Ghost of McCarthyism still haunts Washington

Parallels exist between the zealotry of Joseph McCarthy, the anticommunist firebrand in the US Senate of the 1950s, and the approach of some politicians in today's United States, according to a bestselling author.

At a webinar on Wednesday, Larry Tye spoke of the day when McCarthy made his name at a routine Republican function in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Feb 9, 1950.

"Joe McCarthy showed up with an enormous briefcase. He reached deep into the briefcase and pulled out sheets of paper, raised his hand into the air with great drama, and said, 'I have in my hand a list of more than 200 spies at our very own State Department, and I am going to name names'," said Tye, author of the 2020 book Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy.

McCarthy, who represented Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957, didn't have names of any communists known to the government. What he had in his hand could have been a grocery list or an outdated document, Tye told the online event hosted by the US Heartland China Association and United Chinese Americans.

However, McCarthy was on the front page of every major newspaper in the US within a day.

"He suddenly went from backbencher who knew a little bit about housing and not a whole lot about anything else, certainly not anything about communism, to front-page news in every newspaper, first in America, then around the world, and he never looked back,"Tye said.

"If this starts to sound familiar in terms of anything going on in our world today, it ought to be because lots of today's demagogues took their blueprints from Joe McCarthy and understood that all you need was a good ability to give a good speech," Tye said. "He didn't need facts, and he didn't need truth."

A case every 10 hours

Mara Hvistendahl, author of The Scientist and The Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage, said the way that McCarthy attracted attention reminds her of remarks by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who made numerous claims about China espionage cases that turned into headlines. One such claim was that FBI agents open a China-related case every 10 hours.

Hvistendahl, an investigative reporter with news website The Intercept and Pulitzer Prize finalist, wondered if that meant FBI agents are opening cases in the morning as well at 10 o'clock at night.

She told the forum that she became interested in investigations into Chinese scientists when she suddenly saw that events she covered became headlines in the US. Her book, released in 2020, looks at a case involving Chinese scientist Mo Hailong, who was accused of stealing corn seeds from agricultural giant Monsanto.

The book delves into the years that led up to the so-called China Initiative, and US historical discrimination against Chinese scientists. The FBI used tools for extreme cases such as terrorism when investigating Chinese scientists in the US, and such patterns played out in many other such cases, Hvistendahl said.

Surveillance program

She discovered in her research that there was a dedicated surveillance program targeting Chinese researchers in the US in the 1960s, and it continued into the '70s and '80s. The pattern of assumed guilt due to ethnicity continues to this day, she said.

Hvistendahl also pointed out that the FBI is not very diverse in its recruitment. The FBI even advised Asian agents not to date Asian Americans, not to have culturally significant items at their home, basically implying that people displaying their cultural heritage somehow pose a security risk, she said.