CHARGES AGAINST U.S. OFFICIALS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26078, 3 April 1950, Page 7

CHARGES AGAINST U.S. OFFICIALS

Attack By Senator McCarthy ALLEGED AID TO COMMUNISM (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8.40 p.m.) NEW YORK, April 2. “Vicious attacks on the highest officials of the State Department by Senator Joseph McCarthy are accomplishing results for the Russians which exceed their wildest hopes,” said Mr Owen Lattimore, Professor of Johns Hopkins University to-day. Mr Lattimore is to appeal* before the Senate sub-committee investigating Senator McCarthy’s charges of Communist influence in the State Department. Senator McCarthy told the subcommittee that Mr Lattimore was the top Russian agent in the United States. Mr Lattimore said: I am not, and never have been, a member of the Communist Party, or a Communist sympathiser, or affiliated or associated with the Communist Party.” He said that he had had very little connexion with the State Department. He had served in various advisory positions with some State'Department missions on three occasions, but he had never been a consultant for the State Department or on its payroll. The Secretary of State (Mr Dean Acheson) said that Mr Lattimore was not the architect of the United States Far Eastern policy, as charged by Senator-McCarthy.

Professor’s Work Mr Acheson said that’ the records showed that from October, 1943, to February. 1946, Professor Lattimore had been an economic adviser to the reparations missions to Japan, but he had not been responsible to the State Department. The Secretary of State added that, two speaking engagements with the Foreign Services Institute and a round-table discussion at the State Department. Mr Lattimore had no conne^ on r , w * t * 1 the State Department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation to-day received the documents which Senator McCarthy said yesterday would prove his charges against Mr Lattimore. Officials would hot say whether Senator McCarthy’s documents contained information not previously known to the bureau xrJfi t , he ?' >us , e . to-day. Mt Charles Halleck (Republican) replied to Mr Truman who asserted yesterday that Senator McCarthy and other Republican critics of the State Department were the Kremlin’s best assets in the United States.

. i¥ r 7?. alle S k said: “Mr Trurpan is telling the American people, ‘Fill your fire extinguishers with gasoline and y‘ u will be safe.’ ”

Senator Robert Taft, the Republican domestic policy leader, said in a speech at Portland, Maine; “The only ♦u ?y ot o * Be i the Communists in the State Department is to change the head of the Government.’’