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The Cold War, that nearly half-century of tension between the Soviet bloc and the U.S.-led coalition, will soon recede in memory and with it the drama and tragedy that characterized the Korean War. Historians face the formidable task of recapturing that sense of an embattled "free world" facing the menace of an expanding world communism led by the Soviet Union abroad, and abetted by spies and sympathizers at home. The hysteria generated by the issue of who was loyal to America and who was not reached its peak with the sensational charges by Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) that the U.S. State Department was honeycombed with communists who had conspired to lose China and who threatened the very existence of the free world. Is it possible to recreate for a later generation the atmosphere in which the press, and a great many Americans, took these charges seriously?
Let us, for a moment, enter that dark world of conspiracy that Senator McCarthy and his supporters portrayed. Suppose that the famous list Senator McCarthy held up to his press conference actually contained the names of eighty State Department employees of doubtful loyalty. Some of them would certainly have had access to a top secret 1948 document from the military Chiefs of Staff to the National Security Council (NSC) which stated that Korea was of little strategic value to the United States. The Council, chaired by President Harry S. Truman, had accepted the judgement of the Chiefs. Just in case the State Department reds missed that document, the NSC re-examined the Korean issue in 1949 and reaffirmed that earlier decision, adding that because of its lack of strategic value, "commitment to the United States's use of military force in Korea would be ill-advised"' This judgement was once again accepted by those key advisers who would be at President Truman's side in June 1950 when the North Koreans made their fateful move south. Continuing our little parable, let us assume that one or more of those on Senator McCarthy's list communicated this top secret information to Moscow thereby assuring the Russians and their North Korean allies that they would have little to fear from intervention by the United States.
As we know, however, when the attack came, Truman and the...