McCarthy's "witches". (Cover Story: History).(Cover Story)

"I was a representative of the Young Communist League and the Communist party of the United States [at] the meetings of the executive committee of the Communist International, Young Communist International, Moscow," pronounced Paul Crouch during his September 15, 1953 testimony before a closed session of Senator McCarthy's investigative subcommittee. Crouch's testimony, contained in the 4,232 pages of recently unsealed transcripts, offered details of a resume the witness had compiled during 17 years of diligent service to the Soviet Union.

"I was a student and lecturer at the Frunze Military Academy and an honorary officer of the Red Army," continued Crouch. "I was the head of the Communist party's National Department for Infiltration of the Armed Forces in the United States, national editorial director of the Young Communist League, member of the editorial staff of the Daily Worker, district organizer for the Communist party in Virginia, New York and South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah, member of the district bureau of the Communist party in the Alabama district and the California district, Alameda County organizer, 1941."

Predictably, Crouch's detailed account of his Communist activities received no attention in media accounts of the recently unsealed transcripts. Nor were media outlets willing to report Crouch's testimony regarding nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the key figures in the U.S. government's top-secret Manhattan (atomic bomb) Project. Asked by Senator McCarthy, "Is there any doubt in your mind that Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist party?" Crouch replied: "No, sir, none whatever. I met him in a closed meeting of the Communist party in a house which was subsequently found to have been his residence at the time...."

Three years prior to his testimony before McCarthy's subcommittee, Crouch and his wife (who had also been a member of the Communist Party) had similarly testified regarding Oppenheimer before the California Legislature's Committee on Un-American Activities. But any further inquiry about Oppenheimer's activities was stymied when the scientist received a prominent endorsement from a popular young Golden State congressman with impressive anti-Communist credentials: Richard M. Nixon.

In his testimony at McCarthy's closed-door hearings, Crouch described another occasion when powerful figures in the U.S. government came to Oppenhemier's aid. During Oppenheimer's perjury trial, two Justice Department attorneys forbade Crouch to testify that he and his wife had attended Communist Party meetings at Oppenheimer's home. As a result, Crouch related, the jury "found him not guilty due to lack of sufficient identifying witnesses who had been in closed meetings with him, that is, witnesses who could testify to that effect."

On November 7, 1953, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover received a letter from William L. Borden, former executive director of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, containing a litany of detailed allegations leading to Borden's "exhaustively considered opinion, based upon years of study, of the available classified evidence, that more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union." Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance, thereby becoming a "martyr" to the scourge of "McCarthyism." But like others given that exalted title, Oppenheimer was guilty as charged.

In 1994, Pavel Sudoplatov, former head of the KGB's Administration for Special Tasks, published his memoirs: Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness. In that position, Sudoplatov stated, he was "responsible for sabotage, kidnapping, and assassination of our enemies beyond the country's borders." In Special Tasks, Sudoplatov disclosed that he bad headed "the Soviet espionage effort to obtain the secrets of the atomic bomb from America and Great Britain. I set up a network of illegals who convinced Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard ... and other scientists in America and Great Britain to share atomic secrets with us." Further confirmation of ...