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00:33:27
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Transcription: [00:30:01]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Yeah. [[inaudible cross talk]] Yeah. No, I mean the--

[00:30:04]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
No the whole--and particularly after the atomic bomb with the notion of the atom-the dropping of the bombs in--in Japan and then the explosion of the Soviet bombs,

[00:30:13]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
there really is the sense of total annihilation here.

[00:30:15]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
And the fact that the Soviets had concentrated most of their spying energy on the atomic program, um,

[00:30:23]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
is a cause of greatest concern. And as we've learned recently, despite the denials, the Rosenbergs and Sobell, and the others were, in fact, Soviet agents.

[00:30:32]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
I mean it was denied for years and years but Alger Hiss was, you know, at least a second tier Soviet spy.

[00:30:41]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
And he's you know, high up in the state department. There was a real problem.

[00:30:47]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
How you solve that problem--it's like the 19th century radicals who were accused of burning down the barn in order to kill the rats.

[00:30:56]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and it's, it's a matter of how far you go with this.

[00:30:59]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Again?

[00:31:01]
{SPEAKER name="Questioner-2"}
...these accusations and criticizing military [[?]] with Spanish backgrounds, what was their reaction to senior fellow senators to--?

[00:31:10]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
They gradually began to realize quickly that they'd gone too far.

[00:31:13]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
I think there was the fond hope by people, like Eisenhower and Taft, that they could control him.

[00:31:19]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
And, again, we're dealing with a very short period of time, four and a half years, so,

[00:31:24]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
so, to say that they didn't react quickly, I think is true enough,

[00:31:27]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
but I think that people like Taft, who was an isolationist from Ohio, a fervent philosophical anti-communist, uh,

[00:31:34]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
there was a notion that they could use him, he would get, as I say, get out the vote,

[00:31:40]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and that he would animate their cause, that he would make it apparent to the American people that we were under danger.

[00:31:45]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
ICBMs, rockets are being tested, there's the beginning of the kind of Cold-War paranoia, that we could all g---it wasn't really paranoia, but the element of uncertainty and,

[00:31:58]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
they thought they could control him. I don't think anybody really liked him. They recognized him as a force of nature.

[00:32:04]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Eisenhower, when he was urged, once he became President, to take on McCarthy personally,

[00:32:09]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
he, first of all, Eisenhower was not gonna have a President go after a Senator; there's an element inequality there in terms of, just, almost political propriety.

[00:32:18]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
But he literally said: "I am not gonna get into the gutter with him."

[00:32:22]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
I mean, for a man, a senator, who'd attacked, as he just said, George C. Marshall, probably the greatest--the greatest, gen--one of the two greatest generals of the late--of the--in American history.

[00:32:33]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
If he would attack Marshall for being pro-communist; I mean, Eisenhower, would have been, you know, he would have turned his guns on him.

[00:32:41]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
The wildness of these attacks first attracted and then also repelled the people who benefited from him.

[00:32:47]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
And gradually they distanced him and he loses his censure vote decisively, it's like 75/25 (those aren't the numbers) but he loses; he has a very small rump of support among very conservative Republicans

[00:33:02]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
and as I said to the previous--the answer to the previous--the gentleman's previous question,

[00:33:07]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
he just never--the--he never transferred it into an organization. I mean, he's a rogue.

[00:33:14]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
He's useful for the Republican party and conservative Democrats for a little while, but he leaves nothing behind him and it's--it's a really amazing episode in American history.
[00:33:27]