Owen Lattimore and the "loss" of China

In March 1950 Senator Joseph R. McCarthy accused Owen Lattimore, a distinguished China scholar at Johns Hopkins University, of being "the top Soviet espionage agent in the U.S." The Senate Foreign Relations Committee exonerated Lattimore four months later, but for the next two years Pat McCarran and his Senate Internal Security Committee hounded him. McCarran's subcommittee issued a 5,712-page report, based on perjured testimony, claiming that Lattimore had been a "conscious, articulate instrument of the Communist conspiracy." McCarran then forced the Justice Department to indict Lattimore for perjury, bringing Roy M. Cohn to Washington to draw up the indictment. The FBI was ordered to the ends of the earth to find some credible witness who would testify that Lattimore had served the Communists. No such witness was found. Finally, in 1955 Attorney General Herbert Brownell dismissed the case. Lattimore was a victim of the virulent witch hunts that took place in the U.S. in the 1950s after China, our friend and ally in World War II, went over to that reviled enemy, communism. Americans could not believe that China made this choice freely; its adherence to the World Communist Conspiracy must have been coerced by Soviet manipulation and domestic subversion by Americans. Some Communist mastermind in the American government had to be blamed for our "loss" of China. Lattimore, who had never been in the State Department but who had warned that China was not a stooge of Stalinist Russia and that Mao Zedong had come to power on his own, become the scapegoat. In this magisterial biography, Robert Newman follows the career of Owen Lattimore, scholar-adventurer, through his journeys in Central Asia, his service in both the Chinese Nationalist and American governments in World War II, his tribulations as Joe McCarthy's flagship heretic and McCarran's alleged Communist mastermind, his brilliant academic career in England, and finally his return to Central Asia as the foremost advocate of Mongolian nationalism and independence. Newman proves definitively that there was never any case against Lattimore. His book is based on the most important parts of the 38,900-page FBI Lattimore file--arguably the most complete and candid file on a major prosecution ever released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It shows that despite the pressure of the Senate inquisitors, hard-bitten FBI agents knew all along that Lattimore was never pro-Communist.