal . The article car ried this note about the author: “John W. Ford, is a retired Foreign Service officer. Over twenty-seven years ago Mr. Ford held the position in the Department of State which today is that of deputy assistant secretary for security. Mr. Ford occupied his position at the height of the campaign of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy against alleged communists in the US government and at the time was under fre- quent subpoena by McCarthy, various congressional committees and a New York grand jury. He was threatened by the McCarthy committee staff with contempt of Congress for alleged interference with a congressional witness who took to the McCarthy commit- tee material from security files of the department on some of our highest-ranking Foreign Service officers. Eventually Mr. Ford was placed on indefinite probation and removed from his position.” F ew people who lived through the McCarthy era in the Department of State can ever forget the fear, intimida- tion and sense of outrage which permeated Foggy Bot- tom. As an officer of the Foreign Service (now retired), I found myself caught up in that political whirlwind in which reputations were placed in jeopardy, integrity questioned, and disloyalty frequently presumed rather than proven. Most of us had for guidance during that period only our own moral principles and convictions and above all our belief that the American people would demand fair play and due process. In the long run this proved correct. In the short run though, many fine, loyal, decent, courageous officers of our domestic and foreign service suffered frightful traumas. The public mood of the United States in the early 1950s was hostile to diplomacy generally and to diplomats specifically, McCARTHYISM REVISITED FS HERITAGE a situation we tend to forget but one brought home to me with frightening suddenness on my return from Paris to Washington in late 1951. ABC Anchorman Frank Reynolds captured a part of that mood most vividly this past Foreign Service Day when he observed that his audience “needed no reminder of the painful fact that distinguished public servants, Foreign Service officers of great integrity, have in the past been punished and even ban- ished from the Service for daring to report to Washington what Washington did not wish to hear, and reporting with detachment and accuracy and sometimes indeed with prophesy the meaning of political and military events abroad that did not support the domestic political positions of higher officials in this country.” It was a period when Senator Joseph McCarthy had reached the height of his power and he was feared by the highest eche- lons of the United States executive branch. “Positive loyalty” was demanded by our highest officials in the Department of State. As happened in my case and that of other colleagues, follow- ing an appearance before Senator McCarthy there was loosed a flood of letters and postcards directed toward “unfriendly” witnesses and containing the repeated taunts of “communist,” “traitor,” and “red rat.” In March of 1951, I was on special assignment to the USSR in the combined interest of the British, Canadian and United States governments and their embassies in Moscow—to search for and hopefully uncover the latest clandestine listening device being used by the Soviets—a miniature electronic microphone, activated by a radio from some distance away. My traveling com- panion, Joseph Bezjian, worked for me as electronics technician. Months later he was honored by the Department of State for his fine work which led to the discovery of an advanced miniature listening device hidden in the Great Seal of the United States— a wooden replica hanging in Spaso House, the ambassdor’s official residence.